Of Friday 13th, practical superstitions, and the other kind

Quick, repeat after me the following word: paraskevidekatriaphobia. This is the learned name for fear of Friday 13th. It doesn't trip off the tongue quite as lightly as triskaidekaphobia, which means fear of the number 13.
    The longer tongue-twister is derived from the Greek words for "Friday", "thirteen", and "fear". But don't blame the ancient Greeks, The term was made up just a century ago, when scientists and psychologists still knew Greek and Latin.

     If you're nervous about Friday 13th, here's my suggested remedy. Try to memorize and repeat 13 times (without looking) the word paraskevidekatriaphobia. By the time you get this right, Friday 13th will be over.

     Friday 13th is one of my favorite days in the calendar, but then I think black cats on my path are a good sign. I am in favor of personal and practical superstitions, ones that are road-tested rather than received as hand-me-downs.  I know that for me, for example, a red-tailed hawk is a reliable messenger and that if it is flying my way or feeding well, things will go well that day.  Friday 13th has been a lucky day for me in the past. But if things  turn out otherwise, I am ready to revise my opinion; I want oracles that deliver.
    It's worth recalling that the Latin word superstitionem  literally means "a standing over." The stem, superstare, means to  "stand over" or "survive." There is a clue here, that in the original sense, superstition might be a survival mechanism. It is an etymological mystery how this root meaning evolves into the modern sense of  “irrational belief”.
    Practical superstitions include personal omens that are road-tested. You can rely on them because you have observed many times that (for example) something good or bad follows an encounter with a friendly black dog, or a red-tailed hawk, or a singing mailman.

    You may notice that some old superstitions and nostrums work for you, maybe because that unseen hand that makes things appear and disappear in the world around us chooses to work with your vocabulary of understanding. This is exactly what goes on in dreams and visions. Our dream producers, and greater powers, give us pictures and puns, dramas and deceptions, according to how we are able to perceive and receive.
     In my book Sidewalk Oracles I offer the following guidance on developing a list of personal omens that work for you:

1.Start by checking on superstitions you may have inherited or picked up from others. For example, that walking under a ladder or having a black cat walk in front or you is bad luck, or that having a bird poop on your head or your car might mean money is coming. Have any of these supposed omens worked for you the way they are supposed to? If so, keep them on your personal list of practical omens. If not, scratch them.

2. Check recurring images or incidents that catch your attention. Some people have strong feelings about numbers, both a repeated digit in one number (11:11, 2.22 etc) and the recurrence of a certain number in many different places and situations in a finite time period. 

3. Keep track of what happens after sightings of this kind. Does a certain kind of incident follow? Does the day turn out well, or badly? Does the repeated number or similar sighting seem only to be saying: Listen up, pay attention.

4. Make a short list of your personal omens, the ones that seem to work, and pay attention to what follows your next sightings.

Don't let superstition wreck the rug

Let's note that superstition isn’t practical if you just get spooked. Here's a cautionary tale, from the life of a great writer. Victor Hugo did not like the number thirteen, especially after what happened to him and his family in what he called “The Terrible Year”, 1871. He left Paris on February 13^th and found himself with thirteen people in a carriage on the train. When he got to Bordeaux, the address of the apartment where his son Charles and his daughter were lodged was 13, Rue de la Corse. In the morning, the bill for the family breakfast at a restaurant was 13 francs. Not long after, his son died, at age 44, of a massive heart attack.

     So we might say that Hugo had reason for fear of the number thirteen, for which the scholarly name, as you now remember, is triskadeiphobia. But the superstition later proved impractical, or at least to have an expiration date. When Hugo moved back to Paris, to a splendid apartment on the Rue de Clichy in Paris (number 11) that became a famous address, the number of the guests for dinner one evening was thirteen. This would not do. So a cab driver was invited to join the party. No doubt unused to all the rich food and drink, the cab driver spoiled the scene by throwing up copiously on an expensive carpet. 

Kaspar the 14th dinner guest

The photo above is of Kaspar, the celebrated black cat of the Savoy Hotel in London. If a dinner party at the hotel turns out to be 13 in number, and there is uneasiness about that, Kaspar is seated at the table as the fourteenth guest and served each course at the same time as the other guests.

Text partly adapted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

The Black Chow Named Bear

One of my personal superstitions is that a black dog in a friendly mood is a good sign for any day. I received confirmation just now, with a further tender ripple of synchronicity.

I am walking my little dog when a big furry black dog comes bounding along, unleashed. His head and chest are huge. When he rushes up to us, wanting to play, I see that he is very like a bear.
    “Bear!” his owner calls him.
    He’s a chow.
    A black dog named Bear, happy and off the leash – and of Chinese origin.
    Chows were kept as hunting and guard dogs in ancient China and Mongolia, and were considered good eating. Our use of the word “chow” for food probably originates from the edible dog, whose meat was available in Chinese restaurants until not that long ago.
    The Chinese piece offers an interesting sample of synchronicity: I had been working some Chinese elements into a draft chapter of a novel earlier that morning, and had returned to reading some Chinese classics. Just before walking my dog and meeting the chow, I had entered these thoughts from Chuang Tzu in my notebook:

How do I know that we who hate death are not lost children who have forgotten their way home?

And better still:

Fools think that they are awake.

Note: Shelf Elves among My Journals

I lifted the report above from my journal for January 4, 2007. I did not go looking for it; it came looking for me. I was reshelving binders and the typed page with the chow story came  fluttering out, into my hand.
    My favorite form of bibliomancy is to open an old journal at random and see what it gives me. Sometimes an old journal – or a shelf elf lurking nearby – chooses to speak to me before I consult it.
    This is also an example of how, when you decide to study synchronicity, the world gives you ever more experiences of it.

Thunderbird seismology

This just in from a friend in California, in the wake of Tuesday's 5.8 earthquake in Virginia, whose effects were felt far and wide on the East Coast - but not in the Bay Area, at least not in any ordinary way:

"On Monday I told a good friend that I had seen three Thunderbird classic cars within two days. This struck me as curious. She remembered that just before the Haiti earthquake I saw a big Thunderbird in a dream that left me shaken. After that earthquake struck, I felt the Thunderbird was my way of seeing it in advance.

"On Tuesday, I started to feel that my dream symbology was shifting into regular life. As I drove near my home, a green classic convertible Thunderbird met me at the intersection. I rolled down my window to tell the adorable grey haired couple in the front seat that I loved their car.

"I came home to the news of the Virginia quake. And the hurricane.Coincidence?

"Wait. As I write this, I think I'm feeling a small quake right hear at home. [Pause] Yep. 3.6 on the Richter scale. Nothing for where I live, but it's right on the Hayward fault, which is ready to blow. Dang... The Thunderbird god is busy".

We have different ways of knowing things, and I am much in favor of collecting practical omens, ones that prove to be reliable indicators of what a day may bring. Seems like my California friend has developed a seismic sensor that may work better than seismology generally offers, since we are rarely told in advance when an earthquake will hit.

Black dog sightings

In Praise of Black Dogs

I am in favor of personal superstitions.
Not the kind Granma mumbles
Or the stuff of fright-night moves
But the ones that grow on you
When you notice which incidents in a day
Are shadows cast by something ahead
And get to know which clues from the world
Are reliable road signs.

I think a black dog, if friendly,
Is always a good omen
And could be a god traveling in disguise.
Some days you don’t have to figure this out.
At the door of possibility on San Francisco Bay
A black dog crossed my path.
His walker, a ruddy man in a red pixie hat,
Told me the dog’s name is Pollo,
Short for Apollo.
I have a black dog of my own.
His name is Nubie, short for Anubis.
He lives on my dreams
And takes on many bodies in the world.


Black Dog sightings

When I arrived in St. Louis at the end of last week, I was met at the airport by a man with a black dog called Bear in the back of his car. I immediately sensed that all would go very well in the days of media interviews, lectures and workshops that lay ahead - because for me, a friendly black dog is always a good sign. Indeed, the St. Louis trip unfolded beautifully. In a building where Lincoln slept in 1847, I talked with a lively TV host, Carol Daniel, about how Harriet Tubman used the aerial maps from her dream visions to guide escaping slaves to freedom and how it's common for pregnant mothers to dream of giving birth to baby animals. Erin, the events person at Left Bank Books - a store renowned for supporting creative rebels, artists and dreamers - gave me one of the most eloquent introductions I have ever received, before an enthusiastic crowd of 75 people. In the weekend workshop in an arts building on Delmar, in the city's colorful Loop, we traveled deep into the imaginal realm and collected secret handshakes from the universe while feasting on spicy Thai food during the lunchbreaks.

I've noticed again and again over the years that in my life the appearance of a friendly black dog, especially under unsual circumstances, often presages something good. My feelings may be related to the fact that I shared my home for many years with a couple of big, sloppy black dogs; one of them returned to me in dreams, after his death, as an impeccable friend and guide.

In the midst of a rather difficult phone conversation with a powerful producer who had not quite been "sold" on doing a certain show with me, we were interrupted repeatedly by the barking of a dog. Finally I asked, "What kind of dog is that?" "It's a black lab," the producer explained. It turned out she was sitting a friend's dog for the day - a black dog. I knew in that instant that the conversation would turn out just fine. I proceeded to tell the producer a couple of stories about black dogs who have given me messages (a couple of these are in The Three "Only" Things) - and the producer did not waste another second before agreeing to put me on the show. "How soon can we book you?"

On my way home from leading another workshop, I stopped for essential groceries. When I came out of the supermarket, I noticed that the car parked beside me had a decal that read: "Black Labrador Taxi Service." Yes, the rest of the evening was just lovely.