My (F32) friend (F28) has never really been religious since I've met her. I know she was raised superstitious and has and will always be somewhat superstitious. We've been through college together and never once have she been religious-religious. She does wear this Buddhist amulet and she claims she's gotten it from her family's "master" as a baby and has never taken it off. A few months ago, the string on the amulet was wearing thin and she was gonna replace it. She took it off and for some reason never put it back on again.
I stopped by her apartment this morning and noticed she was snipping away at some string and threading her amulet. I asked her what's up, thought she was done with that superstition. She told me that she had a dream last night where she was wearing her amulet again and was on a walk through the neighborhood she lived in as a child with her mom. And how there was an evil following them and how her amulet in the dream reacted to the evil. And how her mom in the dream suddenly tried to take the amulet from her aggressively.
I asked her "so what?" and she said her mother would never do that. Her mother even goes out of her way to make sure no one but her (my friend) is the only person who touches her amulet to keep the protection pure and solely focused on her. So having that dream where her amulet freaked out at the presence of evil and having her "dream-mother" try so obsessively to take her amulet is making her want to put it back on. My friend took it as a sign that she needs to put the amulet back on because something bad was coming for her.
I tried to be open minded about her superstitions like how she never bends over with her head upside down or how she never looks into a mirror without the lights on. When we eat out at Asian places, she would even reach over the tablet to reposition my chopsticks flat on the bowl if I stick it into the rice vertically when I need to put them down for a minute. But seeing her sitting there, trying to thread that amulet and telling me about how she took some stupid dream as reality was too much.
So I told her so. I told her that her dreams are just dreams and she needs to stop it with this nonsense. She can't live life attached to her religious beliefs and she can't let her mother rule her life like this. Just because her mother is religious does not mean she has to be. She gave me a dirty look and tried to "correct" me by saying she's not religious, she's superstitious and I have known that about her for years so she doesn't appreciate me suddenly taking offense to her beliefs. I tried to explain that I tried to be openminded about her beliefs but this was pushing it too far. We're not in the middle ages anymore. She called me an absolute bitch and told me to get the fuck out of her house. She just texted me that she doesn't want to see or hear from me for the rest of the week.