Also called graveyard rabbit's foot, left hind foot, lucky rabbit foot
In 19th-century American folk magic, the left hind foot of a rabbit, ideally taken in a graveyard, was carried for luck and protection. This entry gives the history and a modern charm that uses no animal parts.
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Take care: This version uses no animal parts. Buckeye nuts are toxic to eat, so keep them away from children and pets.
The most powerful foot was the left hind foot of a rabbit caught in a cemetery, at a dark or full moon or on Friday the 13th, sometimes by a cross-eyed or left-handed person. Ellis argues these 'backward' details were the point: the stranger and more ill-omened the source, the stronger the charm.
Uses: historical only; not recommended
Newspapers reported that Booker T. Washington and the Austrian ambassador swapped overcoats at the White House, and the ambassador found a graveyard rabbit's left hind foot in the pocket. Other papers ran the story without the foot, so it may have been embellished, but it shows how famous the charm had become.
Mass-produced dyed feet on keychains turned the charm into a souvenir. Lucky Mojo notes older charms were undyed and that the dyed kind is a later development. Most were by-products of the fur and meat trade with no ritual at all.
The rabbit's foot charm is documented mainly in 19th-century America. Folklorist Bill Ellis, in Lucifer Ascending (2004), traced it to late 19th-century writings, mostly by white Southern authors describing Black American belief, and showed that by the 1880s feet were sold as trinkets. Some writers link it to the clever rabbit of African American folktales, or to European ideas of witches turning into hares, but neither link is proven. Folklorist Newbell Niles Puckett recorded a story that Grover Cleveland received a foot from a rabbit killed on Jesse James's grave during the 1884 campaign.
In Hoodoo the foot sat beside lodestones, John the Conqueror root and lucky hand root as a gambling and protection piece, sometimes inside a mojo bag. Advertisements played up the graveyard, midnight and dark-moon details, often with no proof at all. Today many people prefer not to carry animal parts, and practitioners commonly swap in herbs, nuts or roots that the same tradition already treats as lucky.
A white clover stem that grew four leaflets instead of three, kept as a charm for good luck. In older British and Irish lore it also let the finder see through fairy glamour.
A small flannel bag holding an odd number of lucky roots, herbs and tokens, tied shut, 'fed' with oil or spirits and carried out of sight. It is the classic Hoodoo way to carry good luck.
A small flannel bag holding a lodestone fed with magnetic sand and a John the Conqueror root, carried to draw money, work and luck. It is a classic charm of African American Hoodoo.
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