I tend to start these posts with a quote from a famous song or words from a bestselling book. For a change, how about some words from a book I hope will soon become a bestseller?
“Not quite,” she said gently, “look closer. As each image gets repeated it loses strength, it passes closer to the realm of the supernatural. As it does so, some essence of its being becomes captured by the spirits that reside within that realm and are so lessened. The entities within the realm beyond the glass of the mirror absorb and feed on the lifeblood within the images and they become fainter and darker. There are no more than perhaps a hundred or so reflections, although it may not appear so to you.”
I peered intently into the depths of the glass and saw that she was correct. The images did diminish as they disappeared into the distance. Each smaller and fainter, more shrouded in shadows than the last.
“Do you also see how thin the divide is stretched between this world and the next?”
For a moment I was puzzled as to what she wanted me to see, but as I stared at our images, I began to realize there was something wrong. As I scoured the farthest images, so small that my eyes ached, I discerned a darkness behind a distant, tiny reflection of myself. I leaned in closer to see better. My reflection also leaned in and revealed a dark and shadowy shape that stood at my shoulder, dark and indistinct, but moving, its face close to my own, almost touching.
“What is it. What do I see?” I whispered, still staring at the dark shape that stood behind me.
What Joseph is looking into in the story, are two scrying mirrors, set facing each other to create a seeming ‘infinity’ of reflections.
You can read the whole story by clicking on the book cover below.
Scrying can be interchanged with terms like ‘seeing’ or ‘peeping’. The word itself comes from the English word ‘descry’ which means ‘to make out dimly’ or ‘to reveal’. It is the practice of looking into a suitable medium, usually reflective, to detect the presence of a paranormal entity or vision/message. The medium can be things like the crystal balls, stones or glass. One of the more infamous mediums is the scrying mirror. Scrying, regardless of medium can be traced back through the ages, as far back as 3000 B.C. in China.
Since the day when Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, humankind has been enthralled by the facets of the worlds, and the possible insights into paranormal realms they reflect.
Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, for instance, made a magic mirror that showed the past, present and future.
Perseus used the mirror of his shield to defeat Medusa. Anybody who looked directly at the face of Medusa was turned to stone, Perseus defeated her by fighting her by looking only at her reflection.
In Europe, it has long been a tradition to cover the mirrors in the home of someone recently deceased. The belief is that the soul of the dead person could easily become entrapped within the hidden realm of the mirror, unable to depart and find peace in the afterlife.
And then there was John Dee. Born in 1527 he became Queen Mary’s astrologer, but he was also an astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher. The application of these sciences all held one common theme, Dee sought to use them to find a way to speak directly to God. Dee had a scrying mirror built from obsidian and for seven years he claimed to have used the device to communicate with angels who taught him the original language use by humankind before the fall.
Dee created a massively convoluted mathematical system in which to achieve his communications and in later years it greatly influenced members of the magical society of the Golden Dawn and the esteemed Aleister Crowley. You can read more about The Golden Dawn and Crowley below.
Mr. Crowley – did you talk to the dead?
Many modern concepts of magic, wicca and the paranormal stem…
Keep reading
I hope you enjoyed this post. Give me a follow, like and a share on Goodreads or social media. Join the blog to read more like this.
Writer & Novelist 