WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Three-Pupiled Eye, Part 2 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.600 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:11.119 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday, 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.600 which means we're going on down into the old vault 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.560 to pull out a classic episode of the show for you. 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.600 This one is from last year. This one is from 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.360 March thirty first, twenty twenty two, and it is the 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:27.320 Three Pupil Die Part two. This is the follow up 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:31.680 to the episode that aired last Saturday about about strange 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:39.120 pupils and irises in myth, legend and reality. Welcome to 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:48.680 Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:50.920 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.520 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In our last episode, 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:59.760 we discussed a common but enthralling literary motif in Irish mythology, 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.680 the triple and the sevenfold eye, three or seven pupils, 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:07.560 three or seven irises found in the eyes of beautiful heroes, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:13.080 divine seers, destructive monsters. We also discussed the structure and 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.360 functionality of the human eye and the rare instances in 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:21.280 which we actually see double pupils in human eyes. In 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:24.440 this episode, we're going to explore more curious eyes from 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:28.000 the natural world, as well as more accounts of marvelous 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.800 eyes from ancient history and literature. But first a pop 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.360 culture update. At the end of last episode we were talking, 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:40.640 I spoke briefly about some double eyes that I remembered 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:44.760 from some movies, album covers, etc. Well, our good producer 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.560 Seth provided us with two additional examples of double eyes 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:50.800 and popular culture that we didn't think of last time. 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:55.240 Number one, the double irises and pupils of Aminet in 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:58.880 twenty seventeens. The Mummy. This is the Tom Cruise Mummy film. 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.200 Oh boy, did not see it, but I think this 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:03.960 is like the the titular Mummy, or at least one 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.760 of them. I think she is the Mummy in this film. 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:08.919 I'm okay, I haven't seen this one, not even on 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.240 an airplane, but I'm not opposed to it. I mean, 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.520 I've seen a lot of crummy mummy movies over the years, 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.560 and usually there's something interesting in them. Yeah, at least 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:22.400 sometimes you get an Arnold Foslou or something. Yeah. And 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:24.720 then the second example Seth brings up is the album 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:31.000 cover to Bubba by Haitian Canadian musician k Trenada featuring 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.520 the artist with otherworldly blue eyes that have double pupils, 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.440 double irises. I listened to a track from this album 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:39.600 while we were working on notes. It was good. I 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:41.400 haven't had a chance yet, but I do love the 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.440 album cover. It's pretty great now. One of the sources 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.320 that we mentioned in the last episode was the Evil 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:53.160 Eye in early Irish literature and law. This was published 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.560 in Celtica twenty four back in two thousand and three, 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.160 and this was by Jacqueline Borsch and the author of 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.839 Fergus Kelly is also cited on this paper because there's 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:06.200 like a part one in a part two, but I 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.840 believe we're we dealt with material from part one. Celtica, 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:12.840 the journal this is in is a scholarly journal for 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.400 Celtic studies out of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.880 So most of this deals of course with Irish law, 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:26.400 Irish traditions, Irish mythology, and despite the popularity of this 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:31.240 motif of the multiple pupils, multiple irises within the Irish tradition, 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:35.000 we also encounter discussions of this sort of thing in 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:39.000 other traditions as well, and shares a few of these 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.960 The first one comes to us from A Plenty of 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.640 The Elder and the Natural History. Plenty discusses individuals in 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.560 Africa said to possess quote, the power of fascination with 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.560 the eyes and can even kill those on whom they 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:57.160 fix their gaze for any length of time, more especially 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.280 if their look denotes anger. Now that's you're pretty basic 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.960 evil eye scenario right there. You encounter variations of this 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.400 throughout the world, based on the fact that, yes, you 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.680 can shoot somebody a really terrible look and you can 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.039 almost feel it. Of course, going back into the ancient world, 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.640 the belief was often that it was more than you know, 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.400 giving somebody the stink eye produced more than just a 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.360 bad feeling, that it could literally curse them or cause 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.200 them magical harm. Yes. But the neat thing here where 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.160 it ties into what we're talking about in these episodes 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:35.120 is Plenty goes on to connect this to multiple pupils quote. 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.200 A still more remarkable circumstance is the fact that these 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:44.080 persons have two pupils in each eye. Apollo Nides says 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.680 that there are certain females of this description in Scythia 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:52.520 who are known as the Bitha and Philarchus states that 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.400 a tribe of the theebe in Pontus, and many other 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.320 persons as well, have a double pupil in one eye 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.320 and in the other the figure of a horse. Double 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.360 pupil in one eye, the other the figure of a horse. Now, 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:08.840 with passages of this kind, we're often faced with the 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:13.960 question is this based on some distorted or exaggerated retelling 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.640 of something that somebody actually saw, or is it just 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:22.200 pure creative imagination or you know, tall tales, And it's 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.120 always interesting to wonder about the former, But ancient accounts 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:28.400 like Plenties are clearly full of the ladder, especially when 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.599 telling stories about peoples who live in far away parts 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.560 of the globe. You know, this section that we're quoting 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:37.000 from plenty is from I can't remember what it's called. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.120 There's like one of his books is all about the 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.880 nations of the world, and it's just all these weird 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.800 stories of like here's a people who live somewhere far away, 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:48.159 and here's this strange thing they do or something that 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.800 they wear that would be fascinating to my readers. Like 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:53.680 there's one part where he talks about a tribe of 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.880 people somewhere who do not have heads and instead have 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:01.040 eyes in their breasts. So it need not be the 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.359 case that Plenty is necessarily here repeating a misunderstood or 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.920 exaggerated story about somebody who actually had something like polychoria 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.480 or some other unusual condition of the pupils. But of 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.800 course it is always possible. Yeah, it does make you wonder, 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.039 you know, to what extent would there be, like, you know, 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:23.600 some account of an individual with this rare condition, some 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.280 memory of this rare condition, and then it gets folded 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.240 into some of these traditions and beliefs at one point 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.200 or another in their long lives. Yes, though of course 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:35.839 it could again just be something somebody made up, like 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:37.760 the people who don't have heads and have eyes in 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.039 their breasts, right right, Like, we can dream up individuals 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:44.479 with like four arms, and it's pretty interesting and we 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.039 can draw all sorts of meaning from that, but it 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.479 doesn't mean that people with four arms ever actually existed, 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:53.760 you know, that there's any actual biological basis on which 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.159 that was based. Though. I do think it's really interesting 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:58.280 that he doesn't just say, Okay, they've got two pupils 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.240 in each eye, but that they've got two pupils in 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.600 one eye and in the other eye a horse. Yeah, 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.799 And like the first place my mind went was, Okay, 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:10.320 is it actually shaped like a horse a distortion that 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:14.360 is roughly horse shaped? Or is it? Does it mean 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:16.720 that this is like some sort of telephone game, you know, 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.840 translation game version of a horizontal pupil like one finds 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.640 in the eyeble horse. That's interesting, and that'll tie into 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:25.960 a scientific paper we're going to talk about in a bit. 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:31.640 I found an editor's footnote in the Bostock translation of Plenty, 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.640 which notes, quote, some of the commentators have supposed that 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.640 Plenty or Phi larcis from whom he borrows, because remember, 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:41.840 this isn't an original observation of Plenties, He's like copying 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:44.840 this from some other writing of this person named phi Larcus, 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:49.400 but Philarcus from whom he borrows. Whether they were misled 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.880 by the ambiguity of the Greek term eCos, which signifies 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:58.760 either a horse or a tremulous motion of the eye. 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.160 But even admitting this to be the case, the wonder 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.120 is scarcely diminished, for we have the double pupil in 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:09.360 one eye, while this supposed tremulous motion is confined to 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.240 the other. So so if Fostuck is correct there, it's 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.640 that this word had had a double meaning, and one 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:17.040 of them was like a you know, a quivering of 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.000 the eye. I guess I would assume that's like when 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.880 somebody's eye is twitching. But yeah, you wonder, well, why 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:24.880 why is it just that the other eye is twitching 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.000 when when the first eye has two pupils in it, 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.040 that's also strange, maybe not as strange as a horse. 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:32.800 I was. I was looking for answers on this as well, 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.200 and I ran across a nineteen eighteen paper titled of 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.240 the Papula duplex and Other Tokens of an Evil Eye 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:47.080 in the Light of Ophthalmology by Walton Brooks McDaniel, And 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.120 according to Brooks, here one doctor Kirby Flower Smith, a 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.920 professor of Latin and at John Hopkins University, who had 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.480 I looked VI had died in nineteen eighteen, interpreted the 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:02.200 Plenty passage as having some sort of connection to the 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:04.560 idea that the affliction of the eye was caused by 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:10.760 quote a horse shaped demon, horsehead masked demon. Yeah. McDaniel 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.880 also begins to discuss the the idea that if you know, 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.920 if you look into another eye, you know certainly with 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.240 the right lighting and so forth, you look into another 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.240 person's eye, you can see your own reflection. And so 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:28.160 McDaniel mentions that in some traditions that individual you see 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.160 in the eye is interpreted, you know, not as yourself, 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.600 but as the signifier of the soul, and that there 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.600 are even some traditions where if the individual looks in 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:42.600 some way inverted, that is because of witchcraft. And in 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.360 this this this is one of those weird situations where 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:49.200 then McDaniel mentioned something else that leads me back to 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.120 a source that I'm very familiar with, and yet I 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:56.640 totally blinked on this particular detail, or or maybe I'd 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.560 never read this one particular tale, but he ends up 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:04.040 referring back to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.800 Poosh song Ling. That's a show, favorite, folks. Should we 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.480 do we have a Strange Sales from a Chinese studio? Buzzer? 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:12.800 I doubt we do, but at any rate, it's it's 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:14.480 it's a book that I really enjoy. This is a 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:19.680 Ching Dynasty collection of stories that Pous song Ling collected 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.440 and retells, and you know there's a lot that's that's 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:26.920 lost in translation. Out of Mandarin. But but there's still 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:32.400 remarkable fun, sometimes funny, and sometimes it's just very strange. Uh. 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:34.840 Sometimes it's it's you know, it's all about what they 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:37.000 would have meant to the people who read them. But 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.600 they're a lot of fun. There's a Penguin edition of 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.280 it translation that I've I read again and again over 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.200 the years, and yet I completely blanked on this one story. 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.079 It's called Talking Pupils. I think maybe the reason that 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.480 I haven't read this one recently is sometimes i'll read 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:57.160 these to my son and I'll sort of glance at them, 0:10:57.160 --> 0:10:58.880 and if it looks like there's something that might be 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.320 scandalous in it, or you know, a little dirty, then 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.320 I'll skip over the tale. There aren't many, but occasionally 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.360 there's one like that. So anyway, this story Talking Pupils 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.600 concerns the tale of one Feng Dong quote, a gentleman 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.440 of considerable accomplishments while at the same time having a 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:19.040 reputation as an unprincipled libertine. Oh yeah, so clearly that's 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.360 why I might have skipped over this in recent years. Anyway, 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.760 So Fang was this is how the story goes. Fang 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.040 is strolling the countryside and he happens on a fine 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.880 carriage on the road. One of the female attendants to 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.680 the carriage is quite fetching, so he moves in for 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.240 a closer look. But as he does so, he's able 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.760 to peek between the curtains of the carriage itself and 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:42.719 he sees a beautiful young woman within, and he's captivated. 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.640 The female attendant is having none of this, though, and 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.360 she verbally shames him, you know, calls him a you know, 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:53.440 a weirdo and a snooper. And not only does she 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:56.319 verbally shame him, she reaches down grabs him dust out 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.199 of the road and throws it in Fang's face. Oh, 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.600 dirty fighter. Yeah, but you know, he had it coming. 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.160 He was up to no good and he gets punished 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:07.920 for it. So he's he's initially he's trying to get 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.839 the dust out of his eyes. The carriage carries on. 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.160 When he is able to see again, you know, struggling, 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.120 the carriage is completely done. It's you know, it's vanished 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.280 around the bend or whatever. So he has heads on home, 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.640 but his eyes continue to bother him, so he seeks 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.960 some help. A friend looks into his eyes, and this 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.440 friend says, yeah, there's a visible film over each of 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:33.199 your eyeballs, and meanwhile, tears won't stop flowing. In time, 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:37.320 the film thickens and a spiral what is described as 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:42.000 a spiral shaped protuberance begins growing from his right eye, 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:47.559 resisting all manner of treatment. Eventually he's completely blind, and 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:51.079 you know he's he's distraught over this. But he hears 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:54.240 about a Buddhist sutra known as the Sutra of Light, 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.160 and it's said to be able to heal eye ailments 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.000 or ailments of this sort. So he gets a side 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.080 friend to read it to him, and he learns it 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:05.400 by heart, and he recites it over and over again, 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.320 and after a while it gives him solace. You know, 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:10.480 he feels a little better. His side is not back. 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.840 But then one day he begins to hear voices, two voices, 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:18.040 one from each of his eyeballs. Oh, I love this. 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.840 The eyeballs are talking, both of them. Well, as it 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.120 turns out, not the eyeballs but things within the eyeballs. 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.679 There's one voice within each eyeball, and they start talking 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:29.400 to each other, and they're talking about how dark it 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:31.960 is in their homes and how they'd really like to 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.280 just get outside and go for a stroll. And then 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:38.199 so pusong Ling says quote, then he felt a slight 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.719 irritation in both nostrils, as if two little creatures were 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.640 wriggling down his nose. After a while, he felt the 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.479 creatures return and make their way back up his nostrils 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.880 and into the eye sockets. Again, this is anatomically correct because, 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.800 as we know, the tear ducks that drain tears away 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.240 from the eyes drain into the nasal cavity, which is 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:03.480 why your nose when you cry. Oh very good. So 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.360 what does Feing do at this point, Well, he gets 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:08.320 his wife to take him to the old garden, and 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.480 he has her observe him in the garden to see 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:12.840 if anything like this happens again. Maybe the garden will 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.360 coax whatever it is out of his eyeballs. And this 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.000 is what happens. Quote. It was not long before she 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.640 saw two little mannekins, neither of them any larger than 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.000 a bean, emerged from his nose and fly buzzing out 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.480 of the door. They were soon well out of sight, 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.840 but we're back again in next to no time, flying 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.160 together up onto his face and in at his nostrils. 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.240 Like a pair of homing bees or ants. So is 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.240 he getting relief when they fly away? I don't think so. No. Oh, 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.440 it's just it happens, and he doesn't know what this 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.080 is about, so it keeps happening. It happens again each 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.800 day for three days, and finally one of the voices 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.400 complains that the tunnel that they're using to get out 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:58.760 of the eyeball is a bit round about and there's 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.680 got to be a better way. It's time that they 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.960 make some sort of proper doorway. So I'm going to 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:07.640 read the rest of this year that it really gets 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.400 to the juicy part. I'm just I'm filled with dread. 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:12.640 It's not a good idea when the tenants in your 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:17.120 eyeballs decided to start renovating on their own. Yeah, so 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.080 that is how it goes. The wall on my side 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.800 is very thick, replied the right eye. It won't be easy. 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.000 I'll try to make an opening on my side, said 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.960 the left eye. Then we can share my door. Presently, 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.240 Fang thought he felt a scratching and a splitting in 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:36.000 his left eye socket, and an instant later he could 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.920 see he could see everything around him with absolute clarity. 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:41.920 Beside himself with a delight. He promptly informed his wife, 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:44.800 who inspected his eyes afresh and found that in the 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:48.400 left eye a minute aperture had appeared in the film, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.560 a hole no larger than a cracked peppercorn, through which 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:55.720 gleamed the black globe of a pupil. By the next morning, 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.920 the film in the left eye had disappeared altogether. But 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.680 the strangest thing of all was that, on careful inspection, 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:05.000 there were now two pupils visible in that eye, and 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:09.360 the right eye was still obscured by its spiral shaped growth. Apparently, 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.400 both of the two eye mannequins his talking pupils had 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:17.040 now taken up residence in the left eye. So although 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:19.920 Fang was still blind in one eye, he could see 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.600 better with his one good eye than he had ever 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.560 done with two. From that day fourth, he was a 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:29.600 great deal more circumspect in his behavior and acquired unimpeccable 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:33.240 reputation in the district. Okay, so no more creeping on 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.080 ladies and carriages. Right, he learned his lesson, He was 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.160 punished for his creepy behavior, and now he's back and 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:42.680 ready to be a good citizen with one eye that 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.880 can see better than two, right, because two pupils. Now 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:49.480 that this again is from the Penguin Classics edition. It's 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.280 a John Minford translation, and this was super interesting as well. 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:57.760 Minford shares this in the notes pupils. The traditional Chinese 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:02.640 expression for pupil, tong wren, means literally man in the 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:06.359 pupil from the reflection of oneself that one sees in 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:09.760 the eye of another. Wow. Yeah, that was that was 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:11.560 really that. I was really impressed by that. And I 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:13.800 was talking to my wife about it because I was 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:15.800 looking around a little bit after this and I saw 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:19.639 an article about photography and about being able to zoom 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.320 in on the eye of an individual in a modern 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:27.200 photograph and see the reflection potentially of the photographer and 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:31.680 oh yeah, because of the high resolution, I guess, yeah, yeah. 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:33.960 And I was asking my wife about this, and she 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.240 pointed out that one thing that photographers can do is 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.000 you can pull up, say a headshot that another photographer 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:42.760 is done. You can zoom in on the eye and 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:46.840 you can see what their lighting setup is. So I 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:49.200 was impressed by that as well. Oh, I'm impressed. That's 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.800 a real James Bond level trick. I do not know 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.359 what to make of the spiral growth though I looked 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.080 around briefly on that and I was not able to 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:02.080 find any answers that seemed fencing. I have no expertise 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:11.040 on spiral growths from eyes. All right, I want to 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:13.479 go back to Borsch for just a minute here, because 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.560 she has a couple of other examples that she brings up. 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:22.879 One apparently tolomeos Chinos. This would have been a figure 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:27.720 from the late first early second century. CE once described 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.439 a beautiful woman as being quote with a double pupil. Okay, 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.360 And in the last episode we talked about some legends 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.720 in which a character with multiple pupils this was assumed 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:41.159 to be a marker of beauty. Right, So this is 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:43.639 interesting because it seems to suggest that this is not 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:48.840 just isolated within Irish literary traditions, that perhaps somewhere else 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.600 in the world there was this idea that double pupil 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.679 equals beauty. And I mean, who am I to say 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.440 it's not beautiful? You know, it's not like you look 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.360 at images of actual double pupil situations and you're not 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.000 hortified by them or anything, no more so than if 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:06.920 you look at a super close up of any human 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:11.600 Eyeball also mentions that ovid portrays a woman with double 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.480 pupils having the evil eye at one point, so tying 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:19.040 back into the evil eye tradition. But anyway, Bors concludes 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:22.200 quote to conclude this section, Both angry eyes and eyes 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:25.480 with multiple pupils have been connected with the concept of 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:29.600 the evil eye, there is no strict identity between the phenomena. 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:33.080 Multiple pupils can also be a sign of beauty, sharp sight, 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.679 and clairvoyance. Okay, so we're not really converging on a 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.359 unity of theme here. If you're in an Irish legend 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:42.560 or myth and you have a character with multiple pupils 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.840 in one eye, it seems they could either be somebody 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:48.720 who has a lot of insight, somebody who can see 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:51.679 very far away, somebody who can see the future, somebody 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.560 who is beautiful, or somebody who is monstrous or can 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:59.200 do curses. And there is this idea too that it's 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.040 it's part of like the supernatural body, that when you 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:06.639 have some sort of a demigod figure, it's the human body. 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.000 It's almost like it mutates with the divinity within it 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.600 like the human The normal human body cannot contain this 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:17.240 level of power and therefore, extra things are going to happen, 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:20.640 you know, extra pupils, extra fingers, that sort of thing. 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.240 And this ties directly into another example I found, and 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:29.399 this one comes from Chinese traditions as well. This is 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.760 from the nineteen sixty seven book Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:39.280 Variations on a Theme by Hungarian born French senologist Eten 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:45.240 Balahs working with working from another source as well, Essay 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:48.840 on the Extinction of the Soul by Faun Shin, a 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.440 Chinese philosopher and writer who lived four fifty through five 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.919 fifteen CE. The subject here, as far as eyes are concerned, 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.560 is one of the legendary sage rulers of antiquity in China. 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.680 This would concern a time during the third millennium BC. 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.520 And so the structure of this paper seems to concern 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.680 like questions and answers. And so first we have this question. 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:15.639 The body of the sage is similar to the body 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.160 of ordinary men. Yet there is a difference by which 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:21.480 the sage is distinguished from ordinary men. From this, it 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.440 can be inferred that body and soul are different. Answer 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:30.000 not at all. Pure gold glitters and unwashed gold does 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:33.520 not pure gold. That glitters surely cannot be made of 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:37.760 the same unglittering material as that of unwashed gold. How 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:40.639 much less, then, can the soul of a sage be 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.800 lodged in a vessel such as the ordinary man. Nor 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.400 would it be possible for the soul of an ordinary 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:50.760 man to dwell in the body of a sage. Therefore, 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:55.360 fengg Sum is depicted as having eyebrows of eight colors, 0:21:55.840 --> 0:22:00.640 and zong Huo's eyes with double pupils, signon as having 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:03.960 the face of a dragon, and tie how the mouth 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:07.560 of a horse, all of which are outward bodily signs 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:11.640 of their exceptional nature. All the seven openings were found 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.600 in the heart of pie Con. The gall bladder of 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:17.760 poe U was as big as a fist, which shows 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.199 that their inner organs were unusual. Thus we know that 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:24.480 certain parts of the bodies of sages are quite out 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.560 of the ordinary, and that sages are not only superior 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:32.159 to ordinary human beings, but also surpass all other creatures 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:37.920 in bodily form. That's just science. I love this passage 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:40.240 so much. I mean, I love that it's basically an 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:45.480 autopsy of supernatural sages, of determining how they're they're but 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.160 like you can imagine this scene in a movie. Oh yeah, 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:50.679 this is beautiful, the gall bladder as big as a fist, 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:54.639 showing that the inner organs are unusual. This is great, 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:57.320 and you know, and this is this is not a 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:00.840 totally unique view of the body of the holy person 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:03.760 or the saint. I mean, you know, there are tons 0:23:03.760 --> 0:23:07.119 of traditions all around the world, including like the idea 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:10.199 that certain types of saints or holy people, because of 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:14.520