Hello, I’m doing a research project on the origins of wishing superstitions (e.g. wishing on a shooting star, blowing out birthday candles, breaking a wishbone, 11:11 on the clock, etc.). I’m having trouble finding any information online and was wondering if any of you might be able to help. Any information or direction would help greatly!
Thanks.
could you be more specific? wishing in general is magical thinking, about which you could probably find material on the web. Many wish superstitions have an element of sadism in them. Wishing on a falling star, for example–you have to make the wish while the star is falling, which is usually less than a second. You could stay up all night trying to get a wish wished in that period of time as the shooting stars appear without warning and disappear quicker than a blink of an eye. Birthday wishes only come true if you don’t tell them, which requires a huge amount of self control on the part of the child, who is immediately asked what he or she wished for. Magical thinking is involved in OCD–believing that stepping on a crack will break mother’s back or knocking on wood will dispell evil. Behaviorists describe this phenomenon in terms of rewards and punishments. If you were thinking about fishing, for example, and you absentmindedly ran your car into a tree, you might feel uncomfortable thinking about fishing at another time even though fishing isn’t really the cause of the accident. Likewise, if you go through a ritual every time you play the lottery, believing it will pay off eventually–well, you’re right. Eventually it will. The law of averages requires that the lottery will hit those specific numbers at some point in the next several million years. So in order to benefit from your special numbers, you’ll have to play virtually forever and bet a very large amount of money–much more than you will ever win, alas.
Thanks for your comments dingleburg. I guess what I’m after is the reason WHY we have these superstitions. WHY is it that we blowout candles and make a wish? WHY is it that we toss coins into a fountain and make a wish? Where did these come from? That’s what I’m really after. One of the points of this research is to comment on the necessity of a physical act in order to wish.
I don’t have cites or the correct technical terms handy, but I would speculate superstitions of all kinds, including wishing, grew out of a human desire to make sense of the world and gain some measure of control over it. For example, early humans had to hunt and gather enough food to sustain them, find water and avoid predators. To make up an example out of this air, say a hunting party sees a particular bird and then brings down a deer. A connection, however spurious, could then be made between seeing the bird and successfully hunting a deer.
The emphasis on physical acts reminds me of the unit on Roman religion in my Roman history class. Keeping the gods happy and predisposed toward people was based on actions rather than belief or emotions. Believing in the gods was not enough. One had to perform the appropriate rituals.
I have a book called Curious Customs that touches on the origins of several modern rituals, like birthday candles, etc. I don’t know if it would be helpful or not, but it is fascinating.
You might have to check a library. At the end of the following link, there are a couple of ref. books: