Crystal-Gazing (Theodore Besterman)

Theodore Besterman's Crystal-Gazing, published in London in 1924, is an early comparative study of scrying, the practice of seeking visions in a reflective or translucent surface such as a crystal, mirror, bowl of water, polished stone, ink pool or fingernail. Besterman, later famous as a bibliographer and as the editor of Voltaire's correspondence, wrote it as a young investigator associated with the Society for Psychical Research, and the book reflects that society's interests in classifying phenomena and explaining them psychologically. It surveys the history and geographical distribution of the practice, from ancient Mesopotamian and Greek lecanomancy through Egyptian, Indian, Islamic, African, Polynesian and Native American examples to medieval and early modern European practice, including the use of child scryers and the crystal work of John Dee and Edward Kelley. It then discusses the methods, the conditions under which visions appear and the various theories offered to explain them, generally favouring a psychological account involving hallucination and the externalisation of subconscious material. The work is dated in its anthropological framework and its reliance on secondary reports, but it remains a convenient collection of comparative data and bibliography. For a modern historical treatment readers can turn to more recent studies of angel magic and divination, including work on Dee's scrying and on medieval mirror magic. The archive presents the full text.

What it contains

• Definitions and varieties of scrying media
• Ancient Near Eastern and classical practices
• Worldwide ethnographic distribution
• Medieval and early modern European scrying, including Dee
• Methods, conditions and the role of child scryers
• Psychological theories of crystal visions