The Black Mirror & Technology
Brendan Heard and Iásonas Lupus
“Be curious about life, and be cautious with it.”
– Vincent Price
Since very ancient times it has been common practice that mystics use mirrors and dark pools of water for scrying, or seeking significant messages or visions. In the 17th century the mathematician, astronomer, and alchemist to Queen Elizabeth John Dee (and his psychic medium, Edward Kelly) used black obsidian stone from the new world for just such occult experiments. They claimed to commune with angelic spirits from the unseen realm through Kelly’s esoteric scrying technique.
In our own time there are many, many people who are fervently addicted to television sets and iPhones, devices which themselves are black screens, with the power to see hidden worlds and obtain messages and visions. Many are very much possessed by the auric imagery of these hand-held mirrors, both metaphorically and experientially more advanced than the obsidian used by the great John Dee.
Are these black pools, these mirror-screens, a portal to an affecting numinous spirit, which in its digital prevalence has become normalized in its exotic function? Can we say, in a way, not entirely untrue, that the phone-zombies are ponderably possessed by an influential computerized force, a kind of diverting succubus which reaches from the screen, as it did from the obsidian or the looking glass or pool, and draws the attention to its purpose? The provocation of paranoia, greed, hatred, and fear: consumption and destruction.
The average person, untrained in the metaphysical, and not possessed with the prowess of John Dee, has nevertheless a tool a great order of magnitude above any new-world rock. And yet they have no psychic firewall to defend from the entities who dwell beyond and behind this black mirror of the abyss. Dire consequence await those without awareness and training.
“By science men may learn the mysteries of the spirit world.”
– John Dee
