A trinity of mirrors in a subshrine of Fushimi Inari Taisha
Reflections on reflections
Green Shinto has posted several pieces before about the mesmerising nature of the circular mirror which stands in shrines as a symbol of the kami, Amaterasu in particular. It’s such a fascinating subject. (See previous postings here, here or here for example.)
A full-length mirror at Wakamiya Hachimangu in Kyoto
Most of the time the mirror that stands in the shrine reflects nothing in particular. It only comes alive when someone moves in front of it, a spirit reflection moving in the mirror. The otherworldly quality derives partly from the oddity of the reflection – for one thing it’s two-dimensional and trapped within a frame.
Look in a mirror, lift your left hand and the man in the mirror lifts his right hand. Show a written message to the mirror, and it reverses the script so that you have to read it backwards. Yet objects in the background seem to remain as they are. It’s very baffling.
Even stranger is the optical illusion in terms of height. In order to see the full length of an average adult, you only need a one-and-a half meter mirror. It defies common sense. Try walking towards and away from a mirror, and you realise that the reflection doesn’t alter proportionately. Something odd is going on.
Such oddities make the mirror more than mysterious. Who exactly is the man in the mirror? It’s clearly not me, because if I punch it he doesn’t get hurt. So the assumption must be that it’s a semblance of me, much like a ghost is a semblance of a once living person. One can see how easily this would lead to the notion of a soul being contained within the murky depths. The soul of Amaterasu, for instance.
The mirror thus becomes the realm of the invisible. It shows us what is unseen in everyday life. Our face, for one thing. Our true self. Within the mirror lies a peculiar other world which is the opposite of our own – a spiritual world on a different plane from the physical. Hence our desperate desire to see into into the looking-glass, to climb through like Alice and enter the Wonderland beyond.
Mirrors are truly magical. The ancients knew what they were doing when they selected them as sacred objects. Shamans wore them to ward off evil, Chinese rulers presented them as precious gifts, people in crisis made offerings of them to the kami. Now they stand in shrines revealing the divine mystery within us all. Reflect on that, and polish your true self!
The bronze mirror of antiquity was a precious and sacred object. Here the carved back side is seen, the other side was carefully polished so as to reflect.
The shrine mirror waits to capture the spirit within
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