Odd reflections

Anyone hanging around Facebook this past week, anyone with way too much time on his hands (isn't that redundant?), is well aware that we've just passed through "Doppelgänger week." Anyone childish enough to participate¹ substituted, in place of his own profile photo, the photo of some celebrity who he supposed (hoped?) bore some resemblance to himself.

I was familiar with the German word as a term commonly used to describe one's "double," but until now had never thought about its origins. It comes from German folklore. (English folklore had a similar concept, called a "fetch"; and the Norse had something called a "vardøger.")

It seems that a Doppelgänger ("double walker") was believed to be a spectral embodiment, or projection from a different level of reality, of one's own soul. If you saw your doppelganger (using the anglicized form of the word), you didn't clown around about it. You froze in terror. The doppelganger was a harbinger of your own death.

The doppelganger was often perceived in the peripheral area of vision, or was seen looking back at one from a mirror or a darkened window. Mirrors were magical objects to the people of many early cultures. They seemed to be windows into a similar but different reality. Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass is a non-threatening description of such a world, one more than slightly askew, found on the other side of a mirror. In some versions of the superstition, the image in any mirror was a doppelganger by definition. It was not until the doppelganger was seen outside the mirror world, seen moving about in our own world, that it became frightening and a sign of disaster.

In some places, it's still a custom to cover all mirrors in the house where a person has just died. Doing so prevents the reflected doppelganger of any visiting guests from being sucked into the afterworld by the deceased's spirit.

In modern times, with our understanding of the optics of mirrors and reflections in general, the whole concept is of course ridiculous. True, Abraham Lincoln did see his doppelganger shortly before he was assassinated, but, well, he was under a lot of stress. And, of course, the poets Percy Shelley and John Donne also saw doppelgangers before their wives miscarried. But you know how hyper-imaginative and sensitive poets can be.

In the spirit of complete honesty and openness, I'll confess that -- up into my teens -- I'd sometimes cover the mirror in my bedroom when I went to bed at night and was alone in the house. Of course, back then I'd never even heard of "doppelgangers" -- with or without the umlaut. However, I had read this damn horror comic book where this guy looked into his bedroom mirror one night and saw ... Well, after he went to sleep, the reflection in the mirror came out and ....

Ah, it was stupid. You don't want to know.

Doppelgangers are part of old folklore, like leprechauns and dwarfs. They don't exist. Never have. On the other hand, who needs a mirror in his bedroom, anyway? I'd chuck it out and use the mirror in your bathroom. Keep the light turned on bright.
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¹I chose Woody Allen.