Hey guys, welcome to the Learn Feng Shui podcast where ancient tradition meets modern living. And each week we cover a different aspect of Feng Shui or Chinese metaphysics. I'm Candice Berlanga, certified Feng Shui practitioner, and this week we're going to be looking at mirrors. And you might think we already covered this topic. Oh, well, you'd be correct cuz this is a remastered episode.
I had episode ready to record. I promised bedroom Feng Shui. I was going to revisit that topic, but my recording software was glitching and had other plans for me. But it's okay cuz I wanted to sprinkle in some old episodes and remaster them. So, that's what today is.
I really like this episode and I think it's pretty relevant covering the topic of mirrors. They've always held a strange place in human culture. They are practical objects that we use every day, but they also have been surrounded by centuries of superstition and folklore. In Feng Shui, mirrors are powerful tools used to redirect, expand, and soften the flow of energy in a space. And we'll be talking about that.
How in both classical and BTB Feng Shui, how mirrors are used along with some practical tips on placement, shapes and colors that can influence the elements that they represent. Today's episode also features a folklore Friday segment and we're going to step into a stranger side of mirrors and look at the work of a famous researcher who explored whether mirrors could act as a kind of doorway or even a tool for communicating with the dead. Let's get into it. Hey guys. So, I know that one of the big questions is when you start doing Feng Shui, you see all this stuff about mirrors.
Where can I put a mirror? Is it bad luck to put a mirror in certain places? What sorts of mirrors can you use? And what is actually superstitious and what is considered in Feng Shui when you're looking at mirrors. So, let's kind of touch on some of these topics today.
Starting off, let's look at some of the common beliefs about mirrors and you know, generally you'll find like a common or generic Feng Shui like do's and don'ts when it comes to mirrors. So, let's kind of start out with that. So, a door facing um a mirror. So, when you walk into your house, if you see a mirror right there, is it bad Feng Shui? Personally, I I kind of say no.
Um a lot of these beliefs and the practices kind of go with a more uh western style of Feng Shui or BTB Feng Shui. And so, um honestly in my experience, I do a little bit more classical Feng Shui. And so, some of this stuff is not taken into consideration. However, I would say that different practitioners that practice BTB style Feng Shui, they swear by this and they seem to have a lot of luck with using mirrors for adjustments. So, with that being said, if you come straight into a house and you startle yourself and it looks like there's like another door in front of you with somebody else coming in, I don't think that's probably a great energy to come into.
And so, I don't know if it actually has anything to do with Feng Shui from a classical point of view, but I would say if it's almost startling to look into a mirror when you enter a space, then I would move the mirror to a different area. This brings me to the point of mirrors in your bedroom. Now, this is one area I don't like to see mirrors and actually the mirror itself is okay. So, what happens, at least in my understanding, is that the mirrors they reflect sunlight. And so, that sunlight is is energy.
It's that yang energy. And if you have a mirror that is in your bedroom and maybe it's facing a window and maybe you're getting the sunlight from that area, perhaps you will have a bad night's sleep. You will be unable to sleep. Your sleep will be a little bit restless. So, rather than like move the mirror from your bedroom, you could cover it at night.
So, having your bed also directly facing a mirror is it comes back to kind of that startling thing that I talked about. It's you wake up and you sit up and you see another person. You're like, "Holy crap." You know, have you How many times have you done that maybe if you have a dresser with a mirror in it that reflects your bed. So, maybe if you just cover that at night, especially if the mirror is reflecting the sunlight from a window and that is also reflecting onto your bed, that could really give you a a really restless night's sleep. So, either cover that mirror or move the dresser where it's not directly reflecting sunlight and it's not directly reflecting your bed.
One of the more popular cures in Feng Shui, especially if you find online and it's really popular with a lot of practitioners, is they like to place a mirror behind their their burners in their stove like that backsplash of their stove so it can double the abundance or double the wealth. A lot of schools of thought actually believe that the kitchen or the stove is a place that activates wealth and abundance. Me personally, I don't love the aesthetic of it and to me the mirror is actually the element of water and also metal because it has that metallic finish to it. So, I don't love the combination of fire with metal and water, but some people swear by this and they really like this cure. One of the things you need to consider also is that stoves used to have real fire to them.
Back in the day, they used to have what was called a wet kitchen and some countries still do it, but it was just like a little place off the side of their house on like a little brick building because they would cook with real fire. And if something were to ever happen, they want to make sure that they could put that fire out quick without it burning their house down. They would feed their stoves this real fire. And so, it would be like a big fire to it. Um and it was really considered very important back in the day.
Nowadays, with a lot of people cooking, we have these convection stoves and some people don't cook at all or maybe they just use a crock-pot a lot. So, this is one time you kind of can take it or leave it or kind of interpret it how you how you would like. Now, if you're one that cooks all the time, you might want to just try it out. I've seen a lot of things that say mirrors are the element of water. However, I would put them more as a yin metal element in the original I Ching and the original trigrams in the Bagua, the sector that represents what is called marsh or like a shallow pool, to me represents a mirror or a reflective surface and that's the the Dui Gua.
That would be the west and to me that represents a mirrors. That's kind of just in my opinion. And so, since it can represent the element of water since it's reflective, it could also represent the element of yin water like a puddle. But again, I kind of see that more as that trigram of marsh or that west area which is that yin metal. So, it could represent one of the two and you really want to take into account the shapes and colors that you're putting with your mirror.
Since it mirror could be the element of water, it could be the element of metal, you want to put something that's kind of compatible with that. You could do colors like purples and greens. Um if you want to add more of that metal element to it, you could do like grays, shiny things, gold gold frames to it. Or you could do like a round mirror. If you wanted to add the element of earth, the squared shape and colors like oranges and your yellows, kind of those earthy terracotta type colors.
And now, if you want some fiery, you could do the red uh for the fire element and you could do triangle shape mirrors. And if you wanted to add maybe the element add some more water to it, you could definitely add like a blue, black, or purple frame to it and it could be some kind of a wavy shape. Now, I would be careful about mirrors that are like distorted. Some of them have like that cracked finish to them and it adds kind of like a distorted like retro type of finish to it. Um so, I would caution against that.
If you already own one, like you don't have to like throw it away or nothing. Like if you already own like a mirror that's like has that crackle effect on it or, you know, something like that, that maybe you just want to consider um what it's reflecting also. So, that brings us to our next segment. What is your mirror reflecting? Again, a mirror is supposed to double the energy it reflects.
This is some perspectives believe that whatever a mirror is reflecting, it's going to double in your life. And so, for that sake, please make sure your mirror is not reflecting a lot of clutter. There's some theories and I think this is kind of a funnier one and I I to me I think it's a superstition, but they say if your bed is reflected in a mirror, that it'll actually invite a third party into your home. So, I mean, unless you want that. I don't like the mirrors facing the bed anyway, not for that reason, but because it's just too energetic.
I don't believe that it'll lead you to have an affair. There's all these things within Feng Shui like, "It's means you're having an affair. It means your spouse is having an affair." or whatever. But if you have a a healthy relationship, I mean, to me you don't have to worry about that because even if the opportunity was to present itself to either you or your partner, you just know that that's not going to happen, right? Like that's just not something that happens in a in a stable marriage.
And so, um I wouldn't worry about that. So, again, looking at the distorted images, looking at if a mirror is broken, you know, out of repair, if it's reflecting like dirt, clutter, um and again, some schools of thought actually say it can expand the area or they use it to fix missing sectors. Speaking of missing sectors, I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically energy adjustment using mirrors. In some schools of thought, the theory is that say you're missing um a corner of your home and that corner is in the west. And so, for BTB, that would be what is called your children, your creativity area.
And say you're having a problem with, you know, either your children, you're having trouble conceiving. You might want to take a large mirror and you might want to place it on the west sector of your wall or it could be the um the children and creativity area if you're BTB. So, you can actually place a mirror there, and you can expand the area out to correct the area or to expand that area to fix a missing corner or missing sector to the home. Um with classical feng shui, we don't take this into consideration as much, and we kind of just talk about the fact that you're missing the sector, and I I suppose energetically that's the thought it could correct. With classical feng shui, we just go more off towards what is actually physically there.
Just for some context, in 2019, I believe, when I visited San Francisco, which has a large Chinese population, you'll notice a lot of examples of feng shui in action, sometimes subtle or sometimes you just have to have the feng shui eye. Well, we went to one restaurant, and I can't remember the name of it, but something caught my eye. One section of the wall actually jetted out into the dining area, and it created this little projection in the wall, and they actually mirrored the entire wall to, I would say, correct the feng shui and uh fix that wall, right? And the moment when I saw that, I just thought to myself, yeah, they're practicing feng shui or they had a feng shui expert come in. Cuz remember, in feng shui, mirrors are often used to visually expand the space or soften the energy of a a wall that projects out like that.
It's this way of balancing the flow of chi, although an entire wall of mirrors might be a little excessive, maybe just one mirror would help. So, I'll leave that up to you to decide, but there again, there's some schools of thought that actually say it it really works, and they swear by it. So, I mean, what do you have to lose by buying a mirror and seeing if it helps improve some things within your life, right? One other thought on using mirrors is that you can actually use mirrors when you are not in a command position. So, say your desk has to be set up against a wall, and your back is to a door, some schools of thought say you can actually put a mirror in front of you so you can see behind you, and they kind of say that this can correct or cure the area if you're not in a commanding position.
Now, looking at mirrors to get rid of poison arrows, this is actually a common thing that some practitioners will use, you know, if there is a poison arrow pointing towards the front door, sometimes out that convex mirror. It kind of it goes out, looks like a bubble, right? So, they'll put a convex mirror there, and they'll say that it can cure that area. This also has to do with um really the the mirrors are kind of used outside the home with uh different schools of feng shui. The concave mirror can actually it's supposed to reflect and expand the energy.
So, if you have the concave mirror, and you have something really nice outside, um you have a good feature, or you want to, again, fix those missing corners or the missing sectors to your home, it's said that you can put a convex mirror there to expand that area energetically and to also expand that good energy. So, uh that's one way people kind of use the bubble mirrors. I don't recommend using them within the house, so you're not supposed to use them inside your house. If you're going to do this within your house, I would actually just use a regular mirror. One other thing I would avoid when putting mirrors up is mirrors reflecting into mirrors and creating that crazy infinity effect.
That is not good energy. The energy is so chaotic, and I've actually heard, although I've never experienced, that when two mirrors reflect each other, it can actually create a an opening for spirit to come through. To me, I'm not comfortable looking into those infinity effect in mirrors when they reflect each other. Um it feels like a funhouse, right? I don't know.
It makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable to sit in a space like that for too long, and so for that reason, I have any in my home like that. But if this is the case, and you can't change that, maybe you could just like cover one up part-time, you know? Some people use different mirrors like that to check like the back of their head when they're doing their hair, whatever, but cover that thing when you're done with it. One last thing you want to avoid with mirrors is placing them so high that you can't see in them. Like, what use is a mirror if you have it so high up to the ceiling that it's just reflecting like open space, you know?
The mirrors can be used to make a space feel bigger, but you want to put a mirror in where you can actually use it. I will say I don't think this probably applies to like mirrors over fireplaces and stuff like that. I have a mirror that I occasionally rotate over my fireplace, and I think it's fine, and it does reflect back part of my dining room, although I can't see through it. Maybe I'm calling myself out, cuz I do actually use that mirrors for decorating purposes sometimes. But you don't want to place a mirror within your home that is like real high up to the ceiling or just for some weird decorative purpose like that.
You want to make sure you can see in it. Now, I would say this doesn't count if you're using mirrors to correct a space. Like, some people use a small little mirrors, maybe they'll use like a small almost like pocket-size mirror, and they'll hang it over a door or something to, you know, reflect back energies. I would say not the small little mirrors, but if you're say a large decorative mirror, don't hang it so high that you can't use it. All right, guys, let's talk all about mirrors, myths, and superstitions.
Mirrors actually have a very big history, and they're actually thought of as very like rare back in the day when they were first started being used. They're actually made out of glass, and so they were very like rare, beautiful items. And with this rarity also came different beliefs because it was actually reflecting the person back to themselves. Mirrors were often used for different things like scrying or contacting deceased relatives, which I want to get into in just a second. But first, I'm going to read from two-waymirrors.com an article entitled "Mirror Myths and Superstitions." I'll link to that in the show notes.
Have you ever wondered if mirrors cause bad luck? In this guide, we expose the top mirror myths and superstitions ranging from Bloody Mary to broken mirrors. Does breaking a mirror really cause 7 years of bad luck? And does chanting Bloody Mary into the mirror summon ghosts? These aren't the only mirror myths floating around in time and space.
In this guide, we provide helpful tips on how to avoid and reverse any bad luck you may have encountered. First, we have Bloody Mary, a dangerous game of truth or dare. This game truth or dare has been around for some time, but have you ever dared to summon a ghost? This folklore ritual claims that if you light a candle in a dimly lit room and chant Bloody Mary three times into a mirror, you will see a woman dripping in blood in the reflection. Legend says she may scream at you or even reach for the mirror and wrap her cold hands around your throat.
Some may even say that she can escape from the mirror and come after you. So, I remember as a child my sister turning the light off in our downstairs bathroom and telling me say Bloody Mary in the mirror, and I was so scared that I did not do it. And to this day, I I won't do that. Like, I just I don't know. [clears throat] To me, mirrors do reflect, and they do they can hold energy.
So, yeah, I don't want to mess with that. A broken mirror is 7 years bad luck. So, as legend has it, when you break a mirror, you're going to be cursed with bad luck for the next 7 years. How true is this myth, and how is this curse undone? While it's hard to say how accurate this belief is, it's always better safe than sorry, and since accidents happen and things break, we are human.
So, potential curse reversal options if you actually break a mirror. So, it says here to wait a couple hours before picking up the broken fragments and taking every last bit of mirror and burying it outside in the moonlight. Throw salt over your left shoulder onto the devil himself, and take a single piece of the mirror and touch it to a tombstone. So, it says that has an immediate effect to it. If you or someone you know is getting married, then this is the one for you.
A happy couple should stand in front of a mirror together, not only to see how they're going to look, of course, but it's a wedding tradition. So, it is said that if a married couple looks into a mirror shortly after they say I do, they're uniting their souls. When you look into a mirror with somebody, it is said to create an alternate universe where the two souls can live on together forever. Another common wedding tradition is a little more risky, but just as fun. It says that breaking glass on your wedding day is a good omen.
The shattered pieces of glass represent how many years the couple will stay together, and uh so it says make sure you put a lot of muscle behind the break. And you see this kind of in different ceremonies where they put a wine cup into like a like a a bag, and then the couples will step on it. So, we we've seen that. It does say here that gifting a mirror while looking into the mirror after being married brings good fortune, gifting a mirror to newlyweds is not the same. So, in Asian cultures, they believe that gifting a new mirror to the couple on their wedding day will bring bring bad luck.
It's partially due to symbolism because marriages are supposed to last forever, and mirrors are actually very fragile and prone to breaking. So, it does say you can get like if you don't give a glass mirror or like a you know, one of those type of mirrors, um do an acrylic mirror instead. So, another reason is that mirrors can potentially hold bad spirits. Looking at the So, I'm wondering about like uniting your soul in an alternate dimension. Like, if you get divorced in this dimension, do you have to get divorced in your mirror dimension?
Mirrors were used to hang up to scare spirits away. So, brass mirrors were used to hang above idols in China. This way, if evil spirits were to enter the place of worship, they would see their reflection and run away. It does not necessarily have to be a mirror, and any highly reflective object will do. In Cambridge in the 1800s, men's shoe buckles were found hanging on the walls, and it was believed that it was used to ward off evil energy, much like the mirrors in China.
Today, people still hang mirrors across their front door to reflect any negative energy and protect their home. And, of course, it's called the Bagua mirror, right? Covering a mirror to trap lost souls. Once someone has passed away, their soul is released from their body, and it starts to roam. And the legend says that if a soul encounters a mirror before the body is buried, typically within 3 days, their soul will be trapped in the mirror, and it is said to cause mirrors to tarnish or to even turn into the image of the deceased.
People have claimed to see the faces of the dead appear in old antique mirrors. So, is this a trapped soul, or are minds playing tricks on us? Some of us believe that demons could escape through the mirror to the living world, and to prevent a trapped soul, you have to cover your mirror when someone passes. And, of course, we know through different cultures it is customs to cover a mirror after somebody passes away. And according to this article here, covering a mirror after the death of a loved one originated from Kabbalistic tradition, and I believe it's still practiced in Judaism.
They believe that the soul leaves this world, it leaves a void. And so, the void allows the spirits to come into the world of the living, bad spirits included. And whenever there's that energy vacuum, there's potential for negative energy to creep in. So, following that up, I want to focus on the fact that people can see their relatives in the mirrors. In fact, there's some very famous cases of this.
And this is one of my favorite cases, one of my favorite paranormal or parapsychology type of researchers that has done a lot of work with communicating with loved ones that have passed is the Dr. Raymond Moody. So, Dr. Raymond Moody was a a philosopher, psychologist, um and author. And he wrote books called Life After Life, in which he talked about people communicating with their loved ones.
And he also talked about near-death experiences. He famously had a mirror he did experiments on, and it was an object sort of called a psychomanteum. And so, a psychomanteum is a small enclosed area set up with a comfortable chair, dim lighting, and a mirror angled so it does not reflect anything but darkness. And it is intended to communicate with spirits of the dead. And I am referencing from a Wikipedia, and I'm kind of paraphrasing some stuff here.
So, if you want to read that, I will include that link in the show notes. Here it says the psychomanteum was popularized by Raymond Moody, the originator of the term near-death experience. In his 1993 book, Reunions, visionary encounters with departed loved ones, Raymond Moody believed that the psychomanteum was useful as a tool to resolve grief. The chamber was kept darkened and illuminated only by candle or a dim lightbulb. Subjects would gaze into the reflected darkness hoping to make contact with spirits of the dead.
Moody compared a psychomanteum to the Greek uh necromanteum, and it is said to be a form of scrying and also seeing the other side. So, one thing I kind of want to describe to you um because I've done a little bit of research on how he would do this. What would happen was Mr. Moody, he would have these different patients in um therapy with him. He would talk about the person that they needed to have closure with.
You know, he would sit them down and have like a nice counseling session with them. Once he had these sessions, he said that he would kind of wait for a little bit of a lull in the conversation, and to him that would signal that it was time for the person to enter what he called the psychomanteum. Again, it would just be a room set up with one mirror in it. The it would be a really low light, and the mirror would be reflecting only like the ceiling or like, you know, you wouldn't be able to see a reflection in it. So, it maybe the mirror would be a little bit of an angle, there would be low lighting, and so you wouldn't see your face in the mirror.
And once that would occur, the person would kind of let their eyes like have a soft gaze to them. You know, when you're looking afar out into the whatever, and you kind of let your eyes relax and just kind of focus on nothing. That was the point where you're supposed to be able to see maybe a deceased relative. And remember that relatives aren't the only things that would come through in some of these cases. I think it's depending on where your mindset and focus is.
I actually read a experiment they did in a book called Magic, Mysticism, and the Molecule, in which they actually induced the beta state of relaxation using ping pong balls, it's like sensory deprivation, cut in half over their eyes, and flashing lights. Once they did that, they put this poor man in a room with the mirror, and uh he had a really bad experience. It was just a strange experience. So, almost like a bad drug trip. Things can come through, and I do think that mirrors, especially when you're focusing and you're trying to communicate with something, you've definitely probably opened a portal, and other things can then come through.
So, I wonder if he would cover his mirror when he would be done with each session. Cuz I definitely think that something can come through in the mirror, especially if it's not just a decorative and you use it specifically for like a tool like scrying or communicating with a deceased loved one. One last thought to go with that is I had heard from I can't remember which paranormal researcher, but they had possession of Raymond Moody's original mirror that he used for his psychomanteum. And when they were transporting it, they had it in their trunk of their car, and they actually heard banging and thumping in the back of their car. And so, to me, that's a big old nope.
Um not doing that. All right, guys. Well, hope you enjoyed today's episode talking about mirrors, how to use them to correct space, the symbolism, and even how they were used to possibly communicate with the dead. Remember that uh we'll have an episode of next week, only two a month. So, that takes us into April 3rd, where I'll be bringing you April energy update.
I'll catch you guys then.