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 perhaps the majority of people see with shut eyes, between
sleeping and waking. {214} It seems probable that people who, when
they think, see a mental picture of the subject of their thoughts,
people who are good 'visualisers,' are likely to succeed best with
the crystal, some of them can 'visualise' purposely, in the crystal,
while others cannot. Many who are very bad 'visualisers,' like the
writer, who think in words, not in pictures, see bright and distinct
hypnagogic illusions, yet see nothing in the crystal, however long
they stare at it. And there are crystal-seers who are not subject
to hypnagogic illusions. These facts, like the analogous facts of
the visualisation of arithmetical figures, analysed by Mr. Galton,
show interesting varieties in the conduct of mental operations.
Thus we speak of 'vision' in a poet, or novelist, and it seems
likely that men of genius 'see' their fictitious characters and
landscapes, while people of critical temperament, if they attempt
creative work, are conscious that they do not create, but construct.
On the other hand many incompetent novelists are convinced that they
have 'vision,' that they see and hear their characters, but they do
not, as genius does, transfer the 'vision' to their readers.
This is a digression from the topic of hallucinations caused by
gazing into a clear depth. Forms of crystal-gazing, it is well
known, are found among savages. The New Zealanders, according to
Taylor, gaze in a drop of blood, as the Egyptians do in a drop of
ink. In North America, the Pere le Jeune found that a kind of
thought reading was practised thus: it was believed that a sick
person had certain desires, if these could be gratified, he would
recover. The sorcerers, therefore, gazed into water in a bowl
expecting to see there visions of the desired objects. The Egyptian
process with the boy and the ink, is too familiar to need
description. In Scott's Journal (ii. 419) we read of the excitement
which the reports of Lord Prudhoe {215} and Colonel Felix, caused
among the curious. A boy, selected by these English gentlemen, saw
and described Shakspeare, and Colonel Felix's brother, who had lost
an arm. The ceremonies of fumigation, and the preliminary visions
of flags, and a sultan, are not necessary in modern crystal-gazing.
Scott made inquiries at Malta, and wished to visit Alexandria. He
was attracted, doubtless, by the resemblance to Dr. Dee's tales of
his magic ball, and to the legends of his own Aunt Margaret's
Mirror. The Quarterly Review (No. 117, pp. 196-208) offers an
explanation which explains nothing. The experiments of Mr. Lane
were tolerably successful, those of Mr. Kinglake, in Eothen, were
amusingly the reverse. Dr. Keate, the flogging headmaster of Eton,
was described by the seer as a beautiful girl, with golden hair and
blue eyes. The modern explanation of successes would apparently be
that the boy does, occasionally, see the reflection of his
interrogator's thoughts.
In a paper in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
(part xiv.), an anonymous writer gives the results of some
historical investigation into the antiquities of crystal-gazing.
The stories of cups, 'wherein my lord divines,' like Joseph, need
not necessarily indicate gazing into the deeps of the cup. There
were other modes of using cups and drops of wine, not connected with
visions. At Patrae, in Greece, Pausanias describes the dropping of
a mirror on to the surface of a well, the burning of incense, and
the vision of the patient who consults the oracle in the deeps of
the mirror. {216a} A Christian Father asserts that, in some cases,
a basin with a glass bottom was used, through which the gazer saw
persons concealed in a room below, and took them for real visions.
{216b} In mirror-magic (catoptromancy), the child seer's eyes were
bandaged, and he saw with the top of his head! The Specularii
continued the tradition through the Middle Ages, and, in the
sixteenth century Dr. Dee ruined himself by his infatuation for
'show-stones,' in which Kelly saw, or pretended to see, visions
which Dr. Dee interpreted. Dee kept voluminous diaries of his
experiments, part of which is published in a folio by Meric
Casaubon. The work is flighty, indeed crazy; Dee thought that the
hallucinations were spirits, and believed that his 'show-stones'
were occasionally spirited away by the demons. Kelly pretended to
hear noises in the stones, and to receive messages.
In our own time, while many can see pictures, few know what the
pictures represent. Some explain them by interpreting the
accompanying 'raps,' or by 'automatic writing'. The intelligence
thus conveyed is then found to exist in county histories,
newspapers, and elsewhere, a circumstance which lends itself to
interpretation of more sorts than one. Without these very dubious
modes of getting at the meaning of the crystal pictures, they
remain, of course, mere picturesque hallucinations. The author of
the paper referred to, is herself a crystal-seer, and (in Borderland
No. 2) mentions one very interesting vision. She and a friend
stared into one of Dr. Dee's 'show-stones,' at the Stuart
exhibition, and both beheld the same scene, not a scene they could
have guessed at, which was going on at the seer's own house. As
this writer, though versed in hallucinations, entirely rejects any
'spiritual' theory, and conceives that, she is dealing with purely
psychological curiosities, her evidence is the better worth notice,
and may be compared with that of a crystal-seer for whose evidence
the present writer can vouch, as far as one mortal may vouch for
that of another.
Miss X., the writer in the Psychical Proceedings, has been able to
see pictures in crystals and other polished surfaces, or, indeed,
independently of these, since childhood. She thinks that the
visions are:--
1. After-images, or recrudescent memories (often memories of things
not consciously noted).
2. Objectivations of ideas or images, consciously or unconsciously
present to the mind.
3. Visions, possibly telepathic or clairvoyant, implying
acquirement of knowledge by supernormal means. The first class is
much the most frequent in this lady's experience. She can
occasionally refresh her memory by looking into the crystal.
The other seer, known to the writer, cannot do this, and her
pictures, as far as she knows, are purely fanciful. Perhaps an
'automatic writer' might interpret them, in the rather dubious
manner of that art. As far as the 'scryer' knows, however, her
pictures of places and people are not revivals of memory. For
example, she sees an ancient ship, with a bird's beak for prow, come
into harbour, and behind it a man carrying a crown. This is a mere
fancy picture. On one occasion she saw a man, like an Oriental
priest, with a white caftan, contemplating the rise and fall of a
fountain of fire: suddenly, at the summit of the fire, appeared a
human hand, pointing downwards, to which the old priest looked up.
This was in August, 1893. Later in the month the author happened to
take up, at Loch Sheil, Lady Burton's Life of Sir Richard Burton.
On the back of the cover is a singular design in gold. A woman in
widow's weeds is bowing beneath rays of light, over which appears a
human hand, marked R. F. B. on the wrist. The author at once wrote
asking his friend the crystal-gazer if she had seen this work of
art, which might have unconsciously suggested the picture. The
lady, however, was certain that she had not seen the Life of Sir
Richard Burton, though her eye, of course, may have fallen on it in
a bookseller's shop, while her mind did not consciously take it in.
If this was a revival of a sub-conscious memory in the crystal, it
was the only case of that process in her experience.
On the other hand Miss X. can trace many of her visions to memories,
as Maury could in his illusions hypnagogiques. Thus, Miss X. saw in
the crystal, the printed announcement of a friend's death. She had
not consciously read the Times, but remembered that she had held it
up before her face as a firescreen. This kind of revival, as she
says, corresponds to the writing, with planchette, of scraps from
the Chanson de Roland, by a person who had never _consciously_ read
a line of it, and who did not even know what stratum of Old French
was represented by the fragments. Miss X. seems not to know either;
for she calls it 'Provencal'. Similar instances of memory revived
are not very uncommon in dreams. Miss X. can consciously put a
group of fanciful characters into the crystal, while this is beyond
the power of the seer known to the writer, who has attempted to
perceive what a friend is doing at a distance, but with no success.
Thus she tried to discover what the writer might be about, and
secured a view of two large sunny rooms, with a shadowy figure
therein. Now it is very probable that the writer was in just such a
room, at --- Castle, but the seer saw, on the library table, a
singular mirror, which did not exist there, and a model of a castle,
also non-existent. The knowledge that the person sought for was
staying at a 'castle,' may have unconsciously suggested this model
in the picture.
A pretty case of revived memory is given by Miss X. She wanted the
date of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Later, in the crystal, she saw a
conventional old Jew, writing in a book with massive clasps. Using
a magnifying glass, she found that he was writing Greek, but the
lines faded, and she only saw the Roman numerals LXX. These
suggested the seventy Hebrews who wrote the Septuagint, with the
date, 277 B.C., which served for Ptolemy Philadelphus. Miss X.
later remembered a memoria technica which she had once learned, with
the clue, 'Now Jewish elders indite a Greek copy'. It is obvious
that these queer symbolical reawakenings of memory explain much of
the (apparently) 'unknown' information given by 'ghosts,' and in
dreams. A lady, who had long been in very bad health, was one
evening seized by a violent recrudescence of memory, and for hours
poured out the minutest details of the most trivial occurrences; the
attack was followed by a cerebral malady from which she fortunately
recovered. The same phenomenon of awakened memory has occasionally
been reported by people who were with difficulty restored after
being seven-eighths drowned.
The crystal ball, in the proper hands, merely illustrates the
possibility of artificially reviving memory, while the fanciful
visions, akin to illusions hypnagogiques, have, in all ages, been
interpreted by superstition as revelations of the distant or the
future. Of course, if there is such a thing as occasional
transference of thought, so that the idea in the inquirer's mind is
reflected in the crystal-gazer's vision, the hypothesis of the
superstitious will fix on this as a miracle, still more will that
hypothesis be strengthened, if future or distant events, not
consciously known, are beheld. Such things must occasionally occur,
by chance, in the myriad confusions of dreams, and, to the same
extent, in crystal visions. Miss X.'s three cases of possible
telepathy in her own experience are trivial, and do not seem to rise
beyond the possibility of fortuitous coincidence: and her possible
clairvoyant visions she leaves to the judgment of the reader, 'to
interpret as clairvoyance, or coincidence, or prevision, or whatever
else he will'. The crystal-gazer known to the author once managed
to see the person (unknown to her) who was in the mind of the other
party in the experiment. But she has made scarcely any experiments
of this description.
The inferences to be drawn from crystal-gazing are not unimportant.
First, we note that the practice is very ancient and widely
diffused, among civilised and uncivilised people. In this diffusion
it answers to the other practices, the magical rites of Australian
blacks, Greeks, Eskimo; to the stories of 'death-bed wraiths,' of
rappings, and so forth. Now this uniformity, as far as regards the
latter phenomena, may be explained by transmission of ideas, or by
the uniformity of human nature, while the phenomena themselves may
be mere inventions like other myths. In the case of crystal-gazing,
however, we can scarcely push scepticism so far as to deny that the
facts exist, that hallucinations are actually provoked. The
inference is that a presumption is raised in favour of the actuality
of the other phenomena universally reported. They, too, may
conceivably be hallucinatory; the rappings and haunting noises may
be auditory, as the crystal visions are ocular hallucinations. The
sounds so widely attested may not cause vibrations in the air, just
as the visions are not really _in_ the crystal ball. As the
unconscious self suggests the pictures in the ball, so it may
suggest the unexplained noises. But while, as a rule, only one
gazer sees the visions, the sounds (usually but not invariably) are
heard by all present. On the whole, the one case wherein we find
facts, if only facts of hallucination, at the bottom of the belief
in a world-wide and world-old practice, rather tends in the
direction of belief in the other facts, not less universally
alleged. We know too much about mythology to agree with Dr.
Johnson, in holding that 'a belief, which prevails as far as human
nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth,' that
'those who never heard of one another would not have agreed in a
tale which nothing but experience could make credible'. But, on the
other hand, a belief is not necessarily untrue, because it is
universally diffused.
In the second place, crystal-gazing shows how a substratum of fact
may be so overlaid with mystic mummeries, incantations, fumigations,
pentacles: and so overwhelmed in superstitious interpretations,
introducing fairies and spirits, that the facts run the risk of
being swept away in the litter and dust of nonsense. Science has
hardly thought crystal-gazing worthy even of contempt, yet it
appears to deserve the notice of psychologists. To persons who can
'scry,' and who do not see hideous illusions, or become hypnotised,
or superstitious, or incur headaches, scrying is a harmless gateway
into Les Paradis Artificiels. 'And the rest, they may live and
learn.' {223}
A very few experiments will show people whether they are scryers, or
not. The phenomena, it seems, are usually preceded by a mistiness,
or milkiness, of the glass: this clears off, and pictures appear.
Even the best scryers often fail to see anything in the crystal
which maintains its natural 'diaphaneity,' as Dr. Dee says. Thus
the conditions under which the scryer can scry, are, as yet,
unascertained.
The phenomena of scrying were not unknown to Dr. Gregory, Professor
of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Gregory believed
in 'odylic fluid' on the evidence of Reichenbach's experiments,
which nobody seems to have repeated successfully under strict tests.
Clairvoyance also was part of Dr. Gregory's faith, and, to be fair,
phenomena were exhibited at his house, in the presence of a learned
and distinguished witness known to the writer, which could only be
accounted for either by thought transference, or by an almost, or
quite incredible combination of astuteness, and imposture on the
side of Dr. Gregory himself. In presence of the _clairvoyants_ the
nobleman of whom we speak thought not of his own house, but of a
room in the house of a friend. It possessed a very singular feature
which it is needless to describe here, but which was entirely out of
the experience of the clairvoyante. She described it, however,
expressing astonishment at what she 'saw'. This, unless Dr. Gregory
guessed what was likely to be thought of, and was guilty of
collusion, can only be explained by thought transference. In other
cases the doctor was convinced that he had evidence of actual
clairvoyance, and it is difficult to estimate the amount of evidence
which will clear such a belief of the charge of credulity. As to
'scrying' the doctor thought it could be done in 'mesmerised water,'
water bewitched. There is no reason to imagine that 'mesmerised' is
different from ordinary water. {224} He knew that folklore retained
the belief in scrying in crystal balls, and added some superfluous
magical incantations. The doctor himself was lucky enough to buy an
old magical crystal in which some boys, after long staring, saw
persons unknown to themselves, but known to the professor, and also
persons known to neither. A little girl, casually picking up a
crystal ball, cried, 'There's a ship in it, with its cloth all in
rags. Now it tumbles down, and a woman is working at it, and holds
her head in her hand.' This is a very fair example of a crystal
fancy picture. The child's mother, not having heard what the child
said, saw the same vision (p. 165). But this is a story at third
hand. The doctor has a number of cases, and held that crystal
possesses an 'odylic' quality. But a ball of glass serves just as
well as a ball of crystal, and is much less expensive.
Children are naturally visionaries, and, as such, are good subjects
for experiment. But it may be a cruel, and is a most injudicious
thing, to set children a-scrying. Superstition may be excited, or
the half-conscious tendency to deceive may be put in motion.
Socrates and Joan of Arc were visionaries as children. Had Joan's
ears been soundly boxed, as Robert de Baudricourt advised, France
might now be an English province. But they were not boxed, happily
for mankind. Certainly much that is curious may be learned by any
one who, having the confidence of a child, will listen to his, or
her, accounts of spontaneous visions. The writer, as a boy, knew a
child who used to lie prone on the grass watching fairies at play in
the miniature forest of blades and leaves. This child had a
favourite familiar whom he described freely, but as his remarks were
received with good-humoured scepticism, no harm came to him. He
would have made a splendid scryer, still, 'I speak of him but
brotherly,' his revelations would have been taken with the largest
allowances. If scrying, on examination, proves to be of real
psychological interest, science will owe another debt to folklore,
to the folk who kept alive a practice which common-sense would not
deign even to examine.