The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Thanks for starting this topic! When I was a kid, I had picked up from somewhere that putting a candle in front of a mirror allows it to light up the room better. Where I live, blackouts are pretty regular annoyances during storm season, so I made good use of that tip...Except, it occurred to larval-me, a mirror reflected everything in its sight. So, there would be a room in the mirror, and therefore more darkness for the candle and its double to light up. As it turns out, there's such a thing as a privative, so even if modern mirrors are good at imitating light patterns, and most sight-having people are all about the light patterns, the "world" in the mirror doesn't necessarily take up resources.

Some Feng Shui books I read advised the strategic position of really very tiny mirrors...too tiny for me to believe that it actually does very much?

And as for the seven years bad luck of a broken mirror...I don't believe it, but I'm also interested in finding out why the belief exists.

I also wonder that some animals apparently catch a reflection of themselves in the mirror and think that it's another animal of the same species. Sure, until the invention of the mirror it was awfully difficult for people to know what their own face looked like, so if I hadn't been raised to the visual vocabulary of "a mirror" then I'd be weirded out too. But there ought to be some clue other than the visual that it's just a mirror.

Reflections do happen in nature, like the surface of a stagnant pool of water, so perhaps more domesticated animals could recognize mirrors instinctively as, more simply, the reflective property of stagnant water but mounted vertically somehow because human are strange, ultimately nothing to worry about.


So, to me a mirror can represent personal recognition as well as vanity. The subjective experience of a concept, for example...hypocrisy, is different that the experience of dissociating enough to see a contradiction and consider it hypocritical of a person in a situation. Lack of reflection is what makes hypocrisy possible, although reflection is an artifice that can be inaccurate and untrue.

 

I've never thought about the physics end of mirrors and how they work. It's an interesting thought though. Especially if one considers the concept of alternate realms not taking in any resources but still seeming to contain them. Or at least creating the illusion of containing them.

I've never actually read much into Feng Shui (never enough space to work with wherever I've lived, or the resources to do much about decor anyway). I may need to google how small these mirrors actually are.

I would be interested in finding out the origins of the 7 years bad luck superstition myself. I mean.. there must be a reason why it's 7 years and not 4 or 10, right?

My animals have never freaked out in front of a mirror, but they have in some cases sat right in front of one before and tried to figure it out. Of course there is the possibility they had been shown a mirror earlier in their life before they came to me and were already familiar with it not being a threatening thing too. I guess it's true though that there are no vertical reflective surfaces that are naturally occurring in nature... unless there are some crystalline formations around that I've never seen/heard of before (which is entirely possible).

Grin.

I love playing with people's heads over the internet. Putting thought and emotions into their heads.

I like to think id be a natural horror author.

I gave you rep for that last post. It was such evocative prose. Of course, I *am* a horror writer...

Grin.

I love playing with people's heads over the internet. Putting thought and emotions into their heads.

I like to think id be a natural horror author.

 
Only one way to really find out. I look forward to a signed first ed. of your horror book! :

Haha, ok then! As long as the lights are on. ^^

Although Bloody Mary in supernatural was able to travel between reflective surfaces in daylight so... just saying. >.>

Yeah, but I hate that show so I'm safe. XD

Only one way to really find out. I look forward to a signed first ed. of your horror book! :

 
Hmmm. Prepare to scream.

Or go, "eeeewwww, with a goat? And demon tentacles and blood? Yuck!"

I've heard the explanation that broken mirrors bringing bad luck comes from the fact mirrors used to be really expensive to produce, so wealthy people would tell their servants they would receive 7 years bad luck if they broke it.

 
I'm always a little suspicious of this sort of explanation for superstitions, because it seems a bit too tidy and rational - like if that was the only basis for it, it either wouldn't have stuck as a belief, or there would be far more beliefs with a similar origin (nobody thinks that, say, spilling perfume is bad luck.)

Valid point. Have you ever been able to dig into these "tidy" reasons for other superstitions and found anything else that may have been the origin? I never have, but there could be other explanations buried out their in folklore that I haven't come across before either.

 
I did a bit more research into the subject and found this: http://www.mirrorhistory.com/mirror-facts/broken-mirror/ It goes into a further explanation of the spiritual/ magical reasoning behind why breaking a mirror brought such bad luck.

I did a bit more research into the subject and found this: http://www.mirrorhistory.com/mirror-facts/broken-mirror/ It goes into a further explanation of the spiritual/ magical reasoning behind why breaking a mirror brought such bad luck.

Interesting, but I wish there were sources cited for the Roman superstition that it took 7 years for a soul to renew.

It does make some sense I think that mirrors reflect a person and therefore breaking a mirror is breaking yourself, except that a person's reflection doesn't stay in a mirror. You could be breaking, like...the shower curtain's soul, by fiddling with the medicine cabinet hinge.

Or maybe it's more like creating a bond with one's own reflection in the mirror and it's that which is missed when the mirror breaks. Or maybe it's breaking the connection with the otherworld, which it might seem that we default to the thisworld but if it's just more wholesome to have both a mundane and uncanny life then there we go.