Obsidian Smoking Mirror
Aztec priests and rulers used disks of highly polished obsidian as divination mirrors, gazing into the glossy black face for visions of what was hidden or to come. The name is inseparable from Tezcatlipoca, the 'Smoking Mirror', whose emblem was just such an obsidian mirror (tezcatl); his power to see everything was said to come through it. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun's Florentine Codex records seers and sorcerers working with mirrors, and carved examples survive with drilled holes for suspension, worn as pectorals or set in wooden frames with resin. Such mirrors were not only for seeing: becau