Glass

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 02:09:32 -0400
myth, technology

The Elizabethan polymath John Dee had an obsidian scrying mirror. This mirror was a polished black disk crafted of natural volcanic glass, the magical tool of a New World civilization. It was a thing of Tezcatlipoca, "Smoking Mirror", the Aztec Lord of Darkness. Some Spanish bureaucrat sent it back to Europe as a heathen curio after exterminating followers of Tezcatlipoca and burning their books.

It fell into the hands of a person excellently-placed to wreak Tezcatlipoca's vengeance on the Spanish empire. Whether this was done via Dee's experiments with calling spirits into the Devil's Looking-Glass, or through the quickening of inspiration it afforded Dee's work in optics and geometry, is naturally hard to say. Whatever the case, England outpaced Spain's imperial ambitions and thus this message is written in English.

You who read this are using the magical tool of a New World civilization right now. This tool is crafted of a non-natural glass -- layer upon layer of doped semiconductor -- set in bits of copper and gold. It is fed, moment by moment, by millions of years of ancient sunlight. You're using it to project thoughts, feelings and intuitions to the minds of other people around the world, including some not yet born, and to take into your own mind the thoughts, feelings and intuitions of others alive and dead.

Who made this thing?

How did it come to you?

Why?