Catoptromancy

The sick person let down a mirror, suspended by a thread till its base touched the surface of the water, having first prayed to the goddess and offered incense.

Then; looking into the mirror, he saw the presage of death or recovery, according as the face appeared fresh and healthy, or of a ghastly aspect.In Ancient Rome, the priests who used catoptromancy were called specularii.

[citation needed] Mirrors have been found inside Egyptian burial tombs, and were used in ceremonial practices attempting to contact the dead.

For example, a collection of funerary manuscripts known as the Book of the Dead describes a ritual in which a mirror could be used by the recently deceased to unite with their mortal soul by looking at their own reflection in the afterlife.

Dellate wrote that, in the Middle Ages, mentions of the divinatory mirror appear, "obscure and also uncertain", in the canon of an Irish council "whose convocation is reported by tradition".

[nb 1] The absence of connection, in the first sentence, between the two relative clauses, as well as the mention of a single measure of reparation and penance, which consists of the retraction of an insult, clearly shows, despite the clumsiness of the editorial, that we cannot dissociate the two faults referred to in this canon: it is the same person who claims to see a witch in a mirror and who, in relation to this first error (as shown by the words this insult), launches against others an accusation of witchcraft.

Frazer reports, according to Miss Gordon Cumming, that a family of Nairn in Scotland possessed in the last century 'a crystal ball which, immersed in a bucket of water, becomes a magic mirror reflecting the face of the evil neighbor who bewitched the cattle'.