Crystal romance
Crystallomancy is a form of divination (mantic) in which reflective surfaces are used as a medium for interpreting future events. Virtually every reflective surface has been used for this at one time or that - water, glass, polished metal, precious stones, blood, and even soap bubbles. The frequently used crystal ball made of glass , rock crystal ( quartz ) or real beryl ( beryl romance) is a guild symbol of fortune tellers. Fortune telling with the help of translucent or reflecting surfaces goes back to ancient times. In the German-speaking countries, mantic texts (magic spells, “crystal blessings”) were particularly widespread in the late Middle Ages, but also beyond. Crystal or simple glass balls were used to perform a magic similar to analogy. Even Thomas Aquinas mentions the "divinatio ex lapide polito", the "prophecy of shining stone". The Catholic Church was opposed to the crystal romance - like all divination exercises. Contemporary moral theologians no longer see any “work of demons”, but emphasize the proximity to unauthorized “research for secret knowledge”.
As Kristalloskopie - and occasionally not entirely correct also as scrying - refers to methods to provoke visions or inner experiences through concentration of gaze and attention to a shiny object. Similar to the psychological use of the tarot , the observer should be put into a trance-like state through meditation , images should arise from the unconscious , which are then used for self-knowledge or psychotherapeutically.
See also
literature
- Christa Agnes Tuczay : Cultural History of Medieval Fortune Telling . De Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 3110240416 , pp. 68-70.
- Richard Baerwald: Occultism and Spiritism and their ideological consequences . SEVERUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 3863471946 , pp. 176 & 177.
Individual evidence
- ^ Anton Birlinger: On Goethe's Faust and Gross-Kophta. Crystal and magic mirror seeing. In: Alemannia . Volume 9, 1881, pp. 71-74.
- ↑ Volker Zimmermann: Crystal Blessing. In: Author's Lexicon . Volume, V, Sp. 382 f.