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Chami-La

If one believes they are in imminent danger or after a percieved faux-pas, they might perform this simple ritual to dispel ill fates, social and otherwise.   The gesture is performed by touching your own forehead with a finger then waving the hand in a circle while grasping at the air, then closing the hand and tossing an invisible thing away.   It is meant to represent clearing a sticky thread of spiderweb away from the face, and disposing of it. It is a reassuring gesture to those in times of great stress, and can be seen sometimes also as a sign of good luck.

History

Once seen on the colorful and clean schoolyard of the first colonists, which had a strange attraction to perfectly harmless, though annoying spiders that would often spin webs across the playground equipment. Children would wave thier hand over their faces after encountering one of the invisible sticky threads. Eventually they would wave their hand in front of thier faces even before playing on the equipment. Later on, during the cataclysm, many of these children, now young adults, adopted the behavior unthinkingly in an atonomous gesture. Over time, it was codified as a way to dispel evil spirits or bad luck.

Execution

Touch yourself in the middle of the forehead, then grasp about your face as if collecting an invisiblle spider web. Then, toss it away toward the ground while saying "Chami-la, Chami-la". Once is enough to last a few hours. Multiple repetitions of the ritual in a short period is said to negate the effect so it is encouraged to use this sparingly.

Participants

Any time someone is afraid or to wish extra good luck, they can perform the ritual by themselves, although it has happened that groups perform the ritual  together if undertaking a dangerous task as a group.

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Comments

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Aug 3, 2022 09:49 by Sailing Ocelot

This is a very interesting tradition, I like how it involves body language, and you've also described the actions well.   It might be worth investigating changing the overall worldanvil layout, as I cannot read the text very well and had to highlight it in order to read it. It'd be a real pity if folks can't read your work!

~~~~~~~~ SailingOcelot