Methodology & Sources

What "origin evidence" means on this site

Every omen page carries an origin-evidence rating: traceable, likely, disputed, or unknown. Traceable means we can point to a specific documented source — a named historical text, a dated event, or an attested cultural practice. Likely means the evidence points strongly in one direction without a single clean citation. Disputed means credible sources genuinely disagree. Unknown means the belief has no traceable first source at all, which is common and completely normal for folklore that spread through oral tradition for centuries before anyone wrote it down.

Why every omen page has a "what different cultures say" section

Superstition isn't one global system — it's hundreds of independent local traditions, some of which happen to land on the same symbol (a black cat, a broken mirror, a particular number) and read it in completely different, sometimes opposite, ways. We treat that cultural variation as required content on every page, not an optional extra, because leaving it out would misrepresent how folklore actually works.

How we choose which cultures to cover

We cover a fixed set of ten broad cultural/regional traditions across the site — East Asian, South Asian, Latin American, Mediterranean, Slavic, Celtic, Middle Eastern, African traditions, North American folk, and Norse/Germanic — chosen for having well-documented, genuinely distinct superstition traditions with real sources available, not to be an exhaustive list of every culture on earth. We're upfront that this is a starting set, and we plan to add more as we can research them properly rather than covering them thinly.

What we do when the history is thin or contested

Some popular "explanations" for a superstition are folk etymology — plausible-sounding stories that spread because they're satisfying, not because they're documented. Where we can identify that pattern (a widely repeated origin claim that doesn't hold up against the actual historical record), we say so directly on the page rather than repeating the popular version uncritically.

How we test a weather or behavioral claim

A handful of omens — mostly in our weather-lore category — make a claim that's actually testable against real meteorology, biology, or psychology. Where that's true, we check the claim against the current science rather than treating every folk rhyme as equally valid or equally silly, and we say plainly when a widely repeated belief doesn't hold up (cows lying down before rain, for instance) alongside the ones that genuinely do (a ring around the moon often preceding a weather front).

Corrections and updates

Folklore research is never fully finished — new sources surface, and traditions we cover thinly at launch sometimes deserve a deeper second pass. When we substantially revise a page, we update its date and, where the correction is significant, note what changed rather than silently swapping the claim.