May You Have My Luck

This chapter offers a treatment of why good luck seems to many people, and as an ancient widespread folk belief has it, to be the very manufactory of bad luck. It takes a look at the apotropaic rituals people undertake not to have their good luck count against them. It also examines why it seems people’s merest wishes and desires provoke the gods to thwart them. The chapter provides an excursus on the negative causal powers people attribute to themselves, what the author calls the narcissism of negativity. The chapter features an extended discussion of hope as opposed to feeling lucky.