Romani mythology is the myth, folklore, religion, traditions, and legends of the Romani people (also known as Gypsies). The Romanies are a nomadic culture which originated in India during the Middle Ages. They migrated widely, particularly to Europe. Some legends (particularly from non-Romani peoples) say that certain Romanies are said to have passive psychic

Psychic

A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...

 powers such as, empathy

Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...

, precognition

Precognition

In parapsychology, precognition , also called future sight, and second sight, is a type of extrasensory perception that would involve the acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics...

, retrocognition

Retrocognition

Retrocognition , from the Latin retro meaning "backward, behind" and cognition meaning "knowing", describes "knowledge of a past event which could not have been learned or inferred by normal means". The term was coined by Frederic W. H...

, or psychometry

Psychometry

Psychometry , also known as token-object reading, or psychoscopy, is a form of extra-sensory perception characterized by the claimed ability to make relevant associations from an object of unknown history by making physical contact with that object...

. Other legends include the ability to levitate, travel through astral projection

Astral projection

Astral projection is an interpretation of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it...

 by way of meditation

Meditation

Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....

, invoke curses or blessings, conjure/channel spirits, and skill with illusion

Illusion

An illusion is a distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. While illusions distort reality, they are generally shared by most people....

-casting.

Origins

The Romani originated in India. According to mythology, the country was going through a social restructuring and adopting the strict social hierarchy system of castes. Various groups were not included in these newly formed castes for political and religious reasons, and left at the bottom of the caste system. Three groups made up the majority of the casteless: Thieves, musicians/actors (historically performing arts have had a negative social connotation; take a look at eastern theatre's history, for example), and magicians whose magic was deemed 'heretical' by the local religion. With life in their once native land now unbearable, these casteless people grouped together forming bands which migrated originally to the west.

Romani folklore topics

• Arnold Paole
  Arnold Paole
  Arnold Paole Arnold Paole Arnold Paole (Arnont Paule in the original documents; an early German rendition of a Serbian name or nickname, perhaps Арнаут Павле, Arnaut Pavle; died c...
  
  
• Astrology
  Astrology
  Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
  
  
• Baldpate
• Beng
• Butyakengo
• The Creation of the Violin
• Curse
  Curse
  A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object...
  
  
• Devla
  Devla
  Devla is the name of God in the Roma religion. Devla was mistaken with the devil or Satan by the general public when the Roma tribes arrived in Europe during the 14th century...
  
  
• Dhampir
  Dhampir
  A Dhampir in Balkan folklore is the child of a vampire father and a human mother. The term is sometimes spelled dhampyre, dhamphir, or dhampyr. Dhampir powers are similar to those of vampires, but without the usual weaknesses...
  
  
• Divination
  Divination
  Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
  
  
• Dragon
  Dragon
  A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
  
  
• Đurđevdan
• Fedor and the Fairy (Gypsy), from A Book of Charms and Changelings
  A Book of Charms and Changelings
  A Book of Charms and Changelings is a 1972 anthology of 15 fairy tales from around the world that have been collected and retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders. It is one in a long series of such anthologies by Manning-Sanders....
  
  
• The Foam Maiden, from A Book of Sorcerers and Spells
  A Book of Sorcerers and Spells
  A Book of Sorcerers and Spells is a 1974 anthology of 12 fairy tales from around the world that have been collected and retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders...
  
  
• Fortune teller
• Gitto Bach
• The Golden Stag
  The Golden Stag (fairy tale)
  -Synopsis:An old woman told her husband that he had to lose his two children, a son and a daughter, by his first marriage, in the woods. The first time, the boy had been playing in the ashes, and the children came back, but the second time, the old man succeeded in losing them...
  
  
• Jack and His Golden Snuff-Box
  Jack and His Golden Snuff-Box
  Jack and His Golden Snuff-Box is a Gypsy fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales. He listed as his source Francis Hindes Groome's In Gypsy Tents....
  
  
• The King of England and his Three Sons
  The King of England and his Three Sons
  The King of England and his Three Sons is a Gypsy fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairy Tales. He listed as his source Francis Hindes Groome's In Gypsy Tents, where the informant was John Roberts, a Welsh gypsy....
  
  
• The Little Bull-Calf
  The Little Bull-Calf
  The Little Bull-Calf is an English Gypsy fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairy Tales.Marian Roalfe Cox, in her pioneering study of Cinderella, identified it as a "hero" type, featuring a male hero instead of the usual heroine....
  
  
• Moshto
• Mossycoat
  Mossycoat
  Mossycoat is a fairy tale collected by Katherine M. Briggs and Ruth I. Tongue in Folktales of England.Also included within A Book of British Fairy Tales by Alan Garner....
  
  
• Mullo
  Mullo (vampire)
  Mullo is an undead, revenant, or vampire of gypsy folklore. 'Mullo' means 'one who is dead'.Mullo are believed to return and do malicious things and/or suck the blood of a person Mullo (Muli: female, Mulo: male) is an undead, revenant, or vampire of gypsy (Roma) folklore. 'Mullo' means 'one who...
  
  
• O Del
• Palmistry
• Psychic
  Psychic
  A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
  
  
• Ratcatcher
• The Red King and the Witch
• Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
  Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
  Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the capital of the Camargue in the south of France. It is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department by the Mediterranean Sea. Population: 2,478...
  
  
• Saint Sarah
  Saint Sarah
  Saint Sarah, also known as Sara-la-Kali , is the mythic patron saint of the Roma people. The center of her veneration is Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a place of pilgrimage for Roma in the Camargue, in southern France...
  
  
• Séance
  Séance
  A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
  
  
• Spirit Invocation
• Suyolak
• Tarot
  Tarot
  The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
  
  
• Trushul: The Romany word for "cross". It is likely from Trishul, Shiva
  Shiva
  Shiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
  
  's trident.
• Urmen
• Vampire
  Vampire
  Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
  
  
• Vampire pumpkins and watermelons
  Vampire pumpkins and watermelons
  The majority of Vukanović's article discusses human vampires; vampiric agricultural tools are also mentioned. Though modern readers may be skeptical that such beliefs ever existed, the superstitions of Gypsy culture are well documented. The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society has many articles that...
  
  
• Witch
  Witchcraft
  Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
  
  
• The Yellow Dragon

See also

• Romani society and culture
• Gypsy Lore Society
  Gypsy Lore Society
  The Gypsy Lore Society was founded in Great Britain in 1888 to unite persons interested in the history and lore of Gypsies and rovers and to establish closer contacts among scholars studying aspects of such cultures. David MacRitchie was one of its founders and he worked with Francis Hindes Groome...
  
  
• The Red King and the Witch: Gypsy Folk and Fairy Tales
  The Red King and the Witch: Gypsy Folk and Fairy Tales
  The Red King and the Witch: Gypsy Folk and Fairy Tales is a 1965 anthology of 25 tales that have been collected and retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders...
  
  

External links

• Gypsy Folk Tales by Francis Hindes Groome [1899], at Sacred Texts.com
• Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling by Charles Godfrey Leland [1891], at Sacred Texts.com