In the mysticism of the twentieth century the above-mentioned form of divination is known as “crystal gazing,” though the medium employed is usually a ball of rock crystal, and not a globe of water such as Cagliostro generally used. Occultism classes all such experiments under the head of _magic mirrors_. The practice is very ancient. The Regent d’Orléans of France experimented with the magic mirror, as Saint Simon records. The great traveler, Lane, speaks of such divination among the modern Egyptians by means of ink held in the palm of the hand. Mirrors of ivory, metal, and wood coated with gypsum have been used. As Andrew Lang puts it: “There is, in short, a chain of examples, from the Greece of the fourth century B. C., to the cases observed by Dr. Mayo and Dr. Gregory in the middle of the nineteenth century, and to those which Mrs. De Morgan wished to explain by ‘spiritualism.’ ” In the opera “Parsifal” by Richard Wagner, the necromancer, Klingsor, sees the approach of the young knight in a magic mirror. In the Middle Ages the use of these mirrors was well known. Deeply imbued with the spirit of mediævalism, Wagner properly equipped the magician of his sublime opera with the mirror. Max Dessoir, the German psychologist, writes as follows concerning the magic mirror (_Monist_, Vol. I, No. 1): {52} “The phenomena produced by the agency of the magic mirror with regard to their contents proceed from the realm of the subconsciousness; and that with regard to their _form_ they belong to the category of hallucinations. . . . Hallucinations, the production of which are facilitated by the fixation of shining surfaces, do not occur with all persons; and there may be a kernel of truth in the tradition which designates women and children as endowed with especial capacities in this respect. The investigations of Fechner upon the varying vividness of after-images; the statistics of Galton upon hallucinatory phantasms in artists; and the extensive statistical work of the Society for Psychical Research, appear to point to a connection of this character. . . . Along with the inner process the outward form of the hallucination requires a brief explanation. The circumstance, namely, which lends magic-mirror phenomena their salient feature, is the sensory reproduction of the images that have sprung up from the subconsciousness. The subterranean ideas produced do not reach the surface as thoughts, but as pseudo-perceptions.” Cagliostro sometimes made use of a metallic mirror. This fact we have on the authority of the Countess du Barry, the frail favorite of Louis XV. When the “Well Beloved” went the way of dusty death, the charming Countess divided her years of banishment from the glories of the Court at her Chateau of Luciennes and her houses in Paris and Versailles. She relates that on one occasion the Cardinal de Rohan paid her a visit. During the conversation the subject of Mesmer and magnetism was discussed.