Abstract:

In Turkish culture, curiosity about the future, trying to foresee what will happen in the future or individuals displaying behaviors and attitudes toward their interests and attitudes about their future expectations are continuous constituents in our history of culture. In the pre-Islamic period, shamans or kams, who also have duties such as fortunetelling in addition to be responsible for treatment and organization of the various religious rituals, have an important place in social life. As a result of the changes in social and cultural life, specifically after the adoption of Islam and having a permanent settlement, duties of those shamans were started to be practiced by different people. Within this process, the duty of fortunetelling started to be performed by fortunetellers. In this article, ırk ocakları and ırkçılar (a type of oracle), still exist in Selendi, Manisa, were examined. Beside the treatment of some certain illnesses, the individuals with the ability to find lost belongings or objects and predict whether a marriage will happen, which can be named as clairvoyance or fortunetelling, and individuals with these abilities still functionally maintain their importance in social life. The applications practiced by ırkçılar were examinedwithin the framework of content, function, cultural permanence and terminology used in these applications.