Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Cutting Hair with the Moon

Nationality: British
Age: 26
Occupation: Pharmacist
Residence: Liverpool
Language: English

Text: “My nan has always told me you should cut your hair during the waxing moon, when it’s growing bigger, so your hair would grow thicker and faster. But never cut it during a waning moon, or it’d grow back slow and thin. Same thing with nails. My nan wouldn’t get her nails done or anything; she would just wait to trim them herself and always looked up at the moon first.”

Context: My informant is from England and told me that her grandmother grew up in a farming village that often relied on the moon to guide the planting and personal care. Her nan treated it like common sense, and a hairdresser in the town also told her this once. 

Interpretation: This is an example of sympathetic magic. Cutting hair during a waxing moon (that looks like it’s growing) symbolically encourages growth; meanwhile, cutting during a waning moon (that looks like it’s shrinking) is seen as limiting or weakening. It reflects an ancient human instinct to see natural cycles like the moon as connected to our bodies and health. This also reflected a transmission of knowledge, passed from grandmother to granddaughter, rooted in domestic spaces and body care. 

Empacho

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 38
Occupation: Mechanic
Residence: Los Angeles
Language: Spanish and English

Text: “When I was little, if I had a stomachache or was constipated, my grandma would say I had empacho. She would rub my stomach with oil while massaging my stomach and back. Then she would give me a té de manzanilla boiled with the pit of an avocado. I wasn’t allowed to eat cold food after that, only warm soups. No doctors were involved, just her hands and prayers.”

Context: The informant explained that he and his cousins were often diagnosed with empacho by their grandmother when they had constipation, bloating, or stomach cramps. He explained that empacho is believed to be caused by eating too much, eating improperly, or food “sticking” in the stomach. His grandmother learned the treatment from a neighborhood curandera (a folk healer) in Michoacán. He doesn’t fully believe in the diagnosis now, but he did say the treatment did make him feel better. It was comforting. 

Interpretation: Empacho is considered to be a folk illness in Mexican medicine. The idea that food can cause an internal imbalance that requires hands-on shows how healing illustrates how illness is perceived not just as biological but also energetic. The act of rubbing or even pulling the stomach is a way of drawing out the illness. Using warmth (like tea or massage) is a way to counteract the “coldness” in the body. This ritual becomes not only a form of medical intervention but a cultural one, preserving heritage and asserting identity. 

Sage Burning

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, AZ
Language: English

“I believe in like burning sage to purify your home. I use sage and herbs. When I’m feeling like negative energy or negative stuff starts happening. I believe that it’s something someone else is doing to me or spiritually happening to me, so I burn sage and bless my house.”

Where did you learn about this?

“I learned about this kind of stuff until I lived on the Hoopa reservation. I never learned about this stuff before moving. I started opening up spiritually when living up there. I was aware of this stuff because my mom was clairvoyant.”

Can you please tell me about how you burn the sage? 

“Protection of house. You burn sage and pray and intent. Clearing things. Things happening in your home, you burn sage. Thanking your home when you live in your house because your house is a living energy. It protects your family. It is a safe haven. I also use it for my crystals. I ground myself and I saw a prayer. I usually say Our Father. I mix my Christianity beliefs within my medicine because that’s the one true god i believe in. I walk through the house and open doors and windows and say the Our Father on each part of the house. And I blow it on myself and the house before I blow it out. I also do crosses on door entrances.”

Context: The informant identifies herself both as a Spiritualist and a Christion. She spent a portion of her 20s in Hoopa, California where she learned a lot of spiritualism from the people she met and connected with on the reservation. She has a mixed background of European and Native American ancestry.

Analysis: Burning sage to purify your home is a commonly recognized Native American ritual that has been adopted by many Spiritualists in the US. Through this practice, the informant is connecting to her roots, which have been lost within her own family. Often, Native American ancestry can be eradicated in European family lines, so many people try to reestablish those connections with that part of their identity. Through this reconnection, the informant also blends her Christian beliefs that have been dominant throughout her entire life. Her approach to sage burning shows the complex ways we blend folk beliefs with religion and spiritualism.

Looking specifically at the act of burning sage, the informant identifies the symbolism in the home, how the home is meant to protect us. Sometimes homes can be believed to be haunted or negative energies might enter the home. Sage acts as a way to contract these spooky unknowns in our homes. As ghost stories tend to be centered around property, sage smudging also focuses on property, cleansing the home to be a safe and welcoming space rather than an ominous one. 

Clairvoyance & Dream Interpretation

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, AZ
Language: English

“Clairvoyance runs in our family. I was taught about it at a very young age. My mom educated me about it at a very young age. Dream interpretation and stuff like that and astral projection and meditation. I’ve gone into trances with binaural beats and left my body.”

What does clairvoyance mean to you?

“Clairvoyance means to be empathic, feeling other people’s emotions, feeling certain types of energies in a room, sleep paralysis. My sleep paralysis is when my body is splitting when I leave my body at night, so you get stuck in between. I’ve had to learn that when in a sleep paralysis, I pray in my mind. I explained this bruja around the corner who explained that my spirit is splitting from my body. My dreams are not normal dreams. I can tell the difference. I can feel all my senses. I can smell, I can touch. Most people are unable to do that. I can feel pain. I have every emotion, fear and everything. That’s not normal.”

Has this always happened for you?

“That’s happened to me all my life. My mom had premonitions. I believe dreams are not necessarily dreams.”

Are there any rituals you do to enhance your dreams?

The informant described using tourmaline or “any stone that gives properties or elements to psychic clairvoyance or astral projection” She puts the stone under the bed, pillow or on her bedside. She described that she grounds herself before going to sleep by “creating a bubble like white light for purification and protection,” as in meditation. She says that she “imagines a safe place in the bubble like a garden or river of amethyst.” She emphasizes the importance of protecting yourself and setting intentions because people that don’t might bring something back with them from the other realm.

Analysis: While dreams themselves are not traditionally considered folklore, I would argue that the informant’s described beliefs about her dreams can be interpreted as a folk belief. Coming from her mother, the informant has been passed down this belief and continues in the practice of dream interpretation in the present day. She also described her mother’s dreams to be premonitions, or seeing the future, while her own was described to be more along the lines of astral projection. This shows some variation within her own family’s interpretation of their dreams. She also describes some ritualistic precautions before attempting to go into this dream state. Meditations, usually guided meditations, are often used to go into trance-like states, which she does herself while also dabbling in binaural beats. Using binaural beats shows the constant evolution of folkloric rituals and practices as she is incorporating modern day technologies into her practice. 

Grandma’s Earrings & Brooch

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA

“When my grandma passed away, the two things that I got from her were a pair of ladybug earrings and a butterfly brooch. So I started as a tradition wearing one of these items. Anytime I had a big presentation, anytime I had a big event, anytime I went to a family event where my grandpa was going to be there, as a way to invite her. I don’t know. It just felt like if I was wearing one of those, she was with me and she was able to see what I was doing and still keep up, even though she wasn’t alive. It definitely got to the point where times when I was like ‘oh, i don’t really want to wear either of these. They don’t go with my outfit’ but I’m not going to say that grandma can’t come to Christmas dinner. So you wear the brooch or you wear the earrings so that grandmas with you.’ I do that for a lot of things.”

Do you also view them as good luck charms in a way?

“Oh, definitely yeah. I mean it’s just like having someone on your side/ I mean, I don’t think it physically brings me good luck. Even though I know butterflies are signs of hope and I know ladybugs are signs of luck, I don’t view it very strictly in that way. It’s supposed to be my grandma and she’s going to help me get through it.”

Did you start doing this on your own?

“Yeah, I started a couple months after, so I’ve been doing it for about nineish years now.”

Analysis: After the death of close relatives, especially grandparents, we receive family heirlooms or some sort of memorabilia from their lives. Particularly with jewlery, we tend to inscribe intense meanings onto these items, feeling that they are a connection to the person’s spirit. Wearing their jewelry is like carrying them with us, just as the informant described. By having her grandmother with her, the informant has the confidence to face stressful events as well as accompanying her at family gatherings. The informant specified that she feels an obligation to wear the items around her grandfather since he had lost his wife. In a way, this creates a special bond with her grandfather who sees his granddaughter carrying a piece of his wife as she lives through her. This is one of the many ways of coping and supporting family members in their losses of loved ones.