When Elliot was introduced to “Smorfia”, the mystical belief that dreams, numbers, and luck could be intertwined, he decided to test it out.
I sleep deeply when visiting my mother-in-law in her small town near Naples and remember my dreams better there. I described one to my wife that had a pretty woman, a frozen fish and a banana in it. I expected a Freudian earful. Instead, she reached for a book. “Go bet,” she said, handing it over.
The title was “Smorfia,” a word in Neapolitan dialect thought to be connected to Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. It refers to an ancient local belief in correlating dream content with numbers and betting them for good luck in the lottery.
The meaty tome alphabetically listed over 60,000 words and word combinations with their symbolic numerical values. Various theories ponder how the numbers are assigned to the words, including origins in the cabbala and works by Aristotle and Pythagoras, but no one knows for sure.
I wanted to try. I hadn’t experimented with giving meaning to numbers since my student days in the 1960s. Then, as hippies were wont, I threw coins to form symbolic numerical sequences and read my fortune in the Chinese “I Ching, or Book of Changes.” It uses chance to explore the unconscious, a world apart from the Neapolitan method of deciphering dreams into numbers for a lucky strike.
The spiritual abyss here wasn’t lost on me, even if I’m open to the notion we all share an unconscious wish to be fabulously rich, or at least have all the goodies money can buy. In any event, with the hope one right dream might be my ticket to a big payday, I wasn’t about to lose sleep worrying about compromised spirituality.
In the Italian lottery, six numbers are drawn to make a winning combination. Players betting at least four correct can win thousands of dollars. Getting five or all six right makes you a budding Zuckerberg.
As I darkened out the numbers on my form in the town’s betting shop, a woman strolled in to recite her wager loud and clear to the clerk. Her confidence was striking and made me feel good. Her pride seemed to boast that destiny was on her side and that there’s dignity in trying to beat overwhelming odds.
My dream-inspired series of bets contained pretty woman (21), a frozen fish (15), banana (30), a dog with spots (80), church (84), seamstress (51) and bartender (32). For good measure, I added Good Friday (71) and Easter (52), the holiday period when my dream occurred, along with some personal lucky numbers.
A few hours later, the winning numbers, 17, 42, 52, 71, 74, 90 and 87, the joker, were announced. I wasn’t in the money. My two correct numbers came from the Easter connection. How strange, I thought, musing whether chance was telling me that religion is the most powerful dream of all.
In classic Neapolitan style, losing only made me more determined. At an outdoor market the next day, April Fool’s, I bought “The True Neapolitan Smorfia,” a paperback guide to the dream technique. The cover had a sketch of a group of aristocrats placing their bets, while a smiling “Pulcinella,” the sly, black-masked jester who’s the mascot of Naples, sneaks out the door with a cornucopia brimming over with of gold coins.
After recalling fragments from a fresh dream, I bet song (88), black eyes (43), woman (50), and sneeze (89). I added my previously lucky 52 and 71 and some randomly chosen numbers. Alas, I lost again. Only Easter (52), twice lucky now, came up smiling.
Then I made a disturbing discovery. In cross-checking words in my paperback with those from my mother-in-law’s book, I found some different numbers associated with the same words. Church (84) was the same in both books, but Easter in my book was 56, but 52 in hers. Seamstress was 11 in mine, not 51 and bartender was 17, not 32.
Apparently, the mystical method to get rich isn’t an exact science. Or, the real payday comes from selling books about the method, regardless of their accuracy.
At first I felt I’d been had, and sorry for for the many others without a clue that the designation of numbers isn’t an exact science. I conjured up the author’s grinning mug behind Pulcinella’s mask as he slunk off with our money in book sales royalties.
In the end, I had to smile. There was something crafty but genial, quintessentially Neapolitan, about the discrepancies. Anyways, you have to be a little nuts to shell out money based on such a whacky idea. What’s more, I’m not about to stop betting and playing the victim is unbecoming for a person destined to dream his way to wealth.
My new approach is to mix my choice of numbers, I Ching style, from the disparate books. So far I haven’t made it to Fat City. Not to worry. Absolutely, I’m one sweet dream away.
—Photo MarioMancuso/Flickr (top)
—Photo Erik Il Russo/Flickr (book)