With winter all but over, and spring tentatively showing its face, our thoughts go towards Spring Cleaning. One of the many tasks that needs doing after a long winter is clearing out the gutters. With this in mind, one of our team asked their grandsons to come over and help with this arduous task.
In truth, they didn’t really want to climb a ladder themselves – a job much better left to someone younger and more agile! It got us thinking about where the superstition of not walking under a ladder came from.
It is one of the most well-known – and most adhered to – superstitions in modern times. Interestingly, while many religions generally view superstitions as a bad thing – even sinful – many superstitions have their basis in religion, and this one is no different.
If a ladder is placed on the ground, leaning against a wall, it forms a triangle shape. It was believed that this formed the Holy Trinity triangle which is held sacred by the Church, representing the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Walking through the centre of a triangle was seen as a violation of both the Holy Trinity and of God and deemed sinful and blasphemous. Therefore, the Church did not label walking around the outside of a ladder as a ‘superstition’, but a necessary action to preserve something The Bible held sacred.
Even as far back as ancient Egyptian times, the triangle was seen as a symbol of life. In early civilisations it was thought that to disrupt or walk through this sacrosanct symbol would temp fate and bring terrible things to the perpetrator.
There is another, more gruesome, source of this superstition. When a condemned prisoner was taken to the gallows, they were made to climb a ladder up to the top of the scaffold, ready for the drop.
The executioner also used the ladder to climb up to collect the bodies. It was widely believed that the souls of those who had been executed loitered under the ladder – as their crimes made them unfit to enter Heaven. Walking under the ladder would mean mingling with these grisly souls and would invite gruesome misfortune.
And then, of course, there is the fact that anything can fall from the top of the ladder whilst you walk under it – in our case perhaps, a handful of sludge from the gutters!
Maybe some soggy old leaves from the nearby sycamore trees. So, whilst the grandson is up high on the ladder, we were quite happy to let them carry on with the job, and stand a tad to the side, making sure we don’t walk underneath!
