If Dee obtained the mirror around 1580, it had only been 60 years since the Spanish dissolved the Aztec Empire, and it's entirely possible that the Nahuas continued to make obsidian mirrors for some time after that (although the Spanish would have recognized it as a non-Christian practice to be stamped out, surely). To him, it could have been approximately as ancient as a John F. Kennedy campaign button is to us.
> although the Spanish would have recognized it as a non-Christian practice to be stamped out, surely
As an occult practice, it may have been discouraged at least, but to say "non-Christian" makes it sound like one arbitrary practice extirpating another.
Rather, the Christian view (and certainly the Catholic view) is one opposed to superstition and the occult on the grounds that superstitions are irrational and immoral and thus opposed to the good of those who engage in them[0].
It is one thing for there to exist varying customs that are more-or-less arbitrary w.r.t. the signifier (greetings, for example), but the signified is no longer arbitrary.
The mirrors were devotional objects in the indigenous religion of the Nahuas, analogous to Christian crucifixes. They were symbols of divine power. The Catholic Church to this day ascribes supernatural power to physical objects such as the Eucharist, and 16th-century Spaniards certainly would have believed that the relics of saints conveyed divine benefits. The Church itself reaffirmed the miraculous power of relics that same century at the Council of Trent. There is really no reason to consider these Nahua religious objects "occult" except by a definition that includes an exception for Christianity.
In any case, the conquerors of New Spain did not encourage the Nahuas to reform their indigenous religion on a rational basis free of superstition. They did not train up an Aquinas for Tezcatlipoca. They suppressed the religion of their conquered subjects in favor of their own, a tale as old as written history.
> Rather, the Christian view (and certainly the Catholic view) is one opposed to superstition and the occult on the grounds that superstitions are irrational and immoral and thus opposed to the good of those who engage in them.
As a Catholic, even I recognize that essentially the entirety of Catholic practice is superstition from the perspective of anyone who doesn't either take Catholicism as a priori true on authority or (arguably equivalently) have a personal divine experience justifying Catholicism experientially.
If one is not Catholic to start with, it as easy to dismiss Catholic practice on the same argument as presented above against superstition as it is for Catholics to do so for non-Catholic superstitions.
I think it's fair to say that religions spawned from an explicit desire to negate a particular aspect of the Catholic Church indeed is devoid of that particular aspect. That doesn't mean that protestantism is entirely rational, it's still a religion; but it's by definition different from catholicism in those specific ways that led to the schism. For example, I friend of mine got kicked in the butt publicly as a child by a priest because she dared to say that the host "represents" the body of Christ (while, clearly, it literally is the body of Christ, not merely represents it)
There are lots of religions, and lots of sects of religions, with wildly varying claims, methods and cosmologies… some of which are true, some of which are not, and possibly in ill-fitting overlap, some of which that are rational or more rational, and some of which are irrational or less rational. It would be incautious to label them all irrational while only truly considering a small number.
Superstition is itself a term of Catholic theology and specifically targets veneration without a formal doctrinal framework, which individual Catholics certainly might be guilty of at times but Catholicism isn't.
While the foundational tenets of Catholicism are supernatural but the system that sprouts from it is highly rational, descriptive and formal. It's a religion of Roman lawyers and it shows.
As a result I have a hard time seeing anybody dismissing Catholicism as superstitious, even if they a priori dismiss the existence of God, unless they have no actual knowledge of it (which, you know, ends up being most people who feel to need to utter an opinion on the subject).
Catholicism teaches that the laying of hands can endow a person (of male biological sex) with the power to transform bread and wine into flesh and blood through the ritual utterance of certain words.
It's going to be hard sell to explain how that's not superstitious...
and then partake in ritual (symbolic) cannibalism?
According to doctrine, it's more than symbolic: Catholicism teaches that bread and wine 'really' turn into flesh and blood, while only 'superficially' maintaining the appearance of bread and wine (cf Aristotle's substance theory and the difference between essential and accidental properties). So under a certain point of view, the Eucharist could indeed be considered cannibalism - however, the body of Christ is divine and cannot be digested...
> Don't Catholics believe that the bread and wine in the mass is Christ's actual body and blood, and then partake in ritual (symbolic) cannibalism?
Yes, with the minor complication that a substantial number of Catholics don't actually understand how it's supposed to work (spiritually speaking) and would be absolutely dumbfounded at the basic concept of transubstantiation.
> makes it sound like one arbitrary practice extirpating another.
Yes, because that's exactly what it was. If anything they could stand to emphasise the hypocrisy a bit more, though I don't think that was particularly relevant to their actual point.
