Almost any household -- or farmyard -- device could be used to predict the future.
Russian villages have always been centers of fortune-telling.
Even today many villagers -- and more city dwellers than would admit -- believe that it is possible to predict by gazing into the face, or divine the name of a future fiance, to predict a marriage, disease or even death.
Even in today's big cities you might find a circle of young women, collected around the table on Christmas Eve, seriously wanting to see their future.
St Petersburg's Ethnography Museum has organized an exhibition displaying the results of research by Yelena Madlevskaya and Dmitry Baranov in the villages of Leningrad Oblast and northern regions of Russia.
One small museum room contains about 60 fortune-telling ceremonies and folklore texts used by Russians of old.
The most powerful time to look into the future is Svyatki, the period we are about to enter, from Sochelnik (Christmas Eve, celebrated on January 6, according to the Russian religious calendar) to Kreshcheniye (Baptism, January 19).
The Svyatki period, the juncture between the past year and the new one (which starts on what is now January 14), is considered to be a time of flux when the line between this world and the next blurs and the spirits are highly active.
When fortune-telling, a person needed to withdraw from his or her normal life and thought in order to get results. Successful fortune-telling required the person to cross into the other world. In the Russian village, such crossover points were located at road crossings, in saunas, in barns or near a wells.
Within the house, the role of the other world was played by the stove, a window, a threshold or a mirror.
To begin the process some cultural norms were rejected -- the cross should be taken off, the braids undone. Sometimes participants had to almost play dead: to look in the mirror with a frozen face, without blinking. Absolute silence was required.
For fortune-telling while sleeping, people went to bed dressed as if they were laid out in a coffin. Some ceremonies were even dangerous for those who decided to participate.
Not just places, but objects, were important. Different objects were used as magic middlemen in the divining process, including mirrors, towels, combs, belts, pens, and brushes.
One of the most popular ceremonies was to put one of the objects under the pillow with the words, "My intended bridegroom, show up." The fiance-to-be would then, hopefully, appear in the girl's dreams. The object under the pillow could be a splint from a neighbor's house, a mirror, a needle, or a playing card. Sometimes even a cockroach could be used. In that case the appropriate incantation before sleeping would be, "Cockroach, take me to the gates, where my intended bridegroom is living."
Some predictions were based on less systematic processes. Eavesdropping could be a powerful device. To discover his or her fate a person could eavesdrop at the neighbors' windows on New Year's night. If the conversation overheard contained the word "a shirt" the eavesdropper would soon die. If a horse's bridle was mentioned, the person's horse would be stolen.
To learn the all important name of your future fiance, a morning vigil was required. The first male name pronounced the next morning would be the future husband of the female spy.
If you want to find out whether this year is the lucky one for you, these and other useful divination techniques are yours for the taking at the Ethnographic Museum's exhibition.