The Witch's Mirror: The Craft, Lore & Magick of the Looking Glass

The Witch's Tools #4

by Mickie Mueller

Discover the fascinating history, tradition, and modern uses of the witch's mirror. From choosing and making the perfect mirror to using it to boost self-esteem and prosperity, this book provides valuable information for witches of all levels. Fun and easy to use, The Witch's Mirror features advice from well-known witches as well as spells and crafts to enhance your magic. Explore the symbols and practice of scrying, uncover the portrayals of mirrors in legends and pop culture, harness the reflective power of mirrors with meditations, and much more. Mickie Mueller invites you to gaze through the looking glass and see your magical self wielding the mirror as a key tool to a successful, happy, and enchanted life. " The Witch's Mirror is a lighthearted book that reflects a wide variety of perspectives, techniques, and magickal styles."―Ellen Dugan, author of the Witchery series and The Natural Psychic "This book is a very thorough and complete manual that explains historical lore, superstitions, and also how to utilize this tool with ease...it is a must have for any witches library!"―Celeste Heldstab, author of Llewellyn's Complete Formulary of Magical Oils "Mickie Mueller has brought to life, in this charming book, all the magic and history of this simple yet potent tool with her own signature grace and eloquence."― Amythyst Raine, author of The Gray Witch's Grimoire "Mueller's conversational style and uncomplicated how-to directions make mirror magic accessible to the novice and experienced witch alike...this book is enlightening, practical, and great fun to read."―Shana Robinson, author of Terra Signs and co-author of Shamanism & The Spirit Mate "Mickie Mueller is the perfect guide through the looking glass... The Witch's Mirror takes one of the most common daily tools and reveals its innate magic."―Lunaea Weatherstone, author of Tending Brigid's Flame and Mystical Cats Tarot "If you want to know about magic and mirrors, this is the book for you! Mickie Mueller has done an excellent job of researching and bringing together all the many facets of mirror-related beliefs, traditions, and lore."―Tess Whitehurst, author of Holistic Energy Magic and Magical Housekeeping

Genres: Witchcraft, Nonfiction, Divination, Crafts, Spirituality, Paganism, Magick

288 pages, Paperback

Published June 8, 2016

Reviews

[Plateresca]

Very original (as compared to a lot of spell compilations) and very interesting information, really useful little book.

[Lora Milton]

This is one of the Tools of Witchcraft series from Llewellyn publishers. It starts out telling the history of mirrors in both physical form and use in folklore, plus superstitions regarding them. In this the author seems to have done a fair bit of research. My one issue with the first part is the frequent references to television programs I've never seen or heard of and the assumption of adolescent games that gives me a feeling that an American author is speaking to an American audience and assuming that these references will have meaning for anyone who reads her book. On the positive side, it gives the reader some insight into the culture the author is coming from.

There are a lot of good arts and crafts ideas for ways of making different kinds of mirrors or mirrored boxes and suggestions for washes. The washes are fairly traditional herbal combinations and I've noted a couple of them that I might actually use.

The writing style is bubbly in a way that made me think the author might be very young, though things she says later in the book indicate otherwise, and the spell suggestions would probably appeal to young people who watch The Craft and such. It did worry me that she didn't seem to know about the traditional wormwood paint used in making black mirrors, but otherwise there were several examples of how mirrors have been regarded magically in different cultures.

There were also some guest essays which got a little repetitive and gave me the impression they were for added page count, but some were interesting. Some general correspondences and such are in the appendices and there is a leaning towards chakras that people into new age subjects can identify easily.

This could be a good book for a young person just starting out on learning about magical tools and implements.

[Remy Rodriguez]

This book is really awesome. I don't usually use mirrors much in my craft, just because I haven't had occasion to and spent more time exploring other aspects before now. Long story short, that is going to change now. This book is informative, inspiring and so creative. It's now my favorite in the Witches Tools series! I can't wait to try start crafting the different mirror ideas the author wrote about and I'm now starting to learn scryibg thabks to this book. It's ignited my passion for exploring mirror work. I highly recommend it to any witch. It's a nust have for your library

[Scarlett (Carrie)]

Learned some neat spells and even the history of how mirrors all started. Great for beginners!

[Dawn Thomas]

The Witch’s Mirror by Mickie Mueller

9780738747910

288 Pages
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications, Llewellyn Worldwide
Release Date: June 8, 2016

Nonfiction (Adult), Religion, Spirituality, Mirrors

The book is divided into the following sections.

1: Mirrors in History, Tradition & Lore
2. Magical Mirrors in Popular Culture
3. Which Mirrors for Witch’s Mirrors?
4. Mirror, Mirror on the Go
5. Finding a Mirror to Reflect Your Witchy Style
6. Crafting and Enchanting a Witch’s Mirror
7: Mirror Herbal Wash Condenser Formulas
8. Spells for Witch’s Mirrors
9. Betwixt and Between the Worlds

Everyone knows stories like Snow White or Alice in Wonderland. Mirrors have been a part of history as far back as the Bronze Age. The author even includes the scary Bloody Mary that many children learn and use to scare others. I have an antique black glass mirror and I was lucky enough to take a class and make a black scrying mirror. They will come in handy when I use the spells in this book. If you are someone that enjoys scrying or working with mirrors, you will enjoy this book.

[Nicole]

I will start off by saying that I don't normally read magickal books from cover to cover. I normally just skip around and find the parts that interest me. However, this book I read the entire thing and I really enjoyed it. I had never thought of working with mirrors and I never would have thought that I would be interested in learning more about mirror magick. This book had a lot of good information on the history of mirrors in magickal practices, practical advise on making your own mirror tools and spells to use with the mirrors. I have already started collecting the items needed to make some of the condensers detailed in the book and found a mirror to make my own scrying mirror with. I also have some other mirrors I want to make after reading this book. I greatly enjoyed this book and I have marked certain information to go back and read again later.

[Kerri Connor]

I loved this book! What a bunch of great information - I particularly loved reading about mirrors being used in Spiritualism. This book is filled with ideas and uses for your own magical mirror, along with the incredible artwork of Mickie Mueller. A beautiful book to add to your collection.

[Helen Griffus]

Another solid offering for this series. My coven is reading these books together, and they often spark great discussion and are good for all levels.
Many ideas to craft your own magickal mirrors and washes for mirrors. I especially liked all the mirror lore throughout the book.

[kye 🫧]

very simple information and easy to follow for new witches.

[Juli Rahel]

Thanks to Llewellyn Worldwide and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As a fairy tale obsessed child, I naturally was intimately familiar with the enchanted mirror that would show you the future, the past, and the present and speak back to you. As a teenage girl, I suddenly became utterly uncomfortable with the mirror and avoided it for quite a while. With that background, I was intrigued to finally dive into this book and see if I could use the mirror as a tool indeed. I really enjoyed Mickie Mueller's approach, from explaining the role of the mirror in popular culture (even if I didn't get a lot of the references or didn't know the shows) and folklore. I, for some reason, also hadn't expected the arts and crafts aspect of the book, but I really liked the encouragement to actively work with mirrors, create little mirrored boxes etc. I might also use one of the washes next time I need to clean my mirror!

The tone of the book is very friendly, as if you're chatting to a friend or to an aunt. This definitely helped me consider some of the author's ideas more than a very authoritative tone would have done. The book has definitely inspired me to reconsider the mirror as a magical tool.

[Anna]

I was hoping for a little more folklore, but it’s not magical realism… it’s magic… either way it was an interesting read.
And there’s always something fascinating about a closet or a mirror or water that is magic…

I’m sure I’ll refer to it for things I write in the future.

[Jeanine]

Love it, Mickie is an excellent writer!

[Allison]

I think Mickie mueller is an excellent storyteller. She really made learning about the history of mirrors and the use of mirrors in magick interesting.

[Starfly]

So much information to absorb. Very interesting book. This will be one of the references books for my personal library.

[Sombre Grimoire]

Un livre très intéressant et très riche !

[Katie Stockton]

Mirrors are so ubiquitous that it is easy to forget how inherently strange they are. They reproduce the world while reversing it, seemingly create another room behind a sheet of glass, multiply light, allow us to stare directly into our own eyes, and have accumulated centuries of folklore about souls, spirits, protection, divination, and doorways into other realms. The Witch's Mirror made me look at every mirror in my house differently. Mickie Mueller takes an object I had mostly associated magically with scrying and demonstrates that the looking glass is one of the most versatile magical tools hiding in plain sight.

The history and folklore were some of my favorite parts because Mueller draws from an enormous range of beliefs about reflective surfaces. She goes back beyond the familiar silvered glass mirror to reflecting pools, polished metals, and obsidian, then follows mirrors through superstition, folklore, witchcraft, feng shui, divination, and popular culture. Breaking mirrors, covering them after a death, repelling unwanted forces with reflection, trapping something within a mirror, and using reflective surfaces to glimpse another world all begin to feel like variations on a remarkably persistent human intuition: a reflection is somehow connected to the thing reflected while simultaneously existing somewhere slightly removed from it.

What really earned the book five stars, though, is what Mueller does with that underlying principle. Reflection becomes an actual magical mechanic. Mirrors can redirect, repel, contain, amplify, multiply, reveal, conceal, or create the experience of a threshold. Once I started thinking about mirror magic in terms of those actions rather than memorizing individual spells, possibilities started occurring to me everywhere. A mirror behind a candle changes the visual effect of the flame, but it can also magically suggest amplification. A mirrored container creates repetition and enclosure. A mirror turned outward becomes protective. The physical behavior of the object becomes the foundation for magical reasoning.

Naturally, I loved the scrying material. Mueller covers black mirrors and other reflective surfaces, symbols that may appear during scrying, and meditations that use the mirror as a threshold between ordinary awareness and a more receptive state of consciousness. Mirror gazing is fascinating from a psychic-development perspective because the technique simultaneously gives the eyes something to focus upon and deprives the analytical mind of the kind of stable visual information it normally expects. Given the right conditions, perception starts behaving strangely. Learning which images are optical effects, which arise through imagination, and which may carry meaningful intuitive or psychic information is part of developing the skill.

But scrying is only one piece of the book. There are instructions for finding, crafting, decorating, enchanting, cleansing, and working with magical mirrors, along with herbal mirror washes and fluid condensers, portable mirror magic, spells, protection work, prosperity work, self-esteem and glamour applications, meditations, and ways of incorporating mirrors into existing workings. I especially loved the washes and condensers because they turn the preparation of the mirror into part of the magick itself. Instead of treating the mirror as a generic object that becomes magical only when a spell begins, Mueller shows how every layer of its preparation can contribute to its purpose.

The book is also full of Mueller's artwork and personality, which keeps a surprisingly specialized subject from becoming dry. She has a playful relationship with folklore and pop culture and clearly just loves mirrors. That enthusiasm becomes infectious. Some occult books can make a magical tool seem intimidating through excessive solemnity, while Mueller made me want to go to thrift stores, find strange old mirrors, research their construction, make washes, paint frames, experiment with placement, and see what happened.

That may be what I appreciate most about The Witch's Mirror. It doesn't merely give me information about another traditional witch's tool. It teaches a way of thinking about that tool. By the end, a mirror can be a shield, amplifier, trap, portal, divinatory surface, meditation device, spell component, magical container, symbolic double, and instrument for confronting the self. I started the book thinking mirrors were primarily useful for scrying. I finished wondering why I hadn't been using them everywhere.

[Sylvia Moore]

A mirror is one of the strangest objects we keep in our homes.

It shows you the room you are standing in while simultaneously creating the appearance of another room behind the glass. It reproduces your face exactly enough to recognize yourself while reversing the image you normally present to everyone else.

The Witch's Mirror made me appreciate just how much magical possibility is contained inside that ordinary contradiction.

Mickie Mueller begins with the history, folklore, and superstition surrounding mirrors before moving into their practical magical uses. That foundation matters because mirrors have accumulated centuries of associations with souls, spirits, beauty, vanity, divination, protection, portals, doubles, and the supernatural.

Once you start seeing those layers, the household mirror becomes considerably less mundane.

I especially enjoyed that Mueller refuses to reduce mirror magic to black-mirror scrying. Scrying is certainly here, but so are protection, prosperity, self-esteem, meditation, enchantment, spirit work, crafting magical mirrors, portable mirror techniques, and formulas for herbal washes and condensers.

The crafting material may actually be my favorite part.

Mueller encourages readers to choose, decorate, prepare, cleanse, and enchant mirrors for specific magical purposes. That process transforms the mirror from something purchased for a spell into an intentionally constructed ritual object.

Several readers mentioned finishing the book wanting to make their own scrying mirrors or experiment with the condensers and mirror washes, and I had exactly the same reaction. The book makes mirror magic feel tactile and creative rather than purely theoretical.

There is also an intriguing psychological dimension running through the material.

A mirror is one of the few magical tools that immediately gives the practitioner something back: their own image. That makes it uniquely suited to work involving identity, confidence, glamour, self-perception, and transformation because the symbol and the person performing the magic are visually occupying the same space.

The reflective quality naturally lends itself to defensive work as well.

Mirrors can return, redirect, reveal, multiply, conceal, or create boundaries depending upon how the practitioner conceptualizes them. Those possibilities make mirror magic feel less like one specialized technique and more like an entire family of magical operations built around reflection itself.

Mueller's conversational style helps enormously because the subject could easily become overly gothic or theatrical. Instead, she moves comfortably between folklore, practical spellcraft, crafts, personal observations, and popular culture, which several reviewers describe as friendly and approachable.

I also enjoyed the discussion of mirrors in stories and popular culture.

Snow White, Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Bloody Mary, and countless supernatural stories have trained us to imagine mirrors as doors, oracles, traps, and containers for alternate realities. Those fictional associations have become part of the modern magical imagination whether we consciously recognize them or not.

That is ultimately what makes this subject so fascinating to me.

A candle already looks magical when it burns, and a crystal already appears unusual enough to attract attention. A mirror can sit unnoticed on a bathroom wall for years while quietly carrying one of the richest collections of symbolic possibilities in the house.

The Witch's Mirror teaches you to look at that familiar object again.

After reading it, I found myself noticing mirrors differently: their placement, what they reflect, what seems to exist inside them, and how profoundly strange it really is to stand before a sheet of glass and encounter another version of the world staring back.

[Sandra Fargo]

Mirrors have always made more sense to me as witch's tools than as decoration. Even an ordinary one is a peculiar thing when you really look at it. It gives you a world that appears to exist behind the glass, reverses what you show it, catches light and faces, and becomes decidedly uncanny if you stare into it for too long in a darkened room. I was playing with mirrors in magic long before I had much understanding of why witches were so fascinated by them, so Mickie Mueller's The Witch's Mirror felt like being handed the missing manual for an old piece of equipment. She gathers together the folklore, symbolism and practical magic of mirrors in a way that reminded me just how much magical territory is hiding inside something most of us pass dozens of times a day without a thought.

Mueller gets into scrying, protection, reversal work, spirit communication, spellcraft, creating magical mirrors and using reflective surfaces as gateways and tools for divination. I particularly enjoyed the scrying material because mirror-gazing was one of those practices I learned mostly by experimenting until something happened. Anyone who has stared into a dark mirror long enough to watch their own face begin behaving strangely knows how quickly the familiar can become unsettling. Mueller gives that experience structure without explaining the mystery out of it, and she also explores enough different applications that the mirror becomes far more than a substitute for a crystal ball. I found a few ideas that had me reconsidering mirrors already hanging in my own home.

What makes this book such fun is that Mueller clearly understands the deliciously eerie quality of the subject. Witchcraft doesn't always need to be scrubbed clean of its cobwebs, and mirrors deserve a little uneasiness. They've been associated with souls, spirits, prophecy, protection, death and strange superstitions for generations because there is something inherently liminal about seeing a world you can look into but never enter in the ordinary way. This old crone has covered mirrors, blessed mirrors, gazed into mirrors and occasionally avoided looking too closely into one at three in the morning. The Witch's Mirror gave me several new reasons to keep doing all four.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣]

I was just today trying to remember how the melong mirrors are called. Great timing!

Also, hexenschpiegel, thoran and witch's eye mirrors discourses were fascinating!

[ash]

Half useful, half not so much. A good primer, a bit too cutesy for my taste.

[Lisa Keipp]

Poor choice for my first read of the year. was intrigued by the author coming from a family who made mirrors, and a quick glimpse at the beginning gave me hope for a lot more in depth history, etc on mirrors and mythological mirror uses, etc.

Instead, a much too brief overview, and some very very basic - and almost pointless - spells.

Very disappointed in what could have been a rather good book and no just another in a long line of catering to beginners, low substance "magick" books. I guess I should have known by the spelling of "magick".