Origin 1400 to 1600
A dark reflective surface used for scrying, in which the practitioner gazes into the reflection until images are reported. Blackened glass and obsidian are usual. The technique is one of a family that includes gazing into water, ink, crystal and flame, and the psychological mechanism, a featureless visual field producing imagery under sustained attention, is documented independently of any claim about its source.
John Dee's scrying materials survive in the British Museum, including an obsidian mirror of Mexica manufacture that reached England after the Spanish conquest. Dee did not scry himself; Edward Kelley did the seeing, and Dee wrote it down. The mirror's route from Mexica ritual use into an Elizabethan magician's cabinet is a fair illustration of how these objects travel.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItTrained or authorised specialists only 2 ConsecrationNot consecrated; an instrument, not a consecrated object 2 Attributions
TraditionWestern esoteric practice, Renaissance magic 1 Physical Form
MaterialBlackened glass, obsidian, polished stone 1 Origins
Origin Period Learn More
The Dark Surface That Gives Back Images
The scrying mirror is a dark reflective surface used for scrying, in which the practitioner gazes into the reflection until images are reported to appear, and it belongs to a very old family of techniques for seeing the hidden.
Gazing into the dark
The mirror is deliberately dark, of blackened glass or polished obsidian, so that it gives no clear reflection but a depth into which the gazer looks steadily until, in the practice account, images, symbols or visions arise, which are then interpreted. The technique is one of a wider set of scrying methods that use a still surface, water, ink, crystal or dark glass, to occupy and quiet the sight so that inward images may come, and the mirror is simply one such surface. The reported images are understood in different frameworks as messages, memories or the products of the practitioner own mind.
In the Western tradition
The dark mirror is associated with Renaissance and later Western magic, and the most famous instance is the obsidian mirror connected with John Dee, the Elizabethan scholar and magician, an object of Mesoamerican origin now in a museum collection, which fixed the mirror in the popular image of the magus. Modern esoteric and Pagan practice has kept the scrying mirror as a tool of divination and vision. The object works the same way as the crystal ball, the fame of which has rather eclipsed it, and both belong to the long history of scrying that reaches back well before the traditions that now use them.
Blackened Glass, Polished Stone, and One Famous Example in a Museum
The simplest scrying mirror is a convex piece of glass painted black on the reverse side, a technique any competent glazier can produce, giving a dark reflective surface without the difficulty of working stone.
Obsidian and polished stone
Aztec artisans produced flat, highly polished obsidian mirrors through skilled lapidary work, grinding and buffing volcanic glass to an even, reflective black surface, objects made for ritual and divinatory use in Mesoamerica centuries before European magicians took an interest in them. The best documented case of that later interest is the Elizabethan scholar John Dee's obsidian mirror, an Aztec object that reached him through trade and now sits in the British Museum, a direct physical link between two very different magical traditions using the same manufactured object for a similar purpose.
Who makes and uses them, and their upkeep
No restriction governs who may own or make a scrying mirror, home made versions using a picture frame and black paint are common among modern practitioners, though effective use is generally considered to depend on trained practice at scrying rather than on the mirror's materials or maker. Practitioners commonly keep a scrying mirror wrapped in dark cloth between uses, both to protect the surface from scratches and, in the view of some traditions, to keep it from being looked into by others when not in use.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Dee did not scry himself; Edward Kelley did the seeing, and Dee wrote it down.
John Dee's scrying materials survive in the British Museum, including an obsidian mirror of Mexica manufacture.
Belongs to Tradition
Disciplines That Use This
A dark surface, the classic instrument of the practice.
Instances
Sources
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