Bosya Ochirova, Omens and Astrology

Abstract

In this interview Bosya talks about which animals are auspicious to see or keep (livestock, the crane) and which are not (the fox, the ferret, and a bird which makes a strange human-like sound). She also says that people should not set out on a journey on inauspicious days and relays a story about a religious practitioner who advised her husband on which animals not to keep (dark chickens and black cows). Bosya: For example, you are riding, and all of a sudden you see a fox crossing the road. This is a bad sign. In this situation, a man has to rotate his hat from front to back. Another example: you are setting out on a journey on an inauspicious day. Today people do not care whether it is a good or bad day. They receive a call at midnight and go out. When you ask, ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’ They say, ‘Someone has telephoned me, I’ll have to go’. This is not right. If you need to go somewhere on a bad day, leave your house by moving backwards, and then go. This is done in order to cheat (evil spirits). Question: Which animals are considered bad, unclean? B: The fox, the ferret. Q: Any birds? B: There is one bird with nasty voice. Sometimes it sounds as if a child is crying. Sometimes it sounds like a child is giggling. This is a bad bird. It looks like the owl. The others are okay. Q: Which birds are good? B: The crane. Q: Which animals are good? B: Livestock. It is good when you have livestock. We had a blue chicken. One day my husband went to a person who read prayers. That person said to my husband, ‘In your family you should not keep a blue chicken. If it goes missing, do not search for it’. Then he read a mantra, and the chicken disappeared. This really happened to us. That person also said, ‘Do not keep a blue chicken and black cows’. Back then I had a black cow who gave birth to a calf. I was thinking, ‘What shall I do?’ If a cow had a white spot, it was okay to keep. But if it was completely black, we were not supposed to keep it.