Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Folk Belief: On Money and Hands

Context:

Informant E is a 21 year old USC student studying American Studies and Ethnicity. She identifies as Chicana and and was born and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. E is a junior at the university and is the interviewer’s roommate.

Text:

E: “So if my right hand – the palm of my right hand – is itchy, I put it in my pocket, because it means I’m gonna get money. If the left palm/hand is itchy, that means I owe someone money. So I have to scratch it.”

Interviewer: “Did you learn this from someone?”

E: “My family.”

A friend, also in the room: “If you scratch it does it mean that you don’t owe them money?”

E: “Like I’m not gonna get – it could mean, like, ‘Oh I have to pay rent soon,’ so it’ll start itching. Or I have to go pay someone back because they took me out to go eat. So then that means I have to get them back.” “If I scratch my hand, I don’t have to pay them back. Sometimes.”

Interviewer: “So who taught you this?”

E: “My grandma and then my grandma taught my mom and then me.”

Interpretation:

E’s folk belief is a kind of self-soothing ritual and, though a bit more complicated, I would compare it easily to knocking on wood or throwing salt over one’s shoulder. It’s clearly been passed down to her as familial knowledge. I did search for more information online and found that the superstition originates in the Caribbean which, although not part of Latin America, is close to it, and the belief itself seems to have spread easily throughout the world. I find it interesting that this belief has to do with hands, as I feel there’s a through-line in history. Bartering relied heavily on hands, and handshakes or palms are often symbols of such agreements. Trade and bartering then became money or payment, which is still then associated with hands, and is what I would argue led to this superstition. In general, money obviously is a good thing to have and a bad thing to lose, so this self-soothing ritual can be comforting and seems so common because of that universal truth about the value of money. The scratching part of this belief makes it a ritual or a form of jinx (re: like knocking on wood) in my opinion, as the participant is doing something tangible, as if to put the belief into effect.

Moroccan Evil Eye

Informant Details

  • Gender: Female
  • Occupation: Student
  • Nationality: Moroccan-American

Folklore Genre: Folk Beliefs/Superstitions (magic)

1. Text

The informant explained a common curse in her culture (the evil eye) and the talisman used to prevent this curse. The evil eye gaze is when someone looks at you with jealousy, and it causes bad fortune. To protect herself from the evil eye gaze, the informant wears jewelry that is decorated with charms that look like eyes. (pictured below) The informant calls this type of jewelry “evil eyes” because they are talismans used to ward off the evil eye gaze. A superstition surrounding this practice is that when the evil eye talisman breaks and falls off, it has done its job protecting you. In addition to the evil eye talisman, the informant’s mother burns sage around her and recites surahs and bismillahs from the Quran. These rituals are also meant to ask Allah for protection against the evil eye.

Image: an evil eye talisman attached to a hamsa hand given to the informant by a friend

2. Context

The informant learned of the evil eye gaze and the evil eye talisman from her mother, who is from Morocco. She has received many evil eye talismans from older family members as well. These practices are performed often, especially when you have good fortune or someone compliments you in an envious tone.

3. Analysis

The evil eye talisman is an example of sympathetic magic because the jewelry is made to look like an eye, which represents the evil eye glance. In International Folkloristics, Dundes says “With homeopathic magic, we have ‘like produces like,’ such that one can enact through mimetic imitation the desired event or outcome.” (222) Since the talisman resembles the eye, this form of magic uses the principle of homeopathic magic. The evil eye belief suggests the cultural idea that jealousy is malevolent and causes misfortune. In this culture, being the subject of envy is seen as a bad thing. It also suggests the cultural belief that fortune can be fickle and blessings may be taken away as quickly as they are given.

Palestinian Evil Eye

Informant Details

  • Gender: Male
  • Occupation: Student
  • Nationality: Palestinian-American

Folklore Genre: Folk Beliefs/Superstitions (magic)

  1. Text

The informant explained a common curse in his culture (the evil eye) and the practices done to protect against this curse. The evil eye can be inflicted when someone is jealous of you, when something good happens to you, or when someone compliments you and doesn’t say mashallah. Most often the evil eye is caused by jealousy. To guard against the evil eye, people keep talismans that look like an eye called nazars and hamsa hands. These can be worn as jewelry, hung in the car, and placed in the house in rooms where guests visit. Wearing blue can protect you from the evil eye. Sage is also used to ward against the evil eye. The nazar is typically worn as a necklace or a bracelet with lots of circular beads that resemble eyes. The beads are blue with a black circle in the middle. One superstition about the nazar is that it should be given as a gift because it is bad luck to buy one for yourself. When the nazar breaks, it isn’t effective anymore. It breaks because it has protected you from someone’s jealousy. Once it is broken, you can’t wear it anymore because it holds on to the negative energy. 

2. Context

The informant learned this belief from his older family members from Palestine. In the first grade, his aunt gave him a nazar because he was being bullied by other kids. His aunt is from a town outside of Ramallah in the West Bank of Palestine. Generally, the rituals that ward off the evil eye were done when people expressed jealousy or negativity towards them.

3. Analysis

The nazar is an example of sympathetic magic because the jewelry is made to look like an eye, which represents the evil eye gaze. The nazar uses the principle of homeopathic magic – “like produces like” – because it resembles an eye. The evil eye belief suggests the cultural idea that jealousy is malevolent and causes misfortune. It also suggests the cultural belief that fortune can be fickle and blessings may be taken away as quickly as they are given. In this culture, being the subject of envy is not viewed favorably. The superstition that a nazar must be received as a gift represents the belief that fostering strong interpersonal bonds protects people from misfortune. This suggests a cultural value of community and loyalty.

aumakuas

text

Informant: “So there are these things called aumakuas–which are like a Hawaiian cultural belief– and so your family can have like a spiritual connection to a certain animal and usually it is something to do with your family’s professions. So if you’re a fisherman or your father or your husband or people throughout your lineage were fishermen,  then you’re aumakua could be something like a fish, it could be a turtle, it could be a shark and stuff like that. But basically when your family member passes away, you do a ceremony to bury their bones and then their spirit takes a form of this animal that they have a connection to. As a person, you aren’t supposed to harm this animal because it’s part of your family. And usually you will see it very often, and those are your ancestors in their animal form visiting and protecting you. \

Me: “So how do you figure out what your aumakua is?”

Informant: “I think you just have to–”

Me: “Do you ask your parents? Is it the same one as your parents”

Informant: “Yes, so it’s the same throughout your entire lineage and Hawaiian language was an oral language so it wasn’t written down so everything was passed down through words which is how it was passed down”

Me: “So what is yours?”

Informant: “Mine is a fish I think, but it’s only like one specific type, but I completely forget the name of it”

Context

Age: 19

From: Oahu, HI

The informant says that everyone in Hawaii that is a native has an aumakua and it is an extremely personal thing. The informant heard her aumakua at a really young age. She said probably 4 or 5 from her parents. She and the other natives take this very seriously and if they see their aumakua, then they take it as a sign which can be good or bad depending on the situation. She also said when you see your aumakua, it gives you some type of feeling– it could be relief, or it could be telling you not to do something you were planning on doing.

Interpretation

I think this is very interesting because a lot of people, even not from Hawaii, believe that the family members that have passed turn into animal forms such as butterflies or other things. Based on that, this idea is not really that foreign to me, but I like how their whole family tree has the same one. I remember a time I visited Hawaii and my friends and I were all meeting up, but on the way, one of our friends saw his aumakua and turned around to go back home. This is taken very seriously in Hawaiian culture and can determine a lot of things in life. I wish I would have asked the informant what happens when two people with different aumakuas get married–which aumakua are the kids taking?

Falling Rock

DC is a 53-year-old white woman who currently lives in Texas but was born in rural Montana. 

DC- You know when you’re driving down the road and you see the yellow caution signs that say ‘loose gravel’ or ‘falling rock’. When I was young, my parents used to tell us that Falling Rock was an angry Native American because we lived with a lot of Indigenous people. They would say that he would jump out and throw boulders at passing cars. I believe that I was in like late elementary school and I used to tell my friends about the legendary Falling Rock.

Me- Do you have any other details you can think about the story? Did your parents ever have a reason as to why he was angry and throwing rocks?

DC- He was angry because the land was taken. That’s all I can remember. My parents would tell us to be quiet and make us look for him when we saw signs. They always told us that as long as we don’t bother him he won’t bother us. His wife’s name was Loose Gravel. I think he also had kids named like boulders on the road or something.

Analysis

The Falling Rock story has many different interesting aspects to examine. Firstly, this tale perpetrates many negative stereotypes towards Native Americans. While I don’t think it was DC’s parent’s goal to be hateful towards Indigenous people, equating important tribal names to the likes of signs found on the sides of roads is disrespectful and harmful, as well as spreading the idea that Native people are angry and violent.  DC and her family were not doing this on purpose, they considered themselves to be good allies and friends with many Indigenous people in their town. This goes to show that unconscious biases exist in everyone, and we need to make an active effort to be aware of the ways we may perpetuate harm without realizing it. An important part of being a good ally is being able to see where you have done wrong and improve from it. While DC heard this story as a young child and would tell others the tale then, as she has grown and become aware of the negative connotations of the story, she no longer spreads it, not even to her own children. 

While DC’s family may unconsciously have been spreading harmful stereotypes, this story also served to educate their children in some ways. Through the story, we can see that DC’s parents had at least a basic understanding of the ways that Native Americans had been unfairly treated, and were trying to teach their children. While it’s not as thorough as the education one may get in class, it still teaches the audience that Natives are valid in their anger because of the cruel way Americans have treated them in the past. They were taught to respect their anger and boundaries and understand their pain, at least slightly. While the story still holds many harmful beliefs, it is important to think through all the ways this story may have impacted its young, White audience. While it may have unfortunately further engrained a few stereotypes, it also helped them better understand the Native’s pain and history. 

Looking past the race dynamics, this story exemplifies many of the ways that similar stories begin and spread. It takes something as simple as a road sign to begin such an oral tradition. Every family has thought of ways to entertain, or quiet, their children on long car rides. Legends are much easier to create than one might imagine, they are being made all around you at every moment.