A simple email asking for my crystal ball recommendations has opened up a whole new line of thought!
Hi Mystic!
A friend gifted me a very witchy base for a crystal ball. I fell down a rabbit hole on the internet looking for a place to get one that didn’t feel like snake oil (Amazon) or like I was being ripped off (Etsy). What do you think of scrying? Are there any retailers you would recommend for a crystal ball?
Thanks,
S
I have no recommendations for a crystal ball but I am certain that someone on here will.
From the Palantir balls of Lord of the Rings to St Paul’s admonition not to look “through a glass darkly,” the practice of gazing into a crystal ball is ancient. It does not even need to be a crystal ball. Scrying is when you let yourself drift into a trance state, so as to pick up psychic cues and messages. The medium could be a bowl of water, the Moon or a flame.
If you’re super psychic, you don’t need any props, the second sight comes unbidden. John Dee, astrologer (and spy) to Queen Elizabeth 1, had a black obsidian “dark mirror.” Merlin carted around a crystal ball, although actually it was made of beryl. Popular culture has declared it the de rigeur accessory for everyone from the Witches of Oz to the crafty ladies in Charmed.
Mirrors are also magic. Feng Shui bans mirrors you see yourself from the bed – because your wandering soul might get trapped in it. And how many fairy tales feature ghosts who only appear in the mirror? Some mirrors are haunted or at least, just off. You don’t like looking in them. They’re Neptunian, holding onto reflections long after the person or event has moved on.
Vampires can’t see their reflection because they’re already living in a limbic state between dimensions. It makes no sense they’d crave blood; modern vampires feed off E.M.F.s
But, back to the question. I fear that a lot of the “crystal” balls and even the obsidian ones available online are, as you deduced, not high quality. Then again, it is only an agent – a medium – you’re the one with the magic. And the most important attribute for scrying is not so much the tool but your consciousness. It works best on the Moon-Neptune Lunar Portal (marked on the Moon Calendar).
So, I am sure someone here can recommend a quality source. But have you considered copper? Look how beautiful this one is. And, as talked about in this post, with so much energy in Earth at the moment, metal is balancing. Copper, big in old Babylon, is also associated with Venus. This place seems authentic.
What does everyone else think?
Love this, and especially the caution on mirrors (which seem to amplify trapped energies from a previous owner??) (Although I have seen some great esoteric techniques for cleaning a mirror on this brilliant site). A copper ball sounds incredibly beautiful – and would repel EMF’s!😄
My own experience – a friend gifted me a second hand dressing table and VERY heavy mirror, which she’d picked up from a garage sale years earlier (I was looking for one for my daughter’s room). Being cautious but also very waste-conscious, I accepted and cleansed mirror thoroughly. It never felt right, and while my daughter never had any negative experiences with the mirror/dresser in her room (I used to cover the mirror with a heavy towel), she did coincidentally sleep a LOT better after I took the mirror out!?? So, I thought I’d cleanse it with the usual tricks, full moon light AND a day of powerful summer sunlight, salt, etc etc. After this, I propped it up ready for more cleaning/repainting in the outdoor patio, before coming back with family after dinner out somewhere to find a freak gust of wind? had pushed the mirror onto its back, smashing the glass very completely yet neatly (only a few shards fell outside the frame). I was amazed – but very relieved, in a way. I will always trust my gut about secondhand furniture (particularly mirrors) in future!! (If I can afford it I will try to buy handmade pieces from local sustainable wood – with the aim of holding on to it). 💗
I picked this cute pyramid shaped mirror from my sister when she moved. Every time I passed by I’d have this eery inclination to duck or try not to catch my own eye in the reflection. I tossed it within 2 weeks, though, as it felt like it trapped all her poor self-image and negative self-talk. Should’ve known… a learned lesson for sure.
I’ve been sitting with this again following my astro-boosted rant, (Mars/taurus, Mercury house IX, etc). What I considered fundamentally, is intention. Mystic, I know there maybe some fine line treading here but if a crystal purchase cant be avoided, surely its better to go to someone sourcing brilliantly and with a sht ton of awareness? If this is ok, I will say, for UK look up Sue Weaver on FB, her Crystal Barn is about gentler aquisition and responsible earth connection. Or Crystal Castles, one of her previous students. (I am also one of sue’s students from 20+years ago). Crystals changed how I saw the world and connected to everything. Simply put, now I use my scrying/attunement practice broadly because I have honed a really well practiced skill. I do think though it doesn’t matter how you get there, just get there gently, with a fantastic teacher or, introduction and use your powers for good.
Also, thank you, I’ve just answered my own question about my next choosen path of study.. XX
the most memorable scrying experience I ever had was using Turkish coffee grounds.
I swear that figures and pictures unfolded in front of my very eyes!! This was as I was being shown how to ‘see’ by a very magical friend who had been taught as a child, though I feel that I was tapping into into her forcefield, as I have not been as successful since as that remarkable first experience.
I think you have to develop a relationship over time with your chosen tool. I Ching is my daily go-to and I used to be able to reliably tap into my dreams but alarm clocks, job, partner, pets all mess with the receptive field!
My fave topic of all time might be crystals! I am so sorry I didn’t study science at school so as to really understand our crystalline friends better. I am lucky to know a warehouse run by a scientist and an empath who have wonderful crystals. The ethics of taking them from the ground is confusing as they do help us in general. Though I have glass crystal from the desert that felt more like an ancient atomic bomb conceived it. Yet to the eye you might think it was ethically sourced in that it it wasn’t mined, but the trauma I felt in the glass was obvious to me where other crystals not. Unfortunately I seem to attract ‘bad’ crystals to be disposed too. Some crystals just need to go back to where they came from! I have buried a few odd bods, even plucked a ruby from a great grandmother’s ring and gave it back to earth.
Living in Alice with a jewellery student opened my mind to them and I promised myself I would find one to buy but forgot. On my way out of NT I went swimming in a lovely large waterhole and something glistened in the murky bottom. I grabbed it and it was my first Quartz Crystal beautifully woven in a string necklace. It was impossible to have found it given the depth and visibility but there it was. It travelled with me for many years until it left me. Now I have many crystal companions and they are dear as friends to me. Some perform amazing functions – the yellower the clear quartz the more they harmonise with my Leo energy field!
In terms of choosing I feel like going with an open heart and picking up a few and moving them about your body, you will find one flows with your energy better than another. I chose one wand by making figure eights and as I went through some hundreds; I came to one and the sensitives next to me unpacking them went ‘woah’ it ‘lit up’ so. Electricity and heart strings are your guides!
My mirror collection is determined by how many hooks I have at any given residence.
I agree the tool finds you…
I think copper is a wonderful scrying metal.
Since I read the Jung introduction to my I Ching book I have used old predecimal copper pennies and half pennies to cast.
I have three with my birth year ( yes pre 1966..) which work with my energies and the collective unconscious like a charm!
I have heeded MM re being quad Virgo I don’t NEED anymore grounding or Earth…
Working with singing bowls and copper coins and shiny, shiny talismans…
Crow, trickster energy
Love singing bowls! That’s a whole rife frequency conversation just there
So scrying is the name of what I used to call, as a child,”in lala.” Fully conscious but on my own relaxed/focused wavelength.Even got a nickname when i went there.. Spaced.. didnt need a crystal ball, although it would be beautiful to hold and gaze at my own…
Or absence seizures !!
I had to look that up, just in case it was a thing for me! On balance I think they sound like completely different experiences… Like the piscean trance state, I’ve disappeared into a daydream so strongly (at a bus stop) that my bus came and went and I didn’t even see it. I don’t think that’s a cousin of epilepsy or anything tho :/
I’m a Venus loving gal and so started to look for a copper bowl – this guy on Etsy has a variety of possibilities to DIY your own scry. https://www.etsy.com/listing/252681919/solid-copper-candy-or-serving-bowl?ref=shop_home_active_30&frs=1
I am working on a website that I have always wanted to be able to tap into to acquire “the tools” from a worthy source. I just gotta get my tech skills up to manifest my dream. I have so many contacts from my past lives…it is like I have a mission. And to find the middle ground with retailing and providing a source for all of us. I truly believe, from my own experience, when something is sourced from love, and, respect for the buyer (and the seller) it is a mutual benefit….and it resonates. The things I have purchased from amazing humans resonates the strongest with me.
I once came across an amazing citrine crystal ball…..I could not afford to buy it at the time…but I still remember the effect it had on me and know it had it’s effect in the not buying of it.
I have a feeling that crystals, mirrors, familiars find us. Along with cars, jobs and partners!
I never look unless I have a deep urge to but I’m receptive always.
Yes!
I had an incredible urge to find an amethyst crystal ball about 5-6 weeks ago? I couldn’t find one but whilst buying the quartz ball handed to me that I didn’t see in the cabinet, for whatever reason anything without flaws seemed unauthentic. So the ball that came home with me has a clear strip and then much clouding – which I adore looking at under lamplight. Flaws throw out rainbows!!! I can gaze at my tumbled smoky crustal for ages. The rainbows that that one throws out are awesome.
I went to my favourite reliable crystal shop and ordered a “flawed” or natural crystal in my price range. The CB came to me rather than me choosing the right one. It’s lovely!
I’m not going to get into the business of recommending because imo it’s not a one dimensional thing but I will share something worth being aware of – apologies if you are already aware of this.
The lure and magic of a quartz crystal ball can be clarity and size. If this doesn’t also come with a price tag the size of your next new luxury SUV then you’ve either got a generous benefactor of a retailer who has decided you must have this piece or something else is up…
Many crystal balls are made out of crushed crystal that has been reformed. You probably want to consider imperfections or be comfortable with a ball made from any number of crystals moulded and bound into one. Nothing wrong with that – it is perhaps a kind of melting pot of potential and magic but still something to keep in mind.
‘Nothing wrong with that’ if that’s your thing as in no judgement from me but I wouldn’t do it. It’s not so much the melting pot as it is the process that I find off putting and it’s not so much the process as it is the intention behind it to perhaps deceive or from a base of greed etc.
We live in a paradoxical world. All things exist and there is no right or wrong but for our own versions of what that means and I appreciate that it rolls off the tongue easier than it integrates into a life philosophy.
Reformed & crushed crystal has pretty much the same resonance as a sandcastle x
Or perhaps – an injured soldier – the outside is all perfectly polished and matching his brothers but the inside is just all smashed together and stuffed inside the uniform to keep up appearances….
I do like a metaphor 🙂
As someone who has studied and worked with crystals for years, my lasting and only conclusion as we reach into earth consciouness and try to find a delicate balancing act with nature is: there is NO ethical crystal source. Believe me when I say, if I could find a CB the size of my head, I would justify it somehow but my underlying feeling, especially as a psychometrist is that a ‘new’ crystal purchase is almost always primarily an ego purchase. Find second hand and cleanse it or, find something else. I’m not particularly happy being this blunt but the person I would buy from is extremely experienced (thirty plus years) and she goes out of her way to track all the background info on her rocks. She also says most need recovery time as theyre often ‘born’ out of trauma, – blasting, war or, greed. Also, she doesnt have a shop, commerce changes the energy game massively. Glastonbury and the (vomit) headshops being a primary point in case. Beware a spiritual theme park. I have however, now stopped buying them unless there is a definitive and clear higher purpose. The crystals I continue to work with I have picked up and could not put down or, they have been gifted. I remember one in a market kind of glued itself to my hand. I said to the stall holder, “I need to give you some money because I think this stone has made its decision”. I sit with ‘need or, greed’ before any purchase these days and it’s still a work in progress.
Bowl of water in moonlight; personal favourite x
Ps: I live near the Witchcraft museum and they don’t sell crystals.
Yes, I agree with a lot of this!
All very interesting.
Thank you for this post. I will definitely look into copper. Ordered obsidian from Hoodwitch.
I got mine during a seminar from the pysichic who held it. my take is that it’s like like with crystals and stones, and like Lili says with everything else basically: you need to look at things until one, or maybe two, screams out at you, and in fact what she did was pour about 50 of them (for eight participants) on the table (they’re quite small) and have us pick our own (in fact they’re not for sale on her website, that’s why I’m not mentioning her name). as of today it’s never happened to me, but maybe it’s also possible to feel that connection with something online and not in person. and yes, the psychic was the first to enhance the fact that however charming/beautiful the object you choose, it’s simply a means: YOU are the medium <3.
I would wander off- the-path curio/book shops- and see where you are led. You will feel an affinity to the right one- and to the right aisle. I have had my hand guided to a stone, a book falling off a shelf and yes, my crystal ball. Bearing in mind as Mystic said, a bowl of water and other reflective surfaces can induce inner vision.
I found my Tiger’s Eye runes that way.
Mine too and I didn’t get it for that purpose, but she is a talkative stone and I’m not even a very stone/crystal person she just appeared in my life
I’ve bought my fair share of crystals based on book recommendations or because I thought they were pretty, and I’m on the hunt for a crystal ball myself for purely aesthetic reasons. But Lili is right, all of the tools and crystals I actually use in my practice are ones that spoke to me, many of which I wouldn’t have looked twice at otherwise. As for best deals, look to see if there is a local lapidary club in your area, they’ll often have shows and/or supply shops that are often cheaper than new age/witchy shops.
WTF FUQ – I have been to that witchcraft museum and seen that mirror and I wanted it but not as much as I fell in love with Dr Dee’s scrying mirror was amazing to think he had been gazing into it. This post is so timely as A) my ancestry DNA confirmed my roots in Cornwall/Devon right near Boscastle where the museum is and a friend was having issues with old vibes in a mirror just this week.