After waiting in line behind two little Japanese girls and several grown-ups, I shook my fortune stick out of a wooden box today in Kyoto, at Fushimi Inari Taisha, a beautiful temple devoted to Inari spirits.
The number on my stick was “32”–not that I could read it, because the number was written in Japanese. With the help of Kyoto physicist Taichiro Kugo, I got the relevant printed fortune, which turned out to predict “Great, great fortune”! If I am sick (I’m not) then I will get well. If I want to build a house, it’s a good time to start. If I have a dream, that dream will come true. And if I want to go on a journey, it will turn out well. With so much good fortune, I think it must be shared by Frank and me and Taichiro, all three of us!
Not all of the fortune numbers promise good fortunes. Some predict bad ones. But if you get a bad fortune, you can fold the paper up narrowly lengthwise and tie it onto a tree branch or a long string–then the fortune no longer applies to you. If, on the other hand, your fortune is good, then you make it come true by…folding the paper up narrowly lengthwise and tying onto some landmark the very same way.
So I folded my paper and tied it up with great pleasure, remembering the story of Niels Bohr’s office, where he kept an old horseshoe on display. One secular visitor challenged him–“Surely you don’t believe the superstition that a horseshoe will bring you good luck!”
“Of course I don’t believe it,” said Bohr. “But they say it will bring you good luck, not just if you believe it but also if you don’t.”
Update–and here’s photographic evidence…