The gypsy fortune-teller is accustomed for years to look keenly and earnestly into the eyes of those whom she dukkers or “fortune-tells.” She is accustomed to make ignorant and credulous or imaginative girls feel that her mysterious insight penetrates “with a power and with a sign” to their very souls. As she looks into their palms, and still more keenly into their eyes, while conversing volubly with perfect self-possession, ere long she observes that she has made a hit—has chanced upon some true passage or relation to the girl’s life. This emboldens her. Unconsciously the Dream Spirit, or the Alter-Ego, is awakened. It calls forth from the hidden stores of Memory strange facts and associations, and with it arises the latent and often unconscious quickness of Perception, and the gypsy actually apprehends and utters things which are “wonderful.” There is no clairvoyance, illumination or witchcraft in such cases. If such powers existed as they are generally understood to do, we should for one case of curious prediction hear of twenty thousand. But the Dream-power is at best fitful, irregular and fantastic in its action; it is at all times untrustworthy, for it has never been trained unless of yore by Chaldæan priests and magi. In some wonderful way facts do, however, manifest themselves, evoked out of the unknown by “occult,” though purely material, mental faculties; and the result is that wonder at the inexplicable—which makes miracles—until we are accustomed to them.
That gypsy women often do surmise or arrive at very curious and startling truths I know by my own experience, and also know that I myself when reading character in people’s hands according to the laws laid down in books on chiromancy, when I have felt deeply interested, or as one may say excited or inspired, and have gone a little beyond mere description into conjecture and deduction, have been amazed at my own successes. It happened once that when in company with several ladies it was proposed after lunch to go to a gypsy camp on the Thames, and have fortunes told. Among these ladies was one of a very imaginative temperament, who had not only lived many years in the East, but had resided several winters as a guest in Arab families. As she was very much disappointed at not finding the gypsies, I offered to tell her fortune by onomancy, i.e., by taking the letters of her name according to numbers, and deducing from them her past and future. This I did in a most reckless manner, freely setting down whatever came into my mind. It seems to me now that a kind of inspiration suggested what I wrote and predicted. What was my amazement to hear the lady declare that all which had been written as to her past life was literally true, and I saw that she was simply awed at my supposed power of prediction, and had the fullest faith in what I had declared as regarded the future. What I had intended for a jest or mere entertainment turned out to be serious enough. And reflecting on the evil consequences of such belief on a person who naturally attributed it all to magic, I deeply regretted what I had done, and have not since attempted any renewal of such oracle-work. It had previously occurred that I wrote out such a prediction for another lady which I did not clearly explain to her, but in which there was a regular recurrence and repetition of something unfortunate. This was shown in after years, and the troubles all came to pass as I had written. Now the more I studied this case the more I was convinced that it was based on unconscious observation, comparison, and deduction. Fichte has said that no bird can fly beyond itself, but the mind sometimes does actually precede its own conscious reasoning and throw back facts to it.
It may be urged by those who still cling to the old-fashioned fetish of a distinction between Spirit and Matter, that this explanation of predictions, oracles, and insight, is simply materialistic and utterly destructive of all the poetry, grandeur, and beauty which is associated with mysterious divination. But for those who believe with Maudsley, et sui generis, that all such distinctions are not seriously worth considering, and to him who can rise to the great philosophy now dawning on the world, there is perceptible in it something far more wonderful and poetical, beautiful and even awful, than ever was known to any occultist of old—for it is scientific and true. It is also true that man can now talk across the world and hear all sounds conveyed to him through the depths of ocean. He can catch these sounds and keep them for centuries. How long will it be before sights, scents, and tastes will be thus transferred, and the man sitting in London will see all things passing in Asia, or wherever it pleases him or an agent to turn a mirror on a view? It will be.[2] Or how long before the discovery of cheap and perfect aerial navigation will change all society and annihilate national distinctions? That, too, will be. These and a thousand stranger discoveries will during the ensuing century burst upon the world, changing it utterly. We go on as of old in our little petty narrow grooves, declaring that this will be, and that will never come to pass, and that this or that kind of hop-scotch lines, and tip-cat and marbles rules, are the eternal laws of humanity, and lo! all the while in his study some man whom you regard as a dreamer or dolt is preparing that which will be felt forever.
One of these great discoveries, and that not the least, will be the development and mastery of memory and perception, attention, interest, and will in children, with the constructive faculty which stimulates the whole by means of easy gradual series of instructions. When this system shall be perfected, we shall advance to understanding, controlling, and disciplining the subtler and stranger powers of the brain, which now puzzle us as dreams, intuitions, poetic inspiration, and prophecy. But this prophecy comes not from it, nor from any vague guessing or hoping. It is based on facts and on years of careful study of a thousand children’s minds, and from a conviction derived from calm observation, that the powers of the human mind are infinite and capable of being developed by science. And they will be!
There is very little knowledge among gypsies of real chiromancy, such as is set forth in the literature of occult or semi-occult science. Two centuries ago, when chiromancy was studied seriously and thoroughly by learned and wise men, the latter compared thousands of hands, and naturally enough evolved certain truths, such as you, reader, would probably evolve for yourself if you would do the same. Firstly they observed, as you may do, that the hand of a boor is not marked like that of a gentleman, nor that of an ignoramus like the palm of an artist or scholar. The line which indicates brain is on an average shorter in women than in men; in almost every instance certain signs infallibly indicate great sensuality, Others show a disposition to dreaminess, sentimentalism, the occult. Now as Love, Wisdom, Strength of Will, or Inertness, are associable with Venus, Apollo, Jupiter, or Saturn, and as astrology was then seriously believed in, it came to pass that the signs of chiromancy were distributed to the seven planets, and supposed to be under their dominion. It was an error, but after all it amounts to a mere classification. Properly considered, the names Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are only synonymes of qualities, meaning masculine virtue and character, aptitude, art, cleverness, sexual passion, and combativeness. He who would, without a trace of superstition, analyze and describe many hands compared with the characters of their owners, would adopt effectively the same arrangement.
When we remember the age in which they lived and the popular yearning for wonders and marvels which then characterized even the wisest men, the old chiromancers were singularly free from superstition. There were many among them who would have regarded with supreme contempt a Desbarolles, with his fortune-telling for twenty francs.
To these truly honest men, the gypsies, with their pretended chiromancy, were at first a great puzzle. The learned Prætorius, in his vast work on Chiromancy and Physiognomy, devotes seventy-five pages to this “foreign element in our midst,” and comes to the conclusion that they are humbugs. They do not know the lines—they know nothing. The intrusion of the latent powers of the mind had no place in the philosophy of Prætorius, therefore he did not perceive the back door by which the Romany slipped into the oracle. Yet there is abundant evidence even in his own valuable collection of the works of his predecessors, that many of them when tempted from merely describing character to straying into prophecy, were guided by something more mysterious than the laws of the lines of life, of the head, heart, the circle of Venus, the “hepatic,” and viâ lactea. The Hungarian gypsies have a system of chiromancy of their own which the reader may find in the book “Vom Wandernden Zigeunervolke,” by Dr. von Wlislocki, Hamburg, 1890. I had translated this and more of the kind for this chapter, but omitted it, thinking, firstly, that its place is supplied by more important matter; and, secondly, because it is, save as perhaps indicative of Indian origin, quite valueless, being merely of the prophetic kind.
I have more than once known gypsies to tell me things of my past life which were certainly remarkable, bewildering, or inexplicable. And for the ordinary seeker of “voonders oopon voonders” it is all-sufficient that a thing shall be beyond clear intelligence. “How do you explain that?” is their crucial question, and their cry of triumph when relating some case of an authentic apparition, a spiritual feat of thaumaturgy, or a dream fulfilled. In fact they would rather not have it explained. I well remember how Professor Joseph Henry, when lecturing on natural science, narrated to us, his hearers, how when he told certain people how certain tricks of a common conjuror were executed, they all protested that it could not be the way it was done. They did not wish to be disillusioned. Raise a man from the dead, make him fly through the air, and it is for everybody a miracle. Give them the power to do the same, and in a month’s time it will be no longer miraculous, but something “in the due course of nature.” And what single fact is there in the due course of nature which is not as inexplicable if we seek for a full explanation of it? Consider this thing every day till you are penetrated with it, bear it in mind constantly, and in due time all phenomena will be miracles. We can apparently get a little nearer to the causes and give our discoveries names, but the primal causes as constantly recede and are continually buried in deeper mystery. But with most people names pass for explanations.
“Can you tell me what a hypothesis is?” asked a young gentleman at a dinner party of a friend who passed for being well-informed. “Hush,” was the reply. “Not now—ladies present.”
“Mon caporal,” asked a French soldier, “can you tell me what is meant by an equilateral?” “Certainly—mais d’abord—do you know Hebrew?” “No.” “Ah, then it would be impossible to explain it to you.”