There is an old superstition, current, probably, in most parts of the country, that the breaking of a mirror will be followed by bad luck--usually a death in the family. This is, doubtless, the survival of a still older superstition--the belief in certain magic qualities of the mirror, which enabled it in certain circumstances to reflect the distant and to forecast the future. Nor was this superstition so childish as were some other popular delusions of old, for it had a certain philosophic basis. It is the peculiar property of the mirror to represent truth; to reproduce faithfully that which is; to show us ourselves as others see us. This is the idea expressed by Hamlet: 'To hold the mirror up to Nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.'
The mirror has been, from time immemorial, a favourite form of charm for the exorcism of devils, and, indeed, to this day some of the African tribes believe that the best defence they have against their extremely ugly devil is a mirror. If they keep one at hand, the devil must see himself in it before he can touch them, and be so terrified at his own ugliness that he will turn tail and flee.
We may take this symbolically--that a man shrinks from his worst self when it is revealed to him; but the untutored mind is prone to mistake symbol for fact. In this way, while the ancient philosophers may have used the mirror as a symbol of the higher nature of man, so polished and clarified that it showed him his lower nature in all its deformity, the crowd came to regard the crystal as an actual instrument of divination.
Some of the oldest romances in the world have to do with the magical operation of the mirror. In the Gesta Romanorum there is a story of a knight who went to Palestine, and who while there was shown by an Eastern magician in a mirror what was going on at home. In the Arabian Nights the story of Prince Ahmed has a variant, an ivory tube through which could be discovered the far-distant--a sort of anticipation of Sam Weller's 'double million magnifying gas microscope of hextra power.'
In the story of Prince Zeyn Alasnam, the enchanted mirror was able to reflect character, and was called the Touchstone of Virtue. Here again we have Hamlet's idea of holding the mirror up to Nature. The young King, Zeyn Alasnam, had eight beautiful statues of priceless value, and he wanted a ninth to make up his set. The difficulty was to find one beautiful enough; but the Prince of Spirits promised to supply one as soon as Zeyn should bring him a maiden at least fifteen years old, and of perfect beauty; only the maiden must not be vain of her charms, and she must never have told an untruth. Zeyn employed his magic mirror, and for a long time without success, as it always became blurred when he looked into it in the presence of a girl. At last he found one whose image was faithfully and brilliantly reflected--whose modesty and truthfulness were attested by the mirror. He took her with reluctance to the Prince of Spirits, because he had fallen in love with her himself; but his faithfulness to the contract was duly rewarded. On returning home, he found that the ninth statue, placed on its pedestal by the Prince of Spirits according to promise, was no cold marble, but the peerless and virtuous maiden whom he had discovered by means of his mirror.
Paracelsus, in one of his treatises on Magic, gives the following account of the uses to which 'the witches and evil spirits' sometimes put the mirror.
'They take a mirror set in a wooden frame and put it into a tub of water, so that it will swim on the top with its face directed towards the sky. On the top of the mirror, and encircling the glass, they lay a cloth saturated with blood, and thus they expose it to the influence of the moon; and this evil influence is thrown towards the moon, and radiating again from the moon, it may bring evil to those who love to look at the moon. The rays of the moon, passing through the ring upon the mirror, become poisoned, and poison the mirror; the mirror throws back the poisoned ether into the atmosphere, and the moon and the mirror poison each other, in the same manner as two malicious persons, by looking at each other, poison each other's souls with their eyes. If a mirror is strongly poisoned in this manner, the witch takes good care of it; and if she desires to injure someone, she takes a waxen image made in his name, she surrounds it with a cloth spotted with blood, and throws the reflex of the mirror through the opening in the middle upon the head of the figure, or upon some other part of its body, using at the same time her evil imagination and curses; and the man whom the image represents may then have his vitality dried up, and his blood poisoned by that evil influence, and he may become diseased and his body covered with boils.'
This, of course, is not divination, but sorcery.
Paracelsus gives very minute directions for the making of a magic mirror. The material should be the 'electrum magicum,' which is a compound of ten parts of pure gold, ten of silver, five of copper, two of tin, two of lead, one part of powdered iron, and five parts of mercury. When the planets Saturn and Mercury conjoin, the lead has to be melted and the mercury added. Then the metal must cool, while you wait for a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn and Mercury; when that occurs, you melt the amalgam of lead and mercury, and add the tin, previously melted in a separate crucible, at the exact moment of conjunction. Again you wait for a conjunction of either of the above-named planets with the Sun, when you add the gold; with the Moon, when you add the silver; with Venus, when you add the copper. Finally, when a conjunction of either of the planets occurs with Mars, you must complete your mixture with the powdered iron, and stir up the whole molten mass with a dry rod of witch-hazel.
Thus far your metal; but the mirror is not made yet. It must be of about two inches diameter, and must be founded in moulds of fine sand at the moment when a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus occurs. The mirror must be smoothed with a grindstone and polished with tripoly and a piece of lime-wood; but all the operations must be conducted only when the planetary influences are favourable.
By selecting the proper hours, three different mirrors may be prepared, and then, at a time of conjunction of two 'good' planets, while the Sun or Moon 'stands on the house of the lord of the hour of your birth,' the three mirrors should be placed in pure well-water and left for an hour. After this they may be wrapped in clean linen and kept ready for use.
With a mirror made in this way from the 'electrum magicum,' Paracelsus says:
'You may see the events of the past and the present, absent friends or enemies, and see what they are doing. You may see in it any object you may desire to see, and all the doings of men in daytime or at night. You may see in it anything that has been ever written down, said, or spoken in the past, and also see the person who said it, and the causes that made him say what he did, and you may see in it anything, however secret it may have been kept.'
Mirrors made of the 'electrum magicum' are warranted antipathetic to all evil influences, because there is hidden in the metal a 'heavenly power and influence of the seven planets.'
The plastic and creative power of the mind is the power of imagination; but the power of imagination is, or should be, controlled by the will. It is not alone the mediaeval dabblers in the occult who have adopted, or endeavoured to adopt, various means for suspending the will and making the imagination passive.
The ancient Pythoness, as Dr. Franz Hartmann, the modern German exponent of the Science of Magic, pointed out, attempted to heighten her receptivity by the inhalation of noxious vapours; uncivilized peoples use poison, or the maddening whirl of the dance; others use opium, Indian hemp, or other narcotics--all for the same purpose, to suspend the will, render the mind a blank, and excite the brain so as to produce morbid fancies and illusions. The fortune-teller and the clairvoyant employ methods of their own for concentrating their attention, so as produce a condition of mental passivity. The Indian adept prides himself on being able to extract volition and suspend imagination by the mere exercise of will.
A favourite device to bring about mental passivity has always been by staring at mirrors, or crystal, or sheets of water, or even pools of ink.
'There are numerous prescriptions for the preparation of magic mirrors,' says Dr. Hartmann in his work on Magic, 'but the best magic mirror will be useless to him who is not able to see clairvoyantly, while the natural clairvoyant may call that faculty into action by concentrating his mind on any particular spot, a glass of water, ink, a crystal, or anything else. For it is not in the mirror where such things are seen, but in the mind; the mirror merely serves to assist in the entering of that mental state which is necessary to produce clairvoyant sight. The best of all mirrors is the soul of man, and it should be always kept pure, and be protected against dust, and dampness, and rust, so that it may not become tarnished, but remain perfectly clear, and able to reflect the light of the divine spirit in its original purity.'
A German writer of the fifteenth century takes a less favourable view of what he calls pyromancy, although pyromancy is really divination by fire. He reports the practices of certain Masters of Magic, who made children look into a wretched mirror for the purpose of obtaining information in an unholy manner. 'Young boys are said to behold future things and all things, in a crystal. Base, desperate, and faint-hearted Christians practise it, to whom the shadow and the phantom of the devil are dearer than the truth of God. Some take a clear and beautifully polished crystal, or beryl, which they consecrate and keep clean, and treat with incense, myrrh, and the like. And when they propose to practise their art, they wait for a clear day, or select some clean chamber in which are many candles burning. The Masters then bathe, and take the pure child into the room with them, and clothe themselves in pure white garments, and sit down and speak in magic sentences, and then burn their magic offering, and make the boy look into the stone, and whisper in his ears secret words which have, as they think, some holy import, but which are verily words of the devil.'
A sixteenth-century German tells of a man at Elbingen, in Prussia, who 'predicted hidden truths' by means of a mirror, and sold the knowledge to his customers. Many crystal-seeing old hags are referred to as being upon terms of intimacy with Black Kaspar. Indeed, in German literature, both historical, philosophical, legendary, and romantic, we find endless references to the magic mirror and the divining crystal.
Modern romancists still find dramatic use for the old superstitions. Quite recently a novel of the present day centred its interest upon an ancient mirror, which exchanged its reflection for the mind of him who gazed into it--a practical and startling realization of the idea that the glass reveals one's true self. Then, not to multiply incidents, Wilkie Collins, in The Moonstone, introduces what Mr. Rudyard Kipling in another story calls the 'ink-pool'; and readers of Dante Gabriel Rossetti will recall to mind the doings of the Spirits of the Beryl.
In a large number of stories the magic mirror is not a looking-glass at all. But the beryl, the ink-pool, Dr. Dee's famous spherical speculum, the rock crystal, or even a glass of water, may all, according to the adepts, have the same properties as Vulcan's mirror, in which Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, beheld, according to Sir John Davies, a vision of all the wonder and grandeur of Queen Elizabeth's Court to be. Even a polished sword-blade has been asserted to have made an effective magic mirror, and it is recorded that Jacob Boehme penetrated into the innermost secrets of nature and the hearts of men by means of a tin cup.
As to cups, the Septuagint gives one to understand that the cup placed by Joseph in the sack of Benjamin in Egypt was not an ordinary drinking-vessel, but a divining-cup. Now, the way of divining with a cup was to fill it with pure water, and to read the images which were then reflected.
Some writers have supposed, from the mention of Urim and Thummim in Exodus, that divination by mirror was a recognised institution among the Jews. Urim signifies 'lights,' and Thummim 'reflections,' and the names were applied to the six bright and six dark precious stones on the breastplate of the high priest when he went to seek special revelations.
Cambuscan's mirror was, according to Chaucer, of Oriental origin. It was given by the King of Tartary to the King of Araby, and it seemed to possess all the virtues of several kinds of magic mirrors. Thus it showed whether love was returned, whether an individual confronted with it were friend or foe, and what trouble was in store for those who consulted it. Merlin's mirror, also called Venus's looking-glass, had some of these properties, but was made in Wales, and was given by Merlin to King Ryence. It revealed what was being done by friend or foe at a distance, and it also enabled the fair Britomart to read the features, and also the name, of her future husband.
The consultation of a pool, on certain special occasions, for the lineaments of 'the coming man,' has been a common enough practice with love-sick damsels in much more recent times.
The wonderful looking-glass of Lao, described by Lien Chi Altangi in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, reflected the mind as well as the body, and the Emperor Chusi used to make his ladies dress both their heads and their hearts before it every morning. Great, however, as are the Chinese in divination, and numerous as are their superstitions, we do not find,
pace Oliver Goldsmith, that the mirror occupies any prominent place in their magic.
One of the most famous dealers in catoptromancy (divination by mirror) in this country was Dr. John Dee, who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century. He had a speculum called the Shew Stone, and sometimes the Holy Stone, with which he divined by the aid of a medium named Kelly. This Kelly was a notoriously bad character, so his example does not carry out the popular idea that the seer must be a stainless child, or some absolutely pure-minded being. Dr. Dee professed to have a number of regular spirit-visitors, whom he described with much circumstantial minuteness, and thus his mirror-magic seems to have possessed more of the character of spiritualistic manifestations than of the usual Oriental crystallomancy.
The famous Cagliostro--Prince of Scoundrels, as Carlyle called him--used a bottle of pure water, into which he directed a child to gaze, with results which were not always satisfactory.
The Orientalist, Lane, published some sixty years ago, or more, a circumstantial narrative of an experience he had with an Egyptian magician, along with Mr. Salt, a British Consul. Invocations were liberally used, in order to summon the two genii of the magician, and verses were recited from the Koran, in order that the eyes of the medium--a boy--should be opened in a supernatural manner. The magician selected one at random from a group of boys, and drew in the palm of the boy's right hand a magic square, inscribed with Arabic figures. He then poured ink into the centre, and told the boy to gaze fixedly, while he himself proceeded to drop more written invocations, on slips of paper, into a chafing-dish.
For some time the boy saw nothing but the reflection of the magician, and then he began to describe various scenes. At last Lane asked that Lord Nelson should be called up, and the boy said that he saw a man in dark-blue clothes, with his left arm across his breast. It was explained that the boy saw things as in a mirror, and that Nelson's empty right sleeve worn across the breast naturally appeared in the glass as the left arm. Now, the boy may have heard of Nelson, but could scarcely have seen him, though the figure of so famous a man must have been familiar to the magician. Hypnotism has, therefore, been suggested as the explanation of what Lane witnessed, and which seemed so miraculous at the time.
Many scholars, philosophers, and scientific students of mediaeval times, who had no pretence to magic, had yet firm faith in the power of mirrors, constructed in a special manner and under auspicious planetary influences, to reveal both the distant-present and the future.
One of the modern adepts was a French magician, who foretold by his mirror the death of a Prince, and the regency of the Duc d'Orleans.
There are many published prescriptions for the making of a magic mirror, but that which has already been given from Paracelsus is a fair specimen of the ultra-scientific method. Among directions for the use of the crystal may be cited those of Barth:
'When a crystal has been ground and polished, it is dedicated to some spirit or other; this is called its consecration. Before being used, it is charged--that is, an invocation is made to the spirit, wherein a vision is requested of the things that one wishes to experience. Ordinarily, a young person is chosen to look into the glass and behold the prayed-for vision. After a little time the crystal becomes enveloped in a cloud, and a tiny vision appears, which represents in miniature the persons, scenes, and things that are necessary to supply the required information. When the information has been obtained, the crystal is discharged, and after receiving thanks for the services he has performed, the spirit is dismissed.'
In modern crystal-gazing and mirror-reading, however, there is no invocation.
An American spiritualist says that he once put a crystal into the hands of a lady who knew nothing about its reputed virtues, but who straightway began to describe a scene which she saw in it, and which turned out afterwards to be a simultaneous incident at Trebizond. The mediumistic influence of the spirit of a North American Indian may not commend the story to non-spiritualists.
The experiences of the Countess Wurmbrand, as related in her curious book, Visionen im Wasserglass, are more matter-of-fact, perhaps, but were also assisted by a mysterious spirit, who enabled her to read pictures in the glass and to describe them to her husband. She was more successful in her time than more recent experimenters and psychologists of her own country have been since.
The Society for Psychical Research have given much attention to the subject, and have reported some remarkable observations--especially those of Miss Goodrich, a lady who has made several scores of experiments of her own in crystal-reading, always taking notes immediately. She tried the back of a watch, a glass of water, a mirror, and other reflecting surfaces, before arriving at the conclusion that polished rock crystal affords the best speculum for divination.
Having reached this point, the lady draped her selected crystal in black, set it where no surrounding objects could be reflected in it, and sought it when in search of light and leading. Sometimes her consultations were very practical. Thus, one finds among her notes:
'I had carelessly destroyed a letter without preserving the address of my correspondent. I knew the county, and searching a map, recognised the name of the town, one unfamiliar to me, but which I was sure I should know when I saw it. But I had no clue to the name of the house or street, till at last it struck me to test the value of the crystal as a means of recalling forgotten knowledge. A very short inspection supplied me with "Hibbs House," in gray letters on a white ground, and having nothing better to suggest from any other source, I risked posting my letter to the address so strangely supplied. A day or two brought an answer headed "Hibbs House" in gray letters on a white ground.'
Let us take an example of another of Miss Goodrich's crystal-readings, and let it be remembered that they are all reported as experiments of our own day:
'One of my earliest experiences was of a picture, perplexing and wholly unexpected--a quaint oak chair, an old hand, a worn black coat-sleeve resting on the arm of the chair--slowly recognised as a recollection of a room in a country vicarage which I had not entered, and but seldom recalled, since I was a child of ten. But whence came this vision? What association has conjured up this picture? What have I done to-day? At length the clue is found. I have to-day been reading Dante, first enjoyed with the help of our dear old vicar many a year ago.'
And again: 'I happened to want the date of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which I could not recall, though feeling sure that I knew it, and that I associated it with some event of importance. When looking in the crystal, some hours later, I found a picture of an old man, with long, white hair and beard, dressed like a Lyceum Shylock, and busy writing in a large book with tarnished massive clasps. I wondered much who he was, and what he could possibly be doing, and thought it a good opportunity of carrying out a suggestion which had been made to me of examining objects in the crystal with a magnifying-glass. The glass revealed to me that my old gentleman was writing in Greek, though the lines faded away as I looked, all but the characters he had last traced, the Latin numerals LXX. Then it flashed into my mind that he was one of the Jewish Elders at work on the Septuagint, and that this date, 277 B.C., would serve equally well for Ptolemy Philadelphus. It may be worth while to add, though the fact was not in my conscious memory at the moment, that I had once learnt a chronology on a mnemonic system which substituted letters for figures, and the
memoria technica for this date was, "Now Jewish Elders indite a Greek copy."'
One may, perhaps, find a simple and easy explanation of Miss Goodrich's mirror-reading, in a theory of unconscious cerebration. The crystal simply assisted her memory, and recalled incidents and scenes, just as a chance odour, a bar of music, a word, a look, a name, will often do for most of us. Clearly there is nothing necessarily either magic or spiritualistic in this particular example of the magic mirror.
There are, however, some other experiments recorded which seem to be only explainable on a theory of telepathy; but Mr. Max Dessoir, commenting on the evidence of Miss Goodrich in an American Review, attributes the whole phenomena merely to 'revived memory.'
This is all very well as to past events, but what shall we say to a case such as the following, among Miss Goodrich's experiments?
'In January last I saw in the crystal the figure of a man crouching at a small window, and looking into the room from the outside. I could not see his features, which appeared to be muffled, but the crystal was particularly dark that evening, and the picture being an unpleasant one, I did not persevere. I concluded the vision to be a result of a discussion in my presence of the many stories of burglary with which the newspapers had lately abounded, and reflected with a passing satisfaction that the only windows in the house divided into four panes, as were those of the crystal picture, were in the front attic, and almost inaccessible. Three days later a fire broke out in that very room, which had to be entered from outside through the window, the face of the fireman being covered with a wet cloth as a protection from the smoke, which rendered access through the door impossible.'
Was this coincidence, or prevision, or what Mr. Dessoir calls the 'falsification of memory'? The thing was either a miracle, which none of us is prepared to accept, or the after-confusion of a vague foreboding with an actual occurrence in the mind of the observer. Mr. Dessoir suggested another explanation of crystal pictures in the doctrine of the double consciousness of the human soul; but that opens up another subject.
While we have seen that mirror and crystal-reading is one of the most ancient of occult practices, we have also seen that it is practised in our own country even at this day. Moreover, it is said that there is in England a wholesale manufacture of magic mirrors as a regular industry--the site of which, however, the present writer is unable to specify.
[The end]
Benjamin Taylor's essay: Magic Mirror