ns of their contents and resulting incident; changes,
voyages, business transactions, deaths, and even changes in the
religious views of individuals, all by means of the crystal vision.

It sometimes happens that the visionary state is induced by
excessive emotion during which the prophetic faculty is
considerably heightened. Some temperaments on the other hand
will fall into the clairvoyant condition when engaged in deep
thought. The thread of thought seems suddenly to be broken, and
there appears a vision wholly unconnected with the subject but a
moment ago absorbing the mind. It is as if the soul, while probing
the depths of its inner consciousness, comes into contact with the
thin partition which may be said to divide the outer world of
reason and doubt from the inner world of intuition and direct
perception, and breaking through, emerges into the light beyond.
In trance there is generally a development of other super-senses,
such as clairaudience and psychic touch, as well as clairvoyance.
Examples might be multiplied and would but serve to show that
the rapport existing between the human soul and the world soul,
the individual consciousness and the collective consciousness, is
capable of being actively induced by recourse to appropriate
means and developed where it exists in latency by means of the
crystal, the black concave mirror or other suitable agent. As yet,
however, the majority are wholly ignorant of the existence of
such psychic faculties, and even those who possess them are
conscious of having but an imperfect control of them.

As in the case of genius where nature is opening up new centres
of activity in the mind, the casual observer notes an eccentricity
hardly distinguishable from some incipient forms of insanity; so
the development of new psychic faculties is frequently attended
by temporary loss of control over the normal brain functions.
Loss of memory, hysteria, absent-mindedness, unconscious
utterance of thought, illusions, irritability, indifference,
misanthropy and similar perversions are not infrequent products
of the preliminary stages of psychic development. These,
however, will pass away as the new faculty pushes through into
full existence. Nature is jealous of her offspring and concentrates
the whole of her forces when in the act of generation, and that is
the reason of her apparent neglect of powers and functions,
normally under her control, while the evolution of a new faculty
is in