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John Dee’s Obsidian Mirror

AlchoPwn said:
Thanks for the interesting post you have made, especially the part about Jehan Fleury.

Just to clarify, in para (D) you say that Dee didn't use the obsidian mirror because it didn't work, which you establish in (A), and he used other shewstones in his workings. So this is why the obsidian mirror wasn't part of his Enochian system. If that is the case, you are indeed quite correct. For my part I wasn't even aware that Dee owned an obsidian mirror prior to this forum topic, but had written elsewhere of the use of obsidian mirrors in the Lesser Key of Solomon.

I am certainly pleased that you think that you can offer a mesoamerican provenance for the mirror in question though. While it has no bearing on Enochian magic, other than being in Dee's posessions, it is certainly relevant to other forms of European ceremonial magic that emerged after the "Conquest of New Spain". I wonder where I could look to further establish the origins of the mirror beyond Dee's ownership?
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Most of what I learned about Fleury, I read in French, from the digitalized documents of the BNF, the Gallica. It can be a rich source for those that can read in French :

https://gallica.bnf.fr/

Besides, there are some material in English as well, like this small article

http://www.cindyvallar.com/Fleury.html

Or even a discussion on Reddit, that some can'y consider very... reliable, but that can have some hints to further research :

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8h33kd

The English ambassador that I mentioned was William Pickering, the English Ambassador for the court of Charles V. He is mentioned as a friend of Dee and was present on some vital occasions on Dee's early perigrinations on Europe :

https://books.google.fr/books?id=0n...=onepage&q=william pickering john dee&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=FA...=onepage&q=william pickering john dee&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=Ib...=onepage&q=william pickering john dee&f=false

There is no actual statement saying that Pickering gave an item of Aztec paraphernalia to Dee, but the opportunity seem to me too good to be put elswhere.

Here, a short mention linking Fleury and the obsidian mirrors that arrived to Europe :

https://books.google.fr/books?id=SL...nepage&q=jehan fleury cortez obsidian&f=false

I will try to find more, better focused sources, when I arrive home. I hope this ones can help. :)
 
Oh dear... Reddit links show very badly... Sorry.
 
chicorea said:
Or even a discussion on Reddit, that some can'y consider very... reliable, but that can have some hints to further research :
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Agreed. The ideas and thoughts that are triggered are very useful.
 
chicorea said:
Most of what I learned about Fleury, I read in French, from the digitalized documents of the BNF, the Gallica. It can be a rich source for those that can read in French : I will try to find more, better focused sources, when I arrive home. I hope this ones can help. :)
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Bless you unto the 7th generation. As a sign of appreciation I am going to randomly "like" a bunch of your posts chicorea. Luckily I am decently proficient at French, having lived in France for a year. Better yet, I can chase the sources too. Fleury sounds like an interesting character.
 
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chicorea said:
... But what about the British Museum verdict, is it based solely on the way the original collection was classified? Have they any reasonable proof that the mirror is Aztec in its origin?
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They do now ...

Newly announced research results indicate the obsidian in Dee's mirror came from the Pachuca region in Mexico - the Aztecs' primary obsidian source.
'Spirit mirror' used by 16th-century occultist John Dee came from the Aztec Empire

The 16th-century courtier John Dee, a scientific adviser to England's Queen Elizabeth I, was also deeply involved in magic and the occult, and he tried to commune with ghosts, using a so-called spirit mirror made of polished obsidian.

Now, a new analysis of Dee's infamous mirror has finally traced its origins — not to the spirit world, but to the Aztec Empire.

Obsidian mirrors such as Dee's were known from Aztec culture, but there were no records on his mirror's origins. However, geochemical analysis enabled researchers to link the mirror's obsidian — a type of volcanic glass — to Pachuca, Mexico, a popular source of obsidian for Aztec people. This finding indicated that the artifact was Aztec and not a copy made from European obsidian, and Dee likely acquired the mirror after it was brought to Europe from Mexico, according to a new study. ...

Dee's obsidian mirror, now in the collection of the British Museum in London, is polished on both sides and is nearly perfectly circular, measuring about 7.2 inches (18.5 centimeters) in diameter and 0.5 inches (13 mm) thick, and weighing about 31 ounces (882 grams). A perforated square tab at the top of the mirror measures about 1.3 inches (33 mm) long and may have served as a handle ...

Inscriptions on notes that are stored with the mirror refer to it as "The Devil's Looking-glass" and "The Black Stone into which Dr Dee used to call his Spirits," according to the British Museum. ...

Drawings of mirrors that resemble Dee's appear in the Codex Tepetlaoztoc; this 16th-century Aztec pictorial manuscript was created by inhabitants of Tepetlaoztoc and depicts excessive tribute demands and other abuses of Indigenous people by Spanish conquistadors ...

The Aztecs used obsidian mirrors for scrying — peering into the future — and for religious rituals. These mirrors were strongly associated with one god in particular: Tezcatlipoca ("smoking mirror" in the Nahuatl language), a creation deity in the Aztec pantheon and a god of sorcerers ...

The scientists analyzed Dee's mirror and related objects in the British Museum collections ... using a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument. They then compared its chemical "fingerprints" — ratios of elements such as iron, titanium and rubidium — with ratios in samples of obsidian mined from different parts of Mexico. ...

Their analysis showed that Dee's mirror — and a circular mirror that was similar to Dee's — were close matches to samples from Pachuca, a region in Mexico that was under Aztec control and "was the most heavily exploited" of the known obsidian resources for the Aztec Empire ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/john-dee-spirit-mirror-aztec
 
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https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection

maximus otter
 
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