Elephant trunk up = good luck... Why?

Question

Any idea of the story behind it?

Answer 1

American fascination with the lucky elephant-god of India and the white elephants of Thailand combined in the form of the ubiquitous lucky elephant knick-knack. In typical American fashion, it was decreed that only those elephant figurines with their trunks upraised were lucky. The rest were, as a friend of mine put it, "just elephants."

This "trunk up" belief has no apparent origin in Africa, India, or South East Asia where elephants are native, but is widespread in the USA, and many Asian and African amulet and statuary makers now produce trunk-up elephant statues for American buyers. It may have originated in the west-British and Irish belief that a lucky horseshoe must face upward or "the luck will run out."  The statuette shown here is a cheap Japanese lusterware "trunk up" elephant knick-knack purchased in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1950s. Other lucky elephant figurines of the mid-20th century were made of ivory, ivory-coloured plastic, onyx, porcelain, jade, serpentine, and ebony.

http://www.luckymojo.com/elephant.html