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

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you 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: and we're back with part two of our talk about

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Speaker 1: halos and the nimbus and the the aureole, the glory

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Speaker 1: that glows behind the figure, whether that's a Christian saint

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Speaker 1: or Huahwa the Terrible Or did we end up last

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Speaker 1: week actually talking about Lucca doors at all? I think

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Speaker 1: we did very briefly, partially because we were in the

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Speaker 1: process of putting together a weird house cinema episode on

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Speaker 1: us on a El Santo film. But yeah, the question

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Speaker 1: came up, are there any halos used with Luchador designs? Uh?

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Speaker 1: With the idea being that, yeah, they're a number of

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Speaker 1: different Catholicism themed Lucia doors. So after we recorded, I

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Speaker 1: did look into it a little bit. I looked at

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Speaker 1: some of the usual specs, and looked on Luca Wicki

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Speaker 1: and looked at some photos. I didn't notice any halo

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Speaker 1: motifs in the mask for the most part, like nothing

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Speaker 1: nothing like um like actually physically emerging and positioned above

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Speaker 1: the head, you know. You see a lot of crosses, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: The best example I did find, though, was a luchador

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Speaker 1: named Angel azul Um, one of at least four different

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Speaker 1: luchadors who's used that name. And this particular mask depicts

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Speaker 1: an entire angel, like a like a Christmas top or

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Speaker 1: angel on the front of the mask, and that angel

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Speaker 1: has a halo. So it's positions so that that the

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Speaker 1: angel's head and halo appear more or less in the

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Speaker 1: center of the forehead. So I assume this is a

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Speaker 1: technico not a rudeo. I guess. So. Um. I don't

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Speaker 1: know anything about this guy, but it looks like a

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Speaker 1: technico mask. You know, if you have an angel like that, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's got to be. But then again,

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Speaker 1: he could easily turn Ruto and become a fallen angel,

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Speaker 1: especially if he loses that mask. Oh yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: a bad angel can be really bad out where you

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Speaker 1: get angels of death, You've got, you've got. Uh Remember

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Speaker 1: a particularly haunting mickloshred Noty poem called The Terrifying Angel,

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Speaker 1: where he an angel appears to him and advises him

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Speaker 1: to remove his own skin. Yeah, there's there are a

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Speaker 1: number of different and Lucia. There have been a few

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Speaker 1: different angels of death, Angel de la Monta. Um, there's

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Speaker 1: one I remember seeing on TV that did not really

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Speaker 1: have any any kind of angelic themes in his outfit.

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Speaker 1: But I did run across on Luca Wicki an old

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Speaker 1: photo from a magazine that had showed a guy with

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Speaker 1: a halo motif again on the forehead, almost like a

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Speaker 1: third eye. But that's the only thing I could really

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Speaker 1: find in terms of uh, dudes like this with with halos.

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Speaker 1: Now another thing that comes to mind, though you know,

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Speaker 1: we're talking a little bit about a halos and and

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Speaker 1: angels and um certainly an art. But I started thinking

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Speaker 1: more and more about films, and I can't think of

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Speaker 1: a single example of of of an angelic being presented

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Speaker 1: in say horror film or some sort of supernatural film

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Speaker 1: in which they have a halo. Like. I was thinking, like,

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Speaker 1: what are some of the the the angel visitation scenes

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Speaker 1: that come to mind? And I thought of, well, the

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Speaker 1: I thought of Bill Paxton's film Frailty, which has a

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Speaker 1: great angel visitation scene like a um, you know, hallucination

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Speaker 1: that emerges in his mind, but there's no halo. Now,

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Speaker 1: I might be remembering that wrong. I thought that the

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Speaker 1: angel in that it doesn't have like a ring halo

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Speaker 1: around the head or anything specifically concentrated on the head,

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Speaker 1: but I did recall a kind of like full body glow.

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Speaker 1: Am I wrong? But definitely definitely has a glow to it,

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Speaker 1: and there is there's a lot of like heavenly architecture

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Speaker 1: going on above it, but in terms of something more

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Speaker 1: instantly recognizable as a halo, not so much. Um Likewise,

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Speaker 1: I was thinking back to the Prophecy films with Christopher Walkin. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of a lot

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Speaker 1: of a lot of angels in that, a lot of

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Speaker 1: angel wings, and you can think of various things that

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Speaker 1: were clearly influenced by that. You know, we have angels

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Speaker 1: and fallen angels popping up and filmmakers will go nuts

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Speaker 1: given him big, big, feathery wings, but I don't think

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Speaker 1: they ever really include the halo. And it's kind of

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Speaker 1: interesting because I guess it comes down to the fact

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Speaker 1: that it's easy to think of it as such a

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Speaker 1: cliche thing, but at the same time it is so

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Speaker 1: weird and it and there's so many ways to depict it.

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Speaker 1: You think you would you would see more of it.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I'd love to hear from folks out

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Speaker 1: there who have encountered really cool halos in genre pictures,

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Speaker 1: because I'd love to I'd love to see it. Now.

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Speaker 1: In the last episode, did you bring up the idea

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Speaker 1: of a cinembyte from like the Clive Barker verse with

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Speaker 1: the with a halo? I can't remember if we if

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Speaker 1: we did, but I started looking into it after the podcast,

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Speaker 1: and um, I think there's in a comic hell Raiser

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Speaker 1: comic book there's a there's a cinembyte named Halo, but

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Speaker 1: he doesn't really have a halo. Now, there was a

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Speaker 1: a Clive Barker action figure for the Todd McFarlane toys

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Speaker 1: for the Tortured Souls line, and this guy, uh, this

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Speaker 1: particular guy agonists has kind of a surgery, has like

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Speaker 1: a surgical halo around his head, like a halo, and

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Speaker 1: then he also has what I think is like a

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Speaker 1: human face maybe his own human face position behind him. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That also seems to mimic halo iconography. So it's a

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Speaker 1: very Cinabitte esque character. So I'm this seems to come

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Speaker 1: close and certainly Clive Barker loves uh toying around with

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Speaker 1: religious imagery, so it makes sense that we would find

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Speaker 1: an example of this and something he designed. Yeah. Fun fact,

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Speaker 1: those those figures that came out, UM turns out they

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Speaker 1: each had a portion of a novella in them that

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Speaker 1: I think for a long time you could only get

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Speaker 1: if you bought all the figures, but it's subsequently been

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Speaker 1: put out since sometime in the last five years or so.

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Speaker 1: UM the titled Tortured Souls the Legend of Primordium, and

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Speaker 1: I read it over the weekend UM joined some time

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Speaker 1: out in the Hammock, and it was pretty fun. You know.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's like, there's not a relatable human character

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Speaker 1: in the whole thing. It's just like a bunch of

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Speaker 1: like sort of monsters and uh and so forth. It's

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Speaker 1: in a kind of a dark fantasy setting. UM. Kind

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Speaker 1: of hell razory at times, for sure, but but not

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Speaker 1: entirely like it felt. It was really good. It is

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Speaker 1: one of the I haven't read a lot of Clive

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Speaker 1: Barker recently, but this one was new to me and

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Speaker 1: I enjoyed it. So a novella that comes serially within

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Speaker 1: the action figures that you would buy at Spencer's Gifts

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Speaker 1: in the nineties. Yeah, and it was, and to my

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Speaker 1: shock it was like it was it was actually really enjoyable.

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Speaker 1: So there you go. I wonder if the Insane Clown

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Speaker 1: Posse action figures had a novella that came with them.

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Speaker 1: I doubt it. I think this was the only I

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Speaker 1: think there was actually another Clive Barker line, who is

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Speaker 1: some sort of like Carnival kind of a theme, where

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Speaker 1: he did another one like this where he had different

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Speaker 1: different chapters in a novella that all came together if

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Speaker 1: you bought all the figures. But but and that one

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Speaker 1: when that one is also available to read now, but

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Speaker 1: I haven't read it. It's interesting though, with the Action

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Speaker 1: figures though, because the whole thing, right is that you

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Speaker 1: don't take them out of the box if you're collecting them.

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Speaker 1: And if that was the case, you wouldn't get to

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Speaker 1: read the cool little novella chapters that are hidden within there. Well,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't get to play with them either. I mean,

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Speaker 1: what are you supposed to do with these things? I

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Speaker 1: don't know. They don't look tremendously fun to play with.

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Speaker 1: They kind of they're very grizzly. Have a little tea

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Speaker 1: party with your barbie and your cinebites. Yeah, but but

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Speaker 1: that's that's like I said that the novella was fun.

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Speaker 1: So in the last episode we ended up talking about

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Speaker 1: a lot of the different ways that the halo or

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Speaker 1: the nimbus has been represented or characterized in history. You know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes as a glowing disc behind the head, or even

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Speaker 1: a solid looking kind of gold disc, sometimes even as

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Speaker 1: a square or as a ring around the head. Other

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Speaker 1: times as a kind of just general emanation of light,

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Speaker 1: like a glow coming from behind the head, almost as

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Speaker 1: if there's bioluminescent hair or a light bulb behind the

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Speaker 1: head or behind the whole body. A full body glow

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Speaker 1: is sometimes characterized as a halo or a reole or nimbus.

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Speaker 1: And when it comes to the kind that's just like

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Speaker 1: a glow or an emanation of divine light from around

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Speaker 1: the body, I started to wonder about the idea of

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Speaker 1: the aura. Now, I guess there's a general concept of

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Speaker 1: an aura that you could just think of as like,

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Speaker 1: this is any emanation of color or light from a body,

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Speaker 1: like in the u in the ancient Mesopotamian mythology, where

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Speaker 1: we talked about Humbaba or Huahwa having the seven terrors

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Speaker 1: or the radiance terrifying radiance that emanated from his body. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Those things could be viewed as an aura. But there's

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Speaker 1: also a more specific definition of an aura, which is

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Speaker 1: a sort of standard claim in the modern world of

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Speaker 1: psychics and New Age spirituality and parapsychology. People often claim

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Speaker 1: to be able to see some kind of aura around

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Speaker 1: human bodies and sometimes around other objects. So I wonder

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Speaker 1: could this modern belief in auras in any way be

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Speaker 1: related to the origins of the religious belief in the halo,

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Speaker 1: the glory, the melom, the sun, disk, crown, etcetera. And

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Speaker 1: this sounds perfectly reasonable, right, I mean, this is a

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Speaker 1: lot of it is getting would seem on the surface

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Speaker 1: at least to get to the same idea, the idea

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Speaker 1: that there's something either emanating out of you or through you. Right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: totally uh. And And the secondary question, if people do

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Speaker 1: really sometimes see a glow of color or cloud of

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Speaker 1: blazing light around someone, what would cause that? Uh? So

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Speaker 1: I'm going to transition into this subject for a bit

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Speaker 1: and look at it a few different ways. The first

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Speaker 1: thing I wanted to know was, wait a second, is

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Speaker 1: it actually possible in just a straightforward scientific physical sense

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Speaker 1: that humans do actually sometimes glow. I don't know. I've

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Speaker 1: come across weirder facts on this show before, so I

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Speaker 1: started looking into this. H The first thing I thought

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Speaker 1: of was, I wonder if there's ever been a case

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Speaker 1: where somebody was was made to glow by exposure to

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Speaker 1: I don't know, something in the environment. And the thing

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Speaker 1: that popped to my mind was in the Simpsons and

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Speaker 1: art ters who work at the nuclear power plant acquire

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Speaker 1: what Mr Burns would call a healthy green glow. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So I was wondering, does exposure to radiation actually have

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Speaker 1: the potential to make people glow? Unfortunately, it seems the

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Speaker 1: answer is no. Ionizing radiation is generally invisible itself, and

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Speaker 1: being exposed to it can of course wreck your body,

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Speaker 1: but it won't make you glow. This myth actually probably

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Speaker 1: comes from a combination of facts, the first of which

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Speaker 1: would be about radio luminescence. So there are some materials

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Speaker 1: that do glow in the presence of ionizing radiation. For example,

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Speaker 1: the paint that was once commonly used for radium dials

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Speaker 1: on clock faces and and is sometimes still used for

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Speaker 1: like um instruments that are made to be viewed in

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Speaker 1: the dark, for example, in in spacecraft. You know, so

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Speaker 1: you want a dial or an instrument that will glow

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Speaker 1: in the dark without having to have any kind of

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Speaker 1: power supply to it or you know, uh, or an

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Speaker 1: elle de inside it or anything like that. Uh. This

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Speaker 1: radio luminescent paint actually had to have a combination of

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Speaker 1: two major elements in order to make it glow. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In in the old school kind that was used by

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Speaker 1: like the company Undark or you know that was tragically

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Speaker 1: the cause of the death and sickening of the Radium girls.

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Speaker 1: This was a paint that was made with radium, which

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Speaker 1: is the radioactive element that's applied the ionizing radiation. But

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Speaker 1: then it also had to have an element that is

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Speaker 1: known as a phosph four, which is a chemical that

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Speaker 1: glows when it's stimulated by alpha and beta particles and

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Speaker 1: gamma rays from the from the radioactive element. And in

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Speaker 1: the case of the radioluminescent paint that was used by

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Speaker 1: Undark in companies like that in the first half of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, the phosphour was usually zinc sulfide that

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Speaker 1: was then laced with a metal like copper to give

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Speaker 1: it a green color. And so because of the specific

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Speaker 1: nature of this material, this phosphour, when the atoms in

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Speaker 1: it are struck by ionizing radiation, they get excited, their

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Speaker 1: electrons jump up to a higher energy level, and then

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Speaker 1: they fall back down to their ground state. And when

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Speaker 1: they fall back down to their ground state, they emit

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Speaker 1: a photon of light. As they do that, they release

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Speaker 1: the energy back out and this is the glow we see.

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Speaker 1: And of course the color of the glow can be

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Speaker 1: determined by what kind of metal it's laced with. Again, uh,

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Speaker 1: copper tends to give a green color. So I think

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Speaker 1: this is the source of the belief that radiation will

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Speaker 1: cause something to have a green glow. Won't cause anything

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Speaker 1: to have a green glow. It will specifically give a

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Speaker 1: green glow to paint with a phosphour in it, and

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Speaker 1: something to make that glow the color green, like copper. So,

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Speaker 1: long story short, exposure to ionizing radiation can absolutely kill you,

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Speaker 1: but it will not make you glow, I guess, unless

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Speaker 1: you coat yourself in a phosphour. Okay, so that this

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Speaker 1: that one episode of The Simpsons where Mr Burns has

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Speaker 1: been found to be wandering through the woods. Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: no, no no, unless yeah, maybe he somehow paints his body

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Speaker 1: and zinc sulfide or something zinc sulfide and copper and

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Speaker 1: then just get some plutonium in there. Maybe I don't

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Speaker 1: know how long he would survive that though well, as

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Speaker 1: we and I think was explained on the show, Mr

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Speaker 1: Burns is imperil from so many different causes of death

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Speaker 1: that they're they're stuck in the door right right three

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Speaker 1: Stooges syndrome. So even the ionizing radiation is going WHOA.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, you know you're not going to have a

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Speaker 1: situation where I don't know, an ancient a person in

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Speaker 1: the ancient world came across a stash of uranium or

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Speaker 1: and then somehow ended up glowing green, so everybody would

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Speaker 1: see him and think, wow, you know that guy's god

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Speaker 1: or something that that just wouldn't happen. But I came

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Speaker 1: across another fact that is pretty weird, which is that,

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Speaker 1: in a qualified sense, the human body actually does just

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Speaker 1: naturally glow, meaning it doesn't only reflect light from external sources,

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Speaker 1: but the body actually does emit electromagnetic radiation in the

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Speaker 1: visible spectrum. Visible light comes out of your body. But

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Speaker 1: before you get too excited. The amount of light that

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Speaker 1: our bodies put out on average is really really tiny.

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Speaker 1: It's roughly a thousand times too dim to see with

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Speaker 1: the naked eye. You need special scientific instruments in a

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Speaker 1: very dark room to pick it up. Uh. And but

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Speaker 1: you should know that this is different from like the

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Speaker 1: heat that we emit as infrared radiation. If this light

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Speaker 1: were bright enough, it would be light that would actually

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Speaker 1: have a color that you could see with your eyes.

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Speaker 1: It is that kind of light. Um And of course

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Speaker 1: it's not just us, most or maybe all other animals

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Speaker 1: would also emit a similar kind of light. Nevertheless, this

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Speaker 1: glow is kind of interesting. I was wondering, so what

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Speaker 1: what makes this glow happen? It appears to be chemical

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Speaker 1: reactions involving free radicals within the body. There was a

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Speaker 1: two thousand nine study that tried to measure this photon

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Speaker 1: mission from the human body using special equipment. So this

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Speaker 1: was by Misaki Kobayashi, di suk Kikuchi, and Hitoshi Okamura

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Speaker 1: published in PLS one in two thousand nine called Imaging

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Speaker 1: of ultra week spontaneous photon emission from the human body

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Speaker 1: displaying diurnal rhythm. And so what the researchers did here

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Speaker 1: was they used a cryogenic CCD camera to image five

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Speaker 1: healthy male subjects in their twenties at different times throughout

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Speaker 1: the day. So the subjects would come in, they'd sit

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Speaker 1: in a chair. I think they were partially naked or

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Speaker 1: at least bare chested in the chair in a dark

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Speaker 1: room for at least twenty minutes. I think there was

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Speaker 1: a period of adjustment to the darkness, and then after

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Speaker 1: that they'd be photographed for twenty minutes with the special camera.

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Speaker 1: And they do this every day for every three hours,

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Speaker 1: from ten am to ten pm. And the researchers actually

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Speaker 1: found that the amount of light emitted from the body

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Speaker 1: varied significantly over the day, so people glowed the most

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Speaker 1: at about four p m and the least at ten am.

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Speaker 1: And they hypothesized that this probably has something to do

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Speaker 1: with how energy metabolism changes throughout the day according to

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Speaker 1: our circadian rhythms. But also interesting, or at least I

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Speaker 1: thought this was interesting, Rob. I've attached a picture for

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Speaker 1: you to look at down here. The body did not

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Speaker 1: glow equally everywhere. In fact, faces tended to glow more

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Speaker 1: than the rest of the body, it seems like and

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Speaker 1: and there were other kinds of differences, like upper shoulders

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Speaker 1: seemed to glow a little bit more than down lower

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Speaker 1: around like the chest or the stomach, And different parts

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Speaker 1: of the face glowed more than other parts. So it

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Speaker 1: looks like the area around the mouth in particular, was

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Speaker 1: usually glowing more than say, like the forehead or or

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Speaker 1: around the eyes or the sides of the face. This

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Speaker 1: thing about the mouth especially makes me imagine an alternate

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Speaker 1: history of halo imagery where the glow is not just

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Speaker 1: surrounding the crown of the head but emanating from the

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Speaker 1: mouth and jaw. Kind of glory beard okay, also kind

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Speaker 1: of a low Pan effect, right, Oh, yes, when we

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Speaker 1: first encountered low Pan and he has light coming out

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Speaker 1: of his eyes and then out of his mouth. One

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Speaker 1: of my favorite line deliveries there is the incredulous way

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Speaker 1: that Kurt Russell says that he had light coming out

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Speaker 1: of his mouth. Yes, big trouble, Little China for anyone

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Speaker 1: who's not familiar. But anyway, so I was reading an

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Speaker 1: NBC news report about this study from two thousand nine

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Speaker 1: by Charles Q. Choi and and he wrote that um

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Speaker 1: one reason that the face might glow more than the

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Speaker 1: rest of the body is that is that usually faces

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Speaker 1: are more tanned than the rest of the body since

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Speaker 1: they get it more exposure to sunlight. And that he

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Speaker 1: said that the pigment behind that that tanning in the skin, melanin,

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Speaker 1: has fluorescent compounds that might might help the skin produce

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Speaker 1: even more light than other skin on the body does. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but since this glow is not detectable with the naked eye,

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Speaker 1: none of this is going to have anything to do

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Speaker 1: with the origins of of halo or nimbus or arial imagery,

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Speaker 1: though it is a nice thing to know, nonetheless, But

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Speaker 1: to come back to the place we started, people do,

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Speaker 1: of course, sometimes make various paranormal claims that they can

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Speaker 1: see a glow of colored light emanating from human beings. Again,

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Speaker 1: this is sometimes called like an aura or an energy field. Um,

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Speaker 1: so I have to be kind of circumspect here. The

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Speaker 1: belief in auras is I have discovered an exceedingly complicated

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Speaker 1: subject with a weird and interesting history. Maybe one will

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Speaker 1: have to come back to and explore more in the future.

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Speaker 1: Since this is one of those subjects, I'm sure you've

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Speaker 1: had this experience on the show before, Rob where like

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Speaker 1: I was trying to read into it so I could

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Speaker 1: give a brief overview. But it was kind of like

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Speaker 1: you go down into a basement and you open an

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Speaker 1: old chest to just like get the things out and

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Speaker 1: see what's inside it. But then something in there starts

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Speaker 1: moving and uh, and I'm like, okay, Uh, So I

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Speaker 1: I cannot I cannot get my brain fully around this subject.

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Speaker 1: I think I can only mention some aspects of it.

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Speaker 1: From what I can tell, the New Age belief in

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Speaker 1: seeing aur as seems to stem from a kind of

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Speaker 1: reinterpretation of the medieval tantric belief in chakras, so chakras

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Speaker 1: would have been a belief original to esoteric Hindu It's

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Speaker 1: also it's kind of hard to succinctly describe even what

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Speaker 1: these are, but I think you can think of them

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Speaker 1: as sort of a collection of nodes or channels that

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Speaker 1: are positioned at different points inside the body and correspond

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Speaker 1: to elements of an imagined subtle body, a second non

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Speaker 1: material energy based body, and the images of these channels

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Speaker 1: or nodes throughout the body would be used in some

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Speaker 1: kinds of tantric meditation. So you might focus mental imagery

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Speaker 1: on one of these nodes at various points. It's positioned,

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Speaker 1: often along the sort of vertical access through the middle

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Speaker 1: of the body, but also at a few other points. So, Rob,

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Speaker 1: I think you probably know more about this world. Is

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Speaker 1: that basically your understanding? Yeah, I think that's a good

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Speaker 1: basic summary of it. And I've I've engaged in yoga

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Speaker 1: and meditation that uses chakras as well. UM, And I

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Speaker 1: find that I guess one way that I like to

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Speaker 1: think of it is it is not it is not

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Speaker 1: the way the body actually works, but it is a

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Speaker 1: way that the body can be interpreted, uh, to aid

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Speaker 1: in meditation or yoga, like thinking about um, you know,

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Speaker 1: like this energy point moving from chakra to chakra, focusing

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Speaker 1: on say, like breathing through your third eye. You know,

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Speaker 1: obviously you're not really breathing through a hole in your

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Speaker 1: your skull, um, but somehow like focusing on that can

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Speaker 1: be very helpful. It gives you like a different physical

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Speaker 1: focus to get out of your thoughts and and even

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of focused on the on the physicality

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Speaker 1: of that part of your body. Uh. So yeah, I

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Speaker 1: find it very helpful though though again I do not

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Speaker 1: engage with it in a way where I think of

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Speaker 1: this is like the actual way that the energy of

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Speaker 1: my body is working. Right, it might not correspond to

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Speaker 1: like physical anatomical realities, but can serve as a focal

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Speaker 1: point for mental imagery and in a way of directing

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Speaker 1: the thoughts. Yeah, but so that's that's chakras. I think

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Speaker 1: like within the the the esoteric Hindu tradition. Then in

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Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it seems this

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Speaker 1: idea somehow got sort of picked up and reinterpreted by

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Speaker 1: various people associated with new religious movements like Theosophy, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of the twentieth century New Age. Belief in

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Speaker 1: auras as an emanation from the body seems to trace

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Speaker 1: back to a British spiritualist and theosophist writer named Charles

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Speaker 1: Webster Leadbetter who lived from eighteen fifty four to nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty four. I was just again, I can only give

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Speaker 1: the briefest glance into this world, because it seems very

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Speaker 1: It's it's like looking at gnosticism or something. It's just

403
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Speaker 1: like you cannot really understand it from the outside. But

404
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Speaker 1: I was trying to peek in and get some kind

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Speaker 1: of characterization here. So I found a couple of quotes

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Speaker 1: from a writing by lead Better called this was a

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Speaker 1: book called Man Visible and Invisible. I think this was

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Speaker 1: actually a reproduction of an earlier pamphlet or essay he

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Speaker 1: had done about the belief in auras. And he writes

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Speaker 1: the following, All members of our society will be familiar

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Speaker 1: with the idea that every human being is surrounded by

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Speaker 1: a sort of luminous cloud, which we have agreed to

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Speaker 1: call the aura. And we have heard from those who

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Speaker 1: have succeeded in developing the special sense by which it

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Speaker 1: is cognized, that it has various beautiful colors, and that

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Speaker 1: from a study of it much maybe learned as to

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Speaker 1: the disposition, the thoughts, and even the past life of

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Speaker 1: its possessor. And then later he comes to a physical

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Speaker 1: description of what this aura it is. It looks like,

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Speaker 1: he writes, we find that it is exceedingly complex in structure.

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Speaker 1: At the first glance, it is seen as a luminous cloud,

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Speaker 1: extending to a distance of about eighteen inches or two

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Speaker 1: feet from the body in all directions, and therefore approximately

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Speaker 1: oval in shape. Whence it is sometimes spoken of in

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Speaker 1: occult writings as the auric egg. In most cases, it

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Speaker 1: has no well defined outline, but its edges fade into

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Speaker 1: invisibility very gradually. Uh. And I think this is interesting

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Speaker 1: because this really does sound like he's describing the halo

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Speaker 1: glow that we see in a lot of religious artwork,

430
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 1: or here described in in a lot of religious poetry,

431
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: a sort of oval shaped framing or emanation of light

432
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 1: from the body that sort of gradually dissipates as it

433
00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:48,719
Speaker 1: gets farther away. Yeah, it also kind of feels like

434
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: my holy personal space, shout not intrude upon right, don't

435
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,120
Speaker 1: put anything in my uric egg. And then he goes

436
00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:58,320
Speaker 1: on to explain a bunch more stuff like that these

437
00:23:58,359 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 1: are actually composed of a number umber of layers of

438
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 1: underlying auras, one that he calls the health aura, which

439
00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 1: what There's one that has something to do with the

440
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: Hindu concept of prana or life force. There's one that

441
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:16,399
Speaker 1: has something to do with desire. And the ability to

442
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 1: see these alleged auras in this context is usually ascribed

443
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:24,360
Speaker 1: to people either with special powers of sight, some kind

444
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 1: of psychic perception, or even more often, it seems, with

445
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:32,040
Speaker 1: special training, who have worked to harness their ability to

446
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:35,640
Speaker 1: see the auras of others. Now, as with many other

447
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: psychic and paranormal phenomena. People who claim to be able

448
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 1: to see auras as an objective physical phenomenon have have

449
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 1: repeatedly been put to the test in parapsychology research, which

450
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: from what I read, usually finds no evidence for any

451
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: consistency in the perception of ouras. It seems to me

452
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:57,119
Speaker 1: like it is more likely an internal, subjective interpreted experience,

453
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:02,719
Speaker 1: not a perception of an objectively verifiable external reality. And

454
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:04,959
Speaker 1: these tests can include lots of different things. Like some

455
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,959
Speaker 1: of them, you might look at the auras of different

456
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 1: people who are obscured by a screen, and then later

457
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:14,399
Speaker 1: try to identify the same people again when the screen

458
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:17,119
Speaker 1: is removed. Okay, so you saw there areas which person

459
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: was standing where behind the screen, And usually people who

460
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 1: claim to have our perception abilities cannot perform better than

461
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: chance at this. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a

462
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,919
Speaker 1: real perception of the ability to uh to view a

463
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: glow emanating from people, and so that does make you

464
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: wonder like, okay, well, even if this is not an

465
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: externally verifiable physical reality, people are for some reason believing

466
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 1: that they see something. They look at somebody and they

467
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: think they see a luminous clouds surrounding them. So, uh,

468
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:50,199
Speaker 1: could that have anything to do with the with the

469
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:54,960
Speaker 1: halo or nimbus tradition? One interesting coincidence that this might

470
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 1: just be a total coincidence actually not have anything to

471
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: not have any causal link. But one interesting thing I

472
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: come across while I was poking around it or a

473
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: perception on the internet, is that there is often a

474
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: belief that there are seven layers of auras. They're actually

475
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: different systems where people say there are different numbers of layers,

476
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 1: but a common one is seven layers, which takes me

477
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 1: back to the ancient Mesopotamian ogre HuaHua or Humbaba, who

478
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 1: is said to have seven terrors or seven auras that

479
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: he could take off one at a time. Oh, no,

480
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 1: that that is that it's a very good, very good point. Yeah,

481
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:33,399
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's an actual connection there or mhm,

482
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: because I mean we also we also have to think

483
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: again back to the chakra tradition in which they're you know,

484
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:41,879
Speaker 1: you're generally dealing with the seven chakra systems, so that

485
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: might be the way it's connected as well, right, But

486
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,439
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth noting that there are some

487
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: major differences as far as I can see, between how

488
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,240
Speaker 1: these different religious concepts like the halo versus the aura

489
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: are described. For example, in in a New Age mysticism,

490
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 1: the aura is usually said to emanate from every living being. Again,

491
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 1: I think there's probably some variation there, but it's a

492
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: common claim that like even insects and plants and even

493
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:13,159
Speaker 1: sometimes inanimate objects would have their own aura, whereas the halo,

494
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: both in Christian iconography and in its predecessors from ancient religion, uh,

495
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 1: this would be reserved for special beings. It's the divine spotlight,

496
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 1: like you said last time, where it's the emanation of

497
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,439
Speaker 1: terrifying God power. I mean, it does make me think

498
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: about just the the idea of beholding somebody and that

499
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: person being said particularly beautiful or charismatic, you know, and uh,

500
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,919
Speaker 1: you know, interpreting that is kind of a holy glow.

501
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: And in a way it does get back to the

502
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: actual way that we we would behold someone, you know,

503
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: in terms of how light you reflecting off of off

504
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: of people or things, uh, you know, light entering our eyes, etcetera. Well,

505
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:56,400
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna get to this in a minute,

506
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:58,640
Speaker 1: but I think there could well be something to the

507
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: idea that beliefs about out things like halos or auras

508
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 1: could very well be quite literally in the eye of

509
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: the beholder. So I came across a study that asks

510
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: an interesting question. Again, you remember I was trying to think. Okay,

511
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 1: So if people do sometimes look at other people, or

512
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: at figures or even statues of God's or something, and

513
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:21,080
Speaker 1: believe they see an an emanation of light around them,

514
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:23,679
Speaker 1: believe they see a nimbus or or a holy glow,

515
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:27,879
Speaker 1: could people's perceptions of these auras or halos sometimes be

516
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:33,639
Speaker 1: explained by cases of synesthesia. This was explored in a

517
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: paper I was looking at. It was published in Consciousness

518
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: and Cognition in the year twelve by Milan at All

519
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: called auras and mysticism and synesthesia a comparison. So the

520
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 1: authors here right that synesthesia quote is a condition in

521
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 1: which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another,

522
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: as when hearing a sound leads to the perception of

523
00:28:56,640 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: mental colors or photisms, photisms or that's a standard term

524
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: in the synesthesia literature. It's a type of visual stimulation

525
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: that associates something that is not originally visual in nature,

526
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: or is a different kind of stimulus. So one common

527
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: example in synesthesia is grapheme color synesthesia, where certain letters

528
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 1: of the alphabet or numerals are consistently associated with a

529
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: color sensation. So imagine if, like if you don't experience

530
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: synesthesia personally, try to imagine if, for some reason in

531
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: your mind, the letter G was purple and the letter

532
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,240
Speaker 1: H was yellow. And there are a bunch of different

533
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: kinds of this. There are people for whom I remember

534
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: reading that. One classic attribution of synesthesia was that there

535
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: was an account of a man I think maybe reported

536
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,000
Speaker 1: by John Locke, who said that every time he heard

537
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:50,720
Speaker 1: the sound of a trumpet or a French horn or something,

538
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: he saw the color red. But there are also some

539
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 1: less common types of synaesthesia that have specifically to do

540
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 1: with the idea or image of individual people. So the

541
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 1: authors here right quote. One of the relatively infrequent varieties

542
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: is the one where photoisms are triggered by emotion affect

543
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: laden stimulis, such as emotional words, photographs, human figures, and

544
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: the faces of familiar people. For instance, for our a

545
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: cynisthat who participated in this study, the side of a

546
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: familiar person automatically triggers a mental image of a human

547
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: silhouette filled with color. Different people are typically associated with

548
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 1: different color hues depending on ours affective relationship with the

549
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: person in question. E g. He claims that he has

550
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: always associated his mother with the color blue. And I

551
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:47,000
Speaker 1: looked this up, and I found people online in forums

552
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 1: sure enough talking about this exact experience today. Like I

553
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,720
Speaker 1: recall just one example, I came across one person saying

554
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: that with their person color synis, these you have both

555
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: of their parents were blue, but different shades of blue.

556
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: But so anyway, the authors here wanted to tie this

557
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: to the mystical concept of aura reading or aura perception

558
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: and ask is it possible that the neurological phenomenon of

559
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: person color synesthesia could be responsible for some of the

560
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: claims of aura vision in these New age religious experiences?

561
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:21,959
Speaker 1: And they tried to figure this out by comparing the

562
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: first person reports of four test subjects with person color

563
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 1: synesthesia against the performance of aura readers and the reports

564
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 1: of auras from the literature. Now, long story short, the

565
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: authors here actually conclude that these phenomena are described in

566
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: usually very different ways with different characteristics, and that experiences

567
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: of person color synesthesia are probably not a major cause

568
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: of belief in auras and are. They put up a

569
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 1: table in their conclusion comparing a lot of the differences

570
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 1: between these things, just to mention what I thought were

571
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 1: a couple of the most relevant takeaways, and this one

572
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: seemed maybe the most signific get to me. They say

573
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: that people with person color synesthesia usually report seeing the

574
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: photism quote in the mind's eye, so there would be

575
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 1: like a strong mental association between a person and a color,

576
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 1: But most synaesthetics do not believe that they are literally

577
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: seeing the color radiating from the person's body directly in

578
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: and mingled with their actual vision. It's a mental association,

579
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: whereas the aura that the clairvoyant reports is usually said

580
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,360
Speaker 1: to be a direct visual stimulus, like it's a literal

581
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: cloud or halo around the body that can be directly

582
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 1: observed as you observe things with your eyes. Now, again,

583
00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: there's a lot of variation in this tradition, so I'm

584
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: sure there are some some counter examples to that, but

585
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 1: that seems to be the dominant way that it's reported.

586
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: A couple of other things they report. Synesthesia is usually

587
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: a lifelong condition, which is probably congenital, whereas the reported

588
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,440
Speaker 1: clairvoyant ability to eve auras is said to be a

589
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: learned skill more often. Uh, they also say that person

590
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: color synesthesia is triggered automatically and requires no effort. It's

591
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 1: just a natural association. As naturally triggered as if I said, like, hey,

592
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: you know, what's the color of a banana? Like, you

593
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: can't help but think it. It just comes automatically to

594
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: your brain upon hearing the words that they say. Counter

595
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 1: to that, or reading usually is said to be something

596
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: that requires concentration and special conditions. Now it does make

597
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: me wonder if now, obviously you would not have to

598
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 1: be a synaestheistic person to engage in our reading. Um,

599
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 1: you know, you could easily take on the trappings and

600
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: the you know, the the dramatic aspects of this kind

601
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: of performance. But if you were person with synesthesia, you

602
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: would be uniquely outfitted to do this kind of work.

603
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 1: You know, uh yeah, sure, you know, you know to

604
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: not just say oh yeah, you're you're blue, you're light

605
00:33:58,560 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: blue with that, right, you know, you know, you know,

606
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 1: to pause and to concentrate and to put on the

607
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,000
Speaker 1: show that people need to see. But then you would

608
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 1: have an actual color to refer to, right, oh, because

609
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:10,839
Speaker 1: you'd have an automatic association in your mind that sort

610
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: of comes naturally there, like you wouldn't have to be

611
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: straining for something, right. But I guess then you're probably

612
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 1: getting into a question. Okay, in the field of aura reading,

613
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: are there certain color you know? I'm sure there are

614
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 1: certain colors associated with different things. There's probably a system,

615
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 1: there's a color code, and that color code might not

616
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 1: match up with the way that the synaesthesia because brain

617
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:37,240
Speaker 1: is is coding the world right exactly. That's another major

618
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: difference is that that and they talk about this in

619
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: the paper. The for people with person color synesthesia, they

620
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: generally understand their individual pairings of certain colors with certain

621
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: people to be to be ideopathic that you like, to

622
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:56,399
Speaker 1: come from their own personal associations, whereas usually people who

623
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: believe that they can read auras say that they're like,

624
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:03,359
Speaker 1: we're they're referring to some kind of like objectively external

625
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: thing that other our readers would supposedly see the same thing,

626
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 1: and it would have a specific meaning. Yeah, yeah, you

627
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: you you want to feel like you're tapping into some

628
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: sort of cosmic overarching order when you have your r

629
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: at as opposed to just like what this this guy

630
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 1: uh thinks in his head when he remembers you. Sure,

631
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:26,120
Speaker 1: but one thing I did want to say, so a

632
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 1: couple of things. First of all, I did think it

633
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,240
Speaker 1: was worth noting before relying too heavily on the study

634
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 1: I just mentioned. I did find a pretty scathing criticism

635
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: published in the same journal and Consciousness and Cognition the

636
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 1: same year by Cardenia at All that basically like, while

637
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 1: lauding the general thrust of this study, it also criticized

638
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: the authors for allegedly being sloppy with a couple of

639
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 1: things about like how they represented or presented parapsychology and

640
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 1: the ura literature. I don't know that this would necessarily

641
00:35:55,560 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: change the main findings, but but there was some criticism there,

642
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: So if you're looking to this, look up the critical

643
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 1: review as well. Um. But also I wanted to hand

644
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,240
Speaker 1: over my nothing to see here reward to the authors

645
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: on this one, because it's always nice to see a

646
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: full ride up of a hypothesis that does not pan out.

647
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:17,320
Speaker 1: But the authors in their conclusion do refer to something

648
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: else that I thought was interesting. Uh They say, Okay,

649
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like there's all that strong of a

650
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: link between the phenomenology of synesthesia and the phenomenology reported

651
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: by people who do aura readings. It looks like they're

652
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 1: reporting different kinds of experiences, so there's probably not a

653
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:35,879
Speaker 1: strong causal link. But they also say quote claims made

654
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 1: by people claiming to be psychic or aura readers can

655
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: be alternatively explained by proven science, And they refer to

656
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: a paper by Dirden from two thousand four which they say,

657
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: quote shows how phenomena which arise as a consequence of

658
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,760
Speaker 1: the normal functioning of the human visual system can explain

659
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: the purported direct experience of the aura. For instance, the

660
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: complementary color effect, which results from a temporary exhaustion of

661
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:04,000
Speaker 1: the color sensitive cells in the retina, could account for

662
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: the presence of auric colors seen by a sensitive viewer

663
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: when staring at a person. Uh. And they also say

664
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 1: staring at a darker object a human figure against a

665
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,240
Speaker 1: bright background may induce the perception of a bright halo

666
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: around the object. This is due to a contrast amplification

667
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 1: mechanism built into the human visual system which allows for

668
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 1: an efficient detection of edges. And so I thought this

669
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 1: was interesting that Okay, uh, maybe this would apply even

670
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 1: more directly to the halo or the nimbus than, uh,

671
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:39,480
Speaker 1: than than it would to the the aura perception. Because

672
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: you can imagine a certain number of optical effects, one

673
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 1: of which, of course, is is the afterimage. You know,

674
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:48,359
Speaker 1: so if you do you ever do that thing when

675
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: you're a kid, where like you look at a picture,

676
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: a certain sort of like negative image of a face

677
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,040
Speaker 1: on a page, and then they say, Okay, stare at

678
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:57,360
Speaker 1: this for twenty seconds, and then close your eyes and

679
00:37:57,400 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: turn your head up, and you'll like see a face

680
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: stare ring at you from behind your eyelids. That's a

681
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 1: natural optical effect that the afterimage effects. That has to

682
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:10,080
Speaker 1: do with with the latent uh activation of retinal cells

683
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: when you've been concentrating on an image. I think it's

684
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:15,760
Speaker 1: quite easy to see how something like that could create

685
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: optical effects that seem quite mystical in nature and could

686
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: allow you to believe you're perceiving either an aura of

687
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: color in the shape of a person or surrounding a person,

688
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: or imagining that you're seeing light emanating from a person. Yeah. Absolutely,

689
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,400
Speaker 1: I mean they're a whole host of optical of effects

690
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 1: like that oftentimes you'll see them um utilized at a

691
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: like a hands on science center. You'll you'll have a

692
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: number of them you can do where it's like stare

693
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: at this spinning thing and then look over here, or

694
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 1: you know, look at these lines and then look at

695
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: these lines and it's it's it's all really quite interesting.

696
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: I mean, so sometimes it's something you do when you're

697
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: a kid. Maybe you forget how how interesting it can be,

698
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: but you know it. It goes to show just how

699
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: how how our visual system, how it can be tricked

700
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,800
Speaker 1: into seeing things that are not quite there or enhanced

701
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,919
Speaker 1: to degrees that that you know, don't seem to line

702
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: up with our normal day to day sensory world. One

703
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 1: of my favorite things actually about our visual systems is

704
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,959
Speaker 1: that like you can prove to people through direct experience

705
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 1: that their visual perception of reality is an illusion. Now

706
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: it's not an illusion as in it's like a totally

707
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: imagined hallucination. It's obviously based on real objects and light

708
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: coming in around you, but the perception that you see

709
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: an unbroken visual field of full color all around you,

710
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:39,320
Speaker 1: it really feels like you might see that, but you don't.

711
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 1: And a couple of great examples for that you can

712
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: show people are if you hold up like colored flags

713
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: at the very periphery of somebody's vision, you can immediately

714
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 1: people immediately realize like, oh, I think I perceive color

715
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: in every direction, but I'm color blind in my peripheral vision.

716
00:39:57,200 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: That that's like to try it sometime if you never

717
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 1: have or get like different colored markers or flags or

718
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 1: something to hold him up at the very edge of

719
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: where you can see, you can't tell the difference in

720
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 1: the colors. Another one is if you ever want to

721
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: look up how to do this, there's a way where

722
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 1: you can find the blind spot caused by your optic

723
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 1: nerve as it as it routes information away from the

724
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: retina in the back of your eye. Uh. There is

725
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: a blind spot just right in the middle of your

726
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:25,920
Speaker 1: vision wherever you're looking and stuff where you can't see anything.

727
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:28,439
Speaker 1: And you can actually do experiments to bring this out,

728
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 1: but it's totally invisible to you. You can't see the

729
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 1: fact that you can't see this area. I think we uh,

730
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 1: I think we talked about something like this one time

731
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:39,360
Speaker 1: with our Scott Baker about the fact that he he

732
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 1: had like an injury to his eye or something that

733
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,840
Speaker 1: caused him to have an illusion of this kind where

734
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:47,319
Speaker 1: in fact he had a large blind spot in the

735
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: center of his vision, but it didn't register as a

736
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: blind spot as in what you might imagine like a

737
00:40:52,360 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: like a field of black or white or something where

738
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 1: there was no vision. Instead, the brain just tricked him

739
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: into thinking he had total vision. But there were places

740
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:03,399
Speaker 1: where he actually couldn't see anything, right, So he would

741
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: look at his dog and the dog would just have

742
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 1: no face, right, But still the brains saying like, no,

743
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:20,879
Speaker 1: you're seeing fine, Yeah, this is this is everything's fine. Well,

744
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: I want to go from here to talk to talk

745
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 1: about halo's um as a as a purely optical phenomenon.

746
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: So these are examples of halos that cannot not only

747
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:34,359
Speaker 1: are are visible to the naked eye, but they can

748
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 1: be they can be captured via photography and frequently are

749
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: um You know I've mentioned in the previous episode there

750
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: are at least a couple of solar and lunar optical phenomena,

751
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: you know, broad broad categories of of them that are

752
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: worth singling out. And these phenomena have been observed for

753
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 1: thousands of years. Yeah, this this is a really good point,

754
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: and we sort of alluded to this in the last episode,

755
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 1: but I just want to emphasize again that I wouldn't

756
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 1: suggest that a person needed to have of a direct

757
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: vision of light emanating from another person's body at some

758
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 1: point in order to imagine something like a halo or nimbus.

759
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 1: It could be it could be just pure imagination that

760
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: brings out this imagery, or it could well be basic

761
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: associate of thinking, mapping the properties of celestial objects or

762
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:20,800
Speaker 1: interesting optical phenomena in the skies or on the earth,

763
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: and then associating that with a person, you know, with

764
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: with godhood or transcending power, and then putting that on

765
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: the body of somebody who is feared or revered. Right,

766
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 1: And in the previous episode we mentioned some Roman and

767
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: Greek examples of of these being observed and recorded. But

768
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: I do want to drive home that, you know, the

769
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 1: sun has always been of importance to two cultures throughout

770
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 1: time and around the world. So anyone looking around looking

771
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: up at the sun or the moon, we're likely to

772
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:52,399
Speaker 1: encounter these things. We just have, you know, certain recorded

773
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: records that are that stand out, that are a little older. Um.

774
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: I was looking around and I found a paper title

775
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:03,880
Speaker 1: the Sun Recorded throughout History by M. Vasquaz from two

776
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: thousand nine, and they point to bone inscriptions from the

777
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 1: Shang dynasty in ancient China, where we where they recorded

778
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: solar phenomena. During the second millennium b C. They reported

779
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: at least four phenomena, including a dark and gloomy sun,

780
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: solar eclipses, and the solar halo, which I believe was

781
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:26,800
Speaker 1: a re un Interestingly enough, there's another one, uh that

782
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:30,239
Speaker 1: there's no translation of. Uh, So it does make me

783
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: wonder what that particular solar phenomena might have been. Oh boy,

784
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: I bet people have a lot of fun with that one. Yeah,

785
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 1: that's when the Sun turns inside out and becomes the

786
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 1: black hole Sun. I mean, I'm sure it's just another

787
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: you know, commonly uh scene occurrence, so with the with

788
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 1: the sun. But anyway, broadly speaking, a halo can occur

789
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: anytime the Sun or the moon shines through thin clouds

790
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: composed of ice crystals, and the effect can be caused

791
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 1: by one of two or a combination of refraction and

792
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: or reflection via these crystals. So the refractions are going

793
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,800
Speaker 1: to cause color separations, meaning the final results may be

794
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: colored while we're reflected, light remains uncolored. The twenty two

795
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:16,240
Speaker 1: degree halo is the most common form of this, consisting

796
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:19,560
Speaker 1: of either a series of colored arcs or even complete

797
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: circles of twenty two degree angular radius is around the

798
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 1: sun or the moon and the coloration. If there's coloration,

799
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 1: it seems to be red um on the on the

800
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: on the on the inside, and a blur on the

801
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 1: outside with the moon. These are sometimes called lunar halos

802
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: or winter halos. And I was lucky enough to see

803
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:41,879
Speaker 1: one of these the last time I was at the beach.

804
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: I was out walking on the beach at night, and

805
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: you know, looking up at the moon and everything was,

806
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:49,680
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful but normal, and then all of a sudden, Uh,

807
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:52,440
Speaker 1: there's this tremendous halo effect, which if you don't know

808
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: what you're you're looking at, it can look like a

809
00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 1: portal has opened up, like a great circular portal has

810
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 1: opened up around the moon moon between you and the moon,

811
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:06,239
Speaker 1: like there's some sort of a connection or a cylindrical

812
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:10,160
Speaker 1: highway between you, uh and the lunar surface. It's pretty

813
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Yeah. It makes me think about images and

814
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 1: the paradiso of like rings or wheels of angels running

815
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:21,560
Speaker 1: about in concentric circles around the heavenly bodies. Yeah, and

816
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: I you know again, people throughout time would have witnessed these,

817
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: and so you can you can imagine this having an

818
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: impact on our our perception of you know, the world

819
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 1: beyond and of the higher cosmos. Now, these are just

820
00:45:34,760 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 1: the most common halo effects, these twenty two degrees, but

821
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 1: there are many others, including the forty six degree halo.

822
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:44,800
Speaker 1: It's similar, but at twice the distance roughly uh, sometimes

823
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:48,359
Speaker 1: occurring in conjunction with twenty two degree halos and even

824
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 1: other optical effects. So you might encounter, say a sun

825
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 1: dog with a double halo. Now, what what are sun dogs?

826
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 1: That's a different optical phenomenon caused by the sunlight. Yeah,

827
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:03,880
Speaker 1: SunDog also known as a mock sun. This is caused

828
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:07,759
Speaker 1: by refraction of sunlight in atmospheric ice crystals. These are

829
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: generally colored patches of light to either side of the

830
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:14,359
Speaker 1: Sun at the same altitude as the Sun itself, So

831
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:17,720
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, it can look like three sons

832
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: dawning over the Earth, or at least like one major

833
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 1: son and like two sort of weirdly shaped. Many sons

834
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: out on either side, the son's two sons. Yeah, and

835
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:31,239
Speaker 1: of course this instantly brings to mind the Chinese myth

836
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 1: of the tin surplus sons that Ho Yee had to

837
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:37,280
Speaker 1: shoot down out of the sky. And I've not actually

838
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 1: seen a connection. I couldn't find a connection drawn between

839
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: those two, uh, though it wouldn't surprise me if there was.

840
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: But there does seem to be a connection in Norse

841
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:49,720
Speaker 1: mythology the two wolves hunting the sun in the moon,

842
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:55,719
Speaker 1: So these would be Finier's son's skull and Hati wror Vintonson. Um.

843
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I got that second one wolf's

844
00:46:57,719 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 1: name right, so um, cosmic wolves, go easy on me.

845
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 1: But but there there there's obviously an eclipse connection as

846
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 1: well here because these are supposed to be um like

847
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:10,399
Speaker 1: sun and moon consumers. But but I I did run

848
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: across direct connections between the sun dogs that are sometimes

849
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: seen to either side of the Sun and these these

850
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: supernatural beasts. Well, coming back to the version of the

851
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 1: halo that is either a ring around the head or

852
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 1: an emanation of light as if from behind the head.

853
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, if you have never witnessed a solar

854
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:35,800
Speaker 1: eclipse before, and seeing the corona of the sun around

855
00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:39,279
Speaker 1: the moon. I mean that that is a probably the

856
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:43,759
Speaker 1: most awe inspiring physical real thing I've I've ever witnessed

857
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 1: like it. Well, it is a life changing thing to

858
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: see with your eyes. And but be very careful of

859
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 1: your eyes when when observing one. Oh yeah, and that

860
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:56,319
Speaker 1: that will come back to that in a second. Uh So,

861
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: their whole host of rare optical effects related to these

862
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 1: exam peoples I've shared that produced various halos, and and

863
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,360
Speaker 1: these have again been observed throughout time and and depicted

864
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: in art two of the earlier Western examples of their

865
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:11,280
Speaker 1: recording are off cited are often Aristotle's writings on them,

866
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 1: as well as the fifteen thirty five sun Dog painting,

867
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:17,240
Speaker 1: often held up as the oldest example of a clear

868
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 1: atmospheric halo in art Um too to quote Aristotle, though

869
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: in Meteorology from three BC this is the Webster translation quote.

870
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: The halo often appears as a complete circle. It is

871
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: seen around the sun and the moon and bright stars

872
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: by night as well as by day and at midday

873
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: or even in the afternoon, more rarely about sunrise or sunset. Now,

874
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,320
Speaker 1: it's obvious that seeing things like this in the sky

875
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:45,799
Speaker 1: can be awe inspiring. But is there reason to suspect

876
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: connections naturally in history between seeing things like this and

877
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: religious concepts. Yeah, absolutely it seems to be the case.

878
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 1: And I think one of the best examples of this

879
00:48:56,560 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 1: is to to look at the Miracle of the Sun

880
00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:03,040
Speaker 1: or the Miracle of Fatima on October thirteenth, nineteen seventeen

881
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:06,879
Speaker 1: and Fatima, Portugal. Um A number if you've probably run

882
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 1: across this before you read an article about it. Uh.

883
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:14,360
Speaker 1: It involved a variety of reports of colored lights in

884
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:17,799
Speaker 1: the daytime sky, of a dancing sun that seemed to

885
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: move around in the sky, and even angelic apparitions. Uh.

886
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: And and there are various interpretations of this, none of

887
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:27,799
Speaker 1: which are you know, can be held up as the

888
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 1: definitive answers. Some have pointed to the possibility of mass

889
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: hallucination or mass hysteria. Um, you know, you would have

890
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:36,320
Speaker 1: been dealing with a you know, a pretty religious bunch

891
00:49:36,560 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: observing this, And in some cases you're dealing with the

892
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 1: observations and um, you know, in recollections of children. But

893
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: it does sound increasingly likely that it's more a matter

894
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:49,080
Speaker 1: of their having been first of all, a variety of

895
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:52,719
Speaker 1: alleged reports, you know, different stories people seeing different things

896
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 1: in the sky and some seeing nothing at all out

897
00:49:55,239 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. So it's not like everybody looked up

898
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: and saw something interesting. Some people looked up and didn't

899
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 1: see what anybody was talking about. But it's the most outrageous,

900
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: the most extreme accounts. They're the ones that survive and

901
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,360
Speaker 1: then evolve in retellings and in recordings. So again, skeptics

902
00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: OFVVOR a host of possible explanations for this particular incident,

903
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:19,399
Speaker 1: but it's um. It has been proposed that the whole

904
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: thing might have started with some manner of a halo

905
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:25,920
Speaker 1: or sun dog sighting, or some sort of unique combination

906
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:28,840
Speaker 1: of these, you know, like the sun dogs with a

907
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: couple of halos around the sun. And then here's the thing.

908
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: As various folks start staring at the sun in all

909
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:37,880
Speaker 1: of these phenomena, or trying to see what the person

910
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:41,359
Speaker 1: next to them is is looking at, they end up

911
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: staring at the sun too long and the experience temporary

912
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: retinal distortion due to prolonged solar staring. Don't stare at

913
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:51,440
Speaker 1: the sun, folks, Yeah, I mean, remember when we had

914
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:53,840
Speaker 1: that solar eclipse in the last few years, you know,

915
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:55,840
Speaker 1: that was were everybody had to drive that home, Like,

916
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 1: even though the sun is doing something really interesting or

917
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:01,360
Speaker 1: and it is even being you know, is even darkening,

918
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: do not stare ahead because you can you can seriously

919
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:07,840
Speaker 1: damage your eyes and in the short term, Yeah, you

920
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:11,719
Speaker 1: could experience temporary retinal distortion, which could have just just

921
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:15,279
Speaker 1: add to these interpretations of like crazy things going on

922
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: in the sky. Well, if you pair this with what

923
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:20,320
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier about the possible like the known

924
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: effects of vision and optical effects within the eye and

925
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 1: within the brain that are caused by say staring for

926
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 1: a long time at a bright light source, like you

927
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:32,239
Speaker 1: could get effects that wouldn't even necessarily have to be

928
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: something in the sky, but would also not just be

929
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:38,800
Speaker 1: people using their imaginations. They'd be real perceptions for the people,

930
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 1: but they could be based on things like retinal effects

931
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: afterimage things, or or over perceiving the edges of of

932
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:50,319
Speaker 1: outlines due to intense strain on the eyes. Yeah. And

933
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 1: then once something like this is observed and thought about,

934
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:55,680
Speaker 1: and then once you've had a chance to ask other

935
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:57,920
Speaker 1: people about it, then you can often turn to pre

936
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:01,920
Speaker 1: existing scripts to explain what that might have been, such as, uh,

937
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: you know, angelic beings such as aliens in an unidentified

938
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 1: flying objects, that sort of thing. I just thought of

939
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 1: a really great opening for a movie. Okay, So it's

940
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:15,959
Speaker 1: it's Fatima Portugal. Everybody's staring at the sun. They think

941
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 1: they see angelic beings or a vision of the Virgin

942
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: Mary or something like that, apparitions in the sky and uh,

943
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: and then it slowly resolves and it's coming in, and

944
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: it's coming in and what is it? And it's the

945
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:32,879
Speaker 1: predators drop ship and and this is Predator Portugal, and

946
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: so all of the yacht hop out and they begin

947
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:41,200
Speaker 1: they begin their hunt. Is that in bad taste enough

948
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 1: to be a Predator movie? Uh? Maybe, I just don't

949
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:45,799
Speaker 1: know that they'd get a lot of good sport. Like,

950
00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:48,839
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're they're drawn to the really rough

951
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: parts of the world, right. Oh, I guess there's not

952
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:53,959
Speaker 1: enough conflict here. There's gotta be like a war going

953
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,920
Speaker 1: on or something. Yeah, like futuristic l A And what

954
00:52:57,640 --> 00:52:59,479
Speaker 1: was that one I'm supposed to take place for Danny

955
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:04,560
Speaker 1: Glover one? Yeah? Yeah, what if they arrived the predators

956
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 1: were to arrive and they're like, okay, we have detected

957
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:08,319
Speaker 1: there's a lot of conflict right now. And then they

958
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:10,719
Speaker 1: get to their location and then they find out all

959
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:14,040
Speaker 1: the conflict is online, like in social media streams, and

960
00:53:14,040 --> 00:53:16,400
Speaker 1: they're like, we brought all these weapons, and now we

961
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:18,240
Speaker 1: just have to get we have to get Twitter accounts

962
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:21,359
Speaker 1: instead and learn English. Oh no, no no. So they

963
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:23,719
Speaker 1: show up because they're like, okay, the heat signatures we've

964
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:25,680
Speaker 1: detected on this place in the surface of the earth

965
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 1: indicate ongoing thermonuclear warfare. But then when they arrive it's

966
00:53:29,719 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: just a bitcoin mining facility. Ah. They're like, well, we

967
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: gotta go all in on bitcoin now. I guess we

968
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: can travel it all the way here. But then they

969
00:53:38,440 --> 00:53:42,000
Speaker 1: get to launch the new predator cryptocurrency, right assuming there's

970
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:46,480
Speaker 1: not already one. I'm sure there's already one. Is that there?

971
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: There's probably there's already like a Garfield cryptocurrency, isn't there? Um?

972
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 1: And I don't know, but I would not that they

973
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:58,759
Speaker 1: could be. I wouldn't. I wouldn't put money against you coin. Well,

974
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:01,640
Speaker 1: I guess we'll closest one out right here. But you know,

975
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep going with this um, this line of

976
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:09,520
Speaker 1: thinking though this idea of optical effects that then get

977
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: interpreted in various ways. Unless plans change, I think the

978
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 1: next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind will continue

979
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:19,360
Speaker 1: on a similar topic. Yeah, I'm very excited about that.

980
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:21,720
Speaker 1: We're gonna be sort of moving on from Halo's mostly

981
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:23,840
Speaker 1: I don't know, it might come back up, but but

982
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah,

983
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 1: all right. Well, in the meantime, if you want to

984
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:31,919
Speaker 1: catch up on episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

985
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:33,399
Speaker 1: you know where to find them. They're in the Stuff

986
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:35,880
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind fee. These are our core episodes,

987
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:38,640
Speaker 1: you know, mostly science and culture and so forth. They

988
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 1: published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we throw out

989
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 1: our short form artifact episodes. On Monday's you got your

990
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:48,400
Speaker 1: listener mail, And on Friday, uh, you know, we we

991
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: leave the most of the science up on the shelf

992
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:53,200
Speaker 1: and we take a little time to discuss a weird

993
00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:57,839
Speaker 1: movie with our Weird House Cinema episodes. So yeah, again,

994
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you find that podcast stream,

995
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:03,319
Speaker 1: just rate, review and subscribe. You know, if you have

996
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 1: the ability to do those things, that helps us out

997
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,399
Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

998
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:11,879
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

999
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

1000
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,

1001
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:19,399
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1002
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1003
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My

1004
00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:35,239
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1005
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.