My wife, a seemingly sane individual (most of the time), believes in “hexes”.
She won’t let me keep a beautiful wood dining table that her aunt abandoned when she moved. Her aunt “puts hexes on people”, and she doesn’t want anything of hers. Especially if we didn’t pay her for it.
This is not the first time she has espoused a belief in “bad luck”, and hexes, and similiar such nonsence. I generally blow it off and poke fun at it, as I assumed she knew deep down it was all crap.
I’ll put aside the fact that months ago when we first discussed it, she didn’t have a problem with me keeping the table. When I tried to make it clear that I really wanted the table (it’s a VERY nice piece), she became adament that she’s not taking anything from that aunt. She concerned about the bad luck/hexes/Mojo/mumbojumbo/Bullshit.
Really? A 30 year old with two Degrees? A grown-ass woman, a Teacher no less, wants to perpetute this nonsense? Is this not the 21st century? She’s aware of my scorn, but says she doesn’t care. I’m not lettin’ her pass that crap to my children though.
Wow. Hocus Pocus. Tell her you’ll get it blessed to exorcise the hex. Maybe she was the victim of bad luck after the witchy aunt once ‘hexed her’. I’m astonished that outwardly normal, smart, switched on, no-nonsense people cling to superstitions. Pagan beliefs and superstition have no role to play in our home. Things happen for a real reason, like in the Age of Materialism (Darwin) when folks realised you got black lung because you worked in a coal mine, not because you cussed out a hexer. Good luck getting her to see sense. Sounds like you have a jones for that table!
Take the table by some Amish folks. I don’t have what you would call real solid info on hexes and the like, but according to the movie Warlock staring Julian Sands they seem to know a thing or two about removing them.
Superstition and hexes are attractive things to believe in. That kind of thinking gives you a way of feeling like you have some control over things that you really don’t. I don’t think it’s any less rational than feeling safer driving than flying, even though all statistics say the opposite, because you feel more in control when driving.
There may be something else to this, too. She may have bad memories of dealing with this aunt, and the sight or smell of things from her house may remind her of them. Those triggers can be subconscious, so she may not be able to put into words why having the table would bother her, but she knows it would.
Shai’tan, you’re just discovering this now? How long have you known her?
Good’n.
Although I must say I gave a waitress serious shit over this a few weeks back. It was the morning of Superbowl Sunday, and I asked her how she thought the game was going to go. She said she didn’t want to talk about it because she didn’t want to jinx it. Sure, these are the top professionals in their field, three-time winners who train year-round, have a top secret playbook, and all they really need to do was keep some waitress from talking about it. Sure thing, hon.
Then again, I got her to talk about it. The Pats lost.
I think we have a winner. If “I can’t explain it, I just don’t want that in my home” only gets her “don’t be unreasonable”, why shouldn’t she talk about hexes?
Tell her the only way to clear a hex is to have sexual relations with a niece of a hex-maker on the item in question.
I’ll leave you to work out the details.
This reminds me of the time, a few years ago, when a bunch of my friends (college-educated, intelligent women all) decided to go to a fortune teller. I hooted. LOUDLY. I couldn’t believe that they were actually going. What a bunch of baloney! Why on EARTH are you wasting your money? On and on I went.
Then I got blasted for ruining their fun. Shut up, I was told, if you don’t want to go, fine, but quit ruining it for the rest of us.
I still don’t know how I feel about this. On the one hand, yes, I suppose I was being rude, shitting on something they were so obviously enjoying. But on the other hand, it wasn’t as if they were going for the entertainment value … they were going on and on about how The Fortune-Teller told so-and-so something and she was right! Ooo. Ah.
It still irritates me, and this incident occurred c. 1992.
My wife’s company is in the process of moving to a new office. The building was previously a bank, but going back many years it was a funeral home. The basement still has the corpse drawers in the walls, there’s still a casket-sized dumbwaiter – all in all a lot of interesting stuff.
Unfortunately, according to many of the people at her work (and “corroborated” by many of the former bank employees), the building is, of course, haunted. After all, it was a funeral home…how could it not be?
Of course, there’s photographic evidence. Pictures were taken when they were all touring the place, and <gasp!> there were orbs!
She’s exceptionally bright, so I just shake my head and let my sarcastic look do all the mocking.
Heh…sports superstition is the worst. Whenever someone brings up whatever their lucky talisman is for their team, I always wonder if Vegas is aware of this sure-fire token.
Full disclosure: I’m not immune. Before the last NFL season began, I hung up a picture in my office that I received as a gift – a nice pencil artwork of several Giants players, framed behind glass. After Week 2, when the Giants dropped to 0-2, the picture fell off the wall and the glass shattered. It was inconvenient to get to, so I figured I’d clean it up “soon”. Then the Giants won. Hmm…maybe I’ll leave it there 'til next week. And then won again. A six-game winning streak, and the broken picture and shattered glass remained. Then the miracle playoff run and the Super Bowl win, and the shattered remains were still there. It seems obvious to me that somehow the Giants mojo got trapped inside that frame, and breaking the glass released it. You think I was going to take a chance of bottling that mojo back up?
Wait, though—are you and your wife fictional characters? Cause I’ve seen curses, hexes, and bad mojo that were real and did “work”—on TV, in books, and in movies. So if you’re in one of those stories, I’d advise you not to dismiss the possibility so hastily!
Excellent point. And, more generally, belief that something is bad luck (or good luck, for that matter) could very well work as a self-fulfilling prophecy, a sort of placebo effect.
I’m a fully grown, 40-year old adult, with degrees and everything. I work in Computer Support, and IT.
I fully and completely believe that in about half of computers, the little suckers have their own personalities, and idiosyncracies, even though they are all identical. They’ve made me a firm believer in animism.
I know its not rational. I know its all superstition. But in my world-view, its perfectly rational that 1 out of 5 computers demands that in order to fix its motherboard issue, I must slice my finger open on the case, and drip blood on it before it will suddenly start working.
I’ve used these devices for years to ward off evil. Hasn’t failed yet, since I discovered them in high school electronics. It was the '77 or '78 April issue of Popular Electronics which led me to this important discovery.
That’s ok, I got a boyfriend who believes in horoscopes. I let it slide, until he tries to rationalize his inability to make a decision and say its because he’s a Gemini and can’t help it. Then I have to remind him that it’s all bullshit and if he wants to play that way, Leos (me) are prone to being patronizing, cruel, and over-dramatic. Plus Geminis are supposed to be communicative and multi-taskers, and he ain’t.
Poor ghosts. Funeral homes are boring and ugly. If I have to haunt something after I die, I’d want to haunt a library. Other ghosts might want to haunt places like movie theaters or houses with big-screen TVs.
You work with computers that have developed a taste for human blood? I would look for another job ASAP, if I were you…
Another theory: Your wife may know that this aunt has a history of making a huge drama out of something like taking a table that she abandoned. “How dare you? You know I wanted your cousin to have that table!” Or the aunt may ask for endless favors in return for the table. “I gave you that nice table, won’t you loan me $500 to pay my electric bill now?” Or she might just use you as free storage for her table and then demand it back when she has room for it. If she does this, she may also make a fuss if there are any nicks or scuffs on it, claiming you damaged her table, even if the damage was already there when you got the table, or if it happened after she took it back. Or she might tell family members that your wife stole the table from her and turn them against your wife. With some relatives, it’s not a good idea to accept anything from them if you want a life where most of the drama is on the other side of the TV screen and your money is yours to spend guilt-free.
