The origin of ritual fortune-telling dates back to the most ancient times, so deep that it is even approximately difficult to say about the time of its appearance. The reason for its origin, obviously, was the desire to explain the mysterious in nature and in human life and look into another unknown world, at least slightly open the dense curtain that hides the future. In the ancient world, priests and philosophers were engaged in fortune-telling. It was he who, endowed with certain knowledge about being and the world around him, was subject to the methods of interpretation of certain events, as well as the meaning of certain signs and phenomena. Those types and forms of fortune telling that have come down to us from the relatively recent past as folk fortune telling are, of course, echoes of ancient forms that were passed down from generation to generation, simplifying, changing their symbolic meaning, but remaining the only possible way of recognizing and interpreting future destiny .
Folk fortune telling provided answers to significant questions using improvised means, household trivia, grains or pets. Attributes and symbols of fortune-telling are closely connected with the peasant uncomplicated way of life. There are several very common types of fortune telling that are still popular on the holy days, at Christmas and Epiphany.
Russian folk fortune telling
Bean fortune telling is very popular . It provides answers to the questions “come true?” or “will not come true?”, and answers can only be obtained in monosyllables, that is, “yes” or “no”. Therefore, you need to conceive fortune-telling in order to get these simple answers. 37 beans are taken when divining on a man, and 31 beans are for a woman. Only absolutely white beans, without spots, are suitable for fortune telling. Having thought up the question, the beans are laid out in 3 heaps. A woman has 10 beans, and a man has 12. One is stealing an extra bean in the middle. Then, separately count the number of letters in the name, patronymic and last name, and from each pile to the bean lying in the middle lay as many beans as there are letters. Then they count the number of vowels in the question that was conceived for fortune telling. From the resulting medium heap, the corresponding amount of beans is laid. If it turns out that the beans do not wail, what is intended will never come true. But if there are enough beans, and in a bunch of them there will be a pair or an even number, everything conceived will come true, and if it is odd, it will not come true.
Fortune- telling is very common on shadows formed by burning paper, melted and poured into cold water with wax or an egg.
A sheet of paper is wrinkled, laid at the bottom of an inverted saucer, set on fire and brought to the wall. The bizarre outlines that appear on the wall are interpreted in accordance with the images that they create. The outlines of solidified wax in water are also treated.
For fortune telling, they take a transparent bottle on the egg , fill it on the shoulders with water and release the raw chicken egg. The bottle is put overnight in a cold place, leaving it open. In the morning, bizarre forms and images formed in the water are interpreted.
There are folk fortune telling on a nutshell. They put a basin of water on the table, take a few well-peeled walnut shells, put tickets in them with the inscription: “it will come true, it will not come true, soon or soon, good or bad”, etc. The shells are launched into the pelvis, which is covered with a napkin on top, and the pelvis is turned several times slowly in place. The fortunetellers stand near the closed basin, make a question and get the shell that has fallen into the hand. The answer to the question will be on the ticket.
Perhaps the most beloved were popular fortune-telling on the narrowed. The most famous of them are fortune-telling with a rooster, fortune telling by a shoe, divination by name. Moreover, these fortune-telling fortunes are especially for girls, even for widows they did not fit.
Folk fortune-telling with a rooster was as follows. In the center of the room they draw a circle with chalk and around the circle pour heaps of grain, put saucers with water, put rings from the hands of fortunetellers and a mirror. The girls stand near their ring and grain, and in the middle of the circle they place a rooster that has been eating nothing all day. The rooster recovering, makes some choice. The rooster went to the grain and began to peck, the girl would certainly get married soon, went to the mirror, her husband would be smart. If he pecked two or three times and walked away, there would be no fast wedding, but if he immediately went to the water, the husband would be a drunkard. If the rooster pecks all the grains in one heap, this portended a quick death.
There are a lot of Russian folk fortune telling. For the most part, they all coincided with winter religious holidays, the symbolism of which is associated with renewal, the beginning of a new countdown, a new life, on the threshold of which everyone wanted to know at least a little about their future destiny.