Home › Crystal Balls and Crystal Gazing › Crystal Balls and Crystal Gazing: Aubrey

Crystal Balls and Crystal Gazing: Aubrey

The following history and description of a crystal ball is given by John Aubrey (1626-1697):

I have here set down the figure of a consecrated Beryl-now in the possession of Sir Edward Harley, Knight of the Bath, which he keeps in his closet at Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire amongst his Cimelia, which I saw there. It came first from Norfolk; a minister had it there, and a call was to be made with it. Afterwards a miller had it and he did work great cures with it (if curable), and in the Beryl they did see, either the receipt in writing, or else the herb. To this minister, the spirits or angels would appear openly, and because the miller (who was his familiar friend) one day happened to see them, he gave him the aforesaid Beryl and Call; by these angels the minister was forewarned of his death. This account I had from Mr. Ashmole. Afterwards this Beryl came into somebody's hand in London who did tell strange things by it; insomuch that at last he was questioned for it, and it was taken away by authority (it was about 1645). This Beryl is a perfect sphere, the diameter of it I guess to be something more than an inch; it is set in a ring, or circle, of silver, resembling the meredian of a globe; the stem of it is about ten inches high, all gilt. At the four quarters of it are the names of four angels, viz: Uriel, Raphael, Michael, Gabriel. On the top is a cross patee. (Aubrey, "Miscellanies," London, 1890. (There is a figure on p. 156.)) In his "Sudducismus Triumphatus," Joseph Glanvil writes that "one Compton of Summersetshire, who practised Physick, and pretends to strange Matters," demonstrated his power to evoke the image of a distant person on the surface of a mirror. Glanvil relates that Compton offered to show to a Mr. Hill any one the latter wished to see. Hill "had no great confidence in his talk," but replied that he desired to see his wife who was many miles distant. "Upon this, Compton took up a Looking-glass that was in the Room, and setting it down again, bid my Friend look in it, which he did, and then, as he most solemnly and seriously professeth, he saw the exact Image of his Wife, in that Habit which she then wore and working at her Needle in such a part of the Room (then represented also) in which and about which time she really was, as he found upon enquiry when he came home. The Gentleman himself averred this to me, and he is a very sober, intelligent, and credible Person. Compton had no knowledge of him before, and was an utter stranger to the Person of his Wife. He was by all accounts a very odd Person." (Glanvil, "Sadducismus Triumphatus," London, 1726.) A contemporary record recites that when a certain Sir Marmaduke Langdale (of the seventeenth century) was in Italy, he went to a sorcerer and was shown in a glass his own figure kneeling before a crucifix. Though a Protestant at this time, he shortly after became a Catholic. (Aubrey, "Miscellanies," London, 1890.) If we exclude all idea of trickery, it is likely enough that the idea of becoming a Catholic was already present to the scryer's mind and called up this picture before him.