Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling: Illustrated by numerous incantations, specimens of medical magic, anecdotes and talesLeland, Charles Godfrey
History
Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling: Illustrated by numerous incantations, specimens of medical magic, anecdotes and tales
Leland, Charles Godfrey
Fortune-telling; Magic, Romani; Romanies
perseverance to perfect them.
The gypsy fortune-teller is accustomed for years to look
keenly and earnestly into the eyes of those whom she dukkers or
"fortune-tells." She is accustomed to make ignorant and credulous
or imaginative girls feel that her mysterious insight penetrates
"with a power and with a sign" to their very souls. As she looks into
their palms, and still more keenly into their eyes, while conversing
volubly with perfect self-possession, ere long she observes that she
has made a hit--has chanced upon some true passage or relation to the
girl's life. This emboldens her. Unconsciously the Dream Spirit, or the
Alter-Ego, is awakened. It calls forth from the hidden stores of Memory
strange facts and associations, and with it arises the latent and often
unconscious quickness of Perception, and the gypsy actually apprehends
and utters things which are "wonderful." There is no clairvoyance,
illumination or witchcraft in such cases. If such powers existed
as they are generally understood to do, we should for one case of
curious prediction hear of twenty thousand. But the Dream-power is
at best fitful, irregular and fantastic in its action; it is at all
times untrustworthy, for it has never been trained unless of yore by
Chaldæan priests and magi. In some wonderful way facts do, however,
manifest themselves, evoked out of the unknown by "occult," though
purely material, mental faculties; and the result is that wonder at the
inexplicable--which makes miracles--until we are accustomed to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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