Voodoo Logic: So Who Cursed Whom With Jersey?

[icymist]

When a construction worker buried a Red Sox jersey at the new Yankee Stadium two weeks ago, he fancied himself a hero of Red Sox Nation.

There he was, a Red Sox fan charged with erecting his enemies’ new fortress, about to curse the Yankees by embedding a David Ortiz jersey deep within the concrete of their new home. And when the Yankees foiled his plan Sunday, digging up the jersey in what they called an “excavation ceremony,” the club thought it had earned the last word.

But according to Paul Monod, a professor of early modern European history at Middlebury College who has written extensively on the occult, the Yankees might have been better off leaving the jersey where it was.

<snip>
The burial of objects, and particularly names, can be traced back as far as the ancient Egyptians and the residents of what is now Iran. Benedictions and prayers were typically inscribed on the stones of houses to ward off evil spirits. Names were also inscribed on tablets of lead — a metal with strong symbolic connections to the underworld — and then buried to curse that person.

But the hex that descended on the Yankees last summer was much simpler. All it took was a squirrel running up and down the right-field foul pole to draw a near perfect parallel to the Norse myth of Ratatosk.

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[Ilsa]

1. And fortunately, some charity will benefit from all of this. The jersey

sold on ebay for over $100,000;proceeds to be donated to a charity. I don't have any idea which one(s).