Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1913 — IS WITHOUT A FLAW [ARTICLE]

IS WITHOUT A FLAW

Mystic Crystal Sphere Is Mor* gan’s Gift to Museum. - Water-Pure Globe Venerated for Cehturies In the Orient Now Where Visitors Gaze Into Its Liquid Deaths. New York. —The Museum of Natural History recenUy has acquired a “mystic crystal sphere”—a silver-mounted globe of quartz, water-pure and of wonderful symmetry. This curious bauble for centuries has bene regarded with veneration and even fear by people of the far east Unknown powers of hallucination furk within its limpid depths, and this has been utilized by wizard and seer with no little profit in bygone days. The crystal Is the gift of J. Pierpont. Morgan. Nearly five inches in diameter, it is absolutely devoid of flaw, cloud, stain or Irregularity, and even the most cynical disbeliever in matters mystical cannot but admit a fascination, a subtle sense of the occult, when looking into its clear depths. Where did it come from? What is its history? . These are questions that must remain unanswered. About its glassy surface hangs strange delusions of prophecy and clairvoyance—tales of credulity and superstition that are not always scoffed at by the most scornful of scientific writers. Fabulous are the weird stores told of its effect upon the lives of men and women. There was the young girl of San Saturn, who eloped with her sister’s husband. She took a famous crystal—a family heirloom with her—and the morning after the escapade she was found lifeless on a couch with' the crystal broken in a thousand pieces on the floor. Probably the most expert crystal fashioners were the Japanese and Chinese of a thousand years ago! They had no labor-saving devices, but skill, patience and hereditary pride made up for their lack of mechanical tools. The masses, at first rounded into globular form by chipping with small steel hammers, were subsequently ground down to an even surface with powdered garnet or emery. The last transformation polish was ImpartedV by rubbing the surface with bamboo and with the hand, which had previously been dipped in a rough kind of rouge. The largest and most perfect sphere known is kept in the Green Vault at Dresden. It weighs fifteen pounds and is seven inches in diameter. The great value of the large spheres arises from the rarity of the quartz

masses of desirable quality for their creation. The islands of Nippon and Fujiyama yield a superior grade of material, the fragments being uncovered in the gravel beds of ancient streams. That the use of crystals by spiritualistic mediums is by no means of recent origin may. be gathered from the observations of Garcia, a Spanish phil-

among the natives practiced a sort of divination through the use of rock crystal and brought its influence to bear upon their crops.”