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How to Read the Crystal by Sepharial

I. A POSTULATE

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In cases like the above it may be said that the clairvoyant faculty is constitutional and already fully developed, waiting only the circumstances which shall serve to bring it into active play, Emanuel Swedenborg, if we remember rightly, was 54 years of age before he awoke to the consciousness of his spiritual vision.

The medium employed for inducing the clairvoyant state cannot be definitely prescribed. It must remain a matter of experiment for each investigator. This, however, may be said: _Every person whose life is not wholly sunk in selfish and material pleasures, but in whom the aspiration to a nobler and purer life is a hunger the world cannot satisfy, has within himself the power to see and know that which he seeks behind the veil of his earthly senses. Nature has never produced a desire she could not satisfy. There is no hope, however vague, that the soul cannot define, and no aspiration, however high, that the wings of the spirit cannot reach. Therefore be patient and strive_.

That there are some in whom the psychic faculties are more prone to activity than in others is certain, as also some in whom these powers are native, by spiritual or hereditary succession; all of which may be determined from their genitures by the astrological art. In others, the determination of the natural powers takes a more practical and mundane tendency, making them more successful in the affairs of daily life than in aught of a spiritual nature St. Paul has spoken of a diversity of gifts. "One star differeth from another in glory," he says, in very truth. This distribution of natural gifts proceeds from the celestial world, and is so ordered that each person born on this earth may fulfil his part in the economy of life. And because the spiritual needs of mankind are of primary importance, there are those born in whom the power of spiritual interpretation is the dominant faculty, such persons being the natural channels of intercourse between the superior and inferior worlds. These are to mankind what a certain order of microbic life is to the body of man--organic interpreters, translating the elements of food into blood, nerve, fibre, tissue, etc., agreeably to the laws of their being.

For those who would aspire to the gift of pure vision, and in whom the faculty is striving for expression, the following pages are written. To others we would say, Be content. All birds are not eagles. The nightingale has a song, the humming-bird a plumage which the eagle will never possess. The nightingale may sing to the stars, humming-bird to the flowers, but the eagle, whose tireless eyes gaze into the heart of day, is uncompanioned in its lofty loneliness in the barren mountain-tops.