Your next free weekend is going to be excellent, knock on wood.
The moon will be in the right phase and there’s no Friday the 13th on the horizon, so you’re good. Your lucky socks are clean, you found two pennies this week, and a money spider crawled across your arm yesterday, yay! The weekend will be epic but first, read “The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions” by Arie Kaplan and good luck!
Baseball and football seasons are overlapping soon and if you’re not careful, your team might lose. Use your lucky cup, wear the same t-shirt each week, you can’t be too cautious — and bingo, you’ve just performed “a superstitious act.”
Sorry-not-sorry. Old wives’ tales, protective charms, talismans, obsessive actions, whatever you call them, superstitions and good-luck rituals are practiced in every society around the world, and it’s been that way for centuries — but why?
“In many thriving ancient cultures,” says Kaplan, “virtually everything that happened… was analyzed to see if it might be a cosmic warning… or supernaturally charged indication of good or bad luck.” It was believed that some sort of “merciless divine power oversaw the entirety of the cosmos” and it was in humans’ best interests to please those mighty controlling entities with “safeguards” designed to curry favor or beg for protection.
We’re so advanced now. Knocking on wood or carrying a rabbit’s foot is silly.
Right?
Still, you can’t be too careful.
And so we throw a pinch of spilled salt over the left shoulder, and prognosticate an unborn baby’s gender. In Asia and Eastern Europe, folks avoid calling that baby “cute.” You wear your birthstone, wish on candles, and celebrate kanreki in Japan. You stop the clocks in the house when someone dies. You hope to see “ninety-nine horses and one white mule” to meet your beloved, you catch a bouquet at a wedding, and watch for a lucky number. And everyone should know how to avoid vampires…
You scoff. You’re not a bit superstitious, are you? Ah, but you might not realize just how embedded a given gesture or belief is in your life. Reading “The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions” reveals how it happened.
Keeping it brief, author Arie Kaplan quickly explains to readers how superstitions appear and how they evolve through the times. The narrative in his book is varied enough to hold the interest of even the most casual reader but full enough to inform the curious, and embellishment of each of the topics here is just right. Relevance is conveyed through pop culture, movies, and Hollywood, making this a book that can be enjoyed by ages teen to grandparents and there’s a bonus: you’ll find a few minor chills inside, and uniquely fun cultural practices to absorb into your own family’s holidays.
Some of what you’ll read here may already be familiar to you but still, “The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions” is a fun, light read. Find it soon, before the big holiday seasons arrive. You’ll enjoy it, fingers crossed.
“The Encyclopedia of Curious Rituals and Superstitions” by Arie Kaplan
c.2025, Wellfleet Press
$19.99
255 pages
