GARLIC CLOVES AND RED UNDERWEARGarlic for Italians is the chicken soup for the Jewish. Both are catch-all remedies for what ails you. The reader won’t find chicken soup mentioned here, but will see garlic referenced for a host of cures
and protections. Another familiar protection is the color red. In the Indian Vedanta culture, red is associated with the first energy center of the body (chakra). There are seven chakras that furnish energy to the body and this red colored chakra is centered at the base of the spine. The base of the spine is the foundation of the system, thus a grounding energy that when activated fortifies the nervous system to naturally allow organs and glands to send out appropriate elements to protect and heal the body. Whether one is familiar with this concept, or believes in such an idea, the use of red to ward off bad spirits (energies i.e., the evil eye) probably migrated from India to the west. The red underwear in the title refers to the old custom of wearing red underwear over-night from New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day for good luck for the new year. At Amazon and other book sellers online: Search Cacibauda Garlic Cloves and Red Underwear EXCERPT Angels: Don’t misbehave at the dinner table or you will cause the angels to cry. Don’t make ugly faces at the table or the angels might pass by and leave you like that. Guilt and shame are methods of behavior management. This admonition probably did work— at least for the short term. Other parents used fear to curb misbehavior around the dinner table. Ugly faces are certainly not helpful to the appetite; nor is their permanence a desirable prospect for the child’s future. The Scriptures support the belief that angels do exist. Matthew 18:10 quotes Jesus— “For I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” The teachings of the apostles make numerous references in the Scriptures that “compel the candid student of the Word to believe in the existence of angels” (Evans). According to the various writings in the Bible, angels are God created beings, spiritual beings, and mighty and powerful beings. “Angels are not the spirits of the departed, nor are they glorified human beings” (Evans). “Originally all angels were created good” (Evans). Any talk of angels in these Italian proverbs almost always refer to the good angels rather than the fallen ones. THE SICILIAN LEGEND OF 101 ANGELS Retold from a St. Joseph Altar pamphlet* A long time ago, a frail widow lived on the outskirts of a small village in Sicily. Her husband had died many years back and her children had left to work in the north. The widow was a devout soul attending church every morning and saying her rosary every night before going to bed. Living alone, her nights were often lonely and scary affairs. The wind would move things outside or cause something on the roof to creak and scrape so that it sounded as though something or someone was trying to get into her small house. At these times, and there were many, she knelt next to her bed and repeated the prayer: One hundred and one angels, Watch over me and protect me, Those who come to do me harm, Do not give them strength Or the force to open my door. The times in which the frail widow lived were hard times for her small Sicilian village; in fact, the whole area suffered poverty with few jobs. Poor people, to survive, often resort to foul deeds they would never do under more opportune circumstances. Such was the predicament for a young man of the village. He was well aware that the frail widow lived alone and he reasoned that living alone, she needed to spend little money. That meant that she surely should have an ample amount of cash stored some place. The young man thought that early morning might be a good time to pay her a visit because he knew she arose early to go to the 6:00 Mass. As he approached her house with the certainty that she would be gone, he saw a number of people working in her yard and coming out of and going into her door. He abandoned his mission and thought it would be better to visit her in the early afternoon reasoning that this was the time for riposo; and, remembering that old people sleep soundly, he could sneak in and make off with her money before she awoke. The next day, he waited until 1:00 p.m. to go to the frail old lady’s house. Again, there were people painting her fence, raking her yard, trimming the shrubs. The only thing left to do now was to wait until late night and break into her house. If she awoke during his burglary then he’d have to decide what to do next. So then, around midnight the young man slinked around the deserted streets heading toward the old lady’s house. He carried an ax for the door and a rope for the old lady. As he reached her door, certain that no one saw him, he laid the ax on the ground to inspect the lock to see how he might break it open. He saw that it was very rudimentary and fragile and that one small whack would do the job. He put down the rope and reached over to pick up the ax, but to his surprise, it would not budge. It had become so heavy that he couldn’t move it an inch. Panicking, he thought of taking his rope and perhaps pulling open a window to get in, but the rope became as heavy as an anvil. Not only was he unable to budge the rope or the ax, he began to notice that his legs were getting wobbly and he was having trouble standing. Stricken with fear and bewilderment, the young man ran away as fast as his shaky legs would take him. It was 2:00 the next day when the young man woke up to a dazzling sun streaming through his window. He couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t dreamed of his trying to get into the old lady’s house. There would be a good way to find out. He’d go to her house to see whether his rope and ax were still there. As he approached her small house, the frail old lady was standing just outside her fence watering a shrub. “Good after Signora,” he said, “I was passing by your house late in the evening when I dropped my ax and my rope. Have you seen them?” The little lady moved aside and sure enough laying right where he had set them down were his rope and his ax. “Ah yes. Well, thank you my good Signora,” he said and bend over to pick them up with no trouble at all. As the young man started to leave, he turned to the old lady and said, “I noticed you had a lot of people working in your yard a couple of times I passed by. Where did all of those people come from?” The widow smiled, but did not answer because she knew immediately that the young man had intended to do her harm. Those “people” he saw had been parts of her nightly prayer. They were the one hundred and one angels watching over and protecting her. *St. Anselm Catholic Church, Madisonville, Louisiana August/May . It is unlucky to marry in August or May. There are a few cautions that involve the months of August and May. The ancient writer Ovid speaks of a Roman festival called Lemuria which took place in May and lasted for three days that sought to appease the restless departed souls. These restless souls were of the murdered. The festivals took place during the rule of Augustus, thus May, the actual month, and August, the name-sake month of Augustus, were considered to be unlucky and morose months, especially for such joyful occasions as weddings. June became a popular month for weddings because it was the first acceptable month after May. There is perhaps another explanation for the months’ poor reputations. It is not that August and May are unlucky months, but on the contrary, they are auspicious months, both dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Church set aside May to honor Mary; and, each day of the month included a daily practice honoring Her. A wedding held on a day in May, aside from being difficult to schedule with the church, would have interfered, even competed, with a sacred day of religious practices, risking the displeasure of the Holy Mother. Since August too was filled with as many days of dedication, the same explanation might have applied to August weddings. It appears that there was a standing rule that maids could not marry on a festive day as many of them were captured and forced to marry. The belief being that the brides would weep bitterly on these festive days dedicated to the gods which would cause the gods to dole out bad luck to the marriage (Plutarch). It is unlucky to buy a broom in August or May. To buy a broom in such holy months of May and August dedicated to the Holy Mother might have been interpreted as giving too much consideration to such an implement, one associated with witches and sorcery. Homes were usually adorned with holy pictures and sacred objects, more so during these months. Bringing a new broom into that consecrated setting would have been seen as disrespectful and improper, and unlucky. Don’t sweep away spider webs in August. The Bible treats spiders and spider webs in positive and negative ways. The web is often used as a symbol for sin’s snare. In some places spiders are viewed as positive creatures of great works and wise for their small size. The spider’s web is also seen as a symbol of God’s protection, a shield that traps all harm. There are the stories of cobwebs hiding the baby Jesus from Herod’s soldiers, and spider webs concealing Mohammed and St. Felix as they were hunted by their enemies. Since the broom is usually associated with witches’ spells, it is possible that sweeping away webs considered, in the Biblical sense, protective things, should be avoided. Also, there is a folklore that reads the shapes of spider webs to prognose weather and other coming conditions. The Farmers’ Almanac says that large webs are signs of a cold winter to come. Thin frail spider webs predict dry weather. A spider web that quickly dries from dew means a “fine day.” Spiders moving down from their web predict a rain. “Spiderwebs [sic] floating at autumn sunset: bring a night frost, on this you may bet.” The Almanac lists August as the best month to harvest vegetables, so perhaps destroying spider webs in that month, which according to Google Search is the optimum month for spiders to spin webs to mate, might have something to do with unnecessarily removing useful predictors. It is interesting to note that some early cultures mixed spider webs with oils to cure sores. It could be that refraining from sweeping away spider webs in August, their peak months, was a way of having an ample supply on hand for these uses. Babies; Don’t go to a funeral or a wake if you are nursing a baby. It will turn the mother’s milk sour. Anything that affects the mother might naturally affect the quality of her breast milk, if not causing it to sour, at least passing along some of the mother’s emotions through breast feeding. Funerals evoke sad and macabre low energies which could affect a mother’s milk. Articles on the topic state that stress can affect breastfeeding in a couple of ways: the supply of milk and the content of the milk. The body releases hormones that deal with emotional situations that can indeed impact the mother’s health. The adage above uses the term “sour” whereas current studies use the word “cortisol”, a hormone that regulates emotion. An emotional mother secretes an abundance of cortisol which is ingested by the baby making the child easily agitated in unfamiliar situations. Also, pregnant mothers were always told to stay away from things and situations that might frighten them for fear that the developing embryo might be negatively affected. It is well known that whatever the mother is exposed to, the baby is exposed to. Funerals would be one of those frightful events that mothers should avoid. (See Pregnancy) Overstating that a baby is beautiful may incur the wrath of the evil eye, unless you say “God Bless” after complimenting the child. The premise here is that the devil is always interested in beautiful babies and children. If you compliment a baby without saying the right words “God Bless” you are exposing the child to the devil. In the same sense, the evil eye is often spurred to wrath by jealousy. Excessive compliments of a baby would unnecessarily bring the child to the attention of a jealous one who would be so envious of you for having such a beautiful baby, that h/she might cast an evil spell on you or the baby or both. Tape a quarter over a new-born baby’s belly button to keep it from protruding. Perhaps the sheer weight of the quarter held tight by tape would help keep the navel from poking out. At any rate, it seems to be a reasonable and inexpensive means of managing the belly button’s height and appearance. At least one will always know where to find a quarter. Garlic pinned to a baby’s shirt will keep away evil spirits. In ancient Greece garlic was served to Hecate, the goddess of the dead. Hecate taught witchcraft and sorcery. Through this association garlic has become closely associated with the world of the occult, including death. It would seem in this case that the garlic should actually attract the goddess of death and evil spirits rather than repel them. Perhaps then the garlic is to appease the evil spirits if they do show up. Rather than chasing them away, it might distract them so that they forget about the baby and indulge themselves with the garlic. However, in addition to stopping bed wetting, curing tooth aches, lowering blood pressures, garlic continues to be used as a means of keeping mean spirits, including vampires, at bay. |