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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. It is Let's see what's up today?

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Speaker 1: Oh it's the Halo Part two. This one originally published

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Speaker 1: on March second, twenty twenty one. We reran the first

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Speaker 1: part of the Halo series last Saturday, so if you

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Speaker 1: miss that, you can go check that out as well.

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Speaker 1: I remember this. The series was a lot of fun,

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Speaker 1: so we hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of

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Speaker 1: our talk about Halos and the Nimbus and the aureol,

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

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Speaker 1: Christian saying to or who wah wah the Terrible Or

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Speaker 1: did we end up last week actually talking about Lucadors

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Speaker 1: at all? I think we did very briefly, partially because

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Speaker 1: we were in the process of putting together a weird

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Speaker 1: house cinema episode on a El Santo film. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: the question came up, are there any halos used with

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Speaker 1: luchador designs, with the idea being that, yeah, they're a

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

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

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Speaker 1: at some of the usual suspects, and looked on Luca

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

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

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Speaker 1: nothing like like actually physically emerging and positioned above the head.

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Speaker 1: You know, you see a lot of crosses, etc. The

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

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Speaker 1: Angel Azul, one of at least four different lujadors who's

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Speaker 1: used that name. And this particular mass depicts an entire angel,

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Speaker 1: like a like a Christmas top or angel on the

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Speaker 1: front of the mask, and that angel has a halo,

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Speaker 1: so it's positioned so that that the angel's head in

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Speaker 1: halo appear more or less in the center of the forehead.

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Speaker 1: So I assume this is a technico, not a ruto,

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Speaker 1: I guess. So I don't know anything about this guy,

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Speaker 1: but it looks like a technico mask. You know, if

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Speaker 1: you have an angel like that. Uh, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: it's got to be. But then again, he could easily

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Speaker 1: turn Ruto and become a fallen angel, especially if he

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Speaker 1: loses that mask. Oh yeah, I mean a bad angel

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Speaker 1: can be really bad. You get angels of death, You've

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Speaker 1: got You've got a remember a particularly haunting mickloshred Nodi

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Speaker 1: poem called The Terrifying Angel, where he an angel appears

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Speaker 1: to him and advises him to remove his own skin. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a There are a number of different and Lucia,

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Speaker 1: there have been a few different angels of death, Angel

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Speaker 1: de la Monte. There's one I remember seeing on TV

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Speaker 1: that did not really have any any kind of angelic

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Speaker 1: themes in his out fit. But I did run across

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Speaker 1: on Lucawiki an old photo from a magazine that had

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Speaker 1: showed a guy with a halo motif again on the forehead,

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Speaker 1: almost like a third eye. But that's the only thing

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Speaker 1: I could really find in terms of dudes like this

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Speaker 1: with halos. Now another thing that comes to mind, though,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're talking a little bit about a halo's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of Bill Paxton's film Frailty, which has a great angel

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Speaker 1: visitation scene, like a you know, hallucination that emerges in

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Speaker 1: his mind, but there's no halo. Now I might be

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Speaker 1: remembering that wrong. I thought that the angel in that

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Speaker 1: it doesn't have like a ring halo around the head

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Speaker 1: or anything specifically concentrated on the head. But I did

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Speaker 1: recall a kind of like full body glow. Am I wrong?

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Speaker 1: But definitely definitely has a glow to it, and there

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

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Speaker 1: above it, But in terms of something more instantly recognizable

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Speaker 1: as a halo, not so much. Likewise, I was thinking

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Speaker 1: back to the Prophecy films with Christopher Walkin. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of a lot of a

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Speaker 1: lot of angels in that, a lot of angel wings.

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Speaker 1: And you can think of various things that were clearly

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Speaker 1: influenced by that you know, we have angels and fallen

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Speaker 1: angels popping up and filmmakers will go nuts given them big,

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Speaker 1: big feathery wings, but I don't think they ever really

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Speaker 1: include the halo. And it's kind of interesting because I

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Speaker 1: guess it comes down to the fact that it's easy

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Speaker 1: to think of it as such a cliche thing, but

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Speaker 1: at the same time it is so weird and and

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Speaker 1: there's so many ways to depict it. You'd think you

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Speaker 1: would you would see more of it. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I'd love to hear it from folks out there who

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Speaker 1: have encountered really cool halos and genre pictures, because I'd

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Speaker 1: love to I'd love to see it now. In the

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

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Speaker 1: cinobyte from like the Clive Barker verse with the with

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Speaker 1: a Halo? I can't remember if we if we did,

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

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Speaker 1: I think there's an a comic hell Raiser comic book.

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Speaker 1: There's a there's a Cinabyte named Halo, but he doesn't

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Speaker 1: really have a halo. Now, there was a Clive Barker

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Speaker 1: action figure for the Todd McFarlane toys for the Tortured

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Speaker 1: souls line, and this guy, uh, this particular guy agnistis

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Speaker 1: has kind of a has like a surgical halo around

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Speaker 1: his head, like a halo, and then he also has

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Speaker 1: what I think is like a human face maybe his

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Speaker 1: own human face position behind him that also seems to

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Speaker 1: mimic halo iconography. So it's a very Cinobyte asked character.

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Speaker 1: So I'm this seems to come close. And certainly Clive

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Speaker 1: Barker loves toying around with religious imagery, so it makes

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Speaker 1: sense that we would find an example of this and

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Speaker 1: something he designed. Yeah. Fun fact, those those figures that

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Speaker 1: came out, turns out they each had a portion of

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Speaker 1: a novella in them that I think for a long

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Speaker 1: time you could only get if you bought all the figures.

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Speaker 1: But it's subsequently been put out sometimes in the last

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Speaker 1: five years or so titled Tortured Souls the Legend of Primordium,

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Speaker 1: and I read it over the weekend enjoined some time

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: sort of monsters and and so forth. It's in a

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Speaker 1: kind of a dark fantasy setting, kind of hell razory

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Speaker 1: at times for sure, but but not entirely like it felt.

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Speaker 1: It was really good. It's one of the I haven't

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Speaker 1: read a lot of Clive Barker recently, but this one

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Speaker 1: was new to me and I enjoyed it. So a

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Speaker 1: novella that comes serially within the Action figures that you

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Speaker 1: would buy at Spencer's Gifts in the nineties, Yeah, it was,

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Speaker 1: and to my shock it was like it was. It

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Speaker 1: was actually really enjoyable, So there you go. I wonder

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Speaker 1: if the Insane Clown Posse action figures had a novella

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Speaker 1: that came with them. I doubt it. I think this

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Speaker 1: was the only I think there was actually another Clive

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Speaker 1: Barker line, who is some sort of like Carnival kind

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Speaker 1: of a theme, where he did another one like this

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Speaker 1: where he had different different chapters in a novella that

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Speaker 1: all came together if you bought all the figures. But

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Speaker 1: but and that one and that one is also available

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Speaker 1: to read now, but I haven't read it. It's interesting though,

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Speaker 1: with the Action figures though, because the whole thing, right

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Speaker 1: is that you don't take them out of the box.

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Speaker 1: If you're collecting them. And if that was the case,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't get to read the cool little novella chapters

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Speaker 1: that are hidden within there. Well, you wouldn't get to

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Speaker 1: play with them either. I mean, what are you supposed

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Speaker 1: to do with these things? I don't know. They don't

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Speaker 1: look tremendously fun to play with. They kind of they're

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Speaker 1: very grizzly. Have a little tea party with your barbie

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Speaker 1: and your cinebites. Yeah, But like I say, the novella

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Speaker 1: was fun. So in the last episode we ended up

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Speaker 1: talking about a lot of the different ways that the

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Speaker 1: halo or the nimbus has been represented or characterized in history.

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Speaker 1: You know, sometimes as a glowing disc behind the head,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: talked about Humbaba or Hubaba having the seven terrors or

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the glory, the melom, the sun, disc crown, etc. And

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

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Speaker 1: it is getting it would seem on the surface at

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Speaker 1: least to get to the same ideas, the idea that

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Speaker 1: there's something either emanating out of you or through you? Right, Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: And the secondary question if people do really sometimes see

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Speaker 1: a glow of color or a cloud of blazing light

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Speaker 1: around someone, what would cause that? So I'm going to

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Speaker 1: transition into this subject for a bit and look at

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Speaker 1: it a few different ways. The first thing I wanted

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Speaker 1: to know was, wait a second, is it actually possible,

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Speaker 1: in just a straightforward scientific physical sense that humans do

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Speaker 1: actually sometimes glow? I don't know. I've come across weirder

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Speaker 1: facts on this show before, so I started looking into this.

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Speaker 1: The first thing I thought of was, I wonder if

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Speaker 1: there's ever been a case where somebody was made to

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Speaker 1: glow by exposure to I don't know, something in the environment.

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Speaker 1: And the thing that popped in my mind was in

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Speaker 1: The Simpsons when characters who work at the nuclear power

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Speaker 1: plant acquire what mister Burns would call a healthy green glow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: instruments that are made to be viewed in the dark,

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Speaker 1: for example in spacecraft. You know, so you want a

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Speaker 1: dial or an instrument that will glow in the dark

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Speaker 1: without having to have any kind of power supply to it,

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Speaker 1: or a you know, or an led inside it or

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Speaker 1: anything like that. This radioluminescent paint actually had to have

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Speaker 1: a combination of two major elements in order to make

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Speaker 1: it glow. In the old school kind that was used

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

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Speaker 1: tragically the cause of the death and sickening of the

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Speaker 1: Radium girls. This was a paint that was made with radium,

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

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

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Speaker 1: is known as a phosphour, which is a chemical that

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

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Speaker 1: gamma rays from the radioactive element, and in the case

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Speaker 1: of the radio luminescent paint that was used by undark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: a green glow. To paint with a phosphour in it,

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Speaker 1: and something to make that glow the color green, like

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Speaker 1: copper Okay, So, long story short, exposure to ionizing radiation

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Speaker 1: can absolutely kill you, but it will not make you glow,

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Speaker 1: I guess, unless you coat yourself in a phosphour. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so that one episode of The Simpsons where mister Burns

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and then just get some plutonium in there. Maybe. Okay.

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Speaker 1: I don't know how long he would survive that though, well,

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Speaker 1: As we I think was explained on the show, mister

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

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

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Speaker 1: three Stooges syndrome. Yeah, so even the ionizing radiation is

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Speaker 1: going whoa. So anyway, you know you're not going to

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

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Speaker 1: person in the ancient world came across a stash of

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Speaker 1: uranium or and then somehow ended up glowing green, so

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Speaker 1: everybody would see him and think, wow, you know, that

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Speaker 1: guy's a god or something. That just wouldn't happen. But

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

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Speaker 1: is that, in a qualified sense, the human body actually

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Speaker 1: does just naturally glow, meaning it doesn't only reflect light

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Speaker 1: from external sources, but the body actually does emit electromagnetic

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Speaker 1: radiation in the visible spectrum. Visible light comes out of

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Speaker 1: your body. Huh. But before you get too excited, the

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Speaker 1: amount of light that our bodies put out on average

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Speaker 1: is really really tiny. It's roughly a thousand times too

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Speaker 1: dim to see with the naked eye. You need special

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Speaker 1: scientific instruments in a very dark room to pick it up.

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: It is that kind of light. And of course it's

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Speaker 1: not just us, most or maybe all other animals would

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

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

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Speaker 1: this glow happen. It appears to be chemical reactions involving

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Speaker 1: free radicals within the body. There was a two thousand

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Speaker 1: nine study that tried to measure this photon emission from

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Speaker 1: the human body using special equipment. So this was by

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Speaker 1: Misaki Kobayashi, Daisuke Kikuchi, and Hitoshi Okamura, published in PLS

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Speaker 1: one in two thousand and nine called Imaging of ultraweek

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Speaker 1: spontaneous photon emission from human body displaying diurnal rhythm. And

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Speaker 1: so what the researchers did here was they used a

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Speaker 1: cryogenic CCD camera to image five healthy male subjects in

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Speaker 1: their twenties at different times throughout the day. So the

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Speaker 1: subjects would come in, they'd sit in a chair I

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Speaker 1: think they were partially naked or at least bare chested

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Speaker 1: in the chair in a dark room for at least

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Speaker 1: twenty minutes. I think there was a period of adjustment

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Speaker 1: to the darkness, and then after that they'd be photographed

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Speaker 1: for twenty minutes with the special camera. And they do

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Speaker 1: this every day for every three hours from ten am

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Speaker 1: to ten pm. And the researchers actually found that the

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Speaker 1: amount of light emitted from the body varied significantly over

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Speaker 1: the day, so people glowed the most at about four

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Speaker 1: pm and the least at ten am. And they hypothesized

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Speaker 1: that this probably has something to do with how energy

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Speaker 1: metabolism changes throughout the day according to our circadian rhythms.

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Speaker 1: But also interesting, or at least I thought this was interesting, Rob,

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Speaker 1: I've attached a picture for you to look at down here.

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Speaker 1: The body did not glow equally everywhere. In fact, faces

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Speaker 1: tended to glow more than the rest of the body,

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Speaker 1: it seems like. And there were other kinds of different

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Speaker 1: It says like upper shoulders seemed to glow a little

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Speaker 1: bit more than down lower around like the chest or

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Speaker 1: the stomach, And different parts of the face glowed more

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Speaker 1: than other parts. So it looks like the area around

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Speaker 1: the mouth in particular, was usually glowing more than say,

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Speaker 1: like the forehead or around the eyes or the sides

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Speaker 1: of the face. This thing about the mouth especially makes

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Speaker 1: me imagine an alternate history of halo imagery where the

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Speaker 1: glow is not just surrounding the crown of the head,

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Speaker 1: but emanating from the mouth and jaw a kind of

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Speaker 1: glory beard okay, also kind of a low Pan effect, right, oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: when we first encountered low Pan and he has light

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: out of his mouth. Yes, it's big Trouble and little

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Speaker 1: China for anyone who's not familiar. But anyway, so I

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Speaker 1: was reading an NBC News report about this study from

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Speaker 1: two thousand and nine by Charles Q. Choi, and he

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

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Speaker 1: than the rest of the body is that is that

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Speaker 1: usually faces are more tanned than the rest of the body,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: So I have to be kind of circumspect here, the

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: since this is one of those subjects. I'm sure you've

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

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

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Speaker 1: could give a brief overview, but it was kind of

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: starts moving and and I'm like, ah, okay, so I

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: seeing auras seems to stem from a kind of reinterpretation

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Speaker 1: of the medieval Tantric belief in chakras. So chakras would

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: on one of these nodes at various points positioned, often

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Speaker 1: along the sort of vertical axis through the middle of

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and meditation that uses chakras as well, and I find

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

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Speaker 1: of it is it is not it is not the

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: energy point moving from chakra to chakra, focusing on say,

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Speaker 1: like breathing through your third eye. You know, obviously you're

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Speaker 1: not really breathing through a hole in your your skull,

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Speaker 1: but somehow like focusing on that can be very helpful.

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Speaker 1: It gives you like a different physical focus to get

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Speaker 1: out of your thoughts and uh and even you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of focus on the on the physicality of that

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

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Speaker 1: very helpful though though again I do not engage with

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Speaker 1: it in a way where I think of this is

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Speaker 1: like the actual way that the energy in my body

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Speaker 1: is working. Right, It might not correspond to like physical

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Speaker 1: anatomical realities, but can serve as a focal point for

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Speaker 1: mental imagery and in the way of directing the thoughts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but so that's that's chakras. I think like within the

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Speaker 1: the esoteric and do tradition. Then in the late nineteenth

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Speaker 1: and early twentieth century, it seems this idea somehow got

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Speaker 1: sort of picked up and reinterpreted by various people associated

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Speaker 1: with new religious movements like Theosophy, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century New Age belief in auras as an

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Speaker 1: emanation from the body seems to trace back to a

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Speaker 1: British spiritualist and Theosophist writer named Charles Webster Ledbetter who

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Speaker 1: lived from eighteen fifty four to nineteen thirty four. I

403
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Speaker 1: was just again, I can only give the briefest glance

404
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:36,920
Speaker 1: into this world because it seems very It's like looking

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00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:40,399
Speaker 1: at gnosticism or something. It's just like you cannot really

406
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Speaker 1: understand it from the outside. But I was trying to

407
00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 1: peek in and get some kind of characterization here. So

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Speaker 1: I found a couple of quotes from a writing by

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Speaker 1: Ledbetter called this was a book called Man Visible and Invisible.

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Speaker 1: I think this was actually a reproduction of an earlier

411
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Speaker 1: pamphlet or essay he had done about the leaf in Auras,

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Speaker 1: and he writes the following, All members of our society

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Speaker 1: will be familiar with the idea that every human being

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Speaker 1: is surrounded by a sort of luminous cloud, which we

415
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Speaker 1: have agreed to call the aura. And we have heard

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Speaker 1: from those who have succeeded in developing the special sense

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

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Speaker 1: and that from a study of it much may be

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Speaker 1: learnt as to the disposition, the thoughts, and even the

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00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:28,080
Speaker 1: past life of its possessor. And then later he comes

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Speaker 1: to a physical description of what this aura is, what

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Speaker 1: it looks like. He writes, we find that it is

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Speaker 1: exceedingly complex in structure. At the first glance, it is

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Speaker 1: seen as a luminous cloud, extending to a distance of

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Speaker 1: about eighteen inches or two feet from the body in

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Speaker 1: all directions, and therefore approximately oval in shape. Whence it

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Speaker 1: is sometimes spoken of in occult writings as the auric egg.

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Speaker 1: In most cases it has no well defined outline, but

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Speaker 1: its edges fade into invisibility very gradually. And I think

430
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 1: this is interesting because this really does sound like he's

431
00:24:03,640 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 1: describing the halo glow that we see in a lot

432
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:10,199
Speaker 1: of religious artwork, or here described in a lot of

433
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 1: religious poetry, a sort of oval shaped framing or emanation

434
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: of light from the body that sort of gradually dissipates

435
00:24:17,080 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: as it gets farther away. Yeah, it also kind of

436
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: feels like my holy personal space. Ye shout, not intrude upon, right,

437
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:27,719
Speaker 1: don't put anything in my auric egg. And then he

438
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: goes on to explain a bunch more stuff like that

439
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: these are actually composed of a number of layers of

440
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: underlying auras, one that he calls the health aura, which

441
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 1: there's one that has something to do with the Hindu

442
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,920
Speaker 1: concept of prana or life force. There's one that has

443
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: something to do with desire and the ability to see

444
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: These alleged auras in this context is usually ascribed to

445
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 1: people either with special powers of sight, some kind of

446
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 1: psychic perception, or even more often, it seems, with special

447
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 1: training who have worked to harness their ability to see

448
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:07,920
Speaker 1: the auras of others. Now, as with many other psychic

449
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:11,439
Speaker 1: and paranormal phenomena, people who claim to be able to

450
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 1: see auras as an objective physical phenomenon have repeatedly been

451
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,119
Speaker 1: put to the test in parapsychology research, which, from what

452
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: I read, usually finds no evidence for any consistency in

453
00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:24,719
Speaker 1: the perception of ouras. It seems to me like it

454
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:29,440
Speaker 1: is more likely an internal, subjective interpreted experience, not a

455
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:35,119
Speaker 1: perception of an objectively verifiable external reality, and these tests

456
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 1: can include lots of different things. Like some of them,

457
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:40,360
Speaker 1: you might look at the auras of different people who

458
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: are obscured by a screen, and then later try to

459
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: identify the same people again when the screen is removed. Okay,

460
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:49,880
Speaker 1: so you saw their auras, which person was standing where

461
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:53,000
Speaker 1: behind the screen? And usually people who claim to have

462
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 1: aura perception abilities cannot perform better than chance at this. Nevertheless,

463
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:00,320
Speaker 1: there does seem to be a real perception of the

464
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:04,880
Speaker 1: ability to view a glow emanating from people, and so

465
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 1: that does make you wonder like, okay, well, even if

466
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,439
Speaker 1: this is not an externally verifiable physical reality, people are

467
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,480
Speaker 1: for some reason believing that they see something. They look

468
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: at somebody and they think they see a luminous clouds

469
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 1: surrounding them. So could that have anything to do with

470
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:26,439
Speaker 1: the halo or nimbus tradition? One interesting coincidence that this

471
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: might just be a total coincidence actually not have anything

472
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,720
Speaker 1: to not have any causal link. But one interesting thing

473
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 1: I come across while I was poking around it, or

474
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:38,480
Speaker 1: a perception on the internet, is that there is often

475
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:41,439
Speaker 1: a belief that there are seven layers of auras. There

476
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:43,919
Speaker 1: are actually different systems where people say there are different

477
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:47,320
Speaker 1: numbers of layers, but a common one is seven layers,

478
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: which takes me back to the ancient Mesopotamian ogre Huawa

479
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: or Humbaba, who is said to have seven terrors or

480
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: seven auras that he could take off one at a time.

481
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: Oh no, that is that. It's a very good, very

482
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: good point. Yeah, I wonder if there's an actual connection

483
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 1: there or because I mean, we also we also have

484
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: to think again back to the chakra tradition in which

485
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 1: they're you know, you're generally dealing with the seven chakra systems,

486
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: so that might be the way it's connected as well, right,

487
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: But I think it's also worth noting that there are

488
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,640
Speaker 1: some major differences as far as I can see, between

489
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: how these different religious concepts like the halo versus the

490
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:29,880
Speaker 1: aura are described. For example, in a New Age mysticism,

491
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 1: the aura is usually said to emanate from every living being. Again,

492
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 1: I think there's probably some variation there, but it's a

493
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: common claim that like even insects and plants and even

494
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:44,959
Speaker 1: sometimes inanimate objects would have their own aura, whereas the halo,

495
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: both in Christian iconography and in its predecessors from ancient religion,

496
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: this would be reserved for special beings. It's the divine

497
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: spotlight like you said last time, or it's the emanation

498
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: of terrifying God power. I mean, he doesn't even think

499
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: about just the idea of beholding somebody and that person

500
00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: being say particularly beautiful or charismatic, you know, and you know,

501
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: interpreting that is kind of a holy glow, and in

502
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 1: a way it does get back to the actual way

503
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: that we would behold someone, you know, in terms of

504
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:22,440
Speaker 1: how light or reflecting off of off of people or things,

505
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:26,399
Speaker 1: U you know, light entering our eyes, et cetera. Well,

506
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to get to this in a minute,

507
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 1: but I think there could well be something to the

508
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:34,120
Speaker 1: idea that beliefs about things like halos or auras could

509
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: very well be quite literally in the eye of the beholder. Okay,

510
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: So I came across a study that asks an interesting question. Again,

511
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: you remember I was trying to think. Okay, So if

512
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 1: people do sometimes look at other people, or at figures

513
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:50,360
Speaker 1: or even statues of gods or something and believe they

514
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: see an emanation of light around them, believe they see

515
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:57,560
Speaker 1: a nimbus or a holy glow, could people's perceptions of

516
00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 1: these auras or halos sometimes be blamed by cases of synesthesia.

517
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: This was explored in a paper I was looking at

518
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: that was published in Consciousness and Cognition in the year

519
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: twenty twelve by Milan at All called auras in mysticism

520
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: and synesthesia a comparison. So the authors here write that

521
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 1: synesthesia quote is a condition in which one type of

522
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:26,440
Speaker 1: stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when hearing a

523
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: sound leads to the perception of mental colors or photisms. Photisms,

524
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: that's a standard term in the synesthesia literature. It's a

525
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: type of visual stimulation that associates something that is not

526
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: originally visual in nature or is a different kind of stimulus.

527
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: So one common example in synesthesia is grapheme color synesthesia,

528
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 1: where certain letters of the alphabet or numerals are consistently

529
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: associated with a color sensation. So imagine, like, if you

530
00:29:56,360 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: don't experience synesthesia personally, try to imagine if some reason

531
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 1: in your mind, the letter G was purple and the

532
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: letter H was yellow, Okay. And there are a bunch

533
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: of different kinds of this. There are people for whom

534
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:14,239
Speaker 1: I remember reading that. One classic attribution of synesthesia was

535
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 1: that there was an account of a man, I think

536
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: maybe reported by John Locke, who said that every time

537
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: he heard the sound of a trumpet or a French

538
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: horn or something, he saw the color red. But there

539
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: are also some less common types of synaesthesia that have

540
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: specifically to do with the idea or image of individual people.

541
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: So the authors here right quote. One of the relatively

542
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: infrequent varieties is the one where photisms are triggered by

543
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 1: emotion affect laden stimulis such as emotional words, photographs, human figures,

544
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 1: and the faces of familiar people. For instance, for are

545
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 1: a synisthete who participated in this study, the side of

546
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 1: a familiar person automatically triggers a mental image of a

547
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 1: human silhouette filled with color. Different people are typically associated

548
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:08,680
Speaker 1: with different color hues depending on our's affective relationship with

549
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: the person in question. Eg. He claims that he has

550
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 1: always associated his mother with the color blue. And I

551
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: looked this up, and I found people online in forums

552
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: sure enough talking about this exact experience today. Like I

553
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: recall just one example, I came across one person saying

554
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: that with their person color synesthesia, both of their parents

555
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: were blue, but different shades of blue. But so anyway,

556
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:36,720
Speaker 1: The authors here wanted to tie this to the mystical

557
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 1: concept of aura reading or aura perception and ask is

558
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 1: it possible that the neurological phenomenon of person color synesthesia

559
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: could be responsible for some of the claims of aura

560
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 1: vision in these New age religious experiences? And they tried

561
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,040
Speaker 1: to figure this out by comparing the first person reports

562
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: of four test subjects with person color synesthesia against the

563
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 1: perform moments of aura readers, and the reports of auras

564
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: from the literature. Now, long story short, the authors here

565
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 1: actually conclude that these phenomena are described in usually very

566
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 1: different ways with different characteristics, and that experiences of person

567
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,719
Speaker 1: color synesthesia are probably not a major cause of belief

568
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: in auras. And they put up a table in their

569
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 1: conclusion comparing a lot of the differences between these things

570
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: just to mention what I thought were a couple of

571
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:31,240
Speaker 1: the most relevant takeaways, and this one seemed maybe the

572
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: most significant to me. They say that people with person

573
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: color synesthesia usually report seeing the photism quote in the

574
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: mind's eye, so there would be like a strong mental

575
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: association between a person and a color, But most synaesthetes

576
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: do not believe that they are literally seeing the color

577
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 1: radiating from the person's body directly in and mingled with

578
00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: their actual vision. It's a mental association, whereas the aura

579
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,479
Speaker 1: that the clairvoyant reports is usually said to be a

580
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: direct visual stimulus, like it's a literal cloud or halo

581
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:11,479
Speaker 1: around the body that can be directly observed as you

582
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: observe things with your eyes. Now, again, there's a lot

583
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: of variation in this tradition, so I'm sure there are

584
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: some counter examples to that, but that seems to be

585
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: the dominant way that it's reported. A couple of other

586
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 1: things they report synesthesia is usually a lifelong condition which

587
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: is probably congenital, whereas the reported clairvoyant ability to perceive

588
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: auras is said to be a learned skill. More often.

589
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 1: They also say that person color synesthesia is triggered automatically

590
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: and requires no effort. It's just a natural association, as

591
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: naturally triggered as if I said, like, hey, you know,

592
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: what's the color of a banana? Like, you can't help

593
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 1: but think it. It just comes automatically to your brain

594
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:54,479
Speaker 1: upon hearing the words that they say. Counter to that,

595
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 1: aura reading usually is said to be something that requires

596
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 1: concentration and special condition. Now it does make me wonder

597
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: if now, obviously you would not have to be a

598
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: synaesthisic person to engage in aura reading. You know, you

599
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 1: could easily take on the trappings and the you know,

600
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: the the dramatic aspects of this kind of performance. But

601
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: if you were a person with synaesthesia, you would be

602
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: uniquely outfitted to do this kind of work. You know,

603
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: oh yeah, sure, you know, you know, to not just

604
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 1: say oh yeah, you're you're blue you're light blue with that,

605
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:32,960
Speaker 1: right you know, you know, to pause and to concentrate

606
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: and to put on the show that people need to see.

607
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 1: But then you would have an actual color to refer to, right, oh,

608
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 1: because you'd have an automatic association in your mind that

609
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: sort of comes naturally there, like you wouldn't have to

610
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: be straining for something, right. But I guess then you're

611
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 1: probably getting into a question. Okay, in the field of

612
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: aura reading, are there certain color you know? I'm sure

613
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:56,800
Speaker 1: there are certain colors associated with different things. There's probably

614
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: a system, there's a color code, and that color code

615
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: might not match up with the way that the synesthesia

616
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:08,720
Speaker 1: brain is is coding the world right exactly. That's another

617
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: major difference is that that and they talk about this

618
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 1: in the paper. For people with person color synesthesia, they

619
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,760
Speaker 1: generally understand their individual pairings of certain colors with certain

620
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: people to be to be idiopathic, like to come from

621
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: their own personal associations, whereas usually people who believe that

622
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 1: they can read auras say that they're like they're referring

623
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 1: to some kind of like objectively external thing that other

624
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:39,239
Speaker 1: or readers would supposedly see the same thing, and it

625
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 1: would have a specific meaning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want

626
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 1: to feel like you're tapping into some sort of cosmic,

627
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: overarching order when you have your r reat as opposed

628
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 1: to just like what this guy thinks in his head

629
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 1: when he remembers you. Sure, But one thing I did

630
00:35:57,040 --> 00:35:58,839
Speaker 1: want to say is so a couple of things. First

631
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:01,400
Speaker 1: of all, I did think it was worth noting before

632
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 1: relying too heavily on the study I just mentioned. I

633
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,759
Speaker 1: did find a pretty scathing criticism published in the same

634
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:11,400
Speaker 1: journal and Consciousness and Cognition the same year by Cardenia

635
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:15,960
Speaker 1: at All that basically like, while lauding the general thrust

636
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: of this study, it also criticized the authors for allegedly

637
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 1: being sloppy with a couple of things about like how

638
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:25,759
Speaker 1: they represented or presented parapsychology and the aura literature. I

639
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 1: don't know that this would necessarily change the main findings,

640
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: but there was some criticism there, so if you're looking

641
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: into this, look up the critical review as well. But

642
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: also I wanted to hand over my nothing to see

643
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,320
Speaker 1: here award to the authors on this one, because it's

644
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: always nice to see a full write up of a

645
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: hypothesis that does not pan out. Yeah, but the authors

646
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: in their conclusion do refer to something else that I

647
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 1: thought was interesting. They say, Okay, it doesn't look like

648
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: there's all that strong of a link between the phenomenology

649
00:36:56,680 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 1: of synesthesia and the phenomenology reported by people who do

650
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: aura readings. It looks like they're reporting different kinds of experiences,

651
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 1: so there's probably not a strong causal link. But they

652
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: also say quote claims made by people claiming to be

653
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:12,840
Speaker 1: psychic or aura readers can be alternatively explained by proven science,

654
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,919
Speaker 1: And they refer to a paper by Durdan from two

655
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: thousand and four which they say, quote shows how phenomena

656
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: which arise as a consequence of the normal functioning of

657
00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:26,279
Speaker 1: the human visual system can explain the purported direct experience

658
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:30,319
Speaker 1: of the aura. For instance, the complementary color effect, which

659
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: results from a temporary exhaustion of the color sensitive cells

660
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: in the retina, could account for the presence of auric

661
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 1: colors seen by a sensitive viewer when staring at a person.

662
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,840
Speaker 1: And they also say staring at a darker object a

663
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 1: human figure against a bright background may induce the perception

664
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: of a bright halo around the object. This is due

665
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: to a contrast amplification mechanism built into the human visual

666
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: system which allows for an efficient detection of edges, and

667
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: so I thought this was interesting that, Okay, maybe this

668
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 1: would apply even more directly to the halo or the

669
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: nimbus than it would to the aura perception, because you

670
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:15,759
Speaker 1: can imagine a certain number of optical effects, one of which,

671
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:18,359
Speaker 1: of course, is is the afterimage. You know, so if

672
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 1: you do you ever do that thing when you're a kid,

673
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: where like you look at a picture, a certain sort

674
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: of like negative image of a face on a page,

675
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 1: and then they say, Okay, stare at this for twenty seconds,

676
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: and then close your eyes and turn your head up,

677
00:38:30,239 --> 00:38:32,880
Speaker 1: and you'll see a face staring at you from behind

678
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 1: your eyelids. That's a natural optical effect, the afterimage effect,

679
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 1: that has to do with the latent activation of retinal

680
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 1: cells when you've been concentrating on an image. I think

681
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 1: it's quite easy to see how something like that could

682
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:51,160
Speaker 1: create optical effects that seem quite mystical in nature, and

683
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,800
Speaker 1: could allow you to believe you're perceiving either an aura

684
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 1: of color in the shape of a person or surrounding

685
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: a person, or imagining that you're seeing light emanating from

686
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:03,720
Speaker 1: a person yeah, absolutely. I mean they're a whole host

687
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 1: of of optical effects like that. Oftentimes you'll see them

688
00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:12,879
Speaker 1: utilized at like a hands on science center where you'll

689
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:14,399
Speaker 1: you'll have a number of them you can do where

690
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 1: it's like stare at this spinning thing and then look

691
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: over here, or you know, look at these lines and

692
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: then look at these lines, and it's it's all really

693
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:24,080
Speaker 1: quite interesting. I mean, so sometimes something you do when

694
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 1: you're a kid maybe forget how how interesting it can be,

695
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: but you know, it goes to show just how how

696
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 1: how our visual system, how it can be tricked into

697
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 1: seeing things that are not quite there or enhanced to

698
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,880
Speaker 1: degrees that that you know, don't seem to line up

699
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: with our normal day to day sensory world. One of

700
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 1: my favorite things actually about our visual systems is that,

701
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:52,359
Speaker 1: like you can prove to people through direct experience that

702
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: their visual perception of reality is an illusion. Now, it's

703
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,759
Speaker 1: not an illusion as in it's like a totally imagined hallucination.

704
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:02,319
Speaker 1: It's obviously based on real objects and light coming in

705
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:05,719
Speaker 1: around you, but the perception that you see an unbroken

706
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: visual field of full color all around you, it really

707
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 1: feels like you might see that but you don't. And

708
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: a couple of great examples for that that you can

709
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: show people are if you hold up like colored flags

710
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 1: at the very periphery of somebody's vision, you can immediately

711
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: people immediately realize like, oh, I think I perceive color

712
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:27,839
Speaker 1: in every direction, but I'm colorblind in my peripheral vision.

713
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: That's like to try it sometime if you never have before,

714
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,359
Speaker 1: get like different colored markers or flags or something, hold

715
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 1: them up at the very edge of where you can see.

716
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: You can't tell the difference in the colors. Another one is,

717
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: if you ever want to look up how to do this,

718
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: there's a way where you can find the blind spot

719
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:48,280
Speaker 1: caused by your optic nerve as it routes information away

720
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: from the retina in the back of your eye. There

721
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: is a blind spot just right in the middle of

722
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: your vision wherever you're looking stuff, where you can't see anything.

723
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: And you can actually do experiments to bring this out,

724
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: but it's totally invisible to you. You can't see the

725
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:06,839
Speaker 1: fact that you can't see this area. I think we uh,

726
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: I think we talked about something like this one time

727
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:11,399
Speaker 1: with our Scott Baker about the fact that he had

728
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: like an injury to his eye or something that caused

729
00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:16,799
Speaker 1: him to have an illusion of this kind where in

730
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:19,359
Speaker 1: fact he had a large blind spot in the center

731
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:22,240
Speaker 1: of his vision, but it didn't register as a blind

732
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:24,239
Speaker 1: spot as in what you might imagine like a like

733
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: a field of black or white or something where there

734
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,959
Speaker 1: was no vision. Instead, the brain just tricked him into

735
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 1: thinking he had total vision, but there were just places

736
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: where he actually couldn't see anything. Right, So he would

737
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: look at his dog and the dog would just have

738
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: no face, right's that recall. But still the brains saying like, no,

739
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 1: you're seeing fine, Yeah, this is a this is every dog. Yeah,

740
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 1: everything's fine. Well, I want to go from here to

741
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 1: talk to talk about halo's as a as a purely

742
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 1: optical phenomenon. So these there are examples of halos that

743
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,840
Speaker 1: cannot not only are visible to the naked eye, but

744
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 1: they can be they can be captured via photography and

745
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 1: frequently are you know I've mentioned in the previous episode

746
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:13,760
Speaker 1: there are at least a couple of solar and lunar

747
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: optical phenomena, you know, broad categories of them that are

748
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: worth singling out. And these phenomena have been observed for

749
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 1: thousands of years. Yeah, this is a really good point,

750
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:26,880
Speaker 1: and we sort of alluded to this in the last episode,

751
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: but I just want to emphasize again that I wouldn't

752
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:33,280
Speaker 1: suggest that a person needed to have a direct vision

753
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: of light emanating from another person's body at some point

754
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: in order to imagine something like a halo or nimbus.

755
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: It could be it could be just pure imagination that

756
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:45,280
Speaker 1: brings out this imagery, or it could well be basic

757
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 1: associative thinking mapping the properties of celestial objects or interesting

758
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 1: optical phenomena in the skies or on the Earth, and

759
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 1: then associating that with a person, you know, with with

760
00:42:56,440 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 1: godhood or transcending power, and then putting that on the

761
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 1: body of somebody who is feared or revered. Right, And

762
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:06,760
Speaker 1: in the previous episode we mentioned some Roman and Greek

763
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 1: examples of these being observed and recorded. But I do

764
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: want to drive home that, you know, the sun has

765
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: always been of importance to cultures throughout time and around

766
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: the world. So anyone looking around looking up at the

767
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: sun or the moon, we're likely to encounter these things.

768
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: We just have, you know, certain recorded records that are

769
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: that stand out, that are a little older. I was

770
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:32,399
Speaker 1: looking around and I found a paper titled the Sun

771
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:36,399
Speaker 1: Recorded Throughout History by M. Vasquez from two thousand and nine,

772
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: and they point to bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty

773
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: in ancient China, where we where they recorded solar phenomena

774
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:48,440
Speaker 1: during the second millennium BC. They reported at least four phenomena,

775
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 1: including a dark and gloomy sun, solar eclipses, and the

776
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 1: solar halo, which I believe was a reyun Interestingly enough,

777
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: there's another one that there's no translation of, so it

778
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:04,440
Speaker 1: does make me wonder what that particular solar phenomenon might

779
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:06,279
Speaker 1: have been. Oh boy, but people have a lot of

780
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,960
Speaker 1: fun with that one. Yeah, that's when the Sun turns

781
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: inside out and becomes the black hole Sun. I mean,

782
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's just another, you know, commonly scene occurrence

783
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: with the sun. But anyway, broadly speaking, a halo can

784
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,399
Speaker 1: occur anytime the Sun or the Moon shines through thin

785
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 1: clouds composed of ice crystals, and the effect can be

786
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:33,359
Speaker 1: caused by one of two or a combination of refraction

787
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:37,399
Speaker 1: and or reflection via these crystals. So the refractions are

788
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: going to cause color separations, meaning the final results may

789
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:45,439
Speaker 1: be colored while reflected light remains uncolored. The twenty two

790
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: degree halo is the most common form of this, consisting

791
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: of either a series of colored arcs or even complete

792
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:55,160
Speaker 1: circles of twenty two degree angular radiuses around the Sun

793
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:58,400
Speaker 1: or the moon and the coloration. If there's coloration, it

794
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: SEMs to be red on the on the on the

795
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:06,560
Speaker 1: inside and a blur on the outside with the moon.

796
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:10,399
Speaker 1: These are sometimes called lunar halos or winter halos. And

797
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:12,360
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to see one of these the

798
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 1: last time I was at the beach. I was out

799
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 1: walking on a beach at night, and you know, looking

800
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 1: up at the moon and everything was, you know, beautiful

801
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:21,719
Speaker 1: but normal, and then all of a sudden, Uh, there's

802
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 1: this tremendous halo effect, which if you don't know what

803
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:27,720
Speaker 1: you're you're looking at, it can look like a portal

804
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: has opened up, like a great circular portal has opened

805
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: up around the moon between you and the moon, like

806
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a connection or a cylindrical highway

807
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 1: between you and the lunar surface. It's pretty pretty interesting. Yeah.

808
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 1: It makes me think about images and the paradiso of

809
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 1: like rings or wheels of angels running about in concentric

810
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: circles around the heavenly bodies. Yeah, and I you know again,

811
00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 1: people throughout time would have witnessed these, and so you

812
00:45:57,880 --> 00:46:00,080
Speaker 1: can you can imagine this having an impact on our

813
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:05,919
Speaker 1: our perception of the worlds beyond and of the higher cosmos. Now,

814
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: these are just the most common halo effects, these twenty

815
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: two degrees, but there are many others, including the forty

816
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: six degree halo. It's similar, but at twice the distance,

817
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:19,800
Speaker 1: roughly sometimes occurring in conjunction with twenty two degree halos,

818
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,879
Speaker 1: and even other optical effects. So you might encounter, say,

819
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: a sun dog with a double halo. Now, what are

820
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:32,439
Speaker 1: sun dogs. That's a different optical phenomenon caused by the sunlight. Yeah,

821
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:35,120
Speaker 1: a sun dog, also known as a mock sun. This

822
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: is caused by refraction of sunlight in atmospheric ice crystals.

823
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 1: These are generally colored patches of light to either side

824
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:45,400
Speaker 1: of the Sun at the same altitude as the Sun itself,

825
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: So to a certain extent, it can look like three

826
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:52,799
Speaker 1: suns dawning over the Earth, or at least like one

827
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: major sun and like two sort of weirdly shaped mini

828
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 1: suns out on either side the Sun's two sons. Yeah,

829
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:02,760
Speaker 1: and of course this instantly brings to mind the Chinese

830
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: myth of the ten surplus suns that Ho Yee had

831
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:08,440
Speaker 1: to shoot down out of the sky, and I've not

832
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 1: actually seen a connection. I couldn't find a connection drawn

833
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:15,279
Speaker 1: between those two, though it wouldn't surprise me if there was.

834
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,280
Speaker 1: But there does seem to be a connection in Norse

835
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: mythology the two wolves hunting the sun in the moon,

836
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:26,840
Speaker 1: so these would be Fineer's Sun's skull and Haiti horor Vintinson.

837
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I got that second one wolf's

838
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 1: name right, So cosmic wolves go easy on me. But

839
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,359
Speaker 1: there's obviously an eclipse connection as well here, because these

840
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:40,560
Speaker 1: are supposed to be like sun and moon consumers. But

841
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,760
Speaker 1: I did run across direct connections between the sun dogs

842
00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 1: that are sometimes seen to either side of the Sun

843
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: and these these supernatural beasts. Well, coming back to the

844
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: version of the halo that is either a ring around

845
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: the head or an emanation of light as if from

846
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: behind the head, I mean, obviously, if you have never

847
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 1: witnessed a solar eclipse before and seen the corona of

848
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:08,839
Speaker 1: the Sun around the moon, I mean that that is

849
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:14,720
Speaker 1: a probably the most awe inspiring physical real thing I've

850
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: ever witnessed like it. Yeah, well, it is a life

851
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:21,200
Speaker 1: changing thing to see with your eyes, and but be

852
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,799
Speaker 1: very careful of your eyes when when observing one. Oh yeah,

853
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:27,280
Speaker 1: and that will come back to that in a second.

854
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 1: So their whole host of rare optical effects related to

855
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,799
Speaker 1: these examples I've shared that produce various halos, and these

856
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 1: have again been observed throughout time and depicted in art.

857
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: Two of the earlier Western examples of their recording are

858
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 1: off cited are Aristotle's writings on them, as well as

859
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:47,279
Speaker 1: the fifteen thirty five SunDog painting, often held up as

860
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:51,719
Speaker 1: the oldest example of a clear atmospheric halo in art.

861
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,879
Speaker 1: To quote Aristotle, though in Meteorology from three fifty BC

862
00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:59,280
Speaker 1: this is the Webster translation quote. The halo often appears

863
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:01,879
Speaker 1: as a complete circle. It is seen around the sun

864
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 1: and the moon and bright stars by night as well

865
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: as by day and at midday or even in the afternoon,

866
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 1: more rarely about sunrise or sunset. Now, it's obvious that

867
00:49:11,640 --> 00:49:14,760
Speaker 1: seeing things like this in the sky can be awe inspiring,

868
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: but is there a reason to suspect connections naturally in

869
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: history between seeing things like this and religious concepts. Yeah, absolutely,

870
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 1: it seems to be the case. And I think one

871
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 1: of the best examples of this is to look at

872
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,280
Speaker 1: the Miracle of the Sun or the Miracle of Fatima

873
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 1: on October thirteenth, nineteen seventeen and Fatima, Portugal the number

874
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: if you've probably run across this before you read an

875
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:44,879
Speaker 1: article about it. It involved a variety of reports of

876
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: colored lights in the daytime sky, of a dancing sun

877
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:51,840
Speaker 1: that seemed to move around in the sky, and even

878
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:57,359
Speaker 1: angelic apparitions. And there are various interpretations of this, none

879
00:49:57,400 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: of which, or you can be held up as the

880
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: definite of ants. There's some have pointed to the possibility

881
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:05,799
Speaker 1: of mass hallucination or mass hysteria. You know, you would

882
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:07,840
Speaker 1: have been dealing with a you know, a pretty religious

883
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:10,840
Speaker 1: bunch observing this, and in some cases you're dealing with

884
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 1: the observations and you know, and recollections of children. But

885
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:18,439
Speaker 1: it does sound increasingly likely that it's more a matter

886
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:20,880
Speaker 1: of their having been first of all, a variety of

887
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: alleged reports, you know, different stories people seeing different things

888
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: in the sky and some seeing nothing at all out

889
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:29,359
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. So it's not like everybody looked up

890
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: and saw something interesting. Some people looked up and didn't

891
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: see what anybody was talking about. But it's the most outrageous,

892
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,879
Speaker 1: the most extreme accounts. They're the ones that survive and

893
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: then evolve in retellings and in recordings. So again, skeptics

894
00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:47,320
Speaker 1: of ovor a host of possible explanations for this particular incident,

895
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:51,439
Speaker 1: but it's it has been proposed that the whole thing

896
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: might have started with some manner of a halo or

897
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,240
Speaker 1: sun dog sighting, or some sort of unique combination of these,

898
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:01,040
Speaker 1: you know, like the sun dogs with a couple of

899
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: halos around the Sun. And then here's the thing. As

900
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:07,400
Speaker 1: various folks start staring at the sun in all of

901
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 1: these phenomena or trying to see what the in person

902
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: next to them is looking at, they end up staring

903
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,680
Speaker 1: at the Sun too long and they experience temporary retinal

904
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: distortion due to prolonged solar staring. Don't stare at the sun, folks, Yeah,

905
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 1: I mean, remember when we had that solar eclipse in

906
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:26,799
Speaker 1: the last few years. You know, that was everybody had

907
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: to drive that home, like even though the Sun is

908
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 1: doing something really interesting or and it is even being

909
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 1: you know, is even darkening do not stare at it,

910
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 1: because you can you can seriously damage your eyes and

911
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:42,000
Speaker 1: in the short term, yeah, you could experience temporary retinal distortion,

912
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:45,560
Speaker 1: which could have just just add to these interpretations of

913
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: like crazy things going on in the sky. Well, if

914
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:50,280
Speaker 1: you pair this with what I was saying earlier about

915
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 1: the possible like the known effects of vision and optical

916
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:57,640
Speaker 1: effects within the eye and within the brain that are

917
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: caused by, say, staring for a long time I'm at

918
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: a bright light source, Like, you could get effects that

919
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: wouldn't even necessarily have to be something in the sky,

920
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,520
Speaker 1: but would also not just be people using their imaginations.

921
00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:11,399
Speaker 1: They'd be real perceptions for the people, but they could

922
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 1: be based on things like retinal effects afterimage things, or

923
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:20,320
Speaker 1: over perceiving the edges of outlines due to intense strain

924
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:23,359
Speaker 1: on the eyes. Yeah. And then once something like this

925
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,600
Speaker 1: is observed and thought about, and then once you've had

926
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:28,600
Speaker 1: a chance to ask other people about it, then you

927
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: can often turn to pre existing scripts to explain what

928
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: that might have been, such as, uh, you know, angelic

929
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:39,600
Speaker 1: beings such as aliens and unidentified flying objects, that sort

930
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:41,800
Speaker 1: of thing. I just thought of a really great opening

931
00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:45,840
Speaker 1: for a movie Okay, so it's it's Fatima Portugal. Everybody's

932
00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: staring at the sun. They think they see angelic beings

933
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: or a vision of the Virgin Mary or something like that,

934
00:52:52,239 --> 00:52:56,799
Speaker 1: apparitions in the sky, and then it slowly resolves and

935
00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:58,920
Speaker 1: it's coming in and it's coming in and what is it?

936
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 1: And it's the predators drop ship and this is Predator Portugal,

937
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 1: and so all of the yacht ja hop out and

938
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:12,320
Speaker 1: they begin they begin their hunt. Is that in bad

939
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 1: taste enough to be a Predator movie? Maybe? I just

940
00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: don't know that they'd get a lot of good sport, Like,

941
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:20,640
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're they're drawn to the really rough

942
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:23,480
Speaker 1: parts of the world, right. Oh, I guess there's not

943
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:25,359
Speaker 1: enough conflict here. There's got to be like a war

944
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 1: going on or something. Yeah, like futuristic la And what

945
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:30,359
Speaker 1: ninety seven was that one of I'm supposed to take

946
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: place Danny Glover one? Yeah, yeah, what if they arrived

947
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 1: the Predators were to arrive and they're like, okay, we

948
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:39,800
Speaker 1: have detected there's a lot of conflict right now. And

949
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: then they get to their location and then they find

950
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: out all the conflict is online, like in social media

951
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 1: streams and they're like, ah, we brought all these weapons

952
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: and now we just have to get we have to

953
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 1: get Twitter accounts instead and learn English. Oh no, no no.

954
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:54,680
Speaker 1: So they show up because they're like, okay, the heat

955
00:53:54,719 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 1: signature is we've detected on this place and the surface

956
00:53:57,080 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: of the earth indicate ongoing thermonuclear warfare. But then when

957
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:05,919
Speaker 1: they arrive, it's just a bitcoin mining facility. Uh. They're like, well,

958
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: we got to go all in on bitcoin. Now, I

959
00:54:07,560 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: guess we can travel all the way here. But then

960
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: they get to launch the new predator cryptocurrency, right, assuming

961
00:54:13,560 --> 00:54:17,920
Speaker 1: there's not already one. I'm sure there's already one. Is

962
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 1: that there? There's probably there's already like a Garfield cryptocurrency,

963
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:24,120
Speaker 1: isn't there? And I don't know, but I would not

964
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:28,080
Speaker 1: remembering that they could day, I wouldn't. I wouldn't put

965
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:31,960
Speaker 1: money against you od coin. Well, I guess we'll close

966
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:33,959
Speaker 1: this one out right here. But you know we're gonna

967
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,399
Speaker 1: keep going with this, this line of thinking though, this

968
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:42,480
Speaker 1: idea of optical effects that then get interpreted in various

969
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:45,800
Speaker 1: ways unless plans change. I think the next episode of

970
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind will continue on a similar topic. Yeah,

971
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:51,879
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about that. We're going to be sort

972
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:53,920
Speaker 1: of moving on from Halo's mostly I don't know, it

973
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 1: might come back up, but but but yeah, it's gonna

974
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun. Yeah, all right. Well, in

975
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:02,480
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to catch up on episodes

976
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,239
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where to

977
00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:06,280
Speaker 1: find them. They're in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Fee.

978
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 1: These are our core episodes, you know, mostly science and

979
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 1: culture and so forth. They published on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

980
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we throw out our short form artifact episodes.

981
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:18,920
Speaker 1: On Mondays you got your listener mail, and on Friday,

982
00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:22,319
Speaker 1: we know, we leave the most of the science up

983
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 1: on the shelf and we take a little time to

984
00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: discuss a weird movie with our Weird House Cinema episodes.

985
00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you

986
00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:34,799
Speaker 1: find that podcast stream, just rate, review and subscribe. You know,

987
00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:37,120
Speaker 1: if you have the ability to do those things, that

988
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:40,080
Speaker 1: helps us out huge thanks as always to our excellent

989
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

990
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

991
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

992
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: or just to say hello. You can email us at

993
00:55:49,800 --> 00:56:00,359
Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow Your mindt dot com. Stuff

994
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more

995
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:06,880
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996
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