The Tęgoborze Prophecy (Polish: ''Przepowiednia z Tęgoborza'') is a verse composition, which describes the post-World War One and post-World War Two fate of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. Its origins date back to late 19th century, however, its author and exact date of creation have not been confirmed so far.

Legend

The history of the

prophecy In religion, mythology, and fiction, a prophecy is a message that has been communicated to a person (typically called a ''prophet'') by a supernatural entity. Prophecies are a feature of many cultures and belief systems and usually contain di ...

begins in 1893 in

Tęgoborze Tęgoborze is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Łososina Dolna, within Nowy Sącz County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately south of Łososina Dolna, north-west of Nowy Sącz, and south-east o ...

, a village located in southern

Lesser Poland Lesser Poland, often known by its Polish name ''Małopolska'' (; ), is a historical region situated in southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków. Throughout centuries, Lesser Poland developed a separate cult ...

. The village belonged to Count Wladyslaw Wielogłowski, who was keenly interested in

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Not ...

activities,

occultism The occult () is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mystic ...

and

clairvoyance Clairvoyance (; ) is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to h ...

. Wielogłowski frequently invited there various fortune tellers and other persons who claimed magical abilities. On September 23 of that year, a mysterious woman appeared in Wielogłowski's house. She stated she was a medium and offered to foresee future. Apparently, she got into touch with a ghost, which left her a message concerning Poland's fate. Wielogłowski, who was present during the session, wrote everything in his diary. A few years later, after the Count's death, the house was inherited by his relative Aleksander Wielogłowski, who decided to remodel the complex and found an archive, with words of the prophecy. Since he was not interested in it, he decided to hand it to the

Ossolineum Ossoliński National Institute (, ZNiO), or the Ossolineum is a Polish cultural Foundation (non-profit), foundation, publishing house, archival institute and a research centre of national significance founded in 1817 in Lwów (now Lviv). Located ...

library in

Lwow Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

, where it was carefully stored as the Tęgoborze Prophecy.

Publication

At first, the composition did not raise interest and was not taken seriously. In 1912, the Gazeta Narodowa newspaper published it, together with a Russian translation. In the following years, the prophecy was forgotten, but this changed on March 27, 1939, a few months before the German and Soviet invasion of Poland. The popular

Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny ''Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny'' (, ''Illustrated Daily Courier''), abbreviated ''IKC'' or ''Ikac'', was a Polish daily newspaper as well as a publishing house. Founded in 1910 in Kraków by Marian Dąbrowski, under the Second Polish Republic IK ...

daily published the text, together with an article about its history. Thousands of readers got to know the composition, and it became extremely popular during the war, when Poland was occupied by the two powers -

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. It raised the spirits of the oppressed Poles, giving them hope for a better future of their homeland. The current whereabouts of the original text of the prophecy are not known. It was lost during the war and has not been found.

Authorship

The name of the author of the prophecy is not known. In the Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny, it was signed from an anonymous medium, while the 1912 Gazeta Narodowa wrote that it was written by a ghost of

Adam Mickiewicz Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (24 December 179826 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He also largely influenced Ukra ...

, which appeared in the house of Count Wielogłowski in 1893. In his book ''Through the Windows of Time: The Clairvoyant of Wisła'', Polish journalist and composer named Agnieszka Pilchowa, a popular interbellum period clairvoyant, as the author., and this presumed linkage is re-stated in a 2014 scholarly article about Pilchowa.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tegoborze Prophecy Prophecy