The Artifact: The Mirrors of Dr. Dee

and occult. He advised Queen Elizabeth, sought communion with angelic beings, advocated British expansion, and plunged the depths of human knowledge in an age of great change. While D's most famed possession was his expensive library of books, he was also known to possess various mirrors and glasses of peculiar power. One of these was the magical speculum, or the devil's

looking glass. If you're envisioning an ominous, framed mirror of darkness, you may be disappointed to see what looks more like a slate painting palette, or perhaps part of an ikea end table. The mirror itself has a diameter of eighteen point four centimeters and a width of three centimeters. It is circular with a perforated notch for hanging, handling, or mounting. The mirror substance is that of polished obsidian, volcanic in origin and believed to have been crafted by the Aztecs

between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. If you've visited the British Museum you may have seen it. The mirrors a leather case features an inscription informing us that it is quote the black stone into which Dr d used to call his spirits unquote. These words are attributed to the eighteenth century art historian Horace Walpole, along with a pair of crystal spheres. D used this object in his pursuit of angelology and sorcery, possibly brought back from the voyages

of Sir Francis Drake. The obsidian mirror was likely used in scrying rituals by Aztec priests in the worship of tez Catlepoca, the god also known as the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, due to the black mirrors used by his priests and his overall connection to the dark volcanic glass of obsidian. But D also possessed another amazing mirror, an artifact bequeathed to him by Sir William Pickering in sixteen seventy five. It was a noted curio of the time.

D even demonstrated the properties of this mirror to Queen Elizabeth herself. As Benjamin Woollowee points out in his book The Queen's Conjuror, it is unlikely that D ever used this mirror in his occult practices. No, the Great Perspective Glass had a place in John D's purely logical interests. Wooly writes that D kept the mirror proudly displayed in a corner of his study. Anyone who lunged at the mirror with a dagger or sword found their reflection lunging

back at them with like hand and weapon. This, of course, is not the typical way of mirrors, and the effect was said to be quite unsettling, But D explained the effect to his guests via the mathematics of perspective, rather than the supernatural. A typical mirror doesn't so much as

flip your image, but turn it inside out. The text on your shirt appears backwards in the mirror, just as the text also appears backwards if you were to withdraw your head into the shirt and read the text from within the garment, So the great perspective glass was likely a nonreversing mirror, which can be accomplished by connecting two regular mirrors at their edges at a ninety degree angle,

among other strategies. Of course, even a typical mirrors reflection can feel unsettling, is Argentinean writer Jorge Lewis Borges wrote, quote, the crystal spies on us. If with in the four walls of a bedroom a mirror stairs, I am no longer alone. There is someone there in the dawn reflections mutely stage a show unquote. As we grow accustomed to the inside out stranger, how stranger still is the rarely seen non reversed stranger, or the smoky shade of tes

Catli Poca's dark Realm. Tune in for additional editions of the Artifact each week, hosted by either Joe or myself. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.