Intuition and Superstition - Lent 2023: Day 19

After the death of my parents, there was much cleaning up to do; a lifetime's accumulation of stuff. First my mother, then my father. Books and clothes were easy to deal with. Much harder was dealing with the small things that they kept, the small things that were meaningful them.

My parents' approach to these varied diametrically. 

I'd ask my father: "Why do you keep this?" His answer was practical: "It may come in handy someday.*" 

I'd ask my mother: "Why do you keep this?" Her answer was metaphysical: "It's lucky."

And so a significant amount of the clutter in the house we inherited was, in the words of her grandchildren, "Babcia's lucky shit." Tons of it. Much of it was intended to attract wealth; a lucky gold-painted wooden horse, under which she'd place her lottery ticket each week (to no avail). A lucky this, a lucky that. "No," she'd tell us when alive, "don't throw that away - it's lucky." 

Many objects were Far Eastern, several fat Buddhas; a Daikoku (Japanese god of wealth, the Buddhist version of the Hindu deity Shiva), sitting on a bag of rice; a dancing Shiva; a Kwan Yin; dogs of Fo (left: one of a pair, one of three pairs my mother had, here with an inkpot). But there also entirely random objects - many dice, a small coin from Rhodesia, a single Barbie doll shoe, pine cones, a porcelain monkey holding a turnip. And many elephants, which were meant to be particularly lucky, especially when it came to attracting money. Some were on windowsills or ledges or on top of bookcases, many more were stored in shoe boxes.

Superstitious beliefs drown out the calm, quiet voice of intuition. Being wedded to an extended catalogue of omens that you believe are connected with good or bad fortune closes the mind to what's really going on. You see a single magpie, or walk under a ladder, or a black cat crosses your path, and you are convinced that an unfortunate event will befall you - and should one happen, that would serve to reinforce your cognitive bias in favour of that particular superstitious belief.

One illusory correlation which can be summed up as "something worked out for me two or three times, so therefore it will also work out the fourth, fifth and nth time" at least has some grounding in probabilistic calculation. Superstition, not based on any prior observation, doesn't.

I see omens not as a indicators of what will happen, but rather of what might happen. If, for example, I consciously notice two persons with an eye patch, in quick succession, it's an alarm call to watch out for potential accidents affecting the eye. If I ignore the omen, noticing the two persons only subconsciously, and then have some problem with my eye, I will later recall seeing them and regret not having switched on my 'quantum luck' mechanism at the time. By that I mean drawing down that request to consciously preclude or forestall such a misfortune.

Superstitious and suspicious though she was, my mother was at heart an optimist. Her lucky things were there to bring good luck, rather than to ward off bad luck - or to project bad luck on others. And maybe - after her wartime traumas - her wishes did come true. Maybe no millions on the lottery, but from the time of her arrival to England in 1947 at the age of 20 to her death at the age of 88, she enjoyed a peaceful and relatively prosperous life. She died before Brexit, Covid, Trump and Putin's genocidal war could trouble her.

*Like my father, I have border hoarder disorder. Cotton-wool ear buds - after use, I cut off the ends, and keep the plastic tubes. Wire tags from food bags, elastic bands, jars, bottles, scrag-ends of cable-ties that can be reused etc. Practical stuff. Other things that I hoard (which don't fit into the practical category) are objets trouvés, goblincore in nature, picked up on my walks. To these, however, I ascribe no supernatural powers.

Lent 2022: Day 19
Between Randomness and Cause

Lent 2021: Day 19
Pleasure and Self-Denial

Lent 2020: Day 19
Balancing the Spiritual with the Material