What if you literally saw God, Goddess, an angel, or a fairy with your own two eyes? If this happened to you in a dream, in church, within the confines of a magical circle, such incredible visions would be appropriate. If, however, this happened while you were driving to work and you swerved off the road to avoid a pixie or Gabriel's horn, you would likely rightfully find yourself in the psychiatric ward of your local hospital. Everything in between is a big old gray area, and not one that feels comfortable to explore.

For that reason, as a professional fortune teller, I have many friends and clients who gush excitedly that they love fortune tellers, scrying, and divination, but that they could never do it themselves. How could this be that I've heard people who are obviously intuitive and open-minded about psychic arts tell me that they feel and see nothing when they attempt to do the work themselves? This is especially strange considering that such people have more access to step-by-step instructions like those in my book, Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners.

It isn't that visions can't be seen by everyone. People who say that they can't see things when they try often either don't know what to look for, or simply don't actually want to see anything supernatural with their own eyes. After all, who hasn't had the experience of catching spooky shadows out of the corners of their eyes and wishing for a bright light to chase them away? Inviting a hallucinatory encounter may seem like a step toward madness. Many wannabe psychics ask themselves: How will I know I'm not crazy?

Fear of "becoming crazy" or of not being able to see anything at all are the reasons why I recommend crystal ball reading as an incredibly valuable and versatile practice. Firstly, having a tool in which you can see whatever "crazy" things that you want, without spooky visions bleeding out into your mundane life, allows the beginning reader and budding psychic a chance to relax and allow whatever amazing revelations there are within the crystal ball to come forth. When the visions seem frightening or overwhelming, the crystal ball can simply be set aside for a time when the reader feels more ready. Some people really do see images inside the crystal ball as clear as in a television set. Others only see the visions on the inside of their eyelids, in the mind's eye, and that's okay, too.

The second amazing virtue of the crystal ball is to provide inspiration to those people who really don't believe that they would be able to see any visions at all. To see why this is true, you may need to see a real quartz crystal ball in person. It isn't just a translucent sphere, like a marble of glass. Each real quartz crystal ball is blessed with countless tiny imperfections throughout. On the clear backdrop of the crystal's surface and interior, you'll see white wisps frozen forever in time within the crystal ball. When the crystal ball is turned in the light, those small imperfections may appear to be different colors along the light spectrum, and will be all different shapes depending on how you turn the crystal ball. In fact, it may seem quite impossible to see one of those imperfections the same way twice. This property is exactly how you can be inspired to see things in the crystal ball.

Even those who don't boast of great creativity can literally see shapes in clouds. If you can lay on your back in the grass and see clear shapes in the clouds almost as if somebody had sculpted them to look like a rabbit, a car, or what have you, then you can also see visions in the crystal ball. The tiny white and rainbow shining imperfections in a crystal ball speak to your intuition in the same way that clouds speak to your imagination. The shapes you see may tell a story, or have personal meaning to you. Or, you can use a book like Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners to help you know what you should be seeing and paying attention to and understand how to interpret your perceptions into full crystal ball readings.

The crystal ball exercises the part of you that sees your intuition expressed in a visual form, while keeping a safe boundary between your psychic practice and your everyday life. For that reason, I find it to be a more valuable tool for the budding fortune teller than other forms of divination (such as tarot cards) or more difficult scrying tools such as a mirror or a bowl of water, which may not already have inspiring shapes swirling around in them. As you practice, you may find that the actual tiny flecks that inspire you to see shapes in the crystal ball allow you to see other fleeting visions within the crystal ball itself that are more akin to real visions right before your eyes. Seeing things in the crystal ball is possible for anyone when you know what to look for.

If you're still too worried to pick up the crystal ball, knowing that you can put it down when you no longer want to see things, then you can take comfort that seeing intangible things does not make you "crazy." In fact, the American Psychiatric Association requires that other problems besides hallucinations or delusions be present before a person can be diagnosed with a mental illness. For example, you must have a severely dysfunctional life, such as not being able to work, have a relationship, or care for yourself in order to be diagnosed with something like psychosis. In addition, to be diagnosed with something like schizophrenia, your hallucinations would have to be happening all the time for a period of six months, not just whenever you looked inside your crystal ball.

So, stop being afraid of seeing things! You won't go crazy. Whether you're someone who has already tried to have visions until your eyes hurt or you're somebody who would scream if they saw a ghost, go pick up a crystal ball and push your boundaries. You'll find out what makes visions so useful and appealing, and why the ancient art of crystal ball reading has persisted to the present day.