Obsidian Scrying Mirror.

Light one candle, let the room go quiet, and look into a mirror that gives almost nothing back. Where a face should be there is only a faint suggestion of depth, dark as a well at night.

This is true volcanic obsidian from Michoacán, ground flat and lapped by hand to a mirror so dark it seems to swallow light rather than return it.

Polished obsidian mirrors were cut in Mesoamerica long before the Spanish arrived, associated there with Tezcatlipoca, the smoking mirror god. Later they crossed the Atlantic as curiosities and instruments both: Dr. John Dee is recorded keeping an Aztec obsidian mirror at the Elizabethan court for his own scrying, and it survives today in the British Museum. Folklore in both traditions holds the black mirror as a tool of far-seeing.

Details

• Material: volcanic obsidian from Michoacán
• Stand: simple wooden stand
• Weight: 260 to 320 grams, steady on a table

How to use

Work in low or candlelit conditions rather than daylight, and let your eye rest unfocused on the glass instead of searching it. Some practices place a single lit candle just out of the mirror's own reflection. Sold as a curiosity, with no medical or scientific claims; what appears in the glass, if anything, is your own reading.

Keep your questions gentle, and let the dark do the rest.