A pretty familiar rhyme is “mirror, mirror, on the wall / who’s the fairest of them all.” This comes from the Evil Queen in Snow White (the animated Disney movie version). The original story is a German fairy tale, and didn’t include seven dwarfs (not even Bashful or Doc). But it did include the magic mirror.
A magic mirror that divines the future, or otherwise answers questions magically, is such a compelling and visual idea that it’s been used in dozens of movies and shows, from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Shrek, the 10th Kingdom, and many more.
Divination based on mirrors wasn’t just relegated to fairy tales; people have really believed in the practice — or at least they’ve listened to people who claimed to be able to do it. One example was John Dee, a magician for the English royal court in the 1500s, during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. He was more than just a magician; he also practiced alchemy, astrology AND astronomy, and math. He even (probably) came up with the phrase “British Empire.” One of his mirrors is said to have been a polished obsidian plate like a hand mirror. It was originally an Aztec artifact, and is now in the British Museum.
Although Dee didn’t use the term, divination by using a mirror is technically “catoptromancy.” The word arose after Dee’s time, and is mentioned in a 1613 work by Samuel Purchase: “Catoptromancie received those resemblances in cleare glasses.” It’s based on Greek root words. “Katoptron” means “mirror,” and “manteia” means divination. In spite of how it sounds, the word has no relationship to cats. But you can find a closely related word: “catoptrics,” which is the optics of reflections.
It’s not really surprising that people have thought mirrors had something magical about them. After all, there are still puzzling aspects of mirrors today, like the old puzzle question “why are mirror images reversed left-to-right but not top-to-bottom?”
