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superstition| Popular belief, concerned with (usually) bad luck, often about the evil consequences of apparently trivial actions. |
| Superstitions may arise in cultures where there is or has been a strong ritual code or belief in spirits, and in those where certain numbers (such as 13 – Christ gathered with the disciples, including Judas Iscariot, at the Last Supper) carry an ominous significance. |
| The term superstition is often used to dismiss beliefs and practices one does not agree with. It can reasonably be employed only when such beliefs and practices contradict the weight of evidence and the conception of what is rational in a given society. |
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| ? Mentioned in | | ? References in classic literature |
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| Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this day--the name of THE MOONSTONE. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Perfect calms at sea are always suspected by the experienced mariner to be the forerunners of a storm, and I know some persons, who, without being generally the devotees of superstition, are apt to apprehend that great and unusual peace or tranquillity will be attended with its opposite. |