Category Archives: Magic

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

Hindu Tradition/Superstition

Tags: Hindu, Superstitions, Cleansing

Text

A plain paper towel with water is used to wipe down counters for good luck/fortune, not to actually sanitize.

Informant Info

Race/Ethnicity: Indian

Age: 22

Occupation: College Student

Residence: Northwest Arkansas, USA

Date of Performance: March 2024

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): N/A

Relationship: Friend

Context

AH, the informant, is of Indian descent. Her father practices Hinduism and speaks Tulu. He has been a very influential figure in her upbringing. She also studies indigenous peoples and their customs as a Sustainability major.

Analysis

The informant’s father often performs this action after any surfaces are used. When asked why, he said that Hindus often do this as a means to beckon in good luck and fortune.

Eating twelve grapes on New Year’s

Text:

Eating twelve grapes on New Year’s Eve

Minor Genre:

Holiday Celebration; Folk Magic

Context:

“On the most recent New Year’s Eve, I was at a New Year’s Eve party when someone told me that you’re supposed to eat twelve grapes right after the clock strikes midnight as a new relationship thing. I decided to do it but I accidentally ate the grapes before midnight, so when the clock struck twelve, I ate another twelve grapes. I ended up getting into a love triangle afterward and now I’m superstitious that it was because of the grapes. I had never heard of or practiced this ritual before hearing about it at the party.”

Analysis:

I have heard different variations of this tradition of eating twelve grapes on New Year’s. The tradition is of Spanish origin, and the most popular version seems to be to eat twelve grapes on New Year’s Eve to bring about twelve months of good luck. Other variations include eating the grapes while sitting under the table and eating twelve grapes in order to find a new relationship in the upcoming year. 

This ritual is an example of contagious magic; the grapes are believed to possess a fortuitous quality that is then transferred to a person upon their consumption of the fruit. While I do not necessarily believe in the magical effects of consuming grapes on New Year’s, I do think that it would make sense for a person to trace back to their success in a new year to such an action. Particularly in the informant’s situation, where being in a love triangle is a fairly rare occurrence, it makes sense from a psychological standpoint that they would blame this situation on the mistake they made in the New Year’s Eve grape ritual.

Karma Points

Text:

Karma Points

Minor Genre:

Superstition; Ritual

Context:

“I believe in karma. Even if someone is justified in stealing or doing horrible stuff, I could never do it because I am superstitious of the idea of karma. Even though I see so much cruelty in how people act, whether that’s on the news or politically or whatever, I still can’t bring myself to do anything horrible on purpose because I believe in it coming back to me in some sense.

“As part of my belief in karma, I believe also in ‘karma points.’ Every time I see a piece of trash I pick it up now. I got used to feeling like it’s bad karma if I lock eyes with a piece of trash on the floor and don’t pick it up and just walk by it. Every time I look at one and register it in my mind as a piece of trash, I have to go grab it and throw it away in the trash can, which gives me a positive karma point. This superstition started in the beginning of 2024. I don’t know exactly why it happened, I just picked up the trash and it transformed into the superstition it is now.”

Analysis:

It is interesting to consider how the larger concept of karma translates into every-day actions in the informant’s life, and what that says about the idea of karma as a whole. If, for example, a person convicted of murder was considered to have a low level of karma, by the informant’s logic, they could work to restore their karma by picking up pieces of trash. This is an extreme example, but it goes to show that superstitious rituals often defy logic; routinely picking up trash would not make a serial killer a “good person,” but it may have a greater positive impact on an average person. The next logical question in such a perspective is then: at what point is someone’s poor karma irredeemable by small actions?

The idea of “karma points” therefore poses interesting philosophical considerations, but it can also be examined in a psychological context. The compulsion for the informant to pick up a piece of trash every time they lock eyes on it may be suggestive of a disorder such as OCD. While the inability to suppress an obsessive urge is a symptom of OCD, it is also a common experience for people who consider themselves superstitious; they will go to great lengths to avoid taking an action that they believe will bring about a negative outcome in their life. Ritualistic superstitious actions “dig the hole deeper” for the person who engages with them; as one gets in the habit of taking a specific set of actions, they assign more emotional significance to it and therefore become less likely to disengage with the superstition.

Break a Leg Ritual

Text
“So this is like the traditional ‘break a leg!’ before a performance, because I’m a theater major. But before any type of performance, instead of just saying ‘break a leg,’ the performing group that I grew up in since I was a kid to high school, we always would say ‘break ALL your legs.’ As like a way of saying ‘you’re even gonna do better than just break a leg, like you’re gonna have a phenomenal performance.’ And then we would- I don’t know how to explain this properly, but we basically lock our pinky fingers together, and then like, bump each other’s hips, each hip twice, and then like, spin, like, turn with our arms. And I was like- everyone in the group that I grew up in performing did this, um, and was incredibly superstitious about it. It was a thing of like, even if you were called to places, you would run backstage to the other side of the stage to find the other people in the cast to do it to. Because it was an incredibly, like, you HAVE to do this. Like, if not something’s gonna go wrong. Um, and so I was incredibly superstitious about it. Like if I didn’t get the chance to do it to everyone, I, like, I was not comfortable on stage and I was like ‘something’s gonna go wrong, I’m gonna mess up, just it’s not gonna be the performance I know it can be.’

And now that I’m in college and I’m not part of this performing group anymore, I still carry it on. Um, especially with this one, like, performance group I’m part of. Backstage before every show that I’ve started since freshman year doing, I teach it to like anyone who’s new in the group, and I do it with as many people in the cast as I can do, and I even like, explain the story of it to people, like ‘this is something I used to do in my past performing community that I was a part of, and we’d say break all your legs,’ and I teach it to them and then like, they go on to do it to other people in the cast and explain it to them. So it’s something I’m like carrying on and spreading to other people.”

Context
C is a current student at the University of Southern California and grew up in Palm Desert, California. She gave the context that she had been part of the same local theater group for her preteen and teenage years until coming to college. When asked to elaborate about some of the logistics of the ritual, C explained how the ritual would be done between two people in the cast, with the goal of everyone in the cast eventually doing it with everyone else. She also stressed the importance of performing the ritual as immediately before the beginning of the performance as possible. She also described how different people in her original group believe in different degrees of consequences for not performing the ritual with everyone in the cast; while some people think it is not strictly necessary, many, including C, believe that there will be “severe and immediate consequences” during the performance for not doing it with everyone. Finally, C explained that, while she is not sure when the ritual began, allegedly everyone who her director had worked with had a similar kind of ritual, which leads her to believe it stemmed from him and evolved to what it is today.

Analysis
As C acknowledged, this tradition takes a widely-known example of theater-specific performative speech and adds an additional physical element as added superstitious behavior. I would say that this ritual combines elements of homeopathic and contagious magic. By believing that not performing this ritual correctly induces bad luck, this theater group exhibits the ‘like produces like’ belief behind homeopathic magic; however, the contact required for the ritual, perhaps to ‘share luck’ amongst the cast, suggests that the connection between two cast members lingers after contact, which is characteristic of contagious magic. There also seems to be an added dimension of promoting the group’s strength and unity; by requiring everyone in the cast to perform this bad-luck-warding behavior together, it reinforces the idea that the group is stronger together. Ultimately, I think this ritual is a perfect example of the multiplicity and variation that is often said to be a core component of folklore, and I would be interested to see if/how this ritual changes after its introduction to USC theater spaces.

Text:

In a discussion about family health practices, a classmate shared a folk remedy rooted in his heritage. When a family member falls ill, his father employs a traditional healing method. This involves igniting a tissue, placing it on a glass, and then setting the glass on the stomach of the sick person. The belief is that the burning tissue creates a vacuum within the glass, which then draws out the infection from the individual’s body.

Context:

My classmate explained that this practice of using fire and a glass to cure ailments is an ancestral folk medicine technique passed down through generations in his family. They believe that the heat and resulting suction specifically target the sickness, effectively extracting it from within. He recalled this method being applied various times throughout his childhood, particularly for stomach-related issues. The ritual, though medically unverified, is deeply embedded in the familial tradition, and it’s a vivid representation of the intimate trust they place in their heritage and the natural methods of healing.

Analysis:

This folk remedy mirrors the principles of sympathetic magic, specifically of the contagious variety, as outlined by James George Frazer. Just as Frazer described how objects associated with a person, such as a lock of hair, could be used to influence their well-being, so does the use of a glass on the body in this practice suggests a transfer or extraction of ailment. While to the outsider it may seem a quaint or even irrational act, to those practicing, it’s a manifestation of a deep-seated belief in the tangible interaction between physical objects and one’s health. Furthermore, Hafstein’s notion of collective tradition plays a role here, emphasizing the importance of community and shared practices in the development of folk remedies. Rather than deriving from a single innovator, this practice is likely the result of communal beliefs and the collective wisdom of the family, passed down and adapted over time. It represents a lineage of knowledge and a tangible connection to their ancestors, imbuing the act with personal, cultural, and historical significance beyond mere “entertainment value” or rudimentary medical intervention. This traditional method, while not scientifically substantiated, offers a unique lens through which we can examine the interplay of belief, culture, and the human need to find solace in the face of illness.