Bleigießen is an an old Austrian New Year’s Eve tradition in which you pour lead into water on New Year’s Eve and try and interpret the image you see made. It translates literally to “lead pouring.” You can buy little lead pouring kits in many northern European countries for this very purpose, but the custom is though to be ancient in origin dating back at least as far as the Romans. The practice of telling the future from poured metal is officially called molybdomancy, from the Greek word for lead, molybdos. In Finland, little tin horseshoes are melted and tossed in the snow for the same purpose. There, the shadow the shape makes when held up to the light is more important than the shape itself. Apparently a basket shape means you’ll have a good mushroom harvest… so I’m hoping for that!
Wax Fortune Telling
Not especially wanting to deal with lead and kids, we have switched our fortune telling medium to wax which also works brilliantly. I collect old candles and bits and pieces that aren’t useful for anything else and save them all year for this purpose. (You could totally use old junky crayons too) This is such a simple and fun way to tell your fortune and it feels so special and magical!
Materials:
- Wax scraps or old crayons
- A spoon you don’t mind ruining (I use the same one every year)
- A dish of water
- A candle
Method:
Heat a bit of wax in the spoon over the candle until its completely liquid.
Pour the melted wax quickly in the water in your dish. (I heat it for the kids and then they hold the handle with me to pour- older kids would be fine on their own)
You can take your wax shape out teh water as soon as it sets up and cools (a few seconds) and decide what you think it looks like and what it might mean. I think mine in the second picture looks like roses or peonies!
I found this list of traditional possible interpretations, but we always just make up our own!
- Ball, Kugel (ball) = Glück rollt auf dich/luck will roll your way
- Degen (epee, sword) = Mut zum Risiko/risk-taking courage
- Frosch (frog) = Lottogwinn/lottery win
- Gitarre (guitar) = Wunsch/wish
- Fuchs (fox) = schlau, Eigenengagement/smart, self-initiative
- Kelch (chalice) = glückliche Zukunft/happy future
- Maske (mask) = überall gern gesehen/welcome everywhere
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