Prevision

Foreknowledge of the future acquired in a visual form. Reportedly, such visions are mostly spontaneous, but there are means of experimentally inducing them through crystal gazing and other forms of divination.

In the experiments of Col. Eugene Rochas, he supposedly took his hypnotic subjects on longitudinal passes into past phases of their lives and brought them back to transversal passes. Reportedly, if these passes were continued beyond the present age the subject went into the future. These experiments are also known as "hypnotic regression."

Florence Marryat, in her book There is No Death (1892), claims her spirit was summoned by friends, sitting in a circle, while she was fast asleep in her home. Her spirit begged to be sent back with the words: "There is a great danger hanging over my children, I must go back to my children." The day after the séance, her brother-in-law accidentally discharged a rifle in the midst of her seven children and a bullet passed through the wall close to her eldest daughter's head.

The mechanism of prevision was described in Vincent Turvey's The Beginnings of Seership (1911):

"At certain times I see a sort of film or ribbon continually moving as does an endless belt in a cinematograph film. This film is in colour of a very, very pale pinky-heliotrope, and it seems to vibrate with very great velocity. Upon it are numerous little pictures, some of which appear to be engraved on the film itself, whilst others are like pale blue photographs stuck on the film. The former I have found to refer to past events, the latter to those about to happen. The locality of the event is judged by the scenery and the climatic heat. I have to estimate dates by the clearness of the pictures. I foresee more unpleasant than pleasant things. I believe the reason to be that evil, being nearer to matter than to spirit, is more ponderous in the ether than its opposite, and is therefore sensed more easily by a Seer. I not only see, but feel, the density of evil."

See also Arnall Bloxham )

Sources:

Besterman, Theodore. Crystal Gazing: A Study in the History, Distribution, Theory and Practice of Scrying. London: William Rider, 1924. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1965.

Grey, E. Howard. Visions, Previsions and Miracles in Modern Times. London: L. N. Fowler, 1915.

Turvey, Vincent N. The Beginnings of Seership. London: Stead's Publishing House, 1911. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1969.