In fact, divining-crystals, when known as such professionally, are tame, hard-working, almost respectable institutions. In the good old days of necromancy, magicians had no need of such mechanical appliances. Any reflecting surface would serve their turn, and a bowl of clear water was enough to reveal to them all that they wanted to know. It was of more importance, says Brand, “to make choice of a young maid to discern therein those images or visions which a person defiled cannot see.” Even the famous mirror, through whose agency Dr. Dee and his seer, Kelly, were said to have discovered the Gunpowder Plot, was in reality nothing more than a black polished stone, closely resembling coal.
“Kelly did all his feats upon The devil’s looking-glass, a stone.”
Yet in an old Prayer-Book of 1737 there is a woodcut representing the king and Sir Kenelm Digby gazing into a circular mirror, in which are reflected the Houses of Parliament, and a man entering them with a dark lantern in his hand. Above, the eye of Providence is seen darting a ray of light upon the mirror. Below are legs and hoofs, as of evil spirits flying rapidly away. The truth is, so many conflicting details are related of Dr. Dee’s useful and benevolent possession that it has lost a little of its _vraisemblance_. We are wont to rank it confusedly with such mystic treasures as the mirror which told the fortunate Alasnam whether or not a maid were as chaste as she was beautiful, or the glass which Reynard described with such minute and charming falsehoods to the royal lioness, who would fain have gratified her curiosity by a sight of its indiscreet revelations.
It is never through magic mirrors, nor crystal balls, nor any of the paraphernalia now so abundantly supplied by painstaking students of telepathy that we approach that shadowy land over which broods perpetual fear. Let us rather turn meekly back to the fairy-taught minister of Aberfoyle, and learn of him the humiliating truth that “every drop of water is a Mirrour to returne the Species of Things, were our visive Faculty sharpe enough to apprehend them.” In other words, we stand in need, not of elaborate appliances, but of a chastened spirit. If we seek the supernatural with the keen apprehension which is begotten of credulity and awe, we shall never find ourselves disappointed in our quest. The same reverend authority tells us that “in a Witch’s Eye the Beholder cannot see his own Image reflected, as in the Eyes of other people,” which is an interesting and, it may be, a very useful thing to know.