V

CRYSTAL VISIONS, SAVAGE AND CIVILISED

Among savage methods of provoking hallucinations whence knowledge may be
supernormally obtained, various forms of 'crystal-gazing' are the most
curious. We find the habit of looking into water, usually in a vessel,
preferably a glass vessel, among Red Indians (Lejeune), Romans (Varro,
cited in _Civitas Dei_, iii. 457), Africans of Fez (Leo Africanus); while
Maoris use a drop of blood (Taylor), Egyptians use ink (Lane), and
Australian savages employ a ball of polished stone, into which the seer
'puts himself' to descry the results of an expedition.[1]

I have already given, in the Introduction, Ellis's record of the
Polynesian case. A hole being dug in the door of his house, and filled
with water, the priest looks for a vision of the thief who has carried off
stolen goods. The Polynesian theory is that the god carries the spirit of
the thief over the water, in which it is reflected. Lejeune's Red Indians
make their patients gaze into the water, in which they will see the
pictures of the things in the way of food or medicine that will do them
good. In modern language, the instinctive knowledge existing implicitly
in the patient's subconsciousness is thus brought into the range of his
ordinary consciousness.

In 1887 the late Captain J. T. Bourke, of the U.S. Cavalry, an original
and careful observer, visited the Apaches in the interests of the
Ethnological Bureau. He learned that one of the chief duties of the
medicine-men was to find out the whereabouts of lost or stolen property.
Na-a-cha, one of these _jossakeeds_, possessed a magic quartz crystal,
which he greatly valued. Captain Bourke presented him with a still finer