When, who and under what circumstances found the first treasure using MD is unknown. At least, I was not able to find such information in open sources, which is a pity. After all, this day could be recognized as the official day of instrumental search. Yes, and even though there is an archaeologist’s day, a treasure hunter’s day, and even a sapper’s day, you still want something of your own, separate, that characterizes this particular new hobby. However, have you ever wondered how treasures were looked for before the first metal detectors appeared on mass sale? I became interested and had to work a little in search of factual, surprising and funny information, with very instructive stories, a whole layer of ethnographic culture and colorful historical facts. I will note right away that this note will not contain stories about treasures found during the construction or, conversely, demolition of old buildings, as well as stories about treasures discovered by archaeologists. I’ll tell you about people who were passionate about searching for treasures and who lived before the era of technological progress. And as it turned out, then this movement was no less popular than it is today.
The modern science of human psychology has somehow passed by the obsessions of individuals with the subject of searching for treasures. However, people in our country have been looking for treasures and hidden treasures since the times of epic Rus’. There is even a legend that Ivan the Terrible came to Novgorod with his guardsmen in 1548 and began torturing the sextons of St. Sophia Cathedral. Asking where the secret storage room of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich is located. An interesting play on words, in those days the word “torture” was synonymous with the word “ask”, hence the term “inquisitive mind” has been preserved in modern language. And in this understanding, it is not entirely clear whether Ivan the Terrible really tortured the sextons or whether he kindly talked to them over a cup of tea with kozinaki. And, as the Pskov Chronicle says, the sextons did not reveal anything to Ivan the Terrible, then the Tsar and the Grand Duke himself went up to the upper chambers and pointed with his finger, indicating the place where it was necessary to break the wall. Behind the wall they found a lot of gold bars and other riches, which were loaded onto carts and sent to Moscow. A good story, indicative, and reveals the essence of the fact that not only ordinary peasants, but also top officials of the state were looking for treasures.
However, as meticulous historians later proved, the Pskov chronicle lied a little. Since Grozny did not visit Novgorod that year, and the St. Sophia Cathedral was built much later after the death of Vladimir Svyatoslavovich. But the story of Peter the Great’s sister Ekaterina Alekseevna, which I will talk about below, will reveal for us an interesting side of the life of secular society of that time. The hobby of treasure hunting has become part of a separate subculture on the same level as fortune telling, divination and horoscope drawing. It is not for nothing that Vladimir Ivanovich Dal, in a series of articles “On Beliefs, Superstitions and Prejudice of the Russian People,” wrote a note on treasures after publications on ghosts, werewolves and sympathetic means. (the last term aroused my interest and decided to read what it was, it turned out to be a whole chapter about remedies against fever. For example, a patient would smear soot on his face and dress in someone else’s dress, so that the fever would not recognize the person when he returned.) In those days they looked for treasures and sometimes found in different ways and signs based on beliefs and pure rationalism. And here are some examples of such methods of searching for treasures.
1) Chance or luck.A method that still works today, but it needs to be described, since it is from this that the entire treasure-hunting subculture originated. The passion for searching for treasures was inherent and ubiquitous both among common people and among the nobility, and even individual representatives of the clergy were seen doing this. Beliefs, omens, conspiracies, actions of scammers of all stripes, storekeepers (not to be confused with the professions of warehouse workers), sorcerers and even advice from priests. As we know, most often treasures are found by accident. This was the case in those distant historical times. In 1673, on the estate of boyar Fyodor Rtishchev in the village of Kutukova, Pereslavl-Ryazan district, such a story happened. The kids drove a herd of cows to water. The cows, having walked along the steep bank of the river, collapsed part of the slope, as a result of which a clay pot with silver hryvnias and various kinds of jewelry made of silver and gold with precious stones fell onto the bank. The kids quickly picked everything up and divided it among themselves. As the investigation later established, they were divided not equally, but according to seniority, and several gold jewelry was broken into pieces. The children brought the treasures home, and as the investigation later established, the adults agreed not to tell anyone about the treasure, and they themselves began to look for ways to sell the treasures. One of the women — Obrashka Sergeeva’s mother could not resist and told the local priest Taras about the treasure, and as the investigation later established, the priest demanded that part of the treasure be donated to the church treasury. Naturally, all participants in the story began to deny that they had any jewelry at all. And then priest Taras told the story to the volost clerk. The clerk wrote a letter to the master and received permission from the Master to conduct a search and confiscate valuables from the serfs. The investigation was unable to accurately establish the subsequent details of the case, since all the participants in the story lied, got out of their way during interrogations, and placed all the blame on others. However, as the investigation established, the clerk, with his assistants, went through the houses of the peasants and, with threats and rods, was able to remove some of the jewelry from the treasure. At the same time, according to the inventory, less than half of all the seized jewelry was sent to the master.
Pop Taras turned to the clerk with a request to donate part of the treasure to the church treasury. But the clerk said that he had sent everything to the master, and he had nothing to donate. The clergyman, out of frustration, reported this story to two clerks in the village neighboring Kutukov. That village belonged in different shares to two different Lords. But the fact is that the river bank where the children found the treasure was a disputed territory. And they wanted to demarcate it between neighbors only after a year. Therefore, the clerks of the neighboring village sent letters to their Lords, the nobles wrote a letter to the Tsar-Father with a request to conduct an investigation. And the capital’s investigators arrived in the village. They did not stand on ceremony and arrested everyone: women, old people, men, children, clerks (even those who wrote a complaint) And only priest Taras remained outside the investigation. He, as a clergyman, was interrogated by the diocesan authorities. The investigation at that time had a very limited range of operational measures, and after torture with fire and smoke, it was quickly possible to establish an approximately accurate picture of the events in detail and participants. However, the case was suspended and subsequently quickly came to naught as a result of the death of boyar Rtishchev. Of course, no one was going to blame the prominent and noble boyar; most likely, the investigators were able to secretly remove the remains of the treasure and it made no rational sense for them to continue to remain in place.
This example shows that stories about the discovery of particularly valuable treasures became public knowledge. At the same time, many stories were written about rich people, saying that they got rich not through their own labor, but through the discovery of secret and ancient treasures. All this together and the generally recognized eternal desire for easy money and quick earnings contributed to the creation of a whole class of superstitions, legends, beliefs and signs.
2) Prophetic dream.At the end of the 19th century, in the village of Bolshie Ugory, Kostroma district, a local priest had a dream about the location of a robber’s treasure. The legend about this treasure has been circulating among the people for a long time, so when the priest told the congregation about the dream and that he knew exactly the place where to look for the treasure, the whole village happily agreed to help in the search. At the height of the spring sowing season, all the peasants went into the forest and, breaking into groups, began to look for treasure. Under the general instruction of the priest and compliance with the “prescribed” rules, with prayers, chants and good thoughts. The district authorities were able to stop this mass madness only after the arrival of an entire detachment of gendarmerie. As a result, particularly zealous treasure hunters were treated with rods, and the priest, after an investigation, was exiled to a distant monastery for preventive measures. As a result, the peasants decided among themselves that the treasure had not been discovered to them, because not all those who looked for it had pure thoughts. Someone probably secretly thought about finding the treasure and keeping it for himself, without telling anyone, and then digging it up and taking it away when the opportunity arises.
But a manuscript dating back to the 11th century tells the story of a more successful outcome of the discovery of a treasure using the method of a prophetic dream. One of the monks of the Pechersk Monastery had a dream, thanks to which he and his companion were able to find a lot of silver and gold dishes of Latin masters in the caves under the monastery. The monks hid the treasure in different places, but news of the find reached Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich. The monks were arrested and tortured for a long time (in this case, most likely they were tortured in the modern understanding of the meaning of the word). But even under torture, the monks did not reveal the place where they hid the treasures. So, here you can’t help but wonder whether the outcome of the whole story was successful for the treasure hunters.
If anyone thinks that such a phenomenon as a prophetic dream in those distant and not so distant times was considered accidental, then I assure you that you are deeply mistaken. Prophetic dreams are a separate topic of popular belief, and therefore there were many “proven”, “true” and “reliably effective” ways to cause the necessary “custom” prophetic dreams on certain topics. For example, to search for a treasure, you had to put an object under your pillow that was associated with this treasure or the person who hid the treasure. People carried earth from a grave or a piece of a grave cross, a shard from a clay pot. And naturally, all these items had to be obtained at midnight of the full red moon of a leap year. There were many variations in the complexity of methods for obtaining the necessary items and they depended on the fantasies of a local healer or the sense of humor of a village priest. There was a whole collection of non-canonical prayers and conspiracies to evoke prophetic dreams. It was also necessary to understand that inducing prophetic dreams during the waning moon was useless, since at this time all dreams are false.
3) Amulets, potions, enchanted items and planetary notebooks.The sister of Peter the Great, Ekaterina Alekseevna Romanova, was known as a passionate treasure hunter. And as usually happens in such cases, for any request of a rich person there will always be interesting people with good and correct proposals. So, in the middle of the night, the princess could order three of the fastest horses to be harnessed and with her retinue they would rush three hundred miles away to dig for treasure in the yard of a peasant unknown to anyone. And such places were pointed out by knowledgeable people. But the conditions were not simple, but what could we do without it? It was necessary to travel three hundred miles with an unextinguished candle. At one time, loyal people brought Princess Catherine together with a certain Kostroma priest who boasted of having rare planetary notebooks. In correspondence, the priest claimed that with the help of these notebooks he had helped find more than one treasure. The correspondence of the princess with the owner of the notebooks came through a secret order to Peter the Great. He ordered a search for the priest. The officers of the secret order carried out an investigation, found the priest, interrogated him and recorded his confession of fraud. According to the law of that time, punishment — torn nostrils, the mark of a thief, shackles and the endless expanses of the Urals for exploration.
According to the general belief of the treasure hunters of that time and the plans of charlatans (or faithful people, whoever it is more convenient for them to accept the activities of storekeepers), potions, decoctions, amulets, ancient scrolls, enchanted roots, fern flower, tear-grass and many, many other object-based enchantments, all this should have contributed to the discovery of dexterity, clairvoyance and condescension of secret knowledge in the treasure hunter. The ability to see through the ground and walls, feel treasures hundreds of miles away, and all sorts of little things, such as the ability to talk with animals, the spirits of dead people and read the thoughts of the living, should have been discovered. Well, if the sold items did not work, then the traders always had one standard, but absolutely working excuse. The treasure hunter’s thoughts were not pure; he decided to spend the found treasure not on a good deed, but on all kinds of shame or actions displeasing to God. And in general, if in the process of searching for a treasure the seeker at least once flashed the thought in his head that he would not share with anyone, but would take everything only for himself, then the treasure will not be given to him. A treasure hunter can dig in the right and precise place, but in this case the treasure itself will go deeper and deeper into the ground.
And here, when reading the last paragraph, each of the comrades will definitely and surely remember their own story about the search for treasure in the right and one hundred percent place. And about what thoughts he had, and if he had true thoughts, then his friends probably had cunning and dishonest thoughts. It would seem that such a naive medieval superstition, but how well the triumph of technical progress of post-industrial society works today?
Another interesting example of the use of enchanted objects is an excerpt from the diary of one unlucky treasure hunter of the late 19th century. A Siberian merchant, sick of searching for the treasures of Stenika Razin and Emelyan Pugachev, very quickly began to spend money on his hobby. As expected, all sorts of people with dubious reputations began to gather around him. Bring him and offer to buy a variety of reliable remedies, amulets wrapped in rags and robber letters. So, for an impressive sum, the merchant purchased a handful of earth from the grave of a strangled man, taken during the full moon at midnight. And here, a very interesting example for me, was the mention, among others, of covetous people, healers, prayer workers, wandering blessed ones, all those who tried to sell “proven” remedies to the merchant. So, among all this rabble, retired soldiers were mentioned who were trading in some relics, allegedly obtained by them from the bodies of killed enemy officers, or shahs, or atamans. As I understand it, stories about the miraculous acquisition of items were invented on the fly, depending on the reaction of the prospective buyer.
4) Prayers, conspiracies, rituals and upgraded books. If in the previous part we were talking about material objects, then here I will tell you about verbal and speech techniques that, according to treasure hunters of the past, truly helped in the search for hidden treasures. “Grandpa, grandpa, here’s some candy for you, give me a coin.” If you, in the company of seasoned treasure hunters of the 19th century, used only this saying, then your comrades would look at you, as today in the field the owner of the Noct Amphibio Multi looks at the owner of a “Pirate” type MD that he accidentally met. In principle, in this segment of the treasure-hunting science of the past, folk conspiracies and prayers did not go far from other spheres of human life in the countryside. The spelled notebooks were copied from one healer to another, often with additions or simplifications. There were entire collections of non-canonical prayers for all occasions, from removing warts to summoning custom-made weather phenomena. Naturally, writing prayers and treasure hunting were not spared.
“I’ll go into an open field, into dense forests, beyond the black mud, across the ocean-sea.” And here “there is a pillar, and on it sits the Most Holy Theotokos.” “Behind the swamp there is a little bit – I have to take it. Go away, evil spirit, it is not your place to guard, and it is not yours to guard.” And in this format of the Central Asian akim – what I see about that I sing, homemade prayers could last an hour without repetition in the storyline. In conspiracies, in addition to mentioning saints and places of search, they always told how the found treasure would be spent. Thus, the pure and unclean forces that could protect the treasure were assured of the splendor of the thoughts and virtue of the treasure hunter’s intentions.
When the time came to realize that homemade prayers did not help, treasure hunters began to think about more advanced, and therefore expensive, methods of prayer searching. So, the same Ural treasure hunter of the 19th century left an interesting entry in his diary describing the so-called Call Books. “But the beggar Vasily Semenych actually took the luggage in the village of Krasnaya Polyana, and a low-ranking deacon taught him how to take it: he read more and more with prayers from the breviary of Peter Mogila. We went to Liva three times for that breviary, but they asked dearly: a hundred rubles, and even the scoundrel Evseika fooled his bast eyes, and robbed him of a lot of money. What was Philip Chistyakov rich in: – he had four barks – and he spent all of them in treasures. – However, God will help, in the spring he will take a little bit. The kisser under the mountain has a book called “The Silent Line”: you can use it to call.” I think it is unnecessary to comment on this passage.
5) Guarding treasures, spirits, minor deities, ghosts and canonical saints.When a person looking for treasure began to ask questions like “What am I doing wrong?”. As usual in similar cases in all other aspects of life, one answer always comes. “I’m doing everything right, it’s just that someone is bothering me.” And who can interfere with an experienced treasure hunter? After identifying the characters that could interfere with the treasure hunter on the way to his cherished goal, a plan was developed to neutralize them. Each type of evil spirit has its own method. But the most important thing is to have nerves of iron. After all, according to various legends, the devil of a person spins in the forest. Or when there is only one step left to the treasure, then the horse will break loose, then the bear will growl, then the person will faint, and when he wakes up, he realizes that he is standing in a different place, and he has been looking for that place with a sign of treasure all his life and can’t find it anymore. .
In the beliefs of the Siberian peoples there are many references to the fact that treasure is a bridge between the world of the living and the world of spirits. In European culture, we can find many legends that the treasure is the object that keeps ghosts from passing on to the afterlife. In our beliefs, there is no clear purpose or logic in the behavior of the evil spirits guarding the treasure. When three hundred people, residents of one village, have been digging a mound for three years and all to no avail, the initiators of such an excavation need good arguments in order to keep the diggers in good shape and interested in the work they have begun. To act against evil spirits, they used standard means: they prayed, were baptized, carried holy water, put up crosses and walked in large groups, they say, if one demon confuses one, then he will not have enough strength for everyone.
We should also talk about the minor deities or good spirits responsible for preserving treasures and issuing treasures according to inventory and orders, only to worthy and pious treasure hunters.
On the territory of Great Russia, the main person in the line of issuing treasures was considered to be a spirit under the name of the Pantry. The name is not very original, although folk fantasy prescribed a deeper storyline and dramaturgy for its subordinates. Layun and Tickler. Accordingly, when treasure hunters approach, one turns into a barking dog, the other spirit becomes an annoying tickling magpie. There is no information on how to complete this quest on the way to the treasured treasure, but probably simply by ignoring all the actions of distracting animals. In the southern provinces the spirit in charge of the treasures was called Kudeyar. This is generally a separate character in treasure-hunting folklore, since stories circulated about him as about a real person who lived in reckless robbery, and therefore hid barrels of gold, bags of pearls and carts of silver everywhere and indiscriminately in all conspicuous places. In Belarus, a small-scale god was buried by Kopusha. They pumped up the deity with the help of food treats, bows and a vow to leave a part of the treasure to him.
Among the canonical church apostles, the people also appointed a responsible saint in the line of treasure hunting. He became the Apostle Simon the Zealot; according to researchers, the belief that Simon helps in the search for treasures came from the consonance of the words “Zealot” and “Gold”. And since it’s gold, it means treasure, somehow the relationship is strained, but what if it works? Another saint according to the specification of searching for treasures in Rus’ was considered St. John, Archbishop of Novgorod. His record included a story about how a priest was pursued by a demon on his way to Jerusalem. Having contrived, John sealed the demon in a jug. So the people decided that he was hunting for treasures, but he couldn’t provide for anything, if this saint could seal the demon, he could also print spells on pots with treasures.
6) Treasures are named, with a pledge and hidden with a key.So, imagine the average treasure hunter a hundred years ago. And best of all is yourself in his place. You have gone through all the above paths, methods, methods, options, variations and attempts to find the right treasure. And you had a dream, and you drank consciousness-expanding potions, and you bought the dry finger of an executed Arab, and you rode a hundred miles with an unquenchable candle, and you hired faithful people to show the place, and you drove away evil spirits with prayers from rare books, and you appeased the spirits with pies. and even on the night of Ivan Kupala, in bast shoes enchanted for the day of Simon the Zealot, they ran through the forest in search of a fern flower. But the result is only an abandoned household, huge debts and a gaping hole in the family budget. Who is to blame? And what to do?
And the treasure itself is to blame, because there is a promise on it, which is why it is not given to the treasure hunter. And even if such a treasure is found without knowing the vow, it will drag on, going underground. The pledge is another quest that the treasure hunter needs to complete. This is a simple matter, you just need to find out to whom and under what conditions the treasure will be revealed to the treasure hunter. For example, only a person with a certain name can find a treasure. They say that the one who hid this treasure wished it so. Most likely, this version was invented by faithful people. Another category of scammers who volunteered to be guides in searches for treasures. Such subjects of rustic appearance could perform entire performances with simple special effects on old tracts, burial mounds, in the ruins of houses or caves. The treasure hunters were assured that they had already found the treasure and the right place, but only a person with a certain name could see this treasure and pick it up. And, as we understand, such a person himself was soon found, or, as the legend continues, he had to be found and persuaded for a long time.
In addition to the name, certain tasks could serve as a pledge. For example, the treasure was buried for a hundred heads. And here it is not clear whether he should reveal himself to the hundredth person, or whether the treasure hunter should ruin a hundred human souls. There were simpler options, like singing twelve songs, but not one of them said either about friend or foe, or about dear or not dear. Or such a vow: “This good will go to the one who immediately dances naked after my death.” In general, in folklore there were such vows for treasures, after reading which, screenwriters of films of the XXX category can learn many new plot images and colorful scenes.
Again, the treasures found completely by accident were explained by the fact that a person, unknowingly, accidentally fulfilled a vow. For example, a man sat down on the shore to have lunch and accidentally spilled milk. And then he was given an expensive treasure, because, you see, it was in the vow. Spill milk and thus the Sami will appease the spirit guarding the treasure.
A separate explanation for why the right treasure is not given to the treasure hunter are stories about keys. Another topic that was perfectly monetized by scammers, since this option fits well into the amulets section. According to the version of the “faithful people,” the treasure was not given to the treasure hunter because a lock was placed on it, and only after the key was found, the lock tore off the veil of invisibility of the treasure. A castle could be called a curse, a spell or a conspiracy to hide a treasure from prying eyes. But people who hid treasures with a lock always made a key to the lock. It was any item that came across to the owner of the treasure at that moment. A metal key, a boot knife, a rusty nail or a cobblestone with initials scratched on it. In general, any item found by a “faithful person” in a trash heap or in a pile of rubbish. But after placing it in the right place – under a bush, under a cross on a grave, under the threshold of a hanged man’s house, and the “accidental” finding of this item by the treasure hunter himself, the key acquired real value, both in the understanding of the treasure hunter and in the swindler’s wallet. < /p>
7) Werewolf Treasures. Separately from all of the above are stories about treasures that have an enchantment in the form of an animal or even a person. According to legends, treasures that did not want to appear to humans could turn into living beings. So, according to one legend from the beginning of the 20th century in the Kaluga province, a certain beggar woman, begging around a rich village, could not get rid of an annoying rooster that was following her and tugging at the lower flaps of her skirt. And then the beggar woman decided to drive away the bird, hitting the rooster with a stick, and it took it and disintegrated on the ground in a good handful of ringing gold chervonets. In the Novgorod province, children decided to play a joke on a poor and sick old man and threw a dead sheep that was lying on the road through his window. The next morning the old man saw the limp corpse and decided to throw it back through the window, but the ram scattered gold coins on the floor.
In all stories about werewolf treasures, there is one detail – in order to reveal the treasure, the werewolf needs to inflict severe damage or physical injury. Hit, kick, hit with a stick, whip with a whip, and many more options using improvised means. Sometimes werewolf treasures could appear in the form of a hornless cow, a lame dog, a one-eyed cat or an unknown person. And here I simply have to ask you, dear readers, to treat this section of my note with irony. And try, on occasion, not to hit with a fiskar a lonely, strange, ridiculous-looking peasant you met on the edge of the forest. First, take a closer look, if he has a bucket and a knife in his hands, then with a high degree of probability he is a mushroom picker.
I think this is where I can complete the first part of my research on how treasures were searched for before the era of technological progress that gave us, lovers of instrumental searching, these wonderful metal detectors. To be honest, I myself was interested in studying such a large layer of historical information. And there was an extremely large amount of this information, so I missed a significant part of the detailed material and compressed it into the size of a small note. In the second part, which will be published on our website in the near future, I will talk about real and actually working methods of searching for treasures and other antiquities by people in the distant and not so distant past.
P.S. I’m writing a note and thinking, but in a hundred years our means for finding treasures may be considered quackery and a useless anachronism of industrial society. And some writer-researcher will make fun of the current owners of the most top-end MDs, just as I just laughed at, say, Call Books. Indeed, in our time, as centuries earlier, the search and discovery of treasure depends solely on luck and the greatest probability of random events.
Honestly, I will be pleased to know if one of the sellers of MD and other equipment for treasure hunters decides to organize a comic showcase in their store with the items described in this article. But there are a lot of such items. Ironic, original, and I think clients will appreciate the approach to business. The main thing is that the items do not legally fall under the product description)))
