Under this rather curious title I am grouping together the cases of
all those people who definitely set themselves to see something, but
have no idea what the something will be, and no control over the sight
after the visions have begun--psychic Micawbers, who put themselves
into a receptive condition, and then simply wait for something to turn
up. Many trance-mediums would come under this heading; they either in
some way hypnotize themselves or are hypnotized by some
"spirit-guide," and then they describe the scenes or persons that
happen to float before their vision. Sometimes, however, when in this
condition they see what is taking place at a distance, and so they
come to have a place among our "clairvoyants in space."
But the largest and most widely-spread band of these semi-intentional
clairvoyants are the various kinds of crystal-gazers--those who, as
Mr. Andrew Lang puts it, "stare into a crystal ball, a cup, a mirror,
a blob of ink (Egypt and India), a drop of blood (among the Maories of
New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), a pond (Roman and
African), water in a glass bowl (in Fez), or almost any polished
surface" (_Dreams and Ghosts_, p. 57).
Two pages later Mr. Lang gives us a very good example of the kind of
vision most frequently seen in this way. "I had given a glass ball,"
he says, "to a young lady, Miss Baillie, who had scarcely any success
with it. She lent it to Miss Leslie, who saw a large square,
old-fashioned red sofa covered with muslin, which she found in the
next country-house she visited. Miss Baillie's brother, a young
athlete, laughed at these experiments, took the ball into the study,
and came back looking 'gey gash.' He admitted that he had seen a
vision--somebody he knew under a lamp. He would discover during the
week whether he saw right or not. This was at 5.30 on a Sunday
afternoon.
"On Tuesday, Mr. Baillie was at a dance in a town some forty miles
from his home, and met a Miss Preston. 'On Sunday,' he said, 'about
half-past five you were sitting under a standard lamp in a dress I
never saw you wear, a blue blouse with lace over the shoulders,
pouring out tea for a man in blue serge, whose back was towards me, so
that I only saw the tip of his moustache.'
"'Why, the blinds must have been up,' said Miss Preston.
"'I was at Dulby,' said Mr. Baillie, and he undeniably was."
This is quite a typical case of crystal-gazing--the picture correct in
every detail, you see, and yet absolutely unimportant and bearing no
apparent signification of any sort to either party, except that it
served to prove to Mr. Baillie that there was something in
crystal-gazing. Perhaps more frequently the visions tend to be of a
romantic character--men in foreign dress, or beautiful though
generally unknown landscapes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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