ИСТИНА

Fortune-telling rituals in modern Greek folklore calendar can be found in an expanded or a truncated form in many holidays of the Ritual Year. The most significant are these ritual events which called “Rites of passage” like Christmas, New Year, Epiphany, Carnival, Days of St. John the Baptist and of Prophet Elijah. The structure of calendar fortune-telling is very typical and it is characterized by a certain set of criteria: time and place, items wich will be used, committed actions and verbal formulas. Modern Greek fortune-telling calendar rituals can be divided into categories based on items used in the process of divination: food from the holiday table, pyromancy (by fire), hydromancy (by water), mirror-mantic, botanomancy (by herbs), oneiromancy (by dreams) and meteorological fortune-telling etc. The main feature of Modern Greek tradition, in contrast to the ancient Greek, is the fact that now these predictions are not official, they are not a ritual instrument of formal religious practice. Most of these examples has been taken from sources from XIX-XX centuries and some of them became a part of the modern urban culture. So, fortune-telling by a coin in vasilopita (Βασιλόπιτα, pie of St. Basil) has become an integral part of the celebration of the New Year, and now you can find a great variety of special coins for vasilopita in supermarkets, as well as finished pies of St.Basil with a happy coin inside.