Superstitious Kissing Wards Off Satan
A messy relationship with the Devil arrises from being raised catholic. As a 7 year old, I was afraid of the radio because I thought it was a transmission point for Satan. I had no fear of record players tho, likely because my mom almost always had albums turning until she married my much older step-father in 1982.
Even tho my mom was dedicated to raising me Catholic - converts are often more committed than people born into a faith - her true church at the time was Music. I was raised on the power throats of Phoebe Snow, Linda Ronstadt, Helen Reddy, and the psychic sounds of Pink Floyd, Cream, and Iron Butterfly. Iron Butterfly’s only Top 40 song was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, a 17-minute song whose title was a drunken translation of “In the Garden of Eden.” Maybe it was that titular track that made the record player sacred to me and the box radio off-limits. The rythmic drums grooved my brain as precisely as those in the lathe-cut vinyl. I honestly don’t know the origin of my peculiar radio-phobia but as a kid my fear of being seduced by Satan was compulsively real.
Even well after leaving the church and ceasing my believing, I was tentative to voice the name of the Devil. If I didn’t say his name, then I’d be immune to his coaxing. Put his name on your tongue and instead of melting into an insipid gluey goo of Christ’s communion wafer, it would engorge and fill our mouths with forked and fiery muscle until we are gulping down his many names; Devil, Satan, Lucifer, etc.
Superstition replaced religion.
Are atheists allowed to be superstitious?
When we were both 15, my Turkish friend Ipek taught me her family’s version of the “knock on wood” superstition. Instead of knocking-on-wood for protection from evil-doings, her Turkish family would say şeytan kulağına kurşun, pull on their ear and make a kissing sound. She told me the phrase was translated to “bullet through devil’s head.” The Devil can’t hear what you’ve just said to use it against you if he has a bullet in his head. And since Turkish was foreign to me, I believed I was given a Turkish work-around for practicing Satan’s name.
Even at only 15, Ipek was already intoxicatingly attractive. She would belly dance as easy as I would amble to the freezer for ice cream. Sound waves slow-danced with her hips and her hair moved like it was ever underwater. She felt both safe and powerful, a feeling that I rarely had around women when I was growing up.
Even tho it’s been three decades since I’ve seen her, Ipek ripples the air every time I pull my earlobe and blow the devil a kiss while attempting to protect myself from his trickery.
Thank you to
Oleg for giving me both the correct spelling of the phrase as well as another translation - “lead on satan’s ear.”