DISCOVERY 



127 



Crystal Gazing Ancient 

 and Modem 



By W. R. Halliday, B.A., B.Litt. 



Professor of Ancicnl Ilislonj in llie Uniuersilij of Liverpool 



A FAVOURITE method of foretelling the future, and one 

 which has enjoyed a considerable continuous popu- 

 larity, is the observance in a mirror or bright object 

 of past, present, or distant happenings. The most 

 usual instrument to-day employed for this purpose is 

 the crystal, but the place of the ball of glass may 

 equally well be taken by a bowl of water, a pool of 

 ink, oil, or fluid, a smear of lamp-black, a mirror or 

 bright metal object, or, I imagine, a bright light. For 

 the function of the instrument in reality seems to be 

 the induction of a h5''pnotic state by prolonged con- 

 centration of the eyes upon some bright or dazzling 

 object. This physiological phenomenon is perhaps in 

 part responsible for the magical powers attributed to 

 crystals by Australian natives and other primitive 

 peoples. I believe that in modern spiritualistic theory 

 no particular magical efficacy is attributed to the crystal 

 itself, and that the normal practice is for the clair- 

 voyante, after being placed in rapport with the object of 

 inquiry (e.g. by being given some article associated with 

 the person about whom inquiry is being made), to throw 

 herself into a hypnotic state by gazing at the crystal 

 and in this condition to exercise her mediumistic 

 powers. Viewed historically, this is but a recent 

 theory of the efficacy of crystal gazing, which seems 

 originally to have been based upon the supposed magical 

 property of the instrument in which the reflection of 

 the future appeared rather than upon the peculiar 

 sensitiveness of the operator in a hypnotic condition. 

 In modern practice it is usually the clairvoyante alone 

 who sees the vision ; in the earlier history of the rite it 

 is more usually the inquirer himself who sees it, thanks 

 to the magical power of the crystal or of its possessor. 

 The magical crystal, however, has not completely dis- 

 appeared. In 1909 the newspapers reported a coroner's 

 inquest upon the wife of a Cardiff postman, who com- 

 mitted suicide by inhaling gas. Evidence was given 

 that the unfortunate woman had recently returned 

 from a visit to a fortune-teller, and had told her step- 

 father that, " when she asked me to look in the crystal, 

 I saw myself seated in a chair deliberately committing 

 suicide with gas." Here the inquirer herself looked 

 into the magic mirror and received the fatal suggestion 

 upon which she acted. 



With the magic mirror is connected the magical well 

 in which distant objects or events may be discerned 

 or the death or recovery of sick persons be revealed. 

 Such waters of divination were known in classical 



antiquity. At Taenarum in Greece there was a well 

 in which people who looked into the water could see 

 the harbours and the ships. Unfortunately a woman 

 defiled the spring by washing dirty clothes in it and, 

 when Pausanias visited it in the second century after 

 Christ, it had consequently lost its magical properties. ^ 

 Anyone who looked into the water of a spring of .A.pollo 

 near Cyanese in Lycia would be shown whatever he 

 wished to see. A mirror-spring at Constantinople, 

 which presumably possessed similar qualities, is men- 

 tioned in the seventeenth century by the Turkish 

 traveller Evliya.= 



The Holy Well 



At the sanctuary of Demeter at Patrs in the Pelo- 

 ponnese was a holy spring which in classical times 

 foretold the event in cases of sickness. A mirror was 

 let down by a fine cord so that it just grazed the top 

 of the water. (With this artificial improvement of 

 the reflective powers of the water we may perhaps com- 

 pare the practice of finishing the surface of the bowl 

 of water used for divination with oil, an instance of 

 which is mentioned below.) The inquirer prayed to 

 the goddess, offered incense, and then looked into the 

 mirror in which he would see the sick person reflected 

 alive or dead. In the second century of our era Lucian 

 narrated a similar wonder in his Veracious History, 

 a satirical parody of histories based upon travellers' 

 tales. In the palace of the King of the Moon his hero 

 saw a great mirror over a well of no very great depth. 

 If one goes down into the well one hears all that is being 

 said amongst us here on earth, and if one looks in the 

 mirror one sees all cities and nations. He tells us 

 that he himself saw his relatives and all his native land, 

 and adds that "whoever does not believe that it is 

 so, if ever he goes to the place, will know that I am 

 speaking the truth." The magical mirror-well is not 

 unknown to English folklore. For instance, girls who 

 walk backwards on St. Mark's Eve to the Maidens' 

 Well at North Kelsey, in Lincolnshire, and then three 

 times round it, are able to see reflected in the water 

 the features of their future husbands. 



Both in classical antiquity and in modern folklore 



' It is a common belief that the magical properties of elements 

 or objects may be destroyed by impure or improper use. For 

 example, in Axo, a village on the Cappadocian plateau, I 

 was told in 1910 that there had formerly been a curative 

 spring (&yia<Tna.) below the tomb of St. Macrina. which is a 

 local centre of pilgrimage (see Carnoy and Nicolaides. Tradi- 

 tions Pupiilaires de I'Asie Mineure, p. 204). When I was there, 

 the cistern, into which it had trickled from the rock, was dry and 

 the cause was said to be the action of a renegade woman who 

 had turned Turk. She washed her baby in the water, where- 

 upon it had ceased to flow. 



^ Von Hammer, Narrative of the Travels in Europe, Asia, 

 and Africa in the Seventeenth Century by Eviiyd Efendi, 1, 

 ii, p. 46. 



