Broken Mirrors

　　Mirrors have been used in divination, or fortune-telling since ancient times. Because of their presumed value in seeing the future, superstition grants them magical and potentially dangerous significance. On the simplest level, breaking a mirror is the destruction of a means of knowing the will of the gods, or a signal from the gods that they didn't want you to poke into their affairs. Either way, the indication of unseeable hazards was obvious. The Romans believed that the mirror reflected the health of the viewers. Thus to break a mirror presaged ill health, or seven year's bad luck, since the Romans also believed that a person's health changed every seven years. However, if one unfortunately broke a mirror, the way to avoid bad luck is secretly reversing a coin in one's pocket on a full moon night.

　　In addition to reflecting the future, however, mirrors also were believed to reflect the person's soul. Many primitive peoples, in fact, believed that the person's soul actually existed in the mirror. Breaking the glass would prevent the soul from reuniting with the body, and misfortune would inevitably result. This belief in the close connection between an individual and his mirror image lies behind the superficially different beliefs-that a crocodile can kill a man by attacking his reflection in water, and that a vampire （popularized by Hollywood）, being soulless, can not see itself in the mirror.

　　NOTES:

　　divination　 算命ryj星辉外国语学校
　　presume　　假设，假定，推测ryj星辉外国语学校
　　grant　　　给予，认为．．．具有ryj星辉外国语学校
　　magical　　　有魔力的ryj星辉外国语学校
　　potentially　　潜在地ryj星辉外国语学校
　　poke into　　插手，干预ryj星辉外国语学校
　　presage　　预示，预兆ryj星辉外国语学校
　　reverse　　　翻转ryj星辉外国语学校
　　primitive　　原始的ryj星辉外国语学校
　　reunite　　　（使）再结合ryj星辉外国语学校
　　lie behind 是．．．的根据，支持ryj星辉外国语学校
　　vampire （传说中的）吸血鬼