October 31, 2015

1880s Fortune Telling by Moles


Happy Halloween! Through my library travels I came across a book that was no doubt a product of the spiritualism movement of the 1880s and I thought it would be fun to highlight some passages for Halloween. It's called the Witches' Dream Book and Fortune Teller and it's the 19th century guilty pleasure equivalent of those "who was your dog in a past life" quizzes that your friends all do on facebook.

This book gives "practical dream advice," such as if you dream of bacon, it "denotes the death of some friend or relation and that enemies endeavor to do you mischief,"
and if you dream of baking it is a sign of "an ill housewife, who lies dreaming in bed, when she should be doing her business." Sometimes dreams are listed as meaning different things to different genders, such as,  dreaming of a hairy chest means profit for men while it, sadly, means the loss of a husband for a woman.

This book also includes advice on how to tell the future using cards, palms, dice, dreams, dominoes and weirdly, skin moles. I had heard of moles being used to denote witches in the 1600s and I have heard of moles as being thought of as the spot where a person had been mortally wounded in a past life but I had never heard of fortune telling by moles.

Now being the skeptic I am I turned right to the mole page to find out my fate. It starts at the top of the body and works its way down. I finally hit "Mole on right thigh." I have a mole on my right thigh! Let's see what it says. "A mole on the right thigh shows that the person will become rich and also fortunate in marriage." I can live with that! Oh wait. It's not on my right thigh, it's on my left thigh. Darn. Lets see what that one says. "A mole on the left thigh denotes that the person suffers much by poverty and want of friends, as also by the enmity and injustice of others." Too bad. :)



Happy Halloween, again! I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday and found "fortune telling by moles" as fun as I did! I'd be interested in hearing what people think of this and before anyone asks, I hear having a mammalian burrowing mole for a pet denotes an adventurous outlook on life, whether or not it is on your left thigh, right thigh or shoulder. :)    

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