Category Archives: Magic

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

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

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“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.

Folk belief about changing teeth.

Text:

“When Children lose their teeth, they should throw the teeth up if they lose their lower teeth, and throw the teeth downward if they lose their upper teeth. This helps the child grow their teeth quicker.”

context:

Mr. B is my friend in China. This is a part of his personal experience. His grandparents told him this piece of folk belief.

analysis:

This is a folk belief of magic that exemplifies the wish for the fast growth of children’s teeth. There is a lot of similar folk belief that involves such movement in a direction correlated with one’s growth. One example is that if a kid jumps a lot, he would grow very tall. Also, the physical movements of objects seem to have a lot of symbolic meaning in folk beliefs.

In regard to Frazer’s principles of sympathetic magic, this teeth-throwing magic fits in the categorization of both contagious and homeopathic magic. It is contagious that the teeth are a part of the body of the action. Although the new teeth have nothing to do with the old teeth, throwing the old teeth higher seems to have a magic force that will help the new teeth grow faster. On the other hand, it is homeopathic because throwing downward or upward is similar to growing teeth downward or upward. The differences are that one is by nature, the other by force, and one is new and one is old.

tattoo as taboolistic Sign: dragon on shoulder

Text:

“You should not tattoo a dragon on your shoulder because you cannot burden its weight. Eventually it will kill you.”

“The way to eliminate the effect of the dragon on he should is to tattoo a Nezha, or 哪吒 on you. Because Nezha can defeat the dragon, so that will keep you safe.”

Context:

My informant is a student at USC. Here is his intepretation of this piece.
“How I take this(tattoo) is like, you are putting a figure onto your body, then it really is on your body. And if you tattoo a dragon on your shoulder, there is a real dragon on your shoulder and you cannot possibly bear it.”

Analysis:

To provide some background, Nezha, or 哪吒 is a mythic figure in Chinese mythology. Nezha is a child that had a pregnancy of 3 years. He had the power to fight the dragon prince in the east sea of China. Eventually, he killed one of the dragon princes. Thus, in the case of the tattoo, putting Nezha as one of the tattoos by the dragon on the shoulder would serve as a suppressor of the dragon.

A tattoo is a sign. A dragon tattoo is a sign that one cannot bear on one’s shoulder. Fortunately, there is a remedy for those who had tattooed dragons on their shoulder without knowing the consequence. This remedy is the conversion of superstitious belief. However, this conversion is no less superstitious.

My informants’ analysis of the piece shows an interesting connection to the folk belief in magic. This tattoo is both contagious and homeopathic under his analysis. It is contagious because tattoo happens on one’s body. It is homeopathic that the tattoo dragon actually becomes a real dragon that kills people, and Nezha actually becomes real and kills the dragon. It’s fascinating isn’t it?