Legendary scryers: Pan Twardowski

Today's famous scryer is perhaps a little less than famous to English-speaking readers.  I'm talking about the quasi-historical Polish sorcerer and folkloric figure Pan Twardowski.  Pan Twardowski (or Master Twardowski) is a Faustian character who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for occult powers.  In Poland, he has been memorialized in numerous plays, ballads, legends, and folk art.

Like Faust, Twardowki managed to evade fulfilling his end of the bargain for many years.  Always a clever one, he included in his contract a clause that stipulated that the devil would collect his soul in Rome, a place that he then avoided visiting at all costs.  His magical career finally ended when Old Scratch found his own loophole, coming to collect Twardowski's soul while he dined in a tavern named Rome.  (Today, there are numerous inns in Poland that claim to be the site of this fatal meeting.)  As Twardowski was being carried off to Hell, he entreated the Virgin Mary, and she came to his aid.  The appearance of the Blessed Virgin so startled the devil that he dropped Twardowski on the Moon, where he resides in solitude to this day.  But Twardowski gets bored there without his magical books and tools.  He sometimes sends spiders down to earth on silvery threads, to act as emissaries and informers for him.

The sorcerer of Krakow may be based on a real 16th-century occultist whose true identity is unclear.  Or he might be composite character created from the activities of various seers and magicians that were swarming Poland at the time (including, perhaps, John Dee and Edward Kelley, who resided in Krakow).  It's one of those cases where historical fact and colorful fiction blend together in an inextricable mess.

The most well-known story about Twardowski involves his evocation of the ghost of a Polish queen.  It seems that Twardowski spent some time in the employ of the Polish king, Sigismund II Augustus.  The king, after the death of his first wife, had made the politically unwise choice of marrying his court mistress, a Lithuanian noblewoman.  This second queen, Barbara Radziwiłł, was reportedly beautiful, accomplished, and the object of the king's passionate devotion.  Unfortunately, her position attracted the jealous attention of many courtiers, and she died of a sudden illness just five months after her coronation.  (Poisoned by her treacherous mother-in-law Bona Sforza?  Oooh...history's mysteries!)  In any case, her untimely death devastated the king.  He draped her chamber in black and remained in mourning for the rest of his life.  (Though he did remarry, hoping vainly for an heir.)

Krakow at that time was something of a haven for occultists, and the king surrounded himself with astrologers, mediums, and necromancers to comfort him in his grief.  One of these was said to be Pan Twardowski.  One night, at the urging of the king, Twardowski brought his magic mirror to the death-chamber of Queen Barbara.  There, the master magician summoned the wronged queen to full appearance, to the great relief of  the royal widower, and secured his position at court.  (Skeptics and cynics alleged that Twardowski faked the whole thing with the help of the queen's old gowns and a look-alike chambermaid.)

An artifact associated with Twardowski has survived (mostly) intact--the so-called "Twardowski mirror."  This is a tin and silver mirror supposed used by the magician for his scrying and conjurations.  In 1711, the mirror was installed in the Basilica of the Assumption in Wegrow, Poland--where it remains to this day.  The prophetic pull of the mirror was said to be so great that anyone could gaze into it and see portents of event to come.  (That is, until 1812, when Napoleon Bonaparte beheld his coming defeat and lashed out at the mirror, cracking its surface and dispersing its magical power.) The Latin inscription on the frame translates as, "Twardowski played with this mirror, performing magical tricks; now it is destined to serve God."

Artwork, from top:

Wojciech Gerson, "The Ghost of Barbara Radziwiłł (1886).     

Józef Simmler, "The Death of Barbara Radziwiłł" (1860).

Woodcut of Twardowski mirror (1871).