Mirrors of the Soul: Scrying as a Path to Self-Knowledge ONLINE COURSE

Mirrors of the Soul: Scrying as a Path to Self-Knowledge with Dr. Hereward Tilton

Sundays in January (4, 11, 18, 25) at 5PM PT

This course explores the ancient gnostic practice of gazing into reflective and refractive media - including mirrors, crystals, and water - to gain self-knowledge; we’ll examine historical scrying traditions from ancient Egypt to the German Rosicrucians and discuss the practical integration of these techniques with Jungian shadow work.

In both the East and the West, reflective and refractive artefacts have been used for millennia to attain gnosis, a direct experiential knowledge of the primordial mind. This four-class course will explore the history and practical application of mirror-gazing and related gnostic scrying techniques utilising crystals and water. Our historical investigation will highlight the tradition of electrum scrying artefacts reaching from the ancient Egyptian alchemist Zosimos to the Rosicrucians of the German late Renaissance. As we explore the fascinating history of these artefacts, we’ll focus on a recurring motif: cleansing the mirror of the mind. In the Western gnostic lineages, the impurities clouding the mirror are accretions of the soul gained on its descent into materiality; in the East, they’re the afflictions and latent mental tendencies accrued in the cycle of samsara. Drawing on my own integration of mirror-gazing with Jung’s technique of active imagination, I’ll explore the relationship of these impurities to the shadow and its distortion of our self- and worldviews (each class will conclude with practical reflections on this theme).

Ticket price: $125 (4-class package) or $35 per class

Online Event Only

Please email contact@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

These classes will be recorded and shared with students for up to 2 weeks following the class. The class recording will be emailed to you a few days after the scheduled class.

Class 1: Faust, Gnosis, and Sophia in the Mirror

In this introductory class, we’ll explore the distinction between low magical and high magical scrying with reference to the mirror scene in Goethe’s Faust and its legendary sources. As we preview and categorise the artefacts and techniques discussed in this course, we’ll examine the relevance of Jung’s concepts – anima, shadow, persona, and self – as well as the theories of his ill-fated contemporary, Herbert Silberer, who believed scrying was “a key to the depths of the soul.”

Practical Reflections: Relating my own experience with mirror-gazing, I’ll suggest that the historical techniques we’re studying involve the cultivation of lucidity, a meta-awareness of egoic selfhood.

Class 2: The Mirror at the Temple of the Seven Gates

The electrum mirror of Zosimos of Panopolis is a portal to the divine mind, a supercelestial sun in which we perceive our own shadows. In this class we’ll examine Zosimos’ artefact in light of related symbolism and rituals in the Sethian Gnostic, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic texts. Turning to a key conduit of influence in the Western gnostic traditions, we’ll explore the influence of ancient Gnosticism proper on the medieval Kabbalah, and the continuity of earlier shadow imagery with the sefirotic mirrors that shine and do not shine.

Practical Reflections: I’ll offer some experiential elaborations on these subjects via the mirror-and-light symbolism of my own formative dreams and visions.

Class 3: Mirrors of the Renaissance Magicians

In late Renaissance Germany, the gnostic use of electrum scrying artefacts reappears in the historical record. This class offers a close examination of two surviving high magical mirrors belonging to the Christian Cabalist Heinrich Khunrath, who used them to cleanse the mirror of his own mind and attain union with Sophia. Exploring the notion of the talisman as a mirror, we’ll uncover the relation of Khunrath’s Urim and Thummim to the scrying of John Dee and Edward Kelly. Following Khunrath’s practice, further electrum scrying artefacts and angel-summoning bells were utilised by the early Rosicrucians and their Behmenist successors.

Practical Reflections: My own work with black mirrors and crystal will elucidate the phenomenology of the gnostic ascent in the Rosicrucian and Behmenist sources.

Class 4: The Mirror and the Omniscient Mind in the East

In our fourth class we’ll turn to the East, and to mirror-gazing and kindred practices which closely parallel those of the Western gnostic traditions. As in the West, we find mirrors as symbols for – and portals to – a primordial reality that is ontologically prior to the illusory realm of phenomena. In the Hindu tradition we’ll explore the seminal use of mirror symbolism in the Upanishads and its interpretation in Advaita Vedanta. Among the Buddhist schools we find the Tantric practice of mirror-washing to attain “mirror-like gnosis,” and the Yogacara sage Asanga depicts the mirror as the gate of liberation to sunyata, “emptiness.” We’ll wrap up our course with a comparative analysis of Eastern and Western mirror-gazing practices and the nature of the primordial unity they reveal.

Practical Reflections: I’ll discuss my own contemplative use of a Shinto sacred mirror to reflect on the individual and collective benefits of gnostic practice.

Hereward Tilton (BA Hons I, PhD, FHEA) is a religious studies scholar who has taught and researched extensively on the history of Western esotericism and the psychology of religion. His areas of interest include the history of Rosicrucianism, the gnostic heritage of Carl Gustav Jung, and the use of psychedelics in Western magic, and he has taught at institutes dedicated to the study of Western esotericism at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Exeter. His publications include The Quest for the Phoenix (a historical study of early Rosicrucianism); Touch Me Not: A Most Rare Compendium of the Whole Magical Art (a translation of an early modern Austrian black magical manuscript dealing with psychoactive fumigations); and The Path of the Serpent, Vol. 1: Psychedelics and the Neuropsychology of Gnosis (an exploration of gnostic serpent symbolism in light of recent discoveries in psychedelic neuroscience).