The Evolution of Superstition
By Joseph F. Rinn
(The Celebrated Anti-Spiritualist)
Mysticism in some form has held the human race in bondage from the earliest time. In all ages the credulous have been easy victims of the crafty designing minds of that period as the human mind has never been able to conceive of anything too ridiculous for many to accept as true.
No sooner does the spread of scientific knowledge kill one superstition than it crops up again in a few years later in a new dress with a few scientific frills added to it which the half educated and mentally weak unable to analyze in a logical manner and accept as true and something new.
The belief in the supernatural has been the curse of the human race—and has ever been the greatest obstacle to scientific progress in every field of research.
Primitive man explained the earth by the heavens, and the storms, lightning, thunder and earthquakes and the havoc they created caused mankind to believe in gods and devils of all kinds. They at one time looked upon the earth as a huge animal that had to be propitiated when angry, so this led to offering of sacrifices to appease its anger and this belief continues to this day in some parts of the world where a convulsion of nature is supposed to be caused by an angry god and an earthquake by demoniacal possession. Every rock, well, river and tree had a special deity to whom mankind made sacrifices so that they might be protected from ill fortune.
Astrology arose through wonder at natural phenomena. The earth was supposed to be a thing apart from the Universe or the rest of the heavenly bodies, and the operations of nature, the changes of the seasons with its mildness, sunshine and warmth as contrasted with cold, earthquakes, storms, epidemics of disease and the eclipse of the sun and moon led to the belief that the planets were peopled with gods who dispensed favors or vent anger on mankind.
To the Babylonians belongs the belief in the Stars of Men's Nativities, the Planetary houses, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, while the fixed stars are associated with the planets and gods in the affairs of men, and even the great Kepler believed that planets had minds.
In Egypt they divided out the limbs and organs of the human body, putting each under a special god, and they made calendars of lucky and unlucky days. These old signs are printed even to the present day on almanacs where you can see different parts of the body marked with signs of the zodiac.
The Assyrians had 36 conciliar gods in the 12 signs of the zodiac and whenever a discovery in medicine or science was made the province of these gods of the stars were enlarged.
As mankind believed natural forces conscious it was but reasonable for them to believe that the gods could come down and visit the earth, and this belief existed for ages among nearly all of mankind.
The dreams of mankind gradually led to the belief that every person, implement, animal, plant and object had a phantom of itself. This gradually led to burying a man's goods with him at death, to the burning of his slaves, horses and his wives at the same time to accompany him on his journey, and this persisted until recent times in some countries, but the last time we have a record of it being done in Europe was at Treves in 1781.
The doctrine of object souls or phantoms expanded into a general doctrine of spirits conveying influences through material objects, and thus arose the worship of images and the belief in amulets or charms bringing good luck.
Magic squares with numbers supposed to possess magical powers were engraven in metal or stone as amulets or talismans, as according to astrologers relations existed between these squares and the planets and they were consecrated to planets.
To-day this superstition still exists as many persons carry lucky pennies, swastikas and other so called charms for good luck, while we have many believers in the power of a horseshoe to bring good luck.
The word "Abraxas" engraved on a ring or gem was once a famous talisman, but all talismans pale into insignificance beside the mystical word:
"ABRACADABRA"
which Baronius, in his Annals, attributes to Serenus, a physician of the third century. It was said to have power to ward off demoniacal inflences, heal physical ills, etc.
Eliphas Levi discourses upon it as follows: "the magic triangle of the pagan theosophists was the celebrated ABRACADABRA, to which they attributed extraordinary virtues, and the letters were arranged in the form of a triangle!"
Pythagorean philosophy grew and favored mystical speculation such as those of numbers. Occult powers in the planetary SEVEN and the zodiacal TWELVE were recognized, and a spiritual arithmetic was carried so far as to indicate good deities by whole numbers and demons by fractions.
Mystical symbolism of the most ridiculous kind in relation to numbers prevailed.
Even to this day, in spite of education and the spread of scientific knowledge, many persons are still afflicted with the belief in the good and bad luck of certain numbers and will not sit down to dinner with thirteen people. Some years ago when the English government was about to start a form of Home Rule in Ireland on the 13th of the month the Irish members of Parliament requested them to postpone it a day and not commence it on such an unlucky day.
A great many persons to-day believe in the ridiculous mystical nonsense brought down to us from an age of ignorance and superstition and change their names to correspond to certain aspects of numbers.
Reasonable persons should readily see that a mere figure of arithmetic could have no more action on the affairs of men than could the picture of a turnip.
The many peculiar ways that multiplication of certain figures, such as 3 or 9 work out, as well as the mystical 7, has led the superstitious of the past to attribute certain spiritual powers to numbers, much as they believed that an earthquake meant a demon had taken possession of the earth or that thunder and lightning meant the angry voice of god.
To the believers in the bad luck of the number 13 I would say that for many years we have had a thirteen club in New York City that has through its members actions violated every rule related to the Thirteen superstition and with no evil results, and I have personally taken part with them many times in doing so. They sit down to dinner on the 13th of the month, 13 at a table, 13 minutes past the hour, eat and drink 13 things, walk under ladders, break looking glasses and do every conceivable thing supposed to do bad luck, and in the years I have followed its career, I know its average for the good luck of its members, as well as good health, is better than other clubs.
In all ages those who knew the operation of the laws of nature and those skilled in magical tricks used their knowledge to increase their wealth and power and to terrify mankind. The art of imposture has been practiced so long in the evolution of human society that no reliance can be placed in anything coming to us from antiquity.
(To be continued next month)
Originally published in the M-U-M in Vol. 11, No. 7, (Whole No. 106) in New York, January 1922.
(continued from last month)
JOSEPH F. RINN
Whose anti-spiritualistic article, "The Evolution of Superstition", is now appearing in M. U. M.
When the Cycle of the Eclipses became first known to mankind we have no record of, but it was known to Thales in the 6th century before Christ, and in India before that, as the Incarnation of Vishnu is based on it.
The Divine year of the Cycle of Eclipses consisted of 223 Lunar revolution or 18 years and 10 or 11 days, and during that period will occur 41 eclipses of the Sun and 29 of the Moon. Familiarity with the Cycles will enable anyone to foretell the Eclipse with unerring certainty, so that in ages past, when ignorance and superstition were prevalent, the few assessing this information were armed with great power over human minds.
The priests of that period used the knowledge to enslave mankind and rule them through their fears. No religious or political revolution was possible in ancient times unless it had adequate astrological sanction, so they that knew the secret of the Eclipses considered anybody an enemy that dared to reveal it to mankind, and the Greek priests caused the philosopher Anaxagoras to be thrown into prison for daring to reveal the information as to the period of the eclipses.
Five centuries later PLINY wrote: "It is a long time since means were discovered of calculating beforehand not merely the day or night, but the very hour at which an eclipse of the Sun or Moon is to take place, yet the majority of the lower orders of mankind still firmly believe that these phenomena are brought about by enchantment."
Magic held a prominent place in Egypt, Babylon and in Rome. Public divination was carried to the extreme and every public act was done under magical conditions. The Oracles of Rome and omens of all kinds had public sanction. Thunder and lightning, a heavy hail storm, or a calf born with two heads meant a sign of some kind. Omens were taken from birds, and it depended whether the birds appeared on the right side or the left. The Owl was the unluckiest bird. Sacred chickens gave omen according as they were eager or not to feed, and if they dropped crumbs on the ground it was an omen.
Foreign soothsayers practiced their arts on the rich and credulous dupes the same as the fakers of our day do now. People lived in fear of the arts of fascination, of ill wishing or of the Evil eye, and in our day we have it in an other form, as the followers of Mrs. Eddy live in fear of "Malicious animal magnetism."
Magicians of old claimed power to be able to converse with spirits and gain their help, and to-day we have Spirit Mediums claiming similar powers.
In Egypt they sang hymns against dangerous animals and used certain formulas of words to protect them. The god SET was invoked as a protector and he must obey when the magic word JOERBETH was uttered.
They believed in Unicorns, Dragons, satyrs, Salamanders, Genii, and many strange things that appear ridiculous to us.
They believed in the magical transformation of men into beasts, and Sorcerers were thought to have the power to turn themselves into wolves.
They had laws in Rome making it a crime for anybody to raise storm by magic or to turn men into animals, and that nobody should remove his neighbors crops to another field by incantation or conjure away his corn, but incantation was permitted against diseases, droughts, storms or any natural phenomena injurious to agriculture.
They believed that conjurers, by force of magic words, could raise the Devil and compel him to execute their commands; that witches made a friendly bargain with the Devil that he should do whatever they desired him; that Sorcerers, by use of superstitious forms of words or by images or other representation of persons or things, produced strange effects above the ordinary effects of nature.
In the 14th century, Pope John XXIII issued a bull against witches showing that they firmly believed in such persons and an alleged witch was to be conjured by the tears of the Saviour, the Virgin and the Saints to weep, but this they could not do if they were a witch.
You have seen old pictures of a witch flying through space on a broomstick, and to-day this has evoluted until persons now believe that we have an astral body that can fly in the same way through space while your regular body is doing business at the same old stand.
To-day among the Indians and the wild tribes of Australia they fear sorcerers have a mysterious power BOYL-YA, invisible except to other sorcerers, whereby they enter the bodies of men and feed steathily on them. The sorcerer can creep near them and can bewitch them by merely pointing at them the leg of a Kangaroo or he can steal away a man's kidney fat where they believe a man's power dwells.
Now this is only the evolution of an old idea that Demons could enter the body, and every time you place your hand politely over your mouth when yawning, you have an illustration of the evolution of a superstition quite common in Europe that the Devil was always lying in wait to enter a man's body and take possession of him. Satan was supposed to go in by the mouth and after he had waited a reasonable time and the man did not open his mouth the Devil made him him yawn and while his mouth was open the Devil jumped down his throat. So many cases of the kind were believed to have occurred that people learned to make the sign of the cross over the mouth whenever they yawned in order to scare away the Devil.
This practice still survives among the peasantry of Spain and Italy, but most other people have dispensed with the sign of the cross and simply place the hand before the lips. It is a remarkable survival of a practice after the significance has perished. Whenever you pass a church, how many of you realize that church bells were put in high places on churches to scare away the devils of the air?
American sorcerers have magic chants of power over the elements. They extract disease animals from the sick by sucking and blowing on them. They make pictures and images of persons or animals and pierce them with horns so as to kill the persons or animals they represent, and they also compel love by practicing on the heart of a picture of the beloved one.
(to be continued next month)
Originally published in the M-U-M in Vol. 11, No. 8, (Whole No. 107) in New York, February 1922.
Continued from Page 98, Feb. issue
The evolution of this belief we have with us now in a new dress under Christian Science, and it is called Malicious Animal Magnetism. They really believe that by throwing magnetic waves over space they can injure a person or make a person well, and so cults today believe that they can take the picture of a person, hang it on a wall and talk words of ill health to the picture or run a dagger into the heart of the picture and that the person the picture represents will be affected at a distance. This is somewhat similar to the old evil eye superstition and some years ago Mrs. Stetson was removed from her position as pastor of the Christian Science Church in New York on the ground that she used Malicious Animal Magnetism against those in power in Boston.
Very few realize that when they say "God bless you" as a person sneezes, that it is an evolution of an old superstition. At one time there was a belief in a God of Sneezing, and great undertakings would even be abandoned if a person sneezed at an inappropriate moment. The act being looked upon as an oracle of the gods.
A sneeze between midnight and noon was looked upon as a fortunate sign, but between noon and midnight it betokened great misfortune. To sneeze to your right was lucky but to your left unlucky and any undertaking in hand should be abandoned; more than four sneezes did not count. If people sneezed together it was a good sign, particularly if they happened to be discussing business.
It is from such a past holding such ridiculous beliefs that has come down to us the belief in Palmistry, Astrology, Fate, Luck, etc., which many persons calling themselves educated accept as true.
In the past men of the medical profession had to contend with difficulties undreamed of today, as under the guise of helping bodily ailments and removing spells cast about people the charlatans and magicians of those days worked all kinds of tricky games on the superstitious public. This class of fakers still are with us even today in spite of scientific knowledge, daily newspapers and books on all sides.
As soon as scientific investigators give a few details of what they hope to accomplish by a particular line of research that may take years to get results of value, the fakers and quacks immediately take advantage of the situation and so we have radium cures for every conceivable ailment, for cancer and for tuberculosis. Galvanic belts, Rheumatic rings, metal insoles in the shoes, Fango mud baths, magic oils and X-ray cures, all play a part in luring dollars from the gullible public.
Nothing seems too ridiculous to find believers and I think now with amazement of the many supposedly educated persons who some years ago endorsed Radam's Microbe Killer, so in a way we seem to be but little advanced over the time when people believed that a toothache could be cured by driving a nail into an oak tree, as today many people believe that carrying a horse chestnut in the left hand pocket will cure Rheumatism.
Ashmole in his diary tells us how chips from a gallows if worn in a bag about the neck would cure ague and that he cured himself by another method. He says: "I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir and hung three spiders about my neck and drove my ague away." It is not many years ago that a custom prevailed in this country of wearing camphor in a bag about the neck to protect one from smallpox. Ashmole says: "By employing certain characters, letters, words or figures as talismans it was possible to conquer contagious diseases." The color of medicine had a great deal to do with its value. White was regarded as cooling and red heating. An elk's foot had curative powers in epilepsy. You had to apply the hoof to the heart, then hold it in the left hand and rub the ear with it. A headache could be cured by tying about your neck a halter with which a person had been hung, or you could take moss growing on a human skull and when dried and powdered and used as a snuff, it was considered equally efficacious.
The royal touch was a sure cure for scrofula. This cure seems to have begun with Edward the Confessor in England and was observed in England until the ascension of the house of Brunswick.
Husbandman's Practice of Medicine published in 1664 says: "It is good to purge with electuaries when the Moon is in Cancer, with pills when the Moon is in Pisces, with potions when the Moon is in Virgo, that it is good to take emetics when the Moon is in Taurus, Virgo or the latter part of Sagittarius. Purging the head by sneezing is recommended when the Moon is in Cancer and cutting of the hair when the Moon is in Libra."
In ancient times herbs were used more for magical effects than for curative properties. They used the heads, middle and roots of plants to cure heads, bodies and legs respectively. Illness was caused by demons and any medicine given must be with magic words. Thus an emetic was given with the following words said aloud: O demon, who art lodged in the stomach of M— son of N— thou whose father is called head smiter, whose name is death, whose name is cursed forever, get thee gone, etc.
The magical formulas showing worship of the moon as follows: "O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spit blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Mormo, thousand faced moon, look favorably on our sacrifices."
Even to this day we have in Pennsylvania what are called Pow Wow doctors. They utter strange words over the patient and cure Erysipelas by moving a shovel full of hot coals slowly to and fro over the body of the patient while repeating a jargon of mystical words. If the Pow Wow fails a regular doctor is called in, but if a cure takes place the Pow Wow gets the credit.
In Scotland they cured Erysipelas by cutting off half the ear of a cat and letting the blood from the wound drop on the diseased part.
The custom of wearing amulets and charms was very popular among, the ancient Greeks and Romans. Athletes wore them to insure victory, and an oath was sometimes administered to persons beginning a legal battle "that they had no charm and no herb of virtue about them."
Astrology has been the most persistent superstition to overcome and it still holds sway over many minds even today. In the past astrologers predicted everything. Pascal says: "They only assign good fortune to rare conjunctions of the stars and thus rarely fail. They say eclipses portend misfortune, because misfortunes are common, so, as ill chance happens often, they are often right."
Montaigne tells us that "astrologers predicted everything, and that one time vast sums of money were lost in Italy because of the sacrifice of valuable securities on the exchange because of the prediction that Italy would be destroyed."
A favorite topic of astrologers has been the immediate end of the world. They predicted it in 1186, and Stoffler predicted a universal deluge in 1524, a year noted for its drought.
The priests regulated the whole civil life of a nation, its laws, courts, markets and marriages by astrology. The primitive week began as the first of the week with Saturn and ended with Venus. They had lucky and unlucky days for everything. With the Arabs, Tuesday and Wednesday were for blood letting, as Mars was lord of iron and blood, and Mercury lord of boils, and even to this day in Bagdad astrologers proclaim lucky and unlucky days and surgical operations are performed accordingly.
In Madagascar thousands of children born at a time declared by astrologers as ill-omened were put to death.
In 1849 in this country, when Miller, the head of the Millerete sect, died, there were 50,000 of his followers who accepted the astrological verdict that the end of the world was at hand and gave away all their possessions.
The curse of humanity has been the belief that something causes us bad or good luck or that things were fated or laid out for us. It is absurd to believe that a child born at the moment of midnight, as the son of John D. Rockefeller, could possibly have the same fate as the child of his Negro chauffeur born at the same place at the same moment, or that a girl born to the Queen of England could possibly have the same future or fate as a child born at the same moment to some poverty stricken women in the slums of London.
Seven times out of ten the man we call lucky has had certain results in his favor occur because he was plucky and because with his pluck he combined prudence, and had prepared himself to take advantage of such opportunities as presented themselves. Now chance is what some people fail to understand as being in a certain chain of circumstances which may bring good results to them, but this chain of circumstances is not prepared or predestined for any special individual any more than if a number of people are walking along the street and a gust of wind blows dust over them. The dust had to strike somebody that was passing and if nobody had been there, it would have fallen in the street.
A lottery is run by a machine and somebody has to win, so why call the winner lucky and the loser unlucky. If you pitch pennies in the air for head or tail or guess what the result will be for 100 throws you will vary but little in the general result. Place a gatling gun in a doorway and it will kill anybody in front of it and luck had no choice in the matter.
In ancient Egypt the cat was an object of worship and there was a cat goddess named Bubastis and numbers of cat mummies still exist. Some people believe they will have bad luck if a black cat follows them or crosses their path because in ancient times the Devil was supposed to sometimes take the form of a cat. The idea of fate or luck, as it is ordinarily understood, go together, but science recognizes no outside intervention in human affairs. Your actions are determined by your impulses and the strongest impulses always govern your actions no matter what the action may be. In this way only have we any knowledge of any controlling force.
It is believed in Thibet that anybody killing a cat will have the sins of the cat transferred to it, and in Germany to dream of a cat at Christmas time means an alarm of illness. If a wind blew a thousand dollar bill into your face it would not have any more significance than if a shower of dust had done the same thing or if you had been bitten by a mosquito or stepped on a carpet tack.
We may think we are advancing, but incredible as it may sound, a woman was actually burned as a witch in Ireland in 1912. A young woman named Bridget Cleary was the victim. She was married to Michael Cleary and with her father Patrick Boland lived in the Cleary cottage apparently happy and contented until a short time before the tragedy when under the influence of sickness she began to suffer from hallucinations. Her husband being ignorant and superstitious, went to consult a fairy doctor who told him that the real Bridget Cleary had been stolen away by the fairies and that an evil spirit had taken her place. To banish this demon remedial measures were resorted to and the confused evidence at the trial showed appalling ignorance. Herbs were administered and disgusting decoction poured over her body and forced into her mouth. Four men holding her down on the bed used a red hot iron to make her open her mouth and severely gripped her throat to make her swallow. She was dragged into the next room and held with her naked body pressed on the bars of the red hot grate. While there she was made to repeat her own name and that of her husband three times while certain incantations were said and she was put back to bed. It is hardly surprising that the woman was raving next day and then stronger measures were resorted to expel the demon until it resulted in the death of the poor sick woman.
Things like this occurring in our age show how difficult it has been to overcome superstitions of the past and that the fight must continue to free the human mind from all superstitious ideas such as still persist.
Originally published in the M-U-M in Vol. 11, No. 12, (Whole No. 111) in New York, June 1922.
