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EveryJaadu

Folk and village custom: magic in this belief world

Rural and household beliefs that belong to no single organised religion.

Folk and village custom is the large body of belief and practice that belongs to no organised religion: the charm against the evil eye, the cure for warts, the fairy hawthorn, the household spirit, the lucky day. It is passed within families and communities and exists in every society. This page looks at how it is kept, who keeps it, and why it is both valued and dismissed. It is also called popular religion, vernacular religion or lived religion by scholars.

Keepers and settings

Keepers are often older women, farmers, midwives, shepherds and craftsmen. Settings are the house, field, well, crossroads and church porch. European cunning folk offered help for fees and kept charms and books. In many Asian and African villages the specialist is a healer, a diviner or a spirit medium working beside religion. The same grandmother may light a candle at church, tie a thread on a child and say a charm for a burn, and see no conflict between them.

Names and labels

The same thing carries many names: the evil eye is the nazar, mal de ojo and ayin hara. Folklorists collected such customs from the nineteenth century, sometimes as relics of a vanished past and sometimes as living culture. The label folk also marks class, since the term often implies rural, poor or uneducated, a bias that modern scholars try to avoid. Where the village has a wise woman or a bone-setter, the community knows what to ask of her and what she will refuse to do.

Religion, state and reform

Churches, mosques and temples have absorbed, tolerated and condemned folk practice in turn. States have banned it as backward: Chinese campaigns against superstition in the twentieth century closed local temples and shrines, and Soviet policy targeted village healers. At times governments have turned to it as national heritage, as in revived festivals across Europe and Asia. Historians and folklorists note that it often keeps old customs alive within newer religions, such as lighting fires at midsummer within Christian saints' days.

Change and commerce

Urban life and migration thin out folk knowledge, while heritage projects and the internet gather it. Customs reappear as products, such as protective charms in shops and festival tourism. Some folk practice carries harm: village accusation of witchcraft, treatments that delay medical care, and fees charged to relieve fear. Illness needs real medical care. In places with active heritage movements, folk custom has become a source of pride, and young people record songs and cures from grandparents before they are lost.

Folk and village custom on EveryJaadu

The entries written up so far, best known first.

RegionSouth AsiaSoutheast AsiaEast AsiaCentral Asia and the CaucasusMiddle EastNorth AfricaSub-Saharan AfricaEuropeNorth AmericaLatin America and the CaribbeanOceania
KindTraditionRiteCharmOracleSubstanceBeingFigureTextIllusionBelief
PurposeProtectionHealingSeeing and foretellingLuck and prosperityLove and attractionCursing and harmCleansing and purificationSpeaking with spirits and the deadChange and initiationBinding and oathsPower and authorityWonder and entertainment
WhoShamansFolk healersPriests and ritual specialistsWitches, sorcerers and cunning folkDiviners and readersMediums and the possessedCeremonial magicians and alchemistsHouseholds and ordinary peopleStage magiciansScholars and sceptics
OccasionWeddings and betrothalFestivalsBirth and childhoodDeath and remembranceHarvest, farming and weatherNew yearInitiation and coming of ageIllness and misfortuneJourneys and voyagesEveryday use
StandingLivingRevivedFadingHistoricalLegendaryPerformed
OrderBest knownA to ZNewestLiving first
馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 4 moreFortune-telling A practice of predicting future events or personal details through various methods and tools.Rite 路 Seeing and foretelling 路 Power and authority Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 4 moreRainmaking Efforts to induce rain through technology, ritual, or prayer.Tradition 路 Protection 路 Healing Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 5 moreFriday the 13th A Western superstition marking a specific calendar date as unlucky.Belief 路 Luck and prosperity Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 1 morePunxsutawney Phil A groundhog who serves as the central figure in an annual American weather prediction festival.Belief 路 Seeing and foretelling 路 Wonder and entertainment Living 馃嚚馃嚘 Canada and 1 moreTotemdoodem A spirit or symbol linking a group to nature, from Ojibwe clan systems to Australian kinshipBelief 路 Speaking with spirits and the dead 路 Power and authority Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 1 moreGroundhog DayGrund'sau d氓k A North American custom using a burrowing rodent to forecast the end of winterTradition 路 Seeing and foretelling 路 Luck and prosperity Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 7 moreSatanic panic A moral panic over unsubstantiated claims of Satanic cults abusing children in the late twentieth centuryBelief 路 Cursing and harm Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesBloody Mary A mirror ritual to summon a spirit that reveals the future or brings harmBelief 路 Seeing and foretelling 路 Cursing and harm Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesCurse of Tippecanoe An urban legend linking US presidential deaths to election years ending in zero.Belief 路 Cursing and harm Fading 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesCurse of the Bambino A sports superstition linking a long championship drought to a player saleBelief 路 Luck and prosperity Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 1 moreJinx A curse or attribute believed to attract bad luckBelief 路 Cursing and harm Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 5 moreFriday the 13th A Western superstition marking a specific calendar date as unluckyBelief 路 Cursing and harm Living 馃嚘馃嚭 Australia and 2 moreTheatrical superstitions Beliefs and rituals among actors to avoid bad luck and ward off spiritsBelief 路 Protection 路 Luck and prosperity Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 5 moreFriday the 13th A Western superstition that a specific calendar alignment brings misfortuneBelief 路 Cursing and harm Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 4 moreTooth fairy A childhood figure who exchanges lost baby teeth for gifts or coins.Figure 路 Luck and prosperity Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesAshtar A channeled extraterrestrial figure central to mid-century American ufology and New Age spiritualityBeing 路 Speaking with spirits and the dead 路 Seeing and foretelling Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesNew England vampire panic A folk response to tuberculosis involving the exhumation and burning of organsBelief 路 Protection 路 Healing Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 2 moreFlying Africans A legend of enslaved people returning to Africa by magic flightFigure 路 Cursing and harm 路 Speaking with spirits and the dead Legendary 馃嚝馃嚠 Finland and 1 moreKy枚pelinvuori A Finnish mountain where dead women are said to gather after deathBelief Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesBelled buzzard A folklore omen of disaster, depicted as a vulture wearing a bellBelief 路 Cursing and harm Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesMoll Dyer A Maryland folktale about a woman accused of witchcraft and her cursed stoneFigure 路 Cursing and harm 路 Protection Legendary 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesCurse of Rocky Colavito A baseball superstition linking a 1960 player trade to decades of team failureBelief 路 Luck and prosperity Historical 馃嚡馃嚨 Japan and 1 moreChain letterFukou no Tegami A message that demands copying and forwarding to avoid bad luck or gain fortuneBelief 路 Luck and prosperity 路 Cursing and harm Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesStamping A childhood gesture believed to capture luck from specific animals or objectsBelief 路 Luck and prosperity Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United StatesJewett City vampires A 19th-century New England family's belief in undead plague and their violent response to it.Belief 路 Protection Historical 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 3 more11:11 A clock time believed to signal spiritual alignment or synchronicity in numerology and New Age thoughtBelief 路 Wonder and entertainment 路 Power and authority Living 馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 1 moreBaskerville effect A theory that superstition about unlucky numbers causes heart attacks through stressBelief 路 Cursing and harm Historical

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

The weekly digest

Every Monday: seven entries you may not know, what is on the calendar this week, and one rite drawn step by step.