ABSTRACT
The fi rst thing we hear from the lips of the Wicked Queen in Disney’s Snow White isn’t the line for which she is famous, the line repeated by generations of American children, “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” Instead, her fi rst words summon the spirit within the magic mirror, commanding her “slave” from the “furthest spaces” to attend her. Her spirit possesses secret knowledge, knowledge that allows the queen to make important personal decisions, like whether or not to kill her stepdaughter because of her unparalleled beauty. The evil Queen is known for being vain and self-serving, but we seldom remember that she’s a conjurer of mysterious, knowledgeable spirits. First and foremost, in fact, the Queen is a conjurer, what medieval and Renaissance audiences might have called a necromancer or a demonologist.
