Beans, Magic, Fortunes!
Prosperity wisdom from one of the world's most humble foods
Miei car’amici1, it's time to set your fortunes! Like many cultures, in my Italian-American house we are preparing a traditional New Year’s dish to bring us prosperity and good luck. Ours is in the form of lentils, which are shaped just like little gold coins. Perhaps you and yours have a New Year’s good-luck custom too?
If not, maybe now is a good time to pick one up.
Many of us have prosperity on our minds as we enter the coming year. These are, indeed, tough times. Most are spread thin, and worried about being spread thinner!
Since we could all use a little more luck, now is the perfect time to celebrate one of the world’s simplest, most powerful tools for good fortune— the humble bean.
In the English-speaking West, Jack and the Beanstalk is likely the most famous lucky-bean tale about a poor boy who trades his family cow for magic beans. When his distraught mother throws them out the window, they sprout overnight into a skyhigh beanstalk. Slipping past his sleeping mother, Jack climbs it and finds himself in the Land of Giants.
Through bravery and cunning, he steals a giant’s fortune and escapes down the stalk with the very angry giant in close pursuit. Once his feet touch the ground, Jack quickly cuts down the stalk, and the giant falls to his death. Safe and newly wealthy, Jack and his mother live the rest of their days in peace and happiness.
This sort of bean magic circles the world.
The hero may make their way up a beanstalk like Jack, or the magic may take a different form. In Ethiopia, a poor farmer climbs a beanstalk to the Sky Kingdom where he faces many challenges and returns with treasure for his family. A Russian woman’s journey up the stalk brings her magical aid to defeat a greedy landlord. Meanwhile in Cherokee and Chinese cultures, magic beans planted during drought provide bountiful harvests that save entire villages from starvation.
Yes, miei car’amici, the little bean has played a big part in humanity’s prosperity magic.
And for good reason— our humble friend has often stood in between us humans and death. Talk about a mighty protector and bringer of good luck.
In everyday reality, beans do seem to carry slightly magical properties. They can do what many other food crops cannot— improve the soil as they grow. Through a cooperative relationship with bacteria, beans pull nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, from the air and make it available in the ground.
In addition to this superpower, beans are generally easy to grow, many varieties produce high-yields, and quite of few are drought resistant. They can be eaten fresh or left to dry and save, like coins in a jar.
Yes, our beans are full of magic. Around the world, folk tellings have picked up on their transformative ability to enrich the ground and grow abundance out of thin air.