FORTUNE-TELLERS.
| 1st Witch. | By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. |
| Macbeth. | How now, you secret, black and midnight hags, What is’t ye do? |
| All. | A deed without a name.—Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1. |
PAST AND PRESENT.—BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND FORTUNE-TELLERS.—ARABIAN.—EASTERN.—ENGLISH.—QUEEN’S FAVORITE.—LILLY.—A LUCKY GUESS.—THE GREAT LONDON FIRE FORETOLD.—HOW.—OUR “TIDAL WAVE” AND AGASSIZ.—A HAUL OF FORTUNE-TELLERS.—PRESENT.—VISIT EN MASSE.—“FILLIKY MILLIKY.”—“CHARGE BAYONETS!”—A FOWL PROCEEDING.—FINDING LOST PROPERTY.—THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSÉ.—“ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE.”—PROCURESSES.—BOSTON MUSEUM.—“A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN.”—MONEY DOES IT.—GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.—“LOVE POWDER” EXPOSE.—HASHEESH.—“DOES HE LOVE ME?”
Under the guise of fortune-telling and clairvoyance the most nefarious atrocities are daily enacted, not only in the larger cities, but in the villages and towns even, throughout the country. In this chapter I propose to ventilate them in a manner never before attempted, and the exposé may be relied upon as correct in every particular.
“Why,” exclaimed a friend, “I thought fortune-telling one of the follies of the past, and that there was little or none of it practised at the present.”
Far from it. Very few, comparatively, who practise the black art come out under the ancient name of fortune-tellers; but there are thousands of ignorant, characterless wretches, in our enlightened day and generation, who pretend to tell fortunes, if not under the open title above, as astrologers, seers, clairvoyants, or spiritualists, etc. There are some clairvoyants of whom we shall treat under the head of “Mind and Matter.”
The Bible fortune-tellers practised their lesser deceptions under the various titles of “wise men,” “soothsayers,” the former being acknowledged as the more legitimate by the Jews, and the latter mere heathenish prognosticators, without divine authority, as thus: Is. ii. 6. “Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers, like the Philistines.”
8. “Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.”
There were also wizards, astrologers, “star-gazers” (Is. xlvii. 13), spiritualists (1 Sam. xxviii. 3), magicians, sorcerers, and “the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.” Nahum iii. 4.
All of these exist at the present day, carrying on the same sort of vile deceptions and heinous crimes, to the “selling of families and nations,” and souls, in spite of law or gospel. Even as those of nearly six thousand years ago were patronized by the great, the kings, and queens, and nobles of the earth, so are the fortune-tellers, under the more refined titles, visited by governors, representatives, and ladies and gentlemen of rank, of modern times.