How to Use a Black Obsidian Scrying Mirror

What is a black obsidian scrying mirror?

It is a disc, sometimes an oval or a rectangle, of black obsidian polished to a mirror finish, with no silvering and no particular mount. Unlike a bathroom mirror, it gives back only a dark, partial reflection that seems to swallow light rather than return it. It is also called a black mirror, a magic mirror, or a scrying mirror.

The material is not incidental. Obsidian is a natural volcanic glass: a silica-rich lava that froze before it could crystallise, which gives it a perfectly smooth surface once polished. It is the only stone that naturally offers a reflective surface of this quality, I tell that story in how obsidian is formed.

Two things set it apart from an ordinary mirror, and they are what drive everything that follows: it reflects poorly (the image is dark, without sharp edges) and it has no readable depth of field. An eye searching for something to fix on finds no purchase. Keep that detail in mind, it matters later.

From the Aztecs to John Dee: the history of the black mirror

The obsidian mirror is Mesoamerican before it is esoteric. In the Aztec pantheon, Tezcatlipoca, literally "Smoking Mirror", carries an obsidian mirror, sometimes at his chest, sometimes in place of a foot. God of night, fate and sorcery, he was said to read all things within it. Priests and diviners used mirrors of this material in their practices.

After the Spanish conquest, these objects reached Europe and became highly sought-after curiosities. One of them ended up in the hands of John Dee (1527-1609), mathematician, astrologer and adviser to Elizabeth I, who used it for his famous "conversations with angels". That mirror is now held at the British Museum.

And here is the detail I love: in 2021, two archaeologists from the University of Manchester, Stuart Campbell and Elizabeth Healey, ran that mirror and several other museum pieces through a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. The geochemical profile matched obsidian from Pachuca, in Mexico. Published in the journal Antiquity, the analysis confirms that the most famous object in Elizabethan occultism is an Aztec artefact, carved by a Mexican craftsman more than a century before Dee ever looked into it for angels.

What you actually see in an obsidian mirror

This is the section this article was written for, so let's be direct: a black mirror does not show the future. It opens no portal and connects you with no one. What it does do is far more interesting, and it is well documented.

In 2010, psychologist Giovanni Caputo, of the University of Urbino, published a now-classic experiment in the journal Perception. Fifty healthy adults stared at their own reflection in a mirror, in very low light, for ten minutes. After about a minute, most began perceiving "apparitions": their face distorted, then gave way to other faces, strangers, relatives, deceased parents, animal or monstrous figures. The phenomenon has a name, the strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion, and three conditions are enough to trigger it: dim lighting, a prolonged fixed gaze, and a face to look at.

In other words: deprived of stable outlines and reliable light information, the visual system fills in the gaps. It manufactures shapes from the little it receives, drawing on a memory of faces. An obsidian mirror brings these conditions together better than almost any other surface: dark, smooth, with no readable depth.

How to use an obsidian mirror: the session, step by step

What follows is the sequence found in most practices. Allow ten minutes at most for a first attempt.

Once a week is more than enough. Consistency matters more than duration, true here just as it is for obsidian meditation, whose framework is very close.

Many practitioners keep a stone on the wrist or in the hand during the exercise: the touch of something smooth and cool gives a concrete point of return when the gaze drifts far. It also makes coming out of the session easier.

Mistakes that spoil a session

Five slip-ups come up again and again, and they explain most of the "it's not working" reports:

• Going fully dark, without at least some light there is no reflection left at all, so nothing left to see;
• Placing the light source in front of you, it reflects off the surface and blots everything out;
• Staring intensely, the eye tenses, waters, and the gaze stays fixed. Softening is what does the work;
• Expecting a specific result, going in looking for an answer to a closed question tends to mean seeing nothing, or worse, seeing whatever you had already decided to see;
• Running long sessions back to back, past fifteen or twenty minutes, eye fatigue and a sense of unreality take over, without adding anything.

A sixth, less obvious one: interpreting on the spot. A shape glimpsed in half-light is not a message. Noting it and coming back to it later is more honest, and often more illuminating.

Choosing and caring for your obsidian mirror

Best to say it upfront: I don't make mirrors. My workshop works with beads and set pieces, not the polishing of large discs, which is a different trade entirely. What follows is buying advice with nothing to sell.

Three practical criteria for choosing: a polish free of micro-scratches (visible when the piece is tilted towards a window, and they ruin the reflection), a diameter of 10 to 15 cm for everyday use, larger becomes cumbersome, smaller and the reflection is too small, and a perfectly flat face, since the slightest dip distorts the image. For everything on imitations and inflated prices, my guide to obsidian price and value sets out the pitfalls.

As for care, obsidian is a glass at 5-5.5 on the Mohs scale: it scratches and takes knocks poorly. A dry microfibre cloth, never an abrasive product, storage flat in a cloth. It is all set out in cleaning your obsidian, and for the energetic side, in cleansing and charging.

If you are new to this stone, the full picture, origin, types, properties, care, is gathered in the complete obsidian guide.

Precautions & good practice

This is the part most pages on the subject skip, and it matters more than the rest. Prolonged fixation in low light produces transient dissociative effects, a sense of unreality, a feeling of being outside yourself. For most people, this fades within a few minutes once the light goes back on. For some, it does not.

A few simple rules:

• Ten minutes, no more, and one session a week to start;
• Always come out properly: light, movement, water, contact with concrete objects;
• Stop the moment it feels unpleasant. There is nothing to gain by "pushing through";
• Do not practise if you are going through a difficult period, are prone to anxiety, dissociative or depressive episodes, or are in recent grief, seeing the face of someone you have lost can be deeply unsettling, and that is exactly what Caputo's experiment describes;
• Adults only, and never under the influence of alcohol or any substance.

If feelings of unreality persist after a session, or turn up outside of one, stop the practice and speak to a healthcare professional. Obsidian is also described as a direct stone, one you ease into gradually, I devote a whole article to it: obsidian, dangers and precautions.

Frequently asked questions