Mirror as Portal

We’ve all had our own secret relationships with mirrors at some point or another through our lives: the reflection through which we obsess with our own self image. Sometimes a mirror is the first thing we get to when we wake up in the morning; other times, we avoid looking into one. Full-length mirrors are strategically placed in our homes, a portal into exploration of self; the tiny ones we carry become our reality check. If we find ourselves alone with one in a public restroom, we are sometimes struck with what we see there – the changes we hadn’t noticed before; a curve or a bulge we stop to admire; the stranger we fear or had not anticipated.

Mirrors provide all kinds of useful functions, many of which fascinate us, or at the very least, play with our perception in some way. We use large, unframed mirrors to create an illusion of space, or to make a room appear larger. We put mirrors on the ceiling over our beds for a source of erotic stimulation. Amusement parks build Halls of Mirrors, deliberately distorted for our own entertainment. Rotating disco balls at clubs covered in small mirrors cast moving spots of light across a dance floor. In the ancient Chinese system of Feng Shui, practitioners believe that a mirror will help to energize a room. And the metaphor “smoke and mirrors” – used frequently in pop culture references to indicate deception or pretense – came from the magician’s illusion: making objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a confusing burst of smoke.

Jimi Hendrix wrote a song called a Room Full of Mirrors, and in a biography of the same name, Charles Cross describes a man who “had an extraordinary sense of self-awareness, and an uncanny ability to use music to express emotional truths.” He talks about a two-by-four-foot mirror that Jimi had created. “Inside the frame sat fifty-odd pieces of a shattered mirror, set in clay in the exact position they would have held upon the breaking of the mirror. The shards all point toward the center, where an unbroken plate-size circle rests.” It was, according to Jimi’s father, his Room Full of Mirrors. The song, Cross says, “tells the story of a man trapped in a world of self-reflection so powerful, it haunts him even in his dreams.”

By far the most fascinating use of a mirror I ever heard was from a teacher I once worked with, who said that if you ever find yourself in a lucid dream (awake in a dream and able to direct it), you can look for your reflection in a mirror to “lock” you in.

Recently, I had the good fortune to interview one of the most interesting people I have ever met. A scholar, architectural historian, and a specialist in Western esoteric traditions, he struck me as a sort of a mystic Sherlock Holmes. Frank Albo penned the Hermetic Code, a book about his groundbreaking discoveries of Freemasonic symbolism in the Manitoba Legislative Building. He spoke to me about the cornerstone of Hermetic philosophy, the concept “as above, so below; so below, as above” -- that the entire universe, and all things in it, is a sea of mirrors.

In other words, he said, everything is inter-connected.

Ah – yes, everything is inter-connected. Well I’ve lived by that philosophy for most of my life. But hearing it described in this way – namely, a sea of mirrors – inspired me to think more deeply into it. For as long as I can remember, even in the throes of dire escapist behavior, I’ve wanted in. I’ve wanted to know that stranger in the mirror. I’ve wanted to have the courage of heart to embrace what I see there; to perceive the “as above” reflected in her face. I don’t want to wake up at 62, or 75, to discover I am still removed from what I know.

For that is surely what the second half of life is about – learning to relax into what we know, and to meet the stranger in the mirror at last.



LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own front door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letter from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott


I invite my readers to share their thoughts on the word “mirror”: stories or myths they’ve heard, favorite metaphors, intriguing associations. It is my intent to write a follow-up post on this subject, depending on the response.

Frank Albo will be teaching a course called Forbidden Knowledge, which will put into proper context the shadowy world of occult philosophy and embark on a fascinating journey through five centuries of mystical traditions, from Renaissance sorcery to modern ceremonial magic. It will explore religious mythology, occult history and code-breaking symbolism. For more information visit www.frankalbo.com