WEBVTT - The Three-Pupiled Eye, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.760 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.800 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:22.239 our last episode, we discussed a common but enthralling literary 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:26.320 motif in Irish mythology, the triple and the sevenfold I 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:30.200 three or seven pupils three or seven iris is found 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:35.320 in the eyes of beautiful heroes, divine seers, destructive monsters. 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.880 We also discussed the structure and functionality of the human 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.080 eye and the rare instances in which we actually see 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:47.040 double pupils in human eyes. In this episode, we're going 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:50.120 to explore more curious eyes from the natural world, as 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.960 well as more accounts of marvelous eyes from ancient history 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:58.279 and literature. But first, a pop culture update. Um At 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:00.280 the end of last episode we were talking about I 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:05.000 spoke briefly about some some double eyes that I've remembered 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.760 from some movies, album covers, etcetera. Well, Our our good 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:12.639 producer Seth provided us with two additional examples of double 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.200 eyes and popular culture that we didn't think of last time. 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.600 Number one, the double irises and pupils of aminet. In 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:22.440 two thousand, seventeens The Mummy. This is the Tom Cruise 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.160 Mummy film. Oh boy, did not see it, but I 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:27.880 think this is like the the titular Mummy, or at 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.400 least one of them. I think she is the Mummy 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:32.840 in this film. I'm okay, I haven't seen this one, 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.160 not even on an airplane, but I'm not opposed to it. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:38.919 I mean, I've seen a lot of crummy Mummy movies 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.600 over the years, and usually there's something interesting in them. Yeah, 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.680 at least sometimes you get an Arnold Fosloo or something. Yeah. Uh. 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:48.720 And then the second example Seth brings up is the 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:53.560 album cover to Uh Bubba by Haitian Canadian musician um 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.640 K Trenada, featuring the artist with otherworldly blue eyes that 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:01.160 have double pupils, double irises. I listened to a track 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.280 from this album while we were working on notes. It 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:05.080 was good. I haven't had a chance yet, but I 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:08.040 do love the album cover. It's pretty great. Now. One 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:11.880 of the sources that we mentioned in the last episode 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:16.400 was the Evil Eye in early Irish literature and law. 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:20.080 This was published in Celtica twenty four back in two 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:25.040 thousand three. Uh and this was by Jacqueline borsch and Um, 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.800 the author of Fergus Kelly is also cited on this 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:30.399 paper because there's like a part one in a part two, 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:32.799 but I believe we were we dealt with material from 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:36.080 part one. Celtica. The journal this is in is a 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.720 scholarly journal for Celtic studies out of the Dublin Institute 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.240 for Advanced Studies. So most of this deals of course 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:47.799 with Irish law, Irish traditions, Irish mythology, UM, and UH 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.800 and in. Despite the popularity of this motif of the 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.600 of the multiple pupils, multiple irises within the Irish tradition, 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.360 we also encounter discussions of this sort of thing in 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.080 other traditions as well, and bor shares a few of 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.839 these well. The first one, UH comes to us from 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.639 a plenty of the Elder and the Natural History. Plenty 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:13.840 discusses individuals in Africa said to possess quote the power 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.320 of fascination with the eyes and can even kill those 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.080 on whom they fix their gaze for any length of time, 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.040 more especially if their look denotes anger. Now that's your 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:28.440 pretty basic evil eye scenario right there. And you encounter 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.880 variations of this through throughout the world. UH. Based on 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:35.000 the fact that, yes, you can shoot somebody a really 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:39.520 terrible look, and you can you can almost feel it. 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.960 Of course, going back into the ancient world, the belief 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.360 was often that it was more than you know, giving 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.480 somebody the stink I produced more than just a bad feeling, 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:51.840 that it could literally curse them or cause them magical harm. Yes, 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.160 But the neat thing here where it ties into what 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.800 we're talking about in these episodes is uh Plenty goes 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.280 on to connect this to multiple pupils quote. A still 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:04.200 more remarkable circumstance is the fact that these persons have 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:08.920 two pupils in each eye. Apollo Nides says that there 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.480 are certain females of this description in Scythia who are 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:17.040 known as the Bitha and Phi. Larches states that a 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.200 tribe of the Theebe in Pontus, and many other persons 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.040 as well have a double pupil in one eye and 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:27.159 in the other the figure of a horse. Double pupil 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.760 in one eye, the other the figure of a horse. Now, 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.200 with passages of this kind, we're often faced with the 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:38.320 question is this based on some distorted or exaggerated retelling 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:42.000 of something that somebody actually saw, or is it just 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:46.560 pure creative imagination or you know, tall tales, and it's 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.440 always interesting to wonder about the former, But ancient accounts 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.719 like Plenties are clearly full of the latter, especially when 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.000 telling stories about peoples who live in far away parts 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.920 of the globe. You know, this section that we're quoting 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.400 from Plenty is from I can't remember what it's called, 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:03.400 but there's like one of his books is all about 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:05.960 the nations of the world, and it's just all these 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.599 weird stories of like, here's a people who live somewhere 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:11.680 far away, and here's this strange thing they do or uh, 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.640 something that they wear that would be fascinating to to 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.560 my readers. Like there's one part where he talks about 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.400 a tribe of people somewhere who do not have heads 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.680 and instead have eyes in their breasts. So, uh, it 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.640 need not be the case that Plenty is necessarily here 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.960 repeating a misunderstood or exaggerated story about somebody who actually 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:35.200 had something like polycoria or some other unusual condition of 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.760 the pupils. But of course it is always possible. Yeah, 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:40.960 it does make make you wonder, you know, to what 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:44.520 extent would there be, like, you know, some account of 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:48.520 an individual with this this rare condition, uh, some memory 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.040 of this rare condition, and then it gets folded into 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.720 some of these traditions and beliefs at one point or 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.680 another in their long lives. Yes, though of course it 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:00.560 could again just be something somebody made, like the people 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:02.760 who don't have heads and have eyes in their breasts 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:05.800 right right, Like, we can dream up individuals with like 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:08.960 four arms, and it's pretty interesting and and we can 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.719 draw all sorts of meaning from that, But it doesn't 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.920 mean that that people with four arms ever actually existed, 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.160 you know, that there's any actual biological basis on which 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.520 that was based. Though. I do think it's really interesting 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:22.640 that he doesn't just say, okay, they've got two pupils 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.640 in each eye, but that they've got two pupils in 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.919 one eye and in the other eye a horse. Yeah, 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.200 And like my the first place my mind went was, Okay, 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.680 is it actually shaped like a horse a distortion that 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.760 is roughly horse shaped? Or is it Does it mean 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.080 that this is like some sort of telephone game, you know, 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:45.280 translation game version of horizontal pupil like one finds in 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.640 the eye of a horse. That's interesting and that will 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.920 tie into a scientific paper we're going to talk about 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.440 in a bit. I found an editor's footnote in the 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.880 Bostock translation of Plenty, which notes, quote, some of the 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:02.480 commentators have supposed Plenty or phi Larcis, from whom he borrows, 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:05.479 because remember, this isn't an original observation of Plenties. He's 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.360 like copying this from some other writing of this person 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.400 named phar Larcas, but phil Arcis from whom he borrows. 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.640 Whether they were misled by the ambiguity of the Greek 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:21.760 term eCos, which signifies either a horse or a tremulous 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:25.560 motion of the eye. But even admitting this to be 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.240 the case, the wonder is scarcely diminished, for we have 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.120 the double pupil in one eye, while this supposed tremulous 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.320 motion is confined to the other. So so if Fostuck 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.960 is correct there, it's that this word had had a 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.600 double meaning, and one of them was like a you know, 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:42.760 a quivering of the eye. I guess I would assume 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:47.080 that's like when somebody's eyes twitching. But yeah, you wonder, well, 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:49.280 why why is it just that the other eyes twitching 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.400 when when the first eye has two pupils in it. 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.440 That's also strange. Maybe not as strange as a horse. 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:56.720 Um I was. I was looking for answers on this 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.520 as well, and I ran across the paper titled of 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.600 the Papula Duplex and Other Tokens of an Evil Eye 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:09.000 in the Light of Ophthalmology by Walton Brooks McDaniel, UM 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:15.360 and uh. According to Brooks, here one Dr Kirby flower Smith, 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.960 a professor of Latin and the at John Hopkins University, 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.760 who had I looked at had died in UH interpreted 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:26.440 the Plenty passage as having some sort of connection to 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:28.800 the idea that the affliction of the eye was caused 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:34.000 by quote a horse shaped demon, horsehead mask demon. Yeah. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.120 McDaniel also begins to discuss the the idea that if you, 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.760 you know, if you look into another eye, you know, 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:43.160 certainly with the right lighting and so forth, you look 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:45.400 into another person's eye, you can see your own reflection. 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:51.040 And so McDaniel mentions that, UH, in some traditions, that 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.680 that individual you see in the eye is interpreted, you know, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.120 not as yourself, but as the signifier of the soul, 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:00.840 and that there are even some tradition where if the 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:05.160 individual looks in some way inverted, that is because of witchcraft. 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.640 And in this uh, this this is one of those 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:13.079 weird situations where then McDaniel mentioned something else that leads 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.520 me back to a source that I'm I'm very familiar with, 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:19.720 and yet I totally blinked on this particular detail or 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.520 or or maybe I've never read this one particular tale, 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:27.319 but he ends up referring back to Strange Tales from 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.760 a Chinese studio by Poosh song Ling. That's a show, favorite, folks. 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:32.640 Should we do we have a strange sales from a 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:36.800 Chinese studio buzzer? I doubt we do, But at any rate, 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:38.680 it's it's it's a book that I really enjoy. This 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:42.760 is a Ching Dynasty um collection of stories that Pouh 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.959 song Ling collected and retails. And you know, there's a 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.000 lot that's that's lost in translation um out of Mandarin, 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.920 but but there's still remarkable fun sometimes funny, and sometimes 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.280 just very strange. Uh. Sometimes it's it's you know, it's 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:00.200 it's all about what they would have meant to the 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.160 people who read them. But there are a lot of 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.280 fun Uh. There's a Penguin edition of it translation that 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:09.400 I've I read again and again over the years, and 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.600 yet I completely blanked on this one story. It's called 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.880 Talking Pupils. I think maybe the reason that I haven't 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.200 read this one recently is sometimes i'll read these to 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:21.599 my son and I'll sort of glance at them, and 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:23.839 if it looks like there's something that might be scandalous 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:25.880 in it, or you know, a little dirty, then I'll 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.960 skip over the tale. There aren't many, but occasionally there's 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.160 one like that. So anyway, this story Talking Pupils concerns 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.120 the tale of one Feng Dong quote, a gentleman of 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.480 considerable accomplishments while at the same time having a reputation 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:43.600 as an unprincipled libertine. Oh yeah, so clearly that's why 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:45.720 I might have skipped over this in recent years. Anyway, 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.079 So Fang was this is how the story goes. Thing 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:51.400 is strolling the countryside and he happens on a fine 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.880 carriage on the road. Uh. One of the female attendants 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:57.960 to the carriage is quite fetching, so he moves in 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.360 for a closer look. But as he does so, he's 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.040 able to peek between the curtains of the carriage itself 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:07.120 and he sees a beautiful young woman within, and he's captivated. 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.000 The female attendant is having none of this, though, and 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.240 she verbally shames him. Uh, you know, call calls him 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.400 a you know, a weirdo and um, you know, a 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.800 snooper and uh, not only does she verbally shame him, 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.080 she reaches down, grabs some dust out of the road 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.680 and throws it in Fang's face. Oh, dirty fighter. Yeah, 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:27.360 but you know he had it coming. He was up 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.360 to no good and he gets punished for it. So 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:32.800 he's he's initially he's trying to get the dust out 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.880 of his eyes. The carriage carries on. When he is 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.520 able to see again, you know, struggling, the carriage is 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.880 is completely done. It's you know, it's vanished around the 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.760 bend or whatever. So he has heads on home, but 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.400 his eyes continue to bother him, so he seeks some help. 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.080 A friend looks into his eyes. Um, and this friend says, yeah, 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:54.880 there's a visible film over each of your eyeballs. And meanwhile, 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.640 tears won't stop flowing. In time, the film thickens and 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.840 a birls. What what is described as a spiral shaped 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:08.000 protuberance begins growing from his right eye, resisting all manner 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:12.720 of treatment. Eventually he's completely blind, and you know, he's 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.440 he's distraught over this. But he hears about a Buddhist 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.600 sutra known as the Sutra of Light, and it's said 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.200 to be able to heal eye ailments or ailments of 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.720 this sort. So he gets a sided friend to read 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:28.080 it to him, and he learns it by heart, and 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:30.480 he recites it over and over again, and after a 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:33.200 while it gives him solace. Uh, you know, he feels 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.840 a little better. His side is not back. But then 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.600 one day he begins to hear voices, two voices, one 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.640 from each of his eyeballs. Oh, I love this. The 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.720 eyeballs are talking, both of them. Well, as it turns out, 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.000 not the eyeballs, but things within the eyeballs. There's one 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.160 voice within each eyeball, and there they start talking to 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:53.920 each other, and they're talking about how dark it is 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.600 in their homes and how they'd really like to just 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:58.800 get outside and go for a stroll. And then so 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.600 puss on Ling says quote, then he felt a slight 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.920 irritation in both the nostrils, as if two little creatures 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.960 were wriggling down his nose. After a while, he felt 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.800 the creatures return and make their way back up his nostrils. 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:16.280 And into the eye sockets. Again, this is anatomically correct because, 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.200 as we know, the tear ducks that drained tears away 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.640 from the eyes drained into the nasal cavity, which is 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:28.240 why your nose runs when you cry. Very good. So, uh, 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:30.720 what does thing do at this point? Well, he gets 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:32.720 his wife to take him to the old garden, and 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:34.839 he has her observe him in the garden to see 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.200 if anything like this happens again. Maybe the garden will 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:40.720 coax whatever it is out of his eyeballs. And this 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.360 is what happens. Quote, it was not long before she 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.040 saw two little mannekins, neither of them any larger than 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.360 a bean, emerged from his nose and fly buzzing out 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.880 of the door. They were soon well out of sight. 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:56.200 But we're back again in next to no time, flying 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.520 together up onto his face and in at his nostrils, 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.640 like a pair of homing bees or ants. So is 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.440 he getting relief when they fly away? I don't think so. No, 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:09.800 It's just it happens, and he doesn't know what this 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.079 is about. So and it keeps happening. It happens again 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.720 each day for three days, and finally one of the 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.560 voices complains that the tunnel that they're using to get 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.160 out of the eyeball is a bit round about, uh, 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.040 and there's got to be a better way, right, It's 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.560 time that they make some sort of proper doorway. So 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.440 I'm going to read uh the rest of this year. 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:34.000 That really gets to the juicy part. I'm just I'm 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.040 filled with dread. It's not a good idea when the 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.440 tenants in your eyeballs decided to start renovating on their own. 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.480 So that's how it goes. The wall on my side 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:47.600 is very thick, replied the right eye. It won't be easy. 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.400 I'll try to make an opening on my side, said 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.320 the left eye. Then we can share my door. Presently, 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.600 Fay thought he felt a scratching and a splitting in 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.400 his left eye socket, and an instant later he could 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.280 see he could see everything around him with absolute clarity, 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.560 beside himself with delight. He promptly informed his wife, who 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.560 inspected his eyes afresh and found that in the left 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:12.920 eye a minute aperture had appeared in the film, a 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.480 hole no larger than a cracked peppercorn, through which gleamed 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.080 the black globe of a pupil. By the next morning, 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:23.280 the film in the left eye had disappeared altogether. But 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.040 the strangest thing of all was that, on careful inspection, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.400 there were now two pupils visible in that eye, and 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.720 the right eye was still obscured by its spiral shaped growth. 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:37.360 Apparently both of the two eye mannekins his talking pupils 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:41.000 had now taken up residence in the left eye. So 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:44.080 although Fang was still blind in one eye, he could 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.720 see better with his one good eye than he had 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.840 ever done with two. From that day forth he was 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.160 a great deal more circumspect in his behavior and acquired 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.440 unimpeccable reputation in the district. Okay, so no more creeping 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.400 on ladies and carriages. Right, he learned his uson. He 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:03.720 was you know, punished for his creepy behavior, and now 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:06.400 he's back and ready to be a good citizen with 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.280 one eye that can see better than two, right, because 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.200 two pupils um Now that this again is from the 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:16.480 Penguin Classics edition. It's a John Minford translation, and this 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:19.280 was super interesting as well. Minford shares this in the 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:24.200 notes Pupils. The traditional Chinese expression for pupil, tong wren, 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.920 means literally man in the pupil from the reflection of 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:33.360 oneself that one sees in the eye of another. Yeah, 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.520 that was that was really that. I was really impressed 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:37.240 by that. And I was talking to my wife about 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:39.720 it because I was looking around a little bit after this, 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.320 and I saw an article about photography and about being 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.120 able to zoom in on the eye of an individual 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:49.760 in a modern photograph and see the reflection potentially of 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:56.000 the photographer and because of the high resolution, I guess, yeah, yeah, 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:58.200 and uh. I was asking my wife about this, and 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:01.600 she pointed out that one the photographers can do is 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:03.760 you can pull up, say a head shot that another 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.960 photographer has done. You can zoom in on the eye 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.280 and you can see what they're lighting set up is. 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.400 So I was impressed by that as well. I'm impressed. 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.919 That's a real James Bond level trick. I do not 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.320 know what to make of the spiral growth though. Um. 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:20.960 I looked around briefly on that, and I was not 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:25.399 able to find any answers that seemed up convincing. I 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:35.040 have no expertise on spiral growths from eyes than all right, 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:36.879 I want to go back to Borsch for just a 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.119 minute here, because she has a couple of other examples 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:46.320 that she brings up. One apparently uh tolomeos chinos um Uh. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.000 This would have been a figure from the late first 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:53.320 early second centuries. CE once described a beautiful woman as 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.240 being quote with a double pupil. Okay. And in the 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.520 last episode we we talked about some legends in which 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.080 a cure or with multiple pupils that this was assumed 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:05.520 to be a marker of beauty. Right. So this is 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.000 interesting because it seems to suggest that this is not 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:13.240 just isolated within Irish literary traditions, that perhaps somewhere else 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.000 in the world there was this idea that double pupil 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.800 equals beauty. Um. And and I mean, who am I 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.200 to say it's it's not beautiful? Uh? You know, it's 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:23.640 not like you look at images of of of actual 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.520 double pupil situations and you're not hortified by them or anything, 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:29.000 no more so than if you, you know, look at 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:31.720 a super close up of of of any human eyeball. 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.960 Borse also mentions that ovid portrays a woman with double 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.400 pupils having the evil eye at one point, so uh, 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.920 tying back into the evil eye tradition. But anyway, boris 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:46.159 concludes quote to conclude this section. Both angry eyes and 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:49.760 eyes with multiple pupils have been connected with the concept 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.040 of the evil eye. There is no strict identity between 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.600 the phenomena. Multiple pupils can also be a sign of beauty, 0:18:56.840 --> 0:19:00.200 sharp sight, and clair avoyance. Okay, so we're not really 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.720 converging on a unity of theme here. It's if you're 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:05.920 in an Irish legendar myth and you have a character 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.840 with multiple pupils in one eye, it seems they could 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.399 either be somebody who has a lot of insight, somebody 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.920 who can see very far away, somebody who can see 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.720 the future, somebody who is beautiful, or somebody who is 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.520 monstrous or can do curses. And you know, there is 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:24.720 this idea too that it's it's part of like the 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.520 supernatural body, that when you have some sort of a 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:32.159 demigod figure, it's the human body. Um, it's almost like 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.280 it mutates with the divinity within it, like the like 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.959 the the human The normal human body cannot contain this 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.600 level of power, and therefore extra things are going to happen, 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:45.000 you know, extra pupils, extra fingers, that sort of thing. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.639 And this ties directly into another example. I found, and 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:53.640 this one comes from Chinese traditions as well. Uh. This 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:58.280 is from the nine seven book Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:03.640 Variations on a theme by Hungarian born French sinologists Eten 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:09.639 Belahs working with working from another source as well, Essay 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.200 on the Extinction of the Soul by Faun Shin, a 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:17.879 Chinese philosopher and writer who lived UH four fifty through five. 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:22.840 The subject here, as far as eyes are concerned, is 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.919 one of the legendary sage rulers of antiquity in China. 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.080 This would concern a time during the third millennium b c. 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:33.879 And so the structure of this paper seems to concern 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:37.080 like questions and answers. And so first we have this question. 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.000 The body of the sage is similar to the body 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.520 of ordinary men, Yet there is a difference by which 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.840 the sage is distinguished from ordinary men. From this, it 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.800 can be inferred that body and soul are different. Answer 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:54.480 not at all. Pure gold glitters, and unwashed gold does not. 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.000 Pure gold that glitters surely cannot be made of the 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:02.400 same unglittering material as out of unwashed gold. How much 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:05.640 less then, can the soul of a sage be lodged 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:09.440 in a vessel such as the ordinary man, Nor would 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.000 it be possible for the soul of an ordinary man 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.520 to dwell in the body of a sage. Therefore, fang 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.840 soon Is is depicted as having eyebrows of eight colors, 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:25.000 and zong Huo's eyes with double pupils, Seyon as having 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:28.320 the face of a dragon, and tie how the mouth 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:31.960 of a horse, all of which are outward bodily signs 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:36.000 of their exceptional nature. All the seven openings were found 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:39.000 in the heart of pie Con. The gall bladder of 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.119 Poe Yu was as big as a fist, which shows 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.560 that their inner organs were unusual. Thus we know that 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:48.840 certain parts of the bodies of sages are quite out 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.960 of the ordinary, and that sages are not only superior 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:56.560 to ordinary human beings, but also surpass all other creatures 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:01.840 in bodily form. That's just science. I I love this 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.399 passage so much. I mean, I love that it's basically 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:09.800 an autopsy of of supernatural sages determining how they're they're 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:11.760 But like you can imagine this scene in a movie. 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:14.440 Oh yeah, this is beautiful. The gall bladder as big 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:18.160 as a fist, showing that the inner organs are unusual. 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:20.239 This is great, and you know, and this is not 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:24.159 This is not a totally unique view of the body 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:27.399 of the holy person or the saint. I mean, you know, 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.840 there are tons of traditions all around the world, including 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:33.159 like the idea that that certain types of saints or 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:37.160