There are very few things that fascinate us more than the supernatural. That's perhaps one of the reasons why Halloween is such a huge holiday until the very un-superstitious new millennium. And it also accounts for several of our modern horror flicks, people's fascination with the occult and the persistence of a lot of myths who can trace their origins back to the times of demons and witchcraft. And more than the terror it brings, perhaps the lure of all these horrific representations is to reflect our mastery of the supernatural and the unexplainable.

Basically it conveys how we have tamed this great force to work for us, entertain us, and have reduced it to harmlessness. And perhaps one of the best examples of this would be fortune telling. It is one of the ways that people all over the world have employed aspects of the supernatural to work for their everyday lives and also a wish fulfilment in a more literal sense of the word. And one of the most popular of a fortune teller's tools of the trade would be the crystal ball.

Fortune tellers and seers use fortune tellers as an item of transcending time--usually by looking into the future or back into the past. This however is not anything new and the crystal ball has in fact existed since 2000 BC. The earliest known users of the crystal ball were the Druids, a priesthood that united the ancient British people. They also used water, black glass, polished quartz and other light reflecting things. The practice of looking into crystal balls is known as scrying or crystallomancy.

The visions people see in crystal balls do not come out as clear images. These visions come as faults, infusions, reflections or smoke within the ball that can be interpreted in any way possible. This most probably accounts for the variations in predictions and techniques that psychics employ.