General features
To win the lottery many and complicated cabals have been reedited with alternate results by famous astrologers. with Ruttilio Benincasa born in Tursano, province of Reggio Calabria in 1555.
He became very popular especially in Sicily where all the cabalists from the first to the last know Rutilio Benincasa and almost everyone calls him Rutiliu, says the historian Giuseppe Pitre, identifying the name of the author with the name of his manuscript. In reality the book which seemed to have been for many years the bible of the players or the popular astronomical almanac of Rutilio Benincasa had nothing to do with the lottery at least not in its original version, but it is about the signs of the Zodiac the effects of the moon on the tides winds and the navigation.
The book cited by Pitre is probably not a pure manuscript, enriched with elements of geometry for divinatory use by unknown hand. More than a literary myth,.that of Rutilio’s, whose presumed cabalas are still being printed after the modern editions of Smorfia.
To the astrologer from Calabria or to his mysterious forger is due the credit of sensing the most important rule of the most frequently drawn numbers according to which a kind of magic of similarities ends up showing the other, as if some numbersarea linked between in certain most frequently drawn series. Regarding the popularity of Rutilio, there is a curious contradiction that did not spare the strictest censor of the Lotto, the lawyer of the Roman church-Pietro Pompilio Rodota, who in the book named About the games of the sector, the fate and mysticisms of1769 first uses fiery words against the cabalas defining them childish, arbitrary and full of whims and misunderstandings and then having to deal with him, who claimed to be the master, Rutilio, softens the throw, calling him Excellent philosopher mathematician and astronomer.
Whatever it is at this point the reader will want an example out of curiosity. Here is a presumably rutilian rule, designed to draw the most frequently drawn number for any month. I faithfully pass it to you the way it was passed by the astronomer, physicist and cabalist from Venice Pietro Casamia: To do this operation, that is to have the real monthly most frequently drawn number, would be good first of all to know how many days has the moon got on that first day of the month we want to do.
In our case we will calculate that number for the month of June 1784 and we will see in the course of the moon in my astrological circle that in my calculations I think the most probably we will see thirteen days of the moon on the first day of June, and having certified this we will check the algebraic tables of two luminaries, e.g. the sun and the moon and will go to the 13° showing the course of the moon, we will find respectively the three numbers 79, 12 and 86 and with these three numbers we will make a pyramid, with taking out as per usual in the art of the cabala 9 as follows:
(Explanation: the first number, 79, makes 7+9=16, which makes 1+6=7. The second digit, 9 ads with the first digit of the second number thus making 9+1=10=1 and so on.)
Rules like the one make up only a small part of the infinite series that the multitude of cabalists have thought out in the course of the centuries. More and more complicated systems that people had trouble understanding, preferring the art of the assisted ones that did not require the knowledge of mathematics nor astrology, but mostly were going back to Smorfia. This way with passing of the centuries the nineteenth century saw the descent of the last cabalists stuck to a science that was locked up in itself and impossible to develop. During the first years of this century in Naples the last cabalists were spending their time sat in coffee shops amidst the mockery of the "assisted" ones who only needed a nap to receive a few good numbers.
