The Making of Religion

to water, usually in a vessel, preferably a glass vessel, among Red Indians (Lejeune), Romans (Varro, cited in Civitas Dei, iii. 457), Africans of Fez (Leo Africanus); while Maoris use

s. The Polynesian theory is that the god carries the spirit of the thief over the water, in which it is reflected. Lejeune’s Red Indians make their patients gaze into the water, in which they will see the pictures of the t

uartz crystal, which he greatly valued. Captain Bourke presented him with a still finer crystal. ‘He could not give me an explanation of its magical use, except that by looking into it he could see everything he wanted to see,’ Captain Bourke appears never to have heard of the modern experiments in crystal-gazing. Captain Bourke al

ed another.’ She gives a case in European times of a medicine-man who found the witch’s habitat, but got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was succe

oes the flint instruments called ‘thunderbolts’ in many countries. ‘Lorsqu’ils squillent, ils ont une de ces pierres au coing de leurs tablettes, disans qu’elle à la vertu de faire faire operation à leur figure de geomance.’ Probably they used the crystals as do the Apaches. On July 15 a Mala

.6 The case of the Inca, Yupanqui, is very curious. ‘As he came up to a fountain he saw a piece of crystal fall into it, within which he beheld a figure of an Indian in th

ent among the Huille-che, in Fez, in Madagascar, in Siberia, among Apaches, Hurons, Iroquois, Australian black fellows, Maoris, and in Polynesia. This is

rey; the Regent d’Orléans in St. Simon’s Memoirs; the modern mesmerists (Gregory, Mayo) and the mid-Victorian spiritualists, who, as usual, explained the phenomena, in their prehistoric way, by ‘spirits8.’ Till this lady examined the subject, nobody ha

ch appear to her eyes

ng thus, and thus only, fr

— (a) consciously or (b) unconsciou

clairvoyant, implying acquirement

would be so useful to a priest or medicine-man asked t

ut he speaks by conjecture, and without having witnessed experiments, as will be shown later. I now offer a series of experiments with a glass ball, coming under my own observation, in which knowledge was apparently acquired in no ordinary way. Of the absence of fraud I am personally convinced, not only by the

nterior of a house, with a full-length portrait of a person unknown. There were, I think, one or two other fancy pictures of the familiar kind. But she presently (living as she was, among strangers) developed a power of ‘seeing’ persons and places unknown to her, but familiar to them. These experiences do seem to me to be good examples of what is called ‘thought transference;’ indeed, I ne

I do not mean to say that success was invariable. I thought of Dr. W.G. Grace, and the scryer saw an old man crawling along with a stick. But I doubt if Dr. Grace is very deeply seated in that mystic entity, my subco

ir histories beforehand, for she could not know (normally) when she left home, that she was about to be shown a glass ball, or whom she would meet. The second objection is met by the circumstance that ladies were not usually picked out for men, nor men for women. Indeed, these choices were the exceptions, and in each case were marked by minutely particular details. A third objection is that credulity, or the love of strange novelties, or desire to oblige, biases the inquirers, and makes them anxious to recognise something f

idart.’ A year after composing my tale, I found the Government description of Mr. Kelly (1736). It exactly tallied with my purely fanciful sketch, down to eyes, and teeth, and face, except that I made my hero ‘about six feet,’ whereas the Government gave him five feet ten. But I knew beforehand that Mr. Kelly was a clergyman; his curious career proved him to be a person of g

ing. She is wearing a little white shawl with a black edge. But! . . . she can’t be old as her hair is quite brown! although her face looks so very very old.” The picture then vanished, and the lady said that I had accurately described her friend’s mother instead of himself; that it was a family joke that the mother must dye

o me, within a week, but leaned to a theory of ‘el

g on a very heavy choppy sea, although land was still visible in the dim distance. That vanished, and, as suddenly, a little house appeared with five or six (I forget now the exact number I then counted) steps leading up

had vividly described a spot in Shetland where she

dies had hitherto been perfect strangers to each other. The old man was the schoolmaster, apparently. In her MS., Miss Angus writes ‘Skye,’ but at the time both she and the other lady said

k for me. She said at once, “I see a bed with a man in it looking very ill and a lady in black beside it.” Without saying any more Miss Angus still kept looking, and, after some time, I asked to have one more look, and on her passing the ball back to me, I received quite a shock, for there, perfectly clearly in a bright light, I saw stretched out in bed an old man apparently dead; for a few minutes I could not look, and on doing so once more there appeared a lady in black and out of dense darkness a long black object was being carri

ved an oral version, from a person present at the scrying. It differed, in one respect, from what Miss Angus writes.

w, so I told her to look. In a very short time she called out, “Oh! I see the bed too! But, oh! take it away, the man is dead!” She got quite a shock, and said she would never look in it again. Soon, however, curiosity prompted her to have one more look, and the scene at once came back again, and slowly, from a misty object at the side of the bed, the lady in black became quite distinct. Then she described several people in the room,

,11 but to show he had never been in our thoughts, although we all knew he had not been

ted here, the corpse being unrecognised, a

cquaintance of Miss Angus’s, who now saw him for th

any person of whom I might think. . . . I fixed my mind upon a friend, a young trooper in the [regiment named], as I thought his would be a striking and peculiar personality, owing to his uniform, and also because I felt sure that Miss Angus could not possibly know of his existence. I fixed my mind steadily upon my friend, and presently Miss Angus, who had already seen two cloudy visions of

d befriended in a severe illness. Miss Angus’s own ac

aged to convert several very decided “sceptics,” and I will here

to baffle me, he said he would think of a frie

efore, and knew utmost nothing a

y queer way — in something so bright that the sun shining on him quite dazzles me, and I cannot make him out!” As he came nearer I exclaimed. “Why, it’s a soldier in shining armour, but it’s not an officer, only a soldier!” Two friends who were in the room said Mr. —— ‘s excitement was intense, a

the lady who was unconsciously scried for, and n

the other side of the room. I was suddenly very much startled to hear Miss A., in quite an agitated way, describe a scene that had most certainly been very often in my thoughts, but of which I had never mentioned a word, She accurately described a race-course in Scotland, and an accident which happened to a friend of mine only a week or two before, and she was evidently going through the sa

us herse

I somehow got inside the thoughts of one lady w

range “magnetic” powers, and felt quit

— insisted on holding my hand and patting her other hand on my forehead! Miss H. in a scorn

of people, and in some strange way I felt I was in it, and we all seemed to be waiting for something. Soon a rider came past, yo

ever, two or three men approached, and carried him past before my eyes, and again my anxiety was intense to discover if he were only very badly hurt or if life were

in Scotland which she had witnessed just a week or two before — a scene that had very often been in her thoughts, but, as we were strangers to each o

d concentrated her thoughts so hard, I should have been in

to the post and nodding to his friends. Then she saw him carried on a stretcher through the crowd. She seemed, she said, to be actually present,

r and many lights. The gentleman made another effort, and remembered his partner with some distinctness. Miss Angus then described another room, not a ball-room, comfortably furnished, in which a girl with brown hair drawn back from her forehead, and attired in a high-necked white blouse, was reading, or writing letters, under a bright light in an unshaded glass globe. The description of the features, figure, and height tallied with Mr. —— ‘s recollection; but he had never seen this Geraldine of an hour except in ball dress. He and Miss Angus noted t

lope, a statement of his thoughts; Miss Angus was to do the same with her description of the picture seen by her; and these documents were to be sent to me, without communication be

nce interesting to them — and, in a secondary degree, to others who know them — can thus be procured; but strangers are left to the same choice of doubts as in a

had just made Miss Angus’s acquaintance, and was but a sojourner in t

was thinking of my brother, who was, I believe, at that time, somewhere between Sabathu

d wrote, before te

son sunset. A great black ship is anchored near, and on the deck I see a man lying, apparently very ill. He is a powerful-looki

ry 28,

ust arriving, as was proved by a letter received from him eight days after the experiment was recorded, on January 31. At that date

h hair drawn back from the brows, standing beside a high chair, dressed in a wide farthingale of stiff grey brocade, without a ruff. The costume corresponds well (as we found) with that of 1546, and I said, ‘I suppose it is Mariotte Ogilvy’ — to whom Miss Angus’s historical knowledge (and perhaps that of the general public) did not extend. Mariotte was the Cardinal’s lady-love, and was in the Castle on t

s well known to me, and it was verbally corroborated by Miss Angus, to w

n.” She looked in the ball again, and said, “It is a large ship, and it is passing a huge rock with a lighthouse on it. I can’t see who are on the ship, but the sky is very clear and blue. Now I see a large building, something like a club, and in front there are a great many people sitting and walking about. I think it must be some place ab

w nothing whatever about my nephew; but the young man described was e

s thinking of her nephew in connection with India. It is not main

ing, in and out of which many men were coming and going. Her impression was that the scene must be abroad. In the little company present, it should be added, was a lady, Mrs. Cockburn, who had considerable reason to think of her young married daughter, then at a place about fifty miles away. After Miss Angus had described the large building and crowds

s. Bissett. When Mrs. Bissett announced that she had ‘thought of something,’ Miss Angus saw a walk in a wood or garden, beside a river, under a brilliant blue sky. Here was a lady, very well dressed, twirling a white parasol on her shoulder as she walked, in a curious ‘stumpy’ way, beside a gentleman in light clothes, such as are worn in India. He was broad-shouldered, had a short neck and a straight nose, and seemed to listen, laughing, but indifferent, to his obviously vivacious companion. The lady had a ‘drawn’ face, indicative of ill health. Then followed a scene in which the man, w

in purpose, ‘and then we go into camp till the end of February.’ One of Mr. Clifton’s duties is to direct the clearing of wood preparatory to the formation of the camp, as in Miss Angus’s crystal picture.15 The sceptical Mrs. Cockburn heard of these coincidences, and an idea occurred to her. She wrote to her daughter, who has

Angus’s mind by way of the glass ball, and was interrupted by a thought of Mrs. Cockburn’s, as to her daughter. But how these thoughts came to display th

, were on shore. Mr. Bissett asked, ‘What is the man’s expression?’ ‘He looks as if he had been giving a lot of last orders.’ Then appeared ‘a place like a hospital, with five or six

o had been thinking of, and recognised in the officer in undress uniform, her brother, the man with the singular hair, whose face, in fact, had been scarred in that way

thought transference, while it would cover the wooden huts at Bombay (Mrs. Bissett knowing that her brother was about to leave that place), can scarcely explain the scene in the garden by the r

tes illustrate the triviality; but the facts certainly left a number of people, wholly unfamiliar with such experiments, under the impression that Miss Angus’s glass ball was lik

ght of is discerned; in another the mind of a stranger present seems to be read. In another case (not given here) the inquirer tried to visualise a card for a person present to guess, whil

ion she makes the experiment. As ‘muscle-reading’ is not in question (in the one case of contact between inquirer and crystal-gazer the results were unexpected), and as no unconsciously made signs could convey, for example, the idea of a cavalry

as the faculty is, a few real successes, well exploited and eked out by fraud, would set up a wizard’s reputation. That a faculty of being thus affected is genuine seems proved, apart from modern evidence, by the world-wide prev

ef that the ‘spirit’ of the thing or person looked for is suspended by a god over the water, crystal, blood, ink, or whatever it may be. Thus, to anthropologists, the discovery of crystal-gazing as a thing widely diffused and still flourishing ought to be grateful, however much they m