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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.
SCRYING OR CRYSTAL-GAZING 74
Cock Lane and Common-Sense
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
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