The Mirror: “That Cursed Thing”

[JON]

I arrived home to find a long brown paper parcel waiting. The attached letter was from my Mother. Her Aunt Emma had “passed away”, leaving her this mirror, as her closest relative. Mum disliked it. And couldn’t bear “that cursed thing” being in her house. She thought it was French, and 18th Century. And that the “symbolism” on it “alluded to a name”, in a rebus/pun. She’d tried to decipher it:

“Lis + Eye [Yeux] = Lisieux. Or, possibly, ‘Lisa ‘or ‘Alicia’. The Heart and Ribbons could mean ‘dearly departed’.”

Certainly the clouded glass and black paint further added to “funereal” impression. The former made it useless as a mirror. But the letter advised me against replacing it. Mum didn’t say why. Or how Emma came to own the mirror. As it gave me the creeps, I put it in the Guest Bedroom. [Attached is an image of the mirror.]

My own reading of the ‘emblems’ was this:

Heart [Coeur] + Lis = Coralie. Lis = Lily [of The Valley]. So: Coralie Du Val. A bit of Internet research turned up such a girl, who had died in 1756, aged 15/16. It was her Looking Glass, then. I found out the accuracy of this phrase later.

One evening I was preparing the room for a friend’s visit. Suddenly the bulb went. I went to get another. But something also made me bring the letter. I found an unearthly glow in the darkened room.

In the mirror was a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl in a white dress. She wasn’t pleased. And demanded to know why I had the mirror. [I can speak French, BTW.] I told her Mum had rejected it, and flourished the letter. ‘Coralie’ was angry - it was supposed to “pass down the female line”. And graphically showed me what she meant - a literal ‘line’ of spectral women. Headed, I noted, by Great Aunt Emma… .

[Wolfjk]

Originally Posted by JON

I arrived home to find a long brown paper parcel waiting. The attached letter was from my Mother. Her Aunt Emma had “passed away”, leaving her this mirror, as her closest relative. Mum disliked it. And couldn’t bear “that cursed thing” being in her house. She thought it was French, and 18th Century. And that the “symbolism” on it “alluded to a name”, in a rebus/pun. She’d tried to decipher it:

“Lis + Eye [Yeux] = Lisieux. Or, possibly, ‘Lisa ‘or ‘Alicia’. The Heart and Ribbons could mean ‘dearly departed’.”

Certainly the clouded glass and black paint further added to “funereal” impression. The former made it useless as a mirror. But the letter advised me against replacing it. Mum didn’t say why. Or how Emma came to own the mirror. As it gave me the creeps, I put it in the Guest Bedroom. [Attached is an image of the mirror.]

My own reading of the ‘emblems’ was this:

Heart [Coeur] + Lis = Coralie. Lis = Lily [of The Valley]. So: Coralie Du Val. A bit of Internet research turned up such a girl, who had died in 1756, aged 15/16. It was her Looking Glass, then. I found out the accuracy of this phrase later.

One evening I was preparing the room for a friend’s visit. Suddenly the bulb went. I went to get another. But something also made me bring the letter. I found an unearthly glow in the darkened room.

In the mirror was a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl in a white dress. She wasn’t pleased. And demanded to know why I had the mirror. [I can speak French, BTW.] I told her Mum had rejected it, and flourished the letter. ‘Coralie’ was angry - it was supposed to “pass down the female line”. And graphically showed me what she meant - a literal ‘line’ of spectral women. Headed, I noted, by Great Aunt Emma… .

Hi Jon,

Location: Submarine in Loch Ness or Dark Side of the Moon

You have obviously been down there! THIS IS A MONSTER OF A DREAM!
Cheers Wolfjk

[JON]

Originally Posted by Wolfjk

Hi Jon, You have obviously been down there! THIS IS A MONSTER OF A DREAM!
Cheers Wolfjk

Thank you. There's no depths my imagination can not reach! When I first drew the mirror afterwards, the Fleur-de-Lis reminded me of flames. [See attached.] So, clearly, Mademoiselle Coralie was a fiery/passionate young woman. Hope you are having a good weekend. Weather here is superb

[JON]

A Mayan and Aztec god called Tezcatlipoca - ‘Smoking Mirror’- aka Hurakan, ‘One Foot’. His leg, eaten by the Earth Monster, was replaced by an obsidian mirror. His name alludes to the mirror’s ‘secrets’ only being revealed when the smoke cleared. Being a sorcerer, Tezcatlipoca used his mirror to see events unfold, into people’s hearts and minds, and into the future.

The magus and astologer to Elizabeth I, John Dee [1527-1608] had a mirror allegedly brought back back from Mexico by the conqueror of the Aztecs, Hernan Cortes. [Attached are images of Dee, Tezcatlipoca, and a Pre-Columbian obsidian 'scrying' mirror.]

Dee's French counterpart was the prophet and mystic Nostradamus [Michel de Notredame, 1503-1566]. In 1560, while her son, Francis II lay dying, the Queen, Catherine de Medici summoned Nostradamus. She wished to learn the fate of the rest of her family.

His 'magic mirror' had the Hebrew names of God in blood on the frame: Yahweh, Elohim, Mitatron and Adonai. To conjure up a 'mirror room', the sage invoked the Angel Anael. It formed from clouds of dim light in the dark leaden glass. [Andrew Lang, in the 19th century, noted that, in “successful experiments”, crystal balls go misty, then black, before “the pictures emerge”]

The number of times each son encircled this virtual chamber denoted their reigns in years. Like Alice in Wonderland's mirror world, this room could be seen as a ‘parallel universe/dimension’.

The closest to my dream is a scene in Act 4 Scene 1 in Shakespeare's Macbeth. The witches made prophecies to him. One led him to murder King Duncan to get the throne. Another leads him to kill Banquo, because his best friend's line will be kings. Not Macbeth's. The witches, in this scene, show Macbeth [graphically] Banquo's royal descendants stretching away behind him.