Mirror Box and Mirror Spell

The mirror is the tradition's instrument for reversal: what is sent at a person is reflected back at the sender, and the box lined with mirrors is the standard form. The logic is old and widespread - the mirror shows and returns, and a mirror facing a door or a road turns away what comes along it - and hoodoo uses it both defensively, on a house, and aggressively, on a named person whose work is to be returned. Long's study of the spiritual-supply trade shows the mirror, the black glass and the 'reversible' candle becoming retail products in the twentieth century.

A mirror may be set facing out at a door or a window to turn away what approaches; a box is lined with mirror on the inside, and the name, photograph or personal concern of the person whose work is being returned is placed inside it, with a candle or a written petition, and the box is closed and kept or disposed of. The mirror spell proper is the same act without the box: the worker writes the name, sets it against the glass, and speaks the reversal. The remains are disposed of in a way that carries the work back rather than keeping it.

Reversal is the one aggressive form the tradition treats as almost always justified, because it answers a work already sent rather than starting one: the worker is not choosing a victim, they are returning a case to its author. Even so, the tradition's own caution is that a reversal work keeps the worker in the quarrel, and that the cleaner answer to being crossed is uncrossing and protection rather than a return.