Category Archives: Magic

Ritual actions engaged in to effect changes in the outside world.

Bad mood leads to bad cooking

Background: M is an American of Sicilian descent who grew up in Buffalo, New York.

Text:

M: “My grandma had a superstition that if you’re cooking while in a bad mood, then the food you’re cooking will taste bad. She’d always say ‘sour mood makes sour food’.”

Interviewer: “Was it just your grandma who believed this superstition?”

M: “My mom…my grandma’s daughter of course… also seemed to believe in this as well. She’d make excuses that she couldn’t cook because she wasn’t in the best of moods.”

Interviewer: “Do you have any other personal experience with this superstition?”

M: “During my teen years, my mom and grandma would yell at me constantly to get out of the kitchen since my teenage mood swings supposedly indicated that I wasn’t up to any good in the kitchen.”

Interviewer: “What did you make of this superstition?”

M: “I always thought it was kind of silly, sometimes maybe even an excuse not to cook. But I guess it could demonstrate how important food and cooking are in Sicilian culture… it’s more than just what’s served on the plate”

Analysis:

As M alludes to, this folk belief can demonstrate how some cultures perceive cooking and serving food as an experience that transcends just the biological need for sustenance. Often times, it can demonstrate a deeper connection to one’s ethnic and cultural background. But not only does preparing ethnic food requires careful consideration and masterful precision to do justice to the cultural practice at hand, it requires soul. Thus, being in a bad mood can distract or subvert one’s full attention from the task and dampen the cooking experience.

Lucky Penny Magic

Text

“I believe in lucky pennies. I have a bunch right here; I have some in my window. They’re only lucky if you find them heads up. But if I find one that is heads down, I’ll flip it so it’s lucky for the next person.

“Sometimes if I know someone’s having a bad day, or they have an exam and they need some luck, I’ll give them one of my lucky pennies.

“But there have been times when I’ve found a lucky penny, and I’m like, ‘Ok, this is the day that I have to do something ballsy and brave. This is a sign.’ And then it won’t go well. And I’ll be like, ‘The lucky penny magic isn’t real,’ and I’ll swear off lucky pennies. But I never seem to stop myself. I always continue doing it anyway.”

GR said she couldn’t recall an experience when a lucky penny actually gave her good luck. “Unless I have incredibly spectacular, amazing luck, I’ll never recognize good luck. I only really recognize when I’ve had really bad luck.”

Context

GR is a 21 year-old college student from Portland, OR, currently living in Los Angeles. Her grandparents were Irish immigrants.

Lucky penny belief is performed mostly in public spaces where one is likely to have dropped loose change, such as a place of business, a parking lot, or the sidewalk. As a resident of a large urban area, GR often encounters such spaces. It is likely that the frequency of finding lucky pennies influences her belief.

Analysis

Lucky penny magic reflects the values of American capitalist society, in which money is the main mechanism of upward mobility and survival. Under this system of values, coming into any amount of money by chance is genuinely good luck.

GR’s belief goes further, however, claiming that the pennies are not merely an instance of luck but a token of it, a good luck charm. Lucky penny belief for some is merely a sign superstition, a form of belief that requires no action; one merely encounters a sign of good or bad luck.

However, GR actively takes part in the belief, choosing to collect the lucky pennies, give them to her friends, and flip a heads down penny over for the next person. This action is what makes her belief magic. Specifically, GR believes that lucky pennies are a form of contagious magic in their ability to bring good luck to whoever possesses them.

Additionally, her choice to collect the pennies out of belief that they may bring luck in the future reflects the future-orientation of American culture, as described by folklorist Alan Dundes.

Irish Knitting Superstition

Text

“Irish people culturally believe that when you knit something, you knit a piece of your soul into your project. And so Irish knitters purposely knit one mistake into their project so that their soul can escape. Otherwise you’re breaking off little pieces of yourself every time you give someone something that you knit.

“So I’m like, ‘Oh, I haven’t been giving my soul away to anyone because I always make a mistake or two.’ Still, there’s certainly some pieces that people have that are a tiny little expression of me.”

Once having heard of this belief, GR began to express it as her own. “It actually makes a lot of sense to me because knitting is just such a labor of love,” she said, adding that she could never sell the pieces that she knits. “No price could quantify the work that I’ve done. It’s so deeply personal. When I’m knitting, I feel like I’m tapping into something cosmic.”

She added that part of this feeling comes from the labor of making something entirely by hand. “There’s no machine that can ever replicate it. Using a knitting machine doesn’t feel as personal. It feels like cheating, honestly.”

Context

GR is a 21 year-old college student from Portland, OR, currently living in Los Angeles. Her grandparents were Irish immigrants.

GR knits a lot in her free time, mainly making beanies for herself and her friends.

GR originally read about this belief online, but her Irish roots in addition to her love of knitting made it easy for her to identify with this belief and adopt it as her own.

Analysis

This belief captures the deeply emotional experience of creating something and gives words to the profound connection an artist feels to their work as an expression of their soul. It also provides a rationalization for any flaws in one’s project, which reduces the pressure on the creator to attain perfection. Such an understanding of the value of mistakes is especially relevant in the art of knitting, a very precise and meticulous craft in which one mistake might make you want to unravel the whole piece until it’s perfect. This belief helps calm the unforgiving pursuit of perfection, which is the enemy of creativity.

This folk belief contains two elements: first, the magical belief that the act of knitting places a piece of one’s soul into their work. This is an example of the law of contagion, in which a non-material bond is established between a person and object. In this belief, the ritual that breaks this bond is the act of knitting a mistake into a piece, allowing the soul to escape. This second element of the belief is an example of conversion magic, a form of performative magic that offsets another magical thing.

Card Game Superstition

Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Language: English

Text

“As long as I can remember, every time I play a card game of any kind, I always wait until everyone has their cards dealt to them before I touch my cards. Otherwise, I feel as if it’s bad luck to touch the cards, and I won’t win the game. It will curse me for that round of cards. 

“Everyone in my family does this, and if someone does touch their cards beforehand, it’s a taboo thing where everyone looks at you like, ‘What have you just done?’

“We’ve passed it along to some family friends, too. It’s like an introduction to our family, and a way for the people we’re closest to to become almost like extended family. Since we believe this and we care about them, we don’t want them to get the bad luck from it.”

Context

BD is a 20 year-old college student from Sacramento, California currently living in Los Angeles. This superstition is part of a card game that has been passed down from his grandparents. When learning the rules of the game, I was also taught this superstition.

BD said he doesn’t remember learning the superstition. “It’s just always been this way and I’ve always done it.”

Analysis

BD’s family sharing this superstition with their close friends as a way of making them part of the family reflects how folk belief can function to create group identities. For example, when reflecting on his family teaching the superstition to his girlfriend, BD said “she has become part of the family by knowing our ways.” Thus, the lore creates the folk.

Superstitions about luck are very common in the context of card games, which often depend on a combination of chance and skill to win. Believing that a certain action will give one good or bad luck for a game is a way to feel a degree of control over a larger, less predictable situation.


The belief that touching an object can give one good or bad luck is an example of contagious magic, as the cards are believed to contain the luck. One can avoid bad luck by abstaining from touching the cards until the proper time.

windows cannot face chimney

Text:

“Here is a folk belief: If a window faces a chimney, the chimney would take the spirit and the qi away from the residents of the building with the smoke it generates. Then the people who live inside the building would become sick. The way to solve this is to put a mirror in the room facing the window. This can reflect the smoke out of the building. Or, you can hang a gourd on the window. Because the gourd is arc-shaped, it would lead the smoke to bypass the window.”

context:

Informant is a friend of mine who is currently studying at USC. This piece of folklore is passed down from his family. He mentioned that in his hometown there are similar interpretations of the chimney and the window. He lived in the northern part of China.

analysis:

Qi, or 气 is a notion in Chinese philosophy and medicine that represents vital energy. It has appeared in many Chinese folk beliefs and serves important elements. It is especially important to older generation people as many of them believe in Chinese medicine, which is a huge combination of field medicine and folk medicine.

This piece is a particularly interesting case in that not only does it provide superstition about windows and chimneys, but it also provided the conversion for getting rid of the influence. The method of the mirror and the gourd are more like magic: create results with separate actions. The solution might be devised by those who actually lived in a house with a window facing a chimney. This shows people’s agency in creating their own folk narratives to protect themselves from superstitious belief. The way to counter superstition is to create another superstition.