The Hocus Pocus of Urban Legends

I have always been a sucker for a good urban legend.  They are always so dramatic and have this teachable moment—some are scary and some are just plain hilarious.  These narratives are made interesting which allows one story teller to remember enough to tell a variation to another person (Heath & Heath, 2008).

In the spirit of Halloween, I will share one of my all-time favorite urban legends…or perhaps my story is a bunch of hocus pocus.

A couple years ago I took a trip to visit a friend in Boston, while walking past a church he decided to give me a mini history lesson.  In the era of oligarchy governments of the 1600’s, when a wealthy family would have a bad seed in the family they would often send them off to the seminary to become priest.  At the time priest were regarded very highly and this was a way a family could preserve family reputation damage from the embarrassments of their son.

Although, there was an attempt to reform their son’s in the seminary these men would often continue their unfavorable favorable behavior, including not studying.  In that era, traditi onal catholic mass was delivered in Latin, however if a priest did not take the seminary seriously they would often leave without learning proper latin.  During mass there is a sacramental portion where the priest is supposed to say in Latin “Hoc est corpus meum” which translates to “this is my body”.  However, due to their vices many priest would often forget the latin language and improvise and say hocus pocus!

When researching for this topic I could only find the portion of faux-latin translation, but let’s face it, having the version with the bad seed of the family make this urban legend much more memorable.

Today the word, hocus pocus, refers to a meaningless expression or to play a trick on someone.  Which makes sense considering they were making up words.  Alternatively, if you were a child in the 1990’s you may recall Hocus Pocus as the 1993 Disney movie starring Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker (see image).

Heath, C.  & Heath D. (2008) Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. New York, NY: Random House.