Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Jamaican White Belly Buttons

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 3rd, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a folk belief that was told to the informant by a Jamaican. According to this belief, if a Jamaican man has a white belly button, then he is lucky.

A white belly button is probably unusual, thus could be considered lucky. There could be a lot of cultural historical stereotypes that play into the tradition: if one was pale in Jamaica, chances are they were not slaves and were therefore fortunate. My informant shrugged about it, and said that it held true for the person who told her that was the case, as it applied to him and he was very fortunate in wealth and dates. It’s possible that he simply invented it to impress her, or that perhaps through his belief in his luck his life outlook changed and he took more risks, and the successful ones reinforced this belief.

Psychic Cat’s Cradle

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

When my informant was in elementary school, the girls would play a form of cat’s cradle. They would take a circular string and form a cat’s cradle, then ask a girl to choose two fingers on either hand. When she removed those two fingers, the resulting formation of the strings would indicate whether the selector would have a male or female child in the future. According to the informant, the outcome was always male because the resulting string configuration resembled a penis. It was considered a scandalous activity.

There’s a lot at play in this kind of children’s game. Firstly, it incorporates a game popular among young girls. Secondly, it attempts to predict the future, as children like to think about what will happen when they are older. Thirdly, there are stirrings of homeopathic magic, as the resulting configuration of strings resemble a specific genital formation of a male or female, and because the girl selected which fingers to pull to create that formation, it is connected to her in some way. The emphasis on a male result also engages in tabooistic discourse, as kids aren’t supposed to think about or talk about sex, or the genitalia of the opposite sex. Thus, this would be a very exciting game to play as it incorporates a lot of themes common in childhood.

Dream Catchers

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“This is from second grade, and we were learning about native Americans in class and–actually it might have been earlier, but, uh, some early elementary school grade, my teachers told me that native Americans made dream catchers. And so we spent one art class making dream catchers, because they told us that if we made them and hung them by our beds we wouldn’t have nightmares anymore. And so I made one and hung it over my bed. It did not work.”

This is a native American tradition, often taught in schools as representative of their beliefs in some way. It’s supposed to be protective, saving the person who has one and hangs it over their bed from having bad dreams. It is also partially belief oriented–my informant did not believe in its abilities, and thus it did not work for him. The dreamcatcher’s main body is a circle, in which are threaded strings in a generally intricate pattern. This web presumably catches the nightmares, keeping them from reaching the person who sleeps beneath it. It is also often decorated, sometimes with feathers hanging down towards the sleeping person.

It occurs fairly frequently in popular culture when one is referencing native Americans. Its protective ability was actually demonstrated (with a few tweaks) in a skit from the television show Saturday Night Live, in episode 13 of season 25. It was used to protect the protagonist against a curse put on him by a homeless man, as long as he hung it above his bed. His protection ended when his wife accidentally knocked it down and broke it.

Mexican Egg Massage

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/15/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Bio: Informant is a friend and fellow business major.  He is a junior at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.  His family is from Mexico but he has lived in Southern California for nearly all of his life.

 

Context: I was talking to Fabian about Mexican stories and folklore.  He shared with me the following superstition that is prominent in his family’s village where his grandmother still lives.

 

Item: “If someone is feeling bad, not always, but sometimes.  What they do is they get this massage with an egg that has been dipped in holy water.  They just kind of rub it on your back, arms and stuff.  Then they make the sign of the cross on your back, chest and forearms.  It’s supposed to be a blessing kind of thing.  Once you’re done, you crack the egg in a cup of water.  When you do it, the egg, which has been shaken from being rolled around your body, has a very opaque yolk which kind of represents the evil from your body.  The yolk is then released from the egg, and, supposedly the evil, which is contained in that opaque yolk, is then released from the body and dispelled into the water.  This is usually done by older women.  There are some people that have a lot of knowledge/spiritual energy to them that perform a lot of these massages for people in the villages.  A lot of the older women – the grandmothers – mostly know how to do it.”

 

Informant Analysis: Many superstitions in Mexico involve direct contact and touching using crosses, since Mexico is such a religious place.

 

Analysis: This superstition seems to involve the idea of contagious magic, the idea that things that have been in direct contact can have influence and interact with each other.  The informant’s comment that many superstitions involve direct contact and touching seems to reinforce that Mexican beliefs heavily involve contagious magic.  It makes sense that Crosses are used due to the deeply religious nature of the country.

 

The opaque egg yolk symbolizing the presence of evil brings about the idea of order being good and disorder being bad.  Something being jumbled up represents disorder, something that civilization and society has tried to eliminate.

 

The fact that older women usually perform this ritual exhibits the very powerful position that they have in Mexican familial hierarchy, as they are revered as being knowledgeable and beyond reproach by anyone else in the family.  The informant recounted a time when he yelled at his grandmother and was ostracized from his extended family for months after.  It is possible to disobey/yell at other family members, but the grandmother is off limits, showing the position they hold in Mexican familial structures.

Little House Elves

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/15/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Bio: Informant is a friend and fellow business major.  He is a junior at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.  His family is from Mexico but he has lived in Southern California for nearly all of his life.

 

Context: I was talking to Fabian about Mexican stories and folklore.  He shared with me the following folk belief common among the people in Michocoan.

 

Item: “There’s, um, little house elves, um, they are mischievous and moves things in your sleep.  If you wake up in the middle of the night you’ll find milk outside the fridge, your shoes or socks out in random places.  The people who do that are these mischievous little house elves.  People, um try and stay up and try to see if they can catch them”.

 

Analysis: It is a way of explaining how things seemingly disappear or how random things move.  The elf part is similar to the cobbler elves in the U.S., where they come out and do things but you never end up seeing them.