To be honest, folklore, and the signs of lovers of instrumental searching and modern treasure hunters, are negligible and primitive against the background of beliefs, legends, signs, conspiracies and prayers of treasure hunters of the period of the Russian Empire. Well, what we have now? A certain earthly grandfather, whom many diggers try to respect before starting a dig. The format of respect is different, from caramel to a bottle of vodka or even cognac. As a change, some creative diggers can bury a plasticine woman with a bottle of vodka. This, in principle, is the entire subculture of modern treasure hunters. Then, as a hundred years ago, a weighty scientific work could easily be written on the topic of signs, beliefs and all kinds of superstitions of treasure hunters. Therefore, I suggest you, dear readers, to reveal a little of the rich treasure-hunting folklore from the past of our country. Specifically Russia, since I won’t mention Europe or China at all.
And so. All the means and techniques that treasure hunters of the past resorted to in search of treasures can be confidently divided into three main groups.
— Prayers and spells.
— Amulets and other magical items.
— Letters and witnesses.
But, first, we must understand for what purpose, or in what vector of actions, these or those means were used. The fact is that treasure hunters of the past clearly knew that it was not so important to find the treasure itself as to see it. Numerous beliefs told about how a man was digging or looking for a treasure in the right place, but could not find this treasure because the treasure was hidden from his sight. Therefore, in order to find the treasure, it was necessary to see this treasure. Preferably at a distance, through a wall or underground. And, the second important factor for the successful discovery of the treasure was the means to remove the magic spell or calm the evil spirits that guarded that treasure.
Prayers and spells.Since the times of ancient paganism, all possible conspiracies, sentences, secret talks and non-canonical prayers have been an integral part of any society in Rus’. For any occasion in life there were not only canonical book prayers, but also all kinds of sayings or notebook prayers. Let’s skip the prayers related to the Apostle Zealot, this is another broader topic, let’s focus on notebook prayers and expensive church books. So there were beliefs that in order to successfully search for treasure in the forest, you need to walk all day and read prayers in that forest, so much so that not a single prayer is repeated. No one was going to memorize such a text, and therefore treasure hunters either bought or otherwise received from a midwife or witch notebooks with non-canonical prayers.
Of the canonical church books, the Breviary of Peter the Mogila was considered the best among treasure hunters. Preferably the original first edition of 1646. It was believed that the prayers from this book must be read in the right place, and then the treasure will come out of the ground, or in some other way the exact place where the treasure is buried will appear. At the same time, the prayers of such a powerful book were supposed to scare away all the evil spirits that hid and protected the treasure, confusing and frightening the treasure hunter. Peter Mogila’s Breviary was a rare book, and therefore obtaining it even temporarily cost the treasure hunter a considerable amount of money. If people borrowed this book from a church or monastery, then they necessarily promised, if a treasure was discovered, to give half of the treasures for the benefit of that very monastery. This was a separate ancient belief. Namely, if a treasure hunter found a treasure, then half of it must be given to a church or monastery, otherwise spells, curses, ghosts of the dead and evil spirits will haunt the happy owner of the found treasure.
Amulets and other magical items. In general, treasure hunting in the past was a big and endless quest. Hundreds of storylines, dozens of characters and a myriad of items necessary to complete the quest. If suddenly, a certain wealthy person fell ill with treasure hunting. And then it really was considered a separate type of mental illness. So, if a wealthy person was keen on searching for treasures, in a very short time he would begin to be surrounded and pestered by dozens of people with dubious reputations. Recommendations, advice and endless examples of how this or that person, with the help of such and such an object, raised a rich deposit in a ravine or on a river cliff. For the majority of passionate and passionate people, treasure hunting ended in complete ruin, debt and a quick death due to nervousness.
You can imagine how huge was the assortment of amulets and all sorts of magical and enchanted things that were offered to the passionate treasure hunters of the past to choose from? Range, from a banal fern flower, to a candle made of gallows taken at midnight of the bloody moon. As we understand, the main thing in this matter was not the object itself, but the story of its miraculous acquisition. They could give out anything as an amulet, even if it was cow dung, the main thing was that this story was conveyed to the prospective buyer in a high-quality manner. And everyone whose conscience did not weigh on their souls acted as sellers. Gypsies, fortune tellers and healers, traders at fairs, and even the clergy themselves did not try to earn a little money to please the suffering. But the most prominent characters in the sales of amulets and enchanted items in those days were retired military men. Dembel in our opinion. In the 19th century, the average person served in the army was 10 years. these are not Peter’s 25. So, after service, the serf peasant became a free man and looked for his place in the city neighborhoods. Most of them made a living with good and honest work, but there were also those who used their military background, so to speak, on a creative scale. These people constantly traded and traded in some rare and outlandish items that they “took” from the bodies of opponents killed in battle. The brighter the story about the battle and about the miraculous properties of a rare item, the more willingly the buyer believed in the story and willingly parted with significant sums of money in exchange for a dream.
Letters and witnesses.If you think that A. Dumas came up with the story about Count Montecristo on his own, then I assure you that this is not at all the case. Stories about robbers, mercenaries, officers, pirates, prostitutes, mistresses and other characters dying in the hold, who could hide a rich treasure in the wild, circulated en masse not only throughout Europe, but also throughout Mother Russia. And if in Europe, thanks to developed cartography, the scheme of fraud with the “originals” of treasure maps was brought to the ideal. In every European tavern, a tipsy visitor could buy for pennies an accurate and reliable map indicating the place where the treasure was buried. Sometimes for pennies, and sometimes they could cheat for very large sums. How can one not remember modern scammers with Peter’s rubles from Aliexpress.
So, in Russia there was a shortage of cards, so letters from hard labor or prison were circulated and sold everywhere. The plot is banal. A dying son writes to his mother, father or wife (underline as appropriate) that he repents, is a sinner, is dying, and therefore wants to tell where he and his gang buried untold riches. The sellers of such letters told gullible buyers that they themselves would have found these treasures a long time ago, but his health was not the same, and he wanted a drink, and in general he was a fugitive, wanted, and therefore if he showed up in those places, he would be in shackles and hard labor until death. Gullible buyers believed and purchased such letters. The whole comedy was that many of them did not even know how to read, and when upon arrival home they asked the literate to read it, it turned out that the letter was written by a person who did not know how to write.
Knowledgeable people have become another type of such written creativity. The same option with the old robber who died in prison, only instead of a letter — cellmate. As a rule, the main goal of such “neighbors” was not getting money, but the desire to get drunk and eat well for free. Everything is simple here, a man in a tavern “accidentally” blurted out that he had a tip on the real treasure of robbers. But he will not tell where exactly this place is. He will dig it up himself and become fabulously rich. Random people who overheard this decided that if you give such a simpleton a good drink, then in a drunken shop, he will tell everything that needs to be said. They gave them water and food, and in the end they got an absolutely fake story, with a non-existent place and signs in that very place.
This is how it was, once an interesting and rich folklore of treasure hunters. Unlike the current one. Although. If you read individual forums today and look at hotel bloggers, then I think there are more than one hefty book worth of fairy tales and storytellers.