shamanism | The Beauty Way

Sitting behind a protective glass in the British museum of London is a black obsidian mirror called the spirit mirror. This sacred object made of volcanic glass once belonged to John Dee, personal astrology, magician and mathematician to Queen Elizabeth I. This scrying item has caused much speculation over the centuries and engages ones curiosity for it contains much unknown magical lore.

It is a well documented that John Dee, who the Queen called her philosopher, along with a con man known for his mediumship, Edward Kelley, used the mirror for over ten years to contact angels. If questioned, Edward Kelley said they were in touch with demons and begged to end the rituals, but John Dee received many profound messages from the mirror and continued with these practices to contact other worlds and the deceased.

The mirror itself had come from the Aztec Empire shortly after Cortes conquered their nation. The Aztec priests were adept in using the mirror to conjure one of their Supreme essences, Tezcatlipoca, also known as the Great Smoking Mirror for the purpose of futuristic visions leading to prophetic messages.

Meanwhile, in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, another of these mirrors is on display with much speculation as to who it belonged. Many Qing Emperors have sang songs and written poetry for the mirror calling it the Ink-Jade mirror. Modern day researchers have since confirmed that indeed, this relic is an artifact, a rare obsidian mirror from the Mesoamerican Aztec culture fashioned from the naturally occurring volcanic glass.

This has resulted in the piece being renamed to the “Aztec Obsidian Mirror”. Mirrors were important relics in the religious traditions of Meso-American cultures, as they were believed to be portals to intangible realms, such as the past and the future.

The Taiwanese learned, just as the British, that the mirror in their possession is traditionally associated with the god Tezcatlipoca, often representing a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, night winds, the jaguar, sorcery, war and conflict.

The Aztecs didn’t disappear, the mirrors didn’t stop being produced and Tezcatlipoca, the God essence, the ONE who can give or take all, is still revered to this day in the indigenous Mexhica culture of Mexico. Traditional dancers, dreamers, curanderas and spiritual leaders are all adept at using their obsidian mirrors, which are still being crafted from Mexican volcanic glass.

In general, mirrors have held a long fascination in the esoteric world. It has always been a tool of divination and magic, a portal that allows us to see into another realm. Mirrors aid one to focus the untrained eye “to see” and perceive what is otherwise unseen. Their purpose is to look into the future, aid in healing, answer questions, solve problems, find lost objects and people, and identify or find thieves and criminals.

Early Egyptians, Arabs, the Magi of Persia, Greeks, and Romans all have documented use of scrying. To gaze upon a shiny surface is the earliest form of divination. “Romans who were skilled in mirror reading were called specularii. Much later, Catherine de Medicis reputedly had a magic mirror that enabled her to see the future for herself and for France. Pére Cotton, the confessor to King Henri IV of France, had a magic mirror that revealed to him the plots against the king.” -https://occult-world.com/mirrors/

The Mayans seem to have had interest in the spirit mirror as these objects were found in every region of the Maya civilization and throughout every period of their existence. Mirrors were of considerable value within Maya society and their use was restricted to the elite. The level of craftsmanship of mirrors seems to indicate they were intended for use by royalty and the aristocratic class alone. Mirrors were hand-held or put into ornate bases, or dwarfs and servants were used to hold the mirror for their rulers. Both for the Maya and the Mexica the very word ‘mirror’ was synonymous with ‘ruler’.

“Advances in the decipherment of Maya script have revealed the central function of mirrors as instruments for ritual scrying. This ritual scrying was the continuation of an ancient divinatory tradition with its ultimate origins in Pre-Classic shamanistic practices that had been formalized by the Maya priesthood.” – Wikipedia. A Mayan Priest, an interpreter of destinies would say, ‘You have come to see yourself in the mirror; you have come to consult the book’. Mirrors represented wisdom, knowledge and power.

The first time I saw an obsidian mirror, my spirit literally jumped out of my body. I had an instant recognition of a sacred tool that I knew in my heart I wanted to know more intimately. I knew the mirror had called me. I have often heard indigenous wisdom teachers say, ‘Don’t go looking for your medicine, it will find you!’ And so it did. Learning to actually work with my mirror was a whole other undertaking.

I needed a teacher. It took me three teachers to find the one with whom I deeply resonated. What I learned with Alma Santiago Martinez, Nahautl lineage keeper, is that a gazer can get lost in the mirror. Permission, respect and knowledge are needed to approach the obsidiana.

The supernatural portal of the mirror can bring you into deep reflections with many archetypes that live within yourself. You learn to see the cosmic eye and how you reflect yourself into the world. You learn to meet your ego and release aspects of yourself and your stories that don’t serve you back into the black mirror. You learn to hear the self destructive voice that keeps you in repetitive destructive patterns and also release this to the mirror. You find your voice and your courage. Symbolically you connect with the sun, the moon, eyes & faces of the ancestors and the wisdom of the flowers & herbs. The mirror can answer questions, it can offer warnings, it can bring protection. It is a gift, from God, from Tezcatlipoca, He Who We Must Obey.

I am blessed and grateful to be working with such a sacred ancient tool of magic! Do you too feel a call to the mirror? The true self is there. Right there. In front of you. In the mirror. In the pool of water. In the significant other, in the ancestors, in the reflection that you dare to gaze upon. Would you like to learn to use a mirror? I asked mi maestra to create a teaching around Tezcatlipoca and beginning use of the Obsidian Mirror: https://moonflowermedicine.love/classes-teachings/obsidian-mirror-teaching

Tlazocamati Tezcatlipoca

Denai Grace Seacombe-Fuller, Cihuatochtli, is a Mama of five, Tarot Guide, Acolyte of IxChel, spiritual healer, flower essence practitioner, flower alchemist and student of Nahualism.

Hiking a short forested trail with my dog on the foothills of Ashland, Oregon, I come to a soothing assortment of Standing Stones. Here I sit at the base of a Grandmother Madrone tree with a panoramic view to this picturesque mountain town I call home. At some time in the life span of this Madrone, she has been struck by lightning. I love the energy she holds from the fire that must have ensued. Some of her branches are charred, burnt and dead, but mostly, her branches are gorgeously rejuvenated and continue to grow in a myriad of directions. She is currently loaded with berries, she stands atop this mountainside, a glorious specimen, a true testament to the resilience of Mother Nature.

I was drawn to this place to make an essence. I open my 1 ounce dropper essence bottle filled with Icelandic artesian vodka and Mt. Shasta spring water, both ingredients hold importance. I am deeply aware of the current struggle for fresh water being led by the woman in North Dakota and of the woman in Iceland who seem to be standing strong in their fight for equal rights. I call out to Grandmother Madrone, “Come bless my essence with your energy, I call forth the energies of a woman, struck by force, who wills her own rejuvenation, so that she may bloom again”. I named this essence, the ‘Grandmothers Speak’… through thunder and lightning… of the end of the patriarchy, of the healing of the woman. It is rejuvenation energy medicine.

This particular sacred Earth place is where my mother has chosen to make her presence known to me this year. “Be still daughter”, she says. “Bear witness to the women rising.” My mother was the victim of domestic violence. She has called me to Grandmother Madrone to impart wisdom. She is making it clear to me that although her life was short, and sad, that she created me, who lives on. Although she could not, by example, show me the home of an honored woman, she has led me to the very lessons needed to realize that women are sacred. She insists that I would create the balanced home of a woman well-loved. She marvels at my fastidiousness to heal the lineage of the women of my family and bloodline. She bows in reverence to the challenges of my path.

My mother started communicating with me in earnest last year when she nudged me to go to the shrine of Lady Guadalupe in Mexico City. This annual day of reverence, 12-12, is the Feast of Lady Guadalupe, it is also my mothers birthday. Serendipitously, I embarked on a shamanic training with Sergio Magana, Ocecoyotl in which I found myself in a moving crowd of nine million Catholic devotees and indigenous pilgrims. Sergio’s students, honoring the old religious protocol of the Aztec, walked along with clear intent as we performed various prayers & movements to heal our blood lines and to release our underworlds. Our six-hour walk will eventually lead us to the mound of Tonatizin Tlalli Coatlicue, the original Aztec Mother Goddess, Mother Earth herself, who the Spanish conquerors displaced hundreds of years prior with the current Basilica of Lady Guadalupe.

I was slightly amused by the perfect crossroads of Christianity and Curanderismo, where my mother and I could actually, peacefully, meet. On this annual religious pilgrimage, I was able to light a candle requesting the Lady Guadalupe to assist me in my healing desires for my family, I was able to kneel on the earth offering deep gratitude to the original Earth Mother who provides all, and I was able to find an inner peace with my own Mother who had departed twenty-eight years prior from bone cancer.

Shortly after her death, I was called to Joshua Tree, California for my first plant medicine initiation. I lay under the desert night sky, riddled with more stars than I had ever seen, aware that some of those stars were speaking to me; they were my ancestors voices whispering. I was able to feel my mother safely in the Mictlans, the land of the dead. Throughout that night, the Sky World Ancestors kept urging me to remember. Remember. I have often been haunted by that particular spiritual quest as I never quite understood what message was being transmitted.

Nor did I know, it would be years later, in a pine forest, at the base of a madrone tree, after many life lessons, marriage, motherhood, loss of love, divorce, and maturity, far from the land of my birth, at the dawn of the 5th world, I’d finally realize the simple and potent message being imparted on that starry night: Remember who you are!

YOU are a Holy Being. You are the center of this universe. You are the creative life force. You are the beginning and the end. It is in your arms that all is well. YOU are the Holy Grail. Front and center. To be honored, respected, heard and seen. “Violating a woman is a violation against God, a sin against yourself; karmic suicide.” (Gina Loring) Any world, family unit, work environment or religious system that does not operate with this foundational belief is doomed to fail.

Woman, Mother, Sister, Daughter, Warrior. Remember!

It took years upon years of untangling, unraveling and re-patterning to believe these simple truths. It has taken centuries to reach this juncture in history, the dismantling of the patriarchy, the empowered woman, the supportive male. It is time.

“Aztec myth tells how the deity Quetzalcoatl, who in the Nahuatl language means “feathered serpent,” journeyed to Mictlan at the dawning of the Fifth Sun (the present world era), in order to restore humankind to life from the bones of those who had lived in previous eras. For bones are like seeds: everything that dies goes into the earth, and from the earth new life is born in the sacred cycle of existence”. http://www.wilderutopia.com

At Grandmother Madrone, high up on an North American earth mound, I carry a candle to the Lady Guadalupe to thank her for cradling me in her Mexican Basilica while hearing my prayers. Here, on this mountaintop, I bow down in prayerful thanksgiving to Tonantzin, Mother Earth, for everything. Everything.

Here, in Ashland, Oregon, I feel my Belizean mother’s full presence as my main ancestral guide. The Original Sky World Ancestor. It is my deceased mother, after all, who has dedicated her bones to the earth to offer me life and it is she who has called me to this rejuvenation tree to connect with my stars, and to make good medicine.

-Denai Grace Fuller, Cihuatochtli
is a Tarot Guide who offers hand-crafted flower & earth essences:
The Grandmothers Speak is a rejuvenation Earth essence which heals mother/daughter wounds and the female spirit $12.00.

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Obsidian Mirror

The Grandmothers Speak