Magical Thought

Some time back, I was reading a book on life in the middle ages, and they tried to explain the mindset of the middle ages, and how different it was from ours. Like, you know, if you got sick, they wouldn’t think of giving you meds. They’d tell you to go to confession and communion, and to live a holy life. Because in their mind illness was not the opposite of health, illness was the opposite of living in grace. For illness to penetrate, you had to be in sin.

In the same way, their households...