Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And you know, we just came off of doing a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes about the artistic convention of the halo
Speaker 1: and how that comes through in in various different religious concepts,
Speaker 1: and how it might be related to optical phenomena that
Speaker 1: are sometimes observed in the sky, like like solar halos
Speaker 1: or sun dogs, and jumping off of that, we wanted
Speaker 1: to hop over to explore another theme today that the
Speaker 1: sort of in the same wheelhouse, not quite halos, but
Speaker 1: an optical phenomenon that has some connection to legendary accounts
Speaker 1: and myths. And so I thought a great place to
Speaker 1: start today to get us in the mood would be
Speaker 1: a reading from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by
Speaker 1: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Now, I think this is going to
Speaker 1: be probably what would you guess, Rob, like the seventh
Speaker 1: time we've quoted this poem on the show, always introducing
Speaker 1: a different type of subject matter. It seems to go
Speaker 1: off in a lot of great directions. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a long work, and it it has
Speaker 1: a lot of cool things happening in It has a
Speaker 1: great story and just an infectious cadence. You know, it
Speaker 1: just gets gets into your brain. Right. So in this poem,
Speaker 1: the narrator here, I guess this is a narration within
Speaker 1: a narration. So this guy gets accosted by an ancient
Speaker 1: gray beard. He says, like, unhand me, gray beard loon.
Speaker 1: But then the gray beard loon starts telling his story,
Speaker 1: and and his story is of course one of terror
Speaker 1: and tragedy in the high seas. He he tells that
Speaker 1: he was once out on a ship and I think
Speaker 1: they've been sailing around in the south seas and uh,
Speaker 1: he somehow brings a curse upon his ship and its
Speaker 1: crew by shooting an albatross out of the sky with
Speaker 1: an arrow. And after this, their ship falls into unnatural
Speaker 1: duld RUMs in the equatorial regions. There are no winds
Speaker 1: for it to sail, so it's just sitting there in
Speaker 1: the water, and and the mariner and the rest of
Speaker 1: the crew are dying of thirst without fresh water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's one thing that I guess worth noting about this.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been talking about the ships at sea
Speaker 1: in these days and superstition among the um among the
Speaker 1: crew is that on one hand, absolutely the best science
Speaker 1: and navigation of the day was utilized to get where
Speaker 1: you're going and to survive on the open seas. But
Speaker 1: the crew was often held together by by also this
Speaker 1: this tenuous web of superstitions, and you read about some
Speaker 1: of them, and at times it seems like it would
Speaker 1: not take much to shift things into the realm of
Speaker 1: of of you know, dire omens. Well sailing vessels really
Speaker 1: are at the at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot you can do to design
Speaker 1: a ship well and work hard to you know, do
Speaker 1: everything you can to get where you're going, but you're
Speaker 1: still at the mercy of the seas and the weather,
Speaker 1: and that can make it feel very much like you
Speaker 1: are a sinner in the hands of an angry god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: saying beneath this uncertain sky and uh a top this
Speaker 1: just dark, unfathomable ocean. Right, So, in the context of
Speaker 1: the part of the poem we're about to read, so
Speaker 1: the curse has already come upon them. They're out there diet.
Speaker 1: You know, you get to the part about water, water everywhere,
Speaker 1: and not a drop to drink. They're all parched and thirsty,
Speaker 1: and the boat is just floating around in the dull drums.
Speaker 1: And then the mariners see something horrible. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read this first bit here, and then rob. I. I
Speaker 1: don't think I can do a sailor voice, but I
Speaker 1: hope you can do the sailor voice for your part.
Speaker 1: I'll try, Okay, So the mariner says, there past a
Speaker 1: weary time. Each throat was parched and glazed, each eye
Speaker 1: a weary time, A weary time, how glazed each weary eye?
Speaker 1: When looking westward, I beheld something in the sky. At
Speaker 1: first it seemed a little speck, and then it seemed
Speaker 1: a missed. It moved and moved, and took at last
Speaker 1: a certain shape. I whist A speck, a mist shape.
Speaker 1: I whisked, And still it neared and neared, as if
Speaker 1: it dodged a water sprite. It plunged and tacked and veered,
Speaker 1: with throats unslaked, with black lips baked. We could not
Speaker 1: laugh nor wail through utter drought. All dumb we stood.
Speaker 1: I bit my arm, I sucked the blood and cried
Speaker 1: a sail a sail. The western wave was all aflame,
Speaker 1: The day was well nigh done. Almost upon the western
Speaker 1: wave rested the broad bright sun. When that strange shape
Speaker 1: stove suddenly betwixt us and the sun, and straight the
Speaker 1: sun was flecked with bars. Heaven's mother send us grace,
Speaker 1: as if through a dungeon grade. He peered with broad
Speaker 1: and burning face. Alas thought I and my heart beat loud.
Speaker 1: How fast she nears and nears? Are those her sails
Speaker 1: that glance in the sun like restless Gossimir's rob I
Speaker 1: give that four urs? Why thank you? Uh so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he sees something approaching. They see a weird spectral
Speaker 1: type of ship coming close. And when this phantom ship
Speaker 1: gets up close to them, they see the figures of
Speaker 1: death and life in death I think represented as like
Speaker 1: a skeleton and then like a pale naked body casting
Speaker 1: lots to claim the fate of the sailors. That's creepy stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also a great couple's halloween cost him to keep in mind, right,
Speaker 1: death and life and death I call life and death.
Speaker 1: Uh So these passages from the rhyme of the ancient mariner.
Speaker 1: Uh It's not known for sure, but they may well
Speaker 1: have been influenced by the legend of the Flying Dutchman,
Speaker 1: a set of related folk tales shared by the seafaring
Speaker 1: people of Europe at least as far back as the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, probably earlier. And usually the way this legend
Speaker 1: goes is that there is some kind of spectral ship,
Speaker 1: a ghost vessel. It's a doomed to sail the globe
Speaker 1: in a terrible limbo, forever circling the seas and never
Speaker 1: allowed to come into port. Often it's regarded as an
Speaker 1: omen of disaster. If a sailor sees the flying Dutchman,
Speaker 1: he knows he's going to die in a shipwreck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is one of the big ones, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, things like killing I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly killing an albatross clearly can be a
Speaker 1: big deal, you know, not touching the horseshoe nailed to
Speaker 1: the mast, you know, things like that. But to see
Speaker 1: the flying Dutchman like all is lost. In some versions,
Speaker 1: even worse than seeing it is that sometimes the ship
Speaker 1: will come up next to you and the doomed crew
Speaker 1: will try to hand off letters for you to give
Speaker 1: to their loved ones. Because you know, they can't call
Speaker 1: the port to send the letters themselves, and you are
Speaker 1: not supposed to accept these letters. You you say, sorry,
Speaker 1: I I can't. I can't do it. Oh man, that's
Speaker 1: so creepy that that totally holds up. Now, there are
Speaker 1: a number of popular story is explaining the origin of
Speaker 1: the flying Dutchman. I think the belief itself goes back
Speaker 1: farther than any of these, like written versions of the stories.
Speaker 1: But in one version, there's a captain named Vanderdecken or
Speaker 1: sometimes just the Dutchman, who's on a sea voyage home
Speaker 1: from Batavia, which is in present day Indonesia around the
Speaker 1: area of Jakarta, but at the time would have been
Speaker 1: in the Duchyst Indies. And he's traveling from Batavia trying
Speaker 1: to go back around the southern tip of Africa to
Speaker 1: a place called Table Bay, and so he's trying to
Speaker 1: round the Cape of Good Hope, but his ship falls
Speaker 1: under a terrible squall, and in defiance of God, he
Speaker 1: swears a brazen oath that he will round the Cape
Speaker 1: of Good Hope despite the storm, even if it takes
Speaker 1: him until Armageddon to do it. And as this oath
Speaker 1: leaves his lips. The ship sinks, but before it does,
Speaker 1: the devil hears Vanderdecken's promise and he holds him to it,
Speaker 1: and this turns the Dutchman and the ghost of his
Speaker 1: vessel into a kind of wraith of the seas, and
Speaker 1: they sail forever between life and death without rest until
Speaker 1: he can reach his destination. Uh. This version is the
Speaker 1: subject of an opera by Wagner, and I think in
Speaker 1: that version actually can go to land once every seven
Speaker 1: years so that he can try to find the true
Speaker 1: love that will break the curse, presumably stop at White
Speaker 1: Castle or something that this sounds this sounds like a
Speaker 1: great setup for like a modern horror film, or maybe
Speaker 1: not a morrow of modern one, but at least like
Speaker 1: a nineteen seventies film, you know, or like it could
Speaker 1: have been a hammer horror film. You could have a
Speaker 1: Vanderdecken as your sort of Dracula s ghostly sailor chap
Speaker 1: that has come on shore to seduce a hapless woman
Speaker 1: that that has no idea that this attractive man is
Speaker 1: actually the captain of a damn ship. Oh. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a great sort of variation on Dracula, right, The
Speaker 1: more seductive versions of Dracula where where you know he
Speaker 1: he falls in love with a woman and he's like,
Speaker 1: you can be with me, you can we can live forever,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't realize that that involves being damned along
Speaker 1: with him. Should have been Christopher Lee, Yeah, he would have.
Speaker 1: He would have. He would have made a good vanderdeck
Speaker 1: and for sure, but the story that this version of
Speaker 1: the story was I think very strong around the area
Speaker 1: of the South Seas and the southern tip of Africa.
Speaker 1: But there's another common version that takes place in the
Speaker 1: North Sea, and this is a captain named Hair von
Speaker 1: Falconberg who sails without rest around the North Sea while
Speaker 1: playing dice with Satan for the possession of his soul.
Speaker 1: And the part about playing dice with the devil for
Speaker 1: for his soul that recalls very much what happens in
Speaker 1: the rhyme of the ancient mariner right after the part
Speaker 1: we read because remember death and life and death or
Speaker 1: gambling for the souls of the crew. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of other variations on this story with
Speaker 1: a good deal of elasticity. It is not known for
Speaker 1: sure exactly where the legend comes from. Originally. I think
Speaker 1: I've read some speculation that it could have to do
Speaker 1: with the Norse legend about a sailor who encounters a
Speaker 1: kind of damned limbo fate, but records of this story
Speaker 1: go at least as far back as the late seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I found one early reference to it from the memoirs
Speaker 1: of a Scottish man named John McDonald who lived seventeen
Speaker 1: forty one to seventeen ninety six, and in writing about
Speaker 1: one of his sea voyages, he writes, quote, the weather
Speaker 1: was so stormy that the sailors said they saw the
Speaker 1: flying Dutchman. The common story is that this Dutchman came
Speaker 1: to the cape in distress of weather and wanted to
Speaker 1: get into harbor, but could not get a pilot to
Speaker 1: conduct her and was lost, and that ever since, in
Speaker 1: very bad weather her vision appears. Now in some versions
Speaker 1: of the story, I think the ship is even more spectral,
Speaker 1: even more of just a clear apparition, something that is
Speaker 1: on the horizon and with a kind of like ghostly silhouette,
Speaker 1: or even appears over the horizon. I think it's not
Speaker 1: exactly clear in the version of the Rhyme of the
Speaker 1: Ancient Mariner whether the ship is said to be approaching
Speaker 1: on the water, or when they first see it it's
Speaker 1: above the water. He he does say that he looked
Speaker 1: and he beheld something in the sky that it first
Speaker 1: looked like it looks like a speck, and then later
Speaker 1: he realizes it's a ship coming toward them. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I guess there are a couple of ways you could
Speaker 1: read that. I know, I've always read that as he
Speaker 1: originally saw the ship flying in the sky. I guess
Speaker 1: you could also read it as they see the ship
Speaker 1: on the water and what he's seeing is the sails
Speaker 1: poking up over the horizon and the sky. But either way,
Speaker 1: I think there are some versions where there's a kind
Speaker 1: of ghost ship that isn't necessarily even confined to the
Speaker 1: water like it flies. Yeah. Yeah, that a true flying
Speaker 1: flying Dutchman. Yeah. And of course this is gonna lead
Speaker 1: us into what we're really talking about here today, a
Speaker 1: very particular type of of optical phenomena, uh that may
Speaker 1: be responsible at least in part for legends like this,
Speaker 1: though of course is always worth remembering that you know,
Speaker 1: anything like this, like the flying Dutchman, for example, in
Speaker 1: all likelihood, we're dealing with a story that has multiple
Speaker 1: converging origins to what extent they are based on things
Speaker 1: that people really saw. They were likely different things, you know,
Speaker 1: like somebody staring into a dark night on a ship,
Speaker 1: somebody seeing an optical phenomenon on the horizon, or somebody
Speaker 1: you know, looking into the chaos of a storm and
Speaker 1: momentarily making out some shape in the flash of lightning. Right,
Speaker 1: But there are some well known optical phenomenon that fit
Speaker 1: with some of these accounts so closely that you have
Speaker 1: to assume at least some of these accounts probably are
Speaker 1: based on the thing we're gonna be talking about today,
Speaker 1: which is known as the Superior Mirage or a variation
Speaker 1: of Superior Mirrage known as the Fatim Morgana. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the one thing that will tie into this before we
Speaker 1: explain the Superior Mirage and the Fatim Organa. Something I
Speaker 1: noticed that was kind of interesting about the Flying Dutchman accounts.
Speaker 1: A lot of these accounts seemed concentrated towards the polar
Speaker 1: regions rather than the equatorial ones. The go ship usually
Speaker 1: seems to be sailing either the North Seas or the
Speaker 1: South Seas more so than anywhere in between. Yeah, quite interesting,
Speaker 1: So keep keep that in mind as we proceed here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, basically from here we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: mirage itself and mirages in general, but then we'll get
Speaker 1: back into some more examples of various folk tales and
Speaker 1: myths that seem to be or perhaps are inspired by
Speaker 1: Fatmorgana sightings. So let's start by talking about the mirage itself.
Speaker 1: A mirage in general is an optical effect that is
Speaker 1: sometimes seen at sea or in the desert or over
Speaker 1: hot pavement, and in some cases these may take on
Speaker 1: the appearance of, say a pool of water or a
Speaker 1: mirror surface, and this can cause distant objects to appear inverted. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear on the language here, you do find
Speaker 1: the word mirage sometimes used interchangeably with the notion all
Speaker 1: an illusion, right, and the louse is something that you're
Speaker 1: seeing but is not there. So in common language it's
Speaker 1: sometimes conflated with even like the idea of a hallucination.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody's just seeing something like it's real in
Speaker 1: their perception, but there is not an external reality to it.
Speaker 1: And that's not the case with the technical meaning of
Speaker 1: a mirage, right, and I feel like this is also uh,
Speaker 1: this is also complicated because a lot of us grew
Speaker 1: up watching, especially cartoons that would occasionally have a mirage scene,
Speaker 1: and those would be a bit confusing because a lot
Speaker 1: of times I feel like they would play it up
Speaker 1: like just something magical that you're you only saw because
Speaker 1: you were you were thirsty and dying and you were
Speaker 1: also a cartoon dog. Right. Well, in cartoons, I feel
Speaker 1: like the mirage is always shown in the desert rather
Speaker 1: than say, over an ice sheet or on the seas.
Speaker 1: Uh and and that over the desert you were probably
Speaker 1: looking at a particular type of mirage, the inferior mirage.
Speaker 1: Will get into more of the distinctions there in just
Speaker 1: a minute. But yeah, in the cartoons, it's always like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that you know, Daffy Duck is seeing
Speaker 1: a mirage in the desert, and it's like an ice
Speaker 1: cream stand or something some variation of the oasis in
Speaker 1: the desert. Yet, right, it's something very specific that gives
Speaker 1: the suggestion that you're seeing like a complicated, detailed hallucination. Right,
Speaker 1: But in reality, the sort of mirage, the specific mirrage
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here, this is an optical effect
Speaker 1: that is visible to all, Like if there is a mirage.
Speaker 1: If you're in a party of say, you know, five
Speaker 1: people in the desert or on a ship wherever, if
Speaker 1: you see a mirage in the distance, everyone with you,
Speaker 1: you know, assuming they have the same site capacity that
Speaker 1: you have, they will be able to see the mirage
Speaker 1: as well, and assuming they're looking from the same place also,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, you gotta have the same vantage point
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, but you know, now that's not also
Speaker 1: not to say that you know, this could not be
Speaker 1: further distorted by the individual, either visually or in memory.
Speaker 1: But it is a thing that you could and be
Speaker 1: people can and do capture photographically or on you know,
Speaker 1: or with a like a video camera. So is it
Speaker 1: is not something you're seeing that isn't there. It is
Speaker 1: an actual optical phenomena, right, Uh. You you are seeing
Speaker 1: something that is really light coming into your eyes looking
Speaker 1: that way. It's not in your head though, what you're
Speaker 1: seeing is very distorted, so you're probably wandering. Okay, mirage.
Speaker 1: How does the mirage happen? It's you know, not caused
Speaker 1: by you know, um, you know, weird spirits in the
Speaker 1: you know, in the desert or on the seas well.
Speaker 1: Mirages in general occur when light passes through air of
Speaker 1: differing temperatures and the light is reflected or refracted a
Speaker 1: ka bent. And there are two types of mirages. We
Speaker 1: can divide them up generally into inferior mirages and superior mirages.
Speaker 1: This is not about their quality. It's not like you know,
Speaker 1: discount mirages and bespoke mirrages. It has to do with
Speaker 1: where they fall in relation to the horizon. Right. So
Speaker 1: the inferior mirrage is the kind that is being lampooned
Speaker 1: in the cartoons where a character isn't you know, Daffy
Speaker 1: Ducks in the death sert and he thinks he sees
Speaker 1: an oasis. This is a very real thing that people
Speaker 1: often experience in desert climates. And this is the inferior mirage. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the inferior mirage again is your stereotypical oasis mirage.
Speaker 1: It looks like a pool of blue water sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: appears when you also look out across the desert or
Speaker 1: down a highway. You've probably seen one of these on
Speaker 1: your own drives or in movies, especially in movies that
Speaker 1: have a desert highway. This is this is like cat
Speaker 1: Net two directors, they they got to have it you know,
Speaker 1: so they'll they'll get a little bit of that mirage
Speaker 1: in their in their shot. Right. And it's not only
Speaker 1: because the desert is hot and you're thirsty that it
Speaker 1: looks like there's water on the desert. There is a
Speaker 1: specific climate related reason that you're likely to see a
Speaker 1: mirage in the desert that looks like a pool of water. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These occur when a dense layer of cold air sits
Speaker 1: on or above line of sight with a layer of
Speaker 1: less dense, warmer air below line of sight. Now, um,
Speaker 1: an example to to pull from here is consider the
Speaker 1: desert highway. Okay, the unbeats down, heats the asphalt, and
Speaker 1: the hot asphalt heats up the bottom portion of the air.
Speaker 1: Rays of light from above are refracted when they hit
Speaker 1: that refracted toward your eyes, resulting in the mirage. So
Speaker 1: the light of the blue sky above is bent back
Speaker 1: towards you from below the horizon, and thus you have this,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like a pool of water, but
Speaker 1: essentially like what seems like a pool of sky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're essentially seeing the blue light of the sky that
Speaker 1: is refracted as it changes from the cooler air above
Speaker 1: to this pocket of warmer air below, and it bends
Speaker 1: down and makes it look like part of the sky
Speaker 1: is just sitting on the ground. And when you see that,
Speaker 1: that blue sky looks a lot like water. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: the superior mirage works the opposite way. Warm air sits
Speaker 1: above line of side, cool layer beneath it, light bends down.
Speaker 1: The light is not traveling straight at us, but our
Speaker 1: visual process assumes that it is, so it makes appear
Speaker 1: as if it is. Uh, it is above its actual positions,
Speaker 1: such as above the horizon, hanging in the sky, and so.
Speaker 1: Of course, in some cases this can cause objects that
Speaker 1: are actually past where you can see on the horizon,
Speaker 1: so they're you know, beyond the curve of the earth
Speaker 1: from your vision, to appear as if they are popping
Speaker 1: up over the horizon. Yeah. They can make something that's
Speaker 1: that's actually just beyond the optical horizons, such as mountain tops,
Speaker 1: appear ahead of schedule. You can imagine how this would
Speaker 1: play into some of your expectations whilst whilst out on
Speaker 1: the open seas. Uh. It can also make objects appear
Speaker 1: closer or further away, larger or smaller than they actually are. Um,
Speaker 1: it's quite interesting. Uh. And and and for another example
Speaker 1: of this. Apparently, the most common example of a superior mirage,
Speaker 1: according to Christine Plam in two thousand eight speaking to
Speaker 1: Robert Siegel of NPR, is a sunrise or a sunset. Quote,
Speaker 1: the same phenomenon occurs to the sun every day and
Speaker 1: makes it appear to be above the horizon when it's
Speaker 1: actually slightly below it. Oh, I think I've read that
Speaker 1: this is even more common, like in polar regions. This
Speaker 1: might be related to what's known as the Novaya Zimilea effect.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's of course. The thing with the
Speaker 1: sunrise and sunset is since it happens every day, and
Speaker 1: and you know, generally it's the kind of thing you
Speaker 1: see every day, it doesn't seem out of place. But
Speaker 1: where we get into these, you know, remarkable stories and
Speaker 1: legends arising from from sightings of of superior mirages, it's
Speaker 1: because they occur. They don't occur every day. It's something
Speaker 1: you would see maybe some frequency, depending on what part
Speaker 1: of the world and what the exactive environmental settings happen
Speaker 1: to be. But they have more mystery to them. They're
Speaker 1: not part of just the everyday movements of the sun
Speaker 1: or everyday atmospheric behavior. Yeah, the conditions have to be right,
Speaker 1: So superior mirages they require there to be a certain
Speaker 1: kind of pocket of warmer air sitting above a pocket
Speaker 1: of cooler air, which is not normally how the sphere works. Right,
Speaker 1: Usually the air up higher is going to be cooler,
Speaker 1: even though heat rises. Usually it's just farther away from
Speaker 1: the Earth and it's going to be cooler. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're completely lost at this point, which I will, I
Speaker 1: will forgive you for for being so um, I will
Speaker 1: say a couple of resources you can turn to how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com has an article about mirages, but
Speaker 1: also the University of British Columbia's Department of Earth, Ocean
Speaker 1: and Atmospheric Sciences. They have a great page that I
Speaker 1: was looking at earlier with very helpful illustrations. Included one
Speaker 1: of these for you to see here, Joe. But uh,
Speaker 1: just very well presented information about like light bending downward,
Speaker 1: that's your superior mirrage, light bending upward, that's your inferior mirage.
Speaker 1: Thank thank now. The superior mirrage can actually get even
Speaker 1: more complicated than just making something appear above where it
Speaker 1: actually is because of the bending of light through these
Speaker 1: pockets of air when there are very specific conditions. I
Speaker 1: think this is something that's usually called atmospheric ducting, like
Speaker 1: when a certain kind of duct or column of atmospheric
Speaker 1: conditions in different temperature gradients in the atmospheric gases are created.
Speaker 1: This can lead to what's known as fatim morgana. Right,
Speaker 1: These occur when there are several layers of warm and
Speaker 1: cold air that cause what is actually a combination of
Speaker 1: superior and inferior images. The uneven inversion causes the light
Speaker 1: to refract and ultimately bizarre ways, so you can wind
Speaker 1: up with multiple segmented reflections in there. So, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's here that we get into the you know, the
Speaker 1: confusing images that may be interpreted as floating walls or
Speaker 1: castles in the sky, or gigantic ships that are flying
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere above the horizon, that sort of thing. Now,
Speaker 1: you might wonder where the name Fati Morgana actually comes from,
Speaker 1: like why would an optical effect have a name like this?
Speaker 1: The name fatim Morgana actually comes from the character from
Speaker 1: our Thurian legend, usually known by her French name Morgan
Speaker 1: la Fee. In English, of course, Morgan la Fay is
Speaker 1: Morgan the Fairy. Though. When I was writing about this,
Speaker 1: for some reason, I kept thinking back to our episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention where we were talking about Alice gy Blush
Speaker 1: and her first film, The Cabbage Fairy La Faye Shoe.
Speaker 1: So I kept thinking about Morgan the Cabbage Fairy. But
Speaker 1: she she is not merely a cabbage fairy. She is
Speaker 1: a fairy, sometimes a fairy of of helpfulness and and medicine,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a fairy of lies and destruction. It always
Speaker 1: makes me think of the wonderful film ex Caliber, where
Speaker 1: Helen Mirren plays MORGANA Do you remember seen it? Oh?
Speaker 1: It's pretty great, has a very shiny armor, a great
Speaker 1: cast John Borman picture. He's got Nisan's in it. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is John Boorman. Did he do it before or
Speaker 1: after Deliverance? That's a strange eight one. So okay, I
Speaker 1: can't remember when Deliverance came out. It was seventies film, right,
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, well, maybe i'll check that one
Speaker 1: out soon. Yeah, Deliverance was seventy two. Okay, Well, so
Speaker 1: Morgan suddenly I'm imagining Burt Reynolds as King Arthur. But
Speaker 1: Morgan la Faye is a character that exists in multiple
Speaker 1: stages throughout the evolution of the Arthurian legendary corpus uh As.
Speaker 1: You probably know that there are lots of different types
Speaker 1: of stories of Arthur, and the character of Arthur and
Speaker 1: the stories about him and all the characters around him.
Speaker 1: They change a lot over the centuries. As this story,
Speaker 1: uh As, the story is retold and retold, and so
Speaker 1: she is usually some kind of sorceress or witch or fairy.
Speaker 1: In earlier sources, it seems she's more often a sympathetic character,
Speaker 1: a kind of helper or a healer, sometimes a sister
Speaker 1: or half sister of King Arthur. In later stories she's
Speaker 1: presented as more morally ambiguous or even the vindictive and
Speaker 1: deceitful villainous of the plot, as in the fifteenth century
Speaker 1: Lamorte d'artour and by that one was by Thomas Mallory,
Speaker 1: Sir Thomas Mallory, uh and that one is the source
Speaker 1: of a lot of the Arthurian stories that people know.
Speaker 1: But La fata Morgana is just the Italian for Morgan
Speaker 1: le fay or Morgan the fairy. But you still might
Speaker 1: be wondering, wait a minute, why is this type of
Speaker 1: complex superior mirage associated with a fairy or sorceress from
Speaker 1: Arthurian literature. Well, remember that fairies are tricksters first of all,
Speaker 1: and Morgan la Fay in these later tellings of the
Speaker 1: arthur Saga, is known for her deceptions. But the connection
Speaker 1: appears to run even deeper than that. So I was
Speaker 1: reading about this in a article for Wired by Matt
Speaker 1: Simon that is in part, I think, a review of
Speaker 1: a book by Marina Warner called Phantasmagoria, published in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight from Oxford University Press. And Matt Simon is
Speaker 1: writing up a section from this book that is about
Speaker 1: the discovery of the Fati Morgana, or at least an
Speaker 1: early documentation of the Fati Morgana with a with a
Speaker 1: sign tific point of view. So he tells the story
Speaker 1: of a Jesuit priest named Father Domenico Giardina, who lived
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century on the island of Sicily. And
Speaker 1: so I'm about to describe some visions. I think there's
Speaker 1: some confusion about whether Giardina saw these visions himself or
Speaker 1: whether he was describing the visions of another person. But
Speaker 1: either way, one day in the sixteen forties, somebody. Maybe
Speaker 1: Jardina was gazing out across the Strait of Messina, which
Speaker 1: is the stretch of ocean between Sicily and mainland Italy.
Speaker 1: And according to Jardina's writings, uh, what was seen here
Speaker 1: was quote a city all floating in the air and
Speaker 1: so measureless and so splendid, so adorned with magnificent buildings,
Speaker 1: all of which was found on a base of a
Speaker 1: luminous crystal. So okay, that's impressive. But it didn't just
Speaker 1: remain that way. Jardina claims that the city transformed itself
Speaker 1: into a garden and then into a worst And I
Speaker 1: can't help but notice the dangerous inversion that might imply.
Speaker 1: The city, of course, is the place of order and humanity,
Speaker 1: and it transforms into the woods, which is the place
Speaker 1: where the power of nature rules and travelers become lost.
Speaker 1: And in some of the classic Arthurian stories, I think
Speaker 1: that's the place you you really see this like civilization
Speaker 1: versus the woods distinction, where the woods are just full
Speaker 1: of unaccountable magic that has power over you rather than
Speaker 1: you over it. Yeah. Absolutely, And Uh, one thing I
Speaker 1: love about this is this is already hit on several
Speaker 1: different themes that we will find not only in you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, tales from you know, elsewhere in Europe, but
Speaker 1: but tales from the other side of the world. Uh
Speaker 1: and you know other you know, other other cultures seem
Speaker 1: to have possibly or in some cases possibly seen, um
Speaker 1: optical phenomena of this nature and had some of the
Speaker 1: same interpretations. Uh So Anyway, Jardina's description goes on after that,
Speaker 1: even after it becomes a bunch of woods, there are
Speaker 1: more transformations and more chaos. He saw what looked like
Speaker 1: armies attacking towns, and then eventually the entire scene just vanishes.
Speaker 1: And Jardina tried to explain this vision in terms of
Speaker 1: science rather than magic. He he blamed salts in the region,
Speaker 1: which he wrote, quote rise up in hot weather in
Speaker 1: vapors from the sea to form clouds, which then condensed
Speaker 1: in the cooler upper air to become a mobile specchio,
Speaker 1: which means a moving polyhedracal mirror. Now this is not correct,
Speaker 1: but as we've seen, this actually isn't very far off.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily have to do with salts, but the
Speaker 1: effect probably was something like a superior mirage of the
Speaker 1: opposing shore and things on it, or a fata morgana
Speaker 1: even more complex, uh sort of shifting, quickly transforming mirage
Speaker 1: that was caused by the vertical arranged end of of
Speaker 1: gases of different temperatures and atmospheric ducting. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about this I was reading
Speaker 1: from a source that i'll side later in the episode,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about how indeed, we we didn't
Speaker 1: really um begin to understand what was going on with
Speaker 1: mirages like this until the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and
Speaker 1: even even say Arab scientists who during the medieval period
Speaker 1: like that was they knew more about optics than anyone
Speaker 1: else in the world, even they were not able to
Speaker 1: to make sense of what they were experiencing when they
Speaker 1: too experienced uh you know, superior inferior mirages on the horizon. Yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 1: so this explanation is not correct, but I think it's
Speaker 1: surprising how close he got. Yeah. So here here's the question,
Speaker 1: where does Morgan la Fay come in? Right? Well, here
Speaker 1: I'm going to read from from Simon's article. According to Warner,
Speaker 1: the Norman's brought stories of Morgan's magic to Italy, particularly
Speaker 1: her Pin and for luring sailors to an undersea palace
Speaker 1: with visions of castles in the air. Fatim morgana is
Speaker 1: particularly prevalent in southern Italy Strait of Messina, where Father
Speaker 1: Giardina experienced his own vision, and then later Simon writes,
Speaker 1: and long before Arthurian legend, it could have been that
Speaker 1: sightings of these phenomena gave rise to any number of
Speaker 1: woe something is appearing in the sky scenes in antiquity.
Speaker 1: Warner argues, So, I think the the idea of the
Speaker 1: fatim morgana is that there is some equation of this
Speaker 1: optical phenomena of seeing things far away or over the
Speaker 1: horizon appearing up in the air above the horizon, and
Speaker 1: in some cases even uh distorted, inverted and stacked upon themselves,
Speaker 1: forming bizarre visions that could look like castles in the sky,
Speaker 1: cities in the sky, uh weird floating objects, ships sailing
Speaker 1: in the air or among the clouds. And you might
Speaker 1: be tempt to reading accounts of things like this, to think, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know it's either just creative the creative mind at work,
Speaker 1: or it is uh it is you know that these
Speaker 1: people's mythology or or legends that are then described. But
Speaker 1: the fatam organa gives us uh the opportunity to look
Speaker 1: to actual optical phenomena as a is it possible or
Speaker 1: in some cases like it seems almost definite cause yes,
Speaker 1: though I guess somebody would not be could not be
Speaker 1: blamed too too much for thinking of it as a
Speaker 1: kind of deceptive fairy magic. Yeah, no, I think so,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, like we said before, when you when you
Speaker 1: witness something that you cannot explain, uh, a lot of
Speaker 1: times you have to go to the pre existing uh narratives,
Speaker 1: the pre existing scripts UH to figure out what it
Speaker 1: might be. And that might be aliens, it might be
Speaker 1: um you know, fit that the fairy folk, it might
Speaker 1: be the gods or sea monsters, etcetera. It seems like
Speaker 1: the CEA in particular is full of a lot of
Speaker 1: characters who want to lead you astray and get you
Speaker 1: into trouble with deceptive visions or invitations, you know, the sirens,
Speaker 1: the all those things. Though I guess the woods too,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The woods in the sea have some
Speaker 1: things in common. Yeah, they're both wild realms. And there
Speaker 1: you know, there's a plethora of of mythical creatures and
Speaker 1: beings and strange lights that will lead you astray. Now
Speaker 1: I came across what I thought was a pretty interesting hypothesis.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how well supported it is, but at
Speaker 1: least in this one case, the fottom Organo mirage has
Speaker 1: been said to not just influence supernatural legends, it may
Speaker 1: possibly explain specific catastrophic navigational blunders in maritime history. And
Speaker 1: the main possibility that has been proposed here is the
Speaker 1: iceberg collision that sank the Titanic. Oh wow, okay. So
Speaker 1: this hypothesis is covered in an April article for The
Speaker 1: New York Times by William J. Broad. In short, there's
Speaker 1: British historian named Tim Malton who was working with the
Speaker 1: help of somebody named Andrew Young, who's an astronomer and
Speaker 1: mirage specialist at San Diego State University. And with Young's help,
Speaker 1: Malton refined and put forward a hypothesis that could explain
Speaker 1: why the Titanics lookouts failed to spot the iceberg in
Speaker 1: time to avoid the collision and why a nearby ship
Speaker 1: failed to respond to a distress signal. Uh So, Malton
Speaker 1: claims that the conditions of the icy water in the
Speaker 1: North Atlantic on the night of the sinking of the
Speaker 1: Titanic were responsible for creating a kind of wall of
Speaker 1: water illusion that could have obscured the approaching iceberg from
Speaker 1: view and A Broad describes the fatim organa effect as
Speaker 1: follows quote. Most people know mirages as natural phenomena caused
Speaker 1: when hot air near the earth surface bends light rays
Speaker 1: upward in a desert, the effect prompts lost travelers to
Speaker 1: mistake patches of blue sky for pools of water. But
Speaker 1: another kind of mirage as when cold air bins light
Speaker 1: raised downward. In that case, observers can see objects and
Speaker 1: settings far over the horizon. The images often undergo quick distortions,
Speaker 1: not unlike the wavy reflections in a fun house mirror. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is in line with what we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: but Broad goes on to say in an interview, Mr
Speaker 1: Malton said he first learned the possibility of cold mirages
Speaker 1: when reading a nine British inquiry on the Titanic sinking.
Speaker 1: It suggested that the icy waters could have cooled the
Speaker 1: adjacent air and warped images that confused the Californian, a
Speaker 1: nearby ship that could have rushed to the Titanic's aid
Speaker 1: but instead did nothing. Fascinated. Mr Malton, who sailed boats
Speaker 1: in his youth, dug into navigational records and found that
Speaker 1: both the Californian and the Titanic had moved into the
Speaker 1: icy Labrador current that night and had encountered conditions ideal
Speaker 1: for cold mirages. He then hunted through reams of official
Speaker 1: and unaff issual testimony to see what people saw or
Speaker 1: what they thought they saw. A drama of misperceptions and shoes.
Speaker 1: Mr Malton's book shows how mirages could have created false
Speaker 1: horizons that hid the iceberg from the Titanic's lookouts. By
Speaker 1: this theory, the intersection of dark sea and starry sky
Speaker 1: would have looked blurry, reducing the contrast with the looming iceberg.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to site some of the
Speaker 1: testimony of the lookouts who were who were watching the
Speaker 1: horizon that night, and and so they put together this
Speaker 1: idea that superior mirages could have hidden the iceberg from
Speaker 1: sight as they were approaching it by creating a kind
Speaker 1: of blur or haze along the horizon. And then also
Speaker 1: that that a type of superior mirage caused by the
Speaker 1: the icy currents in the cold water could have interfered
Speaker 1: with the Californians ability. I remember that was the other
Speaker 1: ship that was nearby that did not intervene could have
Speaker 1: interfered with its ability to correctly assess what was going
Speaker 1: on with the Titanic, and this led to a series
Speaker 1: of misunderstandings that cause them not to help. That is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I don't know how much you know, the most
Speaker 1: relevant experts would put into this hypothesis. Today, I was
Speaker 1: trying to see if I could find criticisms of it,
Speaker 1: and I did find a series of papers in the
Speaker 1: journal Weather from twenty nineteen by Mila's in Cova. The
Speaker 1: first one of the four part series is called Titanic's
Speaker 1: Mirage Part one, The Enigma of the Arctic High and
Speaker 1: a Cold Water Tongue of the Labrador Current. I didn't
Speaker 1: have time to get into this whole series in depth,
Speaker 1: but it looks from what I can tell like the
Speaker 1: author argues that maybe the mirage explanation is possible, but
Speaker 1: probably not the explanation that they think is most consistent
Speaker 1: with the facts, and other explanations for the haze over
Speaker 1: the water that night that would reduce visibility would include
Speaker 1: something that is more commonly known as sea smoke, which
Speaker 1: is just a kind of natural fog that forms when
Speaker 1: very cold air moves over warmer water. Yeah. And that
Speaker 1: coupled with the fact that Billy Zane is chasing Leonard
Speaker 1: DiCaprio around ownership and that's probably distracting everybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's gonna create a steamy fog of its own, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank well. Um yeah, I have an interesting historic tidbit
Speaker 1: here that I think you know. It flows nicely out
Speaker 1: of the Titanic example. Uh, this one takes place, um
Speaker 1: well techno technically it takes place on water as well,
Speaker 1: but on frozen water. And it concerns something that pops
Speaker 1: up as well, the idea of like phantom islands, phantom mountains. Uh,
Speaker 1: something in the distance that you know, looks like some
Speaker 1: sort of large geographical um occurrence, but then as you
Speaker 1: get closer it does not. And this particular tidbit concerns
Speaker 1: crocker Land. Have you ever been to crocker Land, Joe,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No. For some reason, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: Betty crocker Land. Well, it turns out nobody has been
Speaker 1: to crocker Land. And here's the story. So it's n
Speaker 1: SI and Robert E. Perry Arctic explorers exploring the polar regions,
Speaker 1: and he makes an alarming sighting a range of mountain
Speaker 1: peaks rising above the ice cap some what looks like
Speaker 1: four hundred miles, uh, you know, west of Greenland's northern tip.
Speaker 1: So he names this Crocker Land, and it apparently goes
Speaker 1: from there. It ends up appearing on at least one
Speaker 1: published map. And then seven years later, Arctic explorer Donald B.
Speaker 1: McMillan he ventures into the same region in search of
Speaker 1: crocker Land, um, you know, thinking that he is going
Speaker 1: to you know, arrive there and further study it. And
Speaker 1: he initially sees these mountains, but then they slowly vanish
Speaker 1: as he draws closer, and as it turns out, there
Speaker 1: was nothing there at all but flat, featureless ice. And
Speaker 1: this is how he describes it. This is from his beliefs.
Speaker 1: Is from his autobiography quote. The day was exceptionally clear,
Speaker 1: not a cloud or trace of mist. If land could
Speaker 1: be seen, now is our time us there It was,
Speaker 1: It could even be seen without a glass. Extending from
Speaker 1: southwest true to north northeast. Are powerful glasses, however, brought
Speaker 1: out more clearly the dark background in contrast with the
Speaker 1: white the whole resembling hills, valleys and snow capped peaks
Speaker 1: to such a degree that had we not been out
Speaker 1: on the frozen sea for a hundred and fifty miles,
Speaker 1: we would have staked our lives upon its reality. Our
Speaker 1: judgment then as now is that this was a mirage
Speaker 1: or loom of the sea ice. Oh. I guess the
Speaker 1: thing that we haven't discussed yet but is related, is
Speaker 1: that there is another phenomenon called looming that can also
Speaker 1: cause illusions of this kind, seeing different things like with
Speaker 1: relationship to the horizon, sort of appearing out of place
Speaker 1: that works by a different mechanism. Yeah. Now, the next
Speaker 1: example I want to cover though, is almomst definitely an
Speaker 1: example of the fatimorgana uh. And this is actually the
Speaker 1: one that that led me uh to uh to bringing
Speaker 1: this up as a potential topic. UM, because I was
Speaker 1: researching the shan Haijing for our recent episode on the
Speaker 1: shan Haijing and uh I ran across a Chinese connection
Speaker 1: to the Fata Morgana. In an article from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine by Edward H. Schaeffer published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: the American Oriental Society, titled Fusang and Beyond the Haunted
Speaker 1: Seas to Japan now. Edward H. Schaefer lived nineteen thirteen
Speaker 1: through nineteen one. He was an American historians, sinologist, and
Speaker 1: writer noted for his experience on the Tang dynasty, and
Speaker 1: he was a professor of Chinese at the University of California,
Speaker 1: Berkeley for thirty five years. He also did some key
Speaker 1: English translations. In this article, however, Schaefer is looking at
Speaker 1: various examples of a class of Chinese poem about travel,
Speaker 1: particularly about this very specific about saying goodbye to honored
Speaker 1: guests as they depart on a journey. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of there are any um like English poems that
Speaker 1: come to mind that have a similar theme. I don't know,
Speaker 1: not that I can think of. At any rate, it
Speaker 1: was a popular motif at the time in China. Uh
Speaker 1: In a popular journey. Specific journey for these poems during
Speaker 1: the Tang dynasty, which which was six eighteen through nine
Speaker 1: oh seven, was a journey across the Sea of Japan,
Speaker 1: frequently taken by monks, diplomats, and others. So this was
Speaker 1: and is the puffing Sea, the bursting Sea, the domain
Speaker 1: of danger, for sure, but also a supernatural wonder. Now,
Speaker 1: as we've said, this can be said of basically any
Speaker 1: large body of water, this can be said of any
Speaker 1: seafaring civilization. Right anywhere people meet the ocean, you find
Speaker 1: these descriptions of the ocean as as a potentially deadly placed,
Speaker 1: a mysterious place. And we've developed rich myths and legends
Speaker 1: to account for it. Uh, you know, any time, you know,
Speaker 1: just across cultures. But Schaefer points out that there was
Speaker 1: really a lot of this talk regard in the Eastern Sea,
Speaker 1: and you'll find it in poems and in accounts of
Speaker 1: all sorts, including from very well traveled and well educated individuals.
Speaker 1: And he describes these sightings as being marked with quote
Speaker 1: greater awareness than ever before of the denizens of the
Speaker 1: oceanic world. So what are these denizens of particular? Note
Speaker 1: here are the shin or clam monsters of the Eastern Sea.
Speaker 1: And uh, this is where we get shn jing, which
Speaker 1: is or um or high shishi and low, which are
Speaker 1: terms for mirages in Mandarin. Oh wow, So if you
Speaker 1: were talking in Mandarin about a mirage, you're saying something
Speaker 1: that literally could mean something like clam monster. Uh. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the these terms are are all connected. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: while the pre Han genesis of the term shafer rights
Speaker 1: would seem to apply to real world clams, you know,
Speaker 1: the type of clams you might catch and eat and
Speaker 1: some culinary traditions, uh, it clearly evolved into a legend.
Speaker 1: And so this is what he writes quote. Beginning as
Speaker 1: an unassuming marine invertebrate, the shin was later imagined as
Speaker 1: a gaping, pearl producing clam, possibly to be identified with
Speaker 1: the giant clams of tropical seas, for instance, Tridactna. That's
Speaker 1: the genus. So these if you've ever seen images of giant,
Speaker 1: real world giant clams, that's uh, that's the genus, he
Speaker 1: continues quote. Finally, by early medieval times, it had become
Speaker 1: a monster, lurking in submarine grottoes, and was sometimes endowed
Speaker 1: with the attributes of a dragon, or, more likely, under
Speaker 1: Indian influence, a naga. So it gets this gets like
Speaker 1: just super super super weird, and I love it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So these the shin were said these giant clams in
Speaker 1: the ocean deep were said to exhale and belsh up
Speaker 1: bubbles and froth, which that they could they could then
Speaker 1: manifest into spectral castles and haunted palaces made of what
Speaker 1: Schaefer translates as a kind of plasma and later describes
Speaker 1: as being something between less in energy, like a kind
Speaker 1: of ectoplasm quote dream like carrescant with strange lights and
Speaker 1: prismatic hazes. These seemingly insubstantial confections or counterparts of the
Speaker 1: sea asle pin lay, and also of the astral places
Speaker 1: of the high gods of Daoism, all from clams. Huh, well,
Speaker 1: giant clams, giant magical clams that breathe ectoplasm and use
Speaker 1: it to craft massive illusions in the sky. So he
Speaker 1: from here he goes on to share what I believe
Speaker 1: his translation, one of two translations he provides of a
Speaker 1: poem by Wen chi Uh rhapsody on the High House
Speaker 1: of the clam Monsters, and it's it's just glorious. Um.
Speaker 1: You can look up the Shaffer article. You can find it. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's on j store and you can access
Speaker 1: it for free, and you can you can read the
Speaker 1: full version of both poems. I just want to read
Speaker 1: the first part of the initial I think was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a more accurate translation. There in the peeing
Speaker 1: bird's basin. Shoreless and boundless are the clam monsters, high
Speaker 1: houses crag crested. They do not rely on timber to
Speaker 1: knit their frames, but use their own fnast to fly
Speaker 1: and float them hidden away without present sign they blaze
Speaker 1: and splendor, hardly to be matched. Then one of them
Speaker 1: emitst waves and surges there as if it would stud
Speaker 1: the sky with them, forming semilacra. Mutating, it creates porches
Speaker 1: and railings, preferring to simulate the sun, which melts our
Speaker 1: cares so large that it would cover a giant turtle
Speaker 1: mountain with yet another island, or dripped down on the
Speaker 1: shark men's houses and hanging streams. Then it is as
Speaker 1: if the fogs have used up their mistiness, the melting
Speaker 1: clouds have gone home. The moon sheds brilliance over a
Speaker 1: thousand lee vision is terminated only by the eight horizons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's I love it. It's just so full of
Speaker 1: weird wonder and and again has has just start start.
Speaker 1: Comparisons can be made to those to the accounts of
Speaker 1: the fatim Organa that you were reading earlier from you know,
Speaker 1: the other side of the world. But I love all
Speaker 1: the unexplained elements, the shark men's houses. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: may touch on the shark man in a bit, But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just so much wonder This feels like some sort
Speaker 1: of a just it's a weird hallucinatory vision out of uh.
Speaker 1: You know that you might find something similar out of
Speaker 1: say the weird fiction era in an American literature. Now
Speaker 1: I am kind of wondering how exactly some of these
Speaker 1: uh words are translated, because obviously, like so the words
Speaker 1: simulacras in there, and I understand what that means in context.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's actually like a term in the
Speaker 1: original that is becoming exactly that word, or if there
Speaker 1: is something that's somehow the gist of something. Yeah, you know, offhand,
Speaker 1: I can't recall of Schaefer got into that. He it's
Speaker 1: a he. It's mostly related to these two translations that
Speaker 1: he gives, but he does get into some of the
Speaker 1: specific terminology. Um. But on top of that, Shaffer himself
Speaker 1: seemed to be, you know, pretty poetic in his own right. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, just as he's describing the text, there's some
Speaker 1: wonderful sections like he writes in this literary vision, the
Speaker 1: clammy builders are not ordinary creatures at all, but alien
Speaker 1: and anonymous natural forces. Their amorphous bodies are unstable and
Speaker 1: perhaps illusory at least ectoplasmic or spectral. They have no gender.
Speaker 1: They dwell in the murky benthos of the Sea of Whales,
Speaker 1: beyond the domains of the shark people. And uh and
Speaker 1: he actually he provides a second translation in which he
Speaker 1: uses meter in English rhyme. Uh. And again, I just
Speaker 1: have the first section here. Uh, but but he does
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I don't know, did, Joe? Do you
Speaker 1: want to read this one? Oh? Sure I could if
Speaker 1: you want, Jeff, go for it. Where giant fish foul
Speaker 1: range above the seas, and craggy houses clammy monsters weeze.
Speaker 1: They need no dedar to build these halls. Extruded e
Speaker 1: cores fuse as roofs and walls. Abistle gloom eclipses them below,
Speaker 1: but spouted up, they shed a fiery glow. When one
Speaker 1: explodes up through the tossing spume. We hope a vault
Speaker 1: of spangled stars to bloom. Instead, it seems a shining
Speaker 1: golden dome to match the Sun, the God's immortal home.
Speaker 1: It makes the giant seamount seem a hill as vast
Speaker 1: cascades into the vortex spill. Then when the upcast spray
Speaker 1: and froth degrade, and clouds beyond the far horizon fade,
Speaker 1: the lunar lantern sets the sky alight, and all the
Speaker 1: seven seas show clear and bright. The fishy peoples shine
Speaker 1: their scales around. The waves, now soothed, give out no
Speaker 1: further sound. A palace heaves and spouting rare perfumes and
Speaker 1: majesty above the ocean ooms pierces the stubborn haze that
Speaker 1: round it lies and thrusts its mighty walls into the skies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love it. Excellent. Yeah again, giant clam spouting, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bubbles and froth and exoplasm up into the
Speaker 1: sky and forming an otherworldly castle or city in the sky,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it vanishes and uh. And Schaffer
Speaker 1: himself points to the connection here between these tales and
Speaker 1: the very real phenomenon of fatim organa mirages, which are
Speaker 1: still seen today on the Eastern Sea. So you know these, uh,
Speaker 1: these strange castles are are still glimpsed out there. You
Speaker 1: know that these are this is an optical phenomenon that
Speaker 1: still occurs. What who are the shark people? Do you
Speaker 1: know something about sharkman? Yes? I look these up. These
Speaker 1: would be the jow wren or the people of the
Speaker 1: flood dragons, So they were a kind of mir folk
Speaker 1: um or you know, or a shark person. I like
Speaker 1: how he describes them as as as the shark people
Speaker 1: or fishy people if you will. Well, that makes them
Speaker 1: sound more like the subject of that Peter Benchley novel
Speaker 1: adapted to a made for TV movie that we talked
Speaker 1: about not too long ago. What was the one about
Speaker 1: like the shark human hybrid? Oh? What was it? It
Speaker 1: wasn't beast. It had a similar one word name, because
Speaker 1: you know that you stick with what what works? Kim
Speaker 1: control in it? Is that right? Yeah? And Craig T.
Speaker 1: Nelson And a shark that I think in the book
Speaker 1: at least wasn't was a Nazi created mutant intelligent shark.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that translated into the TV adaptation
Speaker 1: or not looking it up, or if it had like
Speaker 1: big muscular arms or not. Oh, it's a mini series.
Speaker 1: It's called Creature Creature. Yes, but I I really want
Speaker 1: to see a film about um, about this giant clam
Speaker 1: um about the Shin and uh, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that that it doesn't exist. Clearly, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a wonderful and fantastic Chinese cinema out there, and um,
Speaker 1: I didn't really dive in enough. So anyone out there,
Speaker 1: if you're aware of a film that features even a
Speaker 1: cameo by a giant um of fairy city spouting clam,
Speaker 1: let me know. Alright, I have another example I want
Speaker 1: to turn to, and this one takes this to another
Speaker 1: continent entirely. This takes us to Africa, specifically Southern Africa,
Speaker 1: and this concerns the San people. So these are indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples found chiefly in Botswana, uh Namibia and southeastern Angola.
Speaker 1: Historically they would have been a hunter gatherer people and
Speaker 1: they've been referred to by several different names over time
Speaker 1: and today are apparently not instantly identifiable by any physical features,
Speaker 1: language or culture. Um, but I was reading an article
Speaker 1: about this. This is a from the year two thousand
Speaker 1: by Helmett trabuch Uh titled does mirage derived mythology give
Speaker 1: access to sun Rock Art? And this was published in
Speaker 1: the Southern African Archaeological Bulletin. In it, the author contemplates
Speaker 1: a link between the traditional rock art of the sun,
Speaker 1: their myths, and the superior mirages they would have deserved
Speaker 1: in their environment. That again, like all these can still
Speaker 1: be observed in those environments today, and the author points
Speaker 1: out that you know that that naturally the sort of
Speaker 1: mirage was seen throughout the world for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: He's the author who brings up, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: the idea that even Arab sciencests, who uh, we're pretty
Speaker 1: much masters of optics. Uh, during the medieval period, they
Speaker 1: weren't able to understand this. So it wasn't ntil the
Speaker 1: eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we we really were able
Speaker 1: to fully crack what's going on when we behold a
Speaker 1: superior mirage. But you know, everyone who had access to
Speaker 1: to these mirages would have probably had some thoughts about them,
Speaker 1: and you can imagine how they might have influenced one's
Speaker 1: worldview and magical thinking. So sun rock art in particular
Speaker 1: depicts in some cases huge flying creatures, upside down creatures
Speaker 1: and double creatures, finned land creatures, as well as floating waters. Now,
Speaker 1: there there have been a different ways of interpreting these, uh,
Speaker 1: the author points out, so rep presentations of mythic ideas
Speaker 1: art for art's sake, or and this is always interesting,
Speaker 1: altered states of consciousness or shamatic visions, but attributes presents
Speaker 1: a what he refers to a naturalistic interpretation in which
Speaker 1: the observation of superior mirages are a key factor. Um,
Speaker 1: of course, and we should drive home. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it seems like all of these could be employed
Speaker 1: at the same time, because certainly you could have hallucinations
Speaker 1: occurring whilst looking at, or remembering or or contemplating the
Speaker 1: nature of things seen on the horizon. Combine that with
Speaker 1: your own myth making uh, and just creative thinking in general. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the specific things he's referring to, first of all,
Speaker 1: giant sky water snakes or rain animals above the horizon
Speaker 1: would have been linked to superior mirages that that were
Speaker 1: often observed in the lull before rain storms. So these
Speaker 1: would have been interpreted as powerful entities responsible for rain
Speaker 1: that could then be called out to spiritually like these
Speaker 1: were the masters of rain, the gods and monsters of rain,
Speaker 1: and uh, and they're the ones who who you need
Speaker 1: favor from in order to, you know, to have a
Speaker 1: wet and rich environment. And then there's this really fascinating
Speaker 1: concept of the underwater where souls and the sorcerers went
Speaker 1: to become stretched. Uh. And this may be linked to
Speaker 1: glimmering inferior and mirages and stretched or elongated forms. Uh.
Speaker 1: These may derive from superior mirages. And yeah, you look
Speaker 1: at examples of this and it's like, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, clearly humanoid representations, and some will be of
Speaker 1: what you might take to be normal size, and others
Speaker 1: are greatly elongated. And uh, yeah, I'm particularly interested by
Speaker 1: this idea of the inverted world and sorcerers who try
Speaker 1: to make contact with the inverted world by he points out,
Speaker 1: adopting an inverted arm position. Here's a quote from the
Speaker 1: paper quote, what would be more realistic than depicting inverted
Speaker 1: lions in a mirage in such an environment the underwater
Speaker 1: of sun belief. It could even be that trance has
Speaker 1: developed as a way to imitate the inverted world, the
Speaker 1: world where everything is the other way around. The body
Speaker 1: does not preserve the upright position anymore. Food or liquid
Speaker 1: does not enter the mouth but leaves. It has depicted
Speaker 1: in many scenes where liquid sometimes interpreted as blood, is
Speaker 1: streaming from the nose of animals and shamans. Maybe the
Speaker 1: crossed legs of painted antelopes and trans dancers and sound
Speaker 1: rock art may simply mean that they do not walk normally,
Speaker 1: but walk in an inverted way, that is backwards, as
Speaker 1: they should in the other world. That's really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again this this connects with with some of what
Speaker 1: you were sharing earlier on again from the other side
Speaker 1: of the world, uh, you know, dealing with contemplations of
Speaker 1: fatimorgana and superior and inferior mirages. So from from here, really,
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't even have to spend much time
Speaker 1: at all talking about the nature of unidentified flying objects
Speaker 1: in the sky UM because you can see I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all written on the wall here. I mean the
Speaker 1: bottom organa is sometimes used to explain UFO sightings, which
Speaker 1: which is just a natural direction to go into, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider modern sailing vessels um and and modern
Speaker 1: vehicles and objects in generals often glinting with metallic details.
Speaker 1: You can imagine them seeing above the horizon as superior mirages.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you consume enough UFO material, which
Speaker 1: I think everybody has at this point, that might be
Speaker 1: one of the first places if not the first places
Speaker 1: that your mind goes. Well, yeah, I mean, I'd imagine
Speaker 1: that superior mirages could explain all kinds of especially anomalous lights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've in particular, I've seen it linked to discussions of
Speaker 1: UFO sightings in Texas and also the so called men
Speaker 1: Men light in the Australian Outback. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: think and I think you can. You can find plenty
Speaker 1: of other examples of this as well. They're similar lights
Speaker 1: that can be found in the Middle East that have
Speaker 1: been linked to two superior mirages. So again we're dealing
Speaker 1: with something you can find around the world, and then
Speaker 1: we find all these interesting stories that are either directly
Speaker 1: linked to superior mirages or could easily be linked to them,
Speaker 1: at least at least in part So it basically explains
Speaker 1: everything is so bigfoot. I don't know, I could an
Speaker 1: elongated humanoid. Um, you know that that could work. Oh,
Speaker 1: slender Man is a superior mirrage. Oh you know, I
Speaker 1: was just thinking about the San Rock illustrations and traditions
Speaker 1: about people walking backwards. That makes me think of the
Speaker 1: leshy again. Oh did the less she walk backwards? Was that?
Speaker 1: I think you could confuse the leshy by walking backwards.
Speaker 1: I don't know that's right, or you could put your
Speaker 1: clothes on backwards, right, yeah, yeah, the upside down, the
Speaker 1: the inverted world moving backwards. Um. Now, as I mentioned
Speaker 1: or earlier on the superior mirages uh and the Fate Morgana,
Speaker 1: these are things that can and our photograph. They can
Speaker 1: be photographed. They are photographs. So if you do some
Speaker 1: image searches you can find some some really excellent examples
Speaker 1: of these. I remember seeing one in particular that instantly
Speaker 1: made me think of the gigantic spaceship from Independence Today. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Independence Day wasn't an actual movie, it was not a mirrage,
Speaker 1: but but the mirages that that that occur can be
Speaker 1: of that nature. You know, it's like there's something huge
Speaker 1: in the sky or on the horizon, and it does
Speaker 1: not confirm, confirm, conform to, uh to to anything that
Speaker 1: would occur in the natural world that you you know of.
Speaker 1: You know, like you have to lead to the the
Speaker 1: unexplained if you're not aware of the sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the again, the optical phenomena that can take place, just
Speaker 1: some shimmering hulk. Yeah. So on that note, we would
Speaker 1: obviously love to hear from anyone out there who has
Speaker 1: witnessed one of these, you know, because I don't think
Speaker 1: I have. I don't remember ever seeing a superior arraje
Speaker 1: much much less uh fata morgana um unless I was
Speaker 1: just you know, barely noticing it certainly. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: A lot of these examples that you hear about, they're
Speaker 1: they're hard to ignore. Uh So, if you have experience
Speaker 1: with them, please write in and let us know, tell
Speaker 1: us all about it, tell us about your experience with it,
Speaker 1: what was going through your mind when you looked at it. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with any other of the you know,
Speaker 1: the many global traditions that either are directly linked to
Speaker 1: these optical phenomena or could easily be linked to them,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about it. And you know, well,
Speaker 1: we'll try and discuss it on an upcoming episode of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail. That's what publishes
Speaker 1: Monday's in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we have The Artifact. Tuesdays and Thursdays we
Speaker 1: have Core episodes, and on Fridays we have Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema where we don't so much get into the science,
Speaker 1: but we talk about a weird movie of note, Huge Things.
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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