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Folklore 114 (2003):297–306

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Taking Superstitions Seriously[1]

Torunn Selberg

Abstract

This paper discusses how the concepts of superstition and tradition are used incurrent discourse about new religions. A range of different associations areassigned to these concepts which are used to describe the actual religioussituation—at times attacking, but also defending religious multiplicity.

Introduction

The religious field can be seen as a social field where a group of people andinstitutions contest things they have in some way in common. Various rightsand powers are vested in a range of different positions and institutions, and thecontest may be about who has the right to define religion, or about the rightways to conduct religion. Similarly, the study of religion is the concern of anumber of different scholarly traditions—such as theology, history of religion,and folklore studies—each of which specialises in different religious expressionsorganised in a hierarchy which is taken more or less for granted. These threeacademic disciplines can also be said to have an allotted place within a similarhierarchy. Certain religious expressions may be designated as divergent, popu-lar, unauthentic, trendy and so on, by whoever holds the power to define whatis right and wrong, genuine or spurious. Disparate sides may well use the sameword or concept to evaluate and characterise beliefs and ideas, yet load themwith different notions and values. In this paper I will exemplify this point bydiscussing how terms, such as superstition and tradition, which have long beenfamiliar to the folklorist, are currently used in discussions to designate religiousideas and right from wrong.

Superstition Then and Now

Let us first examine the concept of superstition. Because alternative religiosityconstitutes no part of any institutional and canonical religion, the ideas brokeredby such religiosity can be referred to as superstition, or contemporary folk belief(Hammer 1998). I will illustrate this view by giving three different examplesfrom a Norwegian context, and then I shall look at how the concept ofsuperstition has been, and perhaps still is being, used to control religiousvariety. The examples are taken from different sources, including the massmedia. As with all current cultural communication, today’s mass media play animportant role. However, the media’s presentations, and the public’s interpreta-tions and understanding of them, are not independent of other communicationforms, be they oral or written, popular or academic, old or new. Other texts and

ISSN 0015-587X print; 1469-8315 online/03/030297-10; Routledge Journals; Taylor & Francis Ltd 2003 The Folklore SocietyDOI: 10.1080/0015587032000145342

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cultural contexts will also have a bearing on media communication. In consider-ing the following examples to be utterances, I am inspired by Mikhail Bakhtinand his perception of language in use as essentially “dialogic”: every speech actsprings from previous utterances and is structured in anticipation of a futureresponse. A given utterance is not a mere representation of something in theworld, but also a representation of another speech act about the same thing. Allutterances are full of different voices, and have a specific position in the sphereof communication, which is related to the actual issue with which they areconcerned. The utterance expresses the speaker’s active position in context(Bakhtin 1986).

Some time ago I gave an interview to a Norwegian newspaper about my“New Age” research. The newspaper published it under their own headlinewhich read: “Taking Superstitions Seriously”—which in turn gave me the titlefor this paper. At the time I felt that the headline was a bit of a “blast from thepast” as it pointed to a conflict between “superstitions” and “seriously,” andcommunicated surprise that superstition could constitute the subject of scholarlyresearch. It thus referred to the familiar line used to divide supernatural beliefsand genuine religion. Implicitly, this dividing line carries with it the idea of“we” and “the others”—opposites which are woven into the narrative aboutsuperstitions and folk belief, and which have even tainted certain folkloristicconcepts. Any concept will carry meanings which incorporate the very problemsthey were created to resolve (see Williams 1983), and the word “superstition”has a long history; it gives rise to many associations and resonates with thevoices of many speakers. The headline can thus be seen to express a common-place attitude towards supranormal beliefs.

My next example is taken from an article in a Norwegian book club magazinefor alternative spirituality, and it may well be viewed as an answer to thecommon attitude to supranormal beliefs expressed in the first example.

It reads:

If crystals, horoscopes and affirmations are to be defined as superstitions, I am happy withthat. These superstitions form part of my life and my choices. The belief that crystals havethe ability to support processes of transformation, that a deck of cards can tell you about thepast and the future, or that the stars in the sky and the lines in my hand can reveal importantthings about mankind—you may well, if you want to—call these [beliefs] irrational andsuperstitious. I, however, am grateful for these irrational beliefs—or superstitions—which Icertainly prefer to beliefs based on hypocrisy, mistrust or prejudice. Every time I occupymyself with these innocent superstitious activities, it feels as if I am close to somethingimportant, and I just cannot get enough of it. By reading so-called superstitious literature andthrough conversation with other superstitious people, I have come to understand my ownintuition. Therefore, I am grateful for the so-called superstitions; in our modern, one-dimen-sional society, and in our pitiable materialistic chase, we need this sort of enhancement.

This quotation is an utterance which forms part of a dialogue about right orwrong religion. The story, like any story, constitutes a meeting point of variousvoices, texts and narratives. In principle, the reader understands the text inrelation to everything she or he has read or heard before—and these processesoccur within a cultural reality, which is thus reproduced. Consequently, thestory forms part of the old and familiar narrative among folklorists aboutsuperstition—a concept also well known to the general public. The writer is here

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clearly trying to change this narrative. To her, superstitions constitute enrich-ments for which she is grateful. She argues against a rational worldview andclaims that superstition is better than hypocrisy, mistrust and prejudice—termsused by her to characterise other forms of belief. Her utterance is an argumentagainst official religion, and she wants to give magic and superstition a moreprominent place in modern society. Superstition is here given a positive evalu-ation.

My third example is a quotation from two theologians who describe thecontemporary religious situation in Norway. Their article forms part of acollection of essays on the development of religion in that country, published onthe initiative of the Norwegian Episcopal Council. The two theologians nevermention the word “superstition” in their description, but the idea about so-called inferior beliefs, such as superstitions, is clearly present in their text. Theywrite:

Over the last thirty years a profound change has taken place with regard to the religiosityof the Norwegian people. This change is so radical that there is every reason to speak of a“religious revolution.” In a remarkably short period of time we have moved a very long way:from a broad and rather unified religiosity, essentially determined by clerical traditions andChristian beliefs, to a fragmented and strongly individualistic religious smørgasbord [buffet].Traditional institutions like schools and churches no longer have a strong influence on thisnew religiosity. Above all, it is characterised by pressures from the mass media, and in termsof religious content, it presents itself as a wretched mixture of traditional Christian elements,new spirituality, occult traditions, and Eastern religiosity … Nevertheless, robust elements ofcontinuity and tradition still characterise religious life [in Norway]. New Age must beconsidered a matter of fashion. The bedrock of the Christian Church is still firm (Engedal andSveinall 2000, 9).

The ideas and conflicts, which are expressed in this utterance, have a muchlonger history than the past three decades to which the writers refer. They arerooted in the long-standing strife between popular cultural diversity on the onehand and established elite culture on the other. The narrative organises religiousexpressions into categories such as “traditional” and “unified,” which in thiscontext are associated with positive qualities, and “new,” “diverse,” and“occult,” which give rise to negative associations. The quotation also incorpo-rates ideas about “the others,” expressed in language suitable for our times, yetconstituting components of a long-standing tradition in our part of the world—in fact, as long-standing as ideas about folk, folklore, folk culture, and theinevitable attempts to reform such folk culture. Around 1730 Erik Pontoppidan,an influential Danish/Norwegian bishop, used the word “superstition” to de-scribe the religious beliefs he found among peasants, servants and commoners—the socially and culturally underdeveloped classes (Amundsen 1999). Accordingto him, these beliefs were an amalgam of residual paganism and papistry. Aboutone hundred years later, Andreas Faye, a priest and editor of “Norwegian FolkLegends” (Faye 1843), stated in the Foreword to his book that the supernaturalbeliefs found in the legends were indeed harmful. He expressed himself as a truechild of the Enlightenment when he wrote:

The objection may be raised that these legends about giants, fairies and the like will confirmold superstitions; however, it is the editor’s opinion that such objections are unfounded.Without a doubt, the dangerous belief in these creatures will receive its deathblow when

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they are printed and become the subject of sensible people’s conversation; such superstitiousbeliefs can only thrive if they are muffled up in secrecy and passed on by word of mouthwithout further explanation.

Today, what are perceived as divergent beliefs are seen by some as resultingfrom the influence of the mass media or commercialisation, and they aredescribed in terms of superficial fashionable trends or foreign religious elements.One Norwegian religious scholar claims that new religious ideas are symp-tomatic of current strains on people’s identity—in effect that they constitute anattempt to mend shattered identities. I quote from a Norwegian sociologist ofreligion: “We have scientific evidence that only very few people have a deeply-felt relationship with alternative religiosity. It is more common for their involve-ment to be of a rather more private and superficial nature … they tend to beconsumers more than churchgoers” (Repstad 1999). This way of describing newreligiosity also reflects on the people who in one way or another are involvedwith these ideas. They are described as people with identity problems, peoplewho are superficial, or influenced by the mass media, or by the latest fashionabletrends. Such descriptions are normally used to designate “the others”; “we”have no identity problems, and “we” will certainly never let the mass mediaconduct our lives for us. The influence of New Age thinking is understood as areaction to the negative features associated with modern or post-modern society,as a way of compensating for “a shattered post-modern reality” (Hopland 2000).Uprooted lives and restlessness are also used to explain the religious changes inour society. These arguments all share the view that alternative religiosity is acompensation for, or reaction to, the problems and complications of contempor-ary society, rather than a continuation or reinforcement of the ideas and valuesof our own times. I return to this issue below.

From 1700 onwards, descriptions of divergent religions appear to imply that“the others” hold all folk beliefs, supernatural beliefs or new religious ideas.Such beliefs are seen as being in opposition to the “right” religion, as well as toenlightenment and rationality. Throughout the centuries the religious com-munity has kept appropriating new arguments for designating correct and truebeliefs. The three quotations I have given above illustrate that the concept andidea of superstition and divergent beliefs are still in use. Yet, there is noagreement among the writers about the meaning of the word, or about how toassess superstitious beliefs. The two latter quotations can be traced to thearguments put forward by those who have been fighting religious multiplicitythrough the ages. The first writer, however, defends diversity in the face ofreligious authorities. It is no longer easy to silence the religious “other”; “theother” talks back.

Tradition and New Religiosity

The ideas of tradition and continuity are prominent in the third quotation, andthey are used to defend institutional religion. Describing something as“traditional” implies that its quality is beyond discussion. And in spite of thefact that “tradition” is necessarily established over time, “traditional” as aquality provides an aura of timelessness. “New,” on the other hand, is an

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adjective which evokes a variety of judgements according to its field of appli-cation. In ancient times, being “new” was the worst quality that could possiblybe assigned to a religion. Traditionally, it has been felt that religions should beof “a ripe old age”—much like wine and antiques (Gilhus 1999). To be perceivedas genuine, a religious belief needs to form an integral part of a particularreligious tradition; otherwise it might be described as a religious smørgasbord ora wretched mixture of beliefs.

One perspective on modernity and religion is that they are perceived as twoincompatible phenomena, while modernity and secularisation are consideredtwo aspects of the same process. In this context, religion belongs to traditionalsociety, and so the term new religion can be perceived as a contradiction interms. However, within new religions, and within the religious community assuch, the concept of tradition and ideas about the past are being used in anumber of different ways, which I now go on to discuss by way of a fewexamples.

My first example is once again a newspaper story. It was published in theNorwegian national newspaper Dagbladet in August 1998. It tells of a femaleSami shaman in a small village in Finnmarksvidda, at the heart of the traditionalSami region in Norway. The theme of the story is a conflict between the shamanand the Christian inhabitants of the village; basically, the story concerns theplace of shamanism in modern culture. The article headline was as follows:“Drum fight in a Sami Village,” and the “Introduction” states that:

She believes in the power of drums and is accused of being the Devil’s delegate. “But it wasthe Christians who brought God and the Devil to the Sami, not I,” the female shaman BiretMaret Kallio chuckles.

The story continues:

She holds the aforementioned drum in her lap. Biret Maret Kallio is a shaman. People inTana also call her noaide [the Sami name for shaman]. Runebommer [the name of the SamiShaman drums] such as this one, decorated with symbols, formed a central part of the Samipre-Christian religion.

But the Christian missionaries burned the pagan drums, and most people believe thatChristianity gained victory over paganism once and for all. Thus, it is very controversialwhen Biret gathers her group—called Noaide—and offers sacrifices to, and worships the oldGods.

The article further states that:

They are fighting over souls in the Sami village. Biret Maret Kallio is surprised that she meetswith so much fear and resentment from the Christians. When the group meets, the drumjourney can last for several days. Biret Maret Kallio believes that the drum is a healinginstrument, and she demonstrates some of the rituals to us.

The story concludes as follows:

The number of Sami people joining the woman shaman’s group is growing. Dagbladet talkedyesterday to some of the Christian leaders in Tana. However, shamanism is something theyare reluctant to talk about—they want to kill it with silence. Biret herself knows that she iscarrying on a very controversial tradition. “Had I lived a few generations ago, I would havebeen burnt at the stake,” she states. “My work has nothing to do with New Age—this is Old

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Age. The drum is a vehicle for contact with one’s inner self, with nature, with the forefathers,and with the spirits” (Dagbladet [31 August 1998]).

The story intrigued me when I first read it because so many questions relatingto contemporary popular religions are touched upon, and common ideas aboutthe influence of the past and tradition in modern society are integral to the story.We hear about pre-Christian religion, pagan beliefs, shamanistic rituals andhealing drums, and the story is narrated in ambiguous and multivocal wordsand concepts. A specific story—in this case a report from a newspaper—can bestudied as a meeting point of various voices, texts and narratives. In principlethe reader understands the text in relation to everything he or she has read orheard before—and these processes occur in, and reproduce, cultural reality(Tarkka 1993, 171).

The narrative about Biret is an expression or utterance about modern shaman-ism, often referred to as neo-shamanism and part of what is called neo-pagan-ism. Neo-paganism implies a religion based on the worship of nature and ofancient indigenous traditions. It is a term which includes certain modernmovements which are based on two convictions; firstly, that all that Christianityhas traditionally denounced as idolatry and superstition actually represents aprofound and meaningful religious worldview, and secondly, that a religiouspractice based on this worldview can and should be revitalised in our modernworld (Hanegraaff 1996, 77).

The story about Biret invokes ideas about a continuous tradition, which hasbeen sustained in secret in the shadow of a dominant ideology. In folkloretheory the term relic is often used to describe this kind of phenomenon. The ideais alive and well in contemporary society and it is commonly used in a mannerwhich suggests that scientific understanding of the concept of historical traditionhas remained intact, which is to say, that tradition is understood to be asuperorganic principle maintaining cultural practices perceived to be transmit-ted in an unaltered form over lengthy periods of time (Korom 2000).

In the newspaper article we are told that in a community untouched bymodern times, ancient wisdom and knowledge are being preserved. The storyabout Biret indicates that in remote places in the world, ancient traditional formswhich have more or less gone underground, have been preserved unchanged.When Biret dissociates herself from the term “New Age” and elegantly says thather beliefs and activities are about “Old Age,” she refers to her own activity asoriginating from the olden times, and indicates that her own religion is olderthan Christianity. She traditionalises her shamanistic activity by connecting heractivities to the past—a past that in her opinion is more in accordance with Samiculture. In popular discourse—as in folklore studies—the concept of traditionand ideas about the past bestow authenticity upon a given matter.

For many people a new religion is controversial, just as it is for the Christianpeople in the Sami village mentioned in the newspaper article. A couple of yearsago a Norwegian journalist, Bjørg Vindsetmo, wrote a very critical book aboutNew Age culture and ideology called Sjelen som turist [Spiritual Tourism] (Vind-setmo 1995). Vindsetmo criticises the innumerable forms of worldview andtherapy to be found within modern religious movements. She views these as amixture of religion and therapy and describes them ironically as follows: “Most

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typical of the new religiosity of our time is its therapeutic essence. Therapy hasbecome a religion, and even worse, religion has become therapy” (Vindsetmo1995, 15). Her way of characterising New Age religion indicates a view ofmodern religiosity as spiritual decline.

One of the chapters in her book concerns neo-shamanism—which the authorviews as one of the four most important therapies within modern “alternativetherapies.” The title of the chapter poses the question: “Are shamanistic journeystherapy?” The chapter itself starts with a description of a female Swedishshaman whom the writer nicknames “Little Hiawatha.” By using the name of aDisneyland cartoon figure, the writer invokes ideas about a superficial, trivial,commercial and unauthentic world.

“Little Hiawatha”—the shaman, not the Disney figure—is described as su-perelegant—a “wandering fashion show for indigenous people”—as Vindsetmoironically puts it, and we are told that “Little Hiawatha” teaches modernbusinessmen creativity and self-development as a sideline to her main practiceas shaman.

After telling us about “Little Hiawatha,” Bjørg Vindsetmo discusses “real”shamanism. She refers to shamanism as the world’s oldest religion, and askshow can the religious life of “our earliest forefathers” become something, that ina modern woman’s worldview, is a new form of therapy? And what makes“Little Hiawatha believe that she is a shaman?” she further asks (Vindsetmo1995, 22).

Vindsetmo’s perception of shamanism as our earliest forefathers’ religion isused to create distance between the shamans of today and those of earlier times.She is of the opinion that some elements of the traditional shamanistic universeare falling by the wayside in the modern version—which she describes as a breakwith tradition, a remnant, or a poor shadow of the authentic version. This,therefore, is an argument for the unauthenticity of neo-shamanism—which, inVindsetmo’s view, is but a pallid forgery of the true shamanism of the past.

Tradition and Authenticity

It has been claimed that one of the traits of modern or postmodern experienceis the dislodging of ideas, images and signs. Within New Age thinking thismeans, among other things, that religious elements from older or culturallydifferent religious traditions are being interpreted and experienced in new andunorthodox ways. This tendency to use religious ideas “freely,” so to speak, isoften discussed in critical interpretations of New Age philosophy in terms oftheir genuineness or spuriousness. This view implies that a religious tradition iscoherent, that the scriptures, religious ideas and rituals together constitute awholeness, and that if elements are separated they loose their authenticity.

From this point of view, religious traditions are perceived as pure categories,characterised by inner structures and relationships. The process of separatingsome of these elements, which are then related to new contexts, is perceived asspurious and unauthentic. If components are dislodged or detached from theoriginal tradition, they are then seen as having lost their authenticity. In myopinion Vindsetmo’s story about shamanism is coloured by such an image of areligious tradition.

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The Rhetoric of Tradition

The utterances discussed above tell about modern perceptions of Shamanism—of-ten described as mankind’s oldest religion. Various positions in a discourse aboutmodern shamanism are being put forward. The question discussed in the storiesis whether neo-shamanism is genuine or spurious, and the arguments put forwardare related to various narratives about the influence of the past in contemporarysociety, and various voices claim the “ownership” of the interpretation and thecontents of the word “tradition.”

In Vindsetmo’s story neo-shamanism represents a break with the shamanismof the past, and it is described as a weak echo of the real and genuine tradition.By invoking the past, she regards present religious ideas as an illustration ofspiritual decline. The two theologians I quoted earlier are in accord with BjørgVindsetmo as they evoke ideas about tradition and continuity when they talk aboutthe Christian religion, whereas their discourse on new religion supports ideasabout superficial fashionable trends and media influence. Tradition and continuityare imbued with polemic powers.

The story about Biret Maret Kallio, the shaman in a Sami village in Norway,evokes ideas about a religious tradition being kept alive in secret. Biret in the Samivillage represents the continuation of old traditions. The stories indicate thatrevelation of this tradition and wisdom from the past can help modern-day peopleto live a better life. Vindsetmo, on the other hand, describes contemporary ideasabout shamanism as spiritual decline. Common to the stories is the idea that thepast represents more consistent traditions and greater wisdom. Common also isthe perception that the past and tradition are not merely a context for the mattersnarrated, but that they are used as a means of arriving at an interpretational andan argumentative stance.

The past—and ideas about tradition—are being used in popular interpretationswithin a New Age context. The past and tradition are used as arguments for thesignification and value of various beliefs and ideas; and the past is being sacralisedwhen seen as containing wisdom and spirituality that are of much largerdimensions than those of contemporary society. When the past is tied to the hereand now, the symbolic power of the past creates an enchantment—which willaffect the present.

Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnikin tell us that the terms “traditional andnew, are interpretative rather than descriptive since all cultures change ceaselessly;thus, there can only be what is new, although what is new can take on symbolicvalue as ‘traditional’ ”(Handler and Linnikin 1984, 273). When people resort toinvoking ideas about tradition, they often do so to validate the authenticity of somecustom or belief, be it local, ethnical, or religious (Korom 2000, 87).

The use of the past in the New Age context is one example of how modern-daypeople establish continuities, authenticise the past, and authorise particularrepresentations in images and stories (Anttonen 1996). The past and tradition arebeing used to legitimise, authenticate and control ideologies and cultural identi-ties, both in a New Age discourse and in contemporary society in general.

Conclusion

My point of departure was that the religious field can be seen as a social field

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where a group of people and institutions contest things they have in common.In this paper I have tried to show how the concepts of superstition and traditionare being used in disparate religious circles as part of their discourse aboutgenuine or spurious religion. The concepts are ambiguous as well as multivocal,and are being used by those on both sides of the argument. A range of differentassociations are, therefore, assigned to these concepts which are used to describethe actual religious situation—at times defending, and at other times attackingreligious multiplicity. The various utterances can be seen to form part of acontinuous series of attempts to control popular religion or religious variety, andare thus also part of a continuous discourse on “us” and “the others.” Today,however, “the others” are participating actively in the discourse, thereby ensur-ing that new meanings are assigned to the various concepts. In doing so theyauthenticate and authorise what others have defined as divergent beliefs.

Notes[1] Keynote lecture at the 4th ESRC Research Seminar in European Ethnology: “From Vernacular

Religion to Contemporary Spirituality: Locating Religion in European Ethnology,” The OpenUniversity, Milton Keynes, 10–11 January 2003.

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Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1983.

Biographical NoteTorunn Selberg is Professor of Folklore Studies, Institute for Cultural Studies and the History of Art,University of Bergen, Norway. Her research interests include folk belief, modern alternative religions andlocal festivals.

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