I’ve been reading r/threekings all day and it’s got me thinking
despite some of the very imaginative fake provenances on there, most of the rituals are modern. that doesn’t mean they can’t be real, but it’s interesting to me to note the difference between modern folk rituals and traditional ones
for one thing, most traditional rituals don’t involve summoning a potentially harmful entity. few Puritans ever questioned what made the egg-in-water or the sieve and scissors work; they might have said the Holy Spirit, or the devil if they disapproved. certain rituals were fueled by saints, such as the one on Saint Agnes’ Eve that’s meant to make you dream of your future spouse. later, in the 19th or early 20th centuries, they might have simply said it was magic and left it at that
the potential rewards are different, too. in the past, fortune-telling or divination rituals were often used for answers about one’s marital prospects. the egg-in-water was meant to reveal a future husband’s occupation; I Wind, Who Holds? would reveal a true love’s appearance. modern rituals often seem to have no reward but survival and having learned that the supernatural is real and exist more often for the thrill of being scared. when there is a reward, it’s either a material thing or, often, some deeper knowledge of yourself or the universe. some modern rituals promise to connect the successful adventurer to a god or other higher entity with understanding beyond our own. there are a few constants, like rituals to speak to beloved dead, but overall modern rituals seem to be more focused on abstract learning and experiences while traditional ones deal more with mundane, concrete aspects of one’s future
the danger involved has also changed. from a tradition of folk magic where the worst one could expect to happen was seeing a coffin in the egg yolk or a skull in the mirror (signifying a premature death), we’ve moved into a climate where a misstep or failed ritual could actively cause death. certainly there have always been anxieties around folk rituals- witness the fateful egg-in-water game that preceded the Salem panic -but concern that your god frowns on divination is a far cry from games like Midnight Man where you actively summon a malevolent entity into your house. do a step of the key in the Bible wrong and it won’t work; do a step of a modern ritual wrong and you might get stabbed by a doll or trapped in the back of a supernatural cab. as the rewards have become more intellectualized, the stakes have gone up in a big way
modern rituals are more of an event, something for daredevils and the desperate. in the past, you might use the sieve and scissors to locate a lost piece of jewelry, or other rituals for similarly everyday purposes. nowadays, playing these games takes time, preparation, and a lot of nerve. they involve intricate steps and specific items, in contrast to the relatively simple historical rituals that made use of household objects
finally, it’s interesting to me that I haven’t seen anyone on this sub-reddit posting about traditional rituals. one could argue that the sieve and scissors, egg-in-water, or the key in the Bible have more in common with Tarot reading than deliberate rituals with steps and thus those don’t count. but later traditions like I Wind, Who Holds? or the stairs and mirror game share the basic shape of their elaborate modern cousins. are these rituals simply too boring for modern audiences, who grew up on a steady diet of horror literature and expect more excitement? is it more to do with the way our ambitions, desires, and concerns have changed (marriage having become more of an option than a necessity)? is it simply that people don’t know they exist?
I can’t answer any of these questions. I just find the contrast very interesting
