Wishing traditions around the world

Written down and hung up

In Japan, ema are small wooden plaques sold at shrines and temples. You write a wish on the back, hang it on a rack with hundreds of others, and leave it there. The name means picture-horse: they descend from the practice of donating a real horse to a shrine, which not everyone could afford, so a painted one stood in.

The same instinct appears wherever people write and tie: prayer flags in the Himalaya releasing their text into the wind as they fray, wishes tied to fences at shrines across Korea and Taiwan, notes pushed into the cracks of walls. The written wish is the most durable form — it stays legible, sometimes for years, and it is the only kind a stranger can read.

Floated and set adrift

At Loy Krathong in Thailand, small rafts of banana leaf carrying a candle, incense and a coin are floated on rivers and lakes in November, both to honour the water and to send away the past year's misfortune. Watching your krathong drift out of sight is the point; if the candle stays lit, it is a good sign.

Floating lanterns, river lamps at Indian festivals, paper boats — the family is large. Its distinguishing feature is duration. A thrown coin is gone instantly; a floated wish takes minutes to leave, and you watch the whole departure.

Where these have become mass tourist events there is a real environmental cost, and the better-run versions now insist on materials that break down.

Burned, blown and snapped

Birthday candles are the wishing ritual almost everyone in the world has performed. Blow them all out in one breath, silently, and do not tell anyone. It has the full structure: a constraint, a silence, a moment that cannot be repeated.

The wishbone is older and stranger. Two people pull the furcula of a bird until it snaps; whoever holds the larger piece has their wish. The practice reaches modern English-speaking countries from Roman divination by way of a long chain of superstition, and it is one of the few wishing rituals with a loser.

Blowing the seeds off a dandelion clock, throwing a fallen eyelash, wishing on the first star, and wishing on a shooting star all belong here — free, spontaneous, unbounded by any site.

Tied, nailed and locked

Clootie wells in Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall take strips of cloth tied to the branches around a holy spring, often for healing. The rag is meant to rot; as it decays, the ailment is supposed to fade with it. Where visitors now tie synthetic fabric that never breaks down, the ritual has quietly stopped working on its own terms.

Coin trees — fallen trunks in the British countryside with coins hammered edge-first into the wood — are a related idea in metal, still being added to by people who have no idea how the custom started.

Love locks on bridges are the newest member of the family and the most contested. They are a genuine folk practice, adopted worldwide within a couple of decades, and cities keep removing them because tonnes of steel on a parapet is a structural problem. Paris cleared the Pont des Arts railings in 2015 after a section collapsed under the weight.

Given at a threshold

The Japanese saisen box, the Thai bowls at Wat Pho, the alms bowl, the collection plate: rituals where the offering is made at the boundary of a sacred place rather than into water. The gift is small, the gesture is formal, and the request is silent.

These sit closest to the fountain tradition, and it is not a coincidence. A fountain basin, a temple gate and a spring enclosed behind stone are all the same architectural idea — a place where you stop, hand something over, and are briefly not just passing through.

What they all have in common

In every case: something small is given up irreversibly, a constraint makes the moment deliberate, the wish is not spoken aloud, and the giver walks away without checking.

The materials are local — leaves, wax, cloth, bone, brass, steel — but the grammar is identical everywhere anyone has looked. That is the most interesting fact in this entire guide.

Questions people ask

What is an ema?

A small wooden plaque sold at Japanese shrines and temples. You write a wish on it and hang it on a rack. The name means picture-horse, from the older practice of donating a horse to a shrine.

Why do cities remove love locks?

Weight. Thousands of padlocks add up to tonnes on a railing that was not designed for it. Paris removed the Pont des Arts locks in 2015 after part of the parapet gave way.

Is there a wishing tradition that costs nothing?

Several. Birthday candles, shooting stars, dandelion seeds and the wishbone all require no money, and the Charles Bridge ritual in Prague asks only that you put your hand on bronze.

Keep reading

• Rome, Italy

  The Trevi Fountain, Rome

  The most famous wishing fountain on earth, and the one that fixed the rules everyone else copies: right hand, left shoulder, back to the water.

• Florence, Italy

  Il Porcellino, Florence

  A bronze boar with a snout polished gold by four centuries of hands, and a coin trick that only counts if the money falls through the grate.

• Bath, England

  The Sacred Spring at Bath

  Before wishing fountains there were sacred springs. The one at Bath gave up twelve thousand Roman coins — and a hundred letters to a goddess.