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