How something that was so ordinary, was once, interpreted as something evil, and yet, with the growth of human awareness, the add-on of our knowledge base, a lot of us, no longer, fall prey to, the, superstitions, and these "evolutions" only happen with the advancing of the human mind and intelligence, translated…
In our day-to-day lives, there are, a ton of things we take for granted, from before, they were, only saved for the, well-to-do to, use. Hard to imagine is, most of the ancient people, they don't have a clue of what they looked, like, because, the fifty-dollar N.T. tiny mirror we're able to purchase from the stationery shops, are only for the daughters of the richer families to own. For the ordinary, when they want to gaze upon their own faces, most can only, see the blurry impressions of their own faces from the surfaces of the water.
But, even if you are a daughter of a major general, a man who ruled over a city, the self that you can see, is usually, not that, clear. Because, it wasn't until very late, did humans completely control how to make the glasses reflective, the mirrors from the ancient times, east or west, were mostly made from the metals that were, polished, made of brasses, and the light reflected isn't perfect enough, so, no matter how beautiful a person is, s/he can only see the blurred images.
As I'd learned about the idiom of "the broken halves of a mirror back into whole", I'd become confused: if the mirrors at home got shattered, wouldn't it fall all over the floors? When the Lechang Princess was forced to part with her husband, and found their ways back to each other, they weren't squatted down on the floors, putting back those, pieces of the puzzles, are they? And yet, the most beautiful moment of that came, as the mirrors were, split in half, because an ax was what had been used to split the brass mirror in half, and the princesses got teary eyed, saying farewell to their husbands, there was, supposed, a servant with an ax in hand, hacking at the mirrors too hard, worried that if he didn't hack hard or quick enough, the enemies would break through the doors.
the very first that ever got invented was a handmirror...photo from online
In the west in ancient times, the brass and the silver mirrors are most prevalent, made into the handheld mirrors. Glass mirrors didn't come into being until around the thirteenth century. At first, it was the craftsman, adding a layer of silver or iron behind the glass, then, the Venetians learned to rub the substance with mercury at the base of the mirrors, and finally, the glass mirrors that we use now, came into, being.
This sort of a brand new invention, the moment it was set up on the shelves, it'd sent the entire Europe into a frenzy, and the cost is way high, that ordinary persons can save for the rest of their lives, and still couldn't, afford. When the princess of Medieval times married, if they can have a tiny hand mirror with their dowries, then, it's a show of her family's wealth. Until the seventeenth century, when the king of France built Versailles, he'd still usesd the seventeen pieces of mirrors to make a whole one, to show how rich the French monarchs are, and it'd made all the monarchs across all of Europe bowed down.
Thankfully, the costliness of the mirror didn't trouble the ordinary persons too long, as Christianity would come out, and blamed women who cared too much about how they looked as, sinful! We should not use mirror, only the Holy Bible can reflect the truth of a person's heart as beautiful or ugly!
And due to how hard to come by the mirrors were, plus the push from religion, the glass mirrors, quickly started being associated with magic, curse, and other, mysticism. And, the mirrors turned into the instrument which the souls are, sucked into, and, anything that can, reflect someone's face is deemed, evil. The evil queen in Snow White had a magic mirror, and, the evil queen may be, gazing upon that mirror, in the depth of the night, missing her own, parents, and not using it to tell her if she's the most beautiful of them all or not.
So, this is, the EVOLUTION of things, with the advances of science, technology, and the human awareness, some of the things which the past generations took to be true, became, no more than, superstitions, and this is still due to how we are, getting smarter and smarter by the generations, kids today, are way more agile than we once were for sure!
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