Quick Note for Fiction and Folklore Stories: Why is 3 the Magic Number?

(Image thanks to FreeFunArt from Pixabay)

Q: Why is three the lucky number and so important in folktales and in magical tales? 

A: 

1)  Once is an event. 

2)  Twice is a coincidence.

3)  Three times is a pattern. Three is the uncanny number, the lucky number, the pattern can create the magic, the spell: Bibbidy, Bobbidy, Boo! Three magic words, or count to three or three pinches of salt, etc. 

Enboldened words above wre from a personal communication with Dr, Joel Rudinger, Folklorist and Professor Emeretis, Bowling Green State University Firelands. 

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Notes re: #2: 

When two or more things in common happen at once, they happen simultaneously, such as the phone ringing just as you are thinking of someone and it is them. 

Jung called this synchronicity--it is acausal. It sppears to be a coincidence. TFolklore studies do not typically involve Jungian studies but Jungian  psychology studies do often include folklore and fairy tales.

Twice or more is a coincidence in time. It is a simultaneous psychic state between the physical world and the world psyche creating the first sign of psychoid events--the colelctive psyche or world psyche breaks out into the physical world of one or more people witnessing the event. Some religious visions experienced by a small to large crowd that is deemed a spiritual vision or spiritual experience may possibly come under this category of psychoid also, but is not necessarily synchronicity, though perhaps a coincidence. It would be a coincidence if at that moment the people in the crowd were talking about the same thing that the vision that came entailed. 

For a study in the above statements, read Death Dreams and Ghosts by Aniela Jaffe, with a forward by C. G. Jung, of whom she was a student. The book discusses such things that I just put my spin on above. 

All kinds of nuances to this, but in folklore/tales, the action/events are generally general (!), usually kept extremely simple, though I can think of a couple exceptions. In those exceptions, the action in the story is still told simply, but the resulting mental exercise created can become more complex when examining the curious meaning.  The exceptions are when the meaning can be mysterious, complex, sets our minds to pondering.  Another time, I will write about one of those exceptions.