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Currently viewing the tag: "superstition"
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Sin Eaters performed a ceremony wherein they took on the sins that the deceased performed — sins that went unforgiven or without confession prior to death. People typically hired a Sin Eater in situations where the deceased died unexpectedly.
By consuming bread and a drink (usually wine or beer) placed on, or ritually waved over, the dead body, onlookers believed the dead person’s sins were digested by the eater after he or she consumed this beggar’s feast. The act appears to be confined to 18th and 19th Century Europe, with no accounts of necro-cannibalism noted.
In time, the practice expanded in popularity, so that Sin Eaters also attended to people who had just died of natural causes — because people believed the ritual could help prevent the dead from wandering the countryside after death. -Keith Veronese -Keith Veronese
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or poem with a sin eater as a protagonist.
Journaling Prompt: Write about the oldest tradition your family still practices.
Art Prompt: Sin Eater
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Research a strange custom and tell your audience about it.
Photo Credit: Mikamatto on Flickr
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Cause-and-effect thinking is critical to human survival, Legare said. So it’s natural for people to find logic in supernatural rituals that emphasize repetition and procedural steps. If doing something once has some effect, then repeating it must have a greater effect. For example, if a mechanic says he inspected something five times, the frequency of his actions leads the customer to overestimate the effectiveness of his work. -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Create a ritual for your character to use and then write a scene about it. Focus on the internal monologue.
Journaling Prompt: What rituals do you use?
Art Prompt: Supernatural Ritual
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the psychology of ritual. Include stories about the rituals used by famous people.
Photo Credit: rodolfoaraiza.com on Flickr
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“If I could tell you this in a single sitting, then you might believe all of it, even the strangest part.” -Graham Joyce, The Limits of Enchantment
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story inspired by this first line.
Journaling Prompt: What is the strangest story you’ve ever believed and why did you believe it?
Art Prompt: Incredible Story
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the strangest true story you’ve ever heard.
Photo Credit: stevelyon on Flickr
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reliquary: A container to hold or display religious relics.
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story, poem or haiku using the word “reliquary.”
Journaling Prompt: Write about an object you own that has religious or spiritual significance for you. Where do you keep it?
Art Prompt: Reliquary
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a specific reliquary and its history.
Photo Credit: Dolmang on Flickr
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“Do you know any ghost stories, Mr. Fort?” asked Tony. He liked to tell us the ones his grandmother told from the old country, all about gypsies and potions and vengeful friars.
Mr. Fort turned and looked at him. “Ghost stories, my boy? They’re just the gossip of the dead. What kind of damned fool wastes his heightened awareness of all time and space to come back and tell you that he loves you? Or where the family treasure is buried? Or who killed him? They all say the same things, those ghosts, none of it interesting. None of it sublime.” He snorted. “The whole world is a ghost, echoing and fading from the perfect original. We are the ghosts.” -Will Ludwigsen, We Were Wonder Scouts, Asimov’s Aug 2011
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a supernatural story that is firmly set in the natural world.
Journaling Prompt: If you were to die unexpectedly today, what would you want to communicate to your family after your death? Why aren’t you telling them now?
Art Prompt: We Are the Ghosts
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the fascination with the paranormal and how it affects our ability to perceive the miraculous in the natural world.
Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney on Flickr
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During the night of May 18/19 of 1910, when the Earth passed through the tail of comet Halley, some people took precautions by sealing the chimneys, windows, and doors of their houses. Others confessed to crimes they had committed because they did not expect to survive the night, and a few panic-stricken people actually committed suicide. Enterprising merchants sold comet pills and oxygen bottles, church services were held for overflow crowds, and people in the countryside took to their storm shelters. A strangely frivolous mood caused thousands of people to gather in restaurants, coffee houses, parks, and on the rooftops of apartment buildings to await their doom in the company of fellow humans. -Gunter Faure and Teresa Mensing, Introduction to Planetary Science: The Geological Perspective
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story set during a time when people believe that they are doomed.
Journaling Prompt: How would you spend tonight if you knew it was the last night of your life?
Art Prompt: Awaiting Doom
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: How do you see the tendency toward doom and despair playing out in today’s world?
Photo Credit: NASAblueshift on Flickr
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We do not believe in the reality of Olympus, so the ancient Greek gods live on in us as symptoms. We no longer have thunderbolts of Zeus, we have headaches. We no longer have the arrows of Eros we have angina pains. We no longer have the ecstasy of Dionysus, we have addictive behavior. Even though we no longer recognize the gods we experience their powerful forces.-Carl Jung
Writing Prompt: Write about a character with a symptom caused by the spirit of a Greek god.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you felt like the victim of the wrath of a Greek god.
Art Prompt: Greek god
Photo Credit: Eddi van W. on Flickr
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I can only conjure up one god cult that believed the universe would cease to exist if its singing ever stopped. All of its members perished in an avalanche thousands of years back, of course. The universe, to my knowledge, has not. -Maggie Clark, Saying the Names (free to read online)
Writing Prompt: Write a character sketch for someone who belongs to a cult. What does he or she believe? Why?
Journaling Prompt: Write about the strangest thing you’ve ever heard someone claim as truth.
Art Prompt: Song of the Universe
Photo Credit: waywuwei on Flickr
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Create whatever this visual prompt inspires in you!
Photo by ktylerconk on Flickr.
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Lucas was born into the Lunar Temple, a group of Americans, most from the Southwest, who believed that the Moon was a part of the Earth that was broken off in an ancient cataclysm, and that humans were devolved from more pure creatures who now lived in vast, spiral cities below the satellite’s surface. These beings were building monstrous engines two hundred miles across on the dark side of the Moon that, on the Day of Joining, they would use to bring the Moon hurtling back to Earth. -Brian Francis Slattery, Spaceman Blues: A Love Song
Writing Prompt: Write about a strange belief that one of your character’s holds.
Journaling Prompt: Write about the strangest thing that you once believed.
Art Prompt: Cult
Photo Credit: bilbord99 on Flickr
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