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
Another very great magic protector in every country among gypsies
as well as Gentiles, is the thunderbolt, known in Germany as the
Donneraxt, Donnerstein, Donnerkeil, Albschoss, Strahlstein, and
Teufelsfinger. It was called by the Greeks Astropelákia, by the Latins
Gemma cerauniæ, by the Spaniards Piedras de rayo, by the dwellers
in the French High Alps Peyras del tron (pierres de tonerre), by the
Birmans Mogio (the child of lightning), by the Chinese Rai-fu-seki (the
battle-axe of Tengu, the guardian of Heaven), by the Hindoos Swayamphu,
or "the self-originated." Dr. Krauss, from whom I have taken these
remarks, adds that in America and Australia it is also regarded as
a charm protective and luck-bringing. But here there is a confusion
of objects. The thunderbolt described by Dr. Krauss is, I believe,
a petrified shell, a kind of mucro or belemnite. The thunderbolt
of the Red Indians really resembles it, but is entirely different
in its nature. The latter results from lightning entering the sand
fusing it. It sometimes makes in this way a very long tube or rod,
with a point. People, finding these, naturally believed that they
were thunderbolts. I knew an old Penobscot Indian who, seeing the
lightning strike the earth, searched and found such a thunderbolt,
which he greatly prized. In process of time people who found mucrones
in rocks believed them to be the same as the glass-like points of
fused sand which they so much resembled.
The so-called thunderbolt is confused with the prehistoric stone
axe, both bearing the same name in many lands. As this axe is
often also a hammer it is evident that it may have been sacred to
Thor. "The South Slavonian"--or gypsy--"does not distinguish," says
Dr. Krauss, "between the thunderbolt and prehistoric axe. He calls
both strelica." The possession of one brings luck and prosperity in
all business, but it must be constantly carried on the person. Among
the "thirties" there lived in Gaj in Slavonia a poor Jewish peddler
named David. Once he found a strelica. He always carried it about
with him. The peasants envied him greatly its possession. They came
to him in the market-place and cried, "Al si sretan, Davide!" ("Ha,
how lucky thou art, David!") The Slavonian Jews called him, for a joke,
"Strelica."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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