FolkBelief.org publishes reference material about documented folk beliefs, superstitions, omens, customs, taboos, traditional sayings, divination practices, and related folklore.
Our editorial approach places particular importance on context. A belief should not be assigned to an entire country, culture, or historical period merely because one source recorded it there.
Documenting Beliefs
Articles are built around identifiable beliefs or closely related groups of variants. We aim to state clearly what action, sign, object, event, or circumstance is involved and what meaning was attached to it in the available record.
Where several documented versions exist, their differences may be described rather than forcing them into one standardized rule.
Distinguishing Folklore From Fact
Supernatural claims and traditional predictions are presented as beliefs, not established facts.
A historical statement that an itchy hand was associated with money, for example, documents a folk interpretation. It does not establish that itching predicts financial events.
Medical, scientific, psychological, and natural explanations should not be replaced by folklore where factual explanation is required.
Geographic Accuracy
Location labels are used as narrowly as the evidence permits.
A belief documented in one village, state, province, county, ethnic community, religious community, occupational group, or folklore collection should not automatically be described as a belief of an entire country.
Broader geographic language may be used when multiple records genuinely support a wider distribution.
Historical Context
Dates and historical sources help establish when a belief was recorded, but the date of a written record is not necessarily the date when a tradition began.
We avoid presenting the earliest source currently known to us as the absolute origin unless the evidence actually supports that conclusion.
Variants and Contradictions
Folklore frequently contradicts itself. One tradition may regard an event as lucky while another interprets the same event as dangerous or unlucky.
These differences are not automatically errors. When supported by reliable documentation, contradictory variants are part of the historical record and may be presented together.
Sources
Preference is given to identifiable folklore collections, academic publications, archival material, historical books, journals, museums, libraries, universities, cultural institutions, and other sources that allow the belief and its context to be evaluated.
Secondary references may be useful for orientation, but extraordinary or highly specific claims require stronger support than a repeated unsourced statement on the web.
Corrections and Updates
Pages may be revised when stronger documentation becomes available, when geographic attribution needs to be narrowed, when a source has been misunderstood, or when an article can more accurately distinguish separate variants.
Confirmed factual mistakes are corrected rather than preserved for consistency with an earlier version.