While art has been a fundamental part of human culture for millennia, it is also a pursuit of change, evolution, and adaption. With each new decade, we find new ways with which to express ourselves, yet there are aspects of art which have remained largely unchanged since their inception so many years ago.
Standing among these is the concept of superstition, of belief in the supernatural which influences the way we think and the people we become. Whether conscious or not, this is a component which still plays an enormous part in the art we create, or even how we interpret the art of others.
So how did we reach this point, what aspects of superstition remain unchanged to this day, and what key components keep this at the forefront of artistic expression?
Filling the Blanks
To understand why superstition first arose, it’s important to look at both history and psychology, both of which are inseparable in the initial and ongoing preoccupation of this concept. When looking back at history, perhaps the most important factor is that of our own former ignorance. In our infancy as a species, we had nothing approaching scientific rigor, nothing close to the scientific method, and little regard for what we currently consider evidence. We knew little, and we often had no way of learning, so understanding was left up to the highly unreliable mind of the individual.
From a psychological perspective, it makes perfect sense. Our success as a species is not simply due to our thumbs or mathematical intelligence; it comes from our ability to recognize patterns. While this still helped our ancestors get a leg up on the competition, it also comes with a distinct and powerful flaw which persists to this day. We often simply do not have all the data from which to draw a natural conclusion, so in our need to find answers, we often settled on the supernatural.
The Importance of Culture
Over time, as we spread further and further out into the world, each land or community would eventually create their own set of superstitions and supernatural beliefs. Inevitably these tied to their environments, with natural processes commonly relegated to the domains of higher beings. When things went well, people would assume it was because they had pleased their unknowable protectors. On the other hand, when things went poorly, the blame would be put on those disappointing the gods, or incurring the wrath of demons or a similar negative supernatural entity.
Sometimes these would be based on animals, with man's misrepresented and unreliable memories easily able to produce tales of half-remembered creatures, twisted and malformed by our horror and ignorance into fearsome beasts beyond the natural. Other times, our concern would be more on our internal struggles with these superstitions, and the tools we used to speciously protect ourselves from harm.
No matter the nation, no matter the culture or the language, our fear and desire for answers would maintain these superstitions, building them over time and consolidating many of them
into important parts of our collective culture. Any art which reflected fear or hope could easily include these as a means of expression, of communicating our internal processes to those of the world around us.
Conceptualizing Luck
It wasn’t just fear and the ultimate unknown on the large scale which guided our art, as also playing an important part was the concept of luck. What made one person die unknowingly while another survived into long life? What was it that made some survive accidents unscathed while others had their entire livelihoods destroyed? What made some recover from illness fully while other quickly succumbed? The answer, as we used to and still often do figure it, is luck.
We still maintain our obsession with determining patterns, and what is luck if not a greater pattern behind everything. This can be illustrated naturally, as
Exemplore details with the occurrences of rainbows and acorns, or manipulated intentionally,
as Betway Casino explores with certain foods and fashions. Unlike older superstitions, these still persist today on a wide scale, covering every nation and every culture.
Art is Expression
To understand why art will always defer to superstition comes in the understanding of art as a form of expression. Humans might have the most potential when it comes to critical thinking and understanding natural explanations for seemingly unknowable developments, but the historical and cultural influence of concepts like superstition are too profound to ignore.
From the tintinnabulum of Ancient Rome to the 4-leaved clovers of today, superstition is not a part of humanity which we are ever likely to abandon. Nothing captures our imagination like the thrill and potential of the unknown, and few can truly illustrate the way we feel like concepts as flexible and subjective as the supernatural. Superstition is expression, and with this, its ongoing basis in art is not just likely, it is guaranteed.
