Showing posts with label windows to faraway places. Show all posts
Showing posts with label windows to faraway places. Show all posts

Monday, July 17, 2017

Crystal Ball

This unique form of quartz found by archaeologists has been found in such distant areas as Peru, Siberia, Australia, Chaldea, Greece, Rome, Assyria, Persia, Japan, and China. The ancient Chinese and Japanese regarded quartz as the perfect gem.

The artists who carved spheres were thought to be the most capable of spiritual and artistic purity. They considered the quartz crystal ball the heart or “essence of the dragon,” symbolic of the highest powers of creation. The Chinese and Japanese shared the term sui ching for quartz, which means “water essence,” the source of peace and power.

Tibetan monks called crystal balls the “windows of the gods,” using them as holy objects of great power. The Taoists believed that looking into the crystal’s clarity “crystallized” one’s being, and they considered quartz the “gem of enlightenment.”

Buddhist altars included quartz spheres as an invocation of the “visible nothingness” that delineates the duality of the material and spiritual world.
Contemplation of this “visible nothingness” gave rise to crystal-gazing, which has been practiced since time immemorial. Crystal gazers use the spheres as windows to faraway places, the past and future.