Mirrors

“Let a cat, either a dog, look into it first.” That was the rule a New Orleans informant gave Hyatt for a mirror that had lain three days buried at a fork in the road. The first eyes into the glass were not to be human.

The looking-glass turns up all through Hyatt’s volumes. It reflects, it reverses, it shows what is hidden, and it holds a picture face to face with its own silvered back. In the hands of a root doctor it was a working tool, not a piece of furniture.

What it is

In hoodoo the mirror is a door between this side and the other side of things. Whatever is set against it is doubled, turned round or sent back.

Informants used ordinary household glasses, small hand mirrors and cheap ten-cent glasses bought new for the job. Some rites demanded a glass nobody had ever looked into. Others called for the silver scraped off the back, which Hyatt noted was one of the things the old workers meant by “quicksilver”.

Hyatt himself wrote of through-the-looking-glass magic: the idea that the far side of the mirror is a reversed world, and that work placed there runs backwards against the one who sent it.

What Hyatt’s informants said

The New Orleans rite of the fork in the road is pure seership. The glass was buried at the crossing, left three days, dug up and handed first to an animal. After that, the informant said, the owner could know through it whether anything was coming against them (Hyatt 592 · New Orleans, La. · informant 822).

In Mobile a woman lost her cooking job to a rival and found black candles burning under the kitchen cabinet. In a dream she was told they were there to keep her away and keep her ailing. An old Indian hoodoo doctor gave her the answer: “You take a looking-glass and turn it on its face under yore bed and you’ll put those things out” (Hyatt 2970 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 677). Face down, the mirror shut off the work aimed at her.

The photograph was the mirror’s great partner. Again and again informants took the cardboard off the back of a hand glass, laid a picture against the silver, and set the whole thing to work. Which way the picture faced, and where the glass was put, decided whether the work drew, held, maddened or killed.

The variations

• Bringing someone home. A photo turned head down against the back of the glass, kept on the dresser or under the sleeper, to return a lover or a runaway daughter (Hyatt 8196 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 458; Hyatt 8198 · Florence, S. Car. · informant 1309).
• The glass of water. A man’s picture turned face down over a glass of water, with a looking-glass laid on top, to draw him back (Hyatt 8420 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1158).
• Killing work. A photo held over a looking-glass for an hour after sunrise, carried to the mantelpiece, and the glass turned down over it (Hyatt 8199 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1159).
• Madness. A photo placed face into a small glass and sunk in running water for two or three weeks (Hyatt 8200 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1111).
• Bad luck. Silver scraped from the back of a looking-glass and rubbed on the face of a picture (Hyatt 8201 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1548).
• Turning someone against the world. A brand-new ten-cent glass buried in a new bucket with graveyard dirt, a woman’s name and her left foot track (Hyatt 5457 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 663).

The mirror and the black cat bone

The most famous use of the mirror in Hyatt is the testing of the boiled black cat’s bones. Informant after informant described standing before a glass in a dark room, passing bone after bone through the mouth until the right one made the worker vanish from the reflection (Hyatt 10083 · New Orleans, La. · informant 782). We cover that rite in full in its own entry.

In their own words

“You takes a mirror and you bury it at the fork of a road”

(Hyatt 592 · New Orleans, La. · informant 822)

“An’ dey say in nine mawnin’s he’ll be a daid person.”

(Hyatt 8199 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1159)

“A mirror ovah it. Dat ’ll draw ’im back tuh yo’.”

(Hyatt 8420 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1158)

“Jis’ lak if dey wanta harm yo’, dey take an’ scrape dat silvah off dat pichure”

(Hyatt 8201 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1548)

How it’s worked today

Mirrors remain a standard tool of conjure. Small mirrors are set facing outward in windows and over doors to send work back to its sender, and mirror boxes enclose a target’s photo or name inside reflecting glass.

Photographs are still laid against mirrors for return-to-me and binding work, and covered mirrors are still part of Southern funeral custom in many families.

Scrying in a black or new mirror carries on the old seership. The core idea is unchanged from Hyatt’s day: the glass sends back, and whatever sits inside it is held.

Learn the work

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Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations from Hyatt’s informants for reference.