![]() Both my grandmother and her older sister, Jeanette, married European Americans as did their children. The survivors intended to move on and they did. Everyone who didn’t escape was dead and no one in my family wanted to tell those stories. The genocide of the early 1900’s and subsequent loss of homeland left this enormous void that seemed to eclipse all the history that came before it. Growing up, I learned very little about Armenian culture. She is wearing small earrings, a chain necklace and a black turtleneck with a patterned vest. Her dark hair is pulled back into a loose bun with some strands of grey hair visible around her face. Image description: Black and white headshot photograph of a woman in her 50’s, smiling and looking confidently into the camera. After marrying my Anglo-American grandfather and raising three sons, she went back to college, earned her PhD and built a successful career as a research scientist. The daughter of genocide survivors, my grandmother was a testament to the resilence of our ancestors and fought hard to assimilate into mainstream American culture. My own grandmother, Helene, was the queen of objective materialism. Even at the age of 10, I’d learned to rationalize and minimize my mystical experiences. I hid the memory away in some interior place reserved for things my worldview couldn’t hold. ![]() At the time, I was frightened and couldn’t make sense of what had happened. Nearly 30 years passed before I found a way to speak of that night. In the front, two elderly women, both wearing glasses and collared dresses, are sitting on chairs and holding a baby girl in a red dress and white tights between their laps. In the background, three middle-aged women are standing, all wearing collared shirts. Image description: A colour photo with six women from four generations. Clockwise from the bottom left: great-grandmother, Mariam Roupenian grandmother, Helene Swenerton mother, Maylien Swenerton grandmother, Ernestine Ardito great-grandmother, Edna Sumner and me, Kirra Swenerton. But it wasn’t Mariam Roupenian’s face either it was someone else’s. Her eyes were just like mine but she was ancient and withered like Grandma Roupen, my Armenian great-grandmother who had died some years before. What I do remember, what has stayed with me all these years, is the moment I flipped on the light and in that state of half-waking looked at my own reflection. The mirror must have been right next to my bed because when I burst out of dream that fateful night, I don’t remember getting up or anything at all about my dream. In spite of this, I managed to acquire one of those round cosmetic mirrors that plugged in and had its own fluorescent light. I yearned to become a teenager and do teenage things like wear makeup, but I was in the 5th grade and lipstick was a distant fantasy. I was between 10 and 11 years old when my body begun to transform and I started bleeding every month. ![]() But you are eternity and you are the mirror.” Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. *A metal stand is included with each Obsidian Mirror.“Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. Tezcatlipoca was the lord of the night and its creatures-above all, the jaguar, a powerful animal believed capable of crossing between the earthly realm and the underworld. The obsidian mirror was the primary accessory of the supreme Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, whose name means "smoking mirror." He is often depicted with an obsidian mirror on his chest, in his headdress, or replacing his right foot. Wise nahuas, or Tlamatinimés, gazed into the mirror and made a mystic travel within the smoky depths of the mirror's reflection. It can also be an amulet for homes or businesses where there is a great flow of people.ĭuring pre hispanic times, polished obsidian mirrors, or tezcatl, were used as instruments of divination and magic. This obsidian black mirror is perfectly polished on both sides to make it shine and it can be a nice gift for a family member or a friend in order to protect them. An obsidian mirror is cleansed by the moonlight, or by submerging it in salt water to reactivate its power. Obsidian mirrors can be used as a protection tool that absorb negative energy from anyone that enters a dwelling carrying any negative vibe.
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