Category Archives: Protection

GIFTING SHOES AND KNIVES

Nationality: Iranian-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Ramon, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Some Farsi

MAIN PIECE:

Informant: So my family has this superstition… About not gifting someone shoes or knives. Like you can give them in the sense of like… If you text me and tell me that you want Nike Air Forces for your birthday… I wouldn’t say no. But I would expect you to pay me for that, like just give me a penny, right? Because if not, the belief is that you’re going to walk away from me. And I need you. So the superstition is that if you get someone shoes, they will walk away from you. Like they’ll leave… So they’re going to move, you know, or go away and be far, and you don’t want that, you want to keep them close. And then with the knives, it’s kind of similar in the sense that if I gift you a set of knives––again, if you do not pay me for them at all––then you’re uh, you might cut yourself. Not like intentionally, just accidentally.

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Informant: We have some German family that married in, you know? And this came from them, but my grandma who’s Persian really adopted it and so did all her daughters. So it’s all my mom and my aunts… I’ve always thought of it as like… A way to assuage guilt? Like if I give you shoes and then you get a great job opportunity and you like move away, I’m going to kick myself. Like, “ I gave her the shoes that she walked away in.” Same thing, if I give you a nice set of knives or something, right? And you go and cut yourself and you lose a finger, I’m going to feel horrible. But if you bought them, then it’s no skin off my back. 

Interviewer: Have you ever experienced something that supports this belief?

Informant: Yeah, someone in my family gifted my younger cousin some shoes, and she moved like half an hour further away because the mom got a better job opportunity.

REFLECTION:

The term “superstition” has a pejorative quality. Many people tend to look down upon these folk beliefs, choosing instead to adhere to scientific facts. However the line between truth and untruth is not so clear. It can be difficult to prove that superstitions are untrue, and it is not the case that all science is true (many of our currently accepted scientific beliefs may be disproven down the line as technology advances, etc.). Calling something a superstition does not mean the belief is untrue, it simply means it has not been scientifically accepted. For generations, across cultures, people have believed in lucky pennies. In this German tradition, including a penny (which is associated with good luck) dispels the bad luck of gifting knives or shoes. This belief may not be scientifically proven, but the informant’s family has witnessed the belief in action when the younger cousin moved away after getting shoes. To them, this folk belief has been proven. Thus, superstitions are not always as untrue or unfounded as people may think. Moreover, regardless of whether a folk belief is or is not true, some may find it comforting to adhere to it, rather than run the risk that a loved one will leave or be injured.

BURNING ESPHAND

Nationality: Iranian-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Ramon, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Some Farsi

MAIN PIECE:

Informant: So my grandma does this a lot and I actually just asked her for clarification about it, but… A lot of the time when I was younger, and especially now, I’ll like wake up and the house will smell like… Smoke… It smells like burnt popcorn, almost? And it’s not like a great smell. And I always thought, like, “Oh, like, my grandma put something in the toaster-oven for too long.” But it turns out it’s an intentional thing. So what she’s doing is… There’s this thing called Esphand… And it’s almost like… Black sand, it looks like? It almost looks like little seeds. I’m not sure what it actually is. It’s not edible. But… Something that Persians do––particularly Persian mothers or grandmothers––is they will put it, you know, in like a pan on the stove, and they’ll toast it and it burns and it smokes, and it smokes very quickly. And it fills the house with that like burnt popcorn aroma… And they’ll like get a towel or something and sort of wave it through the air so it like fills the house… Um… Yeah, and that smoke is supposed to cleanse the air. Um… And it alleviates any bad luck. It’s not that it gives you good luck, but it just prevents bad things from happening, sort of. And the Esphand is, it’s not like only confined to the home? Uh… It’s also… It can be incorporated into weddings? It’s not really done these days, but something they would do in the past is… They would kind of sprinkle the Esphand on the ground before the bride as she was walking. And as she was walking down the aisle, uh, they would kind of… Actually burn it in front of her as she was walking. So someone was leading, walking in front of her, and she would walk through the smoke… So it was kind of like… Like cleansing her on her way. So she’s entering into this marriage cleansed of bad luck.

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Informant: My grandma, she would usually do it if my sister and I weren’t home, ‘cause she knew it––we’d always complain about it… And actually when I was at college, she’d do it, like, she would do it for me, right? Like to… Cleanse my spirit from afar. So that was an interesting kind of practice… And it’s not really about the Esphand… It’s what you do with the Esphand. It’s the ritual…  But it’s not like––it’s not an everyday type of thing. It’s only if she’s like––if she’s nervous, she’ll do it. It’s like to cleanse bad luck. So like, if the family is preparing for something and she, uh, doesn’t like want anything to go wrong… Like at the beginning of the pandemic it was a little bit more common… Like she was doing it more than she ever had before, I think. Or at least, I noticed it more. But like, when I was in high school, I hardly knew it was a thing. Like sometimes I’d just come home and like, “Ugh, someone burned something,” you know? 

REFLECTION:

In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, Elliott Oring claims there is “difficulty [in] interpreting the meaning of symbolic acts in human behavior” (55). In order to give meaning to the act of burning Esphand, one must first be familiar with its ties to the evil eye. The lighting of Esphand is thought to ward off the evil eye. The evil eye is a contagious form of magic; if someone who has the evil eye engages with you, they may bring on bad luck or “jinx” you (jinxing stems from the concept that if you have a jinn attached to you, you bring on bad luck). For example, if a houseguest who has the evil eye compliments a child on their beauty, a mother or grandmother might burn Esphand to clear the air, concerned that the child has been met with an evil eye (i.e. been jinxed) and is thus at risk of their beauty being ruined. While burning Esphand is unique to Persian culture, the act of trying to reverse bad luck is shared across cultures. Similar actions include throwing salt over a shoulder or knocking on wood. These behaviors (performing an action to remove bad luck) can be referred to as a conversion superstitions. The existence of conversion superstitions suggests that humans have an underlying, psychological preoccupation with controlling luck and fate; if we are apprehensive that something will go wrong, it makes us feel better to perform a ritual or action that is meant to steer things in a more desirable, less unlucky direction. And these rituals or actions only have meaning through their association with reversing bad luck.

ANNOTATIONS:

Source cited above:

Oring, Elliott. Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: an Introduction. Utah State University Press, 1986. 

Further reading(s):

“Esfand & The Evil Eye.” My Persian Kitchen, 2016, www.mypersiankitchen.com/esfand-the-evil-eye/#:~:text=It%20is%20pretty%20safe%20to,curse%20on%20someone%20else’s%20behalf.

Saba Soomekh. “Iranian Jewish Women: Domesticating Religion and Appropriating Zoroastrian Religion in Ritual Life.” Nashim : a Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues, vol. 18, no. 18, Indiana University Press, 2009, pp. 13–38, doi:10.2979/NAS.2009.-.18.13.

Name in the Honey Jar

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami, Florida
Performance Date: April 28th, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece: 

“So when my grandma would think that someone had ill will towards you, she would write their name on a piece of paper and stick it in a jar of honey, and put it in the freezer. So it’s the idea that like, it would you know, ‘sweeten’ the person or like make them change their opinion [of you] or influence them in a way.”

Background: 

My informant is one of my friends who lives in Miami, Florida, and is of Cuban and Iranian heritage. This is a folk belief that her grandmother holds, and practices for both herself and the rest of my informant’s family members whenever they supposed someone had “ill will” towards them. This belief seems to have been passed down from my informant’s great-grandmother. When I asked if my informant believed in the custom, she confessed, “I think I want to believe it, it definitely gives me a sense of comfort,” then added, “I kind of feel like, ‘what do I have to lose by it?'”

Context: 

This piece was brought up when my informant and I were talking about the different kinds of superstitions we’d heard in our families growing up. Since she’d already told me a piece of Iranian folk beliefs from her father’s side, I asked if she knew any Cuban ones, and she provided me with the above piece. 

Thoughts: 

I’ve never heard of a custom like putting someone’s name into a jar of honey to “sweeten them,” so I enjoyed this folk belief for the content, but I also found it to be a good example of Homeopathic magic, whether my informant’s grandmother intended it or not. In this piece, the desired event is for the person intending to inflict ill will on— for example— my informant, to change their mind about doing so. In order to do that, my informant’s grandmother wrote the person’s name down on a slip of paper, and stuck it into a jar of honey, which is the mimetic action that is supposed to represent the kindness said person should show towards my informant instead of trying to inflict ill will. I’m not sure what putting the jar of honey in the freezer does, but the action of freezing could be to solidify the behavior that the person should show the informant without worrying that it will melt, and thus undo their way of thinking. 

However, this custom could also be interpreted as a combination of two types of magic: Homeopathic and Contagious. One element of the performance is to take the person’s name— which is deeply connected to their identity— by writing it down on paper. Contagious magic usually requires a physical part of someone’s body/identity, which can’t be done with a name, but it seems that writing it down is the equivalent of making it physical.

Sana Sana Colita de Rana

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami, Florida
Performance Date: April 28th, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece: 

“Sana sana colita de rana

Si no sana hoy

Sana mañana”

Transliteration:

“Heal, heal, tiny frog tail

If it doesn’t heal today

It will heal tomorrow”

Translation:

“Heal, heal, tiny frog tail

If it doesn’t heal today

It will heal tomorrow”

Background: 

My informant is one of my friends who lives in Miami, Florida, and is of Cuban and Iranian heritage. As a child, my informant could always expect to hear this from her grandmother whenever she got hurt. “Sana sana colita de rana” is a popular rhyme often told to small children across Latinx culture as a way to console them after injuries (like falling and scraping their knees, for example). Along with the song, my informant added, “my family always accompanied it with a kiss on the appropriate wound, so I think it’s kind of the equivalent of when Americans are like ‘kiss your boo boos’.”

Context: 

This childhood rhyme came up when I asked my informant if she knew of any Cuban sayings. I listed a different variation of this rhyme as an example, which she was able to recognize and provide the version she’d grown up hearing. 

Thoughts: 

I remember hearing this rhyme all the time whenever I got hurt as a kid, though I heard it differently. In Mexican culture, or at least how my mother told it to me, the rhyme went “Sana sana colita de rana, si no se te quita hoy se te quita mañana,” which translates to: “heal, heal, tiny frog tail, if [the pain] doesn’t leave you today, it will leave you tomorrow.” Either way, hearing the rhyme brings back nostalgia from when I was little. I agree with what my informant said about kissing the wound being equivalent to what American parents might do, and I think the addition of the rhyme also adds to the notion that this performance is mostly a placebo effect.

That being said, I think the rhyme is an important part of children’s culture, particularly in the way that the content doesn’t make sense; what does a frog’s tail have to do with healing, for example, a scraped knee? Why a frog, specifically, and not a medical professional? The nonsensical element here is key to children’s folklore because it allows them to comprehend the world in a way that only their folk group could understand and readily accept. However, another way to look at it is that the silliness of the rhyme helps the child focus less on their pain and more on trying to understand the contents.

For another variation, see Licea, May 12, 2019, “Sana Sana Colita de Rana – Spanish saying”, USC Folklore Archives).

Waiting to go Somewhere After Sneezing

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami, Florida
Performance Date: April 28th, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece:

“He did tell me the other day like, [his family] have this superstition that if you sneeze, like, before you’re gonna go somewhere it means that, like, to wait a little bit so like bad things don’t happen to you.”

Background: 

My informant is one of my friends, and is of Cuban and Iranian heritage. This piece comes from a superstition that her Iranian father told her about recently that he heard from his side of the family. Though he is not superstitious himself, and my informant’s family don’t follow this superstition, it seems to be prevalent in Iranian culture. My informant believes that this superstition serves as a form of protection from harm: “like if you’re gonna drive and you sneeze, wait a minute in case you crash.”

Context: 

This piece came after my friend and I were talking about superstitions we’ve heard, and she told me of some Iranian ones that she heard from her father. After listening, I asked if she could elaborate more on what she meant by “bad things” happening to one who didn’t wait after sneezing, since I was a bit confused.

Thoughts: 

Along with the one my informant provided, I’ve heard a fair amount of superstitions about sneezing, including the one that goes “if you sneeze, it means someone’s talking behind your back.” I think these are interesting because of the way sneezing is perceived as either ill will or bad luck waiting to happen, and this might have to do with sneezing being a symptom of sickness. The addition of “waiting a minute” could also be a representation of being advised to rest to prevent harm, or illness. While many superstitions, or rather, folk beliefs, have negative connotations, the wariness is warranted in the case of this one. At the same time, it also has a protective element to the belief. While the sneeze comes as an omen of bad luck, it simultaneously warns the person affected by it to be careful of their surroundings and actions. It’s both a blessing and a curse, which is what I like about this belief because it shows the nuances in how people categorize superstitions as either “good” or “bad” without realizing that it’s the people that give folk beliefs their meanings, not the action itself.