I imagine this daily post idea that I’ve stolen from Richard Herring will be easy to keep up so long as I’m working at the library, as there seldom seems to be a day where there isn’t a memorable or puzzling encounter, and those are pretty easy to write about.

Today, what at first seemed to be a fairly regular exchange with an elderly member of the public ended with something I have never before witnessed. The lady requested some travel books relating to a specific location, of which I managed to locate four in total. She took all four and with my help checked them out and sat in a chair near to the entrance. Then, from my seat at the main desk I watched her slowly retrieve a large crystal on a chain from her handbag and dangle it from her hand over the pile of books on her lap. After some circling and pendulum-ing (not a word) over each of the titles, she slowly walked up to me with one and said “Sorry to be a pain, but can I return this one? It’s not what they want, it won’t do…”

I duly obliged and uttered not a word relating to what I had just seen her do, but every fibre of my being wanted to immediately interrogate her. She then left and a quiet spell followed, so I did a quick online search describing what had just happened. There was nothing book-specific, but I did find a brief outline of how crystal divination is used, and has been historically used, to make decisions and find objects, with the crystals motion corresponding with answers like ‘yes’ and ‘no’. I didn’t see any crystal motion that meant ‘what the fuck are you doing?’.

I’m a fairly sceptical person and although my stance on such things has softened over the years (from a hard-line science-loving atheism in my mid 20’s to ‘perhaps it’s quite nice to believe in things and have rituals to get you through this tiring charade we call existence’ in my 30’s) I couldn’t help but sneer and snort to myself. The interesting thing that I saw online was that there’s general acceptance that the motion of the pendulum is connected to your subconscious acting imperceptibly on the crystals movement, which seemed science-based and fine, but the connection of the particular crystal to mystic powers and vibrations was too much for me and I stopped reading. The lady’s hand movements were visible from a distance of about six metres, ranging from a vigorous stirring motion to a straightforward back and forth, so it seemed that she was making all of the decisions very consciously herself. But what particular reasons she had for whittling the books down will remain a mystery to me – perhaps she had tacked on a belief in bad energy to the offending book, and refused to take the cursed item it into her aura-conditioned home. I’ll never know, but needless to say I took no chances and immediately torched it.

The whole thing reminded me of someone I worked with not too long ago who also had a strong faith in the power of crystals, with some on her desk, one around her neck and at least a couple in her bag which she would periodically take out and rub across her chest and neck like an antiperspirant. I never questioned it or gave any indication that I’d even noticed them, but now I wish I had asked some polite questions. Not necessarily how they were supposed to work and how on earth that made any sense at all, but more what led her to investing so much time, money and faith in something that (at least to me) seemed so implausible. What sets someone on that path? What type of ailment kickstarts a dependency on crystals? Is it the more the merrier? Does a suit of crystals make you super?

Going back to the old lady with the travel books, she also asked if we had any books on something which turned out to be related to chromotherapy, or colour therapy, an alternative medicine in its own right. We didn’t, but when I suggested that there might be sections related to it in the homeopathy books we had she sort of sneered and said “Erm no. It’s nothing to do with all that.” a response which smacked of a sneer to my ears. Did she look down on that branch of pseudoscience? Perhaps there are vast bitter rifts within alternative medicine that outsiders would be oblivious to. Do groups of christian faith healers sit round scoffing at chakras? Who knows. In my honest opinion I think it’s all bollocks of fairly equal pegging. But these days I keep that scepticism to myself (or save it for a blog though that’s still technically for myself I guess) and let people dangle their crystals, sprinkle their oils and pay extortionate amounts for sugarpills all they want. I think twice about confronting old ladies about their belief structures. Let’s call that progress.