It is very hard to define “SUPERSTITION” to a layman or a kid. If you define it as belief in something, it is not so. There are many things all of us believe in that cannot be proved. At certain times in man’s history, everyone believed in certain things that we now consider as Superstitions. And the people who believed in them at that time were not Superstitious at all!

For example, they believed that the shadow or reflection of a human being was a part of the soul. So they considered that you would harm the soul if you broke anything on which the shadow or reflection appeared. Therefore, they considered it harmful or “unlucky” to break a mirror. Today, if someone considers it “unlucky” to break a mirror he is Superstitious, because today we no longer believe that a shadow or reflection is part of the soul. So Superstition is actually a belief or practice that people cling to after new knowledge or facts have appeared to disprove them. That is why it is impossible to say when Superstition began.

In ancient times man tried to explain events in the world as best he could with the knowledge at hand. So he made up explanations and followed certain practices. The old beliefs should have died out after being disproved by time. So the Disproved beliefs became Superstitions.