What is SUPERSTITION?

Written by Claire

Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason, knowledge, or experience. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to folk beliefs deemed irrational. This leads to some superstitions being called "old wives' tales". It is also commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be foretold by specific unrelated prior events.

When you try to define the word superstition, don't you find that it is quite difficult to do so?
Suppose ,for example, you said it was a belief in something that wasn't really so.
Well there are many things all of us believe in that can't be proved. Besides,at certain times in man's history,everyone believed in certain things that we now regard as superstititions . And the people who believed in them at that time weren't superstitious at all. For example, they believed that the shadow or reflections of a person was a part of soul.So they considered that you would harm the soul,if you broke anything on which this shadow or reflection appeared . Therefore they considered it harmful unlucky to break mirror. But remember at that time this was a belief held by most people. Today if someone considers it unlucky to break a mirror he is superstitious.Today we no longer believe that a shadow or reflection is a part of the soul.

So a superstition is actually a belief or practice that people cling to after new knowledge or facts have appeared to disprove them . That's why it is impossible to say when superstition began. In ancient times man tried to explain events in the world as best as he could with the knowledge at hand. He did not know much about the sun, stars,moon,comets and so on, So people made up explanations about them and followed certain practice to protect themselves from their influence.That is why astrology was an accepted belief at one time. But with the development of science,the heavenly bodies comes to be known and understood, the old beliefs should have died out. When they didn't and when people still believed that ,for example , that seeing an shotting star brought good luck,these beliefs became superstitions



reference: (Wikipedia)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition