CHAPTER XVI.
Turkish Superstitions—Auguries—The Court Astrologer—The Evil Eye—Danger of Blue Eyes—Imperial Firman—The Babaluk—The Ceremony—Sable Pythonesses—Witchcraft.
The Turks are strangely superstitious; they cling resolutely to the absurd and wild fancies which have been banished from Europe for centuries; and that too with a blindness of faith, and a tenacity of purpose, quite in keeping with their firm and somewhat dogged natures.
Many of their superstitions they inherit from the Romans; they extract auguries of good and evil from the entrails of fresh-slaughtered animals—they draw inferences from the flight of birds—they have auspicious and inauspicious hours, which are gravely determined by the Astrologers; and no Osmanli ever undertakes a journey, builds a house, marries a wife, or commences any business of importance, without satisfying himself on this important point. Should evil or disappointment overtake him, despite the precaution he has used, he never blames either his own mismanagement or another’s treachery; neither does he sink beneath the trial: he tells you that it is his kismet—his fate—and he calmly submits to what he considers to have been inevitable; and should misfortunes accumulate about him, instead of attributing them to worldly causes, he ascribes them to felech—his constellation—without searching further.
When he is troubled with unpleasant dreams, haunted by melancholy fancies, or suffering from bodily disease, he tears away a fragment of his dress, and fastens the rag to the iron-work of a window belonging to the tomb of a saint, in order to deposit the evil along with it. When he is sick, he procures from the Priest an earthen bowl, inscribed throughout its interior with passages from the Koran; and, filling it with water, sets it aside until the whole of the writing becomes effaced, when he swallows the liquid, and thus administers to himself a dose of Holy Writ! The Court Astrologer publishes every year a species of supernatural almanack, in which he specifies the lucky and unlucky days of the different moons; foretells wars, deaths, and marriages; and imparts a vast quantity of multifarious information, which must be both valuable and curious, if it is to be estimated by the price paid for it, as the salary of the Seer is a most liberal one.
Another singular superstition common throughout Turkey is the belief that should a dog chance to pass between two persons who are conversing, one or the other will fall sick unless the animal be propitiated with food; and the first care of a Musselmaun to whom this ill-luck has occurred, is to look about him for the means of averting its effect.
But the predominant weakness of the East is the dread of the Evil Eye. Should you praise the beauty of a Turkish child to its mother, without prefacing your admiration with “Mashallah!” or, In the name of God—which is considered sufficient to counteract the power of all malignant spirits; and, should the child become ill or meet with an accident, it is at once decided that you have smitten it with the Evil Eye. The Greeks, when by accident they allude to their own good health or good fortune, immediately spit upon their breasts to avert the malign influence; and to such a pitch do they carry their faith in the efficacy of this inelegant exorcism, that on a recent occasion, when an acquaintance of my own was introduced to a beautiful Greek girl, and betrayed into an eulogium on her loveliness, he was earnestly entreated by her mother to perform the same ceremony in the very face which he had just been eulogizing, in order to annul the evil effects of his admiration; and so pressing were her instances that he was compelled to affect obedience to her wishes, ere she could be re-assured of the safety of her daughter!
The Turk decorates the roof of his house, the prow of his caïque, the cap of his child, the neck of his horse, and the cage of his bird, with charms against the Evil Eye; one of the most powerful of these antidotes being garlic: and it must be conceded that, here at least, the workers of woe have shown their taste. Every hovel has its head of garlic suspended by a string; and bouquets of flowers formed of spices, amid which this noxious root is nestled, are sent as presents to the mother of a new-born infant, as a safeguard both to herself and her little one.
A blue eye is super-eminently suspicious, for they have an idea that such is the legitimate colour of the evil orb; and you seldom see a horse, or a draught ox, or even a donkey, which has not about its neck a string of blue beads, to preserve it from the dark deeds of witchcraft. I was considerably amused on one occasion, when, being about to meet the carriage of a friend, the horse that drew it, either from idleness or caprice, suddenly stood still, and the arabajhe exclaimed with vehemence to his mistress, “You see, madam, you see that the horse is struck—the new Hanoum has blue eyes!” turning his own on me as he spoke, with a most unloving expression. I am perfectly convinced that, had the animal met with any misfortune, or been guilty of any misdemeanour during the remainder of the day, the whole blame would have inevitably been visited on my unlucky eyes, which had counteracted the effect of a row of glass beads, and a crescent of bone!
To protect the reigning Sultan from the power of the Evil Eye during his state progresses through the streets of the capital, a peculiar head-dress was invented for the Imperial body-pages, whose ornamented plumes were of such large dimensions as, collectively, to form a screen about his sacred person. Even Sultan Mahmoud, who is superior to many of the popular prejudices, has just caused a Firman to be published, prohibiting the women from looking earnestly at him as he passes them, on pain of—what think you, reader?—of subjecting their husbands or brothers to the bastinado! The Turkish laws are too gallant to condemn females to suffer this punishment in their own persons, and Mahmoud is consequently to be protected from the possibly fatal effects of the ladies’ eyes by their fears for their male relations.
Another singular custom is that of pouring water where any one has fallen, to prevent a recurrence of the accident on the same spot, which is religiously observed by the lower orders; as well as flinging stones at the body of a decapitated criminal, in order to secure the dreams of the spectator from an intrusion of the ghastly object.
No Turk of the lower ranks of society ever passes a shred of paper which may chance to lie upon his path; he always gathers it up with the greatest care; as the popular belief leads him to place implicit faith in an ancient superstition that all paper thus obtained will be collected after death, and scattered over the burning soil through which he is to pass to paradise; and that consequently the more he is enabled to secure, the less suffering he will have to endure hereafter.
A most extraordinary fact came to my knowledge a short time before I left the East, relatively to the female Arabs of the harem. They have a species of society, or institution—I scarcely know how to term it—in which they are initiated from their girlhood, that they call “Babaluk,” whose principle of mystery is kept as secret as that of freemasonry; while the occasional display of its influence is wild and startling enough to remind the spectator of the Priestesses of Delphi.
Far from affecting any concealment of their participation in the pretended powers of the society, you cannot, when a guest in the harem, please an initiated Arab more surely than by inquiring if she be a Babaluk; and the Turkish ladies frequently amuse themselves and their visitors by exhibiting their black slaves while under the influence of their self-excited phrenzy. When a sable Pythoness is informed of the wish of her mistress, she collects such of her companions as are Babaluks, for there are sometimes several in the same harem, and a brazier of burning charcoal is placed in the centre of the saloon in which the ceremony is to take place. Round this brazier the Arabs squat down, and commence a low, wild chant, which they take up at intervals from the lips of each other; and then break into a chorus, that ultimately dies away in a wail, succeeded by a long silence, during whose continuance they rock their bodies backwards and forwards, and never raise their eyes from the earth. From the moment in which the chant commences, an attendant is constantly employed in feeding the fire with aloes, incense, musk, and every species of intoxicating perfume.
After a time, they fall on the floor in a state of utter insensibility, and great exertion is frequently necessary to arouse them from their trance; but, when once they are awakened, they become furious—they rend themselves, and each other—they tear their hair and their clothing—they howl like wild beasts, and they cry earnestly for food, while they reject all that is offered except brandy and raw meat, both of which they destroy in great quantities. Having satisfied their hunger, they renew the warfare that they had discontinued to indulge it, and finally roll on the floor with bloodshot eyeballs, and foaming at the mouth.
A second trance ultimately seizes them, from which they are left to recover alone; fresh perfumes being flung into the brazier to expedite their restoration, which generally takes place in ten or fifteen minutes; and then it is that the spell of prophecy is on them. They rise slowly and majestically from the floor—they wave their hands solemnly over the aromatic flame—they have become suddenly subdued and gentle; and, after having made the circuit of the brazier several times in silence, they gaze coldly round the circle, until, fixing upon some particular individual, they commence shadowing forth her fate, past, present, and to come; and I have heard it seriously asserted that they have thus divulged the most secret events of by-gone years, as well as prophecying those which subsequently took place.
It is scarcely wonderful—even disgusting as a great portion of the ceremonial undoubtedly is—that many of the Turkish ladies occasionally relieve the tedium of the harem by the exhibition of the Babaluk; that vague yearning to pry into futurity so inherent in our nature, coupled with the uncertainty on whom the spell of the sybil may be cast, causes an excitement which forms an agreeable contrast from their customary ennui. No second fate is ever foretold at the same orgies. When the first Babaluk begins to speak, the others sink down into a sitting posture, occasionally enforcing her assertions by repeating the last words of any remarkable sentence in a long, low wail; and, when she ceases and takes her place among them, they are for the third time overtaken by a trance: the brazier is then removed, the spectators leave the room, the door is carefully closed, and the Babaluks are left to awaken at their leisure. When they finally come forth, they resume their customary avocations, without making the slightest allusion to the extraordinary scene in which they have been actors; nor do they like the subject to be mentioned to them until several days have elapsed.