Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners: Easy Divination & Interpretation

By Alexandra Chauran

Haven't you always wanted to gaze into a crystal ball and see what the future holds? You can learn to use a crystal ball for divination, guidance, and meditation—this friendly introductory guide tells you how!

Alexandra Chauran, a second-generation fortuneteller, presents everything you need to know to begin doing crystal ball readings immediately. You'll learn what a crystal ball is, how it works, and how to choose your first one. Step-by-step instructions describe what to look for when doing a reading and how to interpret the symbols found within the crystal ball.

You can gain heightened intuitive abilities, greater self-knowledge, and a deeper understanding of the universe when you practice the ancient art of crystal ball reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Oct 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9780738729350

Alexandra Chauran

Dr. Alexandra Chauran, of Port Moody, Canada, received a master's degree in teaching from Seattle University and a doctorate from Valdosta State University. She is the author of dozens of books, including Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners, Have You Been Hexed?, and Getting Through It. In her spare time she enjoys streaming on Twitch as QueenOfDiamonds and chatting with readers.

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About Alexandra Chauran

Alexandra Chauran is a second-generation professional fortuneteller. She has been reading the crystal ball professionally since 1999. Holding a Master’s degree in teaching from Seattle University, she enjoys building carefully upon what is already understood by the student, and she offers an apprentice internship to her local practice in the greater Seattle area. Alexandra is also proficient in other forms of divination, having been certified as a Professional Tarot Reader by the Tarot Certification Board of the American Tarot Association. She writes horoscopes and other articles for periodic publications, and has appeared on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.

Please visit her website, at http://www.earthshod.com.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Crystal Ball Reading for Beginners: Easy Divination & Interpretation © 2011 by Alexandra Chauran.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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First e-book edition © 2011

E-book ISBN: 9780738729350

Cover design by Adrienne Zimiga

Cover image © PhotoAlto Agency RF Collections/PunchStock

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

The names and identifying details of the people in the vignettes and anecdotes in this book have been changed in order to protect the anonymity of clients.

Llewellyn Publications

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Manufactured in the United States of America

introduction

one

How to Choose a Crystal Ball

two

How to Read a Crystal Ball

three

Grounding

four

Symbols

five

Using the Crystal Ball for Meditation

six

Special Considerations When Reading for Others

seven

Example Readings

glossary

bibliography

H ello, my name is Alexandra, and I’m the fortuneteller, I said as I arrived, toting my crystal ball, at the home of a woman celebrating her engagement, where she had gathered a dozen friends for an intimate celebration.

As I was ushered into her home, the comfortable clamor of friends excitedly talking became noticeably subdued as timid eyes sized me up. I was twenty-six years old, slender, and clad in a white dress. I entered the house barefoot, even though the weather had been brisk outside. Aside from my preferred barefoot state, there was nothing unusual about my appearance. My outfit was professional; my dark, shoulder-length hair was left in its naturally curly state, and my makeup and jewelry was minimal. I looked like just another guest.

I might easily have melted into the group’s merry conversation over snacks if the guest of honor hadn’t instructed me to let them know why I was there. I introduced myself to the group and gave a brief introduction to a type of fortunetelling called crystalomancy, explaining that, for people with problems with love or career, or any other area of life, divination offered practical solutions through the use of our intuition. I let them know that this evening I would be using a real crystal ball to confirm some things they already knew, to discover new potential in their lives, and to empower them with advice.

After such a bold speech, the guests were even more nervous. But the hostess allowed me to stick around and mingle while a few glasses of wine gave them courage. At last, the bravest of the bunch walked with me to a private area that the hostess had designated for readings, followed later by the rest of the excited guests once they had a chance to hear what she had to say about my reading. Over the course of the evening, I predicted children, extreme job changes, moves to distant lands, and even a few breakups to those who knew they needed to hear such news. By the end of the night, my table was crowded with everyone needing just one more reading.

How I Got Started

Teaching crystal ball reading is an unusual trade, even more so than telling fortunes using a crystal ball. In fact, I know of no others besides myself who currently offer local apprenticeships for learning how to perform this art. Though I learned how to read crystal balls at an early age with natural inclination, guidance from spiritual teachers, encouragement from parents, and a little bit of luck, it was only many years later that I began to pass on the knowledge that I’ve gained.

At first, with a bit of an ego, I assumed that I had special powers. But, given time and experience with others reading the crystal ball for me, I began to believe that everyone has the potential to practice this art. Some stumble upon their talents early; others must work hard on the discipline to achieve them; and still others actively work against developing such skills. My path in life has continuously drawn me into a teaching role, even when I struggled against it. With regard to the crystal ball, it began as a teenager when friends begged me to show them how I did it. An inability to understand how they might be different from me in their use of the crystal ball, as well as possibly a bit of self-sabotage in order to keep feeling special with my unique activity, kept us all frustrated for a while.

In college, I began to learn about psychology and the language of symbols that permeates all societies. Fascinated with how this was a common part of the human condition, and how it could be directly related to crystal ball reading, I hungrily studied symbols in many cultures and the common storylines that arose again and again. Just as I recognized the Hero’s Journey in many stories, retelling the epic journey of someone going to another realm to bring back treasure, I realized that it was going to be my own task to bring back my own experiences from the crystal ball so that others could share in these universal understandings.

I learned that Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, believed that the mind holds keys for how we work through problems in everyday life. The prominent psychologist used dream interpretation as a way to help people move through this world of symbols to understand how best to solve their own issues. Crystal ball gazing is very much like interpreting dreams that you are having while you are wide awake, and so it has the benefit of a deeper understanding of psychology.

Later thinkers, like mythologist Joseph Campbell, believed that symbols and archetypes found in repeating patterns in stories throughout history reflect the archetypes in the lives of real people. His catchphrase was Follow your bliss. When you march along with the flow of your destiny, which is this theoretical structure that follows the archetypes in the Hero’s Journey played out in mythology, it can seem like every challenge is lighter upon your shoulders. Understanding archetypes in the crystal ball can help you flow along your path more easily by pointing the way that is best for you.

For example, I often drive a long distance to visit my spiritual peers and elders. Others might find the traffic, gas money, and time to be frustrating enough to avoid training in this way. But for me, it’s not really an issue. I’m following my bliss, and any challenge in the way seems relatively easy to overcome when I put my mind to it. However, if I was traveling all that way for, say, a dental appointment, I might whine about the traffic all the time, and even find it a reason to quit. Dental work isn’t my bliss! Everyone’s true desire is different, which is why you might see so many of your friends enduring relationship squabbles that would be a dealbreaker for you, while refusing to tolerate annoying aspects of partners that you find endearing and easy to overlook! Let’s just say that following one’s bliss is as easy as falling in love.

So, what if you don’t know what your bliss is, or how to follow it? That’s where the symbology of your dreams and the crystal ball can help when they are interpreted as a psychological aid. Although divination tools can and are used by many therapists, I often joke to my friends that, as a fortuneteller, I’m like a therapist, only I actually help people. There are very real emotional and intellectual benefits to getting to know yourself through a crystal ball.

You see, your subconscious knows, but your subconscious isn’t talking to you from the place of language and your left-brained cognition. Instead, your subconscious talks to you through symbols that you can see in the crystal ball. For example, when choosing between two lovers, a man might envision in the crystal ball a heart next to the woman he should choose, who would be best for him, even if his conscious mind hasn’t been made up. He might also see some symbols that help him think about things he had not yet considered, such as how the second woman’s goals might diverge sharply from his own, symbolized as her face surrounded by cars and material objects that he would not be able to afford to buy for her.

The crystal ball can also be used to examine someone’s personality, and to correct emotional disorders in the exact same way as the Rorschach inkblot test is used. The Rorschach test is widely used by clinical psychologists to analyze personality, thought process, motivations, and conflicts, and I believe that the crystal ball would be an even more powerful tool for use by psychotherapists and their patients. It is like an infinite database of such inkblots, freeing the practitioner from the cultural bias and other sources of error that limit the Rorschach scoring systems.

The crystal ball can be used by both the spiritual and the nonspiritual as a psychological tool to access your subconscious through your right brain, to identify your problems and the solutions to those problems so that you can make choices to run your life. Even for the deeply religious, this process is still going on, adding an extra dimension to the usefulness of crystal ball reading.

I felt during my first experience of crystal ball reading, and still feel, that the crystal ball is a uniquely marvelous tool for divination, because it is like a direct window to one’s own subconscious mind. The beginner doesn’t have to force somebody else’s system to make sense. Instead, the beginner can immediately start to piece together his or her own system and learn an internal language of symbols that have been building since birth, and maybe even before that. At the outset, that may seem the more difficult route, and in some ways it is more challenging since it involves constant growth and reevaluation. But, on the other hand, it requires less rote memorization, and better equips the beginner to transfer those skills to other forms of divination, or even to apply those skills to existing life experiences such as dreams or visions that might otherwise be troubling and confusing.

After graduating from college with a Bachelor of Science degree, I started to find out more about the learning process, the teaching practice, and how these could be applied to crystal ball reading. In my work toward my Master’s degree in teaching, I learned that our current models for schooling were developed during the industrial era. With factories adding on new parts at each new stage, similar ideas for teaching students were adopted. Kids were assigned to grades, and at each new grade were subjected to new information that built upon the last grade. This process is called scaffolding, and will be used in this book. However, people are not factory parts, and everyone is not the same. Especially in a highly differentiated activity such as divination, where everyone’s perceptions, interpretations, and even the beliefs that inform the two of those can be different, any classroom or book would be entirely insufficient.

As a result, to this day I still feel unable to successfully teach a Crystal Ball 101–style class with an entire room full of students, preferring instead that each of my students work at his or her own pace. Though I’ve published many smaller articles about spiritual development, this is my first adventure into the book-publishing world, and with its success I hope many others will follow. It is my hope that this book will be the next evolution in my teaching of this craft, and that it will initiate a whole new learning adventure in individual students all over the world. Thank you for being a part of my story about how I got started reading and teaching crystalomancy for beginners.

What Is a Crystal Ball?

Crystal gazing is the art of looking into a crystal ball to receive perceptions of the past, present, and future. Fortunetelling using a crystal ball, or crystalomancy, offers an opportunity to develop your divination skills to their natural limits with a tool that allows for easy transfer to other methods. The crystal ball itself is a pure crystal sphere, of any size, usually translucent and made of quartz. Crystal ball gazing can be a form of scrying, the practice by which literal or symbolic images are seen that are believed to have meaning and purpose. I chose the crystal ball as the subject for this book because I do believe scrying to be the best way to train natural intuitive abilities as they pop up, since it allows the most freedom of perception and the best way to get to know your own inner self through a divination tool. I also believe the crystal ball to be the best scrying tool for beginners, since it allows you