h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You know how in cartoons sometimes a character will have a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other shoulder?

Does anybody know where that started?

It's an old Roman Catholic tradition that a Guardian Angel is assigned to each of us at birth, to guide us along the right path.

Apparently the belief is a lot older than Christianity. It's a tradition but not an article of faith in Roman Catholicism which means that it is not stated by the Church as being true. But it is certainly suggested by passages in the Bible, such as where Christ says about children "See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven". This strongly suggests that children have angels.

I don't know where the idea of the angel being small and sitting on your shoulder came from.

I remember it from old Tom & Jerry cartoons and the like.

One source has it that the origin was in the story of Faust
http://www.quora.com/Symbols/Whats-the-origin-of-the-shoulder-angel-and-the-shoulder-devil

It was inevitable that it would be thought up at some point. Who of us doesn't have the feeling that some little being is whispering good/bad thoughts to us? And the obvious place to be near enough your ear to whisper like that would be in the form of a tiny person sitting on your shoulder.

Also the good on one side and the bad on the other is a common concept as we wrestle with the morals of something we are contemplating.

It has always fascinated me that we can't always trace the origins of our thoughts. Who puts those ideas into our heads in the first place? And if it's those angels and devils on our shoulders, who puts the ideas into *their* heads?

That's easy: we can blame 2Legs.

Make sure you chuck spilt salt over your left shoulder to hit the bad one

Wandrin' star is right. It used to be believed that you had an angel on your right shoulder and a devil on your left shoulder. If you spilled - an expensive commodity - you would throw some over your left shoulder to blind the devil so that he couldn't give you bad luck for your wastefulness.

The right side has the 'good' side since Roman times, probably before Christianity. Dexterous comes from the Latin for right (as in right-handed), while sinister is Latin for left.