The history of mirrors goes way back to a much earlier time when we were fortunate enough to see ourselves in a body of water and we thought it was mysteriously enchanting. Those reflections continue to hold our fascination today, even if that fascination is merely our face, right there. It's similar to a baby in an echo-filled art gallery making noises to hear its own voice. That's all we're doing when we look into a mirror - and look and look.
In Dixie Dennis' book Living, Dying, Grieving, Dennis says part of perceiving an object as having magical powers is to be afraid of the object and its perceived power. In China, for example, it is customary to remove all mirrors from the house of the recently deceased, in order that the grieving will not look into one of those mirrors and see the coffin in the reflection, as this would indicate another death in the family.
When I was a kid, a group of us young girls would head to the crapper, turn off the light, and chant “Bloody Mary” until one of us was scratched across the face or saw a bloody figure in the mirror. Nice. This is wrong to do for so many reasons, yet it's still a popular sleepover game even now. A film along the same lines, the 2005 Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, sounds like a stinker of a movie. It was nominated for a Golden Trailer Award in the Trashiest category. Sounds classy.
This leads us to scrying (fortune telling using certain objects). When I was younger, I had a friend who bought a scrying mirror on eBay. It had a grayish to black tint, was in a metal frame and had been blessed by a white witch. It never worked for him. A friend/Wiccan/psychic/lab worker/co-worker of mine instructed me that he should keep that thing wrapped up in a black cloth, which had the dual purpose of absorbing any possible negativity and shielding the living from those, "on the other side of the mirror." The friend eventually threw it away as it had never worked anyway.
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