MIRROR MAGIC & SCRYING · LESSON 1 OF 6 · 11 MIN · FREE
From Greek catoptromancy to John Dee's obsidian speculum.
Scrying — gazing into a reflective or translucent surface to receive images or insight — is one of the oldest and most widespread forms of divination. Mirror work in particular has a long, well-documented history.
Scrying — gazing into a reflective or translucent surface to receive images or insight — is one of the oldest and most widespread forms of divination. Mirror work in particular has a long, well-documented history.
The Greek word catoptromancy means divination by mirrors. The traveller Pausanias describes a spring at a sanctuary of Demeter at Patrae where the sick lowered a mirror on a cord until it just touched the water, prayed, and then looked into it to see whether the patient would live or die.
Long before glass mirrors, people gazed into still water, ink, oil or polished stone. Bowl-divination appears in ancient Near Eastern texts, and the Greek Magical Papyri describe "lekanomancy" — divination using a bowl of water and oil, often with a young boy as the seer.
Dr John Dee (1527–1608/9), mathematician and adviser to Elizabeth I, worked from the 1580s with the scryer Edward Kelley to communicate with angels. Their sessions, recorded in Dee's diaries and later published by Méric Casaubon in 1659, produced the "Enochian" system of angelic language and tables.
The British Museum holds a polished obsidian mirror associated with Dee. It is Aztec in origin, probably brought to Europe after the Spanish conquest of Mexico — where obsidian mirrors were linked to the god Tezcatlipoca, the "Smoking Mirror".
In the 19th century, crystal balls and black mirrors became fashionable among spiritualists and occultists. Writers on the subject stressed patience, regular sittings and a quiet, dim room.
A dark, reflective surface does several things at once: it gives the eyes nothing definite to fix on, it softens the boundary between seeing and imagining, and it carries centuries of symbolism as a doorway or a "second world". Modern psychology has even studied the strange-face illusions that arise when people gaze at a mirror in low light — which is one reason scrying should be approached gently (see A Safe Scrying Practice).
Fill a dark bowl with water in a dimly lit room. Sit for five minutes, gazing softly at the surface without expecting anything. Note what you notice — physically and mentally.
4 questions — choose an answer to check it.
1.What material is John Dee's famous "magic mirror" made of?
2.What is catoptromancy?
3.Where was the obsidian mirror associated with John Dee made?
4.According to Pausanias, how did the sick use the spring at Patrae?
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