The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-05

Boston, April 4.-(Special.) lone of th' most famous objects in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts of this citJ IS a great crystal ball with oriental set lirgs the largest mirror of the subcon- acious world, it is said. on the planet. Acquired for the Ames collection from an East Indian source and loaned for an indefinite period 10 the museum in Copley square. it perpetually invites 70 the exercise of the now fashionable fai of crystal gazing. You look into it. or into any other of a large group of similar but smaller globes under certain favoring conditions and if your temperament is right, you may see visions projected from cut your subnminal life.
 Seeing things is very popular just now. X play, for example, in which so well aEown a thespian as Miss Ethel Barry more is starring this season presents aL crystal gazing scene. This is time too. when along with the general revival of interest in all topics pertaining to psyehi- cal research, more people. probably than ever before in the history of the world are looking into crystals, glasses of water. lelished stone or wood or other surfaces capable of rehecting light with the eXpec- tation that apparitions or hallucinations H.ay float before their eyes.
 ''Spooks" seen in q glass seem from all accounts to be among the easiest to conjure up Whatever the cause of these apparitions the fact remains that from very early times peculiarly constituted persons-about one individual in seven have appeared to possess the power of producing hallucinations of certain kind in themselves by gazing intently into q crystal In recent years, and es- pecially since the formation of societies for scientific study of psychical research in this country and abroad, interest In such phenomena has been very keen, and a. considerable body of facts, apparently Wel authenticated. has been collected. Prof. James H. Hyslop, president of the new American Society of PsSchical Re search. has long been studying the psy- chologieal considerations involved in this cult of crystal gazing and ill his book "Enigmas of Psychieal Research" as well as in other popular eXpositions of met apsychical subjects. has given in detail the records of strange sights from the unseen realm. He cautiously claims noth- ing from which an argument can be drawn as to such communications from the eternal depths as Sir Oliver Lodge as- serts he has had. He finds however, q great mass of data that fascinate the student of the little understood activi- ties of the subliminal mind.
 The marvels of crystal gazing come
 
 instance, you looked into a glass ball and there came before your eyes sharp, distinct picture of your old minister whom you had not seen for 15 years and then just as you exclaimed, ''Why NIT. N the face vanished and there appeared a slight picture of cemetery, would you not think there was occasion for apprehension? Later the woman who saw this sight in the glass brightly is reported tn pit n W ba clergyman had moved. found the man himself dying and recognized the very cemetery which she had seen while look ing into the crystal
 This notion of seeing the unseeable at times when the gaze is fixed upon q lehecting surface whose higA lights are eliminated as far as possible is nothing new in history. As Professor Hyslop dis closes in his book on the metapsychical onigmas, this form of divination was kf.own among the Greeks, who possessed polished and enchanted crystals in which future events were signifed He has also found traces of the practices of crystal gazing in Assyria, Greece, Rome, China. Japan India and possibly in some Of the South Sea Islands. The use of a mirror or crystal ball has been noted among the Apaches of the estern plains, tliey employ crystal to discover stolen property. Other tribes of Indians make their patients gaze into water in which they see pictures of the food and medi- clne good for them. In Polynesia a hole ia dug in the ground and as it fills with water the priest peers in to discover the authors of thefts. In India castor oil is held in the hand of a child and in the mirror thus formed float weird pictures cnl spirits and demons.
 Most of the stories of wonders accom- rlished by means of crystal gazing have come down on the basis of such testi-