Mirrors hold in the tradition: the covering customs, the thrifted mirror rule, and how to cleanse the glass in your house.
If you grew up in a certain kind of household, you saw it at least once: a death in the family, and the mirrors covered with cloth until the burying was done. The old folks treated mirrors as more than glass, and the tradition still does. Here is the why, and the how of keeping yours clean in both senses.
What the tradition says about mirrors
A mirror holds. It watches every room it sits in, and the covering custom at death comes from exactly that belief: a mirror left open during grief could catch what should be passing on. Whether you carry the belief at full strength or hold it as inheritance, the practical teaching underneath survives either way. Mirrors are keepers, and keepers need cleaning.
The thrifted mirror rule
This one matters in the secondhand era: a mirror that lived in somebody else's house watched somebody else's life, and it comes to you carrying whatever it kept. The old rule is firm. No secondhand mirror goes on the wall before it gets cleansed. Estate sale finds double the rule, since you rarely know what season that house was in when the mirror left it.
How to cleanse a mirror
Physical first, spiritual second, same order as everything in this work. Clean the glass properly, frame included. Then pass cleansing smoke across the face of it with intention, naming what is being cleared, the same smoke walk covered in How to Use Incense for Spiritual Cleansing, with Clear The Air doing the carrying. Mirrors get included in the whole-house route anyway, and a new arrival just gets its own dedicated pass before it hangs.
When mirrors are due
When one enters the house secondhand. After a season of grief in the home. After a heavy argument in the room where it hangs. And on the regular cleansing rhythm with everything else, per The Weekly Reset. A bedroom mirror that faces the bed gets opinions in every tradition, so if your sleep runs strange, that is one honest thing to try moving before anything else.
Respect the glass, clean the keeper. The household teachings go out on the email list at the bottom of this page.