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An omen (also called portent) is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. [2] It was commonly believed in ancient history , and still believed by some today, that omens bring divine messages from the gods.
Breaking a mirror is said to bring seven years of bad luck [1]; A bird or flock of birds going from left to right () [citation needed]Certain numbers: The number 4.Fear of the number 4 is known as tetraphobia; in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, the number sounds like the word for "death".
Roy Sullivan. Struck by lightning seven times. Roy Sullivan, a park ranger in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, seemed to have an uncanny knack for, how do we put it, angering the universe.
An example of the use of shiny apotropaic objects in Judaism can be found in the so-called "Halsgezeige" or textile neckbands used in the birthing customs of the Franco-German border region. Shiny coins or colourful stones would be sewn onto the neckband or on a central amulet in order to distract the evil eye .
The Dies Infaustus, on which old seamen were desirous of not getting under weigh, as ill-omened. [7] (Dies Infaustus means "unlucky day". [8]) This superstition is the root of the well-known urban legend of HMS Friday. Sailors are often reluctant to set sail on Candlemas Day, believing that any voyage begun then will end in disaster.
Examples include depictions of figures often identified as Odin appear flanked with two birds on a 6th-century bracteate and on a 7th-century helmet plate from Vendel, Sweden. In later Norse mythology , Odin is depicted as having two ravens Huginn and Muninn , serving as his eyes and ears – huginn meaning "thought" and muninn meaning "memory".
A superstition is "a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation" or "an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition."
In Roman histories and biographies, particularly Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars, the lives, personal character and destinies of various emperors can be read in reported portents, omens and dreams; the emperor Caligula, for example, dreamt that he stood before the throne of Jupiter, king of the gods, and Jupiter kicked him down from heaven to ...