Faith Wigzell (University of London), Printed Dream Books and Divinatory Literature in Russia before 1825
When printed divinatory literature first appeared in Moscow in 1765, it met ready acceptance from Russian readers who were to a greater or lesser extent familiar with the many forms of folk divination, and/or the manuscript tradition of mainly Byzantine texts. Prior to this, their appetite had been whened by the astrological information and weaiher predictions in the immensely popular translated calendars. The first texts (geomancy, oneiromancy, physiognomy and chiromancy) like practically all divinatory literature before 1825 were all translated, almost exclusively from German or French. The vigorous folk traditions of divination play no active role at all until the turn of the century when guides to traditional Russian New Year divinatory practices or to folk beliefs in omens were included as appendices to large fortune-telling compendia.
The first divinatory texts were published in Moscow for strictly commercial reasons; it was probably Catherine's own distaste for superstition and divination that delayed iheir appearance in St Petersburg until 1774. Between 1774 and the late 80s St Petersburg produced more than Moscow, where there was a general decline in publishing activity. By the nineties the situation was reversed, perhaps because she distribution system of Moscovite publishers was better developed. This trend accelerated in the nineteenth century. Divinatory literature became extremely popular in the late 80s, suffering a temporary decline under Paul between 1796-99, but after that never looked back.
Nearly half of the texts in the eighteenth century were of the geomantic question/answer type, which appeared in variants, with or without a wheel of fortune, containing instructions for using with either dice or dots or both. In order to increase the appeal of texts, the names of the sages who headed columns of questions and answers were varied and even Slavonicized, or the number of questions was increased. This did not prevent the gradual decline in popularity of this type of text as well as of texts of physiognomy and chiromancy towards 1825. A similar fate befell onomantic texts (how to leam the name of one's beloved) which were reasonably popular before 1800 (5 editions), less so after 1800 and rare after 1825. The reason may be that they were not very flexible, and all too obviously the predictions could be shown to be false. By contrast, cartomantic texts gained rapidly in popularity after their first appearance in 1782, even being used by professionals from the 1790s. Telling fortunes in coffee grounds is another form of professional divination, practised in Russian towns in the first part of the 1780s. It probably reached Russia via printed texts, though since the first known text dates only from 1789, it may also be that it arrived in foreign-language form, printed or oral, via foreign residents or Russian travellers.
In the eighteenth century, dream books came in a number of different types, some of them relying on astrology or dice-throwing, but the majority iconic in character. After 1800, iconic dream books dominated, probably because iconic interpretation is characteristic of the folk tradition and hence familiar to most Russians, even though the interpretations are almost always different. Secondly, many of the other types were complicated to use, possibly requiring some knowledge of astrology. Furthermore, the iconic type, as the nineteenth century showed, could be easily expanded. Dream books also became relatively more popular from 1800, and few of the divinatory compendia that were so popular at this period failed to include a dream book.
Dream books and other divinatory texts seem to have been widely bought by the less sophisticated nobility, especially country dwellers, but it would be a mistake to imagine that the audience was exclusively upper-class. By the 1790s purchasers of printed books included artisans, clerks and lesser merchants. Priests, traditionally consulted as divinatory sages, also seem to have been interested in dream divination. Nor should it be assumed that such literature was produced for a female readership. Evidence suggests that in the eighteenth century this was not exclusively so. especially with dream books, but by 1825 it was slipping down the social scale, sold mainly either to women or to the relatively uneducated. Even Romantic taste for the irrational seems only to have had a slight delaying effect on this process.