Ancient Persia[edit]

Main article: Cup of Jamshid

The Shahnameh, a historical epic work written in the late 10th century, gives a
description of what was called the Cup of Jamshid or Jaam-e Jam, used in pre-Islamic
Persia, which was used by wizards and practitioners of the esoteric sciences for
observing all of the seven layers of the universe. The cup contained an elixir of
immortality.

Latter Day Saint movement[edit]

Main articles: Seer stone (Latter Day Saints) and Urim and Thummim (Latter Day
Saints)
In the late 1820s, Joseph Smith founded the Latter Day Saint movement based in part
on what was said to be the miraculous information obtained from the reflections of seer
stones. Smith had at least three separate stones, including his favorite, a brown stone he
found during excavation of a neighbor's well. He initially used these stones in various
treasure-digging quests in the early 1820s, placing the stone in the bottom of his hat and
putting his face in the hat to read what he believed were the miraculous reflections from
the stone.[4] Smith also said that he had access to a separate set of spectacles composed
of seer stones, which he called the Urim and Thummim. He said that, through these
stones, he could translate the plates that are the stated source of the Book of Mormon.[5]

In folklore[edit]

Divination rituals such as the one depicted on this early 20th-century Halloween
greeting card, where a woman stares into a mirror in a darkened room to catch a glimpse

of the face of her future husband while a witch lurks in the shadows, may be one origin
of the Bloody Mary legend.

This Halloween greeting card from 1904 satirizes divination: the young woman hoping
to see her future husband sees the reflection of a nearby portrait instead.
Rituals that involve many of the same acts as scrying in ceremonial magic are also
preserved in folklore form. A formerly widespread tradition held that young women
gazing into a mirror in a darkened room (often on Halloween) could catch a glimpse of
their future husband's face in the mirroror a skull personifying Death if their fate was
to die before they married.
Another form of the tale, involving the same actions of gazing into a mirror in a
darkened room, is used as a supernatural dare in the tale of "Bloody Mary". Here, the
motive is usually to test the adolescent gazers' mettle against a malevolent witch or
ghost, in a ritual designed to allow the scryers' easy escape if the visions summoned
prove too frightening.[6]
While, as with any sort of folklore, the details may vary, this particular tale (Bloody
Mary) encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backwards, holding a
candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were
supposed to be able to catch a view of their future husband's face. There was, however,
a chance that they would see the skull-face of the Grim Reaper instead; this meant that
they were destined to die before they married.
In the fairytale of Snow White, the jealous queen consults a magic mirror, which she
asks "Magic mirror on the wall / Who is the fairest of them all?", to which the mirror
always replies "You, my queen, are fairest of all." But when Snow White reaches the
age of seven, she becomes as beautiful as the day, and when the queen asks her mirror,
it responds: "Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true, but Snow White is fairer than you."[7]

Modern day[edit]

The Ganzfeld experiment involves sensory deprivation which might be seen as

comparable with scrying. According to the small community of
parapsychologists, it provides the best known evidence for psi abilities in the
laboratory.[8]

The Dr. John Dee of the Mind research institute, founded by the
parapsychologist Raymond Moody, utilizes crystallomancy to allow people to
experience an altered state of consciousness with the intention of invoking
apparitions of the dead.

Contemporary mass media, such as films, often depict scrying using a crystal
ball, stereotypically used by an old gypsy woman.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth (especially in The Lord of

the Rings), the Palantr is a stone that allows a viewer to see what any other
Palantr sees, and the Mirror of Galadriel is used as a scrying device to see
visions of the past, present, or future.

The British astrologer and psychic known as Mystic Meg, who came to national
attention as part of the UK's National Lottery draw in 1994, was often portrayed
with a crystal ball.

In the videogame Clive Barker's Undying, Patrick Galloway (the player) is

shown in possession of a green crystal, The Gel'ziabar Stone, which allows him
to scrye visions and sounds from the past, that are vital to the various missions.
[citation needed]

In Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle the use of a mirror to view people and
places the viewer knew in the present was possible with the drawback of not
being able to see anything to which they had no knowledge. The attempt to scry
the future would cost the user their life.

In the US television series Charmed, the sisters scry with a crystal and a map to
locate people.[citation needed]

Traditional healers from the Yucatn Peninsula and Guatemala use stone crystal
balls for scrying. These are known as sastun or zaztun. Originally, they were
Mayan antiquities that they used to collect in archaeological ruins.[9] Nowadays
they are mostly modern objects. It is unknown what was the original use of the
jade balls found in ancient Mayan burials.

See also[edit]

Catoptromancy

Crystal gazing

Ganzfeld experiment

Hydromancy

Kozyrev mirror

Lecanomancy

Macharomancy

Magic (paranormal)

Psychomanteum

Scyphomancy

List of topics characterized as pseudoscience

Notes[edit]
1.

Jump up ^ Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society: A postgraduate conference

2.

Jump up ^ Caputo, G B (2010). "Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion". Perception 39

(7): 10071008. doi:10.1068/p6466. PMID 20842976. Retrieved 13 December 2014.

3.

Jump up ^ Bell, Vaughan. "The strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion". Mind Hacks.

Retrieved 13 December 2014.

4.

Jump up ^ Richard Bushman Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

5.

Jump up ^ Smith, Lucy Mack (1853). The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother.
p. 101.

6.

Jump up ^ Bill Ellis, Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture
(University of Kentucky, 2004). ISBN 0-8131-2289-9

7.

Jump up ^ Besterman, Theodore. Crystal Gazing: A Study in the History, Distribution,

Theory and Practice of Scrying.

8.

Jump up ^ Modern Ganzfeld Uses. "Scrying Without Crying". PaganPath.com.

Retrieved 19 February 2014.

9.

Jump up ^ Brown L. A. (2000)From discard to divination: Demarcating the sacred

through the collection and curation of discarded objects. Latin American Antiquity 11: 319-333
http://www.academia.edu/216688/From_Discard_to_Divination_Demarcating_the_Sacred_Thro
ugh_the_Collection_and_Curation_of_Discarded_Objects%7C

References and further reading[edit]

A Symbolic Representation of the Universe: Derived by Doctor John Dee

Through the Scrying of Sir Edward Kelly ~Aleister Crowley, Adrian Axwirthy

Crystal Gazing: Study in the History, Distribution, Theory and Practice of

Scrying ~Theodore Besterman

Scrying for Beginners: Tapping into the Supersensory Powers of Your

Subconscious ~Donald Tyson

Crystal Gazing: Its History and Practice with a Discussion on the Evidence for
Telepathic Scrying ~Northcote W. Thomas

Andrew Lang, Crystal visions, savage and civilised, The Making of Religion,
Chapter V, Longmans, Green, and C, London, New York and Bombay, 1900,
pp. 83104.

Shepard, Leslie A. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Gale

Research, Inc.

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/c/captromancy_or_enoptromancy.ht
ml

Armand Delatte, La catoptromancie grecque et ses drivs (1932)

http://skepdic.com/scrying.html

<img src="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1" alt=""

title="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;" />
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Scrying&oldid=671093605"
Categories:

Divination

Hidden categories:

Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL

Articles needing additional references from January 2011

All articles needing additional references

Articles needing additional references from February 2015

All articles with unsourced statements

Articles with unsourced statements from July 2013

Articles with unsourced statements from June 2014

Navigation menu
Personal tools

Create account

Log in

Namespaces

Article

Talk

Variants
Views

Read

Edit

View history

More
Search
Special:Search

Go

Navigation

Main page

Contents

Featured content

Current events

Random article

Donate to Wikipedia

Wikipedia store

Interaction

Help

About Wikipedia

Community portal

Recent changes

Contact page

Tools

What links here

Related changes

Upload file

Special pages

Permanent link

Page information

Wikidata item

Cite this page

Print/export

Create a book

Download as PDF

Printable version

Languages

Bosanski

Deutsch

Hrvatski

Italiano

Nederlands

Srpskohrvatski /

Edit links

This page was last modified on 12 July 2015, at 10:58.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;

additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use
and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

Privacy policy

About Wikipedia

Disclaimers

Contact Wikipedia

Developers

Mobile view