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i’d hate to call it a cliche
symbol but the crystal ball is the
image that you
think of when you hear fortune teller
or you want to predict the future it’s just like a
classic image
can confirm
that’s probably one of the
first things i
think of when i
think fortune teller
well crystal balls actually
have a pretty deep history so no matter what you
think of them their
popularity has lasted for thousands of years so we’re
gonna go over why
in this episode
i wonder if someone thousands
of years ago looked into a crystal ball and knew
how popular they’d say
i saw this very episode
oh god they were like oh
my gosh i’m
so glad to be thousands of years before that
the future looks bleak
hi everyone and welcome
to rituals a spotify original from parcast
i’m christine
schieffer and i’m
m schultz and
every week we’ll
explore the
evolution of
spiritualism and the occult through stories practices
and the impact on
modern culture
we’re going to talk
about crystal balls
today something that i
i feel like we are on the periphery of knowing
about but don’t really know that much about
i feel like it’s
kind of embarrassing after
talking about this
stuff for so long that we know nothing
about crystal balls and i do feel like we say that
every episode
wow it’s embarrassing how little we know
about this so
maybe we should just make that a
catch all for
every topic yeah
we’re trying to
sound like a broken record
but i also do
appreciate that that means
after all this time there’s
still so many
things to learn
about because i feel like
every time someone
directs us to a
topic we’re like what’s that
that’s really true and
we have probably
years of content
speaking of crystals
obviously i couldn’t do this without
letting us have
our crystal
you brought big girl
i brought big c i love her there she is
oh look she’s
so special i know no one else can see this but
we actually have a crystal ball that
travels with us on tour
her name’s crystal obviously
we call her big crystal because she is
heavy as sin and she is the reason why our
luggage is always we always have to pay the premium on
she’s like 10
pounds she’s like a kettle ball
or kettlebell
or whatever it’s called
she’s hefty
well i don’t
wanna say this next phrase in
front of her because i feel like this
might be hard for her to hear but
let’s go covering her ears
let’s crack into it
do you think crystal is a crystal
or is she made of glass
i think she’s probably not actually a crystal
she was oddly cheap
oh well that
maybe explains it no offense crystal but
you are hefty
she’s perfectly
polished i feel like a crystal ball i mean i don’t know
maybe i’ve never seen a crystal ball in real life and
everything has been
glass or fake or
maybe all real and crystal is much prettier that i’m
aware of much
less um in my mind a crystal ball
would have some sort of like imperfections to it but
they’re not meant to i
think they’re meant to be oh
yeah perfectly
clear so you can really
see the future well then
honestly i don’t know we’ll have to do like a dna a
23andme on crystal eventually oh
that’s cute send in her dna that’s fun
until then i would
i think it’s safe to
bet that she’s probably just glass
honestly i don’t
wanna know because if she is crystal that means
we’ve just been lugging her around in the suitcase and
having them
throw her on the tarmac and
she’s gone through a lot yeah yeah
but i do know enough
about crystal balls to know that
she probably would
still function
as a crystal ball
because i think you only need
reflective surfaces
that’s right yet to do some scrying she’s got a lot of
those so we
could scry with her you know
do you know anything
about crystal ball gazing have you ever
you said you’ve probably
never even seen
a real one have you ever had a reading i
guess not i
don’t think so
i mean the only
thing i really know about
crystal balls is whatever
stereotypes have been
fit into my
brain so like
you know a fortune teller and
an offshoot room
but i don’t
think i know really anything
about crystal ball
i don’t know how it works i don’t know
if there’s a certain crystal ball you need
i know reflective surfaces are kind of
the standard or they’re like
what you can practice on but i don’t know anything else
yeah i don’t know honestly i don’t know much
about it either i
agree that i
always kind of looked at it as like a cliche
and i may have seen one
i don’t know if that palm reader jessica
from one of our past episodes that i talked
about had one perhaps or
maybe that’s just my
my memory looking
back but i always kind of thought of them as
kind of cliche
and like maybe they
wouldn’t work but that’s my own bias i
think because i didn’t
understand how they work yeah i feel like
there’s definitely a skeptical
part of me with crystal balls but i also think
first of all i don’t know enough
about it to even have an opinion
but i jump immediately to having
some skeptical opinions because
i just feel like it’s such an
easy thing to
trick people into
of like oh let me look into the crystal ball and
since you don’t know how it works you can’t
tell if i’m
actually doing anything or not
i feel like
it could be a very easy
trick if someone wanted it to be
i agree i agree and i think
just saying you see something you
would be able to
just make that
claim without any sort of
basis yeah i
agree i also wonder if it does work
i’m still skeptical because
or if people
think they work if they
claim that they really are seeing
things in the crystal ball
part of me thinks it’s just
an illusion or
you’re looking at something long enough that
your brain makes up
things kind
of like with bloody mary how like the troxler effect
i kind of wonder like
either it’s a really good
trick and it
doesn’t work or people are
truly convinced it works and it’s
still an illusion i feel like i have a lot of
butts about it
yeah and i think that goes into a lot of the
kind of occult and spiritual practices
where it’s like is this
coming from my mind is
this a trick of the mind
is this coming from a higher source is this coming from
my subconscious yeah i
agree i feel like that’s very easy
question to fall into
and it basically all comes down to scrying
which i feel like we’ve talked
about a little bit have we talked
about that on the
other podcast
maybe my first real
awareness of scrying was through charmed
which i don’t
want to take anything they offer me at face value
my stepmom who’s wiccan
she’s been wiccan for like
40 years she loves scrying but i’ve
never known
it as a crystal ball situation i always knew it as a
pendulum situation
oh cause i always knew it as a mirror hmm
interesting yeah
so let me tell you a little
about scrying
where i’m gonna just tell it up
front before we get into
the whole story because
it comes up a lot
so scrying is when you gaze into a
reflective surface in
order to get some prophetic insight so you
would stare
into a scrying mirror
that’s what i know of you
would stare for example into a crystal to see
visions or messages i don’t know about the
pendulum is that like you stare at the pendulum
i don’t totally
understand but i know she’s got them all over
the house she
definitely explained it to me at some
point and just so many years have
passed i don’t totally
know anymore
well maybe she can be a
guest star on the show someday
i was gonna say
maybe i certainly don’t want to be
the person who explains that and then
completely butchers it we’ll
phone a friend yeah
crystal balls have been used to
look into the future for thousands of years literally
before the industrial revolution the
pawnee the iroquois the incas the
egyptians the persians the chinese and the people
of yucatan were
known to crystal gaze
so this is a very popular
concept from all around the
world so it wasn’t
like one you
know like a
tarot deck that was popularized in one
place and then
spread it was something that
many cultures did
which is kind of kind of cool
yeah it’s possible that
crystals being used for divination dates back to the
celtic druids who
according to julius
caesar and the
roman philosopher
pliny the elder
were known to perform
sacrificial magic
ceremonies in the woods ooh
spooky those
early crystal gazers were called speculari
and they generally used a sea
green mineral called beryl
that’s b e r y
l and i googled this to see what a
crystal ball made of barrel looks like it’s beautiful
like it’s gorgeous
i haven’t seen it as a crystal ball but i have seen
just as like a
you know a rock just its own mineral yeah it’s
the color is so pretty there’s also red barrel
which is like a hot pink it’s very pretty ooh
yeah i haven’t seen that one
i looked it up one time i looked up barrel
and it’s supposed to
cure laziness
i read on one website and i was like oh sign me up
oh that’s why your whole
shelf back there oh i’m seeing it now it’s just full
stockful well working no
maybe i got a
knockoff just like how our crystal ball is probably
solid glass i
think barrel is like a
chunk of an old like wine bottle or something
you just found some sea
glass i just
found some like
random bottle yeah
sea glass it’s exactly what it looks like though
yeah it’s a beautiful
color yeah so
basically the barrel
would get polished and i want to be clear
again this is a barrel b e
r y l it’s not like
a barrel full of bourbon
the barrel with the y
would get polished into
spheres to make the crystal more
reflective and that way you
could use it for scrying you
could also get a barrel of barrels
if you really wanted to now we’re talking
now that is fun
so in addition to i
guess what m said
barrel being used
to cure laziness
it’s also believed to be much more magnetically
charged than
other minerals so theoretically this means that it
could connect with the
psychic energies of the moon better than other
minerals that’s so cool
isn’t it neat
i just thought that was so fascinating
because i know crystals get poo pooed a lot in
the mainstream
and you know i
understand the skepticism but i personally
love my crystal
collection it’s
interesting you call it mainstream because i feel like
crystals are
becoming more and more accepted in the mainstream
oh no they are but i
think there’s
still a lot of like
kind of joke like
laughing about
it like granola hippie
yeah yeah yeah just like oh that’s so
l you know i mean i
moved to kentucky from los angeles and i
think everyone is wondering how i’m
gonna fit my crystal
collection into my new home you know that kind of
thing you’re totally
right i really forget that
compared to la
everywhere else
is probably just like a lawless land for crystals
it’s just like yeah
they’re definitely out of
place they’re having
i’m gonna check in on them
they’re doing okay
they’re all
right over there but they
definitely had to adjust to
their new home
kentucky’s not the most
i totally forget i’m very
lucky that i totally forget that the rest of the
world is not los angeles so
yeah that must be nice in la
we freaking
love crystals we go goo goo gaga over that so oh yeah
no you’re you’re not
wrong i mean our luggage coming from la
every time we’re on tour has a
literal crystal ball in it so i
think i understand
why and people give us crystals and people i mean
there’s so many crystals there’s
actually a crystal shop opening up down the road
oh wonderful well
maybe there’s one opening up here too
it’ll be mine it’ll be my garage so it’ll be
i was gonna say it’ll be the
first ever kentucky’s ever seen
you’re welcome
world i’m spreading i’m
spreading the la love
so anyway all i was saying is that i
think it’s interesting even though people
some people tend to be pretty skeptical
about crystals or
wonder what
their properties really are
it’s kind of cool that
theoretically
one crystal or one mineral
could have these properties that
could theoretically make it
more powerful to do sort of
otherworldly
stuff with so i
think that’s kind of a cool fact
so after the druids and everyone else had been
doing some crystal ball gazing in the woods
it picked up
popularity in rome
and they were like have you
heard the stuff
everyone’s doing it
get in on it get on the ground
floor on the ground
floor yeah i like to
think crystal balls
maybe started as like an
mlm of like hey girly
like i do have you
heard about what we’re doing out in the woods it’s
crazy if you wanted to
start your own but it’s the druids
the druids are like hey girly
come out to the woods with me one time
i feel like
it went viral for
those early
roman days like oh
so and so had a crystal ball at school
i want my own
i feel like we keep finding ways to equate
this to today’s
influencer world and
honestly it’s making
things a lot more palatable
i’m totally
understanding
the history of this a lot better by being like
so like the druids were like
the kooky crystal bulkheads and like
rome was like i
gotta get in on that i know people are kind of laughing
about it but
maybe they’re onto something rome was like burbank
california and was like
oh boy we could pick up on this
i see potential here
well this probably didn’t happen
help or her i don’t know
i can’t decide what
effect this had but i will add that the catholic church
was like oh no we do not
we do not like this the
bible forbids it
yeah well it makes
sense that they
would come suck the fun out of the room but okay
wouldn’t they why
do they do that anyway the book of deuteronomy to be
exact mentions
not to listen to fortune tellers
so of course
the catholics are all up in arms
about this and
i can’t decide if that helped or hurt
the crystal ball
cause cause i have a feeling some people
would be like ooh
now it’s more fun and some people
would be like oh
never mind that’s
you and me 100
would have said oh
the bible isn’t into it i’m
invested like
hey girly let’s go to the woods
the church says i can’t do it
yeah no i totally
know what you mean we’re like i probably really like
empowered one half of the
some people yeah
and then the
other half was like oh now i’m really
gonna steer from it so i don’t know
probably balanced out
broke even yeah yeah i have a feeling
of course the catholic church had to have
their say either way
but the crystal ball was also
thought to be used during the medieval period by anglo
saxons as both
get this a source of
magic on one hand and
a flashy fashion accessory
i mean to this day i
think of them as flashy
fashion accessories really
yeah like i oh
not like that i think
the jenners and the
kardashians have
magic crystal balls or crystal balls at all in
their home but it’s something that i notice
in every household i go to if they have a crystal ball
to me it’s like i mean
maybe you’re talking more
about like apparel or something but in terms
of talking about like jewelry
oh cause i’m
thinking like in home decor
oh decor if
someone ever has a crystal ball in their home
it’s one of the
first things i comment on
to me they’re
still very she she yeah
i’m assuming
that was part of it too but during the medieval period
as far as fashion goes
people wore crystal
spheres that were fastened to wire
as symbols of
power class
status and possibly as
magic charms to
ward off evil
so sort of like that
it is pretty badass
like i know
i don’t usually
think of medieval fashion
as being pretty
modern but i feel like
it’s a very
that’s a very like i
could see that being a jewelry line today that
oh yeah are you
getting you know
hey let’s do it tm tm tm
yeah nobody can take that because we’ve said
tm a bunch of times
that’s how that works yes
that’s how it works that’s
how it works i’m totally into that i mean it makes
sense i feel like there’s a lot of jewelry
places where like you pick your own
gemstone or you pick us
absolutely so i mean it’s i don’t
think it’s totally died out i
think it’s still
super popular
yeah no that’s a good
point i think
it would hit the right
market nowadays i
would think
and by the way you
could do dual purpose
be stuck in the doctor’s waiting room
your jewel scrying
i love that
well also well
i’m curious to see
i assume at some
point you’re
going to explain how crystal balls work
because i wonder if
like are you able to scry
on your ring
cause that would be so convenient
to just always have a crystal ball with you
i imagine so as long as you can
see it properly
i feel like
every time we talk
about something like this like with
tarot or love potions
i feel like i find out
that this practice is so much
more convenient or
so much more accessible
than i’m aware of and i feel like with
crystal balls i always thought oh i have to get a big c
yeah i have to get a big
c i have to go find somebody who knows how to do this
i didn’t know like
if you have one on your hand at all times you
could just like
while waiting for your food at a restaurant do some
crystal ball gazing
but i mean you think
about it and you know scrying is
often done in
mirrors too so and
those are obviously
those abound
so you could do one in any
mirror can you
imagine you’re in the elevator and just staring at the
mirror like i’m
sorry i’m scrying please don’t technically then
black mirror
could you do it with your
phone if you just like turn it off for a second
could you just stare at your own
dead phone oh i
thought we were talking
about the tv show
like playing on your
phone you’re talking like the actual true
black mirror your phone yeah
i’m sure i’m sure you really
could that’s so cool because
it just needs to be a
reflective surface
so yeah you’d be able to do that
but i mean if you
think about it
too like if you have a lot of it is so subjective and
based on your own
so as far as
tarot if you have a deck yeah you
could probably use it even if you’re not like
super well trained
you can probably use it in your own way so
or pendulum or
dowsing rods so yeah i
guess it is pretty
accessible wow as long as you have the main ingredient
so in this case something
reflective oh my gosh
i’m so excited to
learn how to do this
yeah it’s pretty cool
obviously crystal
balls may not be as popular as they once were
but many psychics and fortune tellers
still use them to tell the future
today mm hmm
coming up the
popularity of crystal balls kept growing throughout
history and we’ll tell you how to actually use one
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crystal balls
went from fashion accessories in the middle ages
back to fortune telling form
during the renaissance
so now they were being used not only
as a beautiful
piece of jewelry
but also as a very
powerful tool
okay this was helped by the
royal astrologer to
queen elizabeth i
so the royal astrologer to
queen elizabeth the
first was really into crystal balls for scrying
and believed he was communicating with
angels and demons through the crystal ball
and so he would talk to the queen
about it and this helped the crystal ball’s
popularity kind of revive and it became popular again
one that’s very cool but two this is
i feel like we just keep hearing the same
story over and over that like political leaders are
inserting spirituality into
their leadership
like we have ouija
boards being
used by politicians lincoln was doing seances
i feel like we were spirit
photography
spirit photography
and now we’ve got
literally the
queen is using a crystal ball
well guess what it’s
gonna come up
again in a more
modern sense
a us political
sense you’re
gonna have another one to add
to the list of presidents who’ve been involved in this
i need to just keep a chart of all
world leaders and just start
knocking them off of like
which ones use spirituality and eventually it’s
gonna be all of them
it’s like a
guess who game you know just
knock them off if they’re
did they do scrying
yeah does this one look like they
would secretly be into the spirituality
oh my god yes to all
once crystal gazing seemed more
legit the occult
used the works of indian and arabic writers as a way to
legitimize crystal
balls as tools for seeing into the future
and during the middle ages and renaissance so from
about the fifth to the 17th century
the romani and nomadic
group migrated to europe
and they weren’t
known traditionally to use crystal balls in
their work but
since now the people of europe were really into them
they kind of incorporated them
to use them into
their own work more and people
began seeking out
their advice
and that’s where you get that kind of
connection of like
romani fortune teller
crystal ball
i see okay i never
never knew that
i had neither i knew of the kind of
cliche connection there
but i didn’t know
where it came from and makes a lot of
sense yeah i just always
knew it was kind of a stereotype and i had no idea
where it came from
wow yep well
fun fact just
gonna stick this
right in here the church is
still very opposed to this
whole ordeal
okay get back to me when they’re cool with it how
about that i know
i know we’re all surprised but
i just wanted to remind you thank you
then when we get to the victorian era
which is roughly the mid 1800s to the
early 1900s as you know
and as we’ve talked
about the occult and spiritualism
get another big
boost in popularity
and along with that comes more crystal gazing
along with spirit
photography
seances all the good
stuff aha i
think that’s
that makes sense to me i feel like
as a historian you know
as everyone’s favorite historian yes
i feel like there’s
one era of history
and time in general that i feel confident
giving my two cents on and it’s usually
the era of spiritualism
this makes perfect
sense to me why the crystal ball
would just fit
right in and be like all the rage
you brought this up
earlier too of like it probably
would be an easy tool
if you were trying to
fool people or take advantage of people
you would be able to say you saw something
in it there’s such a history of
fraudulent mediums
especially during that time yep
yep it would not be hard right
it was believed that when the sun was at a certain
point in the sky you
would look into the crystal ball and see a rising mist
and then step two
you’d get a vision of the future
that hmm seems
fishy to me but
i’ve never seen
a rising mist
in our sweet crystal
but also maybe
cause she’s
glass i also
cause she’s in a suitcase 98
of the time fair enough i also feel like
i’m sure it’s not the same
thing but i feel like
looking into a crystal ball
when the sun is at a certain
point in the sky
it sounds a lot like looking into a magnifying
glass through the sun and
burning your eyes out
there’s so many ants
dying i don’t
understand what this means
they’re all fortune tellers
actually that’s interesting science too like
should you be
using a crystal ball out in the sun or is there
a reason why it’s always been like an off dark room
well i don’t know that it meant like to do it
into the sun i
think it was just when
maybe it did
but i interpreted it as
when the sun hits a certain
point that’s the moment that the crystal ball will
have a message for you i don’t know that it was like
okay okay that makes no
sense maybe you’re
right maybe you’re
right maybe
it was that the sun was reflecting through i don’t
think anyone’s looking at
their ball like this through the sun like so i’m
thinking you’re really gonna get
above them and
using it as
glasses near
the sun’s like burn your retinas like you said
but i do wonder like
could a crystal ball
be just think of the
ants do you think
if you were
crystal ball gazing on a
sunny day are
ants in danger
because the sun’s
gonna hit it at a certain angle
anyway we’re derailing i just donate to our new charity
save the ants
in the arms of
you know it’s an epidemic
and it’s not talked
about enough i know an ant
culture i don’t
know if you know this but they probably talk
about like big
glass orbs just showing up and
they’re eyeing
them their whole colony goes away oh
well this leads us indirectly
but i’m gonna
force it in anyway into how exactly crystal balls work
i know you want to know honestly
i do and that was
not forced at all because i am obviously getting off
track trying to figure out how this
thing goes so
perfect perfect segway oh good
well we’ve mentioned who used crystal balls and when
and we did tell you what scrying was
earlier but so how
exactly does it all come together to predict the future
let me tell you
as i said you can practice scrying on any
reflective surface
but obviously crystal balls are kind of the
classic most common used for divination
and those crystal ball users
those early ones called speculari
this is how they
would do it
they would stare deeply into the
stone and go into a
meditative trance
so i don’t know if you
wanna get crystal b out and
give her a little stare
stare down i am doing it
while you’re saying this i know nothing’s
gonna happen
cause i’m not in the
right mind for it but i will be doing this
after we record
excellent i do
wanna know how this goes
yeah so you stare into it deeply you go into a
meditative trance
and you know
this actually
sorry i know i’m interrupting your
trance but you know this
reminds me of
other forms of divination
like pendulums
like tarot just
even akashic record reading like what i do where
you really do kind of put yourself into the
right mental
state and that really helps and so
yeah i wonder
if you’re in the waiting room and you’re gonna scry
you probably
need to work at being able to put yourself in that
place yeah you need to
be able to switch very quickly into different mindsets
yeah if you’re
planning on doing this out in public i imagine
anyway or even
what if you’re so good at it you accidentally slip into
trances is that unfortunate that’s unfortunate
like what if you’re eating
ice cream and then you look at the
spoon and you’re like uh oh like
you know i’ve been
trance my ice cream
i think you’re the only one in danger of this occurring
but let me know
what you see in our future if that happens again
i don’t know if i’d call it a
trans but i’m
certainly much more open minded to all opportunity
and i’m having a spiritual
experience so
you are and you’re easily manipulated
transcending you’re transcendent
in that moment
easily manipulated
yeah i could
actually see this being a danger zone for you so i
would be really careful
well okay when i get real good at this
spoons out of the
picture plastic
spoons only exactly
so they go into this meditative
trance this is step one
this would then help them tap into
their subconscious and reveal
secrets of the past present or future hmm
that’s really it that’s the steps but
again like that just shows me how
i don’t know if sheltered’s the
right word or how like
unaware i was of how accessible
these things were
in my mind every
topic we’ve
covered where like anyone
could practice it they all seem like
you have to go through all this
training and all this practice
and just to find out
every single time like
no you could have done it
all on your own this whole time
i feel like
with all this
stuff like you
can easily access it but then you need to really
train yourself to
be good at it so
what happens when you stare into a crystal ball and i
think this part’s really interesting
because this is what different people say is happening
when you are staring in this
trance into a crystal ball
so some users say you’ll receive
actual like
literal visions of the future or
secrets of the universe or
you’ll be able to communicate with unseen
realms not to be dramatic or anything but you know
but to be dramatic
as i wave my
flash my cape
not to be dramatic but yeah i’m
gonna communicate with some unseen realms real quick
so some people believe that like
it’s a very
literal interpretation
of you’re seeing the future you’re seeing a vision
in this surface and so that’s one theory
another theory
is that it makes you more clairvoyant
so sort of i
think what you were saying of you can
kind of get yourself into a
state a mental
state where you’re open to receiving information
so you could see either something that’s happening
in a different place
sounds almost like astral projecting to me a little bit
or you can access some
other information because you’re in a more clairvoyant
state and there are some people who just say it
relaxes your mind and maybe
you’re able
to i don’t know if that means you’re able to just
hear your own subconscious
i feel like that
would probably be the camp i fall into
first i think it
just being able to
relax your mind and be open
spiritually
does a lot more than we’re
aware of yeah
from the skeptic
side though
i do wonder like
if you’re looking
at something long enough of course your mind’s
gonna wander and so
i don’t totally
understand the science of it but i’m
very open to it and i
think that’s
again can be related to so many of
these topics
with akashic record reading too there’s no like
proof that you’re
doing anything but
talking in your own head you
know but you
just kind of have to either go with it and believe it
or be a skeptic and say
it’s just my own
brain and that’s
again another mental hurdle but
yeah and you know have you ever i’m sure you have
or i don’t know
maybe i’m just a weirdo but have you ever stared at a
mirror so long that like
distorts well that’s the troxler
effect that’s
the bloody mary situation what is that called
the troxler
effect troxler
you just stare at something long enough that
things get distorted
or blurry or you just
that’s just an
effect of your mind that’s not
a paranormal it’s
an optical illusion
yes yeah yeah and so i think
it’s because your
brain starts filling in missing information
right yeah that
always kind of
throws me off a little bit
about this kind of
thing especially
if you are scrying in a
mirror yeah
oh yeah can you imagine if you’re trying to scry
and see the future and then bloody mary shows up
and you’re like oh my god
girl i didn’t ask for you to be here wrong game
yeah oh my gosh
yeah so i wonder that too
i’m sure that
would have some sort of hallucinogenic
like effect
if you were staring into a
mirror for long
enough or a crystal ball for that matter
but if you do want to use a crystal ball effectively
i think we maybe
spoke too soon with our
have it on your ring
idea because you’re supposed to use a ball that’s at
least the size of an orange or a grapefruit
oh okay so i
think crystal b definitely
fits the bill here
mm hmm i would say she’s
hefty enough she’s certainly the size of at
least a pamelo you know
i don’t know
am i wrong she’s at least the size of my big
ol head so i think oh but yep i think that
checks the box so i think you’re good to use crystal
i think so too
your crystal ball should be highly
reflective i would say she’s pretty
reflective she’s shiny as can be so she’s polished
yeah you need to sit in a calm
quiet place your
girlfriends out of town you have the
place to yourself you could
do some scrying
i beg to differ there is construction abound
all over me so that’s
right they are roofing at your house so maybe
maybe not maybe i’ll go sit in my car and rock a little
and then maybe use the crystal ball
and you need to
allow your mind and eyes to relax so
again just kind of getting into that
right mental state
modern day scriers
say crystal balls may or may not give
you visions of the future or offer advice instead it
might reflect
symbols or direct you to make good
decisions for the future so this is more subjective
it reminds me
of taro a little bit like you make of it what you
think it is or what the symbol
speaks to you directly
well i also wonder again
i kind of said this
earlier but
the skeptical side of me
i don’t know
if it’s considered the skeptical side or just like
in agreement with what you’re saying
right now but
i feel like if you take away all distractions
and you’re just
alone with your mind
some pretty
obvious things come up that you usually
might be ignoring
like i feel like
if you’re ever
alone by yourself like
there have been times
where i’m like
i don’t know why i’m
using this example but like
i’ve sat in
a hot tub by
myself and there’s nothing to do but just sit there and
think and all of a
sudden i have
these realizations
where i’m like
i feel like all i did was five
seconds of silence my brain
was banging
yeah your subconscious
was like banging on your
brain yeah so
they let me in
i feel like maybe
that’s what crystal balls
allow you to do they give you an excuse to like
take away all distractions and then i wonder if
in a world of social
media where
i’m used to
blocking my
brain from giving
me realizations
i wonder if
the more distracted we are as
humanity as a people
i wonder if the
second we let ourselves look into a crystal ball for
five minutes if we’re gonna all
start having these
i wonder how
powerful people are gonna
think they are just because they’re
taking five minutes to themselves well that’s a good
point and i
think the power of
meditation comes into play there too because
when you do
meditate and you
start to actually get pretty okay at it
which obviously it’s a
habit and it’s hard to do but like
it is really really difficult to shut off your mind
and once you do you’re like what on
earth is going on up there like it really
intends to surprise you talk
about a lawless land that’s all up here
the outlaws are all coming to play
but i also think you’re
right that a crystal ball if you’re in a meditative
state it’s at
least something to stare at to focus on
you know rather than just like
focus on a spot
on the wall
and then you can like kind of get distracted at
least a crystal ball is something like clear
that you can just stare at without
interaction
literally clear yeah so i don’t know i
think that’s a really good
point and you’re
right it’s probably not even a skeptical point
it’s just like
kind of diving into how it
might work yeah
up next meet some of the most
famous crystal gazers in history and
maybe we’ll reflect on our futures while we’re at it a
also i don’t reflect
i know right good one good one wink
well with any
area of spiritualism there are some people that made
a name for themselves
so the first person i want to tell you
about is american
claude conlan
i don’t know if you’ve
heard of this person
but he performed as
alexander the man
who knows okay
i’m am the person who naps
i’m christine the person who
doesn’t really know most of the time
and this was between 1915 and 1924
and i only know of this phrase because i’ve gone gift
shopping and you and i have very different ways of
going or no not different but different
maybe from the rest of the planet ways of
we get really into gift giving and gift
shopping and
i have a couple times notated that there
are posters like old timey posters that say alexander
the man who knows and that’s my brother’s name and
i’ve a couple times thought you know that
would be kind of a
fun gift idea if i
found like a vintage poster
especially because he loves to know he
that’s his favorite
thing he loves to know
so that actually works really well for him it’s
as his sibling my
least favorite thing but
it is one of
his favorite hobbies you know he loves his trivia
night he loves fun fact
he loves information
loves it loves the
stuff so i think that
could be a cool gift idea
there is a little bit of a problematic part of this
which i’ll tell you in a moment but so
claude conlan
aka alexander the man who knows was a
stage mentalist
who used the crystal ball to
magically answer
sealed questions from audience members that was
his kind of
party trick
i love a good
mentalist i know it’s probably all
stage illusions
but i can’t figure it out and i’m fascinated
every time i’m
assuming in this case it was probably
a plants from the audience
only alexander would know
only alexander
and he does
and he does so here’s
where it becomes a little problematic so clawed
culturally appropriated sort of
recognizable eastern
cultural garments to
capitalize on
this stereotype that was common in the west
of like this mystical other
from different parts of the
world so he wore a turban
that kind of
thing and used that
as a sort of like
ooh i’m this mysterious figure from the
east and obviously
we know now that is
wildly insensitive
and inappropriate
yeah alexander the man who exploits let’s yes
ding ding ding yeah yeah yeah good one
m thank you
thank you unfortunately
but unsurprisingly he thrived as this character yeah
then this is more your
speed there’s this woman
named jean dixon have you
heard of her
mm hmm okay you’re
gonna probably want to
cover her someday
because oh this is
pretty interesting she was a
psychic who used her crystal ball to make political
predictions during the 20th century
for example
in 1956 she correctly predicted kennedy’s assassination
whoa which by the way
seems like a dangerous
thing to be doing like
i feel like yeah
fbi or the cia
would be like
we have a few questions for you that’s one of
those things
where like you say i knew
after the fact but like 20 years later
yeah you don’t
give that out and then say see i told you yeah i i’m
shocked that nobody
first of all nobody who
would have tried to save him
would have been
like why didn’t you help us do that and prevent his
death but then
as the conspiracy goes
like why wouldn’t any of
those people try to shut her up you know yep
it’s hard to say
but instead of shutting her up she actually
advised richard nixon
and also nancy reagan and so she became a political
advisor of sorts
oh my god what is with this
town loving
their spiritualists
but then also poo pooing on them but
with all that
swamp gas coming up from dc
swamps you know it’s like what is
going on their
brains are getting
altered while the lizard people are
just down there just pulling the strings don’t you know
that’s probably it
so after jean dixon’s
death her crystal ball was auctioned off for 12 000
whoa that’s
a lot of cash
a lot of cash and i wonder after our
death how much miss crystal will be auctioned off for
like she’ll be on
clearance i’m sure
40 cents at marshall’s yeah
sorry crystal
you know we love you
right the day we both die crystal’s
gonna explode into several shards and like
all the evil energy will finally be at peace
or it’ll be released
upon the world
luckily we won’t
be here enough to deal with it yeah exactly
so speaking of crystal balls
in person if you want to see one like an actual one
the smithsonian institution owns the largest
flawless quartz crystal ball in the world
but almost there
but yeah so it was cut and polished in
china during the 1920s
and it weighs 106
75 pounds whoa
you know it
might not be as big as you
picture and i
think that’s because i
kind of forget it’s not just glass it’s
pure quartz
the fact that it has no imperfections makes it mmm
really rare
but it is i don’t
i don’t know if you can see me it’s sort of like
that big oh my god
like it’s like oh how
would you describe
the size of it to people who can’t see you yeah i
guess doing it in the
video camera is not helpful to anybody um i
think they said it was probably
i would say like a foot wide i don’t know okay
i mean like
like a globe
like globe size like a globe size
maybe let me see it would
shock me more if
that crystal ball had to be big to be
heavy i i mean it’s
these things are
dead suckers
yeah it’s a good
point so it’s ten inches
oh it’s not even a foot not
even a foot so i was overestimating
but yeah so it’s pretty big but the fact
again that it’s
pure quartz crystal and
has no imperfections and it really is just like fully
see through and it’s beautiful
so yes she weighs
106 75 and you can look that up online there’s a
photo then the
university of pennsylvania’s
museum of archaeology and anthropology owns the
third largest crystal ball in the world
which weighs 49
pounds and i can only assume we own the
second heaviest
because that one’s not
listed that’s what i’m thinking
that’s what i’m
thinking yeah
she certainly feels like a million
pounds so i feel like everyone’s
actually coming in behind us but yeah
every time we pay that overweight luggage fee
i feel like it hurts a little but you know
all for this crystal ball to do nothing
except look pretty on stage
and boy does she do a good job of it by the
way she does a great job
many crystal
balls are important and valuable because of
their associations i mean this reminds me of
the sylvia plath
tarot cards for example
or the jean dixon
crystal ball that you know they
are valuable because of their
who they were associated with right so
the crystal ball used by the wicked
witch of the west in the wizard of
oz for example sold for
126 000 at an auction
in 2011 wow
yeah so i wonder
i wonder if that one was
glass or crystal
or green screen
or not real can you imagine you
bid 126 000
they’re like oh cgi sorry
and the official
scepter of scotland
includes a crystal ball
and this crystal ball is believed to have been owned by
ancient druids you know the ones who are in the woods
doing all their cool fashion alert
fashion alert
in a scepter
are you kidding me how badass is that can you imagine
first of all getting to
carry a scepter for your job but also a
druid owned crystal balls that’s on top of it
how much money do you
think that thing costs
that is probably
priceless but
priceless i’m not sure
so do you feel like you’ll
try crystal
crystal b within
seconds of hanging up with you yeah
you are oh my gosh i can’t wait
i’m very excited i
still wonder how much of it is
legit but i do
think that it’s mainly mind over matter
which i feel like that’s how i end a lot of these
i think intentions and
your mindset are just like
big parts to all of
these elements we’re talking
about i 100
agree yeah i do
wonder if it’s
maybe just a
great way to meditate
and if that’s all that happens then
at least like
you’re still getting some clarity on maybe
things you needed to let yourself sit down and think on
honestly it
might be just a really
good tool and i’m not trying to
knock it i’m just saying i’m
agreeing like
maybe it’s just a really good tool
to help get into that
kind of third eye
space and maybe
i should get my own crystal bee over here and practice
oh next time
we see each
other i’ll just
transfer her to you you can take care of her
until we go on
stage and then you can deal with her with the
tsa no if i’m
ready for that kind of commitment
yeah yeah i
think she’s really
happy with you it seems
we’re having a
blast over here we’re
about to have a
whole day together
after this how fun well i feel like we’ve
learned a lot
about crystal balls something that i didn’t
really know much
about at all before this show
i learned 100
more information than i knew
earlier today
i also feel like that’s the
general takeaway of most of our episodes somehow we’ve
learned 100 of
what we’ve just learned
thanks so much for listening
we’ll be back next week with another
great episode
information on
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teen schiffer
thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week
rituals is executive produced by max cutler
and is a spotify original
from parcast it was created by max cutler
sound designed by kristin
acevedo with associate
sound designed by jamie ryan
research by chelsea wood
fact checking by kara mackerleen
it’s produced by kristen
acevedo and jonathan ratliff
with production assistance by
ron shapiro
we are your hosts christine
schiffer and m schulz
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