Chapter 2 Matter as a Mirror: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance ...

Matter as a Mirror 101
monic as well as saintly powers. 163 Already in Antiquity mirrors had been
used for divination 164 (a papal bull later banned these practices) 165 as well
as for deceptions. In his De mysteriis, Iamblichus repeatedly describes the
practices of tricksters who produce images of gods or dead persons in bowls
filled with water or in half-transparent mirrors. 166 Drawing from a tradition
that went back at least as far as Apuleius, fifteenth-century demonologists
considered the possession of mirrors (especially mirrors with engravings on
their surface) as clear evidence of involvement in illicit magical or divinatory
practices. 167 In the following century, Giambattista Della Porta described the
magician as an expert in trompe l’oeil. 168 In the influential thirteenth-century
magical text the Picatrix, there are recipes for the preparation of mirrors
that, through various suffumigations and inscriptions, acquired and retained
demonic forces, as well as instructions on how to use a plain steel mirror to
ward off thunderstorms. 169
163 On the medieval metaphor of the mirror as instrument of self-reflection/specula-
tion, see Cardini (1984) 71–79. esp. 74; see also West (1983) 156.
164 Originally, a bowl filled with water served as a mirror, linking the mirror to this element
and, to the moon; which was supposed to be like a big aqueous mirror. On this, see
Cardini (1984) 76 and Apuleius (1971) chapt. 42: 52, who recounts a story about a child
who catches the sight of Mercury in a water bowl and is thus able to foretell the future. On
the use of reflections in water for divinatory purposes see also Augustine Civ. Dei VII 35
who condemns such practices. For further references, see Macchorio (1930) 112.
165 See the bull by Pope John XXII 1326/7 Super illius specula. Bullarum Collectio III
Paris 1741 pars III: 194; see also Hansen (1901) 43–45; many other references in Macchorio
(1930) 85–87; Thorndike (1923–58) III: 23–24 and 30.
166 Iamblichus (1965) II, 10: 93–94; III, 28: 167–171.
167 Apuleius (1994) chapts. 13–16: 217–221 defends himself for owning a mirror by
saying that possession of other effigies, such as paintings and statues, does not lead to suspicions
of sorcery. On mirrors owned by suspected sorcerers see Hartlieb (1989) chapts.
86–93; for English village wizards in the seventeenth century who gazed at reflections in
mirrors, polished stone, buckets filled with water, or even polished thumbnails of boys to
detect the features of thieves see Thomas (1971) 117, 215, 254, 549, with references. For
magical mirrors with engravings from the early modern period, see Scott (1584) lib. 15:
414: “A figure or type proportionall, shewing what forme must be observed […] in closing
a spirit in christall.” As well as the magic mirror from Saragossa described and reproduced
in Maury (1846) 154.
168 Della Porta (1611) I, 3: 5.
169 Picatrix latinus IV, 7, 32: 209–210. The long instructions on how to prepare this
mirror through various and protracted suffumigations and ointments by using more or
less repulsive substances culminate with the promise of unlimited power over winds, men,