Redtree Times

The Demon’s Mirror– illustration Arieh Zeldich

Now we are about to begin, and you must attend; and when we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now about a very wicked hobgoblin. He was one of the worst kind; in fact, he was a real demon.

One day he was in a rare good humor because he had invented a very special mirror with this peculiarity, that everything good and beautiful reflected in it shrank away to almost nothing. On the other hand, every bad and good-for-nothing thing was magnified a thousand times and looked its ugliest. The most beautiful landscapes reflected in it looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous, or else they were upside down and had no bodies. Their faces were distorted beyond recognition, and if they had even one freckle it appeared to spread all over the nose and mouth.

The demon thought this immensely amusing. Anytime a good or gentle thought passed through any one’s mind, it turned to a grin in the mirror, and this caused the demon to roar with laughter.

All the trolls in the demon’s school, for he kept a school, reported that a miracle had taken place: now for the first time it had become possible to see what the world and mankind were really like.

The trolls ran about all over with the mirror, till at last there was not a country or a person which had not been seen in this distorting mirror. They then decided to fly up to heaven with it to mock the angels and Our Lord Himself.

Trolls Carrying Mirror to Heaven- illus Boris Diodorov

The higher they flew, nearer and nearer to the Angel and God, the more violently the mirror grinned. It grinned so hard so much so that they could hardly hold it, and at last, the mirror quivered with frightful laughter and slipped out of their hands. It fell to the earth and shivered into hundreds of millions and billions of bits.

But even broken apart, it did more harm and caused more misery than ever. Some of these bits were not as big as a grain of sand, and these whirled about all over the world, blowing into people’s eyes and getting stuck there. And to these unlucky people, everything seemed warped and twisted. They could only see the ugly side of things since each tiny grain of glass kept the same power as that possessed by the whole mirror. Some people even got a bit of the glass into their hearts, and that was terrible, for the heart became like a lump of ice.

Some of the fragments were so big that they were used for windowpanes, but it was not advisable to look at one’s friends through these panes.

Other bits were made into eyeglasses. But woe betide to those who made use of those eyeglasses! Their vision became warped and their judgement distorted.

The bad demon was so tickled at the mischief he had done that he laughed till he split his sides. And still some of these bits of glassed were still left floating about the world…

–Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen (1845)

This is the opening chapter to The Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen. You can take it as a mere fairy tale, if you would like. But as is the case with all myths, legends, and fairy tales, it is the underlying truths and lessons contained within them that makes them forever relevant.

This particular tale feels as though it could not be more relevant. It has evil demons and Trolls– yes, it has trolls! It has ugliness magnified a thousand times and goodness and beauty shrinking to nothingness then being mocked. Then there is the perception of reality and the judgement of those affected by the specks of glass becoming warped and distorted. 

Sometimes seeing similarities to our own lives and times that exist in myths and fairytales gives us clarity, putting things into an order that our brains have been seemingly trained to understand through the ages.

However, you may not see the same parallels, if any at all. Maybe you even have a speck of glass in your eye or, heaven forbid, your heart. I doubt that is the case because you would have stopped reading this blog long ago. 

Just laying this out there on a cold Saturday morning. I didn’t go into the rest of Andersen’s fairytale, but the setting here at the moment seems perfect for the evil Snow Queen with large whirling snowflakes. Hope she’s not around…