No harm in deferring to an expert ~~ what experts are for ~~ so long as one recalls that their pronouncements, on matters aesthetic or interpretive, are not necessarily final statements on the matter, never to be gainsaid by any alternative theory, or augmented by any additional one. I am sure Steve Roud is right about that particular superstition ~~ but maybe the stuff, in other theories or traditions or manifestations, can have some further FX. It's your insistence on regarding the laws of anthropology and traditional belief as entirely monocratic, autarchic, analogous to the Laws of Gravity or Thermo-Dynamics, that I am finding so perplexing.

~M~