A CELTIC MIRROR
by contemplativeinquiry
“About 2,000 years ago a very important woman was buried high on Birdlip Hill overlooking Gloucester. This was the time of the Roman invasion and Gloucester’s farmland was turning into a dangerous frontier between the Celtic Britons and the Roman Empire.” The mirror and bowls on display above are part of her grave goods. I used a mirror of my own to read the Gloucester Museum’s information about what has now become an ‘exhibit’.
Naturally enough, people want to know more than this. Stories connect ‘the very important woman’ to Boudicca, whose campaign against the Romans two decades after their initial takeover was well-documented and is well-remembered. But the location and manner of her death after her eventual defeat are not clear and have provided space for all manner of speculation. This gives improbable possibilities a certain amount of traction.
I turn my attention back to the mirror, as the undoubted product of an iron age culture with a wealthy aristocracy who spoke a Brythonic Celtic language. The designs on the back of the mirror (below) reflect the tastes of that culture. To me, they seem almost alive. They give me a tenuous sense of connection with a real person who was in this neighbourhood (and I would guess came from it) 2,000 years ago.
Being connected by place but separated by time is an odd feeling, even more complicated for me than being connected by time and separated by space. I have to be careful not to let my imagination colonise the past. It can be a distorting and invasive mirror. At the same time I do want a relationship with the past. I want to acknowledge it and be open to what it might teach me. In this case, perhaps, a commitment to beauty in a time of turmoil and danger. Or a commitment to different ways of looking, in a world where past and future may not exist in quite the ways that they appear to do.
contemplativeinquiry 
Hi James,
what I’m wondering is whether this was a ‘magic mirror’ like the Aztec obsidian mirror used by John Dee that can be seen in the British Museum, or something with a use more akin to how we use mirrors nowadays, to adjust our appearance before the public. Then again, perhaps in those long ago times there was less of a distinction between the magical and the everyday and a mirror was an object of power because of its rarity and its ability to show one’s ‘other self’. In Mexico, at least later on, there was (is) a tradition and a whole set of teachings around magical mirror use. I wonder if we once had something comparable.here and what fragments survive.
Hope all is well with you,
Alex
Skrying mirrors are certainly a feature of modern occult and pagan cultures. It is widely believed that they – along with the water in bowls – were also used in the Celtic iron age, though I am not sure what the evidence is. As you say, mirrors were relatively rare and expensive, rather special on any terms. I imagine that owners would use the same mirrors for any purpose they had in mind. The Celts did have a strong commitment to the value of divination.
A very enjoyable “reflection” (pun not intended), not least because we share both druidry and Gloucester in common. I shall purloin the phrase “imagination colonising the past” when thinking about avoiding that particular pitfall… Many thanks! 🙏🏻
Thanks Will. I hadn’t picked up on the Gloucester connection. Past, present or both (if you are willing to say in this space).
Well this is my first time commenting, though I appreciate my name quite common so I may be masquerading unintentionally as a previous commenter!
I grew up in Gloucester, but have ended up in Stroud, via some years in Bristol.
Thanks Will. We moved from Stroud to Gloucester at the beginning of this year, after many happy years there. We needed easier pedestrian access to shops and amenities than we had where we lived in Rodborough.