Frangipani flowers are most fragrant at night in order to lure sphinx moths to pollinate them. The flowers have no nectar, and simply dupe their pollinators. The moths inadvertently pollinate them by transferring pollen from flower to flower in their fruitless search for nectar.

They are associated with temples in both Hindu and Buddhist cultures. In local Asian folk beliefs, the plants provide shelter to ghosts. Frangipani are often planted on cemetery grounds Indonesia. Balinese Hindus use the flowers in their temple offerings.

In Hindu mythology there is a saying “The beauty of Champa is compared to Radhika, who is wife of lord Krishna and honey bees are servants of Lord Krishna. This is the reason honey bees don’t sit on the champa flower.”

The only genuine belief today about mistletoe is that anyone who stands under it cannot refuse to be kissed.  Special powers are attributed to it by a wide range of cultures, both within Europe and elsewhere. The use of mistletoe as an all-heal and a cure for impotence is reputed to have a very ancient history. The link between mistletoe and fertility persists to this day in the tradition of kissing underneath bunches of it at Christmas. In the early 19th century, it was traditional for each man who kissed under the mistletoe to remove one berry. Once all the berries were gone, so was the potency.

The Druids regarded anything growing on oak trees as having been sent from heaven. On the rare occasions when mistletoe was found growing on an oak, it would be gathered with great ceremony. A priest in white clothing would cut the mistletoe with a golden sickle and allow it to fall onto a white cloak, and two white bulls would then be sacrificed.

Holly, ivy and mistletoe, plants traditionally associated with Christmas, have had special roles in earlier religions and past cultures. Houses were decorated with evergreens and bunches of holly were given as tokens of friendship. When this festival was absorbed into the Christian calendar, holly and the other evergreens were absorbed as well.

The main areas in which belief comes to play in respect to Christmas decorations are which plants can be used and which are forbidden, when they are put up and taken down, and what happens to them later and whether they should be burnt or not.

Artificial decorations were not introduced until late Victorian times and do not seem to have gathered any beliefs of their own.

The word comes from the Oneiroi, the sons of Hypnos the Greek god of sleep. Usually such dream interpretation is of a prophetic nature as opposed to the modern psychological version whereby dreams are often seen as clues to the present state of the dreamer, as in the scientific field of oneirology.

The interpretation of dreams was particularly prevalent in ancient Egypt where the dreams of the Pharoah were given great prominence. Oneiromancy also occurs in the Christian bible, as when the Magi are told in a dream to avoid Herod on their journey home.

For many cultures in the past, oneiromancy was seen as a science rather than an art. The use of flexible imagery and artistic interpretation is similar to some of the modern psychological approaches to dreams such as Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and archetypes.

The space serves as a microcosm of order because it is known and settled. Outside the boundaries of the Axis Mundi lie foreign realms that, because they are unfamiliar or not ordered, represent chaos, death or night. From the center one may venture in any of the four cardinal directions, make discoveries, and establish new centers as new realms become known and settled.

A universally told story is that of the healer traversing the Axis Mundi to bring back knowledge from the other world. It may be seen in stories from the Garden of Eden and Jacob’s Ladder to Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel. The stories relate the hero’s descent and ascent through a series of structures that take him from the depths of hell to paradise.

Because the Axis Mundi is an idea that unites a number of concrete images, places and landmarks, no contradiction exists regarding multiple spots as the center. The symbol can operate in a number of locales at once. The ancient Greeks regarded several sites as places of centering, notably the oracle at Delphi, while still maintaining a belief in a cosmic world tree and in Mount Olympus.

In Polynesian culture, it is a spiritual quality considered to have supernatural origin, and a sacred impersonal force existing in the universe. Therefore to have mana is to have influence and authority, and the power to perform in a given situation. This essential quality of mana is not limited to people. Government, places and inanimate objects can possess mana.

There are two ways to obtain mana: through birth and through warfare. People or objects that possess mana are accorded respect because their possession of mana gives them authority, power, and prestige. The word’s meaning is complex because mana is a basic foundation of the Polynesian worldview.

Mana is also referred to in the Huna religion as the vital life force which flows through the body. The kahuna believed that there are three different kinds of mana within the body.

Modern fantasy fiction and computer and role-playing games have adopted mana as a term for magic points, an expendable and often rechargable resource out of which magic users form their magical spells.

The meaning of duende  has to do with emotion, expression and authenticity. In fact, duende can be loosely translated as “having soul”. It is the spirit of evocation. It comes from inside as a physical and emotional response to music. It is what gives you chills, makes you smile or cry as a bodily reaction to an artistic performance that is particularly expressive.

Folk music in general, especially flamenco, tends to embody an authenticity that comes from a people whose culture is enriched by diaspora and hardship; vox populi, the human condition of joys and sorrows. It is thus as universal in its meaning as it is immensely personal and culturally contextual by its nature.

To a higher degree than the muse or the angel, duende seizes not only the performer but also the audience, creating conditions where art can be understood spontaneously with little, if any, conscious effort. It is, in Lorca’s words, “a sort of corkscrew that can get art into the sensibility of an audience… the very dearest thing that life can offer the intellectual.”

The participants, the real subjects and the confederates, were all seated in a classroom. They were asked a variety of questions about lines printed on cards, such as how long is line A compared to the an everyday object, which line was longer than the other, which lines were the same length, etc. The group was told to announce their answers to each question out loud.

The confederates always provided their answers before the study participant, and always gave the same answer as each other. They answered a few questions correctly but eventually began providing incorrect responses.

Asch hypothesized that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong. However, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on a high proportion of the questions. Seventy-five percent of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.

Variations of the basic paradigm tested how many confederates were necessary to induce conformity, examining the influence of just 1 confederate and as many as 15 confederates. Results indicate that 1 confederate has virtually no influence and 2 confederates have only a small influence. When 3 or more confederates are present, the tendency to conform is relatively stable.