Mirrors surround us everywhere: in an apartment, in a store, on an airplane, in a car. We are used to mirrors, we perceive them as something ordinary. But many signs are associated with a mirror. Often, people who are left alone with a mirror in a room experience severe mental discomfort, they say that they see a changing reality in the mirror surface. And there is no object with which so many beliefs would be associated, an object that is one of the main attributes in the arsenal of fortune-tellers and clairvoyants.
The largest number of signs is associated, of course, with broken mirrors. Moreover, these signs have striking coincidences in the cultures of completely different countries. Everywhere in Russia, a broken mirror means the death of one of the family members. The same sign is in England. And besides this, a broken mirror means there the loss of a close friend and seven years of misery and misfortune. In Scotland, as well as in Russia, when someone in the family dies, the mirrors are curtained. Moreover, similar superstitions are found among Indian and African tribes. Misfortune also threatens those who saw their face in the mirror by candlelight. But girls and young people just needed to look in the mirror on the eve of St. Agnes to see the face of the constricted or constricted. But the brides had a hard time. You cannot look in the mirror in a wedding dress - the wedding will be unsuccessful, and married life will leave much to be desired. And here's what to do here? Every girl wants to see herself beautiful and smart.
But you can also avoid trouble by looking in the mirror in full wedding decoration, but without one glove. On the contrary, the newlyweds simply had to look in the mirror after the wedding ceremony, hand in hand - for good luck and long years of happy married life. By the way, the same sign existed in Russia, in the Vladimir province, when the newlyweds after the wedding, holding hands, the newlyweds looked in the mirror.
A great many fortune-telling has been associated with mirrors. It is worth remembering at least the Russian: "The betrothed, the disguised …" and the mirror under the pillow, or also Russian fortune telling on two mirrors, when a good fellow walks along the corridor from burning candles to the beautiful girl. Already in ancient Greece, fortune-telling on the mirror, called catoptromancy, was widespread. The mirror was lowered into the water and judged by the distorted reflection about the future fate of the patient.
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An indispensable condition in many countries is the obligatory curtain of the mirror or even removing it from the room where the deceased is. This is connected, first of all, with a kind of "doubling" - the mirror doubles the space and all objects reflected in it, the reflection of the deceased in it threatens the "doubling" of death. It is interesting that the Hungarian Serbs, and indeed the South Slavs in general, believe that if the deceased "sees" himself in the mirror, he will certainly become a vampire. In Serbia, there is also a widespread belief that death will come for the one who first looks in the mirror after the accident. To avoid another death, the cat was first brought to the mirror.
And the mirror was absolutely formidable danger at night, time belonging to demons, demons and other evil spirits. The Slavs had a ban on looking in the mirror and into the water in the evening. Even now, in Polish villages, peasants are afraid to look in the mirror after midnight, "so as not to see the devil." In many regions of Belarus and Russia, Ukraine, the Carpathians, Serbia, it was taboo to bring a child under one year old to the mirror. In the worst case, the baby was threatened with death, at the best - a sharp change in life, a turn, the baby could stop growing, and his further fate could not be the best.
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In the Russian tradition, the mirror was considered to be the creation of the devil. So, the Old Believers did not want to see mirrors in the rooms and did not tolerate them in the house. There are known cases when wealthy Old Believer merchants never once looked in the mirror in their entire lives.
The belief, ancient as the world, about the "borderline" of the mirror, about the idea, about it as a channel to another world and into another reality, has survived to this day in the form of the custom of keeping small ladies' mirrors closed so that it (the mirror) “does not "On the hostess. The mirror has always been perceived as an object with duality, belonging to two worlds, real and magical. And as long as there is a human civilization, there is also a belief in the inexplicable, witchcraft, witchcraft. And this faith is several thousand years old.