SUPERSTITIONS

YELLOW

Christian tradition associates the color yellow with that of sulfur, sulfur being a synonym for hell and the smell of the Devil. Thus, yellow, the color of the sun, usually associated with laughter, happiness and good times, traditionally evoked more pejorative feelings: it represented pride, falsehood and treason. During the Middle Ages, heretics and people who carried the plague were dressed in yellow. Cities that were suffering form a pandemic, were obliged to raise a yellow flag.

It is also said that Molière's costume, the clothing that he died in, was yellow and that since then, actors believe that it is bad luck to wear yellow onstage. Yet, to Peruvians, yellow is associated with optimism and promise of better days ahead, and as a result it is a new year’s eve tradition to wearing yellow underwear for good luck

SALT

Have you ever been told not to pass the saltshaker directly to someone, to put down, and let the other person to take it? Well, this ritual originated at a time when salt was used as currency. Salt was a rare and pricey commodity and as such, it was considered a sacrilegious offence to spill it; it left you exposed to the devil's temptations. And worse yet, what if it spilled while handing it to the other person? The devil gets you both! As a result, to avoid mistakenly subjecting someone to the devil’s machinations, people began putting down the saltshaker before passing it along. It is also said that by throwing salt over your left shoulder you were throwing it into the devils eyes and blinding him from seeing your mistake, thus inverting your bad luck.

THE MIRROR

It is said that there was once a rich Venetian merchant, who made his fortune importing expensive mirrors from China. Yet, his employees were careless in handling his precious merchandise and despite his warnings and punishments, they continued to brake many mirrors. One day the merchant had an ingenious idea and concocted a legend. He told his servants about it and as expected they spread the word around town: "You all know that these extraordinary mirrors are especially imported from China, but what you do not know is that what makes them so different from other mirrors is that they have a curse on them.... In a mirror you can see your own reflection, it inverses your image, and if a mirror is capable of inversing everything then it must also reflect life itself, and thus what it actually shows you is the image of death. That person who manages to break one of these cursed mirrors will have 7 years of bad luck or might cause the death of someone in his family...”. During the next 20 years in which the merchant dedicated his life to importing Chinese mirrors, not one single mirror broke.