Crystal Balls

Zena, Psychic and Tarot Card Reader Peering Into Her Crystal Ball, Greenwich Village
Ted Thai - 30x40 Photographic Print
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You'll want to set up a space in a quiet room where you have a flat surface to put the crystal ball so that you can sit comfortably in front of it and you'll need to be able to make it dark in the room too. Have a dark fabric to drape the table top. You should either have a base for under the ball that emits light, or have a small candle that you can put on the far side of the ball to illuminate it.

Crystal ball gazing is a form of meditation and the softly-lit ball is what you focus on. The idea is that you clear you mind and gaze intently into the ball. This can induce a light trance state, and when it does, people often see shapes and images inside the crystal ball. Some people prefer a crystal ball that is perfectly clear while others like one with a few inclusions.

The best time to scry is when you feel like it and won't be disturbed. As with all things, if often takes some practice before you start to see anything when you ball gaze.

The crystal ball you see here is Sige's crystal ball. Yes, it's mine, but I've always felt it got it's name from the woman who first owned it. Sige was a psychic whom my aunt used to go see. I never met Sige but my mother did a few times and apparently she was a very old and very wise, intuitive woman. A friend of my aunt's (whom I'll just call K) who also used to go see her, was making a lot of money via some sort of unscrupulous dealings. Sige told him she knew how he was making money and told him that if he got out of the biz at a specific time and during specific circumstances, he'd be fine. If not, he'd get busted and go to prison. He kept up with his "business" and wound up making a LOT of money. At some point he wanted to give Sige some money as thanks for her very accurate advice. She didn't want to just accept his money and, for reasons unknown, agreed to sell him her crystal ball as part of the exchange. So that's how Sige's crystal ball went to live with K.

In the end, K didn't get out of his dealings when Sige had told him to and just like she predicted, he wound up going to prison. During his incarceration, my aunt kept the crystal ball for him. When he got out, he moved on to other things, and told my aunt to hold onto Sige's crystal ball for him. She had the ball for many years. When I was done with college (I'm going to say sometime in the very early 1990s) my aunt brought Sige's crystal ball to me, telling me that she felt it was supposed to go to me and that if K ever turned up and asked for it, I would have to give it back to him. I agreed.

It's now been a little over twenty years and I've been the caretaker of Sige's crystal ball ever since. I do scry with it from time to time. It's glass (you can tell by the inclusions and markings), but clearly has a strong sense of energy to it. In the fall of 2011, I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and saw a window where a local flower shop was putting together a Halloween display. As I was taking a picture, the owner happened by and we got to talking. I mentioned that I had a crystal ball and offered to let her use it for the display, if the crystal ball itself agreed. I used a pendulum to ask, and the crystal ball agreed.

So for about two weeks, Sige's crystal ball got a "working vacation" from my home altar in the window of Terra Bella Flowers in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle.