Tibbar magic is a term that originated in the fictional world of "Star Wars." In the expanded universe of the franchise, Tibbar magic refers to a type of magic practiced by the native inhabitants of the planet Tibbar. These people possess a unique connection to the Force, which allows them to tap into its mystical powers and perform supernatural feats. Tibbar magic is deeply rooted in the spiritual beliefs and practices of the Tibbar people. It is said that their connection to the Force is so strong that they are able to harness its energy and bend it to their will. This enables them to manipulate the physical world, communicate with spirits, and even foresee future events.

Saying Rabbit, Rabbit | The Luck of the English

What does “Rabbit, Rabbit!” mean? Why do people say “Rabbit!” on the first day of each month? Read on to learn about this slightly superstitious tradition.

By Edie Clark

Mar 01 2022

Do you say rabbit rabbit on the first day of the month?

Today is the first day of the month and Rabbit! was the first word spoken in this house. Have you ever wondered why people say Rabbit! or Rabbit, Rabbit! on this day?

Why do people say “Rabbit, Rabbit!” on the first day of the month?

I grew up thinking that our family was the only family with this strange tradition. On the morning of the first day of every month, there was a slow chorus in our house, from room to room, the word “Rabbit” was spoken one and then another until we had all been granted our month’s worth of good luck. In my mind, my grandmother was the originator of the tradition, and it extended to all my aunts and uncles and cousins on my father’s side of the family. My mother was complicit so I didn’t realize it was not her tradition, growing up, but rather something she adopted once she married my father. The superstition was that if you forgot to say rabbit, spoken as the first word on the first day of the month, you would have bad luck that month. Now that I have written that down, I realize how spooky it sounds, as if we were a bunch of paleolithic cave people, clinging to the earth by virtue of luck and whimsy. Whenever I mentioned this custom to friends, they would usually ask me where that came from. My only answer was “from my grandmother,” which, of course, is the short answer. Beyond that, I had no idea. More recently, I’ve discovered a few friends who also indulge in this strange habit, one who not only says Rabbit every month but who also collects rabbit figurines of all sizes and of all material, paper and stone not excluded. Another who feels that one must say the word twice, as in, Rabbit, Rabbit, for the luck to stick. But no one can explain to me why we say Rabbit and where the tradition came from. This morning, I woke up and spoke the word to the silence around me. And finally realized that in this new world of instant information, I finally have the means to answer that question. I went directly to my computer and Googled “rabbit+first day of the month” and up came a variety of sites that referred to this strange habit. That validated me right there. According to the Wikipedia entry, the origin of this custom in unknown but it can be traced back to perhaps the 15th century, maybe even the 13th — good heavens! And it came from England, which makes sense since that is where my grandmother’s family came from. The reasons for the word Rabbit (as opposed to Luck! Or Help! Or Hello! — it seems that any nonsense word would probably do the trick) aren’t particularly clear (they link it to a lucky rabbit’s foot but then you have to ask, what is so lucky about a rabbit’s foot?) but the entry continues to say that one reason for the word Rabbit might be that “it is jumping into the future and moving ahead with life and happiness.” It is ironic to me that both my grandmother and my father, in fact, their entire family, were possessed of the notion that they were unlucky, that fortune did not favor them. They were badly affected by the Depression and further by World War II and so perhaps the idea of saying Rabbit had a particular resonance and force for them. They were devoted to the ritual. The tradition was extended on the first day of the new year, which called for walking backwards down the stairs and saying Rabbit at the same time. I remember an especially hilarious evening spent with my cousins on Cape Cod, not so long ago. I was visiting them at their beach house which had a treacherous set of wooden stairs that lead to the ocean. It was New Year’s Eve and particularly blustery outside but their house being a kind of one-story bungalow, did not have any stairs. And so we all trooped outside into the cold and inky darkness and walked backward down the steps toward the ocean, shouting Rabbit into the stiff ocean breeze. Fortunately, there wasn’t anyone to witness this spectacle and we all made it to the sand safely, laughing hysterically at our irrational claim to this family tradition. I don’t remember if that year was any different from any other, in terms of luck or no luck. For that matter, once I say the word at the beginning of the month, I tend to forget the whole thing. I don’t subscribe to the idea that we need to perform ritual in order to call fortune into our lives. But I do believe I should honor my family and maybe this is how I do it. At this late date in the family history, it would seem sacrilegious to abandon this tradition. And so I keep on. And delight when I find another soul who has carried this old superstition into the 21st century. And to all, I say, Rabbit! Do you say “Rabbit, Rabbit!” on the first of the month? Have you ever wondered “What does ‘Rabbit, Rabbit’ mean?” Let us know! This post was first published in 2008 and has been updated.

Tibbar! Tibbar!

Rabbits have been associated with luck for two millennia. Some believe that saying Rabbit, Rabbit on the first of the month will be a harbinger of good fortune. But, if one forgets to say it on the first, saying it backwards,Tibbar Tibbar, at your first opportunity will re-set one’s luck. Whew! Forwards or backwards, I am promoting the hope that our good fortunes will prevail.

November was National Adoption Awareness Month. What does that mean to me as an adoptee, adoptive parent and clinician? It means that it is complicated. I cherish the gift of my adoptive family. I am sad that I have not reunited with my birth family. I feel blessed to provide mental health interventions for the new generations of fostered and adoptees. I am angry that 26,000 inter-country adoptees have been denied US Citizenship. I struggle with the ongoing effort to make Original Birth Certificates available to all adoptees. I honor those who Flip the Script.

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Rabbit! Rabbit!: Why some Arkansans greet each Day One by beckoning bunnies to ensure good luck

Dan Ostermiller’s sculpture RB Monument turns its tail to traffic on Kavanaugh Boulevard in Little Rock.

Lift the eyelids, one at a time. Behold: the dawn of a new year, no mistakes in it yet.

Squint, if necessary.

Some people say, "Rabbit, rabbit" — to the ceiling or the mirror or to first person they meet. Or they pretend it's the first thing they've said by making it the first thing they post to social media.

This custom is not of recent invention, nor does it appear to have originated in Arkansas. It is folklore of foggy origin, likely English or more generally European.

Neva Barker was in high school in the early 1970s when she learned about saying "rabbit, rabbit" or "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" on the first day of the month for good luck. A teacher or other students at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock got her started doing it.

She doesn't recall whether it was in Mme. Theresa Simon Grillo's French class or Karen Flake's English class, because when she remembers to say or post "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" she also remembers the French for rabbit, "lapin."

"My memory was that we said, 'Lapin, lapin, lapin' in class, but maybe I added the third one, like birthday spankings with one to grow on," says Barker, who is director of international study programs at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. "For some reason it caught my fancy, and I have tried to remember to say it first thing at the first of every month."

Why? Most of the time, simply because it makes her happy. But "on occasion it makes me feel relief to remember to say it.

"Relief comes from the feeling that, anything that goes wrong that month, it will not be because I forgot to say, 'Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.'"

She thinks it's comforting to believe in magic. "It is the less tyrannical version of picking a set of lottery numbers that have personal meaning to you and then feeling pressure to buy a ticket with those numbers every time because what if those numbers eventually win?"

While growing up in North Little Rock, Barker's former classmate Mary Engel said two rabbits — not three — on the first day of the month, for luck. "I did (and, um, still do) . And, OK, truth be told, I say, 'Bunny, bunny.'" Her mother embroidered a little bunny on her flannel sheet, to help her remember. And she developed her own mythology, that the bunnies should be spoken on New Year's Day, the first day of one's birth month and the month in which Easter occurs.

A staff writer for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Fred Hutch News Service in Seattle, Engel likes getting to the bottom of things. A few years ago, she noticed a friend had posted "Rabbit, rabbit" on Facebook, and "became obsessed" with where it came from. This was before the Wikipedia page that today is a primary source for endlessly aggregated news reports.

A little Googling took her to a Trixie Belden novel, The Mystery of the Emeralds (Golden Press, 1965), part of a popular detective series aimed at ages 8 to 12. She was a big Trixie fan as a child. "So I think that must have been my source, though where Trixie got it remains a mystery."

WHAT TRIXIE DID

The Mystery of the Emeralds opens with the young sleuth waking up to a large sign tied to the foot of her bed. She yells "Rabbit! Rabbit!" before dashing down the hall to her brothers' room. Brian draws the covers over his head and turns "thumpily" toward the wall, but Mart sits up, excited. A little brother, Bobby, wanders in, drawn by the rumpus. Trixie picks him up and whirls him around.

"Then, plunking herself down on Brian's bed, she said, 'Well, ever since I was Bobby's age I've been trying to remember to say "Rabbit! Rabbit!" and make a wish just before going to sleep on the last night of the month. If you say it again in the morning, before you've said another word, your wish comes true.'"

TIMES CHANGE

Suddenly she worries that the reminder she hung on her bed might have foxed her luck. Gleeps! What did she wish for? Another mystery to solve, because little Sleepyside seems — "well, a little pallid."

Mart warns her to watch out for ennui. (No, really. All 12-year-olds knew that word in 1965.)

Engel isn't alone in preferring bunnies. Comedian Gilda Radner (1946-1989) did, too, according to Alan Zweibel's Bunny, Bunny: Gilda Radner, a Sort of Romantic Comedy (Villard, 1994).

In 2008, a member of the bunny tribe from Maine called in to the NPR show A Way With Words seeking guidance on how to do it right. (This episode is archived at waywordradio.org, see https://www.waywordradio.org/cruciverbalists-play-across-and-down/.) She had been taught by her family to say "bunny, bunny." But in college, her roommate from an old-money East Coast family pityingly informed her it had to be "rabbit, rabbit." No wonder her family had only the new money.

A joke. But in some tellings, the superstition has teeth.

It was used against Amie Regester by one of her schoolmates in Greenbrier. Today she's an evangelist with Central California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Clovis, Calif., but in 1994, Regester was a ninth-grader whose family had just moved to Faulkner County.

"It was my first few weeks here and someone with a thick country accent said it. I just said, 'What about rabbits?' She explained that she had just stolen all my good luck. I didn't believe it or anything, but I asked how I could get it back. She said it was impossible, but I could steal someone else's.

"That same girl annoyed me nearly every month with her luck-swiping double bunny obsession."

THUMPED

Tom Barron of Maumelle says that he was educated by a different literary work, humorist David Sedaris' memoir Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) (Little, Brown and Co., 2017).

Under "May 8, 2000," Sedaris writes that he picked up the practice from a friend in 1976 and that "it has to be the first thing that comes out of your mouth and you have to say it out loud or else it doesn't work."

He made a point to follow his friend's example, and so "everything I have can be attributed to 'Rabbit, rabbit,'" including his boyfriend, Hugh Hamrick, who took it up after they met. "This is a big help, as he's got a good head for dates and is always the first one to wake up. He says, 'Rabbit, rabbit,' I repeat it, and then I go back to sleep, confident that I'll be safe for another 30 days."

But one first day when he was visiting his sister, Amy Sedaris, he woke up to find her pet rabbit, Tattle Tail, chewing his eyelashes. "Rabbit, rabbit" were not the first words out of his mouth.

"Hence," he writes, "the kidney stone."

RABBIT OF THE MONTH CLUB

Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Crownover Moritz posts "Rabbit rabbit" on her Facebook page monthly, and her friends post it too, tagging her.

"I've done it all my life," she says. "Learned it from my mother, whose family did it. And I've introduced a lot of people to the custom on Facebook."

Melissa Blevins Wilcoxson, co-owner of Little Rock Climbing Center, says she holds with those who invoke three rabbits. "We do it — rabbit, rabbit, rabbit — but I don't have a sweet story for why. I did have a boyfriend in high school whose family said 'white rabbit' for some reason."

Variations range far beyond the number of rabbits. According to lexicographer Grant Barrett, co-host of the National Public Radio show A Way With Words, saying "white rabbit" or "white rabbits" is the more ancient custom. Another variation insists that you pull a hair out of your head and then punch someone nearby.

Also, you must climb out the end of the bed, not the side.

For the record, no harm befell Simon Winchester, author of 14 books including The Professor and the Madman (Harper Perennial, 2005), when he accidentally forgot his lagomorphic locution. He confessed to the world in a New York Times op-ed essay that after 60 years of devout practice, he had forgotten to say "white rabbits" on Oct. 1, 2006.

The British author, an authority on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, had 696 faultless months to his credit.

"My mother, tucking me into bed one night, told me to do it, to bring good fortune; and since I have enjoyed fair good fortune for all of my subsequent days I have assumed that the acceptance of this moderate and harmless habit has had something to do with it, and so has reinforced my need to keep up the practice," Winchester wrote.

"Besides, it is an ancient and thoroughly English conceit: old folk in Yorkshire and Cornwall speak of it having been practiced for many centuries (though the first O.E.D. citation of anything similar is 1920)."

The custom is not universal in Great Britain, witness the testimony of Gary Taylor, owner of Go! Running in Little Rock, who grew up in western London. He was not taught to safeguard luck by mentioning rabbits. Instead, it was:

Pinch and a punch it's the first of the month,

A pinch and a kick for being so quick.

A poke in the eye for being so sly.

Somehow, the rabbits had "hopped the pond" by the early 20th century, as radio lexicographer Barrett told the caller who reported her toney roommate to A Way With Words.

In a different and more widely quoted interview, Barrett's co-host Martha Barnette told another NPR show that in some versions of the superstition, there's hope for the forgetful: If you miss your matutinal rabbits, simply say "black rabbit" right before you go to sleep.

Or say "tibbar, tibbar," which is rabbit spelled backward.

So, no, you have not necessarily already ruined the year 2018 by failing at rabbits.

Democrat-Gazette file illlustration

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette rabbit illustration.

This enables them to manipulate the physical world, communicate with spirits, and even foresee future events. One of the key aspects of Tibbar magic is the use of rituals and incantations. These are performed to commune with the Force and channel its power.

The Tibbar people believe that by carefully following these rituals, they can enhance their ability to connect with the Force and strengthen their magical abilities. Another important aspect of Tibbar magic is the role of the shamans or mystics. These individuals are highly respected within Tibbar society and are considered the guardians of their magical traditions. Shamans undergo intense training to develop their connection to the Force and become skilled in performing rituals and spells. They are seen as the intermediaries between the physical world and the spiritual realm. Tibbar magic is not without its dangers, however. The strong connection to the Force that the Tibbar people possess can also make them vulnerable to its dark side. If a Tibbar practitioner succumbs to negative emotions or desires, they risk being consumed by the dark side of the Force, which can lead to destructive behavior and corrupt their magic. Overall, Tibbar magic is a fascinating concept within the "Star Wars" universe. It presents a unique approach to the supernatural and adds depth to the fictional world. The practices and beliefs associated with Tibbar magic highlight the importance of spirituality and the power of the mind in shaping reality..

Reviews for "The Spiritual Awakening Potential of Tibbar Magic"

1. John - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with "Tibbar magic meaning". I was expecting a deep exploration of the meaning behind magic, but instead, the book was filled with superficial explanations and cliché examples. The writing style was also quite bland and uninspiring. Overall, I felt like the author didn't dig deep enough and it left me unsatisfied.

2. Sarah - 1 star - I found "Tibbar magic meaning" to be a complete waste of time. The book was filled with abstract concepts and convoluted explanations that made it difficult to follow. The author seemed more interested in showcasing their knowledge rather than delivering a clear and concise message. I couldn't connect with the content and found it to be confusing and unenjoyable.

3. David - 2 stars - "Tibbar magic meaning" left me feeling underwhelmed. The author attempted to delve into the depths of magic's meaning, but it felt more like a shallow overview. The examples provided were unconvincing and lacked depth, making it hard to grasp the author's arguments. In addition, the writing style was dry and lacked excitement. Overall, I expected more from this book and was left disappointed.

4. Emily - 2 stars - I was hoping "Tibbar magic meaning" would be a thought-provoking exploration of magic and its significance. However, I found the book to be repetitive and lacking fresh insights. The author simply regurgitated common ideas without adding any unique perspective. It felt like reading a watered-down version of previous works on the subject. I would recommend seeking out other books that offer a more comprehensive and original examination of magic.

5. Michael - 1 star - "Tibbar magic meaning" was a complete letdown. The author seemed more interested in rambling about their personal experiences with magic rather than providing any meaningful analysis. The book lacked structure and coherence, making it difficult to navigate through the jumbled mess. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on this disjointed and self-indulgent piece of writing.

The Sacred Geometry of Tibbar Magic