Tag Archives: homeopathic magic

Chinese Folk Belief on Leg Shaking

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

My mom was born in Hong Kong and lived there up until she was 19 before moving here, and I was born here (in America).

Piece:

My mom would not let me or my brother shake our legs. You know how some people have that nervous tick where they shake their legs? Well she thought that it symbolized shaking money off a tree, so if we did it we wouldn’t be rich in the future. So she would tell us “we were shaking the money off the trees” so now me and my brother don’t shake our legs anymore, although we used to a lot when we were kids. 

Piece Background Information:

She probably got that from her parents as well.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in the informant’s apartment adjacent to USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

This is clearly an instance of homeopathic magic, where the mimicking of shaking a sort of trunk (legs seen as the foundation for which the body depends) has affects in reality and in this case negative effects of losing money or fortune. I could not find other similar accounts so it is pretty likely that the informant’s mother, and possibly the informant’s mother’s parents (and so on), have shared this with their children in order to stop them from shaking their legs and groom them into proper adults. Leg shakers are the worst.

Chinese Folk Belief on White Headdress

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

My mom was born in Hong Kong and lived there up until she was 19 before moving here, and I was born here (in America).

Piece:

So my mom would not let me wear anything white on my head because she said that it meant like death in Chinese, or in China. So when I would try to wear like a white headband (I used to wear headbands) or put anything like a white hat on my head, she told me not to because it was death basically. 

Piece Background Information: 

Maybe when they bury someone, they put a white sash around their heads or something. It’s probably something her mom told her.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in the informant’s apartment adjacent to USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

Although the informant was not too sure on the origins behind this practice, the informant still holds to it to this day.Although I could not find anything supporting the informant’s belief that a white sash is placed upon the heads of the deceased when being buried, which would have been in a sense homeopathic magic (magic of similarity), there are clear associations between white and death, and it comes to no surprise that the informant’s mother would choose to see a white headdress as symbolizing death. Upon further research, apparently white is typically symbolic of the dead in Chinese funeral rituals – it is common in practice to place a white banner over the door of a household to signify that a death has occurred.

Snow Day Magic Tricks

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 04/19/15
Primary Language: English
Language: none

Informant is a 20 year old college student at the University of Chicago. She is a creative writer, activist, and political science major. She grew up in Highland Park, Illinois with her two parents and two younger brothers.

 

Informant: “So here in Chicago, we have a thing called snow. It actually gets quite cold if you remember.”

Interviewer: “I remember!”

Informant: “Just wanted to remind you since now you live in sunny, always blue-skied, 70 degree Cali. Anyways, there are times that so much snow accumulates that school is canceled. Not very often, but every now and then. Usually ever year, but sometimes just once every two or three years.”

Interviewer: “I totally remember those! They were the best…”

Informant: “They were! Do you remember what we all used to do in the hopes there would be a snow day?”

Interviewer: “Sort of, but not entirely.”

Informant: “Okay, let me refresh your memory. We would put a spoon under our pillow before going to bed—some people put it under their bed, and some people didn’t put a spoon but a fork—and that was supposed to make a snow day happen. But not just out of the blue. IT had to already be pretty snowy, or supposed to snow heavily.”

Interviewer: “Do you remember who told you to do that? Or who told you that worked?”

Informant: “No specific person that I remember. I think we all just sort of knew to do it. Like everyone talked about it working, or having worked.”

 

Thoughts:

I can’t figure why a spoon was the object placed under one’s bed or one’s pillow to conjure a snow day, but I do remember doing this once in the hopes of a snow day. I can’t say for sure if it was my having placed the spoon under my bed or Mother Nature, but we did in fact have school canceled the next day…

I actually googled the practice and found several articles as well as some other ways to conjure snow days! For more snow day “magic,” see http://www.grandhaventribune.com/article/strange-grand-haven/265096.

The notion of “conjuring up snow days”, talked about in the article, brings to mind Voodoo. It’s fascinating that magic or voodoo was so looked down on for so long, and even to an extent is now in the very hyper-scientific society in which we live, but that it holds such an important role for people. This again speaks to belief, and how strong it is despite changing times or new scientific discoveries.

Russian Sinus Remedy

Nationality: Russian / American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA, CA
Performance Date: 03/05/15
Primary Language: Russian
Language: English, French, some Hebrew

The informant is a 19-year old student attending the University of California Berkeley. She is majoring in Media Studies and Journalism with a minor in Hebrew. She grew up in West Los Angeles with her two parents, immigrants from the Soviet Union. I mentioned that homeopathic remedies were a form of folklore and she told me about this remedy her mom taught her.

 

Informant: “I got colds a lot when I was a kid, so I remember this one very well. My mom used to take eggs, boil them and then take the warm boiled eggs—two of them—in a towel. You use two because they go on either side of your nose so that your sinuses get released. It’s super weird sounding and it looks funny too. But it works! It actually felt really really nice. It was super comforting.

Interviewer: “Wow, I would never think to do that! But it makes sense.

Informant: “Yea, well Russians had them, the eggs, because chickens were a thing they had. Even in the Soviet Union where there was so much poverty and people had almost nothing. They still had chickens! So I guess this was a way to alleviate sinus pressure when it was cold as hell and people would get sick.”

 

Thoughts:

What the informant said about eggs being something readily available to people in Russia during the time of the Soviet Union makes a lot of sense. Homeopathic remedies from different places often involve plants or food with similar properties, but that grow in different regions, native to whatever area the person giving the remedy is from. This says a lot about the nature of folklore, and once again reminds me of the film, Whose Song is it?, in the variety of folklore concerning one topic, or the variances of a particular piece of folklore.

 

Mexican-Catholic Protection Ritual

Nationality: Latino
Age: 86
Occupation: Retired marriage and family therapist
Residence: Santa Barbara, California
Performance Date: March 14, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“I remember a religious custom which I think my paternal grandmother brought with her from Sonora, Mexico. It utilized a dried palm frond that had been blessed on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Good Friday which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus.

In the New Testament Jesus is described as entering Jerusalem seated on an ass where he was greeted by crowds of people, cheering and waving palm fronds in welcome. Thus was fulfilled the messianic prophecy of Isaiah.

In the religious Mexican folklore I refer to, the dried palm frond blessed on Palm Sunday bore special power. That is, at the onset of a thunder and lightning storm (a sometimes powerful phenomenon in Arizona), a small piece of the palm frond would be burned to ward off any potential lightning strike.

It worked. Our home was never struck by lightning.”

Today, my informant regards this practice as a superstition, rather than a religious practice. Yet, this unusual ritual seems to exemplify the fine line between religious ritual, folk ritual, and superstition. Although not specifically sanctioned by the Catholic Church, this practice was clearly a spiritual experience for my informant’s family, as they believed that the palm frond bestowed their home with divine protection. At the same time, however, this practice seems rather like homeopathic magic–it employs palm fronds due to their association with Jesus in the New Testament.