Scrying

"Scry" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Scrye.
The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse (1902, oil on canvas)

Scrying (also called seeing or peeping) is the practice of looking into a translucent ball or other material with the belief that things can be seen, such as spiritual visions, and less often for purposes of divination or fortune-telling.[1][2][3]

The most common media used are reflective, translucent, or luminescent substances such as crystals, stones, glass, mirrors, water, fire, or smoke. Scrying has been used in many cultures in the belief that it can divine the past, present, or future.[2][3] The visions that come when one stares into the media are believed by some to come from one's subconscious and imagination, though others believe they come from gods, spirits, devils, or the psychic mind, depending on the culture and practice.

Although scrying is most commonly done with a crystal ball, it may also be performed using any smooth surface, such as a bowl of liquid, a pond, or a crystal. Like other aspects of divination and parapsychology, scrying is not supported by science as a method of predicting the future.[1]

Method

One method of scrying using a crystal ball involves a self-induced trance. Initially, the medium serves as a focus for the attention, removing unwanted thoughts from the mind in the same way as a mantra. Once this stage is achieved, the scryer begins a free association with the perceived images suggested. The technique of deliberately looking for and declaring these initial images aloud, however trivial or irrelevant they may seem to the conscious mind, is done with the intent of deepening the trance state, in this trance the scryer hears his own disassociated voice affirming what is seen within the concentrated state in a kind of feedback loop. This process culminates in the achievement of a final and desired end stage in which rich visual images and dramatic stories seem to be projected within the medium itself, or directly within the mind's eye of the scryer, something like an inner movie. This process reputedly allows the scryer to "see" relevant events or images within the chosen medium.

One of the most famous scryers in history lived in the 16th century and was known as Nostradamus. He used a bowl of water or a "magic mirror" to "see" the future in it, while he was in trance.[3]

Religion and mythology

Ancient Persia

Main article: Cup of Jamshid

The Shahnameh, a historical epic work written in the late 10th century, gives a description of what was called the Cup of Jamshid or Jaam-e Jam, used in pre-Islamic Persia, which was used by wizards and practitioners of the esoteric sciences for observing all of the seven layers of the universe. The cup contained an elixir of immortality.

Latter Day Saint movement

In the late 1820s, Joseph Smith founded the Latter Day Saint movement based in part on what was said to be the miraculous information obtained from the reflections of seer stones. Smith had at least three separate stones, including his favorite, a brown stone he found during excavation of a neighbor's well. He initially used these stones in various treasure-digging quests in the early 1820s, placing the stone in the bottom of his hat and putting his face in the hat to read what he believed were the miraculous reflections from the stone.[4] Smith also said that he had access to a separate set of spectacles composed of seer stones, which he called the Urim and Thummim. He said that, through these stones, he could translate the golden plates that are the stated source of the Book of Mormon.[5]

In folklore

Divination rituals such as the one depicted on this early 20th-century Halloween greeting card, where a woman stares into a mirror in a darkened room to catch a glimpse of the face of her future husband while a witch lurks in the shadows, may be one origin of the Bloody Mary legend.
This Halloween greeting card from 1904 satirizes divination: the young woman hoping to see her future husband sees the reflection of a nearby portrait instead.

Rituals that involve many of the same acts as scrying in ceremonial magic are also preserved in folklore form. A formerly widespread tradition held that young women gazing into a mirror in a darkened room (often on Halloween) could catch a glimpse of their future husband's face in the mirror—or a skull personifying Death if their fate was to die before they married.

Another form of the tale, involving the same actions of gazing into a mirror in a darkened room, is used as a supernatural dare in the tale of "Bloody Mary". Here, the motive is usually to test the adolescent gazers' mettle against a malevolent witch or ghost, in a ritual designed to allow the scryers' easy escape if the visions summoned prove too frightening.[6]

While, as with any sort of folklore, the details may vary, this particular tale (Bloody Mary) encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backwards, holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to be able to catch a view of their future husband's face. There was, however, a chance that they would see the skull-face of the Grim Reaper instead; this meant that they were destined to die before they married.

In the fairytale of Snow White, the jealous queen consults a magic mirror, which she asks "Magic mirror on the wall / Who is the fairest of them all?", to which the mirror always replies "You, my queen, are fairest of all." But when Snow White reaches the age of seven, she becomes as beautiful as the day, and when the queen asks her mirror, it responds: "Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true, but Snow White is fairer than you."[7]

Scientific reception

Scrying is not supported by science as a method of predicting the future. Some critics consider it to be a pseudoscience.[2][8] Skeptics consider scrying to be the result of delusion or wishful thinking.[9]

Psychologist Leonard Zusne suggested that scrying images are hallucinations or hypnagogic experiences.[1]

A 2010 paper in the journal Perception[10] identified one specific method of reliably reproducing a scrying illusion in a mirror and hypothesized that it "might be caused by low level fluctuations in the stability of edges, shading and outlines affecting the perceived definition of the face, which gets over-interpreted as ‘someone else’ by the face recognition system."[11]

Modern day

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-805-80507-9
  2. 1 2 3 Regal, Brian. (2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Greenwood. pp. 55-56. ISBN 978-0-313-35507-3
  3. 1 2 3 Guiley, Rosemary. (2010). The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca. Facts on File. p. 319. ISBN 0-8160-7103-9
  4. ↑ Richard Bushman Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.
  5. ↑ Smith, Lucy Mack (1853). The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother. p. 101.
  6. ↑ Bill Ellis, Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture (University of Kentucky, 2004). ISBN 0-8131-2289-9
  7. ↑ Besterman, Theodore. Crystal Gazing: A Study in the History, Distribution, Theory and Practice of Scrying.
  8. ↑ De Camp, Lyon Sprague. (1980). The Ragged Edge of Science. Owlswick Press. p. 101. ISBN 0-913896-06-3 "The term "scrying" better describes this pseudo-science, because genuine crystal is not necessary. Glass, or any shiny object, will do as well. Scrying has been practiced with mirrors, jewels, little pools of water or ink, and (in medieval Europe) with polished sword blades."
  9. ↑ Rawcliffe, D. H. (1987). Occult and Supernatural Phenomena. Dover. pp. 128-133
  10. ↑ Caputo, G B (2010). "Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion". Perception 39 (7): 1007–1008. doi:10.1068/p6466. PMID 20842976. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
  11. ↑ Bell, Vaughan. "The strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion". Mind Hacks. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
  12. ↑ Brown L. A. (2000). From discard to divination: Demarcating the sacred through the collection and curation of discarded objects. Latin American Antiquity 11: 319-333.

Further reading

External links

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