Crystal Balls in Many Countries

Many extraordinary visions are said to have been seen in crystal balls by a French scryer whose grand-mother had clairvoyant powers and was sometimes consulted by Napoleon I. It is claimed that the grandson has enjoyed the patronage of many royal personages, and had predicted, in a more or less definite way, the assassination of King Humbert of Italy, and the attempted assassination of Alfonso XIII and of his young bride, when they were returning to the palace after the conclusion of the marriage ceremony. This French scryer has stated that he is powerfully affected when he is consulted by any one destined to die a violent death; on such occasions he feels, in his own organism, a modified form of the particular kind of suffering they are fated to experience. This exceptional sensitiveness to occult influences was also shown when the crystalgazer went to the Boulaq Museum in Cairo, and gazed upon the rows of mummies exhibited there; he immediately felt, as intensely as though it were a personal experience, the mingled sorrow and rage of the disembodied spirits at seeing their embalmed bodies exposed to the view of the idle crowd, when they should have been permitted to rest in their tombs until the hour of the Resurrection.

In England all those who attempted, with a greater or less degree of success, to reveal the hidden secrets of the future, were expressly designated as rogues and vagabonds according to the terms of an act passed June 21, 1824. (George IV, cap. Ixxxiii.) Such offenders, on being duly convicted before the Justice of the Peace, could be committed to the House of Correction, "there to be kept at hard Labour for any time not exceeding Three Calendar Months." This class of undesirable citizens comprised all using "any subtle Craft, Means, or Device, by Palmistry or otherwise" for the deception of his Majesty's subjects.

The h'men, or diviner, of Yucatan, places great reliance upon his zaztun, or "clear stone." This may be a quartz crystal, or else some other translucent stone; but in order to serve for divining purposes it must be sanctified according to special rites, gum-copal being burned before it, and certain magic formulas recited, which have been transmitted from generation to generation in an archaic dialect. When thus rendered fit for use, the diviner claims to be able to see in the depths of the crystal the whereabouts of lost articles, and also what absent persons are doing at the time he makes his observation. Not only this, but the future is also laid bare before his eyes. As these stones are supposed to possess such miraculous powers we need not be surprised that one of them should be found in almost every village in Yucatan. (Brinton, "Essays of an Americanist," Philadelphia, 1890.)

The Apache medicine-men are also fully persuaded that crystals possess the virtue of inducing visions, and they have used them for the purpose of finding lost property. To aid in the recovery of stolen ponies is one of the most important tasks of the Apache medicine-man, and to this end his crystal offers great assistance. Capt. John G. Burke relates that he made a great friend of a medicine-man named Na-a-che by giving him a large crystal of denticulated spar, much superior to the crystal he had been in the habit of using for his visions. That this was thoroughly satisfactory to the medicine-man at least, is shown by his statement to Capt. Burke that by looking into his crystal he could see everything he wanted to see. Of the way this came about he did not attempt any explanation. (Burke, "The Medicine-men of the Apache," Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1887-1888, Washington, 1892.)