When an 18th century mirror disappeared from a police warehouse in France, the first concern of law enforcement officers was not finding it. At their urgent request, many newspapers turned to lovers of antiquity with a warning: under no circumstances should they buy mirrors with the words “Louis Arpo, 1743” on the frame.
The fact is that 38 owners of this relic died one by one under unclear circumstances.
The spice of our history is added by the fact that it happened not at the end of the 18th century, but in 1997.
By the time of his disappearance, the "criminal" had already served a rather impressive term: he had been stored in the warehouse since 1910, when the death of two people was directly linked to his harmful action and the culprit was arrested.
Someone believed that the rays of sunlight, reflected from the surface of the mirror in some special way, turned out to be the cause of cerebral hemorrhage. Someone simply dubbed it magic, drawing souls to the next world.
Others believed that the destructive work of negative energy accumulated by the ill-fated mirror over many years was to blame.
The adherents of this explanation believed that he was constantly and catastrophically unlucky with the owners: for many years, the mirror was loaded with exclusively negative information, then shared it with another vis-a-vis.
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CHECK HIS PEDIGREE
We buy mirrors infrequently and in most cases are new. Those who do otherwise know that together with an old mirror they often bring insoluble questions into the house, and sometimes even a considerable danger. We are, of course, far from the mirror of Arpo, but chilling stories happen in our country as well.
A wealthy couple on the occasion bought a family mirror and almost immediately lost sleep, or rather, acquired exhausting nightmares along with an antique. Both of them constantly dreamed of a fire engulfing the body, and a terrible death in a raging flame. When the poor fellows guessed to question the former owner, it turned out that her brother had died, having knocked over a kerosene lamp, and the tragedy happened in the room where the memorable mirror hung.
Leisure fantasies - you say. However, now few people are surprised that the psychic, holding in his hand a shard of glass that was scattered as a result of the explosion, says that he felt a strong jolt, and gives a detailed description of the offender from a piece of clothing. So if memory is inherent in any thing to one degree or another, what can we say about a mirror with an amalgam of silver, perhaps the most information-capacious metal!
And then it becomes clear why, barely entering into a more or less widespread use, the mirror immediately overgrown with numerous taboos. It was forbidden for women to look at it during menstruation, pregnancy and after childbirth, those who are unwell or even just upset. Indeed, in any stressful situation or during an illness, the body's activity is activated, and therefore, its emotional and biophysical radiation becomes more intense and therefore easier to remember by a mirror. They are remembered in order to return later - to us or to someone else.
It was not without reason that Ivan the Terrible, with his characteristic maximalism, demanded that mirrors for the tsarina be made only by blind craftsmen: in this way he protected his wife from the evil eye and damage.
PROFESSOR MODODY'S HEAD …
… must have contained a lot of amazing fantasies. Otherwise, why would a respectable scientist undertake to summon the spirits of the dead with the help of a mirror? However, this is exactly what he did, first by rebuilding the attic of his old mill for a laboratory.
He closed the windows with heavy shutters, draped them with dark curtains, brought a large mirror and hung it on one of the walls - at such a distance from the floor that the person sitting in front of him could not see his own reflection. The wall behind the experimenter was draped with a velvet cloth that absorbed light, and the "vision chamber" itself was immersed in semi-darkness.
Dr. Moody took the experiment in good faith. The participants were selected mentally and emotionally stable, adults who know how to clearly express their thoughts and, most importantly, they were not noticed in the inclination to occultism. They prepared for the session in advance: the subject acquired a thing that belonged to whoever he would like to meet, looked at his photographs all day, and remembered him. With the onset of dusk, he took a seat in the waiting room.
Imagine the professor's surprise when, after the very first series of experiments, it turned out that communication took place among half of the participants in the exotic experience! And no horrors happened to Moody's assistants. On the contrary, all of them, leaving the "camera of visions", seemed contented and peaceful. The dead, who came on a date, were also smiling, radiating kindness and calmness.
SCREEN OF THE UNIVERSE
It must be said that Moody's sessions with mirrors have been adopted even in Russia, where they are used (though not very widely) by some psychotherapists.
As a rule, the main component in our attitude towards a departed relative is the feeling of guilt: they did not like, were not too attentive and caring, or even turned out to be an involuntary cause of his death. A session of mirror therapy easily relieves stress and relieves the unfortunate patient of anguish that corrodes the soul: after all, as we remember, visitors from the Looking Glass are calm, contented, they do not hold any grudge against anyone, but they still love us, if not more than that! And yet - where are they found there and why do they come to us?
Scientists say it's all about the right hemisphere of our brain. It directs all creativity and provides intuitive insights. Perhaps it is also a kind of receiver for the images we get from the informative field of the Universe.
Unfortunately, this amazing hemisphere for the most part is in a kind of half-sleep and wakes up only when the human consciousness somehow enters an altered state. But this is exactly what the mirror contributes. In addition, it turns out to be a kind of screen onto which images received by the brain from the outside are projected.
MY LIGHT, MIRROR, SAY
Our ancestors have long suspected these properties of a mirror, an amazing conductor between worlds. About which they left a lot of evidence. “Some people look into mirrors or vessels filled with water … They look intently until they begin to see images. The contemplated object disappears, and then a veil similar to fog is drawn between the observer and the mirror.
Against this background, images appear that he is able to perceive, and then describes what he sees. In this state, the soothsayer sees not with the help of ordinary sight, but with the soul. Wouldn't you think we’re reading the session minutes of Raymond Moody? But these words belong to the Arab writer Ibn Kaldoun and were written by him in the 13th century.
However, the predecessors of Dr. Moody were not looking for meetings with the dead. The feeling of helplessness in front of the present and the fear of the unknown - that is what drove the famous soothsayers. Remember the mirror of Galadriel from the recent hit about "The Lord of the Rings", or, more correctly, from Tolkien's wise novel. It both predicted and warned, showing images of the future.
THE QUEEN IN ADMIRATION
They say that Nostradamus could not do without such a toy. Once in the archives of the castle of Châteauneuf-la-Foret, among the papers of a certain François Crozet, close to Catherine de Medici, a record of Nostradamus's visit to the royal castle of Chaumont was discovered, and it recounted the memories of the queen made by her in 1587.
In one of the rooms of the castle, the famous fortuneteller installed the car he had brought with him. The queen mentioned only its fragments - a rotating mirror, in which vague, changing images appeared, and some kind of moving wheels. Each turn of the mirror corresponded to a year. The session took place in semi-darkness. Only years later, when the mysterious pictures that the mirror machine shared with the queen became a fait accompli, Catherine de Medici deciphered them: the death of Mary Stuart, St. Bartholomew's Night, the death of Henry III, the accession of Henry IV.
Remembering the abilities that today's scientists recognize behind the mirror, we probably will not be too surprised at the intricate apparatus of Nostradamus, although he really anticipated his time: he learned to deliberately draw information from where it used to be only at his own discretion. However, to the end to subdue the absurd character of the mirror is beyond the power, probably, not a single magician.
Sergey BORODIN