Superstition or Sensibility

pick it up or leave it behind?

Energy of the Ancients or a Souvenir?

There’s an Ancestral Puebloan ruins north of Winslow, Arizona, known as Homol’ovi. If you have the lung and leg power to climb a steep hill, you’ll find what’s left of several dwellings, a kiva, and a treasure trove of pottery shards. You’re not supposed to take any of these broken pottery pieces, but I’ve noticed that every time I visit, there are fewer and fewer.

Taking a pottery shard from the Ancients feels wrong on so many levels. A human hand designed and crafted that pot, a pot that was used in this place by these people. I’m fine with picking one up and feeling what I can feel, but to take it, no.

This reminds me of the superstitions around taking pieces of petrified wood from the Petrified Forest National Park. If you take anything from there, it’s said you’ll be cursed. Silly? I don’t think so. In fact, the Park has hundreds of letters from people who took pieces of wood and wanted to send them back because they suffered misfortune. One woman wrote that after taking the petrified rock, her stepmother had kidney failure, their central air and freezer died, their dog and cat had met untimely ends, and their truck broke down. The night before she penned the letter, they’d been evacuated from their home after a gas well exploded.

The sad thing - because of research - the stones can’t ever be returned to their original location; instead they go into the ‘conscience pile’, and there they stay.

When Is It Okay?

Well, I’m not the artifact police but I can say that I don’t want anything that came from an Ancient site. What was left by the Old Ones belongs to them, not me. But what about objects not made by humans? For instance, I was hiking on public land at about 6,000 feet in the mountains of Northern Arizona. There, I found several petrified sea shells and coral. This was an inland sea about 300 million years ago, so not surprising to find remnants of sea life.

Would it be okay to take a shell?

How about this one: Superstition (and probably experience) tells us to leave 13 pennies at the entrance to a cemetery upon leaving. This will ensure that no unwanted guests accompany you home. If you saw those pennies, would you take one? How about an arrowhead from the Little Bighorn Battlefield or a sliver of wood from Lincoln’s death bed? I’m superstitious enough to say ‘no’.

Here’s something else, though. “See a penny pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.” My friend, Jessica Macbeth, blesses pennies, then randomly drops them wherever she goes. She knows that the person who picks up her penny needs the blessing. So yes, take that one home.

This train of thought, of course, takes me to objects passed down from generation-to-generation. I know keeping family antiques is a thing, but sometimes I wonder if the energy binds us to the past in a way that obstructs forward movement? I don’t think there are any superstitions around this one, but I do wonder about the sensibility.

Honestly, I don’t know the answer. Do you?

Next time . . . . . a Surprise, maybe