El espejo de Dee

magical mirror; mirror-case

Object Type
Museum number
1966,1001.1
Object: Dr Dee’s Magical Mirror
Object: Dr Dee’s Magical Speculum
Description
Magic Mirror of Doctor Dee; obsidian; wood case covered in tooled leather with label in handwriting of Horace Walpole, quotation from a Samuel Butler poem.
Cultures/periods
Aztec (obsidian)
Production date1
4thC-16thC (?)

Production place

Made in: Mexico

Americas: North America: Mexico
Materials
Dimensions
Diameter: 21 centimetres (case)
Diameter: 18.40 centimetres
Height: 22 centimetres
Length: 25.50 centimetres (case)
Weight: 881.95 grammes (mirror)
Width: 3 centimetres (case)
Width: 1.30 centimetres

Inscriptions

  • Inscription type: inscription
  • Inscription position: label on leather case
  • Inscription content: The Black Stone into which Dr Dee used to call his Spirits V. his book This Stone was mentioned in the Catalogue of the Collection of the Earls of Peterborough from whom it came to Lady Elizabeth Germaine. H.W.
  • Inscription note: Thought to have been written by Horace Walpole
  • Inscription type: inscription
  • Inscription position: label on leather case
  • Inscription content: Kelly was Dr Dee’s Associate and is mentioned with this very Stone in Hudibras, Part 2. Canto 3 v.631. Kelly did all his feats upon The Devil’s Looking-glass, a Stone.
  • Inscription note: Thought to have been written by Horace Walpole.
  • Inscription type: inscription
  • Inscription position: label on leather case
  • Inscription content: [Quote from Samuel Butler’s ‘Hudibras’ (1663)] Kelly did all his feats upon The Devil’s Looking Glass, a stone; Where playing with him at Bo-peep, He solv’d all problems ne’er so deep.
  • Inscription note: Written by a different hand

Curator’s comments

Associated dates : 16thC(late). Colin McEwan of the BM notes that: Michael E. Smith who specialises in Aztec archaeology (The Aztecs – Blackwell Publishing) has an essay in progress on obsidian mirrors in museum collections for an edited volume of essays on Tezcatlipoca to be published by Univ of Colorado Press. Also published by Univ of Colorado Press in 2003 isa book by Guilhem Olivier on Tezcatlipoca.

For recent bibliography on Dee see ‘John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought’, Stephen Clucas (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer (2006).

The mirror is also illustrated on p.81 of ‘Miscellanea Graphica’ (Thomas Wright 1856) as part of the Londesborough collection.

For Walpole’s interest in Dee see Alicia Weisberg Roberts in Snodin 2009 pp. 95-100

This obsidian mirror featured in the British Museum exhibition ‘Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler’ (24 September 2009 – 24 January 2010). Further details can be found in the exhibition catalogue for entries 71 and 103 (Colin McEwan and Leonardo López Luján (eds.), Moctezuma: Aztec ruler, London: British Museum Press (2009)).The obsidian mirror and other objects associated with John Dee have attracted considerable attention from novelists. One such recent example is Jennifer Lee Carrell’s ‘The Shakespeare Curse’ (2010), where the theft of the mirror from the British Museum together with the murder of its curator, the subsequent consecration of the mirror through human blood, and its ultimate safe return to the Museum are described in haunting detail. It should be pointed out that these events are entirely fictitious.

Bibliographic references

Tait 1967 / `The Devil’s Looking-Glass’: the magical speculum of Dr John Dee (pp. 195-212)

Snodin 2009 / Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill(no. 108, pp. 96-100)

Bate & Thornton 2012 / Shakespeare: Staging the World (p. 236, fig. 6; p. 294)

Rampling 2012 / John Dee and the sciences: early modern networks of knowledge (p. 435)

Ackermann & Devoy 2012 / ‘The Lord of the smoking mirror’: Objects associated with John Dee in the British Museum (Comprehensive discussion of object in BM collections)

McEwan 2009a / Moctezuma. Aztec Ruler (cat. 103 (a similar mirror) and p. 167)

Page et al 2018 / Spellbound: magic, ritual and witchcraftKing 2019 / El hombre del espejo: el espejo de obsidiana de John Dee en el Museo Británico de Londres, in: Tetzáhuitl. Los presagios de la conquista de México (Pl. 2 shows Dee’s mirror.)