Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

by R. Osgood Mason

The Romans made special use of crystals and mirrors, and children were particularly employed for mirror-reading when consulting regarding important events; thus in a manner taking the place of the early oracles. From Jewish and Pagan practices as a means of divination, clairvoyance and prophecy, the art of the crystal seer seems to have passed to early Christian times without material change except in ceremonials. These seers are mentioned in the counsels of the Church as specularii, children often acting as the seers, and although in some quarters they were looked upon with suspicion as heretics, and were under the ban of the Church, yet they had an extensive following.

Thomas Aquinas, speaking of the peculiar power of seeing visions possessed by children, says it is not to be ascribed to any virtue or innocence of theirs, nor any power of nature, but that it is the work of the devil.

In Wagner’s beautiful opera of Parsifal, based upon the legend of the Holy Grail, reference to the same custom is more than once evident. The second act opens with a scene representing the enchanted castle of Klingsor; the magician himself is seen gazing into a bright metallic mirror, in which he sees Parsifal approaching and recognizes and fears him as the promised guiltless one—the true king and guardian of the Grail—an office to which he himself had once aspired. In fact the Grail itself, in its earliest mythical and traditional form, as well as in its later development as a distinctly Christian symbol, was an instrument of divination and prophecy. The Druids had their basin, sometimes filled with aromatic herbs, sometimes with the blood of the sacrificed victim; but in either case it was potent for securing the proper psychic condition in the officiating priest or soothsayer; and while Arabic and Indian myths present the same idea, sometimes as a cup of divination, and sometimes as a brilliant stone, the British Islands were the main source of the traditions which eventually culminated in the legends of the Holy Grail, with its full store of beautiful and touching incidents, prophecies, and forms of worship. In each the special guardians and knights of the Grail appear, with Parsifal, the simple-minded, pure and pitiful knight as its restorer and king when lost or in unworthy hands.

In the German version of the twelfth century as given by Wolfram, in his Parzival, the Grail is a beautiful, sacred stone, enshrined in the magnificent temple at Montsalvat, guarded by the consecrated knights and the sick and erring, but repentant, King Amfortas. While the unhappy king was worshipping with gaze intent upon the Sacred Emblem, suddenly letters of fire surrounded it and he read the cheering prophecy:

“In the loving soul of a guiltless one
Put thy faith—Him have I chosen.”

Kufferath remarks, “The religious emblem soon became a symbolic object—it revealed to its worshippers the knowledge of the future, the mystery of the world, the treasures of human knowledge, and imparted a poetic inspiration.” So it comes to pass that in the legend in its latest form—the splendid work of the Master of Bayreuth, the Holy Grail, as a chalice and Christian emblem, is still endowed with the same miraculous power, and is rescued from the unfortunate guardianship of Amfortas by the “loving soul of a guiltless one”—the simple, tried, and much-enduring Parsifal, miraculously promised long before by the Grail itself.

It will be seen, then, that crystal-gazing in its various forms has, from the earliest times, been practised with great ceremony for the purpose of acquiring knowledge concerning affairs and events unknown and often not discoverable by ordinary methods.

Stripped of its fictitious accessories—its charms, incantations, incense and prayers—one single important fact remains common in the most ancient and the most modern usages, and that fact is the steady and continuous gazing at a bright object. It is identical with Braid’s method of inducing the hypnotic trance, with Luys’ method, causing his patients to gaze at revolving mirrors, and with the method of hypnotizers generally who desire their patients to direct their gaze toward some specified, and preferably some bright or reflecting object.

In crystal gazing, as ordinarily practised, the full hypnotic condition is not usually induced; but in many cases a condition of reverie occurs, in which pictures or visions fill the mind or appear externalized in the crystal or mirror. With some persons this condition so favorable to visualizing, is produced by simply becoming passive; with others the gazing at a bright or reflecting object assists in securing that end, while with many none of these means, nor yet the assistance of the most skilful hypnotizer, avails to secure the message-bearing action of the subliminal self.

The experiences of Miss X., in crystal-gazing are devoid of the interest imparted by exciting incident, and on that very account are the more valuable as illustrating our subject. She has friends of whose experiments she has carefully observed the results, and she has some seventy cases or experiments of her own of which she has kept carefully prepared notes, always made directly or within an hour after each experiment. For a crystal she recommends “a good-sized magnifying glass placed on a dark background.”