Why Is It Considered Bad Luck To Break A Mirror?

People have, over the centuries, come to believe that certain actions will set bad luck in motion. Breaking a mirror is one of these superstitions, along with walking under a ladder and having a black cat cross your path. Along with these beliefs, people were supposedly able to counteract the bad luck by taking certain actions.

According to most written histories and to oral histories, the belief that seven years of bad luck come with breaking a mirror dates back thousands of years. It would have been hard to hold this belief before the first century or two A.D. because people did not have glass mirrors earlier.

In some cultures, mirrors held the same position as taking a photograph has in more recent years. Mirrors were thought to take a person’s soul (or a portion of it) when the individual looked into the mirror. In the 20th century there were populations around the world that believed this same thing of photography. Viewing yourself in an imperfect mirror was supposed to damage the person’s soul. The worst case scenario was breaking the mirror. This was thought to trap the soul inside the mirror. This, of course, would be the worst kind of luck.

The length of time for bad luck – seven years – apparently comes from the belief in Roman society that the body was regenerated each seven years. Thus, if an individual suffered the loss or corruption of the soul because of a broken mirror it was supposed to take seven years for the soul to return to its original state.

To battle against a string of bad-luck events people were supposed to take the broken-mirror scenery to its completion by grinding the glass to dust or otherwise completely destroying the mirror. This destruction might include burying the pieces.

Not all bad-luck superstitions involve something physical, such as a mirror. (Some people believe that Friday the 13th is bad luck.) However, with something so tangible it might be surprising that thousands of people around the globe have latched onto this superstition. Some even argue that much of the reasons given for broken mirrors and bad luck we commonly accept are wrong.

Apparently it’s more accurate to go beyond simple bad luck and consider the more involved reason – losing your soul in the world beyond the mirror. So, if you break a mirror and your reflection wasn’t in the mirror at the time it broke, you shouldn’t suffer from seven years of bad luck. It’s only if the mirror breaks while your image is being reflected that the trouble can begin.

Another slight twist to this superstition is that the bad luck only lasts until the person’s age reaches a multiple of seven. For example, if you are 20 and break a mirror while looking into it your bad luck would last until you turn 21.

Does this superstition (and others like it) come true because we make our own bad luck? What do you think?

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