Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 145, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1919 — SUPERSTITION AN OLD ONE [ARTICLE]

SUPERSTITION AN OLD ONE

In All Ag« the Belief In "Cry** Gazing” Hu Bun Mere or Leu Strongly Held. Crystal suing, or “scrying," u writers on the subject term It, has been practiced pretty well over the world from ancient times to the present. In early times they used to scry In springs and bowls of water. In the British museum there la a orystal ball said to have been used by Dr. Dee, a wizard of the time of Queen Bess. Cagliestro, that sublime humbug of the eighteenth century, used to place a pall of water on the stage and request some child to come out of the audience and gaze Into it. The child would babble of castles, pageants and other marvelous pictures he could see in the clear liquid. The society for psychical research, certain of whose members, one would almost conclude, are ready to swallow whole superstition in any shape, has done some crystal gazing and at last accounts had glass balls for sale at its headquarters In London. The late Andrew Lang stated his belief that some people have the faculty “of seeing faces, places, persons in motion in n glass ball, in water, ink or any clear but scouts the notion that scrying can accomplish anything In the way of finding lost property or In foretelling the future, as has been claimed for it by crystal gazing enthusiasts. As a crystal ball is not absolutely necessary, by all accounts, and a glass pitcher of water will do just as well, almost anybody may make experiments In scrying. The liquid first turns black, it is claimed, then come the pictures. Some of us may feel that It would require a wait of at least a hundred years before anything could be seen.