THE MAGIC CRYSTAL

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 284, 26 August 1922, Page 13

THE MAGIC CRYSTAL

Writing of the crystal, Isidore Kozminsky, a noted lapidiary, states that even the Australian blackfellows venerate the crystal and believe in its magic powers. The (aboriginal “Coradgee) Stone” Was a quartz crystal wrapped in hair, and no woman was permitted to look upon it. The magicians pretended that it could work wonders; among other uses, it was a rain-maker.; In South America the Medicine Indians eay that a holy spirit dwells in the crystal, and only priests may look on the sacred stones.

These savage superstitions are first cousins to the dreams of the crystalgazer, who sees in the pellucid globe the shadows of far-off and future events,- and .tells fortunes at a high fee.

In Japan, a whole family sits round a crystal ball, called the Stone of Concentration, “to seek guidance and help in the pawi of life.” In China, as well as Japan, the crystal with its purity is “The Jewel of Perfection,” and is cut with infinite patience into the images of gods. The old Scottish Highlanders, and the “rough, rug-headed Kerns” of Ireland of centuries ago, believed that crystals in drinking-water would ward off sickness from cattle.

Mediaeval Europe held that crystal Would cloud in the presence.of poison, and worn during sleep it would be a guard against any witchcraft, evil dream, or secret enemy. Messengers from Cambyses in ancient Ethiopia found the bodies of departed kings encased in tombs of pure crystal; the bodies were “perfect m form and feature.” ’

The Hapsburg Imperial vault in the Vienna Church of Capucino has 150 crystal vases, with a Hapsburg heart in each. The first heart was that of Duke Francis, “who, dying in Switzerland, directed; that it should be sent to

The crystal’s translucent purity is the reason why men of all epochs, in all continents, have venerated it as something which must avert all evil, and must contain the secrets of the heavens. It was Swedenborg’s emblem for “Divine truth, in all its brightness.”

A NOVEL HAND-BAG The craze for something original in the way of a hand-bag has resulted in a novel production in Paris. It is designed in the form of a black and white pierrot. Pierrot’s head, with his white face, quaintly lined features, and black cap. surmounting a white ruff, conceals the fastening. He has arms and tiny hands, and then the rest of his loose magpie costume forms the bag. the trousered legs making two useful compartments at the gnd, in which lip salve and other small but necessary aids to the toilet may be stored away. Tiny feet complete this dainty yersitm of the popular doll bag. Some of the pierrot bags are made on strings, which draw up or lessen at a pull at the little figure’s arms.