Fata Morgana

The horizon is an interesting netherworld of optical phenomena, where -- to the human eye -- ghost ships may sail the sky, phantom islands offer relief to weary sailors, sea monsters tower and alien ships enter the atmosphere. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the Fata Morgana mirage.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And you know, we just came off of doing a
couple of episodes about the artistic convention of the halo

(00:24):
and how that comes through in in various different religious concepts,
and how it might be related to optical phenomena that
are sometimes observed in the sky, like like solar halos
or sun dogs, and jumping off of that, we wanted
to hop over to explore another theme today that the
sort of in the same wheelhouse, not quite halos, but

(00:45):
an optical phenomenon that has some connection to legendary accounts
and myths. And so I thought a great place to
start today to get us in the mood would be
a reading from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Now, I think this is going to
be probably what would you guess, Rob, like the seventh
time we've quoted this poem on the show, always introducing

(01:05):
a different type of subject matter. It seems to go
off in a lot of great directions. Well, you know,
it's a it's a long work, and it it has
a lot of cool things happening in It has a
great story and just an infectious cadence. You know, it
just gets gets into your brain. Right. So in this poem,
the narrator here, I guess this is a narration within
a narration. So this guy gets accosted by an ancient

(01:28):
gray beard. He says, like, unhand me, gray beard loon.
But then the gray beard loon starts telling his story,
and and his story is of course one of terror
and tragedy in the high seas. He he tells that
he was once out on a ship and I think
they've been sailing around in the south seas and uh,
he somehow brings a curse upon his ship and its
crew by shooting an albatross out of the sky with

(01:51):
an arrow. And after this, their ship falls into unnatural
duld RUMs in the equatorial regions. There are no winds
for it to sail, so it's just sitting there in
the water, and and the mariner and the rest of
the crew are dying of thirst without fresh water. Yeah,
and it's one thing that I guess worth noting about this.
You know, we've been talking about the ships at sea

(02:11):
in these days and superstition among the um among the
crew is that on one hand, absolutely the best science
and navigation of the day was utilized to get where
you're going and to survive on the open seas. But
the crew was often held together by by also this
this tenuous web of superstitions, and you read about some

(02:33):
of them, and at times it seems like it would
not take much to shift things into the realm of
of of you know, dire omens. Well sailing vessels really
are at the at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Yeah,
I mean, there's a lot you can do to design
a ship well and work hard to you know, do
everything you can to get where you're going, but you're
still at the mercy of the seas and the weather,

(02:54):
and that can make it feel very much like you
are a sinner in the hands of an angry god. Yeah,
saying beneath this uncertain sky and uh a top this
just dark, unfathomable ocean. Right, So, in the context of
the part of the poem we're about to read, so
the curse has already come upon them. They're out there diet.
You know, you get to the part about water, water everywhere,
and not a drop to drink. They're all parched and thirsty,

(03:16):
and the boat is just floating around in the dull drums.
And then the mariners see something horrible. So I'm gonna
read this first bit here, and then rob. I. I
don't think I can do a sailor voice, but I
hope you can do the sailor voice for your part.
I'll try, Okay, So the mariner says, there past a
weary time. Each throat was parched and glazed, each eye

(03:41):
a weary time, A weary time, how glazed each weary eye?
When looking westward, I beheld something in the sky. At
first it seemed a little speck, and then it seemed
a missed. It moved and moved, and took at last
a certain shape. I whist A speck, a mist shape.
I whisked, And still it neared and neared, as if

(04:03):
it dodged a water sprite. It plunged and tacked and veered,
with throats unslaked, with black lips baked. We could not
laugh nor wail through utter drought. All dumb we stood.
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood and cried
a sail a sail. The western wave was all aflame,

(04:24):
The day was well nigh done. Almost upon the western
wave rested the broad bright sun. When that strange shape
stove suddenly betwixt us and the sun, and straight the
sun was flecked with bars. Heaven's mother send us grace,
as if through a dungeon grade. He peered with broad
and burning face. Alas thought I and my heart beat loud.

(04:48):
How fast she nears and nears? Are those her sails
that glance in the sun like restless Gossimir's rob I
give that four urs? Why thank you? Uh so? Yeah,
So he sees something approaching. They see a weird spectral

(05:09):
type of ship coming close. And when this phantom ship
gets up close to them, they see the figures of
death and life in death I think represented as like
a skeleton and then like a pale naked body casting
lots to claim the fate of the sailors. That's creepy stuff. Yeah.
Also a great couple's halloween cost him to keep in mind, right,

(05:30):
death and life and death I call life and death.
Uh So these passages from the rhyme of the ancient mariner.
Uh It's not known for sure, but they may well
have been influenced by the legend of the Flying Dutchman,
a set of related folk tales shared by the seafaring
people of Europe at least as far back as the

(05:52):
eighteenth century, probably earlier. And usually the way this legend
goes is that there is some kind of spectral ship,
a ghost vessel. It's a doomed to sail the globe
in a terrible limbo, forever circling the seas and never
allowed to come into port. Often it's regarded as an
omen of disaster. If a sailor sees the flying Dutchman,

(06:16):
he knows he's going to die in a shipwreck. Yeah,
like this is one of the big ones, uh, you know,
as opposed to you know, things like killing I mean,
I mean, certainly killing an albatross clearly can be a
big deal, you know, not touching the horseshoe nailed to
the mast, you know, things like that. But to see
the flying Dutchman like all is lost. In some versions,

(06:37):
even worse than seeing it is that sometimes the ship
will come up next to you and the doomed crew
will try to hand off letters for you to give
to their loved ones. Because you know, they can't call
the port to send the letters themselves, and you are
not supposed to accept these letters. You you say, sorry,
I I can't. I can't do it. Oh man, that's
so creepy that that totally holds up. Now, there are

(06:58):
a number of popular story is explaining the origin of
the flying Dutchman. I think the belief itself goes back
farther than any of these, like written versions of the stories.
But in one version, there's a captain named Vanderdecken or
sometimes just the Dutchman, who's on a sea voyage home
from Batavia, which is in present day Indonesia around the

(07:19):
area of Jakarta, but at the time would have been
in the Duchyst Indies. And he's traveling from Batavia trying
to go back around the southern tip of Africa to
a place called Table Bay, and so he's trying to
round the Cape of Good Hope, but his ship falls
under a terrible squall, and in defiance of God, he

(07:41):
swears a brazen oath that he will round the Cape
of Good Hope despite the storm, even if it takes
him until Armageddon to do it. And as this oath
leaves his lips. The ship sinks, but before it does,
the devil hears Vanderdecken's promise and he holds him to it,
and this turns the Dutchman and the ghost of his

(08:03):
vessel into a kind of wraith of the seas, and
they sail forever between life and death without rest until
he can reach his destination. Uh. This version is the
subject of an opera by Wagner, and I think in
that version actually can go to land once every seven
years so that he can try to find the true
love that will break the curse, presumably stop at White

(08:27):
Castle or something that this sounds this sounds like a
great setup for like a modern horror film, or maybe
not a morrow of modern one, but at least like
a nineteen seventies film, you know, or like it could
have been a hammer horror film. You could have a
Vanderdecken as your sort of Dracula s ghostly sailor chap
that has come on shore to seduce a hapless woman

(08:48):
that that has no idea that this attractive man is
actually the captain of a damn ship. Oh. I mean,
that's a great sort of variation on Dracula, right, The
more seductive versions of Dracula where where you know he
he falls in love with a woman and he's like,
you can be with me, you can we can live forever,
but she doesn't realize that that involves being damned along
with him. Should have been Christopher Lee, Yeah, he would have.

(09:11):
He would have. He would have made a good vanderdeck
and for sure, but the story that this version of
the story was I think very strong around the area
of the South Seas and the southern tip of Africa.
But there's another common version that takes place in the
North Sea, and this is a captain named Hair von
Falconberg who sails without rest around the North Sea while
playing dice with Satan for the possession of his soul.

(09:33):
And the part about playing dice with the devil for
for his soul that recalls very much what happens in
the rhyme of the ancient mariner right after the part
we read because remember death and life and death or
gambling for the souls of the crew. Yeah, but there
are a lot of other variations on this story with
a good deal of elasticity. It is not known for
sure exactly where the legend comes from. Originally. I think

(09:55):
I've read some speculation that it could have to do
with the Norse legend about a sailor who encounters a
kind of damned limbo fate, but records of this story
go at least as far back as the late seventeen hundreds.
I found one early reference to it from the memoirs
of a Scottish man named John McDonald who lived seventeen
forty one to seventeen ninety six, and in writing about

(10:18):
one of his sea voyages, he writes, quote, the weather
was so stormy that the sailors said they saw the
flying Dutchman. The common story is that this Dutchman came
to the cape in distress of weather and wanted to
get into harbor, but could not get a pilot to
conduct her and was lost, and that ever since, in
very bad weather her vision appears. Now in some versions

(10:40):
of the story, I think the ship is even more spectral,
even more of just a clear apparition, something that is
on the horizon and with a kind of like ghostly silhouette,
or even appears over the horizon. I think it's not
exactly clear in the version of the Rhyme of the
Ancient Mariner whether the ship is said to be approaching

(11:01):
on the water, or when they first see it it's
above the water. He he does say that he looked
and he beheld something in the sky that it first
looked like it looks like a speck, and then later
he realizes it's a ship coming toward them. Uh. And
I guess there are a couple of ways you could
read that. I know, I've always read that as he
originally saw the ship flying in the sky. I guess

(11:21):
you could also read it as they see the ship
on the water and what he's seeing is the sails
poking up over the horizon and the sky. But either way,
I think there are some versions where there's a kind
of ghost ship that isn't necessarily even confined to the
water like it flies. Yeah. Yeah, that a true flying
flying Dutchman. Yeah. And of course this is gonna lead

(11:42):
us into what we're really talking about here today, a
very particular type of of optical phenomena, uh that may
be responsible at least in part for legends like this,
though of course is always worth remembering that you know,
anything like this, like the flying Dutchman, for example, in
all likelihood, we're dealing with a story that has multiple
converging origins to what extent they are based on things

(12:05):
that people really saw. They were likely different things, you know,
like somebody staring into a dark night on a ship,
somebody seeing an optical phenomenon on the horizon, or somebody
you know, looking into the chaos of a storm and
momentarily making out some shape in the flash of lightning. Right,
But there are some well known optical phenomenon that fit

(12:27):
with some of these accounts so closely that you have
to assume at least some of these accounts probably are
based on the thing we're gonna be talking about today,
which is known as the Superior Mirage or a variation
of Superior Mirrage known as the Fatim Morgana. Um. Now,
the one thing that will tie into this before we
explain the Superior Mirage and the Fatim Organa. Something I

(12:50):
noticed that was kind of interesting about the Flying Dutchman accounts.
A lot of these accounts seemed concentrated towards the polar
regions rather than the equatorial ones. The go ship usually
seems to be sailing either the North Seas or the
South Seas more so than anywhere in between. Yeah, quite interesting,
So keep keep that in mind as we proceed here.

(13:11):
So yeah, basically from here we're gonna talk about the
mirage itself and mirages in general, but then we'll get
back into some more examples of various folk tales and
myths that seem to be or perhaps are inspired by
Fatmorgana sightings. So let's start by talking about the mirage itself.
A mirage in general is an optical effect that is

(13:34):
sometimes seen at sea or in the desert or over
hot pavement, and in some cases these may take on
the appearance of, say a pool of water or a
mirror surface, and this can cause distant objects to appear inverted. Uh. Now,
to be clear on the language here, you do find
the word mirage sometimes used interchangeably with the notion all

(13:55):
an illusion, right, and the louse is something that you're
seeing but is not there. So in common language it's
sometimes conflated with even like the idea of a hallucination.
You know, somebody's just seeing something like it's real in
their perception, but there is not an external reality to it.
And that's not the case with the technical meaning of
a mirage, right, and I feel like this is also uh,

(14:18):
this is also complicated because a lot of us grew
up watching, especially cartoons that would occasionally have a mirage scene,
and those would be a bit confusing because a lot
of times I feel like they would play it up
like just something magical that you're you only saw because
you were you were thirsty and dying and you were
also a cartoon dog. Right. Well, in cartoons, I feel
like the mirage is always shown in the desert rather

(14:41):
than say, over an ice sheet or on the seas.
Uh and and that over the desert you were probably
looking at a particular type of mirage, the inferior mirage.
Will get into more of the distinctions there in just
a minute. But yeah, in the cartoons, it's always like,
I don't know that you know, Daffy Duck is seeing
a mirage in the desert, and it's like an ice
cream stand or something some variation of the oasis in

(15:03):
the desert. Yet, right, it's something very specific that gives
the suggestion that you're seeing like a complicated, detailed hallucination. Right,
But in reality, the sort of mirage, the specific mirrage
that we're talking about here, this is an optical effect
that is visible to all, Like if there is a mirage.
If you're in a party of say, you know, five

(15:24):
people in the desert or on a ship wherever, if
you see a mirage in the distance, everyone with you,
you know, assuming they have the same site capacity that
you have, they will be able to see the mirage
as well, and assuming they're looking from the same place also,
right right, Yeah, you gotta have the same vantage point
for sure. Um, but you know, now that's not also

(15:45):
not to say that you know, this could not be
further distorted by the individual, either visually or in memory.
But it is a thing that you could and be
people can and do capture photographically or on you know,
or with a like a video camera. So is it
is not something you're seeing that isn't there. It is
an actual optical phenomena, right, Uh. You you are seeing

(16:07):
something that is really light coming into your eyes looking
that way. It's not in your head though, what you're
seeing is very distorted, so you're probably wandering. Okay, mirage.
How does the mirage happen? It's you know, not caused
by you know, um, you know, weird spirits in the
you know, in the desert or on the seas well.
Mirages in general occur when light passes through air of

(16:28):
differing temperatures and the light is reflected or refracted a
ka bent. And there are two types of mirages. We
can divide them up generally into inferior mirages and superior mirages.
This is not about their quality. It's not like you know,
discount mirages and bespoke mirrages. It has to do with

(16:49):
where they fall in relation to the horizon. Right. So
the inferior mirrage is the kind that is being lampooned
in the cartoons where a character isn't you know, Daffy
Ducks in the death sert and he thinks he sees
an oasis. This is a very real thing that people
often experience in desert climates. And this is the inferior mirage. Yes,
so the inferior mirage again is your stereotypical oasis mirage.

(17:11):
It looks like a pool of blue water sometimes you know,
appears when you also look out across the desert or
down a highway. You've probably seen one of these on
your own drives or in movies, especially in movies that
have a desert highway. This is this is like cat
Net two directors, they they got to have it you know,
so they'll they'll get a little bit of that mirage
in their in their shot. Right. And it's not only

(17:33):
because the desert is hot and you're thirsty that it
looks like there's water on the desert. There is a
specific climate related reason that you're likely to see a
mirage in the desert that looks like a pool of water. Yeah.
These occur when a dense layer of cold air sits
on or above line of sight with a layer of
less dense, warmer air below line of sight. Now, um,

(17:55):
an example to to pull from here is consider the
desert highway. Okay, the unbeats down, heats the asphalt, and
the hot asphalt heats up the bottom portion of the air.
Rays of light from above are refracted when they hit
that refracted toward your eyes, resulting in the mirage. So
the light of the blue sky above is bent back

(18:17):
towards you from below the horizon, and thus you have this,
you know, it's it's like a pool of water, but
essentially like what seems like a pool of sky. Yeah,
you're essentially seeing the blue light of the sky that
is refracted as it changes from the cooler air above
to this pocket of warmer air below, and it bends
down and makes it look like part of the sky

(18:38):
is just sitting on the ground. And when you see that,
that blue sky looks a lot like water. Yeah. Now
the superior mirage works the opposite way. Warm air sits
above line of side, cool layer beneath it, light bends down.
The light is not traveling straight at us, but our
visual process assumes that it is, so it makes appear

(19:00):
as if it is. Uh, it is above its actual positions,
such as above the horizon, hanging in the sky, and so.
Of course, in some cases this can cause objects that
are actually past where you can see on the horizon,
so they're you know, beyond the curve of the earth
from your vision, to appear as if they are popping
up over the horizon. Yeah. They can make something that's

(19:22):
that's actually just beyond the optical horizons, such as mountain tops,
appear ahead of schedule. You can imagine how this would
play into some of your expectations whilst whilst out on
the open seas. Uh. It can also make objects appear
closer or further away, larger or smaller than they actually are. Um,
it's quite interesting. Uh. And and and for another example

(19:45):
of this. Apparently, the most common example of a superior mirage,
according to Christine Plam in two thousand eight speaking to
Robert Siegel of NPR, is a sunrise or a sunset. Quote,
the same phenomenon occurs to the sun every day and
makes it appear to be above the horizon when it's
actually slightly below it. Oh, I think I've read that

(20:05):
this is even more common, like in polar regions. This
might be related to what's known as the Novaya Zimilea effect.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's of course. The thing with the
sunrise and sunset is since it happens every day, and
and you know, generally it's the kind of thing you
see every day, it doesn't seem out of place. But
where we get into these, you know, remarkable stories and

(20:25):
legends arising from from sightings of of superior mirages, it's
because they occur. They don't occur every day. It's something
you would see maybe some frequency, depending on what part
of the world and what the exactive environmental settings happen
to be. But they have more mystery to them. They're
not part of just the everyday movements of the sun
or everyday atmospheric behavior. Yeah, the conditions have to be right,

(20:49):
So superior mirages they require there to be a certain
kind of pocket of warmer air sitting above a pocket
of cooler air, which is not normally how the sphere works. Right,
Usually the air up higher is going to be cooler,
even though heat rises. Usually it's just farther away from
the Earth and it's going to be cooler. Now, if
you're completely lost at this point, which I will, I

(21:10):
will forgive you for for being so um, I will
say a couple of resources you can turn to how
stuff works dot Com has an article about mirages, but
also the University of British Columbia's Department of Earth, Ocean
and Atmospheric Sciences. They have a great page that I
was looking at earlier with very helpful illustrations. Included one
of these for you to see here, Joe. But uh,
just very well presented information about like light bending downward,

(21:33):
that's your superior mirrage, light bending upward, that's your inferior mirage.
Thank thank now. The superior mirrage can actually get even
more complicated than just making something appear above where it
actually is because of the bending of light through these

(21:54):
pockets of air when there are very specific conditions. I
think this is something that's usually called atmospheric ducting, like
when a certain kind of duct or column of atmospheric
conditions in different temperature gradients in the atmospheric gases are created.
This can lead to what's known as fatim morgana. Right,
These occur when there are several layers of warm and

(22:15):
cold air that cause what is actually a combination of
superior and inferior images. The uneven inversion causes the light
to refract and ultimately bizarre ways, so you can wind
up with multiple segmented reflections in there. So, um, you know,
it's here that we get into the you know, the
confusing images that may be interpreted as floating walls or

(22:38):
castles in the sky, or gigantic ships that are flying
through the atmosphere above the horizon, that sort of thing. Now,
you might wonder where the name Fati Morgana actually comes from,
like why would an optical effect have a name like this?
The name fatim Morgana actually comes from the character from
our Thurian legend, usually known by her French name Morgan

(23:00):
la Fee. In English, of course, Morgan la Fay is
Morgan the Fairy. Though. When I was writing about this,
for some reason, I kept thinking back to our episodes
of Invention where we were talking about Alice gy Blush
and her first film, The Cabbage Fairy La Faye Shoe.
So I kept thinking about Morgan the Cabbage Fairy. But
she she is not merely a cabbage fairy. She is

(23:23):
a fairy, sometimes a fairy of of helpfulness and and medicine,
and sometimes a fairy of lies and destruction. It always
makes me think of the wonderful film ex Caliber, where
Helen Mirren plays MORGANA Do you remember seen it? Oh?
It's pretty great, has a very shiny armor, a great
cast John Borman picture. He's got Nisan's in it. Oh really, yeah,

(23:44):
this is John Boorman. Did he do it before or
after Deliverance? That's a strange eight one. So okay, I
can't remember when Deliverance came out. It was seventies film, right,
I think, so, yeah, well, maybe i'll check that one
out soon. Yeah, Deliverance was seventy two. Okay, Well, so
Morgan suddenly I'm imagining Burt Reynolds as King Arthur. But

(24:07):
Morgan la Faye is a character that exists in multiple
stages throughout the evolution of the Arthurian legendary corpus uh As.
You probably know that there are lots of different types
of stories of Arthur, and the character of Arthur and
the stories about him and all the characters around him.
They change a lot over the centuries. As this story,

(24:27):
uh As, the story is retold and retold, and so
she is usually some kind of sorceress or witch or fairy.
In earlier sources, it seems she's more often a sympathetic character,
a kind of helper or a healer, sometimes a sister
or half sister of King Arthur. In later stories she's
presented as more morally ambiguous or even the vindictive and

(24:51):
deceitful villainous of the plot, as in the fifteenth century
Lamorte d'artour and by that one was by Thomas Mallory,
Sir Thomas Mallory, uh and that one is the source
of a lot of the Arthurian stories that people know.
But La fata Morgana is just the Italian for Morgan
le fay or Morgan the fairy. But you still might

(25:11):
be wondering, wait a minute, why is this type of
complex superior mirage associated with a fairy or sorceress from
Arthurian literature. Well, remember that fairies are tricksters first of all,
and Morgan la Fay in these later tellings of the
arthur Saga, is known for her deceptions. But the connection

(25:31):
appears to run even deeper than that. So I was
reading about this in a article for Wired by Matt
Simon that is in part, I think, a review of
a book by Marina Warner called Phantasmagoria, published in two
thousand eight from Oxford University Press. And Matt Simon is
writing up a section from this book that is about

(25:53):
the discovery of the Fati Morgana, or at least an
early documentation of the Fati Morgana with a with a
sign tific point of view. So he tells the story
of a Jesuit priest named Father Domenico Giardina, who lived
in the seventeenth century on the island of Sicily. And
so I'm about to describe some visions. I think there's

(26:14):
some confusion about whether Giardina saw these visions himself or
whether he was describing the visions of another person. But
either way, one day in the sixteen forties, somebody. Maybe
Jardina was gazing out across the Strait of Messina, which
is the stretch of ocean between Sicily and mainland Italy.

(26:35):
And according to Jardina's writings, uh, what was seen here
was quote a city all floating in the air and
so measureless and so splendid, so adorned with magnificent buildings,
all of which was found on a base of a
luminous crystal. So okay, that's impressive. But it didn't just
remain that way. Jardina claims that the city transformed itself

(26:57):
into a garden and then into a worst And I
can't help but notice the dangerous inversion that might imply.
The city, of course, is the place of order and humanity,
and it transforms into the woods, which is the place
where the power of nature rules and travelers become lost.
And in some of the classic Arthurian stories, I think
that's the place you you really see this like civilization

(27:21):
versus the woods distinction, where the woods are just full
of unaccountable magic that has power over you rather than
you over it. Yeah. Absolutely, And Uh, one thing I
love about this is this is already hit on several
different themes that we will find not only in you know, um,
you know, tales from you know, elsewhere in Europe, but

(27:42):
but tales from the other side of the world. Uh
and you know other you know, other other cultures seem
to have possibly or in some cases possibly seen, um
optical phenomena of this nature and had some of the
same interpretations. Uh So Anyway, Jardina's description goes on after that,
even after it becomes a bunch of woods, there are

(28:04):
more transformations and more chaos. He saw what looked like
armies attacking towns, and then eventually the entire scene just vanishes.
And Jardina tried to explain this vision in terms of
science rather than magic. He he blamed salts in the region,
which he wrote, quote rise up in hot weather in

(28:25):
vapors from the sea to form clouds, which then condensed
in the cooler upper air to become a mobile specchio,
which means a moving polyhedracal mirror. Now this is not correct,
but as we've seen, this actually isn't very far off.
It doesn't necessarily have to do with salts, but the
effect probably was something like a superior mirage of the

(28:48):
opposing shore and things on it, or a fata morgana
even more complex, uh sort of shifting, quickly transforming mirage
that was caused by the vertical arranged end of of
gases of different temperatures and atmospheric ducting. Yeah. And you know,
one of the interesting things about this I was reading

(29:08):
from a source that i'll side later in the episode,
and they were talking about how indeed, we we didn't
really um begin to understand what was going on with
mirages like this until the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and
even even say Arab scientists who during the medieval period
like that was they knew more about optics than anyone
else in the world, even they were not able to

(29:31):
to make sense of what they were experiencing when they
too experienced uh you know, superior inferior mirages on the horizon. Yeah, exactly. So,
so this explanation is not correct, but I think it's
surprising how close he got. Yeah. So here here's the question,
where does Morgan la Fay come in? Right? Well, here
I'm going to read from from Simon's article. According to Warner,

(29:54):
the Norman's brought stories of Morgan's magic to Italy, particularly
her Pin and for luring sailors to an undersea palace
with visions of castles in the air. Fatim morgana is
particularly prevalent in southern Italy Strait of Messina, where Father
Giardina experienced his own vision, and then later Simon writes,

(30:17):
and long before Arthurian legend, it could have been that
sightings of these phenomena gave rise to any number of
woe something is appearing in the sky scenes in antiquity.
Warner argues, So, I think the the idea of the
fatim morgana is that there is some equation of this
optical phenomena of seeing things far away or over the

(30:38):
horizon appearing up in the air above the horizon, and
in some cases even uh distorted, inverted and stacked upon themselves,
forming bizarre visions that could look like castles in the sky,
cities in the sky, uh weird floating objects, ships sailing
in the air or among the clouds. And you might

(30:59):
be tempt to reading accounts of things like this, to think, well, okay,
you know it's either just creative the creative mind at work,
or it is uh it is you know that these
people's mythology or or legends that are then described. But
the fatam organa gives us uh the opportunity to look
to actual optical phenomena as a is it possible or

(31:20):
in some cases like it seems almost definite cause yes,
though I guess somebody would not be could not be
blamed too too much for thinking of it as a
kind of deceptive fairy magic. Yeah, no, I think so,
because ultimately, like we said before, when you when you
witness something that you cannot explain, uh, a lot of
times you have to go to the pre existing uh narratives,

(31:41):
the pre existing scripts UH to figure out what it
might be. And that might be aliens, it might be
um you know, fit that the fairy folk, it might
be the gods or sea monsters, etcetera. It seems like
the CEA in particular is full of a lot of
characters who want to lead you astray and get you
into trouble with deceptive visions or invitations, you know, the sirens,
the all those things. Though I guess the woods too,

(32:04):
I don't know. The woods in the sea have some
things in common. Yeah, they're both wild realms. And there
you know, there's a plethora of of mythical creatures and
beings and strange lights that will lead you astray. Now
I came across what I thought was a pretty interesting hypothesis.
I'm not sure how well supported it is, but at
least in this one case, the fottom Organo mirage has

(32:27):
been said to not just influence supernatural legends, it may
possibly explain specific catastrophic navigational blunders in maritime history. And
the main possibility that has been proposed here is the
iceberg collision that sank the Titanic. Oh wow, okay. So
this hypothesis is covered in an April article for The

(32:50):
New York Times by William J. Broad. In short, there's
British historian named Tim Malton who was working with the
help of somebody named Andrew Young, who's an astronomer and
mirage specialist at San Diego State University. And with Young's help,
Malton refined and put forward a hypothesis that could explain

(33:12):
why the Titanics lookouts failed to spot the iceberg in
time to avoid the collision and why a nearby ship
failed to respond to a distress signal. Uh So, Malton
claims that the conditions of the icy water in the
North Atlantic on the night of the sinking of the
Titanic were responsible for creating a kind of wall of

(33:34):
water illusion that could have obscured the approaching iceberg from
view and A Broad describes the fatim organa effect as
follows quote. Most people know mirages as natural phenomena caused
when hot air near the earth surface bends light rays
upward in a desert, the effect prompts lost travelers to

(33:54):
mistake patches of blue sky for pools of water. But
another kind of mirage as when cold air bins light
raised downward. In that case, observers can see objects and
settings far over the horizon. The images often undergo quick distortions,
not unlike the wavy reflections in a fun house mirror. Okay,

(34:15):
so this is in line with what we've been talking about,
but Broad goes on to say in an interview, Mr
Malton said he first learned the possibility of cold mirages
when reading a nine British inquiry on the Titanic sinking.
It suggested that the icy waters could have cooled the
adjacent air and warped images that confused the Californian, a

(34:35):
nearby ship that could have rushed to the Titanic's aid
but instead did nothing. Fascinated. Mr Malton, who sailed boats
in his youth, dug into navigational records and found that
both the Californian and the Titanic had moved into the
icy Labrador current that night and had encountered conditions ideal
for cold mirages. He then hunted through reams of official

(34:59):
and unaff issual testimony to see what people saw or
what they thought they saw. A drama of misperceptions and shoes.
Mr Malton's book shows how mirages could have created false
horizons that hid the iceberg from the Titanic's lookouts. By
this theory, the intersection of dark sea and starry sky
would have looked blurry, reducing the contrast with the looming iceberg.

(35:23):
And then he goes on to site some of the
testimony of the lookouts who were who were watching the
horizon that night, and and so they put together this
idea that superior mirages could have hidden the iceberg from
sight as they were approaching it by creating a kind
of blur or haze along the horizon. And then also
that that a type of superior mirage caused by the

(35:43):
the icy currents in the cold water could have interfered
with the Californians ability. I remember that was the other
ship that was nearby that did not intervene could have
interfered with its ability to correctly assess what was going
on with the Titanic, and this led to a series
of misunderstandings that cause them not to help. That is interesting. Yeah,

(36:06):
Now I don't know how much you know, the most
relevant experts would put into this hypothesis. Today, I was
trying to see if I could find criticisms of it,
and I did find a series of papers in the
journal Weather from twenty nineteen by Mila's in Cova. The
first one of the four part series is called Titanic's
Mirage Part one, The Enigma of the Arctic High and

(36:29):
a Cold Water Tongue of the Labrador Current. I didn't
have time to get into this whole series in depth,
but it looks from what I can tell like the
author argues that maybe the mirage explanation is possible, but
probably not the explanation that they think is most consistent
with the facts, and other explanations for the haze over
the water that night that would reduce visibility would include

(36:51):
something that is more commonly known as sea smoke, which
is just a kind of natural fog that forms when
very cold air moves over warmer water. Yeah. And that
coupled with the fact that Billy Zane is chasing Leonard
DiCaprio around ownership and that's probably distracting everybody. I mean,
that's gonna create a steamy fog of its own, right, Yeah,

(37:16):
thank well. Um yeah, I have an interesting historic tidbit
here that I think you know. It flows nicely out
of the Titanic example. Uh, this one takes place, um
well techno technically it takes place on water as well,
but on frozen water. And it concerns something that pops
up as well, the idea of like phantom islands, phantom mountains. Uh,

(37:38):
something in the distance that you know, looks like some
sort of large geographical um occurrence, but then as you
get closer it does not. And this particular tidbit concerns
crocker Land. Have you ever been to crocker Land, Joe,
I don't think so. No. For some reason, I'm thinking
Betty crocker Land. Well, it turns out nobody has been

(37:58):
to crocker Land. And here's the story. So it's n
SI and Robert E. Perry Arctic explorers exploring the polar regions,
and he makes an alarming sighting a range of mountain
peaks rising above the ice cap some what looks like
four hundred miles, uh, you know, west of Greenland's northern tip.
So he names this Crocker Land, and it apparently goes

(38:20):
from there. It ends up appearing on at least one
published map. And then seven years later, Arctic explorer Donald B.
McMillan he ventures into the same region in search of
crocker Land, um, you know, thinking that he is going
to you know, arrive there and further study it. And
he initially sees these mountains, but then they slowly vanish
as he draws closer, and as it turns out, there

(38:43):
was nothing there at all but flat, featureless ice. And
this is how he describes it. This is from his beliefs.
Is from his autobiography quote. The day was exceptionally clear,
not a cloud or trace of mist. If land could
be seen, now is our time us there It was,
It could even be seen without a glass. Extending from

(39:04):
southwest true to north northeast. Are powerful glasses, however, brought
out more clearly the dark background in contrast with the
white the whole resembling hills, valleys and snow capped peaks
to such a degree that had we not been out
on the frozen sea for a hundred and fifty miles,
we would have staked our lives upon its reality. Our

(39:25):
judgment then as now is that this was a mirage
or loom of the sea ice. Oh. I guess the
thing that we haven't discussed yet but is related, is
that there is another phenomenon called looming that can also
cause illusions of this kind, seeing different things like with
relationship to the horizon, sort of appearing out of place

(39:47):
that works by a different mechanism. Yeah. Now, the next
example I want to cover though, is almomst definitely an
example of the fatimorgana uh. And this is actually the
one that that led me uh to uh to bringing
this up as a potential topic. UM, because I was
researching the shan Haijing for our recent episode on the

(40:09):
shan Haijing and uh I ran across a Chinese connection
to the Fata Morgana. In an article from nineteen eighty
nine by Edward H. Schaeffer published in the Journal of
the American Oriental Society, titled Fusang and Beyond the Haunted
Seas to Japan now. Edward H. Schaefer lived nineteen thirteen

(40:30):
through nineteen one. He was an American historians, sinologist, and
writer noted for his experience on the Tang dynasty, and
he was a professor of Chinese at the University of California,
Berkeley for thirty five years. He also did some key
English translations. In this article, however, Schaefer is looking at
various examples of a class of Chinese poem about travel,

(40:52):
particularly about this very specific about saying goodbye to honored
guests as they depart on a journey. I'm trying to
think of there are any um like English poems that
come to mind that have a similar theme. I don't know,
not that I can think of. At any rate, it
was a popular motif at the time in China. Uh

(41:12):
In a popular journey. Specific journey for these poems during
the Tang dynasty, which which was six eighteen through nine
oh seven, was a journey across the Sea of Japan,
frequently taken by monks, diplomats, and others. So this was
and is the puffing Sea, the bursting Sea, the domain
of danger, for sure, but also a supernatural wonder. Now,

(41:34):
as we've said, this can be said of basically any
large body of water, this can be said of any
seafaring civilization. Right anywhere people meet the ocean, you find
these descriptions of the ocean as as a potentially deadly placed,
a mysterious place. And we've developed rich myths and legends
to account for it. Uh, you know, any time, you know,
just across cultures. But Schaefer points out that there was

(41:58):
really a lot of this talk regard in the Eastern Sea,
and you'll find it in poems and in accounts of
all sorts, including from very well traveled and well educated individuals.
And he describes these sightings as being marked with quote
greater awareness than ever before of the denizens of the
oceanic world. So what are these denizens of particular? Note

(42:19):
here are the shin or clam monsters of the Eastern Sea.
And uh, this is where we get shn jing, which
is or um or high shishi and low, which are
terms for mirages in Mandarin. Oh wow, So if you
were talking in Mandarin about a mirage, you're saying something
that literally could mean something like clam monster. Uh. Yeah. Yeah,

(42:43):
like the these terms are are all connected. Yeah. So
while the pre Han genesis of the term shafer rights
would seem to apply to real world clams, you know,
the type of clams you might catch and eat and
some culinary traditions, uh, it clearly evolved into a legend.
And so this is what he writes quote. Beginning as
an unassuming marine invertebrate, the shin was later imagined as

(43:07):
a gaping, pearl producing clam, possibly to be identified with
the giant clams of tropical seas, for instance, Tridactna. That's
the genus. So these if you've ever seen images of giant,
real world giant clams, that's uh, that's the genus, he
continues quote. Finally, by early medieval times, it had become
a monster, lurking in submarine grottoes, and was sometimes endowed

(43:29):
with the attributes of a dragon, or, more likely, under
Indian influence, a naga. So it gets this gets like
just super super super weird, and I love it. Uh.
So these the shin were said these giant clams in
the ocean deep were said to exhale and belsh up
bubbles and froth, which that they could they could then
manifest into spectral castles and haunted palaces made of what

(43:54):
Schaefer translates as a kind of plasma and later describes
as being something between less in energy, like a kind
of ectoplasm quote dream like carrescant with strange lights and
prismatic hazes. These seemingly insubstantial confections or counterparts of the
sea asle pin lay, and also of the astral places

(44:16):
of the high gods of Daoism, all from clams. Huh, well,
giant clams, giant magical clams that breathe ectoplasm and use
it to craft massive illusions in the sky. So he
from here he goes on to share what I believe
his translation, one of two translations he provides of a

(44:38):
poem by Wen chi Uh rhapsody on the High House
of the clam Monsters, and it's it's just glorious. Um.
You can look up the Shaffer article. You can find it. Um.
I think it's on j store and you can access
it for free, and you can you can read the
full version of both poems. I just want to read
the first part of the initial I think was supposed

(44:59):
to be a more accurate translation. There in the peeing
bird's basin. Shoreless and boundless are the clam monsters, high
houses crag crested. They do not rely on timber to
knit their frames, but use their own fnast to fly
and float them hidden away without present sign they blaze

(45:19):
and splendor, hardly to be matched. Then one of them
emitst waves and surges there as if it would stud
the sky with them, forming semilacra. Mutating, it creates porches
and railings, preferring to simulate the sun, which melts our
cares so large that it would cover a giant turtle
mountain with yet another island, or dripped down on the

(45:42):
shark men's houses and hanging streams. Then it is as
if the fogs have used up their mistiness, the melting
clouds have gone home. The moon sheds brilliance over a
thousand lee vision is terminated only by the eight horizons. Yeah,
it's it's I love it. It's just so full of

(46:03):
weird wonder and and again has has just start start.
Comparisons can be made to those to the accounts of
the fatim Organa that you were reading earlier from you know,
the other side of the world. But I love all
the unexplained elements, the shark men's houses. Yeah, yeah, I
may touch on the shark man in a bit, But yeah,
there's just so much wonder This feels like some sort

(46:24):
of a just it's a weird hallucinatory vision out of uh.
You know that you might find something similar out of
say the weird fiction era in an American literature. Now
I am kind of wondering how exactly some of these
uh words are translated, because obviously, like so the words
simulacras in there, and I understand what that means in context.

(46:45):
I wonder if there's actually like a term in the
original that is becoming exactly that word, or if there
is something that's somehow the gist of something. Yeah, you know, offhand,
I can't recall of Schaefer got into that. He it's
a he. It's mostly related to these two translations that
he gives, but he does get into some of the
specific terminology. Um. But on top of that, Shaffer himself

(47:08):
seemed to be, you know, pretty poetic in his own right. Um,
you know, just as he's describing the text, there's some
wonderful sections like he writes in this literary vision, the
clammy builders are not ordinary creatures at all, but alien
and anonymous natural forces. Their amorphous bodies are unstable and
perhaps illusory at least ectoplasmic or spectral. They have no gender.

(47:31):
They dwell in the murky benthos of the Sea of Whales,
beyond the domains of the shark people. And uh and
he actually he provides a second translation in which he
uses meter in English rhyme. Uh. And again, I just
have the first section here. Uh, but but he does

(47:52):
the whole thing. I don't know, did, Joe? Do you
want to read this one? Oh? Sure I could if
you want, Jeff, go for it. Where giant fish foul
range above the seas, and craggy houses clammy monsters weeze.
They need no dedar to build these halls. Extruded e
cores fuse as roofs and walls. Abistle gloom eclipses them below,

(48:13):
but spouted up, they shed a fiery glow. When one
explodes up through the tossing spume. We hope a vault
of spangled stars to bloom. Instead, it seems a shining
golden dome to match the Sun, the God's immortal home.
It makes the giant seamount seem a hill as vast
cascades into the vortex spill. Then when the upcast spray

(48:37):
and froth degrade, and clouds beyond the far horizon fade,
the lunar lantern sets the sky alight, and all the
seven seas show clear and bright. The fishy peoples shine
their scales around. The waves, now soothed, give out no
further sound. A palace heaves and spouting rare perfumes and

(48:58):
majesty above the ocean ooms pierces the stubborn haze that
round it lies and thrusts its mighty walls into the skies. Yeah,
I absolutely love it. Excellent. Yeah again, giant clam spouting, uh,
you know, bubbles and froth and exoplasm up into the
sky and forming an otherworldly castle or city in the sky,

(49:22):
and then you know, it vanishes and uh. And Schaffer
himself points to the connection here between these tales and
the very real phenomenon of fatim organa mirages, which are
still seen today on the Eastern Sea. So you know these, uh,
these strange castles are are still glimpsed out there. You
know that these are this is an optical phenomenon that

(49:44):
still occurs. What who are the shark people? Do you
know something about sharkman? Yes? I look these up. These
would be the jow wren or the people of the
flood dragons, So they were a kind of mir folk
um or you know, or a shark person. I like
how he describes them as as as the shark people
or fishy people if you will. Well, that makes them
sound more like the subject of that Peter Benchley novel

(50:06):
adapted to a made for TV movie that we talked
about not too long ago. What was the one about
like the shark human hybrid? Oh? What was it? It
wasn't beast. It had a similar one word name, because
you know that you stick with what what works? Kim
control in it? Is that right? Yeah? And Craig T.
Nelson And a shark that I think in the book
at least wasn't was a Nazi created mutant intelligent shark.

(50:27):
I'm not sure if that translated into the TV adaptation
or not looking it up, or if it had like
big muscular arms or not. Oh, it's a mini series.
It's called Creature Creature. Yes, but I I really want
to see a film about um, about this giant clam
um about the Shin and uh, you know, I'm not
sure that that it doesn't exist. Clearly, there's a lot

(50:48):
of a wonderful and fantastic Chinese cinema out there, and um,
I didn't really dive in enough. So anyone out there,
if you're aware of a film that features even a
cameo by a giant um of fairy city spouting clam,
let me know. Alright, I have another example I want
to turn to, and this one takes this to another

(51:09):
continent entirely. This takes us to Africa, specifically Southern Africa,
and this concerns the San people. So these are indigenous
peoples found chiefly in Botswana, uh Namibia and southeastern Angola.
Historically they would have been a hunter gatherer people and
they've been referred to by several different names over time

(51:30):
and today are apparently not instantly identifiable by any physical features,
language or culture. Um, but I was reading an article
about this. This is a from the year two thousand
by Helmett trabuch Uh titled does mirage derived mythology give
access to sun Rock Art? And this was published in
the Southern African Archaeological Bulletin. In it, the author contemplates

(51:53):
a link between the traditional rock art of the sun,
their myths, and the superior mirages they would have deserved
in their environment. That again, like all these can still
be observed in those environments today, and the author points
out that you know that that naturally the sort of
mirage was seen throughout the world for thousands of years.
He's the author who brings up, uh, you know, the

(52:14):
the idea that even Arab sciencests, who uh, we're pretty
much masters of optics. Uh, during the medieval period, they
weren't able to understand this. So it wasn't ntil the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we we really were able
to fully crack what's going on when we behold a
superior mirage. But you know, everyone who had access to
to these mirages would have probably had some thoughts about them,

(52:35):
and you can imagine how they might have influenced one's
worldview and magical thinking. So sun rock art in particular
depicts in some cases huge flying creatures, upside down creatures
and double creatures, finned land creatures, as well as floating waters. Now,
there there have been a different ways of interpreting these, uh,

(52:58):
the author points out, so rep presentations of mythic ideas
art for art's sake, or and this is always interesting,
altered states of consciousness or shamatic visions, but attributes presents
a what he refers to a naturalistic interpretation in which
the observation of superior mirages are a key factor. Um,

(53:18):
of course, and we should drive home. Uh. You know,
it's it seems like all of these could be employed
at the same time, because certainly you could have hallucinations
occurring whilst looking at, or remembering or or contemplating the
nature of things seen on the horizon. Combine that with
your own myth making uh, and just creative thinking in general. Now,

(53:39):
as for the specific things he's referring to, first of all,
giant sky water snakes or rain animals above the horizon
would have been linked to superior mirages that that were
often observed in the lull before rain storms. So these
would have been interpreted as powerful entities responsible for rain
that could then be called out to spiritually like these

(54:00):
were the masters of rain, the gods and monsters of rain,
and uh, and they're the ones who who you need
favor from in order to, you know, to have a
wet and rich environment. And then there's this really fascinating
concept of the underwater where souls and the sorcerers went
to become stretched. Uh. And this may be linked to

(54:22):
glimmering inferior and mirages and stretched or elongated forms. Uh.
These may derive from superior mirages. And yeah, you look
at examples of this and it's like, you know, um,
you know, clearly humanoid representations, and some will be of
what you might take to be normal size, and others
are greatly elongated. And uh, yeah, I'm particularly interested by

(54:45):
this idea of the inverted world and sorcerers who try
to make contact with the inverted world by he points out,
adopting an inverted arm position. Here's a quote from the
paper quote, what would be more realistic than depicting inverted
lions in a mirage in such an environment the underwater
of sun belief. It could even be that trance has

(55:08):
developed as a way to imitate the inverted world, the
world where everything is the other way around. The body
does not preserve the upright position anymore. Food or liquid
does not enter the mouth but leaves. It has depicted
in many scenes where liquid sometimes interpreted as blood, is
streaming from the nose of animals and shamans. Maybe the

(55:28):
crossed legs of painted antelopes and trans dancers and sound
rock art may simply mean that they do not walk normally,
but walk in an inverted way, that is backwards, as
they should in the other world. That's really interesting. Yeah,
and again this this connects with with some of what
you were sharing earlier on again from the other side

(55:49):
of the world, uh, you know, dealing with contemplations of
fatimorgana and superior and inferior mirages. So from from here, really,
I mean, we don't even have to spend much time
at all talking about the nature of unidentified flying objects
in the sky UM because you can see I mean,
it's all written on the wall here. I mean the
bottom organa is sometimes used to explain UFO sightings, which

(56:13):
which is just a natural direction to go into, especially
when you consider modern sailing vessels um and and modern
vehicles and objects in generals often glinting with metallic details.
You can imagine them seeing above the horizon as superior mirages.
And you know, if you consume enough UFO material, which
I think everybody has at this point, that might be

(56:36):
one of the first places if not the first places
that your mind goes. Well, yeah, I mean, I'd imagine
that superior mirages could explain all kinds of especially anomalous lights. Yeah,
I've in particular, I've seen it linked to discussions of
UFO sightings in Texas and also the so called men
Men light in the Australian Outback. And uh, and I

(56:58):
think and I think you can. You can find plenty
of other examples of this as well. They're similar lights
that can be found in the Middle East that have
been linked to two superior mirages. So again we're dealing
with something you can find around the world, and then
we find all these interesting stories that are either directly
linked to superior mirages or could easily be linked to them,

(57:19):
at least at least in part So it basically explains
everything is so bigfoot. I don't know, I could an
elongated humanoid. Um, you know that that could work. Oh,
slender Man is a superior mirrage. Oh you know, I
was just thinking about the San Rock illustrations and traditions
about people walking backwards. That makes me think of the
leshy again. Oh did the less she walk backwards? Was that?

(57:42):
I think you could confuse the leshy by walking backwards.
I don't know that's right, or you could put your
clothes on backwards, right, yeah, yeah, the upside down, the
the inverted world moving backwards. Um. Now, as I mentioned
or earlier on the superior mirages uh and the Fate Morgana,

(58:03):
these are things that can and our photograph. They can
be photographed. They are photographs. So if you do some
image searches you can find some some really excellent examples
of these. I remember seeing one in particular that instantly
made me think of the gigantic spaceship from Independence Today. Um. Now,
Independence Day wasn't an actual movie, it was not a mirrage,

(58:24):
but but the mirages that that that occur can be
of that nature. You know, it's like there's something huge
in the sky or on the horizon, and it does
not confirm, confirm, conform to, uh to to anything that
would occur in the natural world that you you know of.
You know, like you have to lead to the the
unexplained if you're not aware of the sort of you know,

(58:45):
the again, the optical phenomena that can take place, just
some shimmering hulk. Yeah. So on that note, we would
obviously love to hear from anyone out there who has
witnessed one of these, you know, because I don't think
I have. I don't remember ever seeing a superior arraje
much much less uh fata morgana um unless I was
just you know, barely noticing it certainly. And that's the thing.

(59:08):
A lot of these examples that you hear about, they're
they're hard to ignore. Uh So, if you have experience
with them, please write in and let us know, tell
us all about it, tell us about your experience with it,
what was going through your mind when you looked at it. Also,
if you're familiar with any other of the you know,
the many global traditions that either are directly linked to

(59:28):
these optical phenomena or could easily be linked to them,
we'd love to hear about it. And you know, well,
we'll try and discuss it on an upcoming episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail. That's what publishes
Monday's in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
On Wednesdays we have The Artifact. Tuesdays and Thursdays we
have Core episodes, and on Fridays we have Weird House
Cinema where we don't so much get into the science,

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but we talk about a weird movie of note, Huge Things.
As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feed back on this episode or any other, to
suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listening to your favorite shows.