The Shadow of the Gloomy East. Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
lips, a thin streak of blood issuing from his nostrils and deep furrows round his mouth.
We lifted him up and put him on a chair. He opened his eyes heavily and whispered: "Brandy!"
The doctor poured out a cup from his hunters' flagon. The shaman gulped it down, his teeth chattering upon the glass, stretched his limbs, and rose from the chair.
"It didn't come off to-day. … They came, but kept at a distance … and refused to approach."
After a while he left.
My friend the doctor patted my shoulder and said:
"It is better to shoot wild ducks and grouse than to invoke spirits. Set your mind at rest, my boy! This is no wizardry. Monotonous sounds and movements are all excellent devices of hypnotism. But we must hurry up with the cartridges. Open the bag with hailshot No. 3."
This was my first encounter with a shaman-koldun.
The second took place years afterwards on the shores of the Pacific.
It was at the outset of my scientific career, when I was studying the origin of the coal deposits of the Far East The scene was on the River Tudagou in the Ussuri country.
We pitched our tents in an oak and hazel forest, and in the innocence of our hearts we were making preparations for a prolonged stay, when unexpectedly arrived two mounted Orochons.[1] They announced that we could not remain where we were as it was an Orochon cemetery. When they saw my amazement, the natives led me to a small glade and pointed to the tree-tops. I noticed longish, black objects hanging down from the highest branches.
These were the bodies of the dead. The Orochons wrap them round with buck-skins, which are covered oak-tree bark, tied up strongly with leather straps and hanged up on the branches high above the earth.
Seeing me unwilling to leave my camp, the Orochons claimed a gift of brandy, in return for which they offered to bring a shaman, whose invocation would procure for us from the souls of the dead the permission to remain within the border of their realm.
The necromancer came towards evening. He was a young peasant, his face blackened and disfigured by smallpox. His coat was made of multi-coloured rags with straps of red and yellow painted leather hanging down to the ground. He carried a gigantic drum and a long pole with little bells, from which a fife made of buckhom was suspended.
He set to his task at once. First he began to beat the drum for all he was worth, then he blew the fife and made the little bells peal. Soon nothing was heard but the fife as he jumped and turned kicking his heels. The thin tunes of the fife were ever broken with the shrill yells and groans of the shaman. He whirled round madly, his face was swollen, his lips wide open, his eyes flushed with blood, and foam appeared on his lips.
He fell to the ground at last and quivered long as if in agony. Although he uttered no more sounds, the drum still roared in the air, the little bells still pealed, the fife shrieked and piercing groans were heard, repeated by the echo of the forest in the deep silence of the warm, dreamy and overwhelming July night.
When the shaman rose from the ground, we asked him if we might remain. He said yes, and taking a little salt and meat cast it to the four quarters of the world, offering sacrifice to the souls hospitable to us of the deceased Orochons.
The art of fortune-telling plays an important part in the life of Russian peasants. I can truly say that I have not in the home of divination, Thibet and Mongolia, met such a widespread and general practice. In Russia fortune-telling Is a "black" science, supposed to be the work of the evil spirits, while in Mongolia it has the character of a religious cult. Amongst the former it hides in solitary cottages, coming forth only in dark and stormy nights when all kinds of "evil forces" haunt the earth, and peep into the hovels of inhabitants whose souls are wrapped in even deeper gloom.
No other people attach so much importance to sorcery as the Russians, It is not only the uncouth, illiterate villager, but also the working classes, whom their leaders have taught false culture; the bourgeoisie and even the upper classes of Russian society have had recourse to fortune-tellers, often in the most serious emergencies of their lives.
The gipsy science of fortune-telling from cards, from seven or thirteen little stones, from horse beans or bones, was very much in vogue and had many highly skilled practitioners. In a village every old woman, every old man knew this science, nay, and practised with more or less success. The same held good for the towns, and it may be said without exaggeration that in cities like Moscow or Petersburg there was not a street without a fortune-teller of either sex, who had a numerous clientele and a steady and considerable Income. There were besides specialists who had a reputation of immense skill, in whose houses, furnished with rich oriental carpets and adorned as might be expected from the dens of wizards and alchemists with stuffed owls and lizards, dried bats, frogs, and vipers, were met some common woman, a fat bourgeois butcher, a demi-mondaine, a Minister or a Grand Duchess.
It was a mania, a disease, which had its roots deep in the nature of the people.
Arabian wisdom read in coffee-grounds had also many disciples. Before the fall of the dynasty, this science was assiduously cultivated in the palace of Count Kleintnichel by a devoted crowd of those whose prosperity and magnificence depended on the grace of the throne, and who endeavoured to divine the fortunes of the "adored" Romanovs on the surface of black sediments. Once I witnessed this kind of soothsaying in the house of a high official, whose wife, a titled lady, was a devout believer in the secret arts and invited a sorceress of reputation, Irma Galesco.
In the darkened boudoir, scantily lit by a shaded lamp, the Roumanian gazed for a long time on the coffee-grounds which were served in three cups. She examined it from above, then against the light, rippling the surface with a puff of her breath or touching it with a swift and professional move of a long black feather. The main items of the proceedings were the constant murmurings of an incomprehensible incantation. After a prolonged inspection of the contents of the cups, the sorceress poured it all into a shallow white vase, added a pinch of herbs, and continued stirring it with her breath and a touch of the feather.
At last she began to speak as if beholding something on the dark surface or reading some secret writing inscribed upon it. I looked attentively into the vase, but I could not see anything, and I was certain that in all these proceedings the cunning charlatan was adapting herself to the character of the house and flattering the wishes of her lady customer.
The commonest forms of soothsaying among Russian people are those which have descended from the age of heathenism. These are the auguries from blood and from water. I have seen all such forms of fortune-telling in the province of Pskov, the most backward of all the provinces of Russia. There they thrive among the marshy wastes, in the thick forests, or the sandy shores of the River Wyelika and the banks of the Pskov Sea, the embodiment of heathen superstitions.
I shall return frequently to that province, distant only a few hours' journey from the capital, as being the most typical of the whole Russian people.
It happened in the village of Zaluzhye, surrounded by a whole net of boggy lakes and rivulets. In the neighbourhood of this village cholera raged, taking a heavy toll of the inhabitants. It was necessary to find out who had carried the pest into that God-forsaken veldt. Only a wizard could do that. An old man, who looked a centenarian, was put into a room in a solitary cottage which stood close to the woods on the banks of a small reed-covered lake. After sunset, a black ram and an old millstone were taken into the cottage.
Before dawn, when the first cocks began to crow, the soothsayer led the ram forth, its horns and neck crowned with grass and herbs. He cut the throat of the ram, poured his blood over the millstone, and lit a fire, alternately murmuring and shouting. When the fire burned brightly and the coal set down, he pulled it out with his fingers and threw it upon the stove. The curdling blood quickly formed black clots, steam and smoke rose from the stone, and the soothsayer, dishevelling his hair and flowing beard and opening wide his eyes, which seemed dead with age, began to shout with a piercing yet broken voice:
"I behold in the blood-red smoke and the scarlet