Veiled Reality

Conjure Man is a short story that appears in my book Murder Etouffee. Mama Mulate, a character reprised from my French Quarter murder mystery Big Easy, is the primary character. Mama is the quintessential embodiment of two cultures; she is a voodoo mambo, practicing the mysterious religion of Vodoun, but also holds a doctorate in English literature and teaches at Tulane University.

While well versed in spells, hexes and potions, Mama can see neither the past, nor the future. When a hapless couple hires her to help them learn the fate of their missing son, she takes them to a seer, an old black man named Zekiel that lives in a shack built on a high spot in the flood control area outside of New Orleans. Zekiel uses a crystal ball to “scry,” or see the future and the past.

Practitioners of the almost lost art of scrying don’t always use crystal balls. According to George Frederick Kunz, author of the book The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, says, “Mirrors, globules of lead, or quicksilver, polished steel, the surface of water and even pools of ink have been employed and have been found to insure quite as satisfactory results as the crystal ball.”

While Kunz is correct that seers can use any reflective media to achieve their results, many use the crystal ball, not just for its reflective properties, but also because of what lies inside the crystal. Unlike a sphere of glass, a transparent ball of polished quartz is not perfect. It contains vacuoles, fractures, veils and needles of other minerals that reflect and refract light. These very imperfections are what allow the experienced seer to tap into secrets of the past and the future.

Light and reflections are the means we use to experience reality when we see, but consider this: not everything we see reflects reality exactly. When we gaze into a mirror at our own reflection, we are not seeing ourselves as others see us. The right eye looking back at us is really our left eye. The way we perceive ourselves is only a mirrored reflection of reality.

Veils and imperfections in a crystal gazing ball reflect and refract light in such a way that they “reveal” a different dimension to the trained seer. Is it possible to see into the future or the past? My answer is yes.

While most of us cannot explain why we are able to receive wireless voices on our cell phones, there are people that can. It is just as plausible that seers can see into the past and the future, even if they cannot prove it to us, except for the secrets they reveal.

Gondwana