The Three-Cornered Mirror
This essay is featured on Episode 2 of the MeadowSong Podcast. You can listen on this page, the MeadowSong Podcast website, or most major podcast platforms.
I wrote my first poem when I was twelve years old. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in my childhood home, studying my reflection as if it was something I had never seen before. I had been suddenly compelled by the imaginal idea that the mirror could be a window into some other realm running parallel to the life I was living. And so the poem I wrote described my reflection as some other version of me, whose life was somewhat of a mystery to me… a mystery that I longed to better understand. I wanted to crawl through the mirror and see the world he lived in. And I had the notion that doing so would help me learn something about myself.
This whole experience was more than two decades before I would learn about the Platonic concept of the daimon, the inner figure the ancient Greeks thought us all to have, existing in a space somewhere between the mortal realm and the Divine. Assigned to us at birth, this soul partner was believed to hold the secrets of our destiny and the Divine gifts we came into the world to share. Our daimon is responsible for the little clues, hunches, and synchronicities that let us know that we are on the right track in following or pursuing our life’s purpose.
By the time I was fourteen, the bathroom mirror was no longer a window into the realm of the daimon, but a device for seeing myself the way others saw me. I had lost the inner image of who it was I might be becoming, only to have it replaced with a preoccupation of what other people might see when they saw me: Does my hair look OK? Do my clothes fit alright?
Of course, it is between the ages of twelve and fourteen or fifteen (when the body is becoming sexually mature) that the boys and girls of many ancient cultures would be initiated into young men and women. I imagine that our ancestors were aware of the delicate state of the inner image during those earlier teen years, which is why they protected its emergence into consciousness with initiation rituals that secluded those coming of age from certain members of the tribe, especially those of the opposite sex. Some ancient initiation practices involved the initiate leaving the village or tribe altogether to seek a vision from the spirit realm that, once brought back into the community, would be recognized by all as the way the young person had been called to contribute as an adult to the community. And of course, nearly universal in the initiation of young men and women is the presence, instruction, and mentorship of elders who helped to evoke and draw out the inner image of their initiates.
There are many old stories in which a mirror plays a key role. Perhaps the most well-known in the West is “Snow White,” in which Snow White’s wicked stepmother possesses a magic mirror that always spoke the truth when asked a question. Because the stepmother was so vain, she asked everyday to know who was most beautiful in the land and is furious when one day the mirror replies with the name of her stepdaughter.
From Japan, there is the story of The Matsuyama Mirror. It begins with a loving, kind, and humble family who lived in the countryside. One day, the father was required to travel to the capital city on business. He was gone for many days, and his wife and daughter were both very glad to see him return safely. Upon his return he gave his wife a gift. She opened the box he handed her to find a round piece of metal with decorative flowers on one side and clear, smooth crystal on the other. “What do you see?” the father asked, and she replied, “I see a beautiful woman looking back at me, and she’s wearing a dress just like mine.” Her husband said, “That is you, my dear. This is a mirror; we have never seen one here in the country, but everyone has one in the city.” After some time, the mother fell ill and knew that she would soon need to leave her husband and her daughter. The mirror, which she had believed to be too special a thing to use on a daily basis, had remained shut up in its box, and the daughter did not know of it. Before she died, the mother called her daughter to her and said, “Look into this mirror every day, and you will see me and know that I am still with you.” The daughter, believing the mirror to be magic, dutifully did as her mother had asked, and she confided in the mirror with her every hope and concern, thinking the face in the mirror to be her mother in her young, vibrant youth. In doing this, she grew into a strong and confident young woman.
There is a modern story with a mirror which is fresh on my mind right now, because the choir I work with is rehearsing it for an upcoming production. It is called Crossings, and it was written by the American multidisciplinary artist, David Roussève. It tells of a young Black girl who is raised by her grandmother, who keeps no mirrors in the house. The grandmother wants to be sure that the girl develops a self-image that is shaped by her grandmother’s love… and not the fact that her hand-me-down clothes don’t fit quite right, or worse, the ugly things that society had to say (and still has to say) about people with skin the color of hers. After she is called a racial slur and her grandmother dies, the girl catches sight of her reflection in a darkened window. At first, she sees herself as ugly and poor, but upon turning inside and calling upon the image of her grandmother, she finds the truth of her own inner beauty and strength.
The mirror is, of course, a symbol of how we see ourselves. We might even think of the mirror as a bivalent archetype with the triangular structure described by psychologist Robert Moore. On one side – the upper peak of the triangle – is the beneficial positive, aspect of the archetype. In this case, this is the mirror’s ability to show the truth, to reflect who we truly are. The word reflect means ‘to bend back’. Not only does this point to the way the mirror bends back the light so we can see ourselves in it, but we also might see that reflection, in a psychological sense, is how we bend back towards ourselves, perhaps getting a glimpse of our own inner image, our own daimon.
The base of the archetypal triangle represents the archetype’s bipolar shadow aspect. At one end, we have the mirror’s tendency to evoke vanity and self-absorption, like the wicked stepmother in “Snow White.” At the other end is the mirror’s capacity to throw us into the tumult of other people’s judgments – a sort of being absorbed into someone else… anyone else except our own self – like the young Black girl experienced in Crossings.
In looking back to the beneficial aspect of the mirror archetype, we might consider an old usage of the word mirror. A mirror was ‘a person worthy of imitation – a role model.’ This points again to the role elders play in the initiation process, as well as the inner figure of the daimon itself.
One of my favorite musicians, Moira Smiley, recently announced that she is working on creating a set of songs that looks at the phenomenon of smartphones as a modern version of the gazing pool in the old Greek myth of Narcissus, wherein, of course, the beautiful youth, upon first catching sight of his own image in a reflection pool, is unable to look away and thereby wastes away at the spot. I haven’t heard any of the songs yet, but I can see how the way in which we interact with our phones and social media platforms evokes both poles of the archetypal mirror’s shadow; we become self-absorbed, unable to look away and see the people around while, while also obsessing about how we appear to others via our various online profiles and personas.
This causes me to ask: Where then is the modern equivalent of the beneficial side of the mirror archetype? And I’d like to suggest two places where we might look for it. The first is in the relationships we can form with our elders, and the second our capacity for creative expression and doing something with that creative energy, just for its own sake.
While sitting at the piano with the image of my twelve-year-old reflection in front of me and the feelings conjured up by the ongoing revelation of the mystery of the daimon, three further insights came to me through the music. The first is that making contact with one’s daimon, not surprisingly, leads to a strengthening of the soul and an infusion of virtue and vitality into one’s character. Secondly, establishing a relationship with the daimon is somewhat of a dance, and like dancing with a new partner, it can begin with hesitancy but can eventually develop into a satisfying flow of energy with ever–increasing synchronicity. Finally, this richness born out of that relationship is likely to bring something new into our waking life, and that new thing will likely ask us to make space for it to grow and develop in our life.
You can hear an excerpt of that improvisation - as well as a listener submission - by listening to the podcast episode found at the top of this page. You can also hear the whole recording by going to patreon.com/meadowsongpodcast and find the post titled “The Other Side of the Mirror”. The post is public and accessible to anyone.