The English word “superstition” is derived from the Latin word “superstitio,” (noun, feminine) which translates directly to “standing over.” Many interpret this to mean standing over as in standing over the gods or standing over logic. In English, the word superstition is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “excessively credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural.” The name in and of itself suggests an awareness that a superstitious belief is not one that is sound. Yet history is full of magical thinking, rituals, prayers, and beliefs.

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Symbols and Signs, a boy struggles with a mental illness known as “referential mania,” in which he believes that everything in the world around him is in some way relevant to him. A story built around superstition, there are many events that seem inflated with meaning despite the likelihood that they are random and arbitrary. Though there are many interpretations of this story, a popular one is that Nabokov aimed to critique the one who reads literature with the idea that everything must mean something. As the reader follows the parents of the ill boy to visit him in the sanitarium, they encounter many seemingly “bad omens,” like a broken-down subway and a half dead bird. The story ends with three phone calls to the parent’s home, the first two from a wrong number dialer, and the third left ambiguous, abruptly ending the story. With a knowledge of his previous suicide attempts, the reader wonders if Nabokov’s reason for ending the story without revealing the third caller, may have been to allude to a successful suicide. This story is interesting because while Nabokov attempts to lure the reader with meaningless details, the reader actually becomes the maniac, suffering from a situation similar to the boy’s, where they think every detail must mean something.

Magical thinking has been alive since the beginning of time, and not necessarily on a smaller scale than this. Beginning in Ancient Egypt, magic was treated as a serious way to interact with the gods, often times being performed in order to heal or protect. The Bible would appear many years later, which would require a good bit of magical thinking in order to worship.

One superstition you’ve probably heard of is the idea of knocking on wood to save yourself from misfortune. This belief can be traced all the way back to the Ancient Celts. Thought to evolve somewhere around 1200 B.C., the Celts were a European group who shared similar religious and cultural beliefs. Many of their cultural traditions are still alive today in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. One of the many beliefs the Celts shared was that everything contained a spark of the divine, especially trees. The Celts believed that trees were inhabited by spirits, gods, or faeries, which one could rouse by knocking on a tree for protection. This tradition is still alive today, suggesting that people do still engage in magical thinking, regardless of any awareness that it may not be true. Why is this? It can be hard to find signal in a world full of chaos and disorder. Perhaps doing something that provides a tiny illusion of control, is enough to make one feel better and more connected to the world around them.

While certain rituals like knocking on wood, or, saying “bless you” after someone sneezes are surely meaningless, I wouldn’t go as far to say that any illogical thinking is useless. Things like unexplainable gut feelings and intuition are not founded on logic, yet do have some weight in the world.

But maybe the boy in Nabokov’s story wasn’t insane. Maybe he wasn’t mentally ill at all, and maybe we were tricked a second time. Within the confines of his fictional world, Nabokov leads his reader to believe every bad omen and ghastly event must mean something about the boy. All roads lead back to him. In the ambiguous ending of the story, what is in reality just a phone ringing, must be, to its reader, a notification of the son’s death. Would this not confirm the boy’s assumptions?

Superstitione teneri: To be the slave of superstition

Superstitionem funditus tollere: To absolutely annihilate superstition