False Prophets? A Brief History of the Tarabić Family and the Prophecy from Kremna
[caption id=”attachment_6978" align=”alignleft” width=”539"]
Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Kremna_Tarabici3.jpg[/caption]
History is rife with supposed prophecies: verbal or written recollections of men and women who claimed to have received some kind of divine foresight, typically from their god. Many people are familiar with certain well-known prophecies, such as Les Propheties. French apothecary and purported seer Nostradamus wrote this book in the mid-sixteenth century. The Frenchman has been credited with predicting numerous events, such as the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
A small village in Serbia has its own “claim to fame” in the form of two prophets. Kremna is a village in the western region of Serbia, located in the Zlatibor district and in the Užice municipality. The village is small; as of the 2002 census, Kremna had a population of just over seven hundred. Miloš and Mitar Tarabić are two of the village’s best-known residents. Their popularity centers on the legend that Miloš and Mitar, variously referred to as an uncle and nephew, or two brothers, were gifted with the power of foresight. The men were illiterate peasants, but they related their prophecies to the village priest (who was possibly also Mitar’s godfather), a man named Zaharije Zaharić.
The priest supposedly wrote down the dictated prophecies, though the original document is thought to have been lost. Over the years since the prophets’ deaths, the Kremna Prophecy has been re-published in many forms, apparently with various insertions and deletions, by an assortment of people who each have their own claim regarding the prophecies passed down via Zaharić. A new addition to the prophecy arrived in 2002. This latest installment comes from a Serbian immunologist who claimed to have spoken with Miloš Tarabić on the astral plane.
The prophecies as recorded are considered eerily accurate. Unlike Nostradamus’ vaguely worded predictions (which many consider to be loosely framed enough that they could be applied to any number of events), many of the Tarabić prophecies are extremely specific and refer to noted events that actually occurred throughout the twentieth century, particularly within Serbia.
Supposedly, Mitar predicted with “uncanny accuracy” the fact that the Serbian king and queen would be killed and the throne overtaken by a Karađorđević. This prediction came to pass in 1903, four years after Mitar’s death, when Alexander and Draga Obrenović were assassinated and Petar Karađorđević assumed the throne. Zaharić additionally reported that Mitar predicted the rule of Josip Broz Tito, who he is said to have described as a non-Serbian man “with blue eyes and the star upon his forehead.”
Mitar also apparently had precognition of three world wars. In a mixture of notes dictated by Mitar and Zaharić’s own journaling about their conversations, Mitar conveyed the massive bloodshed of World War I, the idea that their “kingdom” would be “again invaded by a foreign, evil army” in a second “Big War,” and a heretofore unseen third world war in which men would “start to die in great numbers” and would “have their scientists […] invent different and strange cannonballs” that would cast a sleeping spell over the citizens.
As captivating as these prophecies are, it is, of course, uncertain whether any of these “uncanny” predictions were actually recorded when they were said to have been — and there lies the rub. Many Serbian scholars agree there is no proof the prophecies were written down at all in advance of the events that transpired.
Voja Antonić, a Serbian inventor and writer, researched the prophecy in an effort to debunk it. He published a book called Non-Prophecy from Kremna: A Study of Deception, in which his findings reported that the twelve copies of the Kremna prophecy varied, and each had been altered over time.
Despite this uncertainty, Kremna is widely regarded as a mystical, important site, and many Serbians know of the Tarabić family. The village has even been referred to as the “Serbian Delphi,” likely a reference to Delphi’s status as a religiously significant site for the Ancient Greeks and as the site of a significant oracle. Dragan Pjević, an engineer from Kremna and founder of the “Kremnaturist” tourist agency, built the third “Memorial Home,” a museum. He is an unabashed proponent of the prophecy, lecturing on the legend of Kremna’s creation.
As the legend goes, the valley was created when “a celestial body entered the earth’s womb […] leaving the limestone (kremen) with miraculous properties that gave the name to the village.” This origin, according to Pjević, explains its residents’ proclivity for psychic powers (Pjević purports that the Tarabić family were merely the most famous, but by no means the only, prophets of the village).
The Tarabić prophecies of Kremna constitute an incredibly interesting aspect of Serbian history. Despite debunking efforts, the prophecy remains popular among many Serbians, even in the face of revelations that the predictions were altered over time. Of course, we’ll never know the degree of accuracy with which Miloš and Mitar Tarabić initially conveyed these future events — and that’s just what makes the legend so very intriguing.
Sources:
Zivkovic, Marko. “Serbian Landscapes of Dreamtime and Healing: Clear Streams, Stones of Prophesy, St Sava’s Ribs, and the Wooden City of Oz.” Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of Health and Place, edited by Erika Dyck and Chrstopher Fletcher, 175–77. New York: Routledge, 2015.
