Mirror work

Working with mirrors is working with the element of Water. It is all about reflection and what lies behind that reflection. So when I say mirror work, that doesn’t necessarily require an actual mirror. An actual mirror may be practical, but any reflective surface will do. Ideally, it would be water. When working in pairs or groups, the eyes of another person are used as such reflective surface. Two people sit across each other and use each other’s eyes as a tool/portal/mirror in this type of work.

Mirror work can be a central part of a ritual, in which case I recommend you read my text on Rituals, but it can also stand alone as divination, scrying, or a meditative practice. As with any other divination or scrying method, mirrors are only tools, and there is absolutely nothing magical about them. You are the one who is doing the actual work: your intuition, inner and/or higher self, your frontal cortex, psyche, and the energetic part of your being. When you combine all those parts of yourself into one harmonious unity, the choosing of a particular tool to work with becomes a playful endeavor. It is similar to a child choosing which toy to play with. If you want mirrors to be one of your figurative toys, I hope this text will provide a certain amount of material that will help you get a better understanding of how to use this particular tool in your spiritual work.

Why mirrors, and why Water?

We have an amazing ability to experience the world outside of us. We look at it, smell it, touch it, hear it, taste it. We feel it. Our senses are pointed outwards, not inwards. During a regular day, your eyes will focus on million things outside of your body and very little on your body or in it. We are living our lives by putting focus on what is out there. We measure it and examine it. We concentrate on various ways of changing what we see. But by putting the focus solely on the outside, the inside gets ignored and forgotten. Looking into the water, a mirror, or any reflective surface changes our focus, and we finally begin to look at ourselves. We begin the journey towards our soul.

Water is an element connected with our emotions, unconscious mind, and psychic abilities, so it is natural that it’s the element used for connecting with our soul. Before having mirrors, pagans around the world (particularly old Celts) used water as a medium to look deep inside. They knew that our reflection reflects not only our physical appearance but our energy back to us. By understanding our authentic self, by seeing it in its true form, we can connect with the divine, understand the flow of Universal love, and face our inner shadows that often keep us stuck and prevent us from evolving into better human beings. Try this simple exercise:

1. Sit in front of a mirror. Let the mirror be on the wall or standing on a table. Avoid holding it in your hands.
2. Be comfortable with your hands resting gently on your knees.
3. Set an alarm for 15 minutes.
4. Relax and gaze into the mirror. Do not force yourself not to blink or change your breathing in any way. Blink and breathe normally.
5. Watch your reflection until the 15 minutes are over.

It is quite normal that you feel uncomfortable the first time you perform this exercise. Your mind is not used to observing itself. It is also normal that you will spend your first couple of minutes looking at your physical appearance, checking your hair, blemishes, or dark bags under your eyes. There is nothing wrong with focusing on the physical first, for you are a physical being. You will recognize the focus shift from the physical to the spiritual by a sudden uncomfortable feeling, a certain unease, and a need to stop looking at yourself. This feeling may last only a short while, or it may go on longer, but if you stick through it, what you will experience next is why you are doing this type of work in the first place.

This exercise is a perfect way to start working with mirrors. No one can tell you what you will see, feel, or experience because your journey is your own. Feel free to let me know in the comments below how it went or if you have any questions about it. Even if absolutely nothing happens or changes inside of you and you spend 15 minutes looking at your clothes, that’s okay too. Maybe you’re just not ready or interested in soul work. As with anything else in life, take your time and be gentle with yourself. Do not be discouraged if you don’t get what you were hoping for. As a matter of fact, the best mirror works are those in which we enter without expectation. Mirror work is not about changing something. It is about seeing, so the best goal to have when starting is the goal of acceptance. Accept what you see.

“So what if I see something I don’t want to see?” Deal with it. Depending on your allowance and openness, a mirror can show you many things, and not all of those things will be to your liking. FEAR is either Forgetting Everything And Running, or Facing Everything And Rising. On the other hand, the presence of fear in this type of work is not mandatory. You may as well (and often will) have an amazing experience that will, if nothing else, spark your curiosity or leave you feeling surprised at what you see. Soul work is an exciting journey. It is growth and learning. It is evolving. On that path, the only thing that might be scary is the change itself, but change will always remain one of human’s biggest nightmares.

Scrying as a form of divination

My text that details what divination is will either soon be available or already is (depending on when you are reading this one), so I will not spend too much time here explaining how it is nothing special, how everyone can do it, how it isn’t telling you what will happen in the future because there is no such thing as a future set in stone, and how it is simply a spiritual way of dealing with statistical analysis and mathematical probability. One of the divination techniques is scrying, and one of the methods of scrying involves mirrors.

Scrying involves figures, shapes, or complete events seen in a particular medium. That medium is usually water, glass, crystal, or candle flame, but it may be absolutely anything.

You will often hear how mirror scrying must include black mirrors. Whenever you hear anyone using the words must or have to, turn around and walk away. There are no musts or have tos on your spiritual path, even though you will encounter people who will try to convince you their way is the best way. If you want to use a black mirror, go for it. If you don’t want to, don’t. It is that simple. A black mirror is nothing more than a regular mirror painted black. People do this because there is a certain belief that your own reflection WILL distract you, so you need to cover it. I strongly disagree with this. Your reflection MIGHT distract you, but it doesn’t have to. There are also theories talking about light behaving differently on black surfaces and therefore needing a black surface. Well… sometimes I wish the words you read could portray my eye roll and sigh. Scrying is not physical work. It’s energy work. Whoever tells you how there is no spiritual work if you don’t follow certain instructions on the physical plane is not the person you should listen to.

The truth is, scrying is one of the methods where you reach the high-vibrational level and a certain state of trance. You can achieve this by literally staring at anything; mirror, water, glass, crystal, a white wall, green grass, blue sky, flame… The tool used is of your choosing. Some people prefer clear, see-through surfaces, and some people prefer darker, solid surfaces. There are no winners or losers here, and nobody will give you a golden sticker if you are better at one method than the other. The only way to see which method works best for you is to try different ones and find which one is your favorite.

Scrying is often said to be one of the most difficult craft techniques to master. Not necessarily. If your expectation is to always visually see something in your tool, you may be disappointed if you can’t reach that level as fast you would wish to. It depends on many factors, and even slow progress is still progress. Work with the peripheries of your thinking process and the visual stimulation will come when you’re ready for it. You may not see anything in the mirror directly right away, but allow it to become a channel for you. What lurks on the outer edges of your consciousness will open the gate for your subconsciousness to be there for interpretation.

So if you want to try mirror scrying as a form of divination, good luck. It is a beautiful practice. You may try the following exercise out. As always, moderate the steps as much as you want to your own liking and needs until you are completely comfortable with them. The second exercise:

1. Do whatever you need to in order to feel comfortable. This includes choosing what to wear and how to sit. Turn off the sound on your phone and avoid possible distractions.
2. Prepare the space to your own liking. This may or may not include the lighting in the room, music in the background, candles, or incense sticks.
3. Have a piece of paper and something to write on it ready.
4. Relax your body and take a couple of deep breaths.
5. Take as much time as you need to feel secure, relaxed, and happy with where you are.
6. Set your intention. Know why you are doing this and what you want to see.
7. * If it feels comfortable to you and if it is part of your path, ask for deities/guardians/angels/animal spirits/ancestors/etc. for help, protection, and/or guidance.
8. * If it feels comfortable to you and if it is part of your path, ask your subconsciousness/inner or higher being/psyche/spiritual or energetic part of yourself/etc. to be open and free to show itself and work in love and harmony with other parts of you.
9. Begin raising your vibration by any method that works for you. This may be affirmations, chants, prayer, altering your breathing, gentle rhythmic movements of parts of your body, going on a self-guided meditation journey, or anything else.
10. Continue raising your vibration while looking in the mirror. Try to remember everything you feel, sense, or see.

The ending of your work may be different from one time to another. You may slowly lower your vibration and journey back to your normal daily self, or you may snap out of it. The sudden snapping out of it is very common in the beginning. As I said earlier, your mind may not be used to this type of work, and it will try to protect you from what it thinks is different from your normal functioning. The only way to react to this is with love. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your brain fighting altered states of vibration. Be grateful for it. It is only doing what it needs to do, protecting you from change. Your mind sees change as something new and different, and something new and different must be dangerous for you. It is only trying to protect you. With time, as your mind realizes that you are safe, it will allow you to spend more and more time in this type of work. Practice makes perfect is a saying that could be used here. In the beginning, you may see or feel a flash of something, just a symbol or a shape, and your mind will be shocked and pull you out. Don’t be angry with it or with yourself. Try again when you feel ready.

You could also experience vision without vision. It is when you feel and see with your “inner eyes” without the actual thing in the reflection changing. It might be in a form of a story that plays out in your mind. That is not only perfectly fine but just as valuable and important as any other thing that could happen. Even falling asleep during this exercise is okay. As long as you are comfortable and feeling good, whatever happens is the best thing that could happen.

There is no telling what a reflection will turn into and what you will see. Don’t forget that accepting what you see is not accepting it as what is.

As with any other divination method, what you see is what you need to see, not what you need to do. The acceptance in scrying is about accepting what you see, but not necessarily accepting it as what is. This means that you are, as always, free to make your own decisions to make what you saw a reality or to do whatever you can to avoid it. Try looking at it as a film on TV showing you one particular outcome, one possible outcome. Sometimes we are not fully aware of where our actions are leading us and need to see a possible reaction to our actions if we continue to do what and how we do. This is very beneficial for our physical and spiritual growth.

Once your work is over, it is not really over. Actually, now is when the harder part comes. Take your paper and write down everything that you saw, felt, and experienced. You will now do the second part of mirror scrying, and that is dealing with it. Think, rationalize, meditate on it, whatever you need to in order to figure out why is it that you saw what you saw and why is it you realized what you realized. What in your life is leading to those outcomes? Do you feel them pleasurable, and are the things you experienced those that you want to come true? What is it you need to do and work on to make them true, or what is it that you need to do in order to stop them from becoming true? Good luck. 🙂

Past lives, ancestors, other realms…

There are other methods of mirror work that are used besides what we call divination. Those are journeying into past lives and/or other realms, working with your chakras and aura, communicating with your ancestors, and so on. The thing to keep in mind is that most of those are also considered to be scrying work. As I already mentioned, if you are looking into a medium such as a mirror, glass, water, or any reflective surface, it is called scrying regardless of what the actual intent is. Now, there are two potential problems that often arise in this type of work.

The first potential problem is the potential lack of belief that such work is even possible. If your religious beliefs or a scientific mind make you question the validity of such experiences, that is perfectly fine. It doesn’t mean that you are not free to use the mirror as a tool to work with your subconscious. You do believe that your subconscious exists, don’t you? There are many things you may encounter on your spiritual path, but that doesn’t mean you have to try them all. Not everything is for everyone. That is one of the beauties of the human race, our rich diversity. I do want to emphasize that just because you consider yourself pagan or are thinking about following a pagan path doesn’t mean you must do what other pagans around you are doing. Paganism is not a religion, and it has no dogmas. Paganism is a path of self-discovery, growth, and connection with nature. There are many toys with which you could play with on that path. Just as some people like puzzle games and others like kicking the ball around, you may or may not like playing with mirrors.

The second potential problem is recognizing what work you are actually doing once you start. Since you are looking into the mirror during a trance-like state and observing either a reflection in it or feeling it play out inside your mind, you may encounter a situation where you will ask yourself if those images are being projected by your subconscious trying to tell you something, if it is a portrayal of some future event brought upon divination, if it is a past-life experience, or if you’ve somehow opened up a portal of communication with your ancestors. Will you even know what’s going on? Sometimes you will know, and sometimes you will only speculate. Your intention sets the tone of the work, so you could presume that you saw what you wanted to see. On the other hand, there will be times when your subconscious intentions will be stronger than your conscious ones, but that is nothing to worry about. A good rule of thumb is, if you see monsters from horror movies, those are your subconscious projections. The only “evil” there is, is in our human form where we are hurting each other and destroying our planet. That which is greater than humans, which resides in all humans, and that which connects everything in this Universe is pure love and infinite wisdom. But hey, if you want to create believe there are monsters out there waiting for you, who am I to stop you?

The best scrying tool you could ever use is another person’s eyes.

It is normal that we want to excel at things and improve our work, be a better human being on all fronts with each day. If you want the best tool for scrying, those are without any doubt the eyes of another person. Pupils are better than any black mirror you could ever make, the irises hold the entire Universe inside them, and the eye, in general, provides a perfect reflective surface. Have you ever heard of the term To get lost in someone’s eyes? The losing refers to abandoning your rational, conscious self and traveling into a realm of mirror work where reflections are not only those of the physical realm but of the spiritual too. If you want to try mirror work by using the technique that involves another person’s eyes, try the third exercise:

1. Choose a person that is equally willing to do this work and happy to do it with you.
2. Create a pleasing atmosphere. This may or may not include candles, music, and/or incense.
3. Sit comfortably across from one another.
4. *Set an alarm for the time you wish to work for or agree to work until one or both of you are done.
5. Relax your breathing and your physical body.
6. Look into each other’s eyes gently. Do not strain your gaze or force yourself to blink faster or slower than normal.
7. Do not shift your gaze away from the other person’s eyes. If something on your body itches or you need to reposition yourself in a more comfortable position, do so without shifting focus. Your hand knows where your knee is. You don’t have to look at it in order to scratch an itch.

When you are done with the exercise, write down what you saw on a piece of paper and talk about it with the person you’ve done the exercise with. Share experiences with each other.

Mirror work with chakras and aura

My text on chakras is either ready or soon to be ready and published (depending on when you’re reading this one), so I will not go into too much detail here about what chakras are, but instead presume you either know or will know before continuing to read along.

This is the easiest type of mirror work you can do, and the only work that isn’t necessarily considered scrying. It is said that if you put some effort into it by including your intuition and an intent backed by love, you may actually see what chakras need your attention. If chakras and an aura are something that feels strange to your own personal belief system, do not let that stop you from giving yourself love and appreciation. You may not believe that there are energy centers in your body, but there is no rational arguing whether you do, in fact, have a body.

This type of mirror work is perfectly fine to perform regardless of your belief system or religion. The point of it is to send yourself love and affection, accept yourself for who you are, forgive yourself for anything there is to forgive, and bless your body with health, strength, love, and wisdom. You may do this by concentrating on each individual chakra and sending it love and light, or you may go up your body and do this with your every organ and body part you see in your reflection. If you are intuitively drawn to look at a certain body part in your reflection, follow that intuition and send it even more love.

Depending on your level of expertise when it comes to chakra work, you may draw protective sigils, seals, or emblems in your aura that will provide further strength to your energy body. If nothing else, a simple talk with yourself and using affirmations while looking at your reflection is more powerful than we often realize.

Love your reflection. It is showing you how perfect you are in every possible way.

You are the spell the Universe has cast, and you are perfect, for you are the Universe itself. From the physical part of you and having inside you some of the particles that were there during the big bang and the creation of physical matter, to the spiritual part where what lies inside you is connected with everything that is and ever will be. Your body is the glorious physical manifestation of energy. Love every muscle of it, every bone, every organ, and each and every cell. Oh, what great things you can do with your body, oh, what marvelous things. Be grateful for it and find pleasure in taking care of it. The lovely combination of your physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and energy body is what makes you that perfect drop in which the entire ocean lies.

When you look into a mirror,
the entire Universe is looking back at you.

IMAGE CREDITS:
– cover image by StockSnap from Pixabay
– first image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay
– second image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
– third image by Nardus70 from Pixabay
– fourth image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay
– fifth image by Edward Amezcua from Pixabay
– sixth image by slightly_different from Pixabay
– seventh image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
– eight image by Noah Blaine Clark on Unsplash

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Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again my dear pagan soul. Rejoice in life, and life will rejoice in you. May God and Goddess bless you in everything you do and spirit guides follow you wherever you go.

In love and light,
Towint

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