CRYSTAL BALLS AND CRYSTAL GAZING 187
read
that "Prayer and a good beleefe prevailed much. For faith is the cay to
this and all other works, and without it nothing can be effected." The
child scryer, either maid or boy, should not be more than twelve years
old.
That
a certain religious spirit, however mistaken, often animated the
crystal-gazers of the sixteenth century, is shown in the case of the
"speculator" of John a Windor, who confessed that when he led an impure
life the "daemons" would not appear to him in his glass. He would then
proceed to fumigate the apartment, as though believing that the very
air was contaminated by the sins of the operator. We may hope that the
seer was not content with this, but also tried to reform his evil
ways. Another scryer, a woman named Sarah Skelhorn, declared that the
spirits that appeared to her in the glass would often follow her about
the house from room to room, so that she at last became weary of their
presence.19 Both of these scryers had regular employment,
for it was quite customary for a gentleman to have a household seer,
just as he would have a body-physician, if he could afford it.
A
sixteenth century work on magic, the "Hollen-zwang" of Dr. Faustus,
whose name has been immortalized for all ages by Goethe, gives very
particular and detailed directions for the preparation and consecration
of a crystal, whether glass or quartz. Faust asks his "Mephistophelis"
whether such crystals can be made, and the spirit replies: "Yes,
indeed, my Faust," and directs Faust to go, on a Tuesday, to a
glass-maker, and get the latter to form a glass. It was requisite that
this
u Jonson, " The Alchemist," ed. Hathaway, New York, 1903, pp. 101,145, note.
