Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling: Illustrated by numerous incantations, specimens of medical magic, anecdotes and talesLeland, Charles Godfrey
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Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling: Illustrated by numerous incantations, specimens of medical magic, anecdotes and tales
Leland, Charles Godfrey
Fortune-telling; Magic, Romani; Romanies
dreams and spectres, fairies and goblins, whether of the Middle Ages or
the Talmud, were inexpressibly dear to him, and they move like myriad
motes through the sunshine of his poetry and prose, often causing
long rays when there were bars at the window--like that on which
the saint hung his cloak. It is probable or certain that Shamanism
(or that into which it has very naturally developed) will influence
all mankind, until science, by absorbing man's love of the marvellous
in stupendous discoveries shall so put to shame the old thaumaturgy,
or wonder-working, that the latter will seem poor and childish. In
all the "Arabian Nights" there is nothing more marvellous than the
new idea that voices and sounds may be laid aside like real books,
and made to speak and sing again years afterwards. And in all of that
vast repertory of occult lore, "Isis Unveiled," there is nothing so
wonderful as the simple truth that every child may be educated to
possess an infinitely developed memory of words, sights, sounds, and
ideas, allied to incredible quickness of perception and practice of
the constructive faculties. These, with the vast fields of adjusting
improved social relations and reforms--all of which in a certain way
opens dazzling vistas of a certain kind of enchantment or brilliant
hope--will go fast and far to change the old romance to a radically
different state of feeling and association.
It is coming--let it come! Doubtless there was an awful romance
of darkness about the old witchcraft which caused its worshippers
to declare that the new lights of Shamanism could never dissipate
it. Just so many millions of educated people at present cannot be
brought to understand that all things to which they are used are not
based on immutable laws of nature, and must needs be eternal. They will
find it hard to comprehend that there can ever be any kind of poetry,
art, or sentiment, utterly different from that to which they and their
ancestors have been accustomed. Yet it is clear and plain before them,
this New Era, looking them directly in the face, about to usher in a
reformation compared to which all the reformations and revolutions,
and new religions which the world has ever seen were as nothing;
and the children are born who will see more than the beginning of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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