7 Superstitions

Halloween is a non-holiday in Kazakhstan. People here know about it, but it’s not celebrated unless there is a volunteer around that takes the initiative to organize something. There is no trick or treating, haunted houses, or dressing up on Halloween in Kazakhstan. Costumes are usually reserved for New Years, and they tend to be the non-scary variety. My Halloween will be very low key. It will be spent going to the swearing in ceremony for the new volunteers in Almaty and then organizing a Halloween party with my sitemate for a student English club. After that, I’ll probably do a marathon of this TV show.

Although Kazakhstan doesn’t have a formal day dedicated to ghosts and ghouls, vampires or zombies, they have a bunch of superstitions. Asking people about their personal superstitions has become a big hobby of mine. Here are my 7 favorites:

• Do not sit at the corners of the table. You will never get married and have babies. I’ve had people literally pick me up, chair and all, and move me from the corners. This one can be taken seriously by people, especially at weddings.

• Do not sit on the ground. You will become sterile. Babushkas strictly enforce this one, and I have been yelled at by several of them for doing this.

• Do not greet people while standing in the doorway. This is bad luck. To properly greet someone, you must place both feet outside, or inside. Never straddle the doorway.

• Blessing someone before a trip. It doesn’t matter if you are Muslim, Orthodox, or Catholic. Whoever’s company you are in will bless you as they see fit. My two host families were huge about this. Every time I would travel further than Taldykorgan or Almaty I’d be continually blessed from the time I put on my shoes until I was out the door.

• Spitting air three times to prevent jinxing. People will do this also as an equivalent to knocking on wood. For you wind instrument musicians out there, it’s much like tonguing without a mouthpiece. For you non musicians, it’s like spitting watermelon seeds.

• Defending against spirits and bad auras. This one isn’t so common. If a person feels that a room is contaminated with bad energy, a shaman can be found who will burn incense, say some words, and chase the evil away. Our accountant did this to our office earlier this week which made me freak out because I thought the shaman dropped some burning incense on my computer.

• The Evil Eye. This is the fear of hurt or destruction caused by other people's envy. This isn’t just a Kazakhstan superstition, as many other countries such as Greece, Turkey, Middle Eastern and many African countries have some variant of this. Even the ancient Romans had something like the Evil Eye in their culture. To defend against the Evil Eye many people in Kazakhstan carry a talisman, usually a piece of jewelry of a blue eye. Here, they are popular as key chains and bracelets. I’ve been told that you should hide it on your person, usually in a pocket. I have two of them; I can’t tell you where I hide them because that would destroy the point of me hiding them. They look something like this:

From Wikipedia "Evil Eye"