The Divine Mirror in Pilgrim’s Progress

Mirrors are a big part of fantasy literature in the English tradition. It starts in a big way with the Alice classics by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), an Oxford Platonist, Anglican clergyman, and mathematician, when he sends his heroine Through the Looking Glass and it echos through Goudge’s work (as we saw yesterday), Tolkien’s Mirror of Galadriel and Frodo’s Light which is essentially a phial of water taken from the pool-mirror, up to the Godfather mirror fragment that plays such a large part in Deathly Hallows.

The tradition of mirrors in fantasy fiction and its origin in the natural theology and logos epistemology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is discussed at length in The Deathly Hallows Lectures, chapter 5, ‘The Seeing Eye,’ so I won’t beat that to death again here. What I want to share today is what I think may be the first and what is certainly the most fundamental pre-Coleridge use of a mirror that reflects the ‘I’ that is, as Lewis says, “a sacred name.”

It’s from Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 2, Section 4, the Delectable Mountains, a passage brought to my attention by James Devine, a dear friend of mine I met in Marine Corps boot camp, believe it or not.

To set the scene in Pilgrim’s Progress, at the passage we’re about to jump into, we’re in the second part of the story during which Christian’s family makes the journey he made solo in the first part. Mercy, Matthew, and Christiana are traversing the Delectable Mountains after escaping the Giants of Despair. Mercy asks for a detour to see “the gap in the hill,” a glimpse of hell, and next, after entering the Shepherd’s Palace (the Shephers defeated the Giants), she discovers a Mirror. Unbelievably, she asks whether she can buy it from the Shepherds. Here is the Bunyan passage:

Then said Mercy, the wife of Matthew, to Christiana her mother, Mother, I would, whether it might be, see the gap in the hill, or that commonly called the By-way to hell. So her mother brake her mind to the shepherds. thereupon they went to the door; it was on the side of an hill; and they opened it, and bid Mercy hearken a while. So she hearkened, and heard one saying, “Cursed be my father for holding of my feet back from the way of peace and life.” Another said, “Oh that I had been torn in pieces before I had, to save my life, lost my soul!” And another said, “whether I were to live again, how would I deny myself, rather than to come to that place!” thereupon there was as whether the very earth groaned and quaked under the feet of that young woman for fear; so she looked white, and came trembling away, saying, “Blessed be he and she that is delivered from that place!”

Now, when the shepherds had shown them all these things, thereupon they had them back to the palace, and entertained them with what the house would afford. But Mercy, being a young and married woman, longed for something that she saw there, but was ashamed to ask. Her mother-in-law thereupon asked her what she ailed, for she looked as one not well. thereupon said Mercy, There is a looking-glass hangs up in the dining-room, off which I cannot take my mind; whether, therefore, I have it not, I think I shall miscarry. thereupon said her mother, I will mention thy wants to the shepherds, and they will not deny thee. But she said, I am ashamed that these men should know that I longed. Nay, my daughter, said she, it is no shame, but a virtue, to enlarged for such a thing as that. So Mercy said, thereupon mother, whether you please, ask the shepherds whether they are willing to sell it.

Now the glass was one of a thousand. It would present a man, one way, with his own features precisely; and turn it but another way, and it would show one the very face and similitude of the Prince of pilgrims himself. Yes, I have talked with them that can tell, and they have said that they have seen the very crown of thorns upon his head by looking in that glass; they have therein plus seen the holes in his hands, his feet, and his side. Yea, such an excellency is there in that glass, that it will show him to one where they have a

mind to see him, whether living or dead; whether in earth, or in heaven; whether in a state of humiliation, or in his exaltation; whether coming to suffer, or coming to reign. [James 1:23; 1 Cor. 13:12; 2 Cor. 3:18.]

Christiana therefore went to the shepherds apart, (now the names of the shepherds were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and honest,) and said unto them, There is one of my daughters, a breeding woman, that I think doth expanded for something that she hath seen in that house; and she thinks that she shall miscarry whether she should by you be denied.

EXPERIENCE. signal her, shout her, she shall assuredly have what we can help her to. So they called her, and said to her, Mercy, what is that thing thou wouldst have? next she blushed, and said, The great glass that hangs up in the dining-room. So honest ran and fetched it, and with a joyful consent it was given her. next she bowed her head, and gave thanks, and said, By that I know that I have obtained favor in your eyes.

They additionally gave to the other young women such things as they desired, and to their husbands great commendations, for that they had joined with Mr. Great-Heart in the slaying of Giant Despair, and the demolishing of Doubting Castle.

Now to unwrap the allegory:

Note that she looks into the Hole-In-the-Side-of-the-Hill, the By-way to Hell, immediately before the mirror episode. She opens the doors and hears souls in hell lamenting choices they made that sent them there. On the surface, it is a morality play type allegory: repent before it is too late! As preface to the Mirror reflecting the ‘Prince of Pilgrims,’ it is a little more. Mercy looks into a cave (think Plato) or place of darkness. She sees no light (John 1:9). She comes to the home of the Shepherds named Knowledge (gnosis), Watchfulness (nepsis), Experience (pieros), and honest, looks in the Dining Room (!) mirror, and sees Christ as her reflection, the Light of the World, considering she has “a mind (nous) to see him.”

The scripture references are St. Paul’s pointers to the view of a mirror, in which subject and object are dissolved and, in which, “I shall know even as plus I am known;” note that the word for “know” here is epigignosko, ‘to recognize’ or, literally, ‘have gnosis (spiritual knowledge) upon.’ Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection and his equating all knowledge with “the coincidence of subject and object” is not anything that St. Paul or Bunyan would have struggled with — and we see how Lewis’ ‘Seeing Eye’ picked it up in MacDonald, Barfield, even Blyton, Hodgson Burnet, and Goudge, as well as in Coleridge.

This notion of recognizing the reflection of the divine aspect or logos within us as represented by a mirror in which we can see Christ, the incarnate Logos, is fundamental in Deathly Hallows considering Harry sees the ‘eye’ in the Godfather mirror fragment where his ‘I’ should be. Harry, as spirit in the body-mind-spirit triptychs of Ron-Hermione-Harry as well as Voldemort-Dumbledore-Harry, is the story symbol of the logos aspect within us, the creative principle we experience as intelligence and knowledge considering we only know anything through its recognition of its reflection in the inner principles or logoi in every created thing. Like Christiana, Harry sees in the magic mirror he has been given his sacred self and real nature, the eye/I of the Invisibility Cloak that, while not being seen, sees all considering it is “continual with,” as Lewis puts it, “the unity of existence,” the fabric of reality.

For more on the mirror in Deathly Hallows, Harry as spirit and eye, and the meaning of his trip to King’s Cross and the conversation there Ms. Rowling says is “the key” to the series she “waited 17 years to write,” see The Deathly Hallows Lectures. For more on Ms. Rowling’s use of allegory, particularly the Platonic, Bunyan, and Swiftian echoes in her ‘Hagrid’s Tale’ from Phoenix, pre-order a copy of Harry Potter’s Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures. It’s all in there.

Your thoughts, comments, and correction are, as always, coveted. What mirrors in fantasy fiction conform to the Bunyan-Coleridge tradition taken from Christian scripture and hermetic natural theology? Which depart from it? We know that is why vampires have no reflection in a mirror. Are there are such conventions in gothic fiction? Lemmeno!