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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey are welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: In today. I wanted to start off with a kind

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Speaker 1: of thought experiment that I think we've actually used on

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Speaker 1: the show before, but we'll use it again because I

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Speaker 1: think it is useful. It's it's the Martian archaeologist thought experiment. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and so h imagine an exo archaeologist from another planet

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Speaker 1: is coming to study the physical remains of human civilizations

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Speaker 1: long after humanity has gone. Who knows what we did.

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Speaker 1: We we screwed up somehow, and there are none of

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Speaker 1: us around here anymore, but the physical remains of our

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Speaker 1: cities and institutions are still hanging about the Earth. I've

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Speaker 1: seen enough episodes of Out Our Limits to to make

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Speaker 1: a few guesses as to how it could have happened. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the neutron bombs of the Facebook wars, they did the job.

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Speaker 1: Or hey, maybe maybe there's a better option. Though, maybe

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Speaker 1: we we warped ourselves into the seventeenth dimension and escaped

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Speaker 1: this world. You know, not a bad end. So this

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Speaker 1: alien archaeologist is trying to understand lost cultures of humankind

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Speaker 1: through the works of art that they created and preserved.

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Speaker 1: And at some point she ends up browsing museums. Maybe

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Speaker 1: she's walking through the louver and looking at the paintings

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Speaker 1: that we're you know, we're once housed and revered here.

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Speaker 1: And if she were to look over many of the

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Speaker 1: famous paintings of of medieval and Renaissance Europe, she might

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Speaker 1: arrive at a question that would be weird to us,

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Speaker 1: but I think perfectly reasonable to her, And that would

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Speaker 1: be why did so many of the people considered wholly

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Speaker 1: by these artists where wide brimmed gold hats or gold

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Speaker 1: wires around their heads. Now, of course, with enough cultural context,

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Speaker 1: we ourselves know that these are not hats in the

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Speaker 1: paintings there, you know, they're not even supposed to represent

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Speaker 1: real physical objects. This, of course, is the artistic convention

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Speaker 1: known today as the halo. But I think it's interesting

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Speaker 1: that in a lot of these paintings there might not

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Speaker 1: be anything in the painting that would tell you that

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Speaker 1: in isolation, it just looks like people have something that's

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Speaker 1: yellow or gold, often circular, sometimes square shaped, or just

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Speaker 1: like a cloud or a kind of glow or radiance

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Speaker 1: around their head. Yeah, it is well discuss it. It

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Speaker 1: ranges from something that is very subtle to to sometimes

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Speaker 1: things that are very unavoidable, even where it goes beyond

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Speaker 1: the halo and becomes this all encompassing nimbus. But that

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Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned earlier how the alien might look

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Speaker 1: and say why why are these people considered holy? Why

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Speaker 1: do they have the halo? But I think it would

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Speaker 1: go even beyond that, like why did these other organisms

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Speaker 1: that are represented in these works of art, why do

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Speaker 1: they have like they wouldn't know they're they're they're holy.

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Speaker 1: Not necessarily you know, they're true, they're the subject of

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Speaker 1: a painting. But otherwise, you know, what might even be

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Speaker 1: able to piece together what this signifies, what it means?

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Speaker 1: Why is it there? You know, why was it that

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Speaker 1: some of these humans but not others appear to have bioluminescence?

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Speaker 1: Like why does their hair emit light? You know, did

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Speaker 1: they have a do they have like chemo luminescence in

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Speaker 1: the keratin of their hair cells or something? And then

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Speaker 1: I think the exo archaeologists might notice something that a

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Speaker 1: lot of us don't tend to notice when we grow

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Speaker 1: up looking at images of like Jesus and saints and

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Speaker 1: stuff with halos, and that would be the similarity of

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Speaker 1: the iconography here the glow or the or the gold

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Speaker 1: circle or disk around the heads of saints and and

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Speaker 1: God's in a Christian context, the similarity of that to

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Speaker 1: depictions of God's from other religions, religions that still exist

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Speaker 1: in the world today or the religions of ages past. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: you can easily start looking at these halos and things

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Speaker 1: like halos, and you could just go crazy with a

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theory connection board, right, um, I mean, it's it's

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Speaker 1: easy to do. Even if you're not owned to conspiracy thinking.

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Speaker 1: You could think like, oh, well, well, clearly they're all

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Speaker 1: describing the same thing, either the same mysterious light source

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Speaker 1: that it is forbidden to represent an art that is

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Speaker 1: always positioned directly behind a person, or this the same

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Speaker 1: like alien disks that we're interacting with ancient people's or

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Speaker 1: you know, you could also go and and use it

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Speaker 1: to prop up various theories such as say that, you know,

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Speaker 1: the bicameral mind hypothesis, things like that, you know, which

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Speaker 1: I think actually will probably uh come to people's minds

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Speaker 1: a lot as we roll through this episode in particular,

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there will be some very specific and interesting

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Speaker 1: connections there. But anyway, so to come back to the

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Speaker 1: idea of you know, what we do know about the Halo,

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Speaker 1: the fact that it's an artistic convention. This is one

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Speaker 1: of these subjects that I really love because it's something

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Speaker 1: that I've seen and just taken for granted my entire

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Speaker 1: life without ever stopping to wonder where it comes from,

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Speaker 1: what it means, and how it connects to history and

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Speaker 1: religion and science. So for the next couple of episodes,

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Speaker 1: we wanted to take a look at the Halo from

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different angles and see what kind of

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Speaker 1: sense we can make of it. Now that opening question

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Speaker 1: I asked of imagining an alien archaeologist looking at these

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Speaker 1: depictions in art that weren't supposed to be physical golden

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Speaker 1: hats but could have been mistaken for such. Uh. This

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Speaker 1: actually connects to an episode of the Artifacts that I

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Speaker 1: did back in January about ancient Egyptian head cones. If

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Speaker 1: you want to get the full story, you can go

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Speaker 1: and listen to that episode, But the short and simplified

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Speaker 1: version goes like this, A lot of ancient Egyptian art

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Speaker 1: shows people with these weird white cones on top of

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Speaker 1: their heads. You know, maybe about the size of a

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Speaker 1: soft ball, but cone shaped, And there has long been

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Speaker 1: a debate about what these cones were supposed to represent.

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Speaker 1: One popular theory is that this is a depiction of

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Speaker 1: a real thing from ancient Egypt, which would have been

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Speaker 1: lumps of unguent or perfumed animal fat which would melt

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Speaker 1: into the scalp and then perform a kind of ritual

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Speaker 1: purification as as the oils came down over your head.

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Speaker 1: It would be somewhat analogous to the to the kind

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Speaker 1: of anointing with oil rituals that we see in other

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Speaker 1: ancient Near Eastern traditions that you can even find in

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Speaker 1: the Bible. But because until recently these cones had only

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Speaker 1: been seen in art and never explicitly given physical grounding,

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Speaker 1: there was always some reason to wonder, well, were these

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Speaker 1: cones maybe not physical objects at all, but symbolic artistic

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Speaker 1: conventions like halos. Well, a few years back, some physical

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Speaker 1: examples of head cones were actually found in some graves

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Speaker 1: in Egypt, so we now know that at least some

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Speaker 1: of them were physical objects, though a lot of questions

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Speaker 1: still remain about about these head cones, But the analogy

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Speaker 1: to Halo's really got the gears turning in my brain

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Speaker 1: and got me wondering about halos themselves. Yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: ultimately a fascinating subject. Again, I'm in the same boat,

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Speaker 1: like I grew up seeing all these dages of Halos,

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Speaker 1: to the point where Halo's didn't even feel suitably weird

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Speaker 1: or even majestic. And I think part of that is

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Speaker 1: the part of that comes from uh angel costumes and

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Speaker 1: cartoon depictions of angel costumes, where even someone like Tom

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Speaker 1: and Jerry will have some sort of a halo above

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Speaker 1: their head made out of maybe like foiled cardboard, and

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Speaker 1: it is visibly held in place by some sort of

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Speaker 1: wire that goes down to the back of their neck.

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Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about, Oh, exactly. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: domestication of this imagery really kind of takes the all

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Speaker 1: inspiring element out of it. Yeah, it ends up making

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Speaker 1: it look kind of stupid, you know, um and um

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Speaker 1: and And I think you also see some of that

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Speaker 1: in the actual tradition of the Halo, with a sort

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Speaker 1: of eventually falling out of favor, except in places where

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Speaker 1: it was really firmly established. Um. But but of course,

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Speaker 1: like we said already, you'll see so many different versions

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Speaker 1: of the halo, even in um, you know, Western art

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Speaker 1: depicting Christian saints an important holy individual rules. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: one that I ran across that I really liked was

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Speaker 1: Caravaggio's The Madonna di Loretto, or more at least a

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Speaker 1: detail from that. Um. And it's such a faint halo

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Speaker 1: you could easily you could easily miss it, perhaps, but

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Speaker 1: it but it also really stands out at you because

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Speaker 1: it that the lines in it run counter to the

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Speaker 1: vertical lines behind her. Yeah. And I like that in

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Speaker 1: Carvaccio's art because the it suggests that in a way,

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Speaker 1: holiness is something that is subtle to the human imagination.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it would be obvious to the heavens, but you know,

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Speaker 1: here on earth, it's just the faintest glimmer of a circle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you have to look for it. Yeah. Um. You know

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Speaker 1: our Scott Baker and some of his fantasy books that

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Speaker 1: they're particularly magical individuals who occasionally developed halos around the

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Speaker 1: palms of their hands. And it's not visible all the time,

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Speaker 1: but just at certain moments by certain people and I

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Speaker 1: feel like that kind of captured some of the energy

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Speaker 1: that you see in an illustrations such as this. Um.

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Speaker 1: But but other times you see realizations of the halo

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Speaker 1: and art that are just they look very much like

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Speaker 1: some sort of a physical ring or a physical disc,

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Speaker 1: like they have one of the Golden records that we

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Speaker 1: sent into space situated either right above their head or

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Speaker 1: directly behind it. Yeah. I've read that this, I think

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Speaker 1: was especially common among like Florentine artists of the Renaissance,

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Speaker 1: who would start depicting the halo almost as if it

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Speaker 1: was a disc in three dimensional space that was balanced

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Speaker 1: on the back of the head. Yeah. One of my

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Speaker 1: favorite saints from art was the subject of some paintings

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Speaker 1: that I saw at the Louve. It's this guy named

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Speaker 1: Peter of Verona, who is usually shown with the machete

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Speaker 1: sticking out of his head. He here is with blood

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Speaker 1: and everything. Yeah, blood, And I feel like these paintings

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Speaker 1: of Peter of Verona should be the new this is

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Speaker 1: Fine meme because he really looks like, you know, we're

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Speaker 1: making it work. Um. Peter was a thirteenth century inquisitor.

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Speaker 1: I think he was some kind of heresy hunter. Think

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Speaker 1: he preached against the Cathars, and the story goes that

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Speaker 1: the Cathars hired an assassin to kill him, and then

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Speaker 1: he got hit in the head with a blade of

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Speaker 1: some kind, like this guy brained him with an axe,

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Speaker 1: and then the I think, according to the story, he

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Speaker 1: wrote out the Apostles creed or part of the Apostles

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Speaker 1: creed in his own blood as he was dying. He also,

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Speaker 1: in both of these has the images that you shared

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Speaker 1: with me. He also has a blade piercing his heart. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it looks like he was front stabbed in one of

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Speaker 1: them and backstabbed in the other depiction. Yeah, so he

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Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, the jump between this and full blown

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Speaker 1: Clive Barker Cinobyte is not that far, you know. And yes,

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Speaker 1: he's very close to a Cinobyte, the machete head, cinobyte,

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Speaker 1: serene face and all. I mean the sign between, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's there's probably a direct line to be made between

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Speaker 1: his vision of the Cinobytes and the depictions of saints

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Speaker 1: suffering but not not suffering on holy tortures. What's medieval

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Speaker 1: Latin for savior tears. It's a waste of good suffering.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have that one an easy

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Speaker 1: recall for it from me. But the funny thing is

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Speaker 1: about with Peter and so in both of these he's

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Speaker 1: got like a machete or a butcher knife stuck in

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Speaker 1: just in his head, like you know, like the lightning

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Speaker 1: bolt or the arrow party gag headset, just sticking out

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Speaker 1: at the top of his head. And you're you're so

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Speaker 1: fixated on the weapon you don't even notice that he's

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Speaker 1: got a faint circle around his head or behind it. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there it is the halo the and and you know

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Speaker 1: it's you think it's helpful too to think about, to

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Speaker 1: ask yourself, like what could it be? What is this

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Speaker 1: thing behind the head? You know, the physical plate a

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Speaker 1: glow an aura, but also you see various interpretations where

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Speaker 1: you can think of it as the sun itself or

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Speaker 1: the moon, some sort of cosmic entity or perhaps a

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Speaker 1: window a portal, uh to another realm like all of

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Speaker 1: all of these things. Uh, you see a rise at

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Speaker 1: different times and interpretations of the halo and things that

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Speaker 1: inspired the halo or seemed to have inspired it, or

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Speaker 1: just have some just basic connection to it based similar symbology. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: since there's so many variations on the halo and the

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Speaker 1: related concept of the aureole. I think that it's best

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Speaker 1: to think about the halo not as something that has

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Speaker 1: like strict criteria for what counts as a halo, but

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Speaker 1: more a a collection of family resemblance. Is kind of

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Speaker 1: like the definition of a game in the Wittgensteinian sense. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's just like there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: things that you can tell they're all related in some way,

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Speaker 1: but there's no set of criteria that all of them meet.

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Speaker 1: But I think we can at least generally say that

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Speaker 1: a halo is something like an area of light or

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Speaker 1: golden color, or some kind of radiant cloud, usually circular

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Speaker 1: but not always surrounding the head of a holy or

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Speaker 1: revered figure. It's also sometimes called a nimbus. I think

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Speaker 1: we've mentioned that already, But it is related to, and

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Speaker 1: with significant overlap on, the concept of an aureole, which

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Speaker 1: is a glow or area of brightness that surrounds a

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Speaker 1: person a specially their head. So I think there's some

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Speaker 1: looseness with the language here, but as best I can tell,

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Speaker 1: halo usually refers to the disc or ring or light

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Speaker 1: around the heads specifically, and the oriole would include halos,

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Speaker 1: but would would also include something like the full body

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Speaker 1: being surrounded by a glow or a golden shine or

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Speaker 1: or fire. Yeah, and that's a U R e O

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Speaker 1: l e ario, not oreo, though in an artistic depiction,

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Speaker 1: you could have an oreo ario. Uh, it's entirely possible.

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Speaker 1: It's the right shape. Oh, you certainly could. Oh have

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Speaker 1: you ever noticed that sometimes products in uh, in TV

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Speaker 1: commercials and in advertisements are given a kind of aureole,

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Speaker 1: Like a box of cereal will be lit as if

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Speaker 1: there's a light bulb right behind it, so there's a

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Speaker 1: glow emanating from all the sides. Yeah, yeah, I mean that.

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Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons I started thinking about, you

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Speaker 1: know what some of these these these paintings we see

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Speaker 1: in these images where it looks like there is a

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Speaker 1: light behind the head. You know, you can easily imagine

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Speaker 1: panning to one side and there is a tripod back

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Speaker 1: there and there's the photographer's light, you know, And then

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Speaker 1: ultimately that's what we we do to baccole it things today. Um,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, you do see you see things that are

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Speaker 1: like halos, and sometimes things that are very much like

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Speaker 1: halos in modern photography, and a lot of it is

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Speaker 1: just by virtue of that sort of positioning. We're talking

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Speaker 1: about either a light position behind the individual just by

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Speaker 1: happenstance because the light's got to go somewhere, or it's

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Speaker 1: some sort of pre existing symbol or decoration. And I

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Speaker 1: want to draw a specific example here that I've I've

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Speaker 1: been kind of obsessed with the last couple of months.

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Speaker 1: UM in BacT, since the since the most recent presidential election. UM,

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Speaker 1: you will see photographs of the U S President or

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Speaker 1: presidential Canada is president elect, etcetera, in which the presidential

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Speaker 1: seal is positioned directly behind the individual's head, sometimes in

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Speaker 1: sharper focus, but other times blurred a bit just by

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Speaker 1: virtue of being behind them in a way that looks

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Speaker 1: a lot like halo iconography. Oh yeah, so I I

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Speaker 1: did not know about this before you brought it up,

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Speaker 1: But now that you have mentioned it, or or since

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Speaker 1: I read that you were writing about this, I I

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Speaker 1: was seeing it all over the place. Yeah. So you

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Speaker 1: can see George W. Bush with a halo, Barack Obama

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Speaker 1: with a halo. It just seems like there's often enough

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Speaker 1: a big circular seal behind their head when they're getting photographed,

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Speaker 1: that these things just naturally happen. Yeah, yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: it's because you generally have a backdrop back there and

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Speaker 1: then that's where the presidential seal is, and the presidential

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Speaker 1: seal is circular um, and yeah, it ends up looking

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Speaker 1: like halo. And I was thinking about this, I'm like, well,

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Speaker 1: this is interesting, but I'm sure some people do not

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Speaker 1: like it. Sure enough, sure enough, I found a wonderful

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Speaker 1: Associated Press blog post about it from and this was

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Speaker 1: from Paul Coo Ford. The APIs former vice president of

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Speaker 1: Media Relations, and he points out that the so called

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Speaker 1: halo issue has been around for a while and that

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Speaker 1: no matter who happens to be president at a given time,

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Speaker 1: people complain about it. You know it because they can

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Speaker 1: make the charge like, what are you doing. You're taking

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Speaker 1: pictures of this president who I don't like, and you're

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Speaker 1: making them look like they are anointed by God, Like,

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Speaker 1: clearly you have an agenda here in the way that

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Speaker 1: the presidential seal is position behind their skull. Well, I

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Speaker 1: would say, whether I like the president or not, if somebody,

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Speaker 1: if I thought the photographer was doing that on purpose,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't like it. I mean, you know, right right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: But knowing a bit about photography and perspective, I can

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Speaker 1: actually see why this might be something that's difficult to avoid. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Go for drives home that it's never the intention of

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Speaker 1: a photographer to give the president a holy glow. But

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Speaker 1: in according to J. David A. K A P. Washington's

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Speaker 1: then assistant chief of the Bureau for Photography quote, the

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Speaker 1: out of focus presidential seal is simply a tool to celebrate,

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Speaker 1: to separate the subject from the background, so he is

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Speaker 1: not speaking in a sea of black. And then he

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Speaker 1: adds that they try to make it clear that it's

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Speaker 1: the seal and it's not some sort of owing blur.

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Speaker 1: And they've tried different things. They've tried shooting a lot closer,

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Speaker 1: you know, getting like cropping in tighter to the individual's

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Speaker 1: face so nothing is seen around the head. But then

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Speaker 1: if you do that, well, first of all, you just

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Speaker 1: have like a real close tight shot of somebody's face

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Speaker 1: and you can give me the president. But then also

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Speaker 1: more to the point, you lose any sense of context

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Speaker 1: or sense of location. And that's one of the things

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to do as a photographer too, is to

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Speaker 1: provide that context and sense of location. And then if

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Speaker 1: you do the reverse, like you pan out more, uh

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Speaker 1: and you know, try and move that seal around in

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Speaker 1: the background, well, then you risk creating a photo that's

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Speaker 1: not suitable for many uses such as mobile use. You know,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to be you know, pull up your

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Speaker 1: news app and you're you're flipping through it and then

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Speaker 1: you're like, who's that. I don't I don't know. There's

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Speaker 1: some some white haired dude there in the background. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's the president. I had to zoom in to see it.

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Speaker 1: I think the real solution is that presidents just should

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Speaker 1: not have the presidential seal behind them and instead should

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Speaker 1: have like a big, like psychedelic tableau, you know, like

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Speaker 1: that like the cover of the of the Jimmy Hendrix

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Speaker 1: Axis Boldest Love album. Yeah, yeah, maybe so. I mean basically,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that comes down to is this

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Speaker 1: is a shot. This is a photograph that gets taken

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Speaker 1: a lot every time the president gives an address or

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Speaker 1: what have you, and the typical background just doesn't really

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Speaker 1: give photographers much to work with, and photographers are constantly

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to frame things up in

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Speaker 1: a way that is visually appealing. So at least for now,

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Speaker 1: until they shake things up and get that new mural

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Speaker 1: background you're talking about, the presidential halo is largely unavoidable.

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Speaker 1: Like you can play around with it yourself, and Matt,

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Speaker 1: put yourself in the photographer's shoes and try to imagine

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Speaker 1: what your options are there. Like, ultimately, the halo kind

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Speaker 1: of the best way to go. Well, maybe we can

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Speaker 1: help you out with that today, just by helping you,

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Speaker 1: as the viewer reframe you're thinking about the halo so

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Speaker 1: that it is not only the projection of a Christian saint,

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Speaker 1: but in fact is an older and more widespread tradition

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Speaker 1: of showing the radiance around the head or body of

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Speaker 1: an interesting or important figure throughout world mythology. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: but but I will I will say that once you

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Speaker 1: start looking for the halo and identifying the halo, you

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Speaker 1: will see it more and more places. So certainly, listeners,

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Speaker 1: as you encounter photographs of people with unintended halos or

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Speaker 1: even intended halos just by virtue of their environment, send

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Speaker 1: those to us. Share those with us. Go go to

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Speaker 1: the discussion module the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion

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Speaker 1: module that's the Facebook group. Share them there. I think

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Speaker 1: it'll be a lot of fun. Yeah, bring them on,

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Speaker 1: Thank thank, thank Now. One thing we've already touched on

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Speaker 1: is that not all halos or aureoles are circular in nature,

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Speaker 1: but an awful lot of them are. There's a reason

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Speaker 1: that you couldn't mistake a lot of halos in paintings

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Speaker 1: for being you know, disc shaped gold hats. So so

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Speaker 1: maybe we should probe the circular element here for a minute. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: The halo, and it's it's most traditional form, is of

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Speaker 1: course going to be either a pair of concentra circles.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna be or it's gonna be a disc, or

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Speaker 1: it's just going to be a circle or a hoop

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Speaker 1: of some sort um. And you know, part of this

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Speaker 1: is we've always been fascinated by circles because the circle

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Speaker 1: is the shape of the sun, it's the shape of

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Speaker 1: the moon, it's the shape of the pupil and our eyeballs.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's just an irresistible It's it's a line

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Speaker 1: that goes on forever. I mean, you can, you can

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Speaker 1: go on and on, like the circle is fascinating in

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Speaker 1: the same way that the triangle in the square are fascinating.

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Speaker 1: Will never stop. Um, you know, finding wonder in these shapes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the fact that there are no perfect circles in nature,

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Speaker 1: but so much of the physical and biological world ends

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Speaker 1: up imperfectly approximating circles and spheres. Um. And then and

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Speaker 1: then it gets even more mysterious and gets into like

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Speaker 1: mathematical mysticism once once you have consciousness of geometry, because

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Speaker 1: there you get all kinds of ideas. You know, I think, uh,

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Speaker 1: the circle has special mystical allure because of its special

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Speaker 1: status among two dimensional shapes like uh, you know, it

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Speaker 1: has this relation and ship to the strange mathematical constant

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Speaker 1: pie and uh. And the fact that if you try

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Speaker 1: to think about it as a polygon, I guess maybe

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00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:09,919
Speaker 1: it's technically not a polygon, but if you were to

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Speaker 1: try to frame it as one, it would have to

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Speaker 1: be a polygon with like an infinite number of sides.

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Speaker 1: But the sun, I think is is a particular note here,

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Speaker 1: not only because of its circular shape and sort of

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00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:22,399
Speaker 1: it's it's all consuming place and human myth making, but

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Speaker 1: also because of of what we call solar halos, And

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Speaker 1: that's something we'll get into more in the second episode.

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Speaker 1: But they're you know recordings of depictions of solar halos

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Speaker 1: dating back to antiquity Uma, in particular, the eruption of

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Speaker 1: Mount Etna in one two and forty four b C

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Speaker 1: resulted in rainbow like halos that were observed at that time. UM.

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Speaker 1: I was reading Ancient Meteorological Optics by Richard Stouther's in

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Speaker 1: the Classical Journal from two thousand nine, and he goes

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Speaker 1: into this and includes a list of such observations from

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Speaker 1: roughly two oh three b C e on up till

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Speaker 1: three C in addition to my signs, which is another

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Speaker 1: optical phenomenal will discuss in the next episode. UH. And

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Speaker 1: and these have been recorded from as far back is

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Speaker 1: five b C in Egypt up through Roman observations in

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Speaker 1: one So the observation of of light based discs and

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Speaker 1: rings in space and in the sky I think could

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Speaker 1: naturally UH suggest some associations between those types of shapes

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Speaker 1: or figures and holiness because of the long standing religious

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Speaker 1: associations with celestial objects, space and the sky. Right and

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Speaker 1: then on top of that too, you start thinking about

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Speaker 1: just symbol making and UH in the creation of of lines,

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00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:45,880
Speaker 1: the etching of lines into things. And as you begin

427
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Speaker 1: to juggle different symbols and combining symbols. It's it's inevitable

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Speaker 1: that you would combine the human form with the circle,

429
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:56,320
Speaker 1: with the sun disc, etcetera. All Right, so we've already

430
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:59,919
Speaker 1: mentioned that the halo is a very common uh piece

431
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:03,800
Speaker 1: of religious symbolism and Christian art, especially in like the

432
00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:08,240
Speaker 1: Medieval through the Renaissance period. Um. So, so how exactly

433
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 1: does that happen? How does the halo become a part

434
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:15,920
Speaker 1: of how Christians depict their their God and their saints.

435
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: So these only pop up in Christian religious art after

436
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: the fifth century see and before that it was used

437
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:26,320
Speaker 1: to highlight literally highlight right, um, important secular people such

438
00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:30,360
Speaker 1: as kings and emperors. Yeah, there is a long tradition

439
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,879
Speaker 1: going back before Christianity in the Greco Roman world of

440
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:37,119
Speaker 1: showing like kings and emperors, I think, especially when associated

441
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:40,919
Speaker 1: with Apollo or Helios, gods that are gods of the

442
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:44,360
Speaker 1: sun or associated with the sun, to show these figures

443
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,120
Speaker 1: with rays of light emanating from their heads, which are

444
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 1: very similar to or in some cases basically the same

445
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:52,920
Speaker 1: as a halo. And so you could get a pagan

446
00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 1: emperor with a halo before any depictions of say Jesus

447
00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 1: with a halo. Yeah, exactly, And as pointed by Derek,

448
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:06,399
Speaker 1: could see siting um Tavino, Perry, and Romston. I'll discuss

449
00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:09,000
Speaker 1: them in a minute in the impact of the symbolism

450
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:12,000
Speaker 1: and iconography of the ax Sun disc and wild jet

451
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 1: Ie on on modern Western society, saints and other religious figures.

452
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:19,800
Speaker 1: At this time we're just shown as normal humans. Meanwhile, yes,

453
00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:22,680
Speaker 1: the secular rulers, they were the ones with the halos.

454
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:25,640
Speaker 1: So that's funny. You've got to imagine, like how would

455
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:28,439
Speaker 1: that be reversed, Like if if Christians and say the

456
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:32,360
Speaker 1: second century in the Roman Empire, we're seeing depictions of

457
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 1: the the the perhaps hated Roman Emperor with a halo,

458
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 1: how would they end up putting that same kind of

459
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:43,200
Speaker 1: imagery on Jesus. Yeah, exactly. So it's really fascinating to

460
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:44,840
Speaker 1: turn that on its on its on its head here

461
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: at least for like I say, modern consideration of the past.

462
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: H So that that Tabanor Perry paper, that's j. Tabnaur Perry.

463
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,600
Speaker 1: It was a nineteen oh seven paper titled The Nimbus

464
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: and Eastern Art. And despite being a nineteen o seven publication,

465
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: you can you can pull this up in j store

466
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 1: and it's a short, very succinct little piece with some

467
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: wonderful illustrations, and you know, this points out and also

468
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,919
Speaker 1: uh cuts the was was commenting on this is that

469
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:16,199
Speaker 1: while there's certainly an urge to connect halos in the

470
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:19,200
Speaker 1: Western tradition to the ancient Egyptian use of the sun

471
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:23,440
Speaker 1: disc um, they conclude that that although the halo came

472
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: from uh, the ancient Near East, it stem seems to

473
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 1: stem from Mesopotamian and Persian use that had been appropriated

474
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: by the Greeks and then later by the Byzantines. Okay,

475
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: so if if this tracing of the history is correct

476
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 1: at saying that there are analogies to the halo in

477
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:45,360
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian iconography, but it looks like the Christians got

478
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,240
Speaker 1: their use from the Greeks and Romans, who in turn

479
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 1: got the halo ideas from the ancient cultures that would

480
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: have occupied present day like Iraq and Iran. Right, yeah,

481
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,919
Speaker 1: so the ideas, yeah, the you know, the Roman usage

482
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: of it would have been like, hey, we really like

483
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:03,360
Speaker 1: this motif, let's use it. Let's use it to signify

484
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:06,679
Speaker 1: our rulers, and then eventually it passes on to Christian use.

485
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:09,439
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a story of the of

486
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: just how irresistible a and alarming or or captivating images

487
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 1: or a combination of symbols happens to be. Now that

488
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:20,120
Speaker 1: other piece e. H. Ramsden, Uh, this is a much

489
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:23,240
Speaker 1: longer piece. It's a lengthy notice in the same publication

490
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: Burlington Magazine from nineteen forty one titled the Halo a

491
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: Further Inquiry into its Origin, and this one points to

492
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 1: the influence of Zoroastrianism on Christianity in general. Which would

493
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: which would bring with it the Cavarna or the Havarna,

494
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 1: which the author here describes as quote the great Havarn No,

495
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,920
Speaker 1: the main symbol of royal power and age, old motif

496
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: of Iranian art, and so Ramsden draws a connection between

497
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: these artistic motifs and what was to come in both

498
00:26:55,359 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: Christian and Buddhist traditions. So it's literally a glory or

499
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 1: splendor indicating a divine force guiding the individual also kind

500
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 1: of come sometimes seeing a sort of you know, like

501
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:12,359
Speaker 1: divine goodwill. It's a kind of holy spotlight reserved for

502
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 1: kings and leaders. And I guess that's something to keep

503
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:16,960
Speaker 1: in mind too when we're thinking about this, you think

504
00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: about the role of the divine king in older traditions,

505
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 1: you know, it's like that's that's the individual who you know,

506
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: the whole system is describing as being the chosen one

507
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: of God or the Gods, etcetera. Yeah, and so, at

508
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,720
Speaker 1: least for me, it's not hard to see how halo

509
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: imagery would have been more thoroughly integrated into Christian artwork

510
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 1: in a period after Christianity was made socially acceptable in

511
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: a widespread way in the in the Roman Empires, say

512
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: under Constantine and then eventually became the official religion of

513
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire. There you would see a unification of

514
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:57,639
Speaker 1: Christianity with the with the state power in the Roman Empire. Yeah. Um.

515
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to think about what the halo does,

516
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: and especially in the later art, about how it it

517
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: signifies that the individual you're looking at is indeed holy. Um.

518
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: And it's it's weird when you look at the at

519
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: the quality of the arts, and maybe not the quality

520
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: of the art, but the changing detail of the art,

521
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:22,120
Speaker 1: the changing lifelike qualities of the art over time, because

522
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:24,360
Speaker 1: it would it would seem to me as as someone

523
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 1: who's not an expert in these things that once you

524
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: get into the age of Caravaggio, you know, you don't

525
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 1: need the halo to show, you know, divine suffering in

526
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,879
Speaker 1: an individual individual. You don't need that halo to realize

527
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: that the individual in the painting is divine. Like they're

528
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: all these other tools, all these other leverage you can pull,

529
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: pull to make it so um and and yet they're

530
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: they're still there. Um that I was reading this, this

531
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: wonderful piece, very well written by Melia Arena's titled Sex,

532
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:56,360
Speaker 1: Violence and Faith the Art of Caravaggio, and they point

533
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: out that the halo, along with other symbolic inclusions, were

534
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 1: often the only way to recognize any given individual in

535
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: a painting before car Carravaggio and the traditions before him, uh,

536
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: that this was a particular saint, etcetera. They'd be like, oh, well,

537
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 1: there's the halo, where there's the you know they're holding, um,

538
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: you know, a particular object or some sort of a

539
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: grizzly uh sign of their passing that sort of thing, right,

540
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: because these saints wouldn't have been somebody, you know, it

541
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: wasn't like they had People magazine where you know what

542
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 1: the famous figures looked like you know, there were no

543
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: photographs and you probably never would have seen these people,

544
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 1: so there wasn't like one way that a figure looked.

545
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: You would have to use queues in the painting itself

546
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: to identify who they were or to identify which of

547
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,600
Speaker 1: the figures in the painting was the person right, and

548
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: they ran as rights that in the older tradition. You know,

549
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: a lot of these people with the halos or other symbols,

550
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 1: they were basically interchangeable looking because they just looked like

551
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: other rich people of the time. And then by the

552
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 1: time Carravaggio is coming along, he's making them look more

553
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: and more like like actual people. And this is interesting

554
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 1: too though, because you you know, you you hear about

555
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 1: the sort of behind the scenes stuff on various famous paintings,

556
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: and you learned that, oh, well, this person that's portraying

557
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: Jesus or whoever, that was just some strapping lad from

558
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: in somewhere around town that came into pose for some paintings.

559
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: Uh So there's still you know, not actual depictions of

560
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: of in order or supposed to you know, be actual

561
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: depictions of the person. You know, it's not a snapshot

562
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 1: of of an historic Jesus or anything, but it's somebody

563
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,040
Speaker 1: that's put there. And then you add these other things,

564
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: either the symbols that allow you to um to gain

565
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: something from it. And I think that gets too into

566
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: the role the like the long standing role of religious

567
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 1: art that you see not only in Christianity, but in Hinduism, Buddhism, etcetera.

568
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: And that is the use of the the image to

569
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: convey often complex uh theological ideas that you know that

570
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: that maybe even be difficult to explain with language, things

571
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: such as the transfiguration of Christ and UH, the very

572
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: complex roles and and powers of Hindu deities and UH

573
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: and and also meditative practices in um Tibetan Buddhism. UH.

574
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 1: You know, these are all things that are often, you know,

575
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: laboriously baked into the the visual image that you're presented with.

576
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: Even if you're an outsider, you don't necessarily pick up

577
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: on all of these things. I think a lot of times,

578
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 1: one thing that religious painting tends to do is to

579
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: inject a kind of visceral passion into stories that are

580
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 1: actually told just in pure linguistic terms, in a kind

581
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: of spare way, like reading the text of the Crucifixion

582
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: narrative in the Gospel of Mark is going to ask

583
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 1: you to sort of do a lot of work of

584
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: like reading, you know, passionate imagery into it. It's actually

585
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: a rather lean narrative, but you can do a painting

586
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: of it that's just full of pathos and anguish and

587
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: uh and and showing the full suffering that the artists

588
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:59,960
Speaker 1: went to depict. Yeah. Absolutely, Now, I guess it's time

589
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: to get into some interesting examples of other religious and

590
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: artistic traditions around the world that show something that might

591
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:12,520
Speaker 1: be considered analogous to the Halo or aureole outside of

592
00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: the Christian artistic tradition. Um. One of the oldest analogs

593
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: to the image of the Halo, that that I came

594
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: across might be something that is found in ancient Mesopotamian mythology.

595
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 1: So I want to start off with a specific example

596
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: from the many stories of Gilgamesh. Now, in the Gilgamesh narratives,

597
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: there is a recurring theme where Gilgamesh and his his

598
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 1: friend or his servant in ky Do have to travel

599
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: to the dreaded Cedar forest to slay a monstrous giant

600
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 1: called who Wah Wah or Humbaba, who is the terrifying

601
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: guardian of the woods, whose roar is as a flood,

602
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: whose mouth is fire, and whose breath is death itself.

603
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: One version of the story I was looking at included

604
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: a line that was something like Huahwa like a man

605
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 1: eating lion, he does not wipe the blood from his slaver,

606
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: and some some interpretations this, right, an Keto is kind

607
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: of a beast man himself, right, yes, I think so.

608
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 1: Now I'm not an expert in this. I think in

609
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 1: the actual epic of Gilgamesh, which is a later, sort

610
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 1: of built out version of this recurring motif, he is

611
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: I don't know, wild man at least, if not a

612
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: beast man. Oh yeah, he's on the locusts and honey diet.

613
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 1: But anyway, there are tons of different versions of this

614
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: story from ancient Mesopotamian poetry and mythology, where Gilgamesh or

615
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: Gilgamesh and ky Do have to go kill this monster

616
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: in the cedar forest, and in many versions of the

617
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: story found in different ancient texts, Huawa or Humbaba is

618
00:33:53,360 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: said to be surrounded by seven layers of something. Sometimes

619
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: this something is interpreted as more straightforwardly to a type

620
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 1: of cloak or armor that protects him. So he's got

621
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: seven layers of armor, seven cloaks. Other times it is

622
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: interpreted as whom Baba's seven terrors or even his seven

623
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 1: auras that inflict a horror supernatural terror on his enemies.

624
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: And in one Sumerian version of the early story Gilgamesh

625
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: and huah Wa, it says that when the warriors neared Huahwa,

626
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: the monsters aura sped towards them like a spear. Oh wow,

627
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: so they're like, it's like he's got seven shield tokens

628
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:40,799
Speaker 1: that they not only protect him but can be used

629
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 1: offensively as well. Wait, what are the shield tokens? And

630
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: you know in various board games you would have tokens

631
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: for your shields. He's like seven shields, so like you'd

632
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: have to combat your way through all seven shields before

633
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 1: you could actually hurt the creature itself. Yes, it's clear

634
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: they have some kind of defensive effect. They also have

635
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 1: some kind of offensive effect, and it's it's very ambiguous

636
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: exactly what they are. There are a thing that can

637
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 1: be taken on and off, and they protect him, and

638
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: they are an emanation of supernatural power that is sometimes

639
00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: represented as a kind of light or glow. And in

640
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:23,759
Speaker 1: many versions of the story, what happens is Gilgamesh entices

641
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: Huahwa to take off and hand over his seven terrors

642
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: or his seven auras, one at a time by offering

643
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,319
Speaker 1: gifts and flattery and return. So Gilgamesh will come up

644
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: to him, and he will go to Huahwa and say,

645
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: no one knows where you live in the mountains. I

646
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: want to be like you. I want to be one

647
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 1: of your kinsmen. Here is a gift of lapis Lazuli.

648
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: Hand over your fifth aura. And so then Huahwa hands

649
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: over his, you know, each of one of his seven

650
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: auras in succession. At some point Gilgamesh offers one of

651
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: his sisters to Huahwa is a concubine. At some point

652
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 1: he offers him I think, uh, some kind of special

653
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: flower grain. But eventually, once all of the auras or

654
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: terrors are removed, Gilgamesh can suddenly beat the monster up,

655
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:14,759
Speaker 1: like in some version that says, immediately Gilgamesh punches him

656
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,279
Speaker 1: in the face. And I was reading about there's one

657
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: specific version of this story, uh, that involves a great

658
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: debate about whether to chase after the auras. It seems

659
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 1: like the auras like fly off on their own. I

660
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: was reading about this in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the

661
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: Babylonian Epic Poem and other texts in Acadian and Sumerian

662
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: by Andrew George from Penguin in two thousand two. And

663
00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:41,719
Speaker 1: this example is in what's known as the East Kali Tablet.

664
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,760
Speaker 1: It's a tablet that contains one version of the story

665
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: supposedly dated to the eighteenth century b c. E. And

666
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:52,319
Speaker 1: uh So, in this version of the story, in ky

667
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: Do and Gilgamesh, after Huahwa is is defeated, uh inky

668
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 1: Do says to Gilgamesh, hey, don't or your foe. But

669
00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:04,959
Speaker 1: Gilgamesh wants to go hunt down huawas auras like they've

670
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 1: they've somehow gotten away. Uh And the text here describes

671
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: them as radiant, numinous powers that Huahwa wears his protection,

672
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: and Gilgamesh is like, no, we gotta go get him,

673
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: and in ky Do suggests that they can easily do

674
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: that later. Instead, we've got to stay here and kill

675
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: hu wah Wah. And then after we kill Huahwa, we

676
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: can go find the auras. And to quote from the

677
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: tablet in translation, said in ky Do to him, to Kilgamesh,

678
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 1: smite huahwa the ogre, who your God's abhor? Why, my friend,

679
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: do you show him mercy? Said Gilgamesh to him, two

680
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: in ky do, Now, my friend, we must impose our victory.

681
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:47,320
Speaker 1: The auras slip away in the thicket. The auras slip away,

682
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 1: their radiance grows, dim said in Kid to him, to Gilgamesh,

683
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: my friend, catch a bird and where go it's chicks.

684
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:57,880
Speaker 1: Let us look for the aura's later as the chicks

685
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 1: run here and there in the thicket. Yeah, I love that.

686
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: I mean, it almost takes on a comical um uh

687
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: air for sure, But it also reminds me just thinking

688
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: about I mean, I love the idea of thinking about

689
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: these is sort of is haunted arrows that surround him

690
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:16,839
Speaker 1: in energy fields, etcetera. But of course, I'm I'm going

691
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,360
Speaker 1: back to our episode. I think it was the horned

692
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: helm episode that we talked about the invention of a

693
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: little bit about the inventions of armor and helmets, and

694
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 1: we talked about how the cloak uh itself is an

695
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: important piece of armor in many older traditions. You know,

696
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: it was a basic way to protect your body and combat.

697
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:38,760
Speaker 1: Um So perhaps these are just like many different living,

698
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: animate cloaks that he wore. Uh. And isn't it interesting

699
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:46,240
Speaker 1: that even today we have imagined beings with animate cloaks

700
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: like I know, for example, I think uh, I think

701
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: Dr Strange has a living cloak that has a mind

702
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,720
Speaker 1: of its own. And I want to say that Spawn

703
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 1: does as well. I'm not an expert on Spawn, but

704
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: I think there's something about his cloak being alive as well.

705
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,000
Speaker 1: Oh that's great, Yes, Spawn. Spawns got a cape or something.

706
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,240
Speaker 1: It's like a big in the movie. It's this giant

707
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:07,279
Speaker 1: c g I cape that does magic stuff. But so

708
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: here I guess the idea is that this monster had

709
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: the seven whatever these are the auras, the terrors, the

710
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: seven sort of defensive, magical, glowing, full body halo type things,

711
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 1: and that he can take them off and put them

712
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:25,360
Speaker 1: back on. And when he takes them off after he's defeated,

713
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:27,400
Speaker 1: they all scatter all over the place and you have

714
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: to go catch them if you want to. I don't know,

715
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: if you want to, I guess domesticate his halos and

716
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:35,720
Speaker 1: put them to your own uses. So I was reading

717
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: further about this concept of these ancient Mesopotamian auras or

718
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: halo type things in a book called God's Demons and

719
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: Symbols by Jeremy Black and Anthony green from the University

720
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:53,320
Speaker 1: of Texas Press in n and uh and so that

721
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,359
Speaker 1: they're also talking about the story of Huaha or Humbabah,

722
00:39:56,400 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: and they translate the word for the seven layers as

723
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:05,239
Speaker 1: terrifying radiance, and they they relate this to a broader entry.

724
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 1: They've got on a couple of concepts from ancient Mesopotamian

725
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:13,360
Speaker 1: religion called melam and knee uh. These are both Sumerian words.

726
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:18,320
Speaker 1: Melam's a caddy and equivalent is milamu, and melam refers

727
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 1: to a specific type of divine power, while knee seems

728
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:27,240
Speaker 1: to refer to the effect that melam has upon humans.

729
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: So if you are walking through the cedar forest and

730
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: you hear a rustling in the bushes, and then Huawa

731
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: pops out and you witness his melom, you will probably

732
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:40,680
Speaker 1: be stricken with knee. And No, I do not know

733
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,000
Speaker 1: if there is any connection to the monty python thing,

734
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: but I can't wonder. Yeah, but Black and Greenwright quote

735
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: the exact connotation of melam is difficult to grasp. It

736
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: is a brilliant visible glamour which is exuded by God's heroes,

737
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: sometimes by kings, and all so by temples of great holiness,

738
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 1: and by God's symbols and emblems. While it is in

739
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: some ways a phenomenon of light, melom is at the

740
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:13,839
Speaker 1: same time terrifying, awe inspiring. Knee can be experienced as

741
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:17,879
Speaker 1: a physical creeping of the flesh. And they say that

742
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 1: both Sumerian and a Cadian are rich in words to

743
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 1: describe this phenomenon and its effects. So, in keeping with

744
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 1: the story we were looking at a minute ago, they

745
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,399
Speaker 1: say that gods are sometimes said to wear their melom

746
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: like a garment or like a crown, And they say

747
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: that like a garment or a crown, the melom can

748
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: be taken off, you can shed it, and if you

749
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 1: kill a god, it's melom will vanish or run away.

750
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: They also stressed that while the melom is apparently always supernatural,

751
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:52,919
Speaker 1: it is not inherently good. Both revered gods and monstrous

752
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:56,080
Speaker 1: demons where the melom alike, it seems to be a

753
00:41:56,200 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 1: visual representation of overwhelming supernatur tural power, that is, that

754
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:06,760
Speaker 1: is imagined as some kind of emanation of light or glow,

755
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: fascinating so holy or unholy aura. Yeah, and this is

756
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:13,800
Speaker 1: one of those things that I just feel like, oh

757
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: I wish I could know, like where does this concept

758
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:19,280
Speaker 1: come from? Like does this have some kind of basis

759
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,360
Speaker 1: in the natural world or is this pure imagination or

760
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: does it have some basis in I don't know, quirks

761
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: of human psychology. I mean, I guess we'll get more

762
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: into sort of natural phenomena and psychology in the second episode.

763
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:34,799
Speaker 1: But but man, yeah, this, this this gets the years going.

764
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:38,279
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean I

765
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: love that even you know, with I guess the mystery

766
00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: even makes the these tales resonate even even more so,

767
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: Like if it were if it were more clear that

768
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: we were just talking about a bunch of cloaks, you know,

769
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 1: or just basic cloak metaphors, then uh, it wouldn't be

770
00:42:52,520 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 1: as magical than now. Uh. Well, from here, let's let's

771
00:43:01,640 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 1: travel over to ancient Egypt, because we mentioned earlier the

772
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 1: idea of sun discs and um. There are several directions

773
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 1: to go in when considering the sun disc in ancient Egypt,

774
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:14,400
Speaker 1: but the one that probably comes to mind most readily,

775
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: of course, is the state worship of the Sun Disc

776
00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 1: often under Menno tap the Fourth. This was as basically

777
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 1: he he was, he decreed that, Okay, we're gonna put

778
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 1: the pantheon more or less aside. We're gonna we're gonna

779
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:32,800
Speaker 1: instead of focusing on on the pantheon ors or certain

780
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: individuals in the pantheon of gods, we're just going to

781
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 1: worship this glorious sun Disc often. And um, we could

782
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on this because it's such a

783
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 1: fascinating story. But basically, this was an unpopular move that

784
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 1: was reversed after his death. You know, it's it's it's

785
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: tough to introduce a new god and a new twist

786
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:56,839
Speaker 1: on religion and expect everyone else to just stay with

787
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: that change. Uh. Now, I know there are some people

788
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 1: who claim here that that Amenhotep is in some ways

789
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: like the inventor of monotheism. I think that might be

790
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 1: a little bit oversimplifying the issue. It seems from what

791
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 1: I recall, I haven't studied this deeply in a while,

792
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: but it seems like from what I recall, the the

793
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: attend Sun Disc that he was revering was sort of

794
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: like already a figure in Egyptian religion. But now he

795
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:24,959
Speaker 1: said like, well, this is now just the only god

796
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 1: that we're going to worship, and the other ones are

797
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:30,160
Speaker 1: all subordinate to that god. Yeah, yeah, this is this

798
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: is this is basically my understanding as well. Yeah, there's

799
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,879
Speaker 1: there's If you're saying that he converted the Egyptians to monotheism,

800
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's that's exaggerating a bit. But certainly the

801
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 1: sun disc in general pops up in various places throughout

802
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:47,319
Speaker 1: Egyptian iconography and oftentimes looks similar to what we might

803
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 1: think of as a halo today. So just to run

804
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: through a few key examples that I think illustrate this. Well,

805
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 1: first of all, there's there's not the sky goddess, who

806
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 1: sometimes rendered as a giant nude woman arched above the earth. Um,

807
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: you can look up images of this. It's where you know,

808
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 1: it's like she has she's kind of in uh cat cow,

809
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:11,760
Speaker 1: I guess yoga wise, Uh, but she is the vaulted sky.

810
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: But don't I don't know that yoga pose. Tell me, Oh,

811
00:45:14,719 --> 00:45:16,839
Speaker 1: it's you know, you're on all fours and you're kind

812
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: of like you're either like a cat or you like

813
00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: a cow. Okay, you should try it. It's great for

814
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: the spun. But but yeah, she's kind of in that

815
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 1: position and her arched body is the cosmos. Like you,

816
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 1: you're looking up at her belly when you're looking up

817
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: at the stars. But sometimes she's seen as she's represented

818
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,919
Speaker 1: as a giant cow with star markings and a sun

819
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: disc positioned between the cow's horns. Again, she's associated with

820
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: the sky she uh uh, and this also signify according

821
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 1: to Geraldine Pinch in Egyptian mythology, this signifies her as

822
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:56,799
Speaker 1: the sky god lifting up the sun god ray or

823
00:45:56,960 --> 00:46:00,920
Speaker 1: or Um hur Rah, and she mentions that this quote

824
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: becomes the insignia of several goddesses, so Ray or Rob

825
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 1: the sun god himself is depicted in various ways as well,

826
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 1: including a sun disk with a scarebon it or in it.

827
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: But you also see him depicted as you know, in

828
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: his hybrid form, with the sun disc above his head

829
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: or on top of his head. Now to be clear,

830
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 1: you see this with other deities and characters in the

831
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 1: Egyptian pampion as well. The symbol of their role or

832
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: identity is simply stacked atop their head like a hat

833
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: like they made like a scorpion is up on your

834
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:37,719
Speaker 1: head to signify, uh, you know that you're scorpion like qualities, etcetera. Um,

835
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: So again, think about the necessity of delivering information through symbols.

836
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: There are only so many ways to present the idea

837
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: of man plus son equal Sun God, right, and it's

838
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 1: just here's a man, or here's a hybrid of a man,

839
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:52,439
Speaker 1: and then here's the sun and they are the Sun God.

840
00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 1: When you were talking about the goddess Newt with the

841
00:46:56,320 --> 00:47:00,480
Speaker 1: representation as the cow with the sun disc about the head,

842
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: I was trying to think, is this the same as

843
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: the imagery I've already seen? Or is there another ancient

844
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:10,320
Speaker 1: Egyptian deity or figure often depicted as a bo vine

845
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:12,879
Speaker 1: with a with a halo or sun disc over its head.

846
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 1: And I think the thing I was thinking about was

847
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: the oppicue bull, which is I think somewhat different. So

848
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: there's another one. Apparently ancient Egyptian religion has multiple bulls

849
00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: with halos I mean, in the loose sense of halo,

850
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 1: a bull with the sun disc between its horns. Well, um,

851
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 1: that I actually have the answer to that, and that

852
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: is because APIs Uh is the offspring of said to

853
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: be the offspring of another Egyptian goddess, and that is Hathor,

854
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,439
Speaker 1: and she's the golden goddess of childbirth um and she's

855
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 1: often depicted as a beautiful woman with a red solar

856
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:49,320
Speaker 1: disc positioned above her head between a pair of cow horns,

857
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:52,200
Speaker 1: and she's associated with raw and ray as well. I

858
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: think it's kind of complex and like it varies, like

859
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 1: sometimes she's more like the offspring and other times she's

860
00:47:57,719 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 1: more like a consort um. It's or it seemed a

861
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,959
Speaker 1: little ambiguous when I was reading about it, but but yeah,

862
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 1: so the the appiss bowl is the offspring of hath Or.

863
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,240
Speaker 1: Hath Or is tied to the Sun god, so it's

864
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: it's like the sun disc is there to show that

865
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: they are aligned or descended from him. Now, if the

866
00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 1: scholars that you were looking at earlier, if their theory

867
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: about the history of the halo iconography that led to

868
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: Christian religion is true, even though it would sort of

869
00:48:28,120 --> 00:48:30,080
Speaker 1: make sense to look at the Oppice bowl or any

870
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: of these gods you've been talking about with the sun

871
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:35,320
Speaker 1: disc over their head and say, ah, that inspired the

872
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:38,359
Speaker 1: the Christian halo symbol, it seems like at least they

873
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: were arguing that's not the case, which if they're correct

874
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 1: about that, that would just make it seem like almost

875
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 1: a case of cultural convergent evolution, right, something that just

876
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 1: so naturally comes to mind, that multiple different cultures have

877
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:55,480
Speaker 1: produced very similar imagery. Yeah. Now, I mean, part of

878
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:57,760
Speaker 1: it could be I just haven't come across and read

879
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 1: an argument to the contrary, But yeah, it seems like

880
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,719
Speaker 1: it's just a situation of different people's playing with some

881
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:07,360
Speaker 1: of the same symbols and doing the obvious things with

882
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: those symbols. Because while it might seem like this would

883
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:12,399
Speaker 1: be a great connection, Like it seems like you could

884
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: put Um hath Or on your conspiracy board and then

885
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:19,080
Speaker 1: put Um the archangel Michael on your on your conspiracy

886
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 1: board and just draw a line between the two, it

887
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:23,799
Speaker 1: does not seem as if there's actually a line to

888
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: be drawn there, you know, in the actual spread of

889
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: symbolism and you know, artistic motifs, it might actually go

890
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: back more to Humbaba or HuaHua, right, but the or

891
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: just generally the Mesopotamian concept. But I've got another one,

892
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: another one from the pre Christian ancient world with some

893
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: interesting uh similarities to Halo iconography and this would be

894
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,320
Speaker 1: the Achaian halo. Could you believe that there is something

895
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 1: like a halo in the Iliad? This this got me

896
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: by surprise as well. Yeah, yeah, I guess a lot

897
00:49:56,640 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: of people have read this and not necessarily noticed the similarities. Again,

898
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: and you know, they're always going to be some differences,

899
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 1: but the similarities are interesting. Um. So, there's one passage

900
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 1: in book eighteen of the Iliad that that strikes me

901
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: as very very pretty darn HALOI ish. So it comes

902
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 1: in book eighteen of the Iliad. The context is that

903
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 1: the great Achaian warrior Achilles he learns that his beloved

904
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: companion Patroclus has been killed in battle by the Trojan

905
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: hero Hector, and the exact relationship between Achilles and Patroclus

906
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: has been the subject of enormous debate over the centuries.

907
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 1: At the very least, they are supposed to be the

908
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: closest of friends, you know, their brothers in arms, their confidants.

909
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:46,880
Speaker 1: Some scholars also believe there's an implication that their lovers

910
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 1: that's not stated explicitly, but some really think it's sort

911
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:54,000
Speaker 1: of there subtly in the text. Whatever the exact nature

912
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: of their relationship, they care very deeply for one another,

913
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,800
Speaker 1: and Patroclus is killed in battle, and when Achilles learns

914
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:05,839
Speaker 1: that patrick LUs has died, he almost literally goes insane

915
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:09,560
Speaker 1: with grief, and then that grief turns into rage and

916
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:13,480
Speaker 1: a thirst for vengeance. And the Trojans and the Achaeans

917
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:16,760
Speaker 1: are in the middle of fighting to claim patrick Lus's

918
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: body from the battlefield. So the goddess Athena intervenes and

919
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:26,839
Speaker 1: she pours her godpower into Achilles so that he can

920
00:51:26,920 --> 00:51:30,760
Speaker 1: become so frightening that the Trojans will flee in terror,

921
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: and patrick Lus's body can be brought back behind the

922
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 1: Achaean lines. And the way this is visually depicted is

923
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: very interesting. So I want to read from actually from

924
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:44,399
Speaker 1: the recent translation of the Iliad by Caroline Alexander, which

925
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:46,799
Speaker 1: is very good. Rachel and I started reading this. We

926
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: we haven't made it all the way through yet, but

927
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 1: we we started reading this and I really like it.

928
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 1: So if you're looking to read the Iliad for the

929
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: first time or the fiftieth, I recommend this one. Um

930
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 1: but the passage here goes like this, Achille's beloved of

931
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 1: Zeus arose and Athena cast the tasseled aegis about his

932
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 1: mighty shoulders, she shining among goddesses, encircled round his head

933
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:15,920
Speaker 1: a cloud of gold, and from it blazed bright, shining fire.

934
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: And as when smoke rising from a city reaches the

935
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:23,960
Speaker 1: clear high air from a distant land which enemy men

936
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: fight round, and they the whole day long are pitted

937
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:31,319
Speaker 1: in hateful warfare around their city walls. But with the

938
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: sun setting, the beacon fires blaze torch upon torch, and

939
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 1: flaring upward, the glare becomes visible to those who live around,

940
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 1: in the hope that they might come with ships as

941
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:48,400
Speaker 1: allies against destruction. So from achilles head the radiance reached

942
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: the clear high air, and going away from the wall,

943
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:54,799
Speaker 1: he stood at the ditch. Nor did he mix with

944
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: the Achaeans, for he observed his mother's knowing command, and

945
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: standing there he shouted, and from the distance Pallace Athena

946
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:07,319
Speaker 1: cried out to unspeakable. Was the uproar he incided in

947
00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: the Trojans, as when a clarion voice is heard when

948
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:15,359
Speaker 1: chries the trumpet of life, destroying enemies who surround a city.

949
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:19,439
Speaker 1: Such then was the clarion voice of eacities, And when

950
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 1: they heard the brazen voice of eacities. The spirit in

951
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:26,359
Speaker 1: each man was thrown in turmoil. The horses, with their

952
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: fine manes, wheeled their chariots back, for in their hearts

953
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:34,120
Speaker 1: they forebode distress to come. And the charioteers were struck

954
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 1: from their senses when they saw the weariless, terrible fire

955
00:53:38,239 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 1: above the head of Peleus's great hearted son blazing. And

956
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 1: this the gleaming eyed goddess Athena caused to blaze. That's wonderful.

957
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:49,880
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the that's the spotlight of the gods

958
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: right there. That's the light of Athena shining through Achilles,

959
00:53:54,800 --> 00:53:58,080
Speaker 1: through Achilles his brain and through his rage. Yeah, it's

960
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. So there's some things in common with

961
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,480
Speaker 1: the melam or milamu. Uh, some things in common with

962
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:07,879
Speaker 1: what could later be seen in Christian halos. You could

963
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:10,839
Speaker 1: say that the radiance here is a phenomenon of light.

964
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 1: It's described as blazing like fire, like a beacon of light. Uh.

965
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:21,360
Speaker 1: It surrounds the head. It is a godpower. It's conferred supernaturally,

966
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,359
Speaker 1: and it strikes terror in the heart of those who

967
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: behold it. Wow. Yeah, I I absolutely love that. And

968
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:29,840
Speaker 1: of course this this especially is one of those examples

969
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:33,440
Speaker 1: that you can easily tie into ideas concerning the bicameral mind.

970
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:37,239
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that especially in this moment, that

971
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:41,840
Speaker 1: Achilles is you know, completely overcome by this uh you

972
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:45,239
Speaker 1: know this this inspired rage. Um. But but it's but

973
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: one interesting thing here is you would never, no matter

974
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:50,440
Speaker 1: how you're looking at Achilles here, you probably would not

975
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:53,680
Speaker 1: make the argument that Achilles is in an enlightened state,

976
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: that he has no it is experiencing enlightenment. Um. And

977
00:54:58,200 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 1: yet that is another way you see halo or halo

978
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:07,840
Speaker 1: like um symbols used in other artistic traditions, particularly in

979
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 1: Buddhist traditions. Oh yeah, because there's a whole class of

980
00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:16,920
Speaker 1: of halo or aureole type glows that can be found

981
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 1: throughout Hindu and Buddhist art. Yeah. And in Tibetan art,

982
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,719
Speaker 1: for example, you're a form of a halo is often

983
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: used to signify enlightenment and or divinity. You'll see it

984
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:30,640
Speaker 1: on the Buddha himself, but also on important monks. And

985
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: I was reading a description of a twelfth century Buddha

986
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: from Kurt Batterans Tibetan, India. Buddhist traditions and Transformations two

987
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen. From the mat quote, He's this is just

988
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:45,480
Speaker 1: his description of this particular work. Quote. He sits on

989
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 1: a lotus, conveying ideas of purity and perhaps suggesting his

990
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: radiance in a cosmic realm, and his head is encircled

991
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:58,200
Speaker 1: by a flaming halo. So Burnt also describes a Buddhist

992
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 1: statue that, in its original form seems to have possessed

993
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:04,560
Speaker 1: a halo that was surrounded by branches, in reference to

994
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha first attained enlightenment. Yeah,

995
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:10,080
Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm not certain, but I feel

996
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:15,319
Speaker 1: like I've seen depictions of the Buddha surrounded by fire. Yeah.

997
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:19,239
Speaker 1: We see this kind of flaming nimbus in Chinese and

998
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:22,279
Speaker 1: also in Islamic traditions as well. Uh. There's also a

999
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 1: really neat when in Japanese traditions that's referred to as

1000
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:29,920
Speaker 1: the Carra flame. Carea is essentially like a Japanese garuda,

1001
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: you know, the sub bird like magical holy creature. Um.

1002
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:38,000
Speaker 1: But the Carrera flame here is often represented as a

1003
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: kind of traditional halo behind the head, this kind of

1004
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:44,239
Speaker 1: hoop design, but with portions at least portions of it

1005
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:47,719
Speaker 1: on fire. Um and I included an image of you

1006
00:56:47,800 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: here image of it here for you Joe described as

1007
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:54,400
Speaker 1: the carra inco. Yeah, it's almost like it's like a

1008
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: hoop with a bonfire at each of the cardinal directions

1009
00:56:58,200 --> 00:57:02,320
Speaker 1: on it. Now, if we broaden our definition from halo

1010
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 1: to also things that are more like you know, the

1011
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:08,279
Speaker 1: areolas and even uh mandola, which is a kind of

1012
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: halo that emanates from or behind the entire body, you know,

1013
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:15,080
Speaker 1: kind of kind of in keeping with those those various

1014
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 1: auras of of the monster we described earlier, of whom

1015
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,080
Speaker 1: baba there. There are plenty more examples as well. We

1016
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:24,240
Speaker 1: certainly see this in Christian traditions, but it's also widespread

1017
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:29,000
Speaker 1: throughout the iconography of India, particularly Buddhist images and in Hinduism.

1018
00:57:29,040 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 1: Statues are often depicted with a uh prahamandola placed above

1019
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:38,800
Speaker 1: the statue and particularly the head to indicate hallowed status.

1020
00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:42,960
Speaker 1: And these are often very ornate with animals and decorative

1021
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: designs in them. Uh sometimes you know, they're often crafted

1022
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:49,920
Speaker 1: of shining metal with red paint, and they're signifying the

1023
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: object or being here as as something that should be

1024
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 1: venerated now and looking at images of the problem Mandala.

1025
00:57:57,120 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 1: One thing I really like about the especially compared to

1026
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,600
Speaker 1: a lot of the Christian iconography of the halo, which

1027
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 1: is often very smooth it's just kind of a radiance

1028
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: or it's a smooth looking almost gold metal type disc.

1029
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 1: The problem mandala is very textured, it's very busy. There's

1030
00:58:15,560 --> 00:58:17,640
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff happening in it. You you almost

1031
00:58:17,680 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 1: get more of the sense of the complexity and the

1032
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:25,000
Speaker 1: almost like uh, I don't know, like teeming ant like

1033
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 1: radiance of of the complexity of the real world. Now.

1034
00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:32,840
Speaker 1: Another very I think a pretty famous rendition of the

1035
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:35,800
Speaker 1: Probab Mandala that a lot of you've probably seen is

1036
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:39,120
Speaker 1: when you see statues of the dance of Shiva, there's

1037
00:58:39,160 --> 00:58:42,800
Speaker 1: kind of this, uh, this flaming hoop that is around Shiva.

1038
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:47,120
Speaker 1: Uh and it is um it's it's less it's less

1039
00:58:47,160 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 1: intricate as this, like it's not a big solid thing.

1040
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:52,800
Speaker 1: It is more of a hoop. But that's probably one

1041
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 1: that a lot of you've seen before. And I believe

1042
00:58:55,040 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 1: this is typically referred to as a as a nataraja. Yeah,

1043
00:58:58,080 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: like a big hoop halo surrounding the entire body with

1044
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:04,880
Speaker 1: the flames all around. It's almost like, I mean, it's

1045
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:09,160
Speaker 1: um coming back in the other sense. So we've talked

1046
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:11,840
Speaker 1: about the way that objects in the natural world like

1047
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:15,840
Speaker 1: the sun might cause you to want to frame an

1048
00:59:15,840 --> 00:59:18,800
Speaker 1: image of a god as something that's emanating light or

1049
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:22,560
Speaker 1: has its head surrounded by a glowing or gleaming disk.

1050
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:26,880
Speaker 1: But it just occurred to me also, I mean, I

1051
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: wonder in what ways could you could you talk about

1052
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 1: just the practical necessities of framing the subjects of art

1053
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:38,320
Speaker 1: as having an influence on on these various traditions of

1054
00:59:38,480 --> 00:59:42,080
Speaker 1: halos and orioles and and problem mandalas and things like that,

1055
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:45,560
Speaker 1: because often these things do serve as a frame there,

1056
00:59:45,600 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 1: like a visual focusing tool. Yeah, certainly they It tells

1057
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 1: you where to look at, what to focus on. I'm

1058
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 1: looking at a dance of Shiva within the not not

1059
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:04,040
Speaker 1: a raja that uh it's got a bunch of snakes. Yeah. Yeah, Again,

1060
01:00:04,080 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting to look at how even within

1061
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:11,280
Speaker 1: a particular religion or um or you know, regional tradition,

1062
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 1: over time you'll see so many different takes on it.

1063
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:17,080
Speaker 1: Like artists have just always had to uh, you know,

1064
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,560
Speaker 1: sort of reinvent in this case, the halo or something

1065
01:00:20,600 --> 01:00:22,880
Speaker 1: like a halo. You know, what can I do that

1066
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:25,560
Speaker 1: that sets it apart, That makes it exciting again, that

1067
01:00:25,640 --> 01:00:29,600
Speaker 1: makes it uh uh, you know, convey the power, the majesty,

1068
01:00:29,720 --> 01:00:32,280
Speaker 1: the you know, the rage or whatever it is, the

1069
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:35,720
Speaker 1: the the enlightenment, whatever you're trying to convey through the imagery.

1070
01:00:36,160 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 1: How to keep that present? That's well put um, which

1071
01:00:42,040 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: which leads me to Mortal Kombat. Um, there's a just

1072
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:48,080
Speaker 1: in passing we mentioned fictional characters earlier. There in the

1073
01:00:48,160 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: latest rendition, there is a goddess character named Centrion, and

1074
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:53,560
Speaker 1: you get to change the way your characters look, and

1075
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:55,280
Speaker 1: one of the things you can do is you change

1076
01:00:55,320 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 1: the various halo like things emanating around her head. Um,

1077
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:02,120
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, it's it's actually quite interesting, like it

1078
01:01:02,200 --> 01:01:03,800
Speaker 1: is it gonna be rocks, Is it gonna be jewels?

1079
01:01:03,880 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 1: Is it gonna be something you know, nature like stick

1080
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:08,439
Speaker 1: like at all? But uh, you know, ultimately they managed

1081
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:10,560
Speaker 1: to work a lot of a lot of what we're

1082
01:01:10,560 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 1: talking about into that particular character design. Now, in any

1083
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:18,560
Speaker 1: of those uh like WWE Builder Wrestler games, can you

1084
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 1: build a wrestler with a halo. I bet you could.

1085
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 1: I don't remember it specifically, but I bet there was

1086
01:01:24,040 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: some sort of hokey looking halo that you could put

1087
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 1: on a character. There's probably been somebody who's wrestled in

1088
01:01:28,480 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: a uh, you know, a goofy angel costume. Now I'm

1089
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:34,920
Speaker 1: what you know now that I say that, though, I

1090
01:01:34,920 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: bet there's a luchador that has a halo. There are

1091
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:41,040
Speaker 1: a lot of luchadors that have uh you know, Catholic

1092
01:01:41,440 --> 01:01:44,880
Speaker 1: imagery tied up in their masks. Doesn't have a halo,

1093
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:47,320
Speaker 1: does he? Well, not Santo, but there are others, Like

1094
01:01:47,520 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: you know, there are other Catholic themed luchadors, And I

1095
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:52,880
Speaker 1: bet there's one that I'm just not thinking of that

1096
01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: maybe Mystico or somebody has some sort of halo iconography

1097
01:01:57,360 --> 01:02:01,120
Speaker 1: wrapped up in their design. That's homework for next time. Yeah,

1098
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:05,040
Speaker 1: to come back and report. Yeah, so, Luca fans out there,

1099
01:02:05,120 --> 01:02:08,400
Speaker 1: let me know who I'm forgetting. Okay, Well, I think

1100
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:11,640
Speaker 1: that's got to wrap it up for part one. Yeah. Yeah, Well,

1101
01:02:11,680 --> 01:02:14,360
Speaker 1: this has been fun and it lays the groundwork for

1102
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:16,919
Speaker 1: the next episode, where we'll I think will inevitably touch

1103
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:19,760
Speaker 1: touch on some more you know, cultural examples and cultural

1104
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:22,440
Speaker 1: ideas of halos. But we'll also get into some of

1105
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:26,400
Speaker 1: the optics that we tease briefly in this episode, and

1106
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:28,920
Speaker 1: of course, in the meantime, we'd love to hear from everybody.

1107
01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:31,800
Speaker 1: You know, what are your favorite examples of halo likenography

1108
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:37,320
Speaker 1: from art, history, from archaeological fines, etcetera. From fiction you know,

1109
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 1: or they're they're particularly particularly interesting renditions of of halo

1110
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:44,960
Speaker 1: imagery that you like. I was always partial to uh um,

1111
01:02:45,360 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: what's his name, Michael William Kaluda's angel drawings. He would do.

1112
01:02:50,040 --> 01:02:52,480
Speaker 1: He had some very bizarre looking angel drawings that he

1113
01:02:52,520 --> 01:02:55,960
Speaker 1: created with like flaming halos and halos of eyes and

1114
01:02:56,280 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 1: the like. So I'm sure there's some other great examples

1115
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,880
Speaker 1: out there, so cendem our away in the meantime as well.

1116
01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 1: If you would like to listen to other episodes of

1117
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:06,320
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find the Stuff

1118
01:03:06,320 --> 01:03:09,360
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind feed wherever you get your podcasts.

1119
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: Uh there you will find core episodes Science and Culture

1120
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:17,640
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'll find listener mails. On Monday's Wednesday,

1121
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:20,240
Speaker 1: that's the that's the day we bust out our short

1122
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:24,360
Speaker 1: form Artifact episodes and Friday It's Weird House Cinema. That's right,

1123
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:27,440
Speaker 1: you gotta catch your mall uh so huge, Thanks as

1124
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:31,080
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1125
01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:32,640
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1126
01:03:32,720 --> 01:03:35,480
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1127
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can

1128
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 1: email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1129
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:50,600
Speaker 1: to dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

1130
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:53,400
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1131
01:03:53,600 --> 01:03:56,440
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're

1132
01:03:56,440 --> 01:04:10,080
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows at four Foo