Scorched

Goblins in the cupboard (M&G)

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 | Mail & Guardian column, rational thought

According to an arcane superstition pre-dating the Enlightenment, I can be a bitch at times. We all can, now and then, but my predisposition was determined by the position of our sun in relation to a specific arrangement of celestial bodies a few hundred light years away, at the time of my birth. If, like me, you came bellowing into this world in late October or most of November, you’re the bearer of grudges and have an almighty sting in your tail. You can’t help it, you’re a Scorpio.

Our relationship with the night skies may have started with astrology — that tottering, nappy-bummed imp that was the early observing human — but since Galileo and Newton we’ve graduated to a more mature relationship with the heavens.

We know now that the Earth isn’t the centre of the universe. We understand how bodies tug on one another in space and we’ve conceived of distances so vast that we need “light years” to describe them. With all this new fangled knowledge you’d have thought we could do away with that quaint form of divination, astrology. But we haven’t.

Superstitions like these cling to the cavernous recesses of our consciousness with the stubbornness of a graffiti tag on an urban wall. Regardless of our tribe (we all come from one, in the end), most of us have some wacky idea or other: whether it’s refusing to fly on the 13th, tossing salt over our shoulder when we spill some, refusing to walk under a ladder, putting our beds up on bricks, shutting our women away while they’re menstruating, avoiding black cats, blaming lightning on witches or ill fortune on a curse.

Not easily dislodged, these ideas probably grew out of our floundering reach for explanation in an unpredictable world where disease and pestilence could blindside us.

In the mid-1500s Earth was gripped by a cold spell known today as the Little Ice Age. It was an entirely natural swing, but it devastated Europe. Without the reasoned observations of science to explain the creeping glaciers, which spilled down the flanks of the Swiss Alps and threatened to engulf entire villages, locals took the only explanation within their grasp: devils, it had to be devils.

A huddle of Jesuits was set upon one glacier — which was advancing by more than 120m a day, according to archaeologist Brian Fagan — and told to exorcise the damn thing of its evil.

In 1562 a hailstorm thundered across central Europe, killing animals, shredding crops, whipping roofs off buildings and plucking windows from their hinges. The storm arrived in a pre-Enlightenment climate where ill fortune, bad weather, pestilence or crop loss were easily explained: witchcraft. In Germany’s Weisensteig territory, where witch fever peaked, 63 women were burned for their part in conjuring up that storm.

Something interesting is afoot these days. Since the sky turned dark over Manhattan on 9/11 there’s been an upswell from the atheist and “sceptical” communities, calling for reason and rationality in what astronomer Carl Sagan called our “demon-haunted world”.

A little quaint superstition hardly leads to terrorism, but people have still been hurt by it.

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo: 13 men threatened with lynching in April for supposedly using sorcery to steal or shrink other men’s penises. KwaZakhele, South Africa: a two-year-old stabbed 38 times for being an evil spirit. Oregon, United States: a 15-month-old baby dies after its fundamentalist Christian parents shun conventional medicine in favour of faith healing. New Delhi, India: a 50-year-old woman is tied up and beaten for using witchcraft to bring misfortune to her fellow villagers. China’s misplaced belief in the potency of rhino horn lays waste to Africa’s horny pachyderms.

Before the germ theory of disease, we blamed illness on demons and curses. Before meteorology, we blamed foul weather on witches or angry gods. Before astronomy, we looked to the heavens to reassure us about the future.

At some point astrology has to concede to astronomy; herbal treatments to the clinical trials demanded of modern medicine. Belief in goblins must give way to a world view that is informed by evidence and observation. But probably the most difficult thing about challenging entrenched beliefs is intuiting where the respect for another’s culture ends and a healthy critique of outmoded thinking starts.

Despite this, a magazine at my elbow insists that I should prepare myself for tears of joy this month and that where something may be ending for me, another is starting. Which is true, in a way, since I’m at a bit of a crossroads. But then it could have been true for the past three months too, or not at all — it all depends on how loosely I interpret events.

(Originally published in the M&G, 21 May 2008)

Tags: astrology, superstition

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