The Paradox of the Lucky Rabbit's Foot: Using Bad Omens to Create Good Luck

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A woman kissing her lucky rabbit's foot, circa 1955. (Photo by Jacobsen /Three Lions/Getty Images)

In the list of traditional lucky charms or tokens, the rabbit foot ranks up there with four-leaf clovers and horseshoes, but it's considerably more macabre. Why did people start carrying severed rabbit limbs around in the first place? The answer is much more complicated than one would think. While rabbits have long been cherished by cultures around the world, the rabbit's foot talisman comes to us via African-American slaves in the 19th-century American South. According to folklore, as many bad luck symbols as possible must align to make the rabbit's foot a powerful token of good luck.