There's a surprising amount of people in the US who believe in variations of witchcraft, things like tarot cards, horoscopes, and talking to the dead. Much of this actually comes from secular society.
The shopkeeper wasn't prepared to demonstrate the good things his pouch of talismans were doing for him, but he certainly preferred to believe that his day would go better with them in hand. Who wouldn't? What an easy way to ward off misfortune.
It's like a belief in Myers-Briggs personality types, too, in that it's easily bolstered by a confirmation bias and, arguably, can serve a broader function in metaphor. The same of course can be said for much religious dogma and many faith-oriented parables. I think most people would agree that the world would be a better place if more people behaved as Christians believe Jesus did.
I don't believe that an excess of something called black bile, which relates to autumn, Earth, etc. makes me feel melancholy, but I have, numerous times, described my girlfriend as 'sanguine' to people who've not met her, and then, when I was rightly mocked for saying that instead of something more colloquial, proceeded to attempt to justify my word choice with an approximate characterization of her based on a humorist framework.
Perhaps this is just a product of insufferable douchiness and self-satisfaction, and is little more than analogizing, but that's kind of all beliefs are, anyway.
https://pacificheatingcooling.com/2018/12/27/carbon-monoxide...