Greek Superstitions

Greek superstitions are the folk beliefs and charms of Greece. Visitors explore the country on small-group trips with a local host, across the mainland and islands. The topics here start with the evil eye and Tuesday the 13th. They continue with the vrykolakas, Lamia, the Moirai, Charon’s obol, curse tablets and tamata. Related pages cover Greek traditions, Greek souvenirs and Greek Easter traditions. More trips appear under Greece tours.

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What are Greek superstitions?

Greek superstitions are folk beliefs and practices that outsiders judge to be irrational or supernatural. In a 2015 survey, 66% of adults in Greece said they believe in the evil eye. The evil eye is a harmful glance thought to cause bad luck.

The ancient word behind Greek superstitions was deisidaimonia, the Greek match for Latin superstitio. Both words came to suggest overdone ritual and a quick trust in prophecies. Greek and Roman worshippers of the old gods mocked any man who shook with constant dread of them. The Greek historian Polybius used the word in his Histories about Rome.

Stuart Vyse and Dale Martin are two modern writers on superstition. They argue that what counts as superstition changes across cultures and eras. Martin adds that such beliefs survive as leftovers of older popular habits. Vyse sees each superstition as a tool. Its holder expects a real result, such as better odds of winning a prize.

Greek superstitions also live on in legend. The folk legends of Greece name the Nereids, the Kalikantzaros, the Lycanthrope and the Vrykolakas. Nereids are fairies tied to water. A Kalikantzaros is a goblin of the Christmas season. A Lycanthrope is a wolf-man, and a Vrykolakas is a dead body that rises and does harm.

• Scope: The word superstition covers beliefs about luck, fate, magic, amulets, fortune telling and spirits.
• Greek root: Tetraphobia, the fear of the number four, takes its name from two Ancient Greek words.
• Eye charm: Greece and Cyprus are among the cultures that use the nazar, an eye-shaped charm.

Greek superstitions also touch on worship itself. Practices that differ from a culture’s main religion have at times been called superstitious. An excessive show of devotion has drawn the same label. The Roman writer Cicero set superstitio against the mainstream religion of his day.

Which ancient writers shaped Greek superstitions about the evil eye?

Greek superstitions about the evil eye reach back to classical writers. Hesiod, Plato, Theocritus and Plutarch all mention this harmful glance. The Greek eye talisman guards specifically against such hostile looks. A talisman is a lucky object worn or kept for protection.

In Greek superstitions, the ancient name for this curse was ophthalmos baskanos, meaning the evil eye. In 1978 Peter Walcot published Envy and the Greeks. His book listed over one hundred ancient works that mention the evil eye. In Roman times, entire tribes were feared as carriers of the curse. Those of Pontus and Scythia stood out.

Greek superstitions have long called for protection against the eye. Ancient Greeks and Romans spat into the folds of their clothes to block the curse. Glass beads came into production in the Mediterranean region around 1500 BC. After that, evil eye beads spread among Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Persians and other peoples.

Greek superstitions also use spoken words against the eye. Greece has regional versions of the healing prayer. One common version calls on the Virgin Mary. It asks her to free the named victim from the evil eye. The healer then makes the sign of the cross three times. Three spitting sounds into the air come next.

• Prayer books: Greek Orthodox service books called Euchologia hold prayers against vaskania, a Greek term for the evil eye.
• Church view: Advice from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America says only a priest can offer such prayers.
• Envy: Basil of Caesarea taught that envy mainly harms the envious person, not the one envied.

Older forms of the eye symbol were made of ceramic or clay. Ceramic means fired clay, as in pottery. Plutarch, a Greek writer, treated the evil eye as a source of wonder and disbelief. To him it seemed to defy explanation.

Why is Tuesday the 13th the unlucky date in Greek superstitions?

Greek superstitions mark Tuesday, and above all Tuesday the 13th, as an unlucky day instead of Friday. Greeks link the day with Ares, the ancient god of war. A Tuesday the 13th falls in any month that begins on a Thursday.

Two falls of Constantinople feed Greek superstitions about the date. The city fell to the Fourth Crusade on Tuesday 13 April 1204. A crusade was a Western Christian military campaign. The Ottomans captured it in 1453, also on a Tuesday, the 29th of the fifth month. Both events strengthened the belief about Tuesday.

The Greek name for Tuesday is Triti, which means the third. Bad luck is said to come in threes. The number in the name therefore adds weight to Greek superstitions about the day. The Latin name dies Martis means the day of Mars, the Roman war god. It matches the Greek hemera Areos, the day of Ares.

Greek superstitions share this date with Hispanic countries. There, Tuesday the 13th is called martes trece, Spanish for Tuesday thirteen. It counts as the day of bad luck. The belief is traced to the link between Tuesday and Mars. As god of war, Mars was tied to death.

• Calendar: Calendars that start the week on Sunday make Tuesday the third day.
• Lucky Tuesday: In Judaism, Tuesday is held to be a particularly lucky day of the week.
• English name: The English word Tuesday comes from Middle English Tewesday, an older form of the name.

Outside Greek superstitions, astrology also ties Tuesday to the planet Mars. It pairs the day with the star signs Aries and Scorpio. The Thai solar calendar names Tuesday after the planet Mars too, and gives the day the colour pink.

What does the vrykolakas reveal about Greek superstitions of the dead?

Greek superstitions name the vrykolakas as a harmful undead creature of folk belief. Undead means dead yet still active. Unlike a blood-drinking vampire, it eats human flesh, and livers above all. The word itself comes from a Bulgarian word.

Greeks held that a sinful life was one path to becoming a vrykolakas after death. Excommunication, or expulsion from the Church, carried the same risk. So did burial in unblessed ground. The creature knocks on house doors and calls out the names of those inside. With no reply at the first knock, it passes on without harm.

Greek superstitions in certain villages advise waiting for a second knock before opening the door. Legends say the vrykolakas crushes or smothers sleepers by sitting on them. The creature grows stronger if left alone, so legends call for its body to be destroyed. Certain accounts allow this only on Saturday, the one day it rests in its grave.

Western writers recorded Greek superstitions about the vrykolakas from the mid-17th century. Leo Allatius, a Greek librarian at the Vatican, wrote about them in 1645. In 1701 the French traveller Joseph Pitton de Tournefort watched a suspected vrykolakas being dug up on Mykonos. On Lesbos, digs at Mytilene found two vrykolakas burials in early cemeteries.

• Grave charms: A wax cross and a pottery fragment inscribed with “Jesus Christ conquers” were laid on the body.
• Wartime belief: During World War II, the vrykolakas remained a widely held belief in rural Greece.
• Causes: In 1869 Henry Tozer named excommunication, grave sins, a parent’s curse and magic as causes.

Greek superstitions about revenants have left suspected burials across ancient Greece. A revenant is a corpse believed to come back. The earliest examples come from Cyprus in the New Stone Age. At Khirokitia, millstones were laid on heads or chests to pin bodies down.

How do Chios and Zakynthos colour Greek superstitions about the kallikantzaros?

Greek superstitions cast the kallikantzaros as a goblin of the twelve days of Christmas. A goblin is a small, mischievous demon. Its equivalents appear in Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Cypriot and Turkish folklore. Its looks vary by region, from enormous to tiny.

Scholars of Greek superstitions disagree over the name. Adamantios Korais traced it to kantharos, the Greek word for a scarab beetle. John Cuthbert Lawson rejected that idea in 1910. He preferred a link with the centaur, a half-horse figure of myth. Bernhard Schmidt had concluded in 1871 that no Greek root explains the word.

On Chios, Leo Allatius recorded shaggy kallikantzaroi that slashed victims with sharp claws at Christmas. One sat on a victim and asked, “Tow or lead?” Tow is a clump of hemp fibre. Tow won release, while lead brought crushing weight. A tangle of hemp left out kept the creature counting threads until the cock crowed.

Greek superstitions on Zakynthos say a child born on Christmas Eve grows into a skalikantzaros. As an adult, such a child changes shape at Christmas. On Chios, superstitious parents exposed the feet of a child born in the wrong season to fire. Binding a baby with bunches of garlic or straw was thought to prevent the change.

• Dancers: Elsewhere in Greece they are shaggy demons with goat ears and a love of dancing.
• Diet: Frogs, worms and snakes are said to make up their food.
• Looks: Accounts give them hairy black bodies and eyes that burn red.

Greek superstitions offer two origin theories. One links the lore to masked revels at an old winter feast of Dionysus, god of wine. Leo Allatius saw the kallikantzaros as no more than the folk nightmare. That nightmare is a monster that presses on sleepers.

Who are the neraides of Greek superstitions and folktales?

Greek superstitions use the word neraida for any nymph, fairy or mermaid, not only the old sea nymphs. Nymphs, in ancient myth, were female spirits of springs, woods and hills. In folktales the neraida appears as a kind of supernatural wife.

The figure gives its name to tale type ATU 400, The Neraida, in the Catalogue of Greek Folktales. A tale type is a standard plot that scholars number and compare. In Greek superstitions she lives at water sources such as rivers and wells. In modern speech the word also covers fairy maidens of mountains and woods.

The folklorist Nicolaos Politis gathered a great deal of material on the neraida. In tales from Greek tellers, the neraides dance at noon or at midnight. They have golden hair and dress in white or rose-coloured clothes. A veil covers the head, or a handkerchief is held in the hand.

Greek superstitions tie the neraides to a marriage tale. Their beauty draws young men to them. The men steal their veils or kerchiefs to keep them in the human world. The women marry these men. Later they win back their clothing and vanish forever. Scholar Anna Angelopoulos calls this storyline The Stolen Scarf.

• Demetros: In one tale, the goatherd Demetros spends three nights dancing with ten fairies.
• Hidden cloth: Demetros keeps his fairy wife’s handkerchief hidden for seven years.
• Daughter: Years later, their daughter follows her mother at the age of fifteen.

His fairy wife, Katena, takes back the handkerchief and dances with it at a festival. During the dance she slips away and returns home. In Greek superstitions and folktales of type 400, The Stolen Scarf is the commonest and steadiest opening.

What role does Lamia play in Greek superstitions about children?

Greek superstitions keep Lamia as a child-eating monster from ancient myth. In past centuries, she served in Greece as a bogeyman to scare children into obedience. A bogeyman is an imaginary monster named to frighten the young.

The oldest myths make Lamia a queen of ancient Libya and a lover of Zeus. His wife Hera robbed her of her children. The loss drove Lamia mad, so she turned to hunting other women’s children. Zeus gave her the power of prophecy. He also gave her eyes that she took out and put back.

A scholiast, or ancient commentator, on Aristophanes linked her name to laimos, a large throat or gullet. Modern scholars rebuild an ancient root, lem-, meaning a spirit of the night. Notes on Theocritus give Greek superstitions two other names for Lamia: Mormo and Gello. These notes, called scholia, sit in the margins of old texts.

Greek superstitions also left sayings about Lamia. John Cuthbert Lawson named their chief traits as uncleanliness, gluttony and stupidity, besides a thirst for blood. The Greek proverb “the Lamia’s sweeping” sums up slovenliness, or untidy laziness. Another saying, “the Lamia strangled the child”, explained the sudden death of young children.

• Sleepless: In one myth, Hera took away her sleep, so Lamia grieved for her children without rest.
• Diodorus: The historian Diodorus Siculus described Lamia as a Libyan queen who was born in a cave.
• Horace: The Roman poet Horace warned writers against stories of a live boy pulled from her belly.

Byzantine writers carried Greek superstitions about Lamia forward. The Suda, a lexicon of the 10th century, gave an entry for lamia. Hesychius of Alexandria explained lamiai as apparitions, and even as fish. A lexicon is a dictionary, and apparitions are ghostly figures.

How did Gello haunt Greek superstitions about birth and infancy?

Greek superstitions blame Gello, a female demon, for infertility, miscarriage and the deaths of infants. In the oldest myth, a young woman named Gello died a virgin and came back as a ghost. Infertility means being unable to have children.

Sappho mentioned Gello, so fear of her reaches back to the sixth century BC. Hesychius, who compiled a dictionary, called a gello a ghost that attacked both virgins and newborn babies. The name possibly comes from Gallu, a Mesopotamian demon of sickness and death. The name also lives on in the later word ghoul.

In Byzantine Greek superstitions, gelloudes formed a whole class of beings. John of Damascus said they flew by night and slipped into houses even through barred doors and windows. Michael Psellos claimed they sucked blood and all vital fluids from infants. Women thought possessed by gelloudes risked trial or exorcism, a rite to drive out demons.

Greek superstitions surrounded birth with charms. Byzantine mothers relied on amulets to shield newborns from the Gello, also called Gyllou. A rare woman shunned these charms and trusted only in the power of the Cross. In the 17th century, Leo Allatius attacked such charms as leftovers of sorcery. Among them were red coral and heads of garlic.

• Gillobrota: Psellus says newborns who wasted away were called Gillobrota, after the demon Gillo.
• Baptism: Allatius reports that baptising infants was thought to guard them against the gello.
• Bedside cross: Allatius prescribed a cross or an image of Christ placed by a child’s bed.

Greek superstitions about Gello changed shape over time. The first Gello was a young virgin, yet the Christian-era gelloudes were pictured as old, envious crones. Psellos traced the gello to the Hebrew Lilith, a female demon. Leo Allatius later criticised him for mixing the two figures.

Why is the donkey-footed Empusa part of Greek superstitions?

Greek superstitions remember the Empusa as a shape-shifting female phantom with a single leg of copper. Ancient writers said the goddess Hecate, linked with magic, commanded her. She bore the names Onokole and Onoskelis, which both mean donkey-footed.

The main ancient sources are plays by Aristophanes and the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus. The Suda, a Byzantine lexicon, and the scholar Crates of Mallus called her a demonic phantom. A folk etymology reads her name as one-footed. A folk etymology is a popular guess about where a word comes from.

Greek superstitions met comedy in The Frogs by Aristophanes. There an Empusa appears before the god Dionysus and his slave Xanthias on their way to the underworld. Xanthias watches her change shape from bull to mule, then to woman and dog. He also insists she has one brass leg and another of cow dung.

By late antiquity, Greek superstitions treated empusai as spectres, or ghosts, that preyed on young men. In the Life of Apollonius, one takes the form of an attractive woman. She seduces a young philosophy student in order to devour him. On another journey, Apollonius hurls insults at an empousa, and it flees with high-pitched screams.

• Arachova lore: A modern tale gives a thin woman five different feet, including bronze, donkey and goat ones.
• Vampire reading: Smith’s Dictionary of 1849 read the empousa as a blood-sucking vampire.
• Faust: In Goethe’s Faust, Part Two, Empusa calls herself a cousin of Mephisto because of her donkey’s foot.

Greek superstitions about the Empusa reached modern times in Arachova, on Mount Parnassus. Bernhard Schmidt published lore from there in 1871. A 1985 field study by Charles Stewart found the word empousa rare in spoken tradition. Gello, a term of similar meaning, was far commoner.

How did wolf-men enter Greek superstitions through Arcadia?

Greek superstitions supply the word lycanthrope, built from the Ancient Greek for wolf-human. It names a werewolf, a person who turns into a wolf. Ancient tales from Arcadia describe men changed into wolves after a human sacrifice to Zeus.

Ancient writers used the term only for clinical lycanthropy. This is a mental condition in which a patient imagines being a wolf. Herodotus heard of the Neuri, a tribe northeast of Scythia. They said the whole tribe became wolves for days once a year. Herodotus added that he did not believe the story.

Greek superstitions owe two Arcadian wolf tales to Pausanias, a Greek geographer. King Lycaon became a wolf after sacrificing a child at the altar of Zeus Lycaeus. Damarchus of Parrhasia turned wolf after tasting the inner organs of a sacrificed child. He returned to human shape after ten years and went on to become an Olympic champion.

Greek superstitions in Arcadia also included a yearly rite, says Pliny the Elder, quoting Euanthes. A man chosen by lot from the clan of Anthus hung his clothes on an oak. He swam across a marsh and joined a wolf pack for nine years. If he avoided human flesh, he swam back and became a man again.

• Temesa ghost: Pausanias describes a painting of Euthymus of Locri overcoming a wolf-skinned spirit named Lycas.
• Cure: Ancient Greeks and Romans believed long physical exhaustion cured people of lycanthropy.
• Word links: The Greek vrykolakas and Romanian vircolac, names for vampire-like beings, came from Slavic languages.

Greek superstitions linked werewolves with the restless dead. Until the late 19th century, Greeks held that werewolf corpses not destroyed came back to life. They returned as wolves or hyenas that prowled battlefields. There they drank the blood of dying soldiers.

Which Fates rule birth and death in Greek superstitions?

Greek superstitions held that the Moirai, the three Fates, came to a newborn three nights after birth. There they decided the course of the child’s life. A Fate is a goddess who controls destiny, the fixed course of a life.

Greek superstitions tie this visit to the story of Meleager. His mother kept a firebrand, or burning stick, from the hearth to lengthen his life. Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth and midwifery, was the companion of the Moirai. The Moirai possibly began as birth goddesses before becoming agents of destiny. Midwifery is the craft of helping at births.

Early Greek superstitions pictured fate as thread. In Homer’s Iliad, Moira spins each man’s thread of life when he is born. The Odyssey names the Klothes, or Spinners. In Hesiod’s Theogony, the Moirai are daughters of Nyx, the night. Their sisters include the Keres, Thanatos, meaning death, and Nemesis, meaning retribution.

Greek superstitions also shaped worship of the Moirai. At Sparta, their temple stood near the communal hearth of the city. Athenian brides gave them locks of their hair, and women swore oaths by them. Delphi honoured just two of them, the Fates of Birth and Death. Despite their grim name, they were placated, or soothed, as goddesses.

• Thebes: Near a gate of Thebes, a sanctuary of the Moirai held no images of them.
• Eldest Fate: In Athens, Aphrodite Urania was called the eldest of the Fates, says Pausanias.
• Hour of death: Moira came to mean a spirit that set the time of death at birth.

In Greek superstitions, Moira was a power that ruled even the gods. Elsewhere in the Theogony, Hesiod calls them daughters of Zeus and Themis. Themis embodied divine order and law. Aeschylus, Herodotus and Plato refused to accept that the Moirai had a father.

What were the Keres in ancient Greek superstitions of death?

Greek superstitions of antiquity feared the Keres, malevolent spirits who brought plague and ruin. They fed on warriors who lay dead or dying in battle. The Greek word ker means death or doom. Malevolent means wishing harm to others.

In Greek superstitions, ancient sources seldom count the Keres. The Iliad describes them as thousands. The poet Mimnermus names just two: one brings old age, the other death. Quintus Smyrnaeus mentions twin Keres, one dark and one bright. Hesiod treats the singular Ker as a being apart from the Keres.

Greek superstitions pictured them as dark beings with gnashing teeth, claws and a thirst for human blood. They hovered over battlefields, seeking dying and wounded men. The ancient poem Shield of Heracles describes them in this role. In fifth-century vase paintings, the Keres appear as small winged sprites, or little spirits.

Greek superstitions also used the word keres for a person’s fate. In the Iliad, Achilles faces a choice of keres. One is a long, obscure life at home; the other is death at Troy with lasting glory. Before Hector and Achilles fought, Zeus weighed the keres of both warriors. Hector’s proved heavier, so he was doomed.

• Homer’s phrase: Homer uses the phrase keres of death in his epic poems.
• Wider sense: By extension, the word ker can also mean plague, disease or a blemish.
• Decay: Hesychius of Alexandria linked the word to a verb meaning to decay.

Greek superstitions called for rites against these spirits. The scholar Jane Ellen Harrison described protective and cleansing rites meant to keep the Keres away. She saw a sprite behind each hunger, plague, madness and nightmare. Two Keres stood beyond any rite: Old Age and Death.

Why did Greek superstitions place a coin in the mouth of the dead?

Greek superstitions placed a coin called Charon’s obol in or on the mouth of the dead. Ancient writers explained it as a fare or bribe for Charon. He was the ferryman who carried souls across the river to the underworld.

The coin had other names in Greek superstitions. In the Suda, danake is a coin buried with the dead to pay the ferryman. The ferryman crossed the river Acheron. Hesychius defines naulon as the coin put into a dead person’s mouth. Callimachus wrote of the ferryman’s fee carried in the parched mouths of the dead.

Archaeology confirms these Greek superstitions as a real custom. Greek graves hold coins from the 5th century BCE, once Greece began using money. Yet coins turn up in just 5 to 10 percent of known Greek burials. At Olynthus, 136 coins came to light with burials. In 1932, diggers reported 20 graves there with four bronze coins each.

Greek superstitions met mystery cults in a 4th-century BCE grave in Thessaly. The woman buried there was possibly an initiate of the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries. Mysteries were secret cults. Gold tablets in her grave gave instructions for the afterlife. On her lips lay a gold danake stamped with the head of a Gorgon.

• Lucian: The satirist Lucian has Charon say he takes an obol from everyone going down.
• Mockery: Greek epigrams that copied epitaphs sometimes mocked or debunked the belief in the fare.
• Seal: The coin on the mouth has also been read as a seal guarding the soul.

In one theory, Greek superstitions gave the coin a second role. It kept evil spirits from entering the body. A single coin in a burial is commonly read as a mark of Greek influence. Such coins have been called the best-known grave goods from antiquity.

How did the gorgoneion guard against evil in Greek superstitions?

Greek superstitions used the gorgoneion, the face of a Gorgon, to turn away evil. A Gorgon is a monster of Greek myth. The face shows wild eyes, fangs and a tongue sticking out. Of all ancient Greek demon images, the gorgoneion is by far the commonest.

Scholars broadly agree that the gorgoneion was an apotropaion in Greek superstitions. An apotropaion is a device to ward off unwanted things. It possibly began as a mask worn by dancers. Jane Ellen Harrison called it a ritual mask misunderstood. She pictured a grinning mask with glaring eyes, beast-like tusks and a hanging tongue.

In Greek superstitions, the face guarded temple pediments and roof ornaments. A pediment is the three-sided gable over a temple front. Gorgoneia also decorated shields and coins, and the undersides of bowls and cups. Gorgoneia first appear in the mid-sixth century BC. Early ones look hideous; later ones show attractive young women.

Greek superstitions set the Gorgon head on Athena’s aegis, a protective cloak, and on her shield. Homer’s Iliad gives Agamemnon a shield with a grim, glaring Gorgon on it. Spartans and their allies offered a golden shield after fighting at Tanagra in 457 BC. It bore a gorgoneion and was displayed at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

• Tiryns masks: Seventh-century BC terracotta helmet masks from Tiryns resemble early Gorgon faces.
• Sparta masks: Offerings shaped as masks, found at the Sanctuary of Orthia in Sparta, share early Gorgon features.
• Temple art: The Temple of Apollo at Delphi apparently showed Athena defeating the Giant Enceladus with a gorgoneion shield.

In Greek superstitions, the Gorgon was the chief image used to avert evil. The earliest attractive gorgoneion is the Medusa Rondanini, possibly a Roman copy of a Greek work. In Euripides’s Ion, the Chorus sees Athena waving her gorgon shield on temple walls.

Which magic words did Greek superstitions call the Ephesian Letters?

Greek superstitions prized the Ephesia Grammata, or Ephesian Letters. These magic formulas date from the 5th or 4th century BC. A formula is a fixed form of words. Their power lay in their sound, so a mispronounced spell failed.

The statue of Artemis at Ephesus reportedly bore the letters faintly on its feet, girdle and crown. A girdle is a belt worn around the waist. Clement of Alexandria credited their invention to the Daktyloi, figures of myth. In Greek superstitions, the words carried no meaning, yet they shielded anyone who spoke them correctly.

Plutarch, in his Table Talk, reports that Magi told people thought possessed to recite the Ephesian letters. Magi were Persian priests and wise men. In a 4th-century comedy by Anaxilas, one character wears the letters on his belt. King Croesus is said to have spoken them on his funeral pyre, and they saved him.

The best known Ephesia Grammata form a group of six words. A version appears on a damaged inscription from Himera in Sicily, older than 409 BC. Greek superstitions kept the formula alive, and it reappears on papyri of spells through the Hellenistic period. A variant appears on a lead tablet from Phalasarna in Crete.

• The six words: They run aski, kataski, lix, tetrax, damnameneus and aision, sometimes ending in aisia.
• Androcydes: He read the words as symbols, with lix standing for Earth and tetrax for the year.
• Olympia bout: An Ephesian wrestler wore the letters on his ankle, and his rival from Miletus was unable to wrestle.

In Greek superstitions, the letters also served as protective magic. Once the letters were removed from his ankle, the Ephesian wrestler fell again and again. The Suda calls them spells that are hard to understand. Damnameneus was read as the name of a Dactyl.

How did curse tablets bind enemies in Greek superstitions?

Greek superstitions produced the katadesmos, or curse tablet, a small plaque inscribed with a curse. Its name comes from Greek and Latin words for pierce and bind. About 1,600 such tablets are known, and the majority carry Greek text.

Curse tablets are thin sheets of lead, scratched with tiny letters. Makers then rolled, folded or pierced them with nails. Greek superstitions sent them below ground: into graves and tombs, down wells and pools, or into underground sanctuaries. Others were nailed to temple walls. A sanctuary is a site sacred to a god.

The texts tend to address gods of the underworld, such as Pluto, Charon, Hecate and Persephone. The request sometimes passed through a dead person, possibly the corpse in the same grave. Certain tablets bear nothing more than the names of their targets. Greek superstitions used them to make gods, local spirits or the dead act against a person.

A good number of Athenian tablets refer to court cases. They curse the opposing side, wishing that he forgets his words or grows dizzy. Other tablets carry love spells, or curses on thieves and rivals in business and sport. In Greek superstitions, love spells were placed inside the home of the person desired.

• Attica: Of the known curse tablets, 220 were found in Attica, the region around Athens.
• Selinus: The first set discovered came from Selinus in Sicily: twenty-two tablets, mostly from the early fifth century.
• All classes: Magic to control the natural world was common among people of every economic and social rank.

Scholars once doubted that these Greek superstitions on lead were genuine. The Oxford professor of Greek E. R. Dodds was among the first to study them. Certain historians compare the tablets to modern swearing, done in anger. Peter Green also studied the subject.

What does the Pella curse tablet show about Greek superstitions of love?

Greek superstitions of love appear on the Pella curse tablet, a spell from ancient Macedon. Its writer was a woman whose name was possibly Dagina or Phila. She wanted to stop Dionysophon, the man she loved, from marrying a woman named Thetima.

She entrusted the spell to the corpse of a dead man named Macron. Greek superstitions held that the dead carried such messages to the underworld spirits. She calls on Makron and the daimones to make Dionysophon marry her instead. Daimones were lesser spirits that moved between gods and humans.

The writer binds the wedding of Thetima and Dionysophon. She also binds his marriage to every other woman, widow or maiden. Dionysophon was to marry only after she dug up the tablet and read it again. She asks to grow old at his side, and beside no one else.

Magic in ancient Macedon sheds light on popular Greek superstitions, not only on the habits of the elite. Magic was widely practised across the Greek world alongside official religion. Still, it stayed a marginal practice, largely carried out in secret. It was linked with the underworld and the daimones. Professional sorcerers sometimes helped clients compose curses for payment.

• Opening word: The text opens with the verb katagrapho, which means to register.
• Publication: Scholars published the tablet in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993.
• Museum: The tablet is now held in the Archaeological Museum of Pella.

The tablet was written in the 4th century BC, in its first half. Its text uses a distinct Doric Greek idiom, a regional dialect. The word Dagina is unexplained and unknown elsewhere. It is possibly linked to dagys, a doll used in Greek superstitions and magic.

Where do tamata, the votive plaques, fit among Greek superstitions and customs?

Greek superstitions and church custom meet in the tama, a votive offering of the Greek Orthodox Church. A votive offering is a gift made to keep a vow or to ask for help. Tamata are small plaques of base or precious metal.

In Greek superstitions, each tama carries an embossed image of the subject of the prayer. Embossed means raised from the surface. The images allow more than one reading. A heart can mean a prayer for love or for a heart problem. Eyes can point to an eye illness, and hands or legs to ailments of the limbs.

In Greek superstitions and daily faith, tamata are bought in shops that sell Greek Orthodox religious goods. The buyer ties one with a ribbon to a pole or hook beside an icon. A prayer goes with the act, and sometimes a lit votive candle. Icons are sacred images that the faithful honour.

A tama serves as a reminder of a person’s need, or as thanks for a prayer answered. A torso can stand for illness of the body, and wedding crowns for a happy marriage. Pilgrimage shrines are decorated with large numbers of tamata. Pilgrimage means travel to a sacred site.

• Silver hand: John of Damascus had a silver copy of his hand made and fixed it to an icon.
• The legend: Tradition says his hand was cut off after a false charge, then restored after prayer.
• Three-handed: That icon, called Trojerucica, the Three-handed, is kept at Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos.

Beyond Greek superstitions and Greek churches, tamata also appear in Italy, above all in the South. They compare with Roman Catholic votive gifts such as milagros, the Spanish word for miracles. Milagros serve as healing offerings in Mexico, Latin America and the southern United States.

What do travellers ask about Greek superstitions, and what are the answers?

Greek superstitions include apotropaic magic, which is protective magic meant to drive off harm or evil influences. The term comes from the Ancient Greek verb apotrepo, meaning to ward off. Good luck charms, amulets and knocking on wood can serve the same purpose.

Before a trip to Greece, who is Mormo in Greek superstitions?

Mormo was a female spirit of Greek folklore. Mothers and nurses spoke her name to frighten misbehaving children. A variant name, mormolyce, translates as terrible wolves. The poet Erinna wrote a poem called The Distaff. In it, she recalls that she and Baucis, her friend, feared Mormo when young.

What are the Sortes Homericae of Greek superstitions?

Sortes Homericae is Latin for Homeric lots, a way of reading the future from a book. A random line from Homer answered a question or foretold events. Socrates reportedly took a dreamed Iliad verse as a sign of his execution day. A later Homer Oracle used three rolls of a die, giving 216 possible results.

Which birth feast in Greek superstitions waited for the seventh day?

The Amphidromia was a family feast held five or seven days after a child was born. Families waited because people believed that the majority of babies died before the seventh day. The house was decorated outside with olive branches for a boy, or garlands of wool for a girl.

Why do Greek superstitions paint eyes on cups and boats?

Greek drinking cups called kylikes carried painted eyes from the 6th century BCE. These eye-cups possibly aimed to stop evil spirits entering the mouth during drinking. A kylix is a shallow cup. Stylised eyes still decorate the bows of fishing boats in parts of the Mediterranean. The bow is the front of a boat.

Featured photo: Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.