Mirrors

[Coldfusion]

Does anyone know why people say that breaking a mirror is 7 years bad luck?

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.obsidianmagazine.com/Pages/mirror.html for a website with lots of information on mirror-superstitions.

[Phantaxus]

That site is blocked for me, for the benefit of anyone else it is blocked for I believe it dates back to victorian times 7 years is the length of time it would take a servant to pay for a broken mirror

[catgate]

Yes. It is because if you reak a mirror you will be unlucky for seven years. I know it works and it can often be more than seven years. The day before Toady B liar became prime minister I broke a mirror, and look what that has led to!

[Quizmonster]

It's very much older than Victorian times, Phantaxus, being based on the concept that one's reflection - in water, for example - was somehow part of the individual...the soul, perhaps.

This sort of notion is still found in the modern world, where primitive peoples refuse to let anyone take a photograph of them on the basis that such an image gives them power over you.

[Pickle]

Here's part of Quizmonster's link - The Romans, who were the first to make glass mirrors, attributed the seven years' bad luck to their belief that life renewed itself every seven years. To break a mirror meant to break one's health, and this "broken health" would not be remedied for seven years. The bad luck could be averted, though, by grinding the mirror shards to dust so that no shattered reflections could again be seen in them. The early American slaves adopted a less grueling way to deal with this kind of ill luck: submerge the broken mirror pieces in a stream of south-running water, and the bad luck would be washed away in seven hours.