Was it really the Greek God of fire and metal Hephaestus who invented the mirror? When you move away from the mirror the image is lost, much like a shadow? Is it magic…how does it work? Over the centuries has a mirror become a metaphor for eye catching deception? What is it that the eye is really seeing? Does the image it reveals have a foundation or consistency. In the words of contemporary French historian Sabine Melchior Bonnet, it was part of a cycle that climaxed with the ‘ democratisation of narcissism’ during the nineteenth century. He questioned why the sun could make a circular image when it shined through a square hole. Mastering reflection was one step towards an evolution that began with an observation by ancient Greek Philosopher Aristotle in 330 BC. In Eve’s eye, described as the mirror of love, that Adam first learned to know himself.įrom that encounter ‘reflection, concentration, self construction and reproduction’ were said to have been born. Gazing at one another to see the reflection of each other in the eyes was an aspect of love.
In the pupil was an image of the one who looked into it. In antiquity the eye served precisely to characterize one’s beloved ocule mi, my little eye. Many myths, legends and superstitions are associated with the mirror and in all cultures they are associated with truth.
In Ancient Greece looking at one’s reflection could mean losing one’s soul, and the ancients put forward all sorts of hypotheses concerning the formation of such images. It was well known in ancient times when writers mention this and other such aphorisms written on the walls of the proneos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. ‘Know thyself’ is an ambitious ideal and a continuing dialogue between philosophy and love. It has been described as the ‘matrix of the symbolic’, accompanying the human quest to know and understand our identity. The Mirror has occupied a unique place in the imagination of humans for as long as recorded history.
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