The Guardian has a section called “Making sense of it”, and in it an opinion piece “Spirituality isn’t rigid dogma. It’s a living, breathing practice that helps make sense of an incomprehensible world” The writer finds comfort in various “quiet rituals” which he says have stayed with him more than strictly religious practices.
Drawing on my own encounters, I’ve come to see how these seemingly small gestures – the fragrant smoke of esfand to lift heaviness, the rhythmic pull of qawwali, the quiet assurance of a taweez tied around a wrist – hold more than superstition. They carry virtues: grounding, comfort and a deep sense of protection. None of these things were in any book of religion. No one ever sat down and taught them. They were just picked up, like pebbles from the ground, passed from women to girls, from grandmothers to mothers to daughters – and sometimes to sons who were paying attention.
This writer is a Muslim from Pakistan, and the specific rituals he mentions would be foreign for most of us. But my grandmother had other, no less inexplicable beliefs and rituals: throwing a pinch of salt over the shoulder if salt had been spilled, not opening an umbrella inside the home, and, of course, not walking under a ladder.
Sometimes the beliefs of one people contradict those of another: for example, the number 13, unlucky for Christians, is lucky for Jews. At other times, they correspond: the Hamsa is a popular amulet all across the Middle East and North Africa. The use of Henna designs at weddings and marriages goes all the way from Morocco to Malaysia, and it hardly matters whether the brides are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Sikh.
India has a huge and daunting collection of beliefs that govern people’s lives, and sometimes they seem to cut across religions. I know that in the renovation of a neighbouring house in South India, there were specific rules, based on the Hindu Vastu Shastra, governing the position of every room in the house – particularly the direction of kitchen and bathroom appliances. There is no way the Muslim plumber would agree to do it differently. And the local people – I think, Hindu or Muslim alike, would never, as we do, re-use clothes as rags.
I vaguely recall that the 19th century tome, The Golden Bough, purports to explain many folk customs and beliefs, such as the practice of covering our mouth when we yawn (I think this is to prevent the soul from escaping).
Really, I do not think that any of these folk beliefs, customs and rituals, have much to do with spirituality. Some of these are quaint, colourful or harmless, but often, just as people may find comfort, they are, in equal measure, constrained by these nonsensicalities.
Source: https://hub.vikshepa.com/item/13228e2b-0696-4b00-aa84-3d0eb1246f78
