Superstition in Egypt

There is still great magic in Egypt and the rest of the world. The paranormal, astrology, leylines, rituals, telepathy and ESP interest us all. Discuss the mysterious aspects of life that appeal to your sixth sense here.

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Miriamkhalifa
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Superstition in Egypt

Post by Miriamkhalifa »

My hub told me a nice bedtime story about the BES.

It happens when a woman has twins, and one dies during or before childbirth. the twin will return as a cat /mancat and prowl the nights... a little bit of a werewolf-story.

Anyone with more info on this myth or others from Luxor/ Egypt??


"One band, two oil barrels, three chords, four dreams, five lies, six ties, seven deadly sins and eight ways to stay alive. They know who you are, they know where you live, they're the Kaizers Orchestra~"
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Post by DJKeefy »

I heard that if they have twins they feed them on goats milk else they might turn into cats...

Monkeys - if your very bad Allah will change you into a monkey :)

Story goes (in brief) - A girl who was very bad all the time, the mother sent her to bed, the next day when they went up to check on her she had changed into a monkey...

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Jumping (shock)

I was sat watching a movie with my Egyptian friend when one of the plastic water bottles made a loud cracking noise which made me JUMP, my Egyptian friend pulled the top of my T-Shirt and spit down my chest, which of course i nearly smacked him for. Apparently if you dont do this you will jump all the time even when sleeping :)

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Snakes

A few years ago i was walking with an Egyptian friend up near Kimo street when a snake moved from one side of the road to the other in front of us, My friend got a big rock and battered it to little pieces, I was yelling at him saying its DEAD, look at it, its in pieces, he told me if a snake sees you it will follow you for the rest of your life, so you have to kill them, I replied and what if i go back to the UK :)
Anyway afterwards we went to Manchier and he was chatting with many of his friends, next minute we was all (big bunch of people) walking back to where the bashed up snake was, and guess what.... they all set fire to it :lol: I kept telling them its DEAD why on earth are you setting fire to it :)

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Your suppose to be able to get a piece of paper from the Sheik (Emam) dont know if this costs money, but it stops you from weeing on a jinn, of course if you do wee on a jinn it will make him very angry :)
Last edited by DJKeefy on Wed Oct 08, 2008 11:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Miriamkhalifa »

haha, keefy, I was on a desert trip once and our egyptian friend killed a small yellow snake that we found stealing our food :D He was very worried after, said the snake-family would come after him for revenge ;)
"One band, two oil barrels, three chords, four dreams, five lies, six ties, seven deadly sins and eight ways to stay alive. They know who you are, they know where you live, they're the Kaizers Orchestra~"
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Post by Mimimay »

It's not if the twin dies MK, but twins have the 'ability' to come to life at night as cats whilst they sleep. If they buy their weight in gold they will be protected.
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Post by drwho »

There's many a slip twixt cup and lip, some things work but many things don't, It's all in the eye of the believer,
Egypt is a great place for all this, quite similar to the UK in the 40's, a nail-clipping here, lock of hair there, my mother was a dab hand at all this in the 50/60s, the practice and belief in 'bad-eye & Jins I am happy to say is alive and well, somebody actually had a Cat nailed to their front door last week, terrific stuff, much more fun than christ...........8)
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Post by Wills »

Monkeys - if your very bad Allah will change you into a monkey - I hope that happens to my X. :)
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Post by Lisak »

Mimimay wrote:It's not if the twin dies MK, but twins have the 'ability' to come to life at night as cats whilst they sleep. If they buy their weight in gold they will be protected.
Might have to add that to my story as there are twins in it. :)
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Re: Superstition in Egypt

Post by chelle »

Miriamkhalifa wrote:My hub told me a nice bedtime story about the BES.

It happens when a woman has twins, and one dies during or before childbirth. the twin will return as a cat /mancat and prowl the nights... a little bit of a werewolf-story.

Anyone with more info on this myth or others from Luxor/ Egypt??


MK There is a good bit about afrits in Omm Sety's Living Egypt, Surviving Folkways from Pharonic Times.
It is an excellent book, it is omm setys writings and observations of customs and beliefs that have passed from pharonic times.
It was edited by our very own Glyphdoctor who has done an excellent job of putting this book together.
It has been well researched by glyph which I can imagine was no mean feat, I should write a review of it and I will when I have the time to sit down and do it.
The book has chapters on all sorts of things such as social customs such as family loyalty, customs such as marriage, death, demonic posession, clothing.
it is a real jem of a book and the only complaint I would have is that I would like to read more of the medicine chapter such as the cures and herbal remedies but who knows maybe glyph has enough material from omm setys writings to do another book. :mrgreen:
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Re: Superstition in Egypt

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chelle wrote:MK There is a good bit about afrits in Omm Sety's Living Egypt, Surviving Folkways from Pharonic Times.
It is an excellent book, it is omm setys writings and observations of customs and beliefs that have passed from pharonic times.
It was edited by our very own Glyphdoctor who has done an excellent job of putting this book together.
It has been well researched by glyph which I can imagine was no mean feat, I should write a review of it and I will when I have the time to sit down and do it.
The book has chapters on all sorts of things such as social customs such as family loyalty, customs such as marriage, death, demonic posession, clothing.
it is a real jem of a book and the only complaint I would have is that I would like to read more of the medicine chapter such as the cures and herbal remedies but who knows maybe glyph has enough material from omm setys writings to do another book. :mrgreen:
Agreed! It's a wonderful book full of fascinating folklore. It'll be one of a small suitcase of books i'll be attempting to haul to Luxor in December if anyone wants to borrow it. I'm reading Jonathan Cott's 'The Search for Omm Sety' at the moment. Fascinating lady. I'm really interested in folklore so i'll be scrabbling around for information of this sort when i'm there!
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Post by FABlux »

Ooh Ghadis I would love to borrow it if you don't mind. I read The Search for Omm Sety last winter and found that fascinating :)
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Post by Ghadis »

Sure FABlux. I'll bring it along when we meet at sinbads or elsewhere. :D
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Re: Superstition in Egypt

Post by Miriamkhalifa »

Ghadis wrote:
chelle wrote:MK There is a good bit about afrits in Omm Sety's Living Egypt, Surviving Folkways from Pharonic Times.
It is an excellent book, it is omm setys writings and observations of customs and beliefs that have passed from pharonic times.
It was edited by our very own Glyphdoctor who has done an excellent job of putting this book together.
It has been well researched by glyph which I can imagine was no mean feat, I should write a review of it and I will when I have the time to sit down and do it.
The book has chapters on all sorts of things such as social customs such as family loyalty, customs such as marriage, death, demonic posession, clothing.
it is a real jem of a book and the only complaint I would have is that I would like to read more of the medicine chapter such as the cures and herbal remedies but who knows maybe glyph has enough material from omm setys writings to do another book. :mrgreen:
Agreed! It's a wonderful book full of fascinating folklore. It'll be one of a small suitcase of books i'll be attempting to haul to Luxor in December if anyone wants to borrow it. I'm reading Jonathan Cott's 'The Search for Omm Sety' at the moment. Fascinating lady. I'm really interested in folklore so i'll be scrabbling around for information of this sort when i'm there!
Me too! It really is an interesting field!
"One band, two oil barrels, three chords, four dreams, five lies, six ties, seven deadly sins and eight ways to stay alive. They know who you are, they know where you live, they're the Kaizers Orchestra~"
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Post by Glyphdoctor »

What Mimimay said about twins is correct. Also, if you strike a cat that is a twin the injury will be on the child too.

As for Omm Sety, if you are interested in Luxor, take a look at the footnotes for mentions of the West Bank in Luxor. Those are parallels I collected from my husband. There were things that she talked about I had never read or heard about anywhere else and he was a big help to confirm she wasn't imagining some realloy bizarre things.

Unfortunately, that is almost everything I have from Omm Sety. I have a few more pieces that didn't fit into the overall theme of the book that I left out, but for folklore that is everything that I had. I know she mentioned some other chapters that I believe went missing, probably when she mailed them to Cairo.

I have a site I put together for the book if you want to know more:

http://ommsety.glyphdoctors.com
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Post by FABlux »

Ghadis wrote:Sure FABlux. I'll bring it along when we meet at sinbads or elsewhere. :D
That's wonderful thank you :D
Thanks for the link Glyph, read the excerpt, even more enthusiastic about reading the book
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Post by chelle »

Glyphdoctor wrote:What Mimimay said about twins is correct. Also, if you strike a cat that is a twin the injury will be on the child too.

As for Omm Sety, if you are interested in Luxor, take a look at the footnotes for mentions of the West Bank in Luxor. Those are parallels I collected from my husband. There were things that she talked about I had never read or heard about anywhere else and he was a big help to confirm she wasn't imagining some realloy bizarre things.

Unfortunately, that is almost everything I have from Omm Sety. I have a few more pieces that didn't fit into the overall theme of the book that I left out, but for folklore that is everything that I had. I know she mentioned some other chapters that I believe went missing, probably when she mailed them to Cairo.

I have a site I put together for the book if you want to know more:

http://ommsety.glyphdoctors.com
Thanks Glyph, What a shame there are no more notes I was keeping my fingers crossed that there would be another book.
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Post by Layla13 »

greetings, im new to the forum so id like to say hi.. lol and im an american in egypt for almost 4 years in cairo.

i am a twin and as far as i know i dont turn to a cat to prowl the streets at nite as i sleep lmao. :lol: but i love cats and wish i could do that lol.

egypt is a fasinating place.. and very diff. culture and i find it difficult to adhere kuz of my american freedoms lol my first rule was to quiet down and not complain lol which to me is conversation. the women seem to be more quiet unless theyre laughing or celebrating a wedding. lol

but the superstitions i heard was the jinn.. that they can possess you and stuff. i noticed the egyptian majick isnt touched upon so much and its almost like the sacred places here are not seen as so sacred by the locals except to make money from it. im still learning.. just what i observed like at the pyramids.. trash in piles all over and even saw an egyptian guard taking a pee on one of the old tombs. :oops:

but i am going to luxor soon for a short visit( from hurghada) what are things to do ,i can have access to with a car? if anyone knows it would be helpful. my husband who is arabic is taking me. i used to watch shows on tv about karnak and the valley of the kings and queen its very exciting to be able to see it for real. :D sincerely, layla
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Post by PRchick »

Hi Layla, Welcome to Luxor4U. For tips on things to do in Luxor visit the Visiting Luxor section of the forum and on the main Luxor4U.com page at the Luxor4tours agency, which can arrange anything you need. I hope you will also visit our other forum, Egypt4U.com, which takes in more of Cairo and Alexandria.
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Post by pinkmagic »

There are so, so many superstitions in Egypt. A good book to read is ' The fellahin of upper Egypt' by Winifred Blackman. It was originally written in the 20's but is so interesting and much of it is still relevant. The thing about the twins turning into cats is in it!
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