Scrying, or, Crystal Gazing

Contents:

Revival of crystal-gazing. Antiquity of the practice. Its general harmlessness. Superstitious explanations. Crystal-gazing and 'illusions hypnagogiques'. Visualisers. Poetic vision. Ancient and savage practices analogous to crystal-gazing. New Zealand. North America. Egypt. Sir Walter's interest in the subject. Mr. Kinglake. Greek examples. Dr. Dee. Miss X. Another modern instance. Successes and failures. Revival of lost memories. Possible thought-transference. Inferences from antiquity and diffusion of practice. Based on actual experience. Anecdotes of Dr. Gregory. Children as visionaries. Not to be encouraged.

The practice of 'scrying,' 'peeping,' or 'crystal-gazing,' has been revived in recent years, and is, perhaps, the only 'occult' diversion which may be free from psychological or physical risk, and which it is easy not to mix with superstition. The antiquity and world-wide diffusion of scrying, in one form or other, interests the student of human nature. Meanwhile the comparatively few persons who can see pictures in a clear depth, may be as innocently employed while so doing, as if they were watching the clouds, or the embers. 'May be,' one must say, for crystal-seers are very apt to fall back on our old friend, the animistic hypothesis, and to explain what they see, or fancy they see, by the theory that 'spirits' are at the bottom of it all. In Mrs. de Morgan's work From Matter to Spirit, suggestions of this kind are not absent: 'As an explanation of crystal-seeing, a spiritual drawing was once made, representing a spirit directing on the crystal a stream of influence,' and so forth. Mrs. de Morgan herself seemed rather to hold that the act of staring at a crystal mesmerises the observer. The person who looks at it often becomes sleepy. 'Sometimes the eyes close, at other times tears flow.' People who become sleepy, or cry, or get hypnotised, will probably consult their own health and comfort by leaving crystal balls alone.

There are others, however, who are no more hypnotised by crystal- gazing than tea-drinking, or gardening, or reading a book, and who can still enjoy visions as beautiful as those of the opium eater, without any of the reaction. Their condition remains perfectly normal, that is, they are wide awake to all that is going on. In some way their fancy is enlivened, and they can behold, in the glass, just such vivid pictures as many persons habitually see between sleeping and waking, illusions hypnagogiques. These 'hypnagogic illusions' Pontus de Tyard described in a pretty sonnet, more than three hundred years ago. Maury, in his book on dreams has recorded, and analysed them. They represent faces, places, a page of print, a flame of fire, and so forth, and it is one of their peculiarities that the faces rapidly shift and alter, generally from beautiful to ugly. A crystal-seer seems to be a person who can see, in a glass, while awake and with open eyes, visions akin to those which