Magic mirror

“ While we have seen that mirror and crystal-reading is one of the most ancient of occult practices, we have also seen that it is practised in our own country even at this day. Moreover, it is said that there is in England a wholesale manufacture of magic mirrors as a regular industry—the site of which, however, the present writer is unable to specify. ”

“ art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls. ”

“ By holding a magic mirror very obliquely to the light one can discern traces of the pattern in the face, especially if one is accustomed to examine optical surfaces for small inequalities of curvature. ”

“ The magic mirror must refuse to reflect the irrelevant and non-essential, and must thereby concentrate attention on the pertinent and essential phases of nature. That mirror is the best that reflects the least which does not matter, and, as a consequence, reflects most clearly that which does. ”

“ Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass. ”

“ Then, after a little, he told me that one of his objects was to initiate me into certain mysteries of white magic, to teach me how to construct the magic mirror in which the majority of persons could glance through space, see and talk with the dead, and in all things, save a few, have an unerring guide through life. ”

“ Another variety of the same experiment is to place a ruled diffraction-grating of 100 lines to the inch (ruled in a silvered surface on glass) close to a bright light, and with a short-focus lens project the lines upon a screen. Then interpose the magic mirror to throw the luminous lines upon another screen, when they will be seen with the usual magic image; the bright lines concentrating into the bright parts and avoiding the darker parts of the luminous pattern. ”

“ The arrows show the direction of the reflected image. b. The second mirror, also at an angle of 45 degrees; the face of the person looking in at a is reflected at b. c is the partition between the rooms.
One of the most startling effects that can be displayed to persons ignorant of the common laws of the reflection of light, is called the "magic mirror," and is described by Sir Walter Scott in his graphic story of that name. The apparatus for the purpose must be well planned and fixed in a proper room for that purpose, and if carefully conducted, may surprise even the learned. ”

“ An enchanter’s mirror, on which, with a word, could be made to rise all apparitions of the universe, grouped in new relations; a magic ring, that could transport the wearer, himself invisible, into each region of grandeur or beauty ”

“ The crystal, etc., serves to focus the psychic energy of the person, in such a way that the astral senses are induced to function more readily than ordinarily. The student is cautioned against regarding the crystal, or magic mirror, as possessing any particular magic power in itself. On the contrary, the crystal, or magic mirror serves merely as a physical instrument for the astral vision, just as the telescope or microscope performs a similar office for the physical vision. ”

“ On removing the pressure it was found to retain permanently all the qualities of a good magic mirror, though it is slightly more convex than mirrors ordinarily are. Since then it has been found that many mirrors which, when purchased, showed no magic properties, can be converted into magic mirrors, some by application of screw pressure, some by mere bending by hand over the knee, some by burnishing under pressure the pattern at the back. ”

“ It is much [19] more likely that the mirror bore on its back a large flower, than that it bore the word meaning a large flower.
Except for obscure references such as these, there is no record of real magic mirrors prior to 1832. Yet a few did undoubtedly exist. There were some in the collection of the royal family of Savoy at Turin, which were later examined by Professor Govi. There was one reputed to be magical in Berlin. The great Von Humboldt thought it worth his while, in 1830, to bring this mirror to Paris to show it to his confrères of the Académie des Sciences ”

“ One may, perhaps, find a simple and easy explanation of Miss Goodrich's mirror-reading, in a theory of unconscious cerebration. The crystal simply assisted her memory, and recalled incidents [Pg 56] and scenes, just as a chance odour, a bar of music, a word, a look, a name, will often do for most of us. Clearly there is nothing necessarily either magic or spiritualistic in this particular example of the magic mirror.
There are, however, some other experiments recorded which seem to be only explainable on a theory of telepathy ”

“ The introduction of the magic lantern provided the magicians of the seventeenth century with a very powerful instrument with which to continue their deceptions. The use of the concave mirror, which does not appear to have had any accessories worth speaking of, required a separate apartment, or at least a hiding-place of some sort that was difficult to discover under ordinary circumstances ”

“ Among the more innocent illusions of art, I may remind you of concave and cylindrical mirrors and lenses, the magic lanthorn, “les ombres chinoises,”and the phantasmagoria of Cagliastro, by which daggers appear to strike the breast of the spectator, and images of objects in other rooms are thrown on the walls of that in which we are sitting. A mirror, thus accidentally placed, has afforded the evidence of murder within our own time.
The duration of impressions on the eye, is another source of illusion. An image remains on the retina, I believe, about the eighth of a second ”

“ MIRROR MAGIC Strictly speaking there are fewer illusions found in the practice of the magician than is generally supposed; that is, the eye usually delivers correctly to the intellect, but the judgment errs for various reasons. The “illusion” is due to false assumptions, to the distracting words, to unduly accented superfluous movements of the magician ”

“ If the polished disc of a mirror so prepared be turned towards the sun, and the image be reflected on a wall, it presents distinctly the clear portion and the dark portion, the one of the fine, and the other of the rough copper.” Ou-tseu-hing states, that he had ascertained this by a careful inspection of the fragments of a broken mirror.
It is easy for an ignorant and superstitious mind to confound a very harmless and simple instrument with one of magical power. We have an example of this in Dodwell’s description of his residence at Athens. ”

“ And thus it was that throughout the long space of three thousand years people did not clearly discover that in the case of magic mirrors the most important factor was the person that saw, and not the instruments of seeing. ”

“ Probably the most common of all of the illusions which depend upon mirrors is the Talking Head upon a table. The illustration is almost self-explanatory. The apparatus consists only of a mirror fixed to the side legs of the table. The mirror hides the body of the girl, who is on her knees and seated on a small stool, and reflects the straw which covers the floor so as to make it appear continuous under the table; likewise it reflects the front leg of the table so as to make it appear at an equal distance from the other side and thus produce the illusion of the fourth leg. ”

“ One of the latter, in his possession, an old mirror covered at the back with Chinese characters, has no magic qualities at all. The large rectangular mirror is slightly convex, but more so in its longer direction than in its breadth. The bamboos in the pattern, though [37] not very highly raised, are in very sharp relief, the mirror being, apparently, an ichi mai buki, or artist’s proof. There are two raised lumps on the back, apparently the remains of the parts where the metal was poured into the mould ”

“ Behind it is a concave mirror set on the floor at an angle in an opening in the wall. Within the other room an arm and hand of wax, holding a dagger, are mounted so as to descend, while brilliantly illumined, towards the concave mirror.
A person can show his or her face instead of his arm 223or the false limb, and something rather laughable than terrifying is recommended for such experiments to a juvenile auditory.
THE GHOST ILLUSION. In The Secret Out the explanation of “The Witch of Endor” trick showed how spectres may be made to appear by aid of the magic lantern. ”

“ Magic Mirrors.—Among the many amusing and curious articles which the amateur mechanic can turn out, metallic mirrors having concealed designs on them, and which can be brought into view by breathing on the polished surface, are both funny and easy to produce. ”

“ If magic jugs and marvelous automatons make up most of the contents of the Pneumatics and Automatic Theater, [Pg 193] comic and magic mirrors play a prominent part in the Catoptrics. The spectator sees himself upside down, with three eyes, two noses, or an otherwise distorted countenance. By means of two rectangular mirrors which open and close on a common axis Pallas is made to spring from the head of Zeus. Instructions are given how to place mirrors so that the person approaching will see no reflection of himself but only whatever apparition you select for him to see. ”

“ What a strange thing a mirror is! and what a wondrous affinity exists between it and a man's imagination! For this room of mine, as I behold it in the glass, is the same, and yet not the same. It is not the mere representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared. The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realm of art ”

“ Magic lanterns mounted on wheels and images projected on screens of smoke make ghost shadow plays—Robertson “resurrects” Louis XVI—Théâtre Robert Houdin, Paris, 1845, Polytechnic Institution, London, 1848 and Nazi Army, 1940—all use magic shadows for supernatural effects.
The tongue-twisting word, Phantasmagoria, stands for a certain type of light and shadow show popular immediately after the French Revolution. It marked a definite throwback in the story of magic shadows. ”

“ As the magician after having summoned up and marshalled before him a phantasmagoria of shadowy figures, at length perceives them fading from his sight, and, conscious that the spell is fast departing, lays down his rod, so we, approaching to the end of our task, find that the charm is beginning to lose its power, and that the beings we have conjured up are melting rapidly from our vision. Even now they seem to us only as a dream. Yet there is one glimpse more afforded to us before the magic curtain falls on them forever. ”

“ By daytime it is commonplace enough, and lends itself with facile ease to the cheerful and homely nature of its surroundings. But at dusk, at night, by lamplight, or under the white, insinuating moonbeams, the mirror assumes a distinctive and uncanny character of its own. Then it is that it reflects that which we shrink from seeing. Then it is that our own eyes meet us with an unnatural stare and a piercing intelligence, as if another soul were watching us from their depths with furtive, startled inquiry. ”

“ They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and shew him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams.
The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of the uniformity of nature, but in its misapprehension of the particular laws which govern the sequence of natural events. ”

“ He drew the sheet from the mirror, and revealed another veil of gauze resting upon the glass, as, in some houses, the most prized pictures are sometimes doubly covered. "You see; it is just a mirror, a full-length mirror. But, oh, my dear Vane, the wonderfulness of this mirror! I have only to look into this mirror; to veil it; and then, when next you glance into it, if it be within the hour, my soul, my spirit, my very self, passes from the face of the mirror to you! That is the whole secret, or at least, the manifestation of it! ”

“ A plate, a glass, a water bottle, and a candle shine in space with the light of glow-worms.
A sinister guest in the form of a skeleton sits opposite the place occupied by the near-sighted gentleman, who has disappeared, and whose eyeglasses alone have held their own before this ghastly apparition. Finally, to complete the illusion, hands are seen moving over the heads of the spectators, and those multiply, and then disappear, only to appear anew. ”

“ When light and glass get together it is difficult to divine what tricks they are going to perform. But some of these are very interesting, if they are a little wild, and there are very few of us who do not enjoy them.
For instance, what a delight to any company, be it composed of [11] young folks or old, is a magic-lantern! The most beautiful and the most absurd pictures may be made to appear upon the wall or screen. ”