The Mirror That Cast No Reflection Ο Καθρέφτης που δεν Έριχε Αντίκτυπο

-From the Meletic Tales.

There once was a traveller who came from an unknown city, an unnamed land. Where he was born mattered little; for his journey was not of destination, but of the discovery of his true essence. His name was Aristides. Word had reached him of an ancient and forgotten place and civilisation said to lie far beyond the edge of towering mountains, beyond the surrounding rivers and sloping hills. It was a unique hall spoken of in tales by those people who had walked the innermost path, which was the Hall of Countless Mirrors.

It was said that within its walls were concealed mirrors unlike any in the world manifest. Not mirrors of vanity, nor of illusion, but of revelation. They did not merely show the image of the one who stood before them, but they revealed character, hidden wounds and long-buried truths of the past and present. There was one mirror it was said, did not reflect anything at all in appearance. This mirror, according to legends, contained the key not to identity, but to actual being.

No one could tell Aristides how to reach this mysterious place. No established roads led to it. No pilgrim’s stone pointed the way in its general direction, but Aristides, stirred by a longing deeper than his curiosity, abandoned all certainties, lodestones and began walking. Not outwardly, but inwardly. Unbeknownst to him was the elusive truth he had sought in his quest.

The path led him across immense deserts of doubt and vast forests of distraction, through open valleys of memory and steady plateaus of silence. Time lost its firm grip. Seasons blurred. He walked not in days but in realisations.

At last, after what seemed to be both a lifetime and an instant in duration, Aristides reached a lone cavern. He stood before a threshold carved not by mere hands, but by ancient absence long forsaken. Its archway bore no decoration, only a single phrase etched in primitive script that was visible: 'Step forth, if you seek to meet what cannot be seen'.

And so he did, with a great sense of intrigue billowing inside of him as he entered the passage of the cavern.

It was The Hall of Countless Mirrors. He had heard about its legend before, but to discover it was beyond his wildest dreams conceived.

The hall was huge and impressive. Its wondrous architecture defied earthly geometry. It was not built of just stone, but of silence and light. All around, mirrors stretched high into the air like slender towers that were pervasive. Their frames gleamed: some silver, some gold, others carved from wood, bone or even crystal in design. In each, Aristides saw an apparent version of himself.

He wandered slowly and with caution. One mirror showed him dressed in fine robes, crowned as a stoic monarch. Another showed him ragged, dirty and poor. In one, he was smiling; in another, weeping alone. The images stirred profound memory and emotion, but Aristides did not linger. Each mirror, he knew, showed only fragments, which were masks worn through life, masks assumed through desire or fear exhibited.

He passed the mirrors that magnified his ambition, mirrors that reflected regrets he had buried, mirrors that exaggerated every flaw or concealed every virtue of his character. It was mesmerising, disorienting and subtly vivid. Some travellers it was said, never left the hall, enchanted with one version of themselves and mistaking it for the certain truth.

Aristides was not here for vanity or to impress the ego that corrupts the self. He searched for the one mirror that showed nothing at all. It was the silent mirror.

He found it deep in a quiet alcove far from the glittering path, its frame unadorned, rough, as if cut from sheer ebony stone. The mirror’s surface was rough but not opaque. It had no gleam, no shimmer, no light. When the traveller stood before it, it reflected nothing of tangible substance to bear its raw essence.

Not his face. Nor his shape. Not even his shadow. It was as though they had vanished. Or perhaps, they had never been there to begin with in the first place.

Thus, Aristides stood still. For some time, perhaps hours, perhaps days, he waited in anticipation. He tried waving, moving and whispering. Still the mirror gave nothing. Not even the faintest echo in reverberation to be heard.

The longer he stood before it, the more something began to shift, not in the glass, but within himself. A subtle awareness awakened within him. Not a thought. Not a feeling, but something ancient than both could be expressed.

The silence of the mirror was not emptiness. It was absolute presence. The mirror was not refusing to reflect; for it was inviting Aristides to go beyond mere reflection. It was the internal descent into time itself. This was the realisation of the face of reality.

Aristides sat down before the mirror and closed his eyes, not fully knowing what to expect. He began to breathe, not with the lungs alone, but with the whole being that encompassed him. Each breath dissolved a layer of noise, such as memory, assumption and expectation. Thoughts slowed. Sensation softened. Awareness turned in an inwards position.

Then, gently, the walls of the hall faded. Aristides was no longer seated, but suspended in a space of silver, neither warm nor cold in its surface. He could not see his limbs, nor hear a heartbeat, but he knew, with absolute clarity, that he still existed in the world.

Not as a body. Not even as a person, but as presence. A presence that was emerging before his eyes.

A door appeared, not ahead, nor behind, but within. It opened soundlessly and through it, Aristides passed like an ephemeral breath. It was a form that he had never experienced.

He was not walking now, but sensing true existence. He moved through the landscape of his life, not in chronological order, but by significance. He felt again the ache of childhood longing, the burden of adolescent shame, the bitter weight of unspoken guilt, the warmth of moments he had forgotten. Each memory was not a picture, but a pulse that was vivid, real and instructive.

There was no judgement in this action. Aristides saw himself not as a villain nor a hero, but as a being shaped by causes and conditions that formed part of the natural order of life. He was overwhelmed, not from sorrow, but from the admission of his recognition.

Then, the memories gradually faded, and Aristides stood before a new mirror; this one made of mist, suspended in the sudden void. The mist was palpable and real.

Within it he saw not an image, but a light. A tiny, steady light, like a candle hidden deep within the hardened stone erected.

It pulsed in time with something vast and lasting. The voice that came then did not speak in the mere utterance of words, but in ancestral knowledge:

'This is what you are. Not what you seem. Not what you remember. You are not the name. Not the face. Not the role. You are this light, which is emanated through To Ena, the One'.

Aristides bowed, even though there was no one to bow to in reverence and awe. It was a moment in time that seemed suspended. He responded, 'Tell me strange voice, what must I do next? I have come seeking the truth, and yet, I have found myself infront of mirrors'.

When Aristides opened his astonished eyes, he was once more in the Hall of Countless Mirrors. The silent mirror still stood before him. It still showed nothing, yet it now revealed everything. He stared, somewhat puzzled by the occurrence.

As he walked back through the hall, the other mirrors no longer held power. The images within them seemed faint, like fading shadows on the wall. They no longer stirred pride or pain. They were merely echoes that were useful, but not ultimate.

The golden threshold reappeared at the far end of the hall. It shimmered now, newly inscribed with a line Aristides had not seen before. Was this more than a coincidence he asked himself.

'Only when no image remains can truth be finally seen'.

Aristides stepped through to discover that his vision of the world had a different meaning and purpose. Thus, the mirror had revealed his philosophical truth.

He did not return home, because his home had changed. Or rather, he had changed. The world appeared the same; the rivers flowed, the trees swayed, the sky stretched overhead, but his perception had altered to a great degree. He saw not only people’s faces, but the weight of their unseen lives. He listened to others not only with ears, but with the awareness of the soul, as he walked amongst them in public.

He no longer needed to prove himself. He no longer feared being unseen. He no longer chased the mirror’s approval. He lived quietly, fully, present in each movement, moved not by impulse but by intention. His words became fewer in action, but when he spoke, they carried weight and wisdom. His message was one of hope and self-acceptance.

When others asked him what he had found in that strange hall of legends, Aristides would only smile and say,

'I met myself, when there was nothing left to see. It is the ultimate truth that man must seek, if he is to free himself of the burden of the material world'.

There was a certain philosopher named Polydoros who taught him the Meletic path. At first, he was uncertain of what to believe, until he began to sense the lasting presence of the Logos, the Nous and To Ena.

'What you sought was always within you. The mirror was merely a reflection of that in essential form', Polydoros would tell Aristides.

'How do I retain that essence?' Aristides would ask.

'With your wisdom'.

'I don't know if my wisdom has reached enough knowledge. How shall I know?'

'When the hour arrives, you will know'.

The years passed and the mystery of the mirrors had spread to other seekers of their truth. Aristides could no longer remain anonymous. He was seen as a sage by some people and mocked by others, but his encounter had reached the four corners of the empire.

Aristides now quieter, wiser, almost translucent in his presence had become a kind of myth in his village. He neither preached nor professed, but lived in deep harmony with the world, tending to gardens, aiding the sick, mending what others discarded of life. He lived a virtuous life, according to his Meletic belief. He performed no miracles. His only wonder was to have found his inner truth, through the mirror of his soul.

One evening, as he sat beneath a tree watching the sun dissolve into dusk, a stranger approached, who was young, anxious and exhausted. His eyes were troubled. His speech was hurried.

'I’ve come looking for the Hall,' said the stranger. 'They say you’ve seen it in person. They say one mirror there changes everything. I want to find it. I must!'

Aristides nodded and gestured for the stranger to sit.

'What do you seek from it?' Aristides asked calmly.

'The truth', replied the stranger, without a measure of hesitation.

Aristides offered no instruction, no map, only silence. 'Are you certain that you are prepared to discover your truth?'

The young one grew impatient. 'Why won’t you tell me where it is?'

Aristides smiled faintly. 'Because it does not lie on a path of footsteps young man, but on a path of contemplation. It cannot be reached by human desire. Only by readiness and consciousness'.

Frustrated, the stranger stood. 'Then how will I know when I’m ready? I don't understand. You speak in words that sound like a riddle'.

'When you no longer seek to ask the mirror to tell you who you are', Aristides responded.

He paused before he continued, 'Instead, ask it to show you what you’ve forgotten'.

'I shall find it, and when I do, I shall discover its innermost secrets'.

That night, the stranger departed. He was determined to explore the legend. Aristides, now alone again beneath the stars, remembered his own first encounter with the hall that brought the longing, the illusions, the wordless unveiling upon him.

There would be manifold people men and women alike, who would seek the lone traveller of Aristides to find the desired hall. Each time, he would tell them to find their souls. Once they did, they would see the image of their self.

In the final chapter of his own inner journey, Aristides had returned to the hall, not as a curious seeker, but as one called back by something unspoken. He was then older in his age, but with immeasurable wisdom he had obtained.

This time, the mirror that once refused to reflect had changed. Its surface shimmered not with an image, but with a light, which was a familiar, quiet glow, pulsing as if in time with his breath.

He stepped forth, but did not look into it, sensing that he had discovered his truth. Then, he stepped through it. All that was unclear was transparent.

What lay beyond was no longer memory, nor identity, nor emotion. It was structure, not of the physical world, but of the unseen architecture beneath all material things. Patterns, movements, geometries woven from sudden silence. Not symbols, but pure intelligibility. It was the Nous, which was what the ancient Meletics had spoken of, the cosmic architecture of existence itself joined by the Logos, which the cosmic order.

Here, there were no familiar faces, no names. Only natural flows of essence; each unique, each belonging to To Ena, the One.

Aristides realised that the mirror had never been an imposing surface. It had always been a doorway. A gate to a timeless source. It did not reflect the outer form because it offered entry into what lies beneath all inherent form.

It did not conceal. It revealed the formless truth. A truth that men ignore or are too blind in their greed and ambition to see with simplicity.

Once that was known, even for a moment, it never left. The truth that men seek exists in all men. It is existence itself. He remembered the words of Polydoros implying that he would know when the time arrived,

Back in the world of breath and sound, Aristides would spent his days in the company of Polydoros walking and listening to the wisdom shared by the wise philosopher.

On one unforgettable day, Polydoros would pass away, but not before he spoke one last time to Aristides.

'Your journey is complete'. he told Aristides.

'Yes. I have discovered myself and above all, the wisdom that will guide me in the rest of my life'.

'Go then, and spread the message of your story to others. The world is awaiting you, as my hour of death is near'.

'I shall honour you', Aristides confessed.

'No. Honour yourself, for I need not to be honoured only remembered'.

Aristides began to write, not books, not doctrines, but short phrases etched onto stones, left along forest paths or tucked into the cracks of caverns.

They read: You are not your image. To vanish from the world’s mirrors is to appear before To Ena. The One cannot be seen, only experienced. The mirror without reflection is the teacher without voice. In stillness and awareness, the soul recalls its intrinsic shape.

Some people found these stones and thought them to be riddles impressed upon the stones. Others took them as beautiful poetry. A few, however, paused and thought, listening inwardly.

One child found such an onyx stone beside a stream and carried it with her for years, until one day, unprompted, she placed it before her reflection, and asked nothing of it. Unaware of its ancient value.

In time, the mirror that refused to reflect became a story whispered in other far aways lands, in different tongues. It passed from sage to seeker, from contemplative to children of a new generation. Some dismissed it as mere myth or fable. Others meditated upon its actual meaning, but for those attuned to Meletic consciousness, it was not only a tale; it was a threshold within the inner self.

The young man who sought to find the Hall and had asked Aristides would locate it. He had discovered his own ultimate truth, but upon his return, he would be told that Aristides had disappeared. His name was Ploutarchos.

Some people said that Aristides had left the village, whilst other people spoke of his legend; that he had vanished into the mist of the mirror.

Every human being, it is said, carries a version of that mirror, which is unseen, unshaped and silent. Most people pass it by, distracted by the reflection of the mirror, the noise of validation. For those who pause, there is something that stirs behind the veil of secrecy. A subtle awareness that they are more than their image, more than the illusion of the material world.

Aristides realised to step towards the mirror was to confront the mode of essential being. There, he no longer sought to define himself, but to express what he already was beneath any mention of definition. It is a place where there is no divinity, no mask, only presence. He had not found a god. Instead, he found himself through the influence of To Ena. Aristides had come face to face with his inherent soul.

The mirror thus remains, in every seeker of the truth. Not on a wall. Not in a hall, but in the quiet spaces between thought and breath.

When a man dares to look into it, not for who that man believes he represents, but for what he truly is, he steps, silently, into the eternal glimpse of existence.

In ancient myths, mirrors were often tools of vanity or revelation. With Aristides, the mirror became a crucible of essence. It was not the face it returned that mattered, but the silence it held that unfolded with the truth.

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