Ink, Oil and Mirror Gazing Ceremonies in Modern Egypt

The practice of gazing at smooth surfaces or into clear depths to produce visions is one of the most ancient and universal which folk-lore has brought to light. It appears to explain a great variety of practices, and to bring them from the cabinet of merely curious superstitions back to the more rational ground of demonstrable though little understood psychic phenomena. The sober monographs of Andrew Lang in the new Encyclopedia Britannica (vii, 566) and the Hastings' Encyclopedita of Religion amd Ethics (iv, 351), his volume on The Making of Religion, and his preface to Thomas' Crystal Gazing-perhaps the most important single volume on the subject-with Miss GoodrichFreer's historical sketch in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychic Research (v, 486f), can be read with profit by any one contemplating the study of magical texts. From these sources it appears that a certain number of persons-Andrew Lang found many, though the present writer has searched in vain-are able, by gazing at a ball of glass, a polished stone, a glass vessel filled with water, a pool of ink, the surface of standing water out of doors or in a vessel, the large opening of a funnel, a dark picture hanging in the shadow, the palm of the hand, the shining surface of animal viscera, and what not, to perceive visions in the object,1 or to enter seemingly through it into the vision beyond.2

Ancient egypt · Ancient history · Art · Visual arts · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History