Mysterious Rite

Back where I was born and raised, a small rural town called Cub Run, the old timers that lived around the area always spoke of my grandfather Dewey Childress. I never knew him, as my mother had me when she was older (40) and he died before I was born. Strange stories were told to me by local folk for as long as I could remember. How he could work magic to help folks, how he came over to america from ireland with a wife that had gypsy blood in their veins. Most stories I had heard were all of a kind and warm nature, mostly about him taking care of folks back in the country. showing them rituals to make their land bear more crops, or how he would uncure land if the owner felt a blight had been placed upon it. One story, however caught my imagination and has never left it since. I found this website and I hope that maybe someone here will have some answers for me.

For sometime I just ignored the stories, I was a teenager and obviously I knew everything. These rednecks were just superstitious yocals. After a few years however, I became curious and asked my closest aunt about my grandfather (her father), quickly she dismissed the questions as foolishness, almost before I even finished my line of questions. It was as if she dismissed the questions out of fear, as she grew quiet the rest of the evening and seemed awful distant.

I then went to my mother, who seemed to have some trepidation about the subject...but sat me down to tell a story anyways. Dewey asked my mother one day for her help, they lived on a small plot of land in the backwoods of Kentucky, a small area called "Buzzard's roost". My mother was about five or six I believe. Dewey handed her a mirror, in his arms he carried a coal oil lamp, the sort that had a long skinny globe, and a single hen's egg in his hand. He had my mother stand at the back of the room, she said he told her stand in a specific direction, he seemed rather adamant about that part. He then extinguished all lights in the room (They didn't have electricity at their home) and lit the coal oil lamp. He cracked open the egg, careful not to lose any of the shell and dumped the contents down the globe into the fire of the wick. He ate the shell and peered into the globe while mother held up that mirror.

For some reason, the story gave me the chills. I asked mom what he was intending to do and she told me Dewey said he could read his future by means of this rite.

Has anyone heard anything like this? or know of any culture or certain belief that this ritual might have come from? Im not certain if it helps, but many of the old folks around that area claimed Dewey was the seventh son of a seventh son, thus they believed power was in his blood.