Mirrors are pretty cool. Placed in the right place they can bring light into a home. Placed at the end of a dark passageway they can cause you to jump scare yourself each night as you go for a glass of water. Placed in front of a camera they can cause endless amounts of optical illusions. It comes as no surprise that there are a certain amount of superstitions surrounding mirrors, the most famous possibly being Bloody Mary. Although this is also the most unlikely to be true. There are plenty less known ones that are equally as awesome though.
7 Years of bad luck
This is pretty well known but the origin is not quite that well known. This superstition goes back to the ancient Romans. Ancient Romans believed that life renewed itself every 7 years, and with this the soul also renewed itself every 7 years. They believed that if a mirror was broken it would cause damage to the soul being reflected in it until such time that the soul is renewed. This is why you specifically get 7 years of bad luck when you break a mirror. Look at how much smarter you are now.
“Captromancy" or "Enoptromancy”
Captromancy, also known as enoptromancy, is a ritual where a mirror is lowered by a string until the bottom edge of the mirror touches the water in a basin of water. At this point a person would gaze into the mirror and pray to whichever god or goddess they desired. These cultures believed that your reflection in the mirror was your “shadow soul”. This is also the stem of the belief that vampires and demons have no reflection. You need a soul before your “shadow soul” can be shown back to you.
Covering Mirrors
One of the most popular reason for covering mirrors is the practice of “7 days of mourning” from the Jewish belief. When someone in the Jewish community dies they go into 7 days of mourning and during this time all the mirrors in the home will be covered so that the soul of the deceased does not get trapped in the mirror.
In other cultures and in older times mirrors would be covered while you were sleeping. This is because it was believed that your dreams could get trapped in mirrors and would then follow you around for the rest of your days.
Hallucinations
This is not really a superstition, more an experiment. This experiment started in Italy. It is proven that with the right circumstances, if you stare at yourself in the mirror for extended periods of time, your reflection will begin to distort and change. Experimented with a lot of volunteers the results documented were very interesting. Most volunteers claimed large differences in their appearance, faces changing into those of their parents, animal features, demonic features and often the faces will transform into that of an old woman.
Above all this, subjects experienced a form of dissociative identity disorder. As their faces changed to look more demonic, if they continued to stare even longer their emotions would change to feelings of anger and jealousy. The same as with other visual hallucinated changes, their emotions would begin to reflect it as well.
And just like that you have an entirely new topic to talk about the next time you are stuck in a really boring and awkward conversation. You are welcome.
