The Shadow of the Gloomy East. Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski

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      The gipsy science of fortune-telling from cards, from seven or thirteen little stones, from horse beans or bones, was very much in vogue and had many highly skilled practitioners. In a village every old woman, every old man knew this science, nay, and practised with more or less success. The same held good for the towns, and it may be said without exaggeration that in cities like Moscow or Petersburg there was not a street without a fortune-teller of either sex, who had a numerous clientele and a steady and considerable Income. There were besides specialists who had a reputation of immense skill, in whose houses, furnished with rich oriental carpets and adorned as might be expected from the dens of wizards and alchemists with ​stuffed owls and lizards, dried bats, frogs, and vipers, were met some common woman, a fat bourgeois butcher, a demi-mondaine, a Minister or a Grand Duchess.

      It was a mania, a disease, which had its roots deep in the nature of the people.

      Arabian wisdom read in coffee-grounds had also many disciples. Before the fall of the dynasty, this science was assiduously cultivated in the palace of Count Kleintnichel by a devoted crowd of those whose prosperity and magnificence depended on the grace of the throne, and who endeavoured to divine the fortunes of the "adored" Romanovs on the surface of black sediments. Once I witnessed this kind of soothsaying in the house of a high official, whose wife, a titled lady, was a devout believer in the secret arts and invited a sorceress of reputation, Irma Galesco.

      In the darkened boudoir, scantily lit by a shaded lamp, the Roumanian gazed for a long time on the coffee-grounds which were served in three cups. She examined it from above, then against the light, rippling the surface with a puff of her breath or touching it with a swift and professional move of a long black feather. The main items of the proceedings were the constant murmurings of an incomprehensible incantation. After a prolonged inspection of the contents of the cups, the sorceress poured it all into a shallow white vase, added a pinch of herbs, and continued ​stirring it with her breath and a touch of the feather.

      At last she began to speak as if beholding something on the dark surface or reading some secret writing inscribed upon it. I looked attentively into the vase, but I could not see anything, and I was certain that in all these proceedings the cunning charlatan was adapting herself to the character of the house and flattering the wishes of her lady customer.

      The commonest forms of soothsaying among Russian people are those which have descended from the age of heathenism. These are the auguries from blood and from water. I have seen all such forms of fortune-telling in the province of Pskov, the most backward of all the provinces of Russia. There they thrive among the marshy wastes, in the thick forests, or the sandy shores of the River Wyelika and the banks of the Pskov Sea, the embodiment of heathen superstitions.

      I shall return frequently to that province, distant only a few hours' journey from the capital, as being the most typical of the whole Russian people.

      It happened in the village of Zaluzhye, surrounded by a whole net of boggy lakes and rivulets. In the neighbourhood of this village cholera raged, taking a heavy toll of the inhabitants. It was necessary to find out who had carried the pest into that God-forsaken veldt. Only a wizard could do that. An old man, who looked a centenarian, was put into a room in a solitary cottage which stood close to the woods on ​the banks of a small reed-covered lake. After sunset, a black ram and an old millstone were taken into the cottage.

      Before dawn, when the first cocks began to crow, the soothsayer led the ram forth, its horns and neck crowned with grass and herbs. He cut the throat of the ram, poured his blood over the millstone, and lit a fire, alternately murmuring and shouting. When the fire burned brightly and the coal set down, he pulled it out with his fingers and threw it upon the stove. The curdling blood quickly formed black clots, steam and smoke rose from the stone, and the soothsayer, dishevelling his hair and flowing beard and opening wide his eyes, which seemed dead with age, began to shout with a piercing yet broken voice:

      "I behold in the blood-red smoke and the scarlet vapours … open graves and terrible pale death. … Men proceed in front of her. … I don't know them, they are not from our country. … They go forward and cast into the water of the rivers and wells, into the stables and barns, seeds of disease which ruins and kills … by blood only can death be defeated. … I can see it. … I behold it in the scarlet, blood-soaked vapours and smoke."

      The peasants stood in gloomy silence and profound thought. The soothsayer himself was silent; there was the hissing sound of flames in the hearth, the light crackling of the burnt curdling clots of blood, the quicker breathing of the throng, and the rustle of the ​rushes in the lake. From afar came the chuckling of wild ducks settling down to sleep, the lowing of a stray cow, and the barking of a dog. The summer night was filled with mystery, which buries crime and every outburst of primitive passion, and it seemed to listen to the unspoken thoughts of this benighted crowd which stood flooded with the crimson glare of the open fire. My mind was involuntarily carried away, back into olden times, when perhaps on the self-same spot was raised the wooden image of the god Perkunas, while the priests, clad in white linen garments, their heads wreathed, shed the blood of consecrated beasts. The fire burning upon the altar then illuminated by its glare, just like now, the terrified crowd which, just like now, resembled a gathering of crimson-bathed phantoms.

      Thus proceeded the soothsaying, and a few days afterwards the peasant mob seized the doctor and his assistants who were sent to fight the epidemics, clubbed them to death, and threw their bodies into the boggy river. Police inquiries were instituted, after which new crowds of sullen peasants, whose only crime was spiritual darkness, went to prison or Siberia.

      Still another time, near Petersburg, in the town of Gdov, I witnessed fortune-telling by water.

      The diviner poured water into a glass basin and asked the client for her wedding ring. She wanted to find out what had happened to her husband, who ​had left home for a long journey and had failed to "send any news of himself.

      The woman handed over her ring, which the soothsayer dropped into the basin, uttering a conjuration and bending over the vessel. Muttering some words, the witch blew on the water, the surface of which quivered and was ruffled. For a long while we could not see anything, till at last I had the impression as if the inside of the ring were a tiny window in a little wall, behind which was a big room. I noticed all the details of the furnishing and the general plan of the room, when all of a sudden an elderly man with a quiet and smiling face entered. I saw clearly every feature of his face and his dress. Suddenly he turned pale, seized his breast, and fell to the ground. A dusk began to settle on his prostrate figure. The ring seemed now like an opening made in the bottom of the basin. The fortune-teller and her client looked pale and agitated. The witch shook her head with a wail of despair and whispered:

      "Bad omen, very bad omen! … He will die … no! … He is dead. … There's no doubt! …"

      By a strange coincidence the augury proved true. Next day my friend received a telegram saying that her husband had died suddenly of heart failure, after he had successfully settled his affairs and intended to leave for home the same day.

      Footnotes

       Table of Contents

      1 ↑ The Orochons are nomads, hunters of a Mongolian tribe which is almost extinct to-day.

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