Introduction

Superstitions are the small rules of luck that people keep without quite believing them: touching wood, not opening an umbrella indoors, avoiding the number thirteen or the number four. Many are fragments of older religions and magical systems, some come from practical caution or misunderstood history, and some were invented in print. This section traces their origins and meanings — omens and portents, lucky and unlucky numbers and days, animals, the household and the kitchen, birth, marriage and death, the superstitions of sailors, miners, actors and gamblers, and the folk beliefs of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas — and looks at what psychologists have learned about why people keep them.