The post about the strangest segulah ever led to much discussion about the history of Judaism's approaches to segulos. I thought it would be worthwhile to re-post a discussion on this from a few years ago, regarding the view of Rashba (a.k.a. Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Aderes, 1235–1310). Rashba discussed this matter in the context of his disagreeing strongly with Rambam's across-the-board dismissal of all magic (and similar phenomena for which there is no rational explanation) as being nonsense and thus prohibited. Rashba points out that the Gemara is full of such things, which (unlike Rambam) he takes authoritatively, and he stresses that these practices are endorsed even though there is no rational explanation for them. Rashba later delivers what he believes to be the