Superstitious beliefs are found in lot of places and I have drawn five illustrations about this theme which was exhibited at UNIONMALL Bangkok from 25 Mar - 25 Jun 2023
"Lotto"
Here we have lottery drawing on the 1st day and on the 16th of the month. You can buy lottery everywhere.. from seller on streets or online. There will be random number for to choose. I rarely buy lottery but when I do I just choose random numbers. I won a small price once when I was 4 years old. It was about 100 dollars.
Where do people get the number they want in their mind?
- dream.. Like my aunt, when she dreamed about numbers she will buy lottery.
- some incident... Such as if your car got hit (a little accident on the road) you might buy your license plate number.
- dream.. Like my aunt, when she dreamed about numbers she will buy lottery.
- some incident... Such as if your car got hit (a little accident on the road) you might buy your license plate number.
And other way which I'm not an expert.
Here is Kajon selling lottery and Lui is praying for the first prize while Bo is choosing the number he saw from his dream.
"Palmistry"
Palmistry is a branch of fortune telling by looking at lines of your palm and fingerprints and did you know? Koala have fingerprints that looks very similar to us! If not an expert, the Koala prints can be mistaken as human's print.
So I guess Bo is the only on among his friend's to use the palm-reading service?
"Maneki-neko"
'Im sure many of you must have seen the Maneki-neko aka 'beckoning cat' when walked into shops. It is a lucky cat which will bring luck and fortune but what's the story behind it?
There is an interesting article on the National Geographic website by Rebecca Suanders about the origin of the cat. Follow the link below if you want to dig deeper.
As I read, there are two main stories of where the Maneki-neko comes from.
One, the regional ruler was saved from a lightning because there was a cat beckoned him inside the temple. He was blessed and made it patron to the temple as the cat brings luck.
Two, there was an old lady who was very poor. She couldn't no longer feed the cat and had to let it go. Later she dreamed about the cat saying to her that if she build the cat figure, it will bring luck to her. So she did and the ceramic cats was very popularly sold.
Anyway, the beckoning cat can be dated back in the Edo period (1603–1868).
To keep the fortune coming to your shops and businesses you have to keep the cat clean. 😉
"This car is red"
but wait, it's a purple truck.
Here in Thailand, some cars sticked a sticker in Thai translated in English as "This car is red" even the car is purple. "This car is blue" even the car is yellow etc. Some taken it as a joke but some taken it as a superstitious act. Basically, the belife is that the bad spirit won't be able to get to you because they will be confused that the color of the car is not accurate as what the sticker says... So bad spirit will be like.. "wait, I plan to follow a guy in the blue car but the sticker says its yellow... wahttt??"
