NUMEROUS METHODS OF TELLING FORTUNES ON NEW YEAR’S EYE.
The evening which of all others is the most adapted for witchery, is New Year’s eve. It is a very ill practice to spend this evening at a ball, and it is an acknowledged fact that ill luck, more or less, follows a person throughout the year, who has danced the old year out and the new year in.
You should spend New Year’s eve with a small circle of near and dear friends, around a punch-bowl, while you seek to inquire what the future has in store for you. In the first place this may be done with melted lead or wax. Some of you, perhaps, are acquainted with this method of inquiring of the future, yet there may be many among your number who are still ignorant of it. Now, as it is of the highest interest in the world that these should know the process, I will here give, for their benefit, a short explanation of it, which the others may skip over.
THE LEAD AND WAX SPELL.
Take a good-sized piece of lead or wax, (the former is better,) place it in a melting-ladle, and dissolve it over the coals, or over a spirit-lamp, into which you have poured a little alcohol. You must then take a vessel full of water, (a bowl is best, that is not too deep nor too shallow,) and pour into it the lead or wax, and from the various figures which it forms in the water you endeavor to tell your fortune.
THE SAUCER CHARM.
The following is another method: you take four saucers; in one you put a ring, in another a sprig of myrtle, in the third a piece of money, and in the fourth nothing. The individuals composing the company must now walk around the table, blindfold, one after the other, and choose one of the saucers, which, in the mean time, have been changed as to place. Those among the company who choose the ring, will be betrothed in the course of the year; myrtle signifies wedlock, the piece of money wealth, the empty saucer no change of circumstances.
HOW TO TELL THE FIRST LETTER OF YOUR FUTURE WIFE OR HUSBAND’S NAME.
If you wish to know the letter with which your future wife or husband’s name commences, write all the letters of the alphabet, separately, upon small pieces of paper, put these pieces in a box, and draw one out blindfold.