Broken Mirrors
Mirrors have been used in divination, or fortune-telling since ancient times. Because of their presumed value in seeing the future, superstition grants them magical and potentially dangerous significance. On the simplest level, breaking a mirror is the destruction of a means of knowing the will of the gods, or a signal from the gods that they didn't want you to poke into their affairs. Either way, the indication of unseeable hazards was obvious. The Romans believed that the mirror reflected the health of the viewers. Thus to break a mirror presaged ill health, or seven year's bad luck, since the Romans also believed that a person's health changed every seven years. However, if one unfortunately broke a mirror, the way to avoid bad luck is secretly reversing a coin in one's pocket on a full moon night.
In addition to reflecting the future, however, mirrors also were believed to reflect the person's soul. Many primitive peoples, in fact, believed that the person's soul actually existed in the mirror. Breaking the glass would prevent the soul from reuniting with the body, and misfortune would inevitably result. This belief in the close connection between an individual and his mirror image lies behind the superficially different beliefs-that a crocodile can kill a man by attacking his reflection in water, and that a vampire （popularized by Hollywood）, being soulless, can not see itself in the mirror.
NOTES:
divination 算命
presume 假设，假定，推测
grant 给予，认为．．．具有
magical 有魔力的
potentially 潜在地
poke into 插手，干预
presage 预示，预兆
reverse 翻转
primitive 原始的
reunite （使）再结合
lie behind 是．．．的根据，支持
vampire （传说中的）吸血鬼