The Mirror of God
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In a 13th century treatise on the magical properties of mirrors, the author known only as Garantius writes of a free-standing obsidian glass, framed in willow, kept in the reliquary at the abbey of St Dymphna, deep in the valley of Cloche. A mirror which, when placed in the dark, will show the image of a single pillar of fire. “Bisecting the Glasse,” writes Garantius, “like the latitudinous eye of some Infernalle Wyrm.” Students of comparative religion may make a connection with the myth of the flaming cyclone that hunted Dog-Runner during his search for the Cactus Flower of Self-Possession. The 9th century Persian poet Taqjar similarly sang of how, “to know thyself is to disappear/to meet the flaming tower.” Self-knowledge, like anything it would seem, is not without a cost.
Considering these accounts, let us turn our attention to a Livonian legend recorded by Kārlis Briedis in his 1994 book Heroic Tales of the Eastern Baltic.
“When the god Pērkons was away in battle with his nemesis, the cloud-spirit Jods,” writes Briedis, “the forces of darkness were free to roam the land. All manner of demon and shapeshifter came out of hiding, spoiling oat fields, poisoning wells, turning beets into blood.
“A warrior named Vilis came home from battle abroad to find his farmstead destroyed and his family slaughtered by a vilkati, a man-wolf that terrorized the countryside. Vilis wept and pleaded to the gods for aid. The goddess Laima appeared above, at the foot of the Mountain of Sky, and presented Vilis with a gift. ‘This is Dieva Spogulis, a glass wherein will show the children of light. And the children of light will aid you.’
Suddenly, a small hand mirror appeared before him, caught in the boughs of a birch tree, the kind one might find in a lady’s chamber. The glass was solid black, the frame of sturdy willow. Vilis was confused but the goddess simply smiled before ascending the Mountain to weave with her sisters in heaven.
“At that moment, the vilkati appeared, loping out of the woods, pink tongue trailing spit, blood clinging to its snout.
“‘Ah, man-thing,” it said to Vilis, ‘you will be the dessert to my feast. I particularly enjoyed the taste of your son’s liver. Sweeter than rupjmaizes.’
Vilis grabbed the mirror off of the tree and held it before the creature. What the vilkati saw in the glass chilled its wolfish blood. A hideous hybrid, jaws flecked with viscera; it beheld its own monstrous reflection and was terrified.
And though Vilis could not see it, something else had joined the beast in the mirror. A single pillar of fire arose behind the vilkati’s reflection, a spinning vortex of ash and belching flame which consumed the stricken creature as though it were made of paper. With the Dieva Spogulis in hand, Vilis set about ridding the land of evil.”
Now, for your essays, I would like you to consider other ways in which periods of self-reflection may present some considerable risk to your lives. You may begin.
Matt Smith
Matt is a writer and musician from somewhere in eastern Ontario. He enjoys the shadows of things more than the things themselves, loud music, quiet music, children’s artwork, crime, stone tapes and sigils. He writes in order to hallucinate.
