Is there an element of truth in traditions and superstitions? Many superstitions result from lack of knowledge of causality, others from unenlightened fears. Another word for superstitions is "blind belief." Many superstitions could be based on accidental luck or misfortune. For instance, if wearing a particular dress or ornament brought good luck on a certain occasion, then there is a tendency to repeat that dress or ornament. Subsequently if the dress or the ornament continues to bring "luck" it is our faith or belief that works in making it "lucky." Hence we have a series of superstitions, such as, if a cat crosses our path, it is bad omen. It is good luck to find a four-leaf clover; and breaking of a mirror brings seven years of bad luck.

However, we must not throw away the baby with the bath water, as some of these superstitions/beliefs are based on truth. For instance, the belief that certain part of the day or the year is auspicious/inauspicious. Just as early morning atmosphere is conducive to study and meditation, so also the time between Christmas and Easter is auspicious. H.P.B. writes:

Let no one imagine that it is a mere fancy, the attaching of importance to the birth of the year. The earth passes through its definite phases and man with it; and as a day can be coloured so can a year. The astral life of the earth is young and strong between Christmas and Easter. Those who form their wishes now will have added strength to fulfil them consistently. (U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 28, Foreword)

Many people avoid doing important work during a certain part of the day called Rahu Kalam, which is indicated as inauspicious in the Hindu Almanac.

Likewise, belief in the power of the "evil eye" is not a superstition. When people fix their thoughts in envy upon a person who suddenly gets rich, he may get adversely affected and may lose money. So also the envious glance of a person on a beautiful vase or a car or any other object or person may result in damage or injury to the same. Evil eye is the destructive power of thought. Our thoughts coalesce with elementals and become an entity. The rod gets charged when electricity is passed through it and anyone touching it would experience shock. Like the charged rod, elementals carry powerful, bad thoughts from one person to another person and cause him harm.

Often, things that people are not able to explain, they class as superstition. American investigators who failed to explain the Indian rope trick by an Indian fakir, in 1889, concluded that the fakir was the symbol of Indian benightedness, and that his childish tricks could frighten his countrymen but could not fool westerners. The British were convinced that the Indians were superstitious savages. In the article "Superstition," H.P.B. observes:

Greatly mistaken, or as grossly unjust is he who affirms that...strange beliefs are limited to paganism, or that they are the direct result of the heathen religions alone. They are international; the cumulative production and necessary effect of countless generations of the arts of an unconscientious clergy of every religion and in every age. Adopted by the archaic pristly, hierarchies, the policy of subjecting the ignorant masses, by working on their untutored imaginations and credulous fears, with the object of getting at their purse via the soul, was found effectual and was universally practised by the priest upon the layman from the first dawn of history down to our modern times....SUPERSTITION is the cloaca of all dogmatic creeds that are based upon blind faith. Literally speaking, it is the sewer carrying off the putrid waters of the Chaldeo-Noachian deluge. Unstemmed it ran in a straight course, through Paganism, Judaism, and Christianism alike, catching up in its current all the garbage of human dead letter interpretations....(The Theosophist, December 1881)

Often, belief in the supernatural is classed as superstition. For instance, belief in Nature spirits, like elves, dwarfs, djins, etc., is universal and yet considered a superstition by so-called enlightened people. These invisible beings take objective shape under certain conditions and become visible to people.

Among the Irish, just as much as among the people of India, there is a deep-seated belief in the supernatural. In the country districts, people believe that the devil would stay in the house after it is vacated, and hence they break the windowpanes to make way for the devil to escape. The "devil" is the group of elementals impressed by the thoughts of the people who occupied the house. Hence it is advised that one must bless the house before leaving it.

Belief in the fairies is comparable to belief in the devas among the Hindus. Physiology is aware that lymphatic cells play an active part in the process of filtering of the poisons that may have been injected directly into the blood stream. The lymphatic cells separate them and these poisons appear through intestinal walls. H.P.B. observes that the Latin word "lympha" is derived from the Greek nymphe, "a nymph or inferior Goddess." The ancient Greeks and the Latins are known to have shared in the same "superstitions" as they believed that every atom of matter in the five Elements is an emanation from an inferior God or Goddess, and these in turn are emanations from a superior deity. The kosmic trimurti is a scientific symbol of the material universe and its gradual evolution, and this is suggested by the etymology of the names of these deities. For instance, Brahma comes from the root brih, "to expand," and Vishnu from the root vis "to pervade" or "to enter into" the universe of matter. This shows what Hindus meant by endowing every atom with mind and consciousness. "Place their Pantheon, composed of 30 crores (or 300 million) of deities within the macrocosm (the Universe), or inside the microcosm (man), and the number will not be found overrated, since they relate to the atoms, cells, and molecules of everything that is." (U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 20, pp. 20-21)

In India, people are reluctant to shake hands. This is not an idle fancy or superstition, because every person has a magnetic exhalation. A person may be in perfect physical health, but his exhalation may be harmful for others who are sensitive to such subtle influences. These magnetic exhalations are more intense from the eyes, palms, fingers, soles of the feet, etc. Hence the reluctance to shake hands. Careful physicians wash their hands before leaving each patient. Just like physical disease, impure magnetism can be communicated by touch. In Russia, maidens make wreaths of green leaves and throw them into water. If the wreath sinks she will die unmarried in a short time. H.P.B. explains that impure magnetism has in it the germs of early death and such magnetism has attraction for earth at the bottom of the stream. (Isis, II, 610-12)

According to sociologists, traditions and social customs are the cement of the society. Traditions are often used by leaders of the society to keep their hold over people. Typically, we have religious traditions. Pandits and purohits expound the shastras and tell people to do things with a view to making money. For instance, a pandit in the village will advise that one can be absolved of the crime of killing a cat if he makes a cat of gold and offers it to the deity. Often profound truth is hidden beneath a meaningless tradition, such as the one mentioned in The Light of Asia. When Buddha was walking by the rajagriha, in the morning, he beheld Singala, a brahmin, who was bowing down to earth and sky and was scattering rice, red and white, in all four directions. When Buddha asked him the reason, he replied: "It is the way Great Sir!" He explained that it was the tradition followed by his ancestors to ward off evil from all directions. The Buddha said, "Scatter not rice," but offer loving thoughts and acts in all directions.

There is some truth in the belief of evil coming from the four directions. H.P.B. explains that there are four Maharajahs or Devas who preside over four cardinal points. They are Regents or angels, which rule over the cosmical forces of North, South, East and West. These beings are also connected with Karma, but they need material agents, such as four kinds of winds, to carry out the Karmic decree. Science admits that some of these winds have evil while others have beneficent influence on mankind. So also the Bible says that the glory of the god comes from the East while wars, epidemics and calamities come from North and West. But is it the Maharajahs who punish humanity by sending calamities? No. Man himself, acting individually and collectively, attracts every calamity. We produce causes by our thoughts and acts and they awaken corresponding powers in the sidereal world. And these powers are magnetically drawn to and react upon those who produced the causes. (S.D., I, 122-24)

Smriti are traditions imparted orally. Manu-Smriti is the most important. It lays down the code of conduct for individuals, societies, families, etc. It is these traditions which prepare a person for the higher spiritual life. However, we need to distinguish between true and false traditions.

There are, then, both true and false "traditions," and it is possible to establish philosophical criteria for distinguishing between them. H. P. Blavatsky added that the subtle work of learning how to distinguish between the two is a vital prerequisite to advanced discipleship. Some might say, however, with considerable pertinence that the most perplexing customs and conventions are those which seem "somewhere in between" the two described. That such exist there can be little doubt. Perhaps they belong to that lost heritage of Krishna—"being thus transmitted....the mighty art was lost." Originally pure, originally having to do only with the acquirement of self-knowledge, some traditions may have become confused with the twistings and distortions which contrive to place emphasis on external means for the gaining of a higher spiritual state....In an intelligent society...tradition can become the "cement" of mutual assistance on the path of the Higher Self. (Theosophy, Vol. 41)

The tradition of paying respect to one's elders, teachers, parents, etc., prepares the child to revere and recognize the guruparampara chain. He learns to respect every teacher, right from the person who taught him his alphabet to the one who gives him spiritual birth. It is lack of this tradition in the West that makes spiritual life difficult for a Westerner. Again, we see that superstition/tradition, among the Hindus, of not shaking hands with others, is the foundation for the sine qua non condition in spiritual life, of not allowing one's magnetism to become impure by external influences. Thus:

A Lanoo (disciple) has to dread external living influence alone (magnetic emanations from living creatures). For this reason while at one with all, in his inner nature, he must take care to separate his outer (external) body from every foreign influence: none must drink out of, or eat in his cup but himself. He must avoid bodily contact (i.e., being touched or touch) with humans, as with animal beings....A disciple has to live, so to say, in his own atmosphere in order to individualize it for occult purposes. (Raja-Yoga or Occultism)

How and why did the tradition of Sati or "widow burning" take such a firm hold? It is because people blindly follow the traditions. The woman dying on the funeral pyre of her husband is made to understand that she will get "freedom" if she becomes a Sati. The rite of "widow burning" is nowhere sanctioned in the Hindu scriptures. Prof. Wilson was the first to point out that by changing "yonim agre" to "yonim agne" (womb of fire) the practice of Sati was introduced. According to the hymns of the Rig Veda and Veidic ceremonials contained in the "Grihya Sutras," the wife accompanies the corpse of her husband to the funeral pyre, but she is addressed with verses taken from the Rig Veda and ordered to leave and go back to the world of the living. (Isis, I, 541 and fn.) One of the ways to distinguish between good and bad or true and false traditions is to use our reason and discrimination. We have to follow the intuitive feeling from within which says, "This must be true."

Many traditions are universal. Traditions and folklore of giants is no fiction. Every nation has believed in the existence of giants. There is a tradition among people of most nations in the world that since the beginning of humanity men have existed in a high state of civilization. H.P.B. writes:

No mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of a people has ever been, at any time, pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual, historical lining to it. (S.D., I, 303)