Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and our month of
Speaker 3: creepy Topics continues. We are back with part two in
Speaker 3: our series on shadows. In part one, we talked about
Speaker 3: historical examples of people infusing the concept of the shadow
Speaker 3: with strange power or supernatural connotations. We talked about how
Speaker 3: the brain perceives shadows, and some cognitive science research regarding shadows,
Speaker 3: including the interesting finding that a lot of the time
Speaker 3: people do not detect when shadows apparently cast by objects
Speaker 3: are physically impossible. We also talked about legends of the
Speaker 3: Icelandic wizard who lost his shadow when it was snatched
Speaker 3: away by the devil, a kind of a violent tuition
Speaker 3: extra for his fees for going to which school. But
Speaker 3: also we talked about what it was understood to mean
Speaker 3: that a vampire had no shadow at the time Bram
Speaker 3: Stoker was writing the novel Dracula. Today, we're back to
Speaker 3: examine the shadows yet again, and to get started today,
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about shadows with halos, so to
Speaker 3: introduce this item, I'm going to read a passage from
Speaker 3: the memoirs of one ben Venudo Cellini, a sixteenth century
Speaker 3: Italian sculptor and goldsmith who I had never heard of before.
Speaker 3: But this guy is interesting. He told his life story
Speaker 3: in a weird, passionate, melodramatic autobiography full of bragging that
Speaker 3: became widely celebrated in translation long after his death. This
Speaker 3: memoir was especially beloved by artists and authors of the
Speaker 3: Romantic movement in the late eighteen and early nineteenth centuries. Rob,
Speaker 3: Just so you can get a quick flavor of Chillini's
Speaker 3: comprehensive too muchness of personality, I attached an image for
Speaker 3: you to look at. This is a famous salt cellar
Speaker 3: that ben Venudo Chillini designed. This was used to store salt,
Speaker 3: like for cooking.
Speaker 2: You know, I always find it weird that that it's
Speaker 2: essentially a salt box. And I think it's sometimes called
Speaker 2: a salt box, but it's also called a salt cellar
Speaker 2: and a salt pig. Neither of these terms really feel
Speaker 2: very true to what the thing is, at least to me.
Speaker 3: Even less so in this case. So let me describe
Speaker 3: for those of you who cannot see the image. What
Speaker 3: we have here is a sculpture with two towering nude gods,
Speaker 3: one male, one female. They are lying back, their legs
Speaker 3: entangled with one another's, suggestively. The male immortal here is
Speaker 3: pointing with a trident, kind of holding it out, sort
Speaker 3: of languidly. He's like almost like he's, you know, very
Speaker 3: tired from having feasted long, but he's still he still
Speaker 3: wants that thing over there, so he's sort of gesturing
Speaker 3: with his trident as if to a servant, like bring
Speaker 3: me that. Meanwhile, the goddess here appears to be sort
Speaker 3: of pinching her own breast. Both figures are huge, they're
Speaker 3: made of gold. They are over a landscape of blue
Speaker 3: water crashing on a rocky shore, with golden horse heads
Speaker 3: shrieking from the surf, a golden temple with three archways
Speaker 3: under the giant goddess's shadow. I think this is supposed
Speaker 3: to be Poseidon and Gaya playing foot see here, or
Speaker 3: rather I guess in a Roman context it would be
Speaker 3: Neptune and Tara Mater. And if you think about it,
Speaker 3: the gods selected are actually on theme here because this
Speaker 3: is a salt cellar and these are if it's a
Speaker 3: Neptune and Ta Mater. This would be gods of the
Speaker 3: earth and sea.
Speaker 2: And I think those are hippocampi there right behind the
Speaker 2: mail god right, so that would be a strong indicator
Speaker 2: of aquatic divinity.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's a good point. I didn't think of that.
Speaker 3: Another thing here, So there's a dish next to the
Speaker 3: two gods and the salt I guess goes in the dish.
Speaker 3: But rob you see that little temple at the bottom
Speaker 3: underneath the goddess. That's for peppercorns.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 3: Also strange fact, this salt cellar was stolen from a
Speaker 3: museum in Austria in two thousand and three by a
Speaker 3: man who ran an alarm system company. I was reading
Speaker 3: about this in an article in The Guardian. The suspect
Speaker 3: later claimed that the theft was quote all rather spontaneous.
Speaker 3: The salt seller was valued at thirty five million pounds
Speaker 3: at the time. I think the thief tried to get
Speaker 3: a ransom, maybe from the insurance company or something, but
Speaker 3: eventually he was caught and the museum got the peace back.
Speaker 2: Well that's good.
Speaker 3: So in his memoirs, benven Nudo Cellini tells the story
Speaker 3: of creating this masterpiece. At one point, he says that
Speaker 3: he took a mock up design and showed it to
Speaker 3: the King of France at the time, Francis the First,
Speaker 3: who was so impressed by this model that he commissioned
Speaker 3: him to make the salt cellar out of gold from
Speaker 3: his own treasury. And he was like, Chillini, you are
Speaker 3: a genius. You're the best ever. And then Chillini says, okay.
Speaker 3: So he gets the gold. He's carrying it back to
Speaker 3: his workshop in a basket to make to cast the
Speaker 3: design in gold. When he was set upon by four
Speaker 3: armed highwaymen and then he had to draw his sword
Speaker 3: and defeat them single handedly, he says.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He also brags about a time that he decided to
Speaker 3: stab some guys who had sued him and prevailed in court.
Speaker 3: He writes, in translation quote, I perceived that my cause
Speaker 3: had been unjustly lost. I had recourse for my to
Speaker 3: a great dagger I carried.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you want to read more about
Speaker 3: the salt Cellar in particular, there's a good Jaystore Daily
Speaker 3: feature about this story by Giovanni Garcia Finitch. But needless
Speaker 3: to say, Chilini seems to have had a fairly grandiose
Speaker 3: idea of his own personal genius and historical significance. He
Speaker 3: thought he was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, he sounds pretty cool just from this account, right,
Speaker 2: And he's going around getting into sword fights, stabbing people
Speaker 2: in legal disputes.
Speaker 3: He says, But I don't know who knows.
Speaker 2: Maybe.
Speaker 3: Among Chillini's many adventures in Travail's, at one point he
Speaker 3: found himself imprisoned in Castle San Angelo in Rome after
Speaker 3: being accused of embezzlement. By the way, he escaped from
Speaker 3: prison later. Oh, and then he got caught and returned
Speaker 3: to prison. But then he got busted out of prison
Speaker 3: by like the like a rich family. Anyway, He tells
Speaker 3: stories of his time in prison in his memoirs, including
Speaker 3: the fact that he had a dream in which an
Speaker 3: angel came to him and wrote words of great importance
Speaker 3: on his forehead with a red and he says when
Speaker 3: he woke up that morning, he found that his forehead
Speaker 3: actually had marks on it, and he concludes that he
Speaker 3: was at the time receiving messages from a heavenly angel.
Speaker 3: But here we get to the passage that brings us
Speaker 3: back to shadows. Cellini writes quote another circumstance, I must
Speaker 3: not omit, which is one of the most extraordinary things
Speaker 3: that ever happened to any man, and I mention it
Speaker 3: in justice to God and the wondrous ways of His
Speaker 3: providence towards me. From the very moment that I beheld
Speaker 3: the phenomenon, there appeared strange to relate a resplendent light
Speaker 3: over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all
Speaker 3: that I have thought proper to show it to, but
Speaker 3: those were very few. This shining light is to be
Speaker 3: seen in the morning over my shadow till two o'clock
Speaker 3: in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage
Speaker 3: when the grass is moist with dew. It is likewise
Speaker 3: visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took
Speaker 3: notice of when I was at Paris, because the air
Speaker 3: is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could
Speaker 3: distinguish it there, much plainer than in Italy, where mists
Speaker 3: are much more frequent. But I can still see it
Speaker 3: even here and show it to others, though not to
Speaker 3: the same advantage as in France.
Speaker 2: All right, well, no, that's cool. Not only is he
Speaker 2: going around getting into sword fights and stabbing people in
Speaker 2: legal disputes. But he has some sort of mysterious halo
Speaker 2: that is visible about his shadow, at least for certain
Speaker 2: parts of the day, during certain environmental conditions.
Speaker 3: That's right, he says, God likes me so much that
Speaker 3: he sometimes puts a halo around my shadow's head, and
Speaker 3: you can see the shadows radiance. Especially in the morning,
Speaker 3: when the grass is wet with dew, there will be
Speaker 3: visible to all a seraphic light in circling the face
Speaker 3: of my shadow, as if my shadow's head contained a
Speaker 3: second sun.
Speaker 2: But not between the hours of two and six that's
Speaker 2: Willie's time. I get.
Speaker 3: That's right. So it's a fantastic story. But the more
Speaker 3: fantastic part of it would probably do injury to Chillini's
Speaker 3: sense of specialness, because, unfortunately for him, other people have
Speaker 3: seen this same effect. In fact, it's very common when
Speaker 3: standing over a field of grass in the morning sunlight,
Speaker 3: you can often see a ring of golden light surrounding
Speaker 3: your shadow's head. M Rob, I've attached some pictures for
Speaker 3: you to look at here. Presumably the people who took
Speaker 3: these pictures are not specially blessed by God. They were
Speaker 3: not given a you know, plus four modifier on sword
Speaker 3: fighting bandits. They're not the most genius goldsmith that ever existed.
Speaker 3: These are just photographers. And what do you know, they're
Speaker 3: looking out of the field, they're taking a photo and
Speaker 3: there is a ring, like a sort of emanation of
Speaker 3: radiance off of the top of their shadow.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I see it.
Speaker 3: Folks at home, you can look this up yourself with
Speaker 3: the term I'm about to give you. The phenomenon is
Speaker 3: known as hiligenshine h e i l I g e
Speaker 3: n s c h e i n, meaning the light
Speaker 3: of the Holy One or holy light, sometimes also known
Speaker 3: as Chilini's halo after the passage in question, and it
Speaker 3: is not in fact the flame of the Lord's favor
Speaker 3: for the rattus dude in Renaissance Italy. It is an
Speaker 3: optical effect created by the interplay of sunlight and certain
Speaker 3: types of backgrounds, especially backgrounds containing drops of dew.
Speaker 2: Also not to be confused with heinegenshine, that's a different
Speaker 2: optical phenomenon.
Speaker 3: So much like Chilini describes, the hiligenshine is most often
Speaker 3: seen in fields early in the morning, when the sun
Speaker 3: is at a low angle, and the observer has a
Speaker 3: long shadow falling over wet grass. The fact that the
Speaker 3: light is brightest right around your shadow's head here is
Speaker 3: of course not magic. It's also not really anything special
Speaker 3: about your shadow or the head of your shadow. Rather,
Speaker 3: it's about perspective. It's about light sources and reflecting backgrounds
Speaker 3: and perspective. The halo is located around your shadow's head
Speaker 3: because your eyes are in your head, and thus the
Speaker 3: head of your shadow is the place exactly opposite the
Speaker 3: sun from your eyes. Maybe even never thought about it
Speaker 3: that way before, but that's always true. This point opposite
Speaker 3: the sun from your head is known as your antisolar point.
Speaker 3: And another way to picture this concept is that you
Speaker 3: can always draw a straight line in three dimensional space
Speaker 3: from the sun through your head to your shadow's head.
Speaker 3: Your shadow's head is at one end of that line,
Speaker 3: the sun is at the other. The line goes straight
Speaker 3: through your face.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, I can picture it.
Speaker 3: So the explanation for the optical effect usually goes like this.
Speaker 3: The intensity of light reflected off of a drop of
Speaker 3: water or through a drop of water and back towards
Speaker 3: you depends on the angle of reflection. Rays of light
Speaker 3: that reflect straight back through a droplet of water are
Speaker 3: most intense that this straight bounce back angle of reflection
Speaker 3: would be one hundred and eighty degrees right, going straight
Speaker 3: into and back, like the reflection looking straight into a mirror.
Speaker 3: As the angle of reflection shifts further away from one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty degrees, the reflected light becomes significantly less bright.
Speaker 3: Why would that be, well, I was reading about this
Speaker 3: in the American Meteorological Society's Glossary of Meteorology, and they write, quote,
Speaker 3: do drops held off the surface of the leaf by
Speaker 3: small hairs focus sunlight on the leaf where it is
Speaker 3: diffusely reflected. The drop, acting in a manner similar to
Speaker 3: the lens of a lighthouse, then collects a large fraction
Speaker 3: of this diffusely reflected light that would have otherwise gone
Speaker 3: in other directions, and sends it back toward the source
Speaker 3: and the observer. So, in other words, the dewdrop acts
Speaker 3: as a kind of focusing lens to reflect light directly
Speaker 3: back at the sun. Again, that's one hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: degrees the angle of reflection. Of course, when you look
Speaker 3: out at a field in the sunlight, no light from
Speaker 3: the sun is reflected to your eyes from exactly one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty degrees because your head is in the
Speaker 3: way right that's where your shadow is, so you're blocking
Speaker 3: the exact one hundred and eighty reflection point. But light
Speaker 3: reflected in droplets from right around your antisolar point can
Speaker 3: be pretty close to one hundred and eighty degrees and
Speaker 3: thus significantly brighter when the rays are focused by the
Speaker 3: droplets like this than the light from all around. This
Speaker 3: is especially true if the angle of the sun is
Speaker 3: low and your shadow is long, and your antisolar point
Speaker 3: on the ground is thus farther away from you. And
Speaker 3: if you think about it for a minute, this makes
Speaker 3: sense because as your shadow's head gets farther away from
Speaker 3: your eyes because the sun is lower, the difference in
Speaker 3: the angle between like your exact antisolar point and some
Speaker 3: point on the ground maybe eight inches to the side
Speaker 3: of it. That difference in angle becomes smaller and smaller
Speaker 3: as the antisolar point gets farther away. You could compare
Speaker 3: this to like if you are aiming a bow and
Speaker 3: arrow at two targets that are one foot apart from
Speaker 3: each other, You'll have to make a larger adjustment if
Speaker 3: those targets are one foot apart from each other and
Speaker 3: ten feet in front of you than you would if
Speaker 3: they were one foot apart from each other and thirty
Speaker 3: feet in front of you. That smaller adjustment in aim
Speaker 3: is a smaller angle of difference. So this whole glow
Speaker 3: around your shadow's head has to do with the angle
Speaker 3: of reflected light hitting your eyes. It's closest to a
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty degree angle of reflection near where
Speaker 3: your shadow's head is, so the light fro reflected from
Speaker 3: the surface around that area is brighter. If you could
Speaker 3: see it, it would be brightest exactly where your head is,
Speaker 3: but your head's in the way. One way of demonstrating
Speaker 3: this actually visually, that's quite simple. As I've seen online.
Speaker 3: Somebody takes a photo of themself with the Highligen shine
Speaker 3: and the camera is right in front of their face,
Speaker 3: and then they hold the camera away from their head
Speaker 3: over to the side, and the glow is around the
Speaker 3: camera and not around their shadows head.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: One other tidbit from the American Meteorological Society entry. The
Speaker 3: glossary entry, though, is that while it's entirely true that
Speaker 3: this effect is much stronger on wet irregular surfaces like
Speaker 3: dewy grass. There's actually weaker version of the shadow halo
Speaker 3: effect that occurs even on dry surfaces. They write, quote,
Speaker 3: when an observer's shadow is cast on a dry irregular
Speaker 3: surface such as gravel or vegetation, each irregularity near the
Speaker 3: antisolar point covers its own shadow in other directions. The
Speaker 3: average brightness results from a mixture of sunlit and shaded surfaces.
Speaker 3: The lower the sun in the sky, the longer the shadows,
Speaker 3: and so the greater the contrast with the brighter region
Speaker 3: near the antisolar point. So even if there's no dew,
Speaker 3: you're still going to have the effect that if you
Speaker 3: look around the world places that are farther away from
Speaker 3: your antisolar point, you're going to be seeing light reflected
Speaker 3: kind of bouncing in all directions from both brightly sunlit
Speaker 3: areas and shaded areas. But when you're looking straight at
Speaker 3: your antisolar point, the stuff right around there, you're pretty
Speaker 3: much only going to be seeing non shaded areas because
Speaker 3: shaded areas are blocked by the objects, right.
Speaker 2: Right, All right, so's it sounds then like that Seleni
Speaker 2: probably had a case here he was actually seeing this
Speaker 2: optical phenomenon when he was out walking in the fields
Speaker 2: and there was dew on the grass and so forth.
Speaker 3: That's right, there's no reason to doubt his story that
Speaker 3: he saw this. Lots of other people have seen it.
Speaker 3: You can probably see it too in the right conditions. However,
Speaker 3: I am doubtful about Chilini's claims that other people could
Speaker 3: see his halo. Remember he says, like, I've showed it
Speaker 3: to a few special people and they said, yes, it's there.
Speaker 3: The hiligenshine is a phenomenon that is dependent on the
Speaker 3: position of the viewer. It is not actually an object
Speaker 3: out there in the world. Like you know, you and
Speaker 3: I can stand and look at a tree from different
Speaker 3: angles and both see the tree. The hiligenshine is about
Speaker 3: the angle of reflected rays of light hitting your eyes,
Speaker 3: and the rays are actually being reflected in this manner
Speaker 3: all over the surface of the Earth, the sunlit side
Speaker 3: of the Earth. It just happens to be around your
Speaker 3: shadow's head that you see it, because that's your particular
Speaker 3: anti solar point. So I don't know. Maybe they could
Speaker 3: see it if they got really close to him, like
Speaker 3: cheek to cheek and then they'd be like, oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 3: there is a glow around our heads. I'm curious how
Speaker 3: close exactly you would have to be to see the
Speaker 3: same thing. Maybe you don't have to be cheek to cheek,
Speaker 3: but you'd basically have to be looking from the same
Speaker 3: perspective that he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess you can well imagine it
Speaker 2: being a scenario where since it's a subtle enough effect,
Speaker 2: if it was, if he's there like pointing it out
Speaker 2: to you, you might say, Okay, I think I see something.
Speaker 2: Or this is a guy that seemed to have a
Speaker 2: very strong personality. Yes, and there were at least stories
Speaker 2: about him stabbing people. You know, you might be inclined
Speaker 2: to just be like, yeah, totally, I do see that
Speaker 2: halo around your shadow. No, no, no, we don't have to.
Speaker 2: I don't have to put my head next to yours.
Speaker 2: It's fine. I got you.
Speaker 3: I can see it too. Yes you're a genius, Yes
Speaker 3: you're really cool. Yes that coat looks cool on you.
Speaker 2: Please put the dagger away.
Speaker 3: So that's the Highligan shine. But I am I am
Speaker 3: so interested in this bombastic weirdo. I might try to
Speaker 3: find another way to keep reading about Benvenuto Cellini and
Speaker 3: see if I can bring him back to the show
Speaker 3: in the future.
Speaker 2: And then it sounds like a big character who had
Speaker 2: a lot of thoughts about a lot of topics, So
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if he pops back up again.
Speaker 2: All right, I want to come back to a couple
Speaker 2: of things. In the last episode, we talked about people
Speaker 2: and things that, due to some sort of supernatural reason,
Speaker 2: do not cast a shadow, or a thought to not
Speaker 2: cast a shadow, and how this is generally a comment
Speaker 2: on something going on with their soul or thereof. As
Speaker 2: I was telling my wife about all of this, she
Speaker 2: was like, well, you've got to mention that episode of
Speaker 2: The Simpsons. I believe this is the episode where Lisa
Speaker 2: becomes a vegan for a little bit, or at least
Speaker 2: she encounters a vegan. I know she becomes vegan for
Speaker 2: an episode, but I can't remember if this is the
Speaker 2: same episode.
Speaker 3: I think she becomes a vegetan unless this happens more
Speaker 3: than once. She becomes a vegetarian, and then she ruins
Speaker 3: Homer's barbecue by how.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's another episode where she meets and
Speaker 2: falls in love with a vegan who claims that he
Speaker 2: is a level five vegan and he doesn't eat anything
Speaker 2: that casts a shadow. Yes, now, I have to admit,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes looking back, especially at vegetarian and vegan
Speaker 2: jokes from the nineteen nineties, a lot of them hit
Speaker 2: unnecessarily hard, and especially you know, as a vegetarian and
Speaker 2: someone has lots of vegan friends, you know, I often
Speaker 2: will be like, I think that's that's a much nineiest comedy.
Speaker 2: But this one, I don't know. I've always liked this
Speaker 2: one because you know, at one hand, it's a parody
Speaker 2: of it's poking fun at a particular dietary choice. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, this idea of eating something that
Speaker 2: doesn't cast a shadow, it does line up with a
Speaker 2: lot of what we were talking about, the idea that like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is a creature with diminished or non existent personhood
Speaker 2: and therefore or a plant. Even I guess more and
Speaker 2: more likely it would be the scenario like this particular
Speaker 2: stalk of corn that doesn't cast a shadow, and therefore
Speaker 2: it is okay to eat corn from this plant. I
Speaker 2: don't like a lot of comedy. If you think about
Speaker 2: it too hard, it doesn't work. But I always found
Speaker 2: it a bit funny, all right, So I had to
Speaker 2: mention that one another thing, this is another one that
Speaker 2: came up and talking about these episodes with my wife,
Speaker 2: she said, oh, well, you've got to mention zero shadow days.
Speaker 2: So it's worth noting that if you're standing in just
Speaker 2: the right place at just the right time, you might
Speaker 2: well encounter a world with I don't want to say
Speaker 2: no shadows, but let's say significantly decrease shadow activity, like
Speaker 2: if you were let's say you're an individual in a
Speaker 2: supernatural horror show and you always have to be on
Speaker 2: guard for shadow monsters climbing out of the shadows and
Speaker 2: dragging you to hell. Well, these are the places you
Speaker 2: would want to be because you would, I guess, have
Speaker 2: fewer pools of shadow from which things might crop. As
Speaker 2: pointed out on NASA's Night Sky Network website, this is
Speaker 2: a reality of the solstice in the tropics between the
Speaker 2: Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Here people
Speaker 2: experience two zero shadow days per year, so called when
Speaker 2: the sun is directly overhead at solar noon, and this
Speaker 2: makes objects and people cast a minimal shadow. It's often
Speaker 2: been observed that you may have to jump in the
Speaker 2: air to see your own shadow.
Speaker 3: So it's not literally zero shadow, but it's as close
Speaker 3: as it gets on Earth to zero shadow. Because the
Speaker 3: sun is directly over so you're not casting. There's really
Speaker 3: no horizontality to your shadow, right right.
Speaker 2: No lengthen shadows for the most part. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: minimal shadow activity.
Speaker 3: Ooh. You know though, I wonder if you could say
Speaker 3: that there's actually even less shadow on days when the
Speaker 3: sun is obscured by clouds, because then the directionality of
Speaker 3: light is greatly reduced and light is more just kind
Speaker 3: of diffuse, So you know, there's much I guess you
Speaker 3: still have a shadow, but it's much much less intense.
Speaker 2: It's very faint, yeah, fainter shadows. And then of course
Speaker 2: we also have to take into account our world of
Speaker 2: so much modern illumination, artificial illumination, it's going to continue
Speaker 2: to cast all sorts of interesting shadows as well. In fact,
Speaker 2: that's kind of a defining aspect of sort of the
Speaker 2: modern urban environment. You know, we've talked about that before,
Speaker 2: these various realities and conceptions of the big city, you know,
Speaker 2: having like gulches of shadow between skyscrapers that our position
Speaker 2: too closely or don't taper off as they climb into
Speaker 2: the sky, that sort of thing. And then you get
Speaker 2: into various forms of artificial illumination, particularly at night. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a defining character of so many visuals that
Speaker 2: we have with you know, from various noir films, you know,
Speaker 2: where it's like this this shadowy night scape, urban nightscape
Speaker 2: in which there are all these places where one may hide,
Speaker 2: but also all these places where one will be starkly
Speaker 2: illuminated and be in more vulnerable perhaps to the nighttime city.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the environment of the modern city makes for
Speaker 3: you can almost kind of recreate the striking lighting of
Speaker 3: like stage effects, but within a realistic context, you know,
Speaker 3: having like a dark street with a single street lamp
Speaker 3: illuminating something. It's like a spotlight, but you know it's
Speaker 3: plausible to reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that classic what it's the the movie poster
Speaker 2: for The Exorcist that way, you know, it's got a
Speaker 2: sort of noir styling to the poster, but also it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: here comes the Exorcist front and center, spotlights on you, buddy,
Speaker 2: Time to put on a show for the devil.
Speaker 3: The way he's got the bag. Yet it almost looks
Speaker 3: like he's gonna put on like a costume and tap
Speaker 3: dancing shoes or something like.
Speaker 2: The suitcase is full of like prop comedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got a can of spring snakes.
Speaker 2: Oh man, the devil won't see that kind of ye
Speaker 2: with devil?
Speaker 3: Would you like a boiled peanut?
Speaker 2: Now, at this point, I'd like to get once more
Speaker 2: into the world of art and shadow and get a
Speaker 2: little bit into philosophy and history here as well. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this is gonna be like a big tint discussion. I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna get into all the details here, because ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, shadows have always been with us. They've they're
Speaker 2: never far from us. And so anytime throughout history when
Speaker 2: you've had a particularly contemplative individual who's gonna indulge in
Speaker 2: a bit of of navel gazing, the shadow was always
Speaker 2: there to aid us. And yeah, there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of deep thoughts about shadows, about what is and isn't
Speaker 2: a shadow? Can you actually look at a shadow? Does
Speaker 2: a moving bird cast one shadow or multiple shadows? And
Speaker 2: so forth? And I'm not saying it isn't interesting, but
Speaker 2: it all kind of started turning my brain upside down
Speaker 2: after a bit, so I'm gonna skip around a bit here,
Speaker 2: but I was initially reminded once more of our episode
Speaker 2: on necromancy, or one of our episodes on necromancy, when
Speaker 2: we briefly discussed shadow puppetry and its possible connections to
Speaker 2: shamanistic practices and or necromancy in the sense of some
Speaker 2: sort of ritualistic way of attempting to speak with the
Speaker 2: dead or to create the illusion of speaking with the dead.
Speaker 3: Right, So, the example from the necromancy episode was a
Speaker 3: story about a Chinese emperor long ago who had a
Speaker 3: sort of wizard like advisor who told him that he
Speaker 3: could resurre the spirit of a concubine who he had
Speaker 3: loved very much but who had passed away, and that
Speaker 3: she could speak to him again, but she would appear
Speaker 3: as like a shadow behind a screen, and that this
Speaker 3: was attributed later to shadow puppetry.
Speaker 2: Right, it's it's unknown exactly how this played out or
Speaker 2: you know, ultimately you know how true this account is.
Speaker 2: And there were some thoughts that it was like a
Speaker 2: statue behind the screen or scrim that it was more
Speaker 2: traditional shadow puppetry or that, and also disagreements over to
Speaker 2: what extent the emperor would have been conned by this,
Speaker 2: but it's it's an interesting slice of history. But at
Speaker 2: any rate, setting all that aside, shadow theater anyway you
Speaker 2: slice it is an ancient performance are that probably began
Speaker 2: in Central Asia or China or possibly India during the
Speaker 2: first millennium BC. That's at least, I mean, who knows
Speaker 2: ultimately how far back it goes, because of course people
Speaker 2: along before that were aware of their shadows, and they
Speaker 2: might have caught on to ways that you might manipulate
Speaker 2: that shadow. So as it stands, shadow puppetry contains a
Speaker 2: number of different styles and traditions, you know, their use
Speaker 2: of puppets, cut out or otherwise. Also you have instances
Speaker 2: where individuals are using their own bodies. I think the
Speaker 2: most famous example of this is of course shadow graphy,
Speaker 2: or the use of you know, like making a little
Speaker 2: bunny out of your hands and far more complicated things
Speaker 2: and then using that with light to create a shadow creature.
Speaker 2: And then that's a you know, you may think of
Speaker 2: that as just like a quick, little, you know, dad
Speaker 2: trick or something, but it's actually a very refined craft
Speaker 2: and it is likely it likely originated in China or
Speaker 2: the Far East, as well.
Speaker 3: In my limited recent experiences doing hand shadow puppetry for
Speaker 3: my daughter. It's interesting the way that it's unlike some
Speaker 3: other art forms in that by re shaping your hand
Speaker 3: in front of the to block the light and looking
Speaker 3: at the shadow, you can kind of get a instant,
Speaker 3: continuous feedback on how close you're getting to the object
Speaker 3: you're trying to represent as you move your hand around.
Speaker 3: You know, it's unlike I would say in my experience drawing,
Speaker 3: which I'm not good at at all, which is a
Speaker 3: more laborious path to the realization of the image, and
Speaker 3: then if you make a mistake, it's laborious to undo
Speaker 3: it and try to change it. With the shadow puppet,
Speaker 3: I felt like my hand kind of became a form
Speaker 3: of jelly that was just automatically adjusting itself to try
Speaker 3: to look more and more like a dinosaur head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably worth keeping in mind, this act of
Speaker 2: making your hand into this three dimensional object, this three
Speaker 2: dimensional arrangement of digits that can then be manipulated in
Speaker 2: three D space in order to change a two D
Speaker 2: silhouette and make it resemble something else. We're thinking about
Speaker 2: it when we get into a discussion of shadows as
Speaker 2: truth and shhados as lies or manipulation. So at any rate,
Speaker 2: I think you know shadow publishers worth thinking about here, though,
Speaker 2: of course, we can easily become lost in discussions over
Speaker 2: to what extent we're talking about shadow in these various
Speaker 2: performances rather than shade, silhouette, translucent materials, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot going on in any given example of
Speaker 2: shadow theater, But what about shadows elsewhere in art? This
Speaker 2: is another huge topic that we're not going to be
Speaker 2: able to do full justice too. But I was reading
Speaker 2: a bit about this in a really excellent jay Store
Speaker 2: article type Jaystore Daily article titled do We Actually See Shadows?
Speaker 2: By Roy Sorensen, an article that I recommend for anyone
Speaker 2: wanting a nice look at the various philosophical arguments over
Speaker 2: whether we can see a shadow or not When you
Speaker 2: look at a shadow, are you looking at something? Or
Speaker 2: are you looking at nothing? That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: This seems exactly the perfect kind of debate to like
Speaker 3: occupy the minds and debates of medieval scholastics.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so there's a great deal in there. This
Speaker 2: article also gets into some of these theological discussions. What
Speaker 2: does it mean that a shadow moves over the deep,
Speaker 2: et cetera, but it covers a lot of ground in here.
Speaker 2: At one point he mentions, quote, shadows were fringe phenomena
Speaker 2: in the European Dark Ages. They are rarely depicted in
Speaker 2: the era's paintings. Perhaps the artist portrayed only what they
Speaker 2: believe to be visible. So coming back to this idea
Speaker 2: that maybe a sort of negative view of the shadow
Speaker 2: was maybe more predominant during this period of time.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm having an idea. It's only sort of half formed,
Speaker 3: but I'm thinking about how when you look at like
Speaker 3: a medieval artwork that might to some modern critics appear
Speaker 3: kind of primitive somehow, because it's like a maybe a
Speaker 3: representation of a human that shows no optical effects or
Speaker 3: effects of perspective at all. Like so it doesn't show
Speaker 3: any difference is in illumination by the direction of light.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have any shadows or anything like that. That
Speaker 3: might look kind of unsophisticated as an artwork because it
Speaker 3: doesn't show all the tricks and plays of light that
Speaker 3: are so prized in the you know, in the passionate
Speaker 3: realistic artworks of I don't know, the Renaissance or whatever.
Speaker 3: But you could look at that and say, actually, by
Speaker 3: taking out all of those light effects, that is a
Speaker 3: that is a more highly processed visual representation. That is
Speaker 3: what the brain. That is the information the brain is
Speaker 3: trying to interpret in a scene, because, as we talked
Speaker 3: about it in the last episode, the brain has to
Speaker 3: kind of ignore a lot of things about shadows and
Speaker 3: effects of light to try to just get information about
Speaker 3: what are the physical objects in my space and what
Speaker 3: are the physical agents in my space that I need
Speaker 3: to understand as possibly having relevance to what I'm about
Speaker 3: to do. You know, you need to be able to
Speaker 3: see that there are two people standing in the room
Speaker 3: in front of you, and there's a rock right there
Speaker 3: that you could trip on, and not be confused by
Speaker 3: shadows and changes in shading due to the position of
Speaker 3: the light source. That might be literal differences that you
Speaker 3: see with your eyes, but are not relevant information about
Speaker 3: what the objects in your space are. So when you
Speaker 3: see that artwork that is like a picture of a
Speaker 3: person without any effects of light sources or shadows or
Speaker 3: anything like that, that is kind of a mental representation
Speaker 3: of a person. That's not how we actually see the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so it's still a true image, but in
Speaker 2: a different way. And again you can also factor into
Speaker 2: these various discussions about whether or not we actually see
Speaker 2: a shadow, that sort of thing. But Sorenson does get
Speaker 2: back to the idea of shadow theater in ways that
Speaker 2: I was not expecting. He writes, quote, if shadows were
Speaker 2: not seen as figures, shadow plays would be as visually inert.
Speaker 2: Shadows are enlivened by actions such as jumping, bowing, and kissing.
Speaker 2: This animation raised medieval concerns about idolatry to appease the
Speaker 2: pious puppets were perforated. The dots of light were reminders
Speaker 2: that shadows are lifeless effects of positive causes.
Speaker 3: Hmm, it seems like even if it's perforated, the principle remains.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: That just seems like one of those funny, kind of
Speaker 3: ineffectual gesture is to try to appease somebody who just
Speaker 3: wants to complain about something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it also reminds me of other
Speaker 2: stories and tales we've read about where it's like, if
Speaker 2: you don't complete a highly realistic painting, then it there's
Speaker 2: less risk of it coming alive, Like, do not dot
Speaker 2: the dragon's eye less the dragon climb out of the painting.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing. Hmm. Now, it is true that
Speaker 2: puppetry has at times raised the ire of iconoclasts and
Speaker 2: raised fears of idolatry, though at the same it's also
Speaker 2: been utilized by religious groups and it's still utilized by
Speaker 2: religious groups today. I mean, puppetry is just generally speaking,
Speaker 2: a performance medium that is very ancient and well entrenched
Speaker 2: in human tradition. But I was curious about this idea
Speaker 2: of perforation, the idea like we were discussing that, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's this shadow thing we've created on the wall, but
Speaker 2: don't worry, it has holes in it. It can't possibly
Speaker 2: be real because, on one hand, outside of European context especially,
Speaker 2: you see plenty of examples of shadow puppetry, thinking especially
Speaker 2: of Indonesian traditions that depend on perforated puppets structures in
Speaker 2: order to allow light to pass through and enhance the
Speaker 2: overall effect. It's those holes, at least to me as
Speaker 2: a viewer, they help bring the things alive more, not
Speaker 2: make them seem less alive. I don't know where you
Speaker 2: would stand on the argument of making it less real.
Speaker 2: But I did find something written about this as it
Speaker 2: concerns traditional Turkish shadow puppetry. This is from the article
Speaker 2: Karagaz and Hazavat Projections of Subversion and Conformance by James Smith.
Speaker 2: This was an Asian theater journal from back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four. The author writes Islamic Sufi thought, one
Speaker 2: of the most powerful cultural forces within Islamic society from
Speaker 2: the twelfth century on, also affected Karrago's performance. According to
Speaker 2: Karragao's expert Linda Merceades, Turkish shadow puppetry was designed both
Speaker 2: to entertain and to achieve religious experience, based on the
Speaker 2: Sufi Islam doctrine that man is but a shadow manipulated
Speaker 2: by his creator. The opening poem, typically recited by either
Speaker 2: k or Hasavat, is a ghazal. The rules against forms
Speaker 2: of representation expressed by the Quran in Surutu are fairly strict,
Speaker 2: but Sufi clerics defended Karaga's performance a complex theological argument
Speaker 2: formulated because Islam forbids the representation of animate beings, and furthermore,
Speaker 2: because shadow puppets were perforated by holes, there was no
Speaker 2: possible reason to think of shadow puppets as animate beings.
Speaker 2: Thus shadow puppet shows could be performed. Now there's a
Speaker 2: lot to process there that I think is just fascinating.
Speaker 2: On one hand, this idea of human beings as shadows
Speaker 2: cast by God, and thus God is far beyond us,
Speaker 2: as a human being is beyond the substance of his
Speaker 2: own shadow. I think that's all really really deep and
Speaker 2: cool to think about. And we'll also see some reflections
Speaker 2: of that in another religious example coming up. And then
Speaker 2: we have this idea that, hey, puppets have holes in them,
Speaker 2: and therefore they can't possibly be mistaken for living, animate creatures.
Speaker 2: It's interesting as well, it seems again I still feel
Speaker 2: like the holes overall in any given shadow puppetry example
Speaker 2: they do aid to bring the thing to life more.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to think of it as kind of
Speaker 2: like a theological loophole as well. All right, Now, moving
Speaker 2: along to some other areas, this is another one that
Speaker 2: I imagine is on listeners' minds already. It's worth at
Speaker 2: least noting that Plato's allegory of the cave concerns shadow
Speaker 2: images on a wall, essentially shadow puppets, I guess you
Speaker 2: could say. And this of course, regards humanity's ability to
Speaker 2: see beyond the material world and into something far greater.
Speaker 2: So it's an allegory in which shadows on a wall
Speaker 2: are taken for reality because there's no additional context for
Speaker 2: the viewer to understand them. And we also have this
Speaker 2: idea of shadows ultimately as something less than reality, something
Speaker 2: that can mislead us about the true nature of reality.
Speaker 2: Now they come back to visual art, Yeah, there is
Speaker 2: often the lack of shadows, like we're then discus and
Speaker 2: older works, unless shadow is key to the work itself.
Speaker 2: During the Dark Ages, again, Soresen suggests that perhaps artists
Speaker 2: were just more concerned with the visible as opposed to
Speaker 2: the invisible world of shadows. But shadows would of course
Speaker 2: become more popular again during the Renaissance as perspective became
Speaker 2: increasingly important in works of Western art, and post Renaissance
Speaker 2: shadows became just standard in all manner of Western art.
Speaker 2: As William Chapman Sharp points out in a twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: article for the Oxford University Press titled What's going On
Speaker 2: in the Shadows? A Visual arts Timeline, you eventually get
Speaker 2: to a point in the nineteenth century where standalone shadows
Speaker 2: without an in picture source, so like the shadow is
Speaker 2: cast by someone essentially out of frame or off screen.
Speaker 2: If you will, these begin to pop up. He specifically
Speaker 2: points to an eighteen thirty three p piece by William
Speaker 2: Collins that you can look up online titled Rustic Civility.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I don't know if this is the intended effect.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm just in the Halloween mindset, but I'm finding
Speaker 3: this painting rather spooky. So what we see here is
Speaker 3: like a sort of road leading through a gate into
Speaker 3: a wooded grove, and there's a house in the distance.
Speaker 3: The gate is open, and there are three children standing
Speaker 3: beside the gate. They're sort of like squinting in the sun.
Speaker 3: I think one is holding up a holding up a
Speaker 3: hand to block the sun over his eyes, and two
Speaker 3: of the children seem to be kind of hiding behind
Speaker 3: the third. And then we see in the foreground on
Speaker 3: the road just a shadow of a figure and a hat.
Speaker 3: I think it's a man mounted on a horse. Maybe.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's the impression I get.
Speaker 3: We don't see the figure itself, we just see its shadow,
Speaker 3: but it seems rather ominous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a valid interpretation. Again, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure offhand what the artist's exact intent was here, but
Speaker 2: you could look at this like, oh, Dad's home. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the kids are excited. The kids don't look particularly fearful,
Speaker 2: but they are they are children. Yeah. The other interpretation
Speaker 2: is that this is a stranger and then therefore we
Speaker 2: have no idea what the intent is. But we don't
Speaker 2: see the individual in this in this, in this painting,
Speaker 2: all we see is the shadow they cast on the
Speaker 2: road in front of the children.
Speaker 3: Well, I apologize to William Collins if I've read menace
Speaker 3: into his artwork that he did not intend. But yeah,
Speaker 3: this is looking to me, this is kind of like
Speaker 3: some of those paintings by Edward Hopper, like gas by
Speaker 3: Hopper that just to me always look more and more
Speaker 3: foreboding and ominous the more I look at them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but but nothing else. You know. It's
Speaker 2: an example of a case where in a painting the
Speaker 2: shadow is not merely incidental. The shadow is key to
Speaker 2: the work. It's not just oh, it's nice that things
Speaker 2: have shadows and people have shadows now like that. The
Speaker 2: shadow is key to whatever the artist is trying to
Speaker 2: say here. Now, once we reach the age of photography
Speaker 2: and then cinema, of course, shadow becomes increasingly essential. In fact,
Speaker 2: the author of this Oxford University Press piece sharp points
Speaker 2: out that Henry Fox Talbot originally discussed photography as a
Speaker 2: matter of fixing a shadow, and various others made this
Speaker 2: connection between photography and shadow as well. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can't engage in photography without at least thinking about shadows, right,
Speaker 2: if not exploiting them and using them. One example though,
Speaker 2: of people of the time period thinking about shadows and
Speaker 2: photography apparently a poet Elizabeth Barrett wrote to a friend
Speaker 2: in eighteen forty three that a photograph was like quote
Speaker 2: the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever.
Speaker 2: Ooh yeah, going around with your cameras just snatching shadows
Speaker 2: left and right. And then, of course, once we get
Speaker 2: into the era of film, which we touched on earlier. You,
Speaker 2: especially when you look at the work of German expressionists
Speaker 2: during the Silent Era, they made terrific use of shadow.
Speaker 2: Not only is just a way of capturing the mood,
Speaker 2: but making them become an active part of the visual narrative,
Speaker 2: which of course brings us back to Nosferatu, and you
Speaker 2: know those scenes of Nosferatu, the vampire creep or I
Speaker 2: guess his name's not nos Faratu, It's called crown Count
Speaker 2: Orlock or creeping up the stairs. His shadow lengthened and menacing.
Speaker 2: The shadow is an active part of the narrative that
Speaker 2: is being presented on the screen. Now rewinding things a bit.
Speaker 2: Our old friend Plenty of the Elder famously chimed in
Speaker 2: on the role of shadow in art. In the natural history,
Speaker 2: he shares the story of the Corinthian Butedes, who allegedly
Speaker 2: invented the art of modeling via shadow, or at least
Speaker 2: the art of modeling clay in relief utilizing shadow. In
Speaker 2: translation quote, it was through his daughter that he made
Speaker 2: the discovery, who, upon being deeply in love with a
Speaker 2: young man about to depart on a long journey, traced
Speaker 2: the profile of his face as thrown upon the wall
Speaker 2: by the light of the lamp. Upon seeing this, her
Speaker 2: father filled in the outline by compressing clay upon the surface,
Speaker 2: and so made a face in relief, which he then
Speaker 2: hardened by fire along with other articles of pottery.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, but so I would think via that method
Speaker 3: you could only get a two dimensional silhouette, not a
Speaker 3: three dimensional cast right.
Speaker 2: Right right, So he would have to add in additional
Speaker 2: details via his craft, but he would have at least
Speaker 2: some aspect at least the silo out of the individual
Speaker 2: is captured on the wall. So it's interest especially when
Speaker 2: you sort of compare it to Plato. And again, Plato
Speaker 2: is making other points. Plato's not just talking about, hey,
Speaker 2: let me tell you all about shadows and what they're
Speaker 2: up to. He's using it to make a different point.
Speaker 2: But instead of shadow being a dangerous deceiver regarding the
Speaker 2: true nature of reality, in this case, it actually allows
Speaker 2: reality to at least a certain degree, be captured, to
Speaker 2: be recreated or duplicated. This story would apparently become a
Speaker 2: popular painting subject in and of itself in the eighteenth
Speaker 2: century and again because you're getting into a time period
Speaker 2: where painters want to make use of shadow, and here
Speaker 2: here is a story about artistic creation or recreation via shadow.
Speaker 2: So it's a perfect topic to consider in your art
Speaker 2: in the topic itself, and the idea of using silhouettes
Speaker 2: and shadow in portraits also became popular again in this
Speaker 2: time period. All right, And finally, I want to return
Speaker 2: back to the world of shadows and mythology and religion
Speaker 2: here just for a couple of examples that I didn't
Speaker 2: turn up earlier that turned out kind of late in
Speaker 2: my research. They're both really good. First of all, is
Speaker 2: the idea that in Hinduism there is a Hindu goddess
Speaker 2: of shadows and her name is Chaia, and Chaia is
Speaker 2: an interesting goddess from Hinduism. She is the cast shadow
Speaker 2: of the goddess surround you that the first wife of
Speaker 2: the sun and the sun god Surya, and I've seen
Speaker 2: some treatments that discuss her as a sort of shadow clone.
Speaker 2: I've seen the word clone used a lot. She becomes
Speaker 2: Surya's wife after the first wife, Saranyu, temporarily temporarily leaves him,
Speaker 2: and together they actually, the shadow wife here and the
Speaker 2: son actually have three children. He has other children with
Speaker 2: other wives, but at different points. But yeah, they they
Speaker 2: he has three children with the shadow wife. But anyway,
Speaker 2: this idea of like the shadow actually taking on the
Speaker 2: likeness of that which casts the shadow is really interesting.
Speaker 2: And then finally this is really interesting as well. I'd
Speaker 2: read a little bit about this before, certainly, but the
Speaker 2: idea of the shadow in ancient Egyptian religion and culture
Speaker 2: is also fascinating. The shadow is it would be called
Speaker 2: a shut or I've seen it. I think it's pronounced shut,
Speaker 2: but it's sometimes spelled swt in English translation. And you know,
Speaker 2: it should come as no surprise that many of the
Speaker 2: same elements we've discussed already concerning shadows in these episodes
Speaker 2: also is in play here. So first of all, the
Speaker 2: idea of the shadow as darkness, you know, they're almost
Speaker 2: used interchangeably in a lot of languages and traditions. But
Speaker 2: then of course we have the idea of the shadow
Speaker 2: as the soul, or in the case of the ancient
Speaker 2: Egyptian religion, one aspect of the human soul alongside at
Speaker 2: least the ba. So the shadow or shoot is more
Speaker 2: spiritual in nature, while the ba is more physical, or
Speaker 2: at least that's the rough overview of it. The concepts
Speaker 2: of the soul and ancient Egyptian religion are rather complicated
Speaker 2: and have multiple.
Speaker 3: Parts to them.
Speaker 2: And then also the idea of the shadow as a
Speaker 2: copy of something, and particularly it's interesting with the idea
Speaker 2: of a shadow of a god as a kind of
Speaker 2: manifestation of the god. So apparently a statue of a
Speaker 2: god was sometimes discussed as a shadow, and even a
Speaker 2: temple to a god was considered that God's shadow. All right.
Speaker 2: So I don't think any of those ideas comes as
Speaker 2: a complete shocker or anything. But there are two additional
Speaker 2: contexts here that that I thought were rather fascinating. One
Speaker 2: is that shadows are associated with quick movement without any sound,
Speaker 2: which I suppose is key given this. You know, the
Speaker 2: speedy and silent movement of the shadow, a thing that,
Speaker 2: according to may Ahmed Hasani in light, darkness and shadow
Speaker 2: in ancient Egypt was considered a physical entity. So it
Speaker 2: was largely thought like the shadow as being more or
Speaker 2: less physical in form.
Speaker 3: So it's like a substance that moves, but it does
Speaker 3: so without making a sound and even without generating a breeze.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, a lot of what we've discussed in terms
Speaker 2: of supernatural and mythic and religious treatments of shadows, you know,
Speaker 2: they get down to some sort of deep metaphysical truth.
Speaker 2: You know, it's connected to the soul or it is
Speaker 2: connected to the darkness. Right, So this last bit I
Speaker 2: found very fascinating, and this is something that Hasti mentions
Speaker 2: in the article. The idea that also to the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 2: shadow was associated with protection from the sun and the heat.
Speaker 2: And also when you start factoring in these various divine invocations,
Speaker 2: it becomes a metaphor for the protection of the gods,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's one of those things that once
Speaker 2: it's pointed out to you, it seems kind of like
Speaker 2: a no brainer, because obviously, under the intense Egyptian sun,
Speaker 2: shadow is also a refuge, it's a place of protection
Speaker 2: or rest. But yeah, you factor in these divine aspects
Speaker 2: and so, you know, Hasting points out that shadow becomes
Speaker 2: a symbolic word for protection from the sun god, a
Speaker 2: metaphor for protection in general, in addition to being part
Speaker 2: of a human being's essence that survives moral death.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so you can see how that complex of
Speaker 3: different symbols converging could generate some very interesting, I don't know,
Speaker 3: mythological grammar, like the idea that the shadow is both
Speaker 3: a reflection like sort of a soul copy of a person,
Speaker 3: but it is also the place in which you could
Speaker 3: stand to be sheltered by that person.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, So this idea of like, step into my
Speaker 2: shadow would be an an invitation to enter into my protection.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing. And then we also get back
Speaker 2: to this idea that we referenced earlier about like a
Speaker 2: shadow of something, especially if we're talking about a god,
Speaker 2: a divine being of some sort, like the shadow is creation,
Speaker 2: the shadow is replication, at least to some lesser extent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see that.
Speaker 2: So just some final mythological and religious ideas about shadows,
Speaker 2: I think to sort of take us home for these episodes.
Speaker 2: It's been fascinating to go through all this. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of things I expected to find and expected
Speaker 2: to see other takes in the shadow that I I
Speaker 2: just was blisifully unaware of, or you know, we're not
Speaker 2: in the forefront of my mind when we first ventured
Speaker 2: into it. I know we didn't even we didn't even
Speaker 2: really get into any I guess real shadow monsters we
Speaker 2: talked about, not in like the sort of dungeons and
Speaker 2: dragons sense of the word. I did a little bit
Speaker 2: of looking around to see about mentions of shadows and
Speaker 2: shades and a couple of my favorite monster guides and
Speaker 2: so forth, but nothing else really came up. Maybe I
Speaker 2: missed something. It also can get a little difficult to
Speaker 2: research things related to the word shadow because of course,
Speaker 2: shadow is used so frequently to refer to things that
Speaker 2: are not specifically shadows, or things that are just metaphorically shadows.
Speaker 3: I'm sure some of you out there are thinking of
Speaker 3: a shadow monster right now that you want to tell
Speaker 3: us about, right in.
Speaker 2: That's right, send us your shadow monsters. We'd love to
Speaker 2: talk about them in a future listener Mail episode. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: on that note, we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 2: out this episode, but yeah, write in, we'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. On Mondays we do listener Mail. Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays are core episodes. On Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 2: short form monster fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. Also, I want
Speaker 2: to stress hey, you might have noticed that we have
Speaker 2: new host photos for Stuff to Blow your Mind. If
Speaker 2: you haven't seen them, run by our recently revived social
Speaker 2: media presences all linked off of Stuff to Blow Yourmind
Speaker 2: dot com, or you can look them up independently. Maybe
Speaker 2: you already follow them. We are STBYM podcast on Instagram,
Speaker 2: so you can go there. You can see these new
Speaker 2: photos of Joe and myself. If you're wondering, well, where
Speaker 2: did you take these fabulous and strange photos with these cool,
Speaker 2: weird mirrors and so forth, Well, we visited Museum of
Speaker 2: Illusions Atlanta, a delightful and educational attraction located in Atlantic Station.
Speaker 2: They feature a whole host of visual illusions, including illusion
Speaker 2: rooms you can walk into an interact with, and that
Speaker 2: includes use the cameras there or your own cameras to
Speaker 2: take some selfies and some cool shots. This is a
Speaker 2: real fun place, good for all ages, the whole family.
Speaker 2: These are not scary mirror rooms. These are awe inspiring
Speaker 2: mirror rooms. These are whimsical mirror based illusions and other
Speaker 2: sorts of illusions that you encounter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not like a creepy haunted house though. Well
Speaker 3: I don't know if they do something for October. Maybe
Speaker 3: they do, but.
Speaker 2: It is I think they put some some decorations up now.
Speaker 2: The other thing is, since a number of the rooms
Speaker 2: do involve mirrors, if you yourself are creepy, then I'm
Speaker 2: afraid that your experience might be creepy because it will
Speaker 2: be built upon your own reflection, and if you have
Speaker 2: lost your reflection, due to some sort of wizardry, mishap
Speaker 2: or undead status. Well, I don't think you can get
Speaker 2: your money back.
Speaker 3: It's a great place to find that out though, Yes.
Speaker 2: So yeah. If you want to learn more about Museum
Speaker 2: of Illusions Atlanta, visit MOI Atlanta dot com.
Speaker 3: It's a great place check it out. Huge Things, as
Speaker 3: always are excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.