On winter nights set aside for fortune telling, young Russian women drip hot wax, throw shoes out of the window and crumple newspapers, hoping to foresee their future husbands and careers.
In a ritual vividly described in 19th century literature and still alive today, Russians tell fortunes in the evenings between Russian Orthodox Christmas (Jan. 6 and Jan. 7) and the festival of Epiphany on Jan. 19.
While fortune telling is practiced between Christian holidays, it is frowned upon by the Russian Orthodox Church, which sees it as a remnant of paganism.
Photo: AFP
Many Russians take the tradition very seriously.
After examining a piece of wax dropped into a bowl of cold water, Yelena, 29, decided to take a life-changing decision to leave her office job and set up her own public relations company.
“We poured melted wax into cold water and I saw the shape of a single person climbing a mountain. It was then that I decided to leave my company and work as a freelancer,” she said.
Two years ago, her friend Inna also changed the course of her life after seeing the shape of a microphone in the wax. She took up singing seriously and last year recorded her first album.
Yelena claimed to be skeptical about the fortune telling, nevertheless.
“Everyone sees what he wants. These omens only confirm our dreams,” she said.
As well as career moves, women look for advice on their love lives and some swear that they spotted their future husbands.
“Fifteen years ago, I saw the profile of my future husband,” said Katya, 36.
Instead of dripping hot wax, she studied the shadow projected by a ball of crumpled paper onto a wall.
She and her husband divorced three years ago, but she still attends fortunetelling seances, saying she now does this for fun.
Olesya, 37, a manager of Internet projects, said that two years ago her group of friends spotted the shape of a dove in the dripped wax, signifying that one of them would marry.
On Tuesday, she planned to meet friends at a bar in Moscow to hold a new session.
Numerous techniques are used to divine future husbands. Some women throw shoes out of the window and if a man picks it up, they ask his name, believing it will be the same as that of their future husband. Others read coffee grounds to spot a man’s face.
During the Soviet era, the fortune telling continued, and women even used the official Pravda newspaper for occult predictions.
Marina Kirilenko, 71, who still works as an engineer, used to crumple the newspaper into a ball and study the shapes formed.
In 1963, she saw the shape of a chariot that she believes predicted her subsequent move from far eastern Russia to Moscow.
A few years later, she spotted a wax figure of a man with a briefcase, in an apparent prediction of her marriage to an official, the director of a collective farm.
“The more you believe in miracles, the greater the chances that they will happen,” she said.
Psychologist Svetlana Fyodorova puts the faith in fortune telling down to Russians’ close links to their pagan past.
“Russians love fortune telling because it frees their subconscious,” she said. “As compared to Europe, in Russia Christianity is young and the traces of pagan traditions can still be felt here.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
RSS