Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Black Cat Superstitions

By Russ D. Edwards

Most people won't admit to being superstitious. Maybe that's because the definition of superstition' is an unreasonable belief based on stupidity or fear, or both. Nobody wants to appear ignorant or fearful. Yet you may find well-educated, awfully successful people who won't walk under a ladder or who will bury the pieces of a broken mirror or who throw salt over their shoulders if salt is spilled. You will find people who, if a black pussy crosses their path, turn around and go back home or take another path to their destination.

Black cats are somehow associated with malicious, with magicians, and even with illness. Black cats have been blamed for everything from a run of bad luck to the plague and all of the injustices of the Earth.

Actually, superstitious beliefs change from country to country and even from area to area. Having a black cat cross your trail in England or Japan is claimed to bring' luck, but having a black pussy cross your path in America and some other EU nations is believed to bring' luck.

Having a black pussy cross your trail isn't the only legend that is based on black cats :

* In Scotland, it is thought that a unusual black cat on your porch brings prosperity. * Italians believe that when a black pussy sneezes, all who hear it'll have good luck. * Egyptians believe that the life-giving rays of the sun are kept in the eyes of a cat at night. * In Ireland, slaughtering a moggy brings seventeen years of bad luck. * In America, it's 'bad' luck to see a white cat at night, but 'good' luck to dream about a white moggy.

traditional Egyptians worshiped pussies, and anyone who finished a moggy was executed. In the Middle Ages, when witches changed into a concern, the black moggy was linked to magicians and to devil. Some assumed that a magician has the power to transform herself into the form of a black moggy, so that the notion that a black cat that crossed your path was basically a camouflaged hag was born.

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