• WITCHCRAFT • & • CULTURAL • NORMS •
Hey all, we have not long experienced Yule (mine was awesome I hope yours was too) and during this time I know there’s always a lot of chat about how Christmas adapted a lot of the Yule traditions and made them social norms. As I’m sure you’re all aware this is not the only cross over between witchy life and what society deems as normal so I wanted to do a little post listing other wonderful witchy practises society uses without realising.
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• H O W • M A N Y • D O • Y O U • K N O W ? •
• BIRTHDAY • CANDLES •
In Ancient Greece people put candles on cakes to honour the goddess Artemis! They believed the smoke from blowing these candles out carried their wishes to the gods ...... still to this day we blow birthday candles out and make a wish.
• 11:11 •
Most of us know that 11:11 is an angelic number - a lot of people outside of witchcraft or that don’t follow a spiritual path don’t - yet they still know to make a wish if they look at their watch and it’s 11:11 .... pretty strange huh.
• KNOCKING • ON • WOOD •
I’m sure if we haven’t done this we have seen someone that has. If you’re trying to avoid bad luck or are getting a negative feeling about something you knock on wood. In history people believed that trees were homes to spirits or Dryads, people would knock on these to summon them to protect them.
• SALT • OVER • THE • SHOULDER •
Still to this day people not involved in the craft are worried about spilling salt and throw some over their shoulder for protection. We know how powerfu salt is for protection as witches yet it’s still made it’s way into every day life. To go into more detail people throw it over their left shoulder I bet they don’t know this is because in history people did this to protect themselves from following “the left path”.
• WALKING • UNDER • A • LADDER •
Something even I avoided without knowing why. A ladder leant against a wall makes a triangle shape symbolic of life, if you walk through this it used to be said that you were tempting fate!
• LUCKY • FOUR • LEAVED • CLOVER •
Still to this day if someone finds a four leaved clover they will almost certainly keep it for luck. If only they knew this superstition comes directly from witchcraft as it’s a highly sought after herb, powerful and used in many spells and potions.
• UMBRELLAS • INDOORS •
I’m sure we’ve all been told never to open an umbrella indoors. Did you know that originally this was said as umbrellas were meant to give shade from the sun and opening it indoors unnecessarily offended the sun god?
• FINGERS • CROSSED •
why do we do this for good luck? Think about it - a lot of pagans believe crosses hold spirits so creating this cross could summon the spirit to help them achieve their intention.
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There are ssoooo many more - if you know of any add them to the comments below! Anything I didn’t know already came from the sources below.
