Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

Superstitions around the world

 Superstition (noun); excessively credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural

                                A widely held but irrational belief in supernatural influences, especially as leading to good or bad luck, or a practice based on such belief.

Walking under a ladder is traditionally European superstition as its roots stem from the Christian symbolism of the Holy Trinity, of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. This is also what led to the association of the number three with something sacred.

The triangle shape came to be regarded as sacred as well, and a ladder forms a triangle shape, so naturally to walk under the ladder would be to destroy the sanctity of the Trinity and you would then have to suffer the consequences.

The ladders resemblance to the gallows also did not help the belief that it is bad luck to walk under one, nor did the fact of the obvious danger of something or someone falling from it.

This superstition is also very common in Egypt as they believe that one might accidentally spot a God climbing up or down a ladder and so they avoid it as much as possible.

One common superstition that comes from an ancient Greek and Roman background is breaking a mirror. This originates from the simple fact that that reflections of ourselves are uncanny and are often unnerving, so people have long associated bad things with them. For example, the idea that a crack in a mirror would somehow break its charm or trap someone’s soul.

In ancient Rome, those who contributed the notion that a broken mirror would bring seven years of bad luck to whoever broke it, since it was believed that only poor health would cause a mirror to crack and the number seven was seen by the Romans as the number of years required to complete a full life-cycle of sickness and renewal.

As a result, a broken mirror meant you were headed toward a death-spiral that might take seven years to pull yourself out of. This same Romans also felt that you could prevent a horrible outcome by gathering broken pieces of the mirror and burying them by the moonlight, so should we trust them about all the bad luck stuff?

Ariel x