Stripped of its fictitious accessories--its charms, incantations, incense and prayers--one single important fact remains common in the most ancient and the most modern usages, and that fact is the steady and continuous gazing at a bright object. It is identical with Braid's method of inducing the hypnotic trance, with Luys' method, causing his patients to gaze at revolving mirrors, and with the method of hypnotizers generally who desire their patients to direct their gaze toward some specified, and preferably some bright or reflecting object. In crystal gazing, as ordinarily practised, the full hypnotic condition is not usually induced; but in many cases a condition of reverie occurs, in which pictures or visions fill the mind or appear externalized in the crystal or mirror. With some persons this condition so favorable to visualizing, is produced by simply becoming passive; with others the gazing at a bright or reflecting object assists in securing that end, while with many none of these means, nor yet the assistance of the most skilful hypnotizer, avails to secure the message-bearing action of the subliminal self. The experiences of Miss X., in crystal-gazing are devoid of the interest imparted by exciting incident, and on that very account are the more valuable as illustrating our subject. She has friends of whose experiments she has carefully observed the results, and she has some seventy cases or experiments of her own of which she has kept carefully prepared notes, always made directly or within an hour after each experiment. For a crystal she recommends "a good-sized magnifying glass placed on a dark background." She classifies her results as follows:-- (1) After-images or recrudescent memories coming up from the subconscious strata to which they had fallen. (2) Objectivations, or the visualizing of ideas or images which already exist consciously or unconsciously in the mind. (3) Visions possibly telepathic, or clairvoyant, implying acquirement of knowledge by supranormal means. The following are some of Miss X.'s experiments:-- She had been occupying herself with accounts and opened a drawer to take out her banking book; accidentally her hand came in contact with the crystal she was in the habit of using, and she welcomed the suggestion of a change of occupation. Figures, however, were still uppermost, and the crystal showed her nothing but the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab she had driven in that morning, or a chance combination of figures with which she had been occupied, she laid aside the crystal and took up her banking book, which certainly she had not seen for several months. Greatly to her surprise she found that 7694 was the number of her book, plainly indicated on the cover. She declares that she would have utterly failed to recall the figures, and could not even have guessed the number of digits nor the value of the first figure.