The crystal ball is one of the most iconic images of popular cartomancy: a glass or rock-crystal sphere used as visual concentration support. The practice is called crystallomancy or catoptromancy (when the support is a mirror) and is part of the wider family of scrying, observation of reflective surfaces to favor inner visions.
Scrying has very old roots: Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia (1st century) mentions reading water and crystal surfaces. In the Renaissance the English mathematician and occultist John Dee (1527-1608/9) used a black obsidian sphere, today at the British Museum, for "angelic scrying" sessions with Edward Kelley. In the 19th century the crystal ball enters the popular imagery of the fortune teller thanks to Victorian illustration and gypsy iconography.
Enter your question and shuffle. The tool "animates" the sphere. At the end of the animation it returns a symbolic image, a keyword and a textual interpretation generated in the moment. It is not real vision: a visual metaphor reproducing the meditative experience of traditional scrying.
When you want an "atmospheric" reading, more contemplative than tarot; for an introspective consultation on a spiritual or emotional theme; as a small daily ritual. For practical and detailed questions other tools (tarot, Lenormand, I Ching) are more suitable.
Neither the physical sphere nor the online tool "show" the future literally. Traditional practice was meditative: surface observation favored inner images to interpret.
No. The oracle is a playful-symbolic tool. Anyone can consult it, regardless of meditative training.
The online tool poses no risk. The physical practice of scrying is traditionally discouraged in great fatigue or anxiety because it favors light trance states.