Augurai (Baltic Oracles)

A sketch of Auguras

Augurai were Baltic oracles who used to tell the future by advising with the birds. Some birds were particularly important. For example owls and martins were considered to bring loses and fires while storks, woodpeckers and nightingales — good fortune. In Latvia’s territory the tit was the luckiest little bird.

Augurai used to take a long crooked wooden staff with them when talking to the birds (krivule). No one knows how they used it now.

The name itself — Augurai — was accommodated by Christian travelers from the roman name for bird oracle, as there are no written sources of how they were really called.