Old Taboos Flourish in New Russia

As she shakes off the fog of sleep and rolls out of bed each morning, Galina Penzurova tries to remember to touch the floor with her right foot first to ward off a day filled with troubles.

The 26-year-old chemist is always careful not to obstruct the bedroom mirror with open closet doors or discarded clothing for fear of blocking the journey of a recently departed spirit to the next world.

If she drops her knife while buttering toast at the breakfast table, she knows to expect a male visitor. If she puts her shirt or sweater on inside out, she casts it to the floor and steps on it before putting it on the right way.

Russian folklore is so rich with omens and superstition that an outsider studying the rituals might conclude that the only way to avoid bad luck is to stay in bed all day.

But even that’s not safe, warn those truly tuned in to the otherworldly.

“If you have a bad dream and you don’t want it to come true,” explains Penzurova, “you have to get rid of it first thing in the morning by retelling it to running water from the faucet so that it goes down the drain.”

Russians have always been highly superstitious, especially about rites of passage such as traveling, marriage and death. No self-respecting Russian--from cosmonauts to frequent-flying diplomats to the millions who now make their living ferrying goods in the new “shuttle trade”--would embark on a journey without the traditional “sitting for the road” practice in which everyone in the household observes a moment of silence together while seated on their luggage, the couch or a bed.

Whistling indoors, shaking hands over a threshold, returning something borrowed after nightfall and mending a hem or button while wearing the damaged garment have long been shunned by most Russians in the belief that they tempt misfortune.

But as this society recovers from seven decades of the rigid Communist ideology that frowned on any belief in rival forces, the occult and the paranormal have risen to new heights of influence on everyday behavior in the uncertain reform era. Ancient prohibitions have been resurrected by the superstitious, from an ever-lengthening list of forbidden gifts to a reluctance to celebrate any holiday, birthday, anniversary or other happy event in advance.

“Today, Russians’ behavior is a bit experimental,” says Vladimir Druzhinin, director of the Psychology Institute of the Academy of Sciences. “Until the 1990s, the ideology of those in power was imposed as the guiding force. There was no place for folkloric rituals, at least not in public.”

Druzhinin and others attribute the renaissance of superstitions to the current quest for certainty and confidence in an era of upheaval.

“The old system of values imposed from above during the Soviet era has collapsed. Now there is a vacuum,” Druzhinin says. “This has encouraged the spread of traditional religions as well as religious sects and more irrational forms of belief, like astrology, ESP and fortunetelling.”

Orthodox Christianity experienced a rebirth shortly after the official policy of atheism was dropped in Russia as the Communists fell from power. But because so many generations here grew up regarding churches as warehouses and architectural curiosities, strong faith is professed by only a minority of Russians.

Instead, people get through their days with the help of “little religions,” says Olga Miserva, a parapsychologist and director of Moscow’s Open Spiritual Center. “Reliance on superstition shows up the inadequacy of our internal knowledge and self-confidence, problems that have been intensified by the insecurity inflicted on people by the complete change of the world they knew.”

She sees the current fixation on paranormal phenomena as a transitory indulgence that will lessen as more Russians become comfortable with their unfamiliar personal freedoms and the need to be more self-reliant in the evolving capitalist world.

“There are a lot of problems today and a lot of reasons for people to be fearful,” Miserva says. “People want to fill these voids with a little something they can believe in. They look to the stars for guidance and put their faith in these old superstitions to feel they have some control over the future.”

Lilia Voronezheva, a popular psychic and faith healer, sees the same motivations for adhering to superstition and folklore but parts ways with traditional psychologists by viewing the trend as natural and lasting. “People need to hold on to their cultural traditions. It gives them a sense of identity, of belonging,” says the frequent guest on late-night television programs and a member of Moscow’s Healers Assn.

The Road to Utopia

Although trust in healers and psychics is less pervasive than the popular adherence to superstition, practitioners of the occult also have experienced growth in their followings. Psychologists such as Druzhinin note that communism professed to know the path to utopia, and now that it is discredited many Russians prefer to grasp at other illusions about miracles and fate rather than accept the harsh reality around them.

Voronezheva’s healing practice is so busy she has to turn away clients. Fellow psychic Anatoly Kashpirovsky won a seat in parliament in 1993. Every Saturday night, NTV’s television series “The Third Eye” parades an array of seers, healers and mediums for the public’s rapt attention.

Voronezheva traces many of the superstitious rituals to ancient religious beliefs about guardian angels and the transit of the human spirit following death to the afterlife.

One pagan belief that has survived among a smaller circle of the superstitious is the danger of “the evil eye” and an ill-intending person’s ability to cast it. Those who believe in the power of a hateful glance to summon misfortune “disinfect” themselves by passing a candle three times before an icon, Voronezheva explains.

Fear of witches and sorcerers survives in rural Russia. One woman was beaten to death in a village near the city of Voronezh in early March by neighbors who were convinced she was casting deadly spells on their livestock, the Itar-Tass news service reported.

Colors and figures have strong associations with luck or the lack of it.

Yellow flowers and red hair are particularly suspect, the former associated with sadness and the latter mistrusted because redheads are so rare in Russia.

Unlike in many Western cultures, the number 13 holds little meaning for Russians. Friday the 13th is nothing to worry about, and hotels have floors and rooms numbered 13. But the even numbers are widely considered omens of bad luck. A dozen roses, or any other even quantity of any flower, would be appropriate only at a funeral.

The phobia about even numbers is tied to ancient pagan fears about duplication, says cultural anthropologist Yelena Minenok, likening it to the multitude of risks associated with a mirror image.

“It probably comes from our folklore, when the hero always defeated his enemy with a single blow,” Minenok says. “If he had to strike two blows, it would transform the attacker into two and double his problems.”

Beyond Looking Glass

One of the most widely held superstitions is that coming back into a home to fetch a forgotten object will bring danger on the resumed journey, unless the forgetful one glances in the mirror before going out again. Some insist you must stick out your tongue at the mirror or at least make an ugly face to scare off evil spirits lurking in the nether world beyond the glass.

Voronezheva, the psychic, explains that this most enduring of rituals has its roots in ancient religion. When one left home, it was believed he was followed by a guardian angel, she says. If he returns, the angel will be waiting alone on the roadside and unavailable to protect the forgetful one. Glancing in the mirror brings the angel back to restart the sojourn.

Many rituals and superstitions involve mirrors because they are regarded as “the border between our world and the unknown universe,” says Minenok, who compiled an Encyclopedia of Superstitions published in Russia two years ago.

Breaking a mirror is reputed to herald the alienation of a close friend or loved one, and looking at one’s reflection in a broken mirror is considered even more perilous. Catching a mirror image lighted by candles also is supposed to bring bad luck; eating in front of a mirror is thought to inflict permanent damage on the diner’s physical appearance.

The hefty book compiled by Minenok explains in its more than 500 pages many of the origins of widely held superstitions, including regional and foreign variations.

As with mirrors, thresholds are the dwelling place of spirits. Russian fairy tales are replete with the figure of the domovoi, a temperamental brownie who protects the household. “The threshold is where the domovoi lives. Shaking hands or kissing over the threshold is an invasion of his territory and might offend him,” Minenok says. “He also doesn’t appreciate anyone sitting or sleeping too close to his space.”

When an unwitting foreigner greets a visiting Russian at the door and extends a hand or proffers a kiss, the polite thing to do is leap into the household before contact is made.

The domovoi is supposed to follow the head of a household if the family moves. There are elaborate rituals for attracting free domovois to newly established households after a marriage. Most involve cats, who are the only creatures who can communicate with the brownies. Rather than carrying a bride over the threshold into a new home, the post-nuptial rite in Russia calls for letting a cat into the house to summon a domovoi.

Another popular, if off-putting, ritual requires spitting over the left shoulder three times after making a cavalier statement about a possible danger or presumed good. This action, held to chase away the devil who sits on a person’s left shoulder looking for ways to spoil the future, is a close approximation of the Western idea of knocking on wood.

“A lot of people don’t consciously believe in a cause-effect relationship between superstition and consequences,” Minenok says. “But many go through the rituals as a learned behavior or with a feeling that there is no harm in taking precautions.”

Penzurova, the unemployed chemist with vast knowledge of good- and bad-luck omens, agrees that abiding by the laws of superstition may be little more than a cheap form of psychological insurance. “I’m not sure I really expect something bad to happen, but I do these things just in case,” she says.

A Nervous Cosmonaut

While the academics say superstition is strongest in the countryside and among the old, evidence that it is alive and thriving at all levels of society is apparent.

When the Russian Mir space station and the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis linked up in the cosmos in June 1995, Mir commander Vladimir Dezhurov hesitated fretfully for several seconds after Atlantis commander Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson extended his hand in greeting through the portal linking the spacecraft. Dezhurov eventually threw cultural caution to the wind and shook the hand of his counterpart, ignoring the threshold taboo.

Television viewers here also noticed that President Boris N. Yeltsin’s wife let her hair grow out during his heart surgery in November and during the weeks it took him to recover--apparently abiding by the common fear that contact with scissors is bad luck when a loved one’s health is touch and go.

The dictates of superstition and warding-off tactics probably gained strength after Naina I. Yeltsin finally submitted to the beauticians just before New Year’s Day: Her husband fell ill with pneumonia Jan. 6 and was again hospitalized and out of the Kremlin for weeks.