The Neapolitan Smorfia: when dreams become lottery numbers
History of the Neapolitan Smorfia, which turns dreams into the ninety lottery numbers: the name, Morpheus, the cabala and the Naples of Matilde Serao.
Naples gave dream interpretation perhaps its most unusual form: the Smorfia. Its aim is not to predict the future in the strict sense, but to turn night images into numbers to play in the lottery. Every dream, every object, every person and every situation corresponds to one of the game's ninety numbers, according to a table handed down for generations and still known throughout Italy, even by those who have never bought a ticket.
The name and its origins
The most widespread etymology links the word smorfia to Morpheus, the god of dreams whom Ovid, in the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses, describes as skilled at imitating human features. This is, however, a traditional and unproven explanation: some scholars propose other origins, and the question remains uncertain. In Neapolitan, after all, the word simply means the book that explains dreams.
The history of the game is more secure. The lottery was born in Genoa in the sixteenth century from the habit of betting on the names of citizens drawn for public office, and from there it spread to other Italian states. In Naples the game took hold between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, becoming a popular institution and a source of revenue for the state. It was in this setting that dream traditions merged with numbers.
The ninety numbers
The Smorfia assigns to each number from 1 to 90 a main meaning, often accompanied by many secondary ones. Number 1 is Italy, 33 the years of Christ, 47 the dead man, 48 the dead man who speaks, 90 fear. There are, however, many versions, and meanings may vary from one book to another or from one neighbourhood to the next.
The associations arise from analogies, religious traditions, sayings and sometimes from the very shape of the figures. Dreaming of a dead person, in particular, was considered extremely important: a departed relative who appeared in a dream and spoke words or numbers was interpreted as a message to be turned at once into a bet.
The cabala and the assistiti
Around the Smorfia a whole world of specialists developed. The so-called lottery cabalists proposed methods for combining the numbers of dreams, dates and the events of daily life, while the «assistiti» were people said to receive numbers from spirits. The Church and the authorities often viewed these practices with concern, linked as they were to poverty and the hope of a sudden win.
The writer Matilde Serao, in the novel Il paese di Cuccagna published in 1891, described with a clear yet sympathetic eye the Neapolitans' passion for the lottery, from ruined nobles to the common people, and the role of dreams and cabalists in that collective fever. The book remains one of the liveliest literary testimonies to the phenomenon.
Today the Smorfia survives above all as cultural heritage. Its numbers appear in everyday speech, in the Christmas tombola games, where each number drawn is announced with its meaning, and in popular sayings. It is a rare example of how a very ancient divinatory practice turned into a game and finally into folklore.