There are but few general directions necessary for the person wishing to experiment in crystal gazing.  The principal thing is to maintain quiet, and an earnest, serious state of mind—­do not make a merry game of it, if you wish to obtain results.  Again, always have the light behind your back, instead of facing you.  Gaze calmly at the crystal, but do not strain your eyes.  Do not try to avoid winking your eyes—­there is a difference between “gazing” and “staring,” remember.  Some good authorities advise making funnels of the hands, and using them as you would a pair of opera glasses.

In many cases, a number of trials are required before you will be able to get good results.  In others, at least some results are obtained at the first trial.  It is a good plan to try to bring into vision something that you have already seen with the physical eyes—­some familiar object.  The first sign of actual psychic seeing in the crystal usually appears as a cloudy appearance, or “milky-mist,” the crystal gradually losing its transparency.  In this milky cloud then gradually appears a form, or face, or scene of some kind, more or less plainly defined.  If you have ever developed a photographic film or plate, you will know how the picture gradually comes into view.

W.T.  Stead, the eminent English investigator of psychic phenomena, has written as follows regarding the phenomena of crystal-gazing:  “There are some persons who cannot look into an ordinary globular bottle without seeing pictures form themselves without any effort or will on their part, in the crystal globe.  Crystal-gazing seems to be the least dangerous and most simple of all forms of experimenting.  You simply look into a crystal globe the size of a five-shilling piece, or a water-bottle which is full of clear water, and which is placed so that too much light does not fall upon it, and then simply look at it.  You make no incantations, and engage in no mumbo-jumbo business; you simply look at it for two or three minutes, taking care not to tire yourself, winking as much as you please, but fixing your thought upon whatever you wish to see.  Then, if you have the faculty, the glass will cloud over with a milky mist, and in the centre the image is gradually precipitated in just the same way as a photograph forms on the sensitive plate.”

The same authority relates the following interesting experiment with the crystal:  “Miss X., upon looking into the crystal on two occasions as a test, to see if she could see me when she was several miles off, saw not me, but a different friend of mine on each occasion.  She had never seen either of my friends before, but immediately identified them both on seeing them afterward at my office.  On one of the evenings on which we experimented in the vain attempts to photograph a ‘double,’ I dined with Madam C. and her friend at a neighboring restaurant.  As she glanced at the water-bottle, Madam C. saw a picture beginning to form, and, looking