If you want to build one for yourself, then read on.
In my early teens I devoured books on the occult, UFOs, ESP and especially astral projection. Astral projection is where your astral body, a kind of spooky facsimile of your physical body, floats free of your corporeal self. This means you can fly around the world in an instant to anywhere you like and yet be invisible to all around you. Imagine what a teenage boy could do with such a superpower…
But to access another dimension or a higher plane of existence, you needed a magic mirror. So, in 1980, or thereabouts, I took my paper round money to The Book Case in Hebden Bridge in search of enlightenment.
What I got was How to Make and Use Magic Mirrors by Nigel R. Watson.[i] I can’t remember how much it was, but I can recall thinking that it was expensive for such a slim volume. Therefore, I reasoned, it must be true.
Blood and Gold
So I set about building my magic mirror, my portal to another realm. The book gives several methods, but I went for the easiest and cheapest – a seven inch circle of blotting paper stuck to a twelve inch square piece of yellow card. This was my no frills gateway to another dimension.
Next, I needed to add a universal fluid accumulator. You need a universal fluid accumulator, you see, to lock astral fluid in the mirror to enable it to work. To make my mirror effective, in other words, I needed blood and gold. The gold I got by filing a few teeny tiny flakes off the strap of my dad’s gold watch with the serrated bit of a butter knife. I’m not sure if the watch actually was gold, but the book said only a few atoms were needed. For the blood, I squeezed a spot. The blood and atoms of gold were placed in the centre of the mirror on the blotting paper circle which was the lens.
Now I had to charge the mirror. To do this, in my darkened bedroom, I had to imagine the top half of the room was full of some dark purple energy. Then I had to use my mind to pull this astral fluid down through my hands and zap it into the mirror. As I did this I had to use my mind to impregnate this mysterious purple energy with the desire to enter the astral plane. The universal fluid accumulator – the blood and gold – would hold the astral fluid for up to an hour, enabling me to use the mirror as the portal to another plane of reality.
Now I was ready for my sojourn to the astral world. In my darkened bedroom, I sat in front of the mirror and bathed in its magic rays, as the book instructed.
My Astral Adventure
The book had warned me what to expect. It said I may feel as if I’m shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. I would then lose awareness of my physical body and feel as if I were being pulled towards the mirror. Soon I would feel a floating sensation as my astral body left my physical body and entered the astral plane….
You’re probably wondering what’s in store for you once you send your astral body through the magic mirror into a strange new realm.
Time has no meaning on the astral plane so you can stay as long as you like. Hours will feel like minutes. You will meet all kinds of odd inhabitants in this magical dimension, though, sadly, the book goes into no details about them. One scary prospect is that it’s normal not to be able to see anything on the first few visits to the astral plane. This thought rather unnerved me – I’d be in another reality surrounded by weird Lovecraftian creatures and totally blind…
However, one thing I looked forward to in my journey through the astral looking glass was the Akashic Record. According to theosophical types like Russian mystic Madam Blavatsky, the Akashic Record is an infinite library of books containing everything ever, past, present and future – every thought, word, feeling, intention or deed of everyone and everything that ever did and ever will exist. It’s like the internet for early twentieth century mystics.
Anyway, I nervously awaited my astral adventure.
Soon I began to feel a numbness in my body, and felt – or imagined I felt – myself being pulled towards the magic mirror. It felt like I was leaving my body behind and moving towards a hole in the fabric of the everyday world, but just as I was on the brink of success, a wave of terror overwhelmed me… and I was back. Perhaps it was the nagging thought of being blind in an occult world filled with unimaginable creatures that brought me down to earth with a bump, but it felt like I’d almost touched the astral plane, and would have if I hadn’t freaked out.
I tried many more times over the months, but never came as close as that first time.
I reflected on my lack of success and wondered if it might be because my mirror was a bit crap and that I should have tried to build one that looked a bit more Dennis Wheatley and a bit less W.H. Smith. Or it could be that I hadn’t sufficiently charged my mirror with enough universal fluid accumulator, that my dad’s watch wasn’t really gold or even that my astral fluid was leaking from my magic looking glass.
I even considered briefly that the whole thing might just be bollocks…
[i] Nigel R. Watson, How to Make and Use Magic Mirrors (Samuel Weiser: New York, 1977). It’s in the public domain and available here: file:///F:/Blog/Astral%20Projection/Nigel%20R.%20Clough%20-%20How%20To%20Make%20and%20Use%20Magic%20Mirrors.pdf
Paul Weatherhead 