Kazakhs believed in signs that are connected to the visits of guests, and other meaningful things.
1. When somebody leaves, he should not slam the door. There is a well-known proverb that says: «Don’t slam the door that you are still going to enter».
Door and tor (the place for the most respectable, older people) are the places where happiness live and that abandons the place if treated without respect.
2. Kazakhs would never cut or otherwise injure a lonely tree. He would not rest in its shadow and moreover — he would never spend a night under it. To do so would mean to become dull and widowed as that tree, and there is no more misery than loneliness. A lonely tree is an embodiment of evil, a wish to somebody the worst.
3. Kazakhs believe in signs that are connected to the visits (arrival and stay) of guests. Specific honor awaited the guest who stayed at night when the host’s cattle bred. He would be treated with honor, indulged in food and clothes and he would be seen off like the «guest of the happy beginning».
4. It is not good to enter the yurta with your mouth full with food, on the other hand — it is good to leave it with your mouth full: «one enters his enemy’s house chewing, but one leaves his friend’s house chewing». If a host notices that someone entered his house with a chewing gum, he would definitely ask to throw everything in his mouth on the threshold. When guests arrive hosts open the door to them, but when they leave the house — they would never do that (here there is a custom of hospitability in the base). Some people do not give to wear their hats to others with fear that there might be bad consequences.
5. One should not look in the mirror at night. If you look — you’ll lose your beauty, lose your charm, wither in body and would become stern in look.
6. One should not dig soil without a reason, as according to people’s notion, such action may call death and forebode the end.
7. Another bad sign is to burst into an aul on a horse. Unless it is god news and the rider announces suyinshi, then he should shout out loud: Suyinshi! Suyinshi! Thus, the villagers would understand that it is good news.
8. If there was news that such and such person died and in fact he was alive, then, according to the superstition — he would live long.
9. Kazakhs would not go to toilet looking at the sun and the moon. It is forbidden to do that in the direction of Caaba and west. It is a sin and at the same time danger of getting mental disease, infection or inflammation of urinary bladder. Sun and moon are considered as the light of Universe, beauty and purity criteria.
10. A marriage bed is inviolable; it is not supposed to let anybody to lie in it. Otherwise the marriage is ruined, love leaves the couple. A daughter-in-law would not sit on the bed of her in-law’s bed. It is strictly forbidden; their relations spoil, daughter-in-law loses her respect and gets to adultery.
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