Tag Archives: numbers

The Magic of Wishing on 11:11

Original Text: INFORMANT: “I am a huge believer that 11:11 is good luck. When I was like in 8th grade, for anything that I really wanted, I would wait until exactly 11:11 and just think about my wish over and over again during the full minute. And I have several examples of those things actually coming true. When I was in 8th grade, I really wanted to get into a performing arts high school, and I wished on 11:11 every night and day after my auditions for it, and I got in! You have to do it for the full minute though, or else it wont work. And specifically 11:11 is the number that works, not any other numbers. Now I don’t do it as intensely, but like if I do see that it’s 11:11, I’ll think of something random to put out into the universe, because I think it will come back to me.”

Context: The informant is an 18-year-old female first year at USC. She is half-Indian and half-American. She firmly believes in karma and manifestation, and 11:11 is a tangible number with magical energy that she can use to manifest. The fact that it has brought her good things in the past further solidifies her belief in it. She does not recall where she learned this from but thinks she probably saw it online when she was in 8th grade. She still continues this magic ritual today.

Analysis: Wishing on 11:11 is a widely spread belief amongst many cultures, and cannot be pinned down to a single origin. Repeated numbers like 1111 are often called angel numbers, a belief rooted in numerology, which was supposedly invented by Pythagorus in Ancient Greece. It is believed that certain numbers have a specific vibration or magic that can be used to make things happen. Numerology is widely spread in India where the informant is from, but it has also worked its way into Western culture. 1111 has no specific meaning because different people have different thoughts on it, but it is generally agreed that it is a sign of growth, power, new beginnings, or spiritual support. Given these general meanings, it makes sense that the informant would use the particular magic energy of 1111 (versus other angel numbers) to channel into an arts high school acceptance, for example. Manifestation is also a popular belief in India. Posting 11:11 on your Snapchat story was a popular thing to do in 2016-2019 (ish) to bring about luck or love, which might have been an influence on the informant as an 8th grader during those years.

The Monkey King

Text:

AX: “There’s this old story about something called the Monkey King, and how he goes from being… he goes through all these trials and training, like Hercules and the twelve trials. He goes from this little monkey who goes through all these problems, solving some and causing others, he ends up achieving godhood and he’s the savior. He has a trusty staff that can expand in size. It was very special that we had to remember that he has 72 transformations. It’s him, a pig, and like a sage, and there’s a monk that all of them follow. A journey to the West. If you go west enough, further west, you’ll hit mount Olympus, or the equivalent of that: enlightenment. So they try and go to the West and everything. It was important that the monkey king had 72 transformations, his little brother had 36, and then his youngest brother had 18, it was very important that we remember that. So this Monkey King has a band around his head, it’s gold and it’s enchanted, so his monk, his master can chant something whenever he’s misbehaving and it’ll tighten around his head in punishment. So like as they journey to the west, he always has this headband on him, so when they finally reach the west and everything, Buddha takes off the golden band and replaces it with a halo to represent how he’s gone from being imprisoned from his thoughts to him being enlightened, above that. When it was on his head, it was in contact with his skin, but when it was replaced, it hovered slightly above it.”

Context: AX is a freshman at USC studying English—she’s a fellow student in our folklore class and knows the material well. She grew up in Chino, a small suburb outside of Los Angeles. She’s of Asian descent.

AX: “My mom always called me her little monkey king, and would threaten me. Don’t make me put a red band around your head! Like, yes ma’am. I cannot misbehave!”


Analysis: The Monkey King is a common story, common enough for me, a white Californian, to have heard of it. Right off the bat, she compared her story to Hercules and the twelve trials. In Western society, Hercules is more commonly known, partially due to academic emphasis on Greek/Roman mythology and the popular Disney movie Hercules. AX’s childhood in California may have resulted in this association, almost a need to preface with a comparison to Western culture. I wonder if AX’s knowledge of the folklore class impacted her interpretation. The numerology of the story itself is interesting, especially since AX knew they were important but didn’t know what they mean. All of the numbers AX said are multiples of 2, 3, 6, and/or 8, which are all lucky numbers in China. And, of course, each is a multiple of the other. 18 times 2 is 36, and 36 times 2 is 72. 72 in particular is frequently used in Chinese folklore, occurring across a vast number of stories, and it’s the base of calculation in the ancient Chinese calendar.

Haunted house at the end of the street

[A]: I grew up in like an 8 house horizontal neighborhood, you know like 8 houses and they were gated off, and when I turned 5 or 6 the last house at the end, the people left and the house was just there sitting for like 3 years between the period that the family was living there and the next one. So me and my friends that lived in the other houses always used to say that that house was haunted and that’s why they had left. So when Halloween would come around we would walk over to the house, ‘cause there was also like…it was at the end and it was blocked off with big hedges so you couldn’t totally see it like the rest of the neighborhood. So we used to go in there and grab little stones from the pavement and toss them at the windows to see if a spirit would appear or something. So for that whole time we used to say that the house was haunted.

[Me]: Did you guys just decide one day that the house was haunted or was there something specifically that happened?

[A]: I think we always used to just say it…I don’t think there was anything specifically but we used to say a bunch of stuff about why it was haunted. It was the last house, number 8, and we used to say that 8 was a haunted number and that we had seen the number in the night and that the house would spin in circles and the lights would flicker on and off…allegedly…we were probably just little kids making up stuff

[Me]: Did you ever go on to the property?

[A]: I don’t think we ever broke into the house but we definitely went into the yard and on to the patio and the driveway and we used to again throw rocks at the windows then one of us would scream that we saw something then we would run away or whatever

A is 21 years old and grew up in a small town in Mexico. He told me this story after I had asked him if he remembered any scary or ghost stories from when he was younger, but as he recounted it like more of a happy memory than one that still scared him—as most scary stories from youth seem in adulthood. Afterwards I prompted him to tell me a bit more about the role the number 8 played in the story, but the details were unfortunately lost to time. Regardless, reflecting on our class discussion about the “luckiness” of numbers in certain cultures, it got me thinking about how the number 8 is perceived in popular American culture; typically it’s considered a lucky or at least auspicious number (i.e. magic 8 ball), so I’d be interested to dive deeper into whether this was just an instance of kids being kids or if there’s some deeper significance in Mexican culture.

A’s story contains many motifs common to the general concept of a haunted house: blocked off from the rest of the community, a mysterious backstory, etc. I found it interesting that both of the haunted house stories I collected for this portion weren’t necessarily well-known in the community but were instead primarily known and/or created by a group of young kids.

Number Games and Familial Ties

“A game that my family has given meaning is we play a number guessing game, especially on road trips and it started out as a joke by my dad because my sister and I would always ask for things to do or things to play.  But it’s evolved into something that we unironically choose to do because we’ve given it such meaning. To me, it, it, it symbolizes … it’s hard to describe, it symbolizes, like, the nature of friendly competition and always loving to challenge each other to silly little things. It’s really a simple and rather stupid game.  You give them a range and you give them a certain number of tries to guess the number, and you tell them ‘higher or lower’ to see if they can guess the number.  and while it may seem like it’s sort of just luck, we’ve gotten to the point where we can make more informed guesses based on who came up with the number because we know each other so well. and then that way it also just symbolizes our connection…”

Background: The informant is a 19 year-old college student who went on road trips often with his family growing up.  The game shared with me was created by his father when he was 9 and has become a staple part of their traveling as a family in the years since.

Context: I was told about this game in USC’s Annenberg Hall during a quick interview.

It’s interesting how simple games can become a symbol of a family’s close connections to each other.  Shared activities like the number game can become a small group of people’s defining characteristic, and the informant was enthusiastic about how they could guess the patterns that each player used in the game as an indicator of how well they knew each other.

Unlucky Number Four

Informant:

E, a 22-year-old Chinese-Taiwanese female who was born and raised in Los Angeles. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California.

Background info:

E’s first language was English, but because her parents were immigrants, she quickly learned Mandarin as well. Her parents are proud of their culture, and thus they often participated in many Taiwan and Chinese traditions, and believed many of the superstitions, as well. This is one of the superstitions Eileen’s mother believed.

Context:

Late at night, a lot of weird conversations happen. Because E is on a project with me, we were working together at around 2:00am when we started discussing superstitions. When she knocked on wood, it brought this conversation up. The following is a transcript of the conversation I had with E. (I will be represented with a J)

Main piece:

J: “Are there any other superstitions that you experienced growing up? With your family or friends? School, even?

E: “Uhh… Well, because my dad was Chinese, he would always warn us about the number 4. In Chinese, the number four sounds the same as the word death, so we would avoid it like the plague. Even today, if I have to travel, I ask to be moved to a new hotel room if I am placed on the fourth floor. In china, most of the hotels don’t even have a fourth floor. It just goes from the third to the fifth floor.… Freshman year, I had to stay on the fourth floor of the dorms, and it was one of the wort years of my life.”

J: “Why was it so bad?”

E: “Well, I was constantly getting sick, and I really seemed to struggle in my classes. As soon as I moved out of those dorms, my grades improved a lot, too! So you know, that kind of solidified it for me, I guess.”

J: “What are your thoughts on the number 7? A lot of people believe that it is almost the opposite of that. That the number 7 represents fortune or good luck. Are there any like that in Chinese folklore that you know of?”

E: “Yeah, here in the United States, 7 is big. 7 for good luck, and 13 for bad luck. Even our gambling has a game specifically for rolling dice to get 7. And of course, Friday the thirteenth. In terms of lucky Chinese numbers, the number 8 is considered to be pretty lucky. It sounds similar to a word that means ‘making fortune’ or ‘to make a fortune’.”

Thoughts:

This superstition seems to be a common theme across cultures. There seems to be an unlucky number that cultures try to avoid. For example, I’ve also seen hotels in the United States that do not have a thirteenth floor. A lot of buildings stop at the twelfth floor, too. There also tends to be a lucky number in each culture. We have the overarching 7 being lucky, but then people in the United States also have “lucky numbers” that they look for. It could be the person’s birthday, or just a number that they experienced something positive with growing up.