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Sheer Superstition: Outmaneuvering Fate

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Is there any validity to superstition? Does throwing salt over your left shoulder keep away bad luck? Will walking under a ladder bring bad luck? Armando Benitez thinks the answer to questions like this is yes, and he tells why in his new book, Sheer Superstition.

Benitez says that "superstition has been present in the human soul since the first stirrings of the human intellect." He digs into the reasons for this, searching for the origin of superstitions, and maintains that "the basic premise of all superstitions is that we have direct control over our destiny, that we can change our destiny, because we are free to choose the path we wish to traverse."

He turns to the ancient Greeks, using the mythology of the Fates and their control of human fortune, as a model for explaining how events seemingly beyond our ability to influence or change can affect our lives. Then he describes how we can use superstition to make choices to overcome these events.

The way to make changes in our lives, or destiny, is to start with very small changes. Those changes often hinge on a stroke of luck. Benitez believes that certain practices can affect luck, thus giving people a measure of control.

He has bet on horse races for many years, and he uses his racetrack experiences as examples of how people can use superstitions to outwit Fate and improve their luck. While some superstitions apply only to certain people or at certain times, others are universal. Benitez describes them all, often with explanations of how they came into being, and explains how individuals can put the relevant ones to work in their own lives.

Benitez says that "our luck should be nurtured, just as a sensible person guards his health." In Sheer Superstition, he provides readers with the knowledge and tools they need to change and nurture their luck.

This is the best book I have ever read in my life! Being a superstious person, I bought it seeking for some sort of assurance that my superstition is not something entirely irrational. I was not disappointed. An added bonus was that I bought it expecting a 256 page book. But it is 316 pages of absolutely fascinating reading. It is chock-full of the most absorbing anecdotes from history, and explanations of why superstition is something that we should not try to do without. Superstitious taboos, Benitez says, are something we have inherited from our ancient forbears, and which contribute to our continued survival, the same as do the instinctive behavior of animals.

The book is profound and wise, with many insights into human and animal behavior, explanations of why things are as they are, and - most important of all - suggestions on how we can improve our day-to-day luck (such as when we are at the race track or engaged in any other endeavor having to do with probability) as the first step to becoming wiser and more fortunate in life in general.

And on top of all this, it is exceedingly funny throughout. Whether you accept the author's postulates or not, the book will make you laugh.

A reviewer (mariannemonte@msn.com), A reviewer, May 16, 2001,
Sheer Superstition
What is luck? Is it something we are born with or can it be learned and acquired? 'Why do some people have the golden touch,' Benitez rhetorically asks, 'whereas everything others of us touch turns into ... matter?' Can observing certain superstitions keep us out of trouble and improve our basic fortune? These are the questions the author endeavors to answer in this entertaining and thought-provoking book. Benitez, evidently a poster child of superstition (he would carry out his former occupation, apparently in stakeout surveying, without ever using the number 13, he says) maintains that there is a force, either evil or benign, depending on our situation in life, that holds us to our more or less preordained destiny. By observing certain superstitious precautions and by taking evasive action, however, we can evade our evil destiny and misfortune by basically fooling Fate and Destiny, escaping into another reality where things are better for us. Benitez reminisces upon his childhood years in a poverty-stricken migrant family in the San Joaquin Valley of California during the Great Depression to illustrate his points, as well as by quotes and examples from ancient and modern authors - Herodotus, Pausanias, Plutarch, Aeschylus and others. His meandering, tangential, recursive style frequently takes us to the race track, where he says his theories can be put to the test, sometimes profitably, by using the occurrence of coincidences and divinatory practices to pick winning horses. Altogether, a humorous and highly entertaining rendering of metaphysical thought and newage philosophy.

Sheer Superstition is an amalgam of philosophy, metaphysics and wry humor. The philosophical element is of the man-in-the-street type, strongly laced with, as the title suggests, sheer superstition. But superstition, Benitez says, is something that the human race has been provided with as a survival mechanism, just as instinctive behavior contributes to the survival of dumb animals.

The book takes us through various episodes in the author's life to illustrate his points. Evidently enamoured of ancient history and ancient authors, he sprinkles his work throughout with quotes and extracts from Herodotus,Xenophon, Aeschylus, Dante, Machiavelli . . . and on up to Herman Melville, Ross Perot and Peg Bundy.

Benitez makes a quite convincing case for his theory that improving our luck is the first step we should take in order to become wiser and more fortunate in our endeavors. He fervently advocates (though it must be suspected that he is writing tongue-in-cheek) the use of good-luck charms, and recommends that unlucky omens and actions be scrupulously oberved. Another way to improve our luck, he says, is by carefully abstaining from certain foods, such as cassava, stewed tomatoes, fried bananas, and - if you are a horse-racing fan and are at the race track - peanuts. The foods we eat, says Benitez, are tracers and markers that Destiny uses to keep track of us and to keep us in the situation it has laid out for us (he equates destiny with the three fates of Greek mythology). When we refuse to eat the foods that Destiny has determined we should eat, then we shake off the grasp that it has on our life, and carve out a new destiny for ourselves.

The book is highly entertaining, well written, sometimes with poetic undertones, sometimes eloquent, and flavored throughout with a strange, quirky humor.