In West Africa, the hare is a trickster, not necessarily a uniformly “good” figure. And so it remained a major part of what’s variously called Hoodoo or Conjure, referring to the type of spirituality that evolved from the slave trade moving Africans to the US. The rabbit had an important place in West African folklore, same as it did in Mexico and China and Brittany, though in Africa any rabbity folklore likely referred to the very common African savannah hare rather than the relatively uncommon species of rabbit that inhabit various parts of Africa. By the 1880s, rabbit’s feet were a popular trinket to purchase in places such as New Orleans.

It first shows up in published writings in the late 19th century, primarily by Southern white writers anthropologically discussing the beliefs of black America. In fact, the documented history of the rabbit’s foot starts much, much later, very far away: 19th century America.īill Ellis, in his book Lucifer Ascending, traces back what we know about this iteration of the rabbit’s foot charm. That isn’t to say that the Iron Age Celts or Qin Dynasty Chinese didn’t believe in the protective power of the rabbit’s foot, only that we don’t have many stories saying so. More on the hare later this week!)īut this recognition doesn’t necessarily align with the specific history of the rabbit’s foot amulet, and actual historical evidence of it is pretty scarce.

The island Celts would instead have known about the hare, which nests … above-ground. Fun! But the rabbit, though it would have been known to the Celts in mainland Europe, wasn’t introduced to the British Isles until, at the earliest, 100 or 200 AD, by the Romans. Their situation is pretty confusing many sources identify the rabbit as a luck talisman in Celtic Europe as early as 600 BC, often attributing this status to the rabbit’s habit of nesting underground, and thus closer to benevolent spirits. (You might have notice I didn’t mention the Celts. Throughout Africa (and now North America, thanks to the influence of the slave trade), the rabbit has a trickster status: wily, evasive and clever. In China, thanks to its prodigious aptitude for breeding, it’s associate with fertility. In Japan and the Aztec Empire, people noticed that certain dark spots on the moon are shaped like a rabbit, causing members of those civilizations to begin associating the creature with the moon. The rabbit, being easy to spot and found pretty much everywhere, has a special place in much of the world’s folklore. Why the foot? It was thought that to create a totem of good luck, you have to basically do everything according to existing norms of bad luck.

Are rabbit feet lucky