Description
- The lucky elephant charm is a deliberate bit of cultural exoticism found in America and Europe. Historically linked to to the era of British colonialism in India, it entered popular culture folk-magic during the late 19th century and probably reached its apotheosis in the 1930s, when lucky elephant charms and knick-knacks were all the rage in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
- The origins of the lucky elephant charm can be found in the Hindu religion of India. There, the god Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Siva and Parvati, is worshipped as an opener of the way and luck-god. Ganesha has his own iconography in India, and his best-known symbol is the swastika, which was also popular as a luck-symbol in America.
- Elephant charms and lucky elephant figurines are still made and used, but their popularity is currently on the wane. One reason for this may be that the much-publicized endangered-species status of the elephant makes it seem anything but "lucky" in the modern world.
- American fascination with the lucky elephant-god of India and the white elephants of Thailand combined in the form of the ubiquitous lucky elephant knick-knack. In typical American fashion, it was decreed that only those elephant figurines with their trunks upraised were lucky.
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Elephants have been revered in Thailand for many centuries. Famous as the strongest beasts of burden, in Thailand they were important in battle, with kings mounted on Elephants fighting the Burmese to defend Thailand on many occasions. They have also been noted for their intelligence, memory and pleasant nature. A Thai legend has it that a marriage is like an elephant-- the husband is the front legs, that choose the direction, the wife the back legs, providing the power !
