November 9, 2024 • 55 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the world of shadows. How do human conceptions of shadows factor into our literature, art, history and monster making? What does it mean to cast a monstrous shadow, or to cast no shadow at all? Find out… (originally published 10/26/2023)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday once more,
so we have another vault episode for you. This is
Where the Shadows Lie, Part two. It originally published ten
twenty six, twenty twenty three. Let's jump right.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
In Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And our month of
creepy topics continues. We are back with part two in
our series on shadows. In part one, we talked about
historical examples of people infusing the concept of the shadow
with strange power or supernatural connotations. We talked about how
the brain perceives shadows, and some cognitive science research regarding shadows,
(01:01):
including the interesting finding that a lot of the time
people do not detect when shadows apparently cast by objects
are physically impossible. We also talked about legends of the
Icelandic wizard who lost his shadow when it was snatched
away by the devil, a kind of a violent tuition
extraction for his fees for going to which school. But
(01:24):
also we talked about what it was understood to mean
that a vampire had no shadow at the time Bram
Stoker was writing the novel Dracula. Today we're back to
examine the shadows yet again. And to get started today,
I wanted to talk about shadows with halos. So to
(01:45):
introduce this item, I'm going to read a passage from
the memoirs of one ben Venudo Cellini, a sixteenth century
Italian sculptor and goldsmith who I had never heard of before.
But this this guy is interesting. He told his life
story in a weird, passionate, melodramatic autobiography full of bragging
(02:09):
that became widely celebrated in translation long after his death.
This memoir was especially beloved by artists and authors of
the Romantic movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rob,
just so you can get a quick flavor of Chillini's
comprehensive too muchness of personality, I attached an image for
(02:31):
you to look at. This is a famous salt seller
that Benvenudo Chillini designed. This was used to store salt,
like for cooking.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
You know, I always find it weird that it's essentially
a salt box, and I think it's sometimes called a
salt box, but it's also called a salt cellar and
a salt pig. Neither of these terms really feel very
true to what the thing is, at.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Least to be even less so in this case. So
let me just describe for those of you who cannot
see the image. What we have here is a sculpture
with two towering nude gods, one male, one female. They
are lying back, their legs entangled with one another's, suggestively.
The male immortal here is pointing with a trident, kind
(03:19):
of holding it out sort of languidly. He's like almost
like he's, you know, very tired from having feasted long,
but he's still he still wants that thing over there,
so he's sort of gesturing with his trident as if
to a servant, like bring me that. Meanwhile, the goddess
here appears to be sort of pinching her own breast.
(03:40):
Both figures are huge, they're made of gold. They are
over a landscape of blue water crashing on a rocky shore,
with golden horse heads shrieking from the surf, a golden
temple with three archways under the giant goddess's shadow. I
think this is supposed to be Poseidon in Gaya playing
(04:01):
foot see here, or rather I guess in a Roman
context it would be Neptune and Tara Mater. And if
you think about it, the gods selected are actually on
theme here because this is a salt cellar and these
are If it's a Neptune and Terra mater, this would
be gods of the earth and sea.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
And I think those are hippocampi there right behind the
male god right, so that would be a strong indicator
of aquatic divinity.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Ah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I didn't think of that.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Another thing here, So there's a dish next to the
two gods and the salt I guess goes in the dish.
But rob you see that little temple at the bottom
underneath the goddess. That's for peppercorns.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh okay.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Also strange fact, this salt cellar was stolen from a
museum in Austria in two thousand and three by a
man who ran an alarm system company. I was reading
about this in an article in the Guardian. The man
the suspect, later claimed that the theft was quote all
rather spontaneous. The salt seller was valued at thirty five
(05:08):
million pounds at the time. I think the thief tried
to get a ransom, maybe from the insurance company or something,
but eventually he was caught and the museum got.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
The piece back. Well that's good.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So in his memoirs Benvenudo, Cellini tells the story of
creating this masterpiece. At one point he says that he
took a mock up design and showed it to the
King of France at the time, Francis the First, who
was so impressed by this model that he commissioned him
(05:38):
to make the salt cellar out of gold from his
own treasury. And he was like, Chillini, you are a genius,
You're the best ever. And then Chillini says, okay. So
he gets the gold. He's carrying it back to his
workshop in a basket to make to cast the design
in gold. When he was set upon by four armed
highwaymen and then he had to draw his sword and
(06:01):
defeat them single handedly, he says.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
He also brags about a time that he decided to
stab some guys who had sued him and prevailed in court.
He writes, in translation quote, I perceived that my cause
had been unjustly lost I had recourse for my defense
to a great dagger I carried.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
All right.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
By the way, if you want to read more about
the salt cellar in particular, there's a good Jaystore Daily
feature about this story by Giovanni Garcia Finitch. But needless
to say, Chilini seems to have had a fairly grandiose
idea of his own personal genius and historical significance. He
thought he was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I mean, he sounds pretty cool just from this account, right,
And he's going around getting into sword fights, stabbing people
in legal disputes.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
He says, But I don't know who knows.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Maybe.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Among Chilini's many adventures and travails, at one point he
found himself imprisoned in Castle San Angelo in Rome after
being accused of embezzlement. By the way, he escaped from
prison later, Oh, and then he got caught and returned
to prison. But then he got busted out of prison
by the like a rich family. Anyway. He tells stories
(07:22):
of his time in prison in his memoirs, including the
fact that he had a dream in which an angel
came to him and wrote words of great importance on
his forehead with a red and he says, when he
woke up that morning, he found that his forehead actually
had marks on it, and he concludes that he was
at the time receiving messages from a heavenly angel. But
(07:43):
here we get to the passage that brings us back
to shadows. Cillini writes, quote another circumstance, I must not omit,
which is one of the most extraordinary things that ever
happened to any man, And I mention it in justice
to God and the wondrous ways of His providce towards me.
From the very moment that I beheld the phenomenon, there
(08:04):
appeared strange to relate a resplendent light over my head,
which has displayed itself conspicuously to all that I have
thought proper to show it to, but those were very few.
This shining light is to be seen in the morning
over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and
it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is
(08:26):
moist with dew. It is likewise visible in the evening
at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I
was at Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in
that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much
plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent.
But I can still see it even here and show
it to others, though not to the same advantage as
(08:48):
in France.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
All right, well, no, that's cool. Not only is he
going around getting into sword fights and stabbing people in
legal disputes, but he has some sort of mysterious halo
that is about his shadow, at least for certain parts
of the day, during certain environmental conditions.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
That's right, He says, God likes me so much that
he sometimes puts a halo around my shadow's head, and
you can see the shadows radiance. Especially in the morning
when the grass is wet with dew, there will be
visible to all a seraphic light in circling the face
of my shadow, as if my shadow's head contained a
second sun.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
But not between the hours of two and six that's
Willie's time. I get.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
That's all right. So it's a fantastic story. But the
more fantastic part of it would probably do injury to
Chillini's sense of specialness, because, unfortunately for him, other people
have seen this same effect. In fact, it's very common
when standing over a field of grass in the morning sunlight,
(09:53):
you can often see a ring of golden light surrounding
your shadow's head. Rob, I've attached some pictures for you
to look at here. Presumably the people who took these
pictures are not specially blessed by God. They were not
given a you know, plus four modifier on sword fighting bandits.
They're they're not the most genius goldsmith that ever existed.
(10:15):
These are just photographers. And what do you know they're
looking at in the field. They're taking a photo and
there is a ring, like a sort of emanation of
radiance off of the top of their shadow.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I see it.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Folks at home, you can look this up yourself with
the term I'm about to give you. The phenomenon is
known as highligenshine h e i l I g e
n s c h e i n, meaning the light
of the Holy One or holy light, sometimes also known
as Chillini's halo after the passage in question, and it
(10:50):
is not in fact the flame of the Lord's favor
for the rattus dude in Renaissance Italy. It is an
optical effect created by the interplay of sunlight and certain
types of backgrounds, especially backgrounds containing drops of dew.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Also not to be confused with heinekenshine. That's a different
opical phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
So much like Chilini describes, the hiligenshine is most often
seen in fields early in the morning, when the sun
is at a low angle and the observer has a
long shadow falling over wet grass. The fact that the
light is brightest right around your shadow's head here is
of course not magic. It's also not really anything special
(11:31):
about your shadow or the head of your shadow. Rather,
it's about perspective. It's about light sources and reflecting backgrounds
and perspective. The halo is located around your shadow's head
because your eyes are in your head, and thus the
head of your shadow is the place exactly opposite the
(11:52):
sun from your eyes. Maybe even never thought about it
that way before, but that's always true. This point opposite
the sun from your head is known as your antisolar point.
And another way to picture this concept is that you
can always draw a straight line in three dimensional space
from the sun through your head to your shadow's head.
(12:15):
Your shadow's head is at one end of that line,
the sun is at the other. The line goes straight
through your face.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
All right, all right, I can picture it.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
So the explanation for the optical effect usually goes like this.
The intensity of light reflected off of a drop of water,
or through a drop of water and back towards you
depends on the angle of reflection. Rays of light that
reflect straight back through a droplet of water are most intense.
(12:44):
That this straight bounce back angle of reflection would be
one hundred and eighty degrees right, going straight into and
back like your reflection looking straight into a mirror. As
the angle of reflection shifts further away from one hundred
and eighty degrees, the reflect light becomes significantly less bright.
Why would that be? Well, I was reading about this
(13:04):
in the American Meteorological Society's Glossary of Meteorology, and they write, quote,
dew drops held off the surface of the leaf by
small hairs focus sunlight on the leaf where it is
diffusely reflected. The drop, acting in a manner similar to
the lens of a lighthouse, then collects a large fraction
(13:26):
of this diffusely reflected light that would have otherwise gone
in other directions, and sends it back toward the source
and the observer. So in other words, the dew drop
acts as a kind of focusing lens to reflect light
directly back at the sun. Again, that's one hundred and
eighty degrees the angle of reflection. Of course, when you
(13:48):
look out at a field in the sunlight, no light
from the sun is reflected to your eyes from exactly
one hundred and eighty degrees because your head is in
the way right that's where your shadow is, so you're
blocking the exact at one hundred and eighty degree reflection point.
But light reflected in droplets from right around your antisolar
(14:08):
point can be pretty close to one hundred and eighty
degrees and thus significantly brighter when when the rays are
focused by the droplets like this than the light from
all around. This is especially true if the angle of
the sun is low and your shadow is long, and
your antisolar point on the ground is thus farther away
(14:28):
from you, And if you think about it for a minute,
this makes sense because as your shadow's head gets farther
away from your eyes because the sun is lower, the
difference in the angle between like your exact antisolar point
and some point on the ground maybe eight inches to
the side of it that difference in angle becomes smaller
(14:49):
and smaller as the antisolar point gets farther away. You
could compare this to like, if you are aiming a
bow and arrow at two targets that are one foot
apart from each other, You'll have to make a larger
adjustment if those targets are one foot apart from each
other and ten feet in front of you than you
would if they were one foot apart from each other
(15:12):
and thirty feet in front of you. That smaller adjustment
in aim is a smaller angle of difference. So this
holy glow around your shadow's head has to do with
the angle of reflected light hitting your eyes. It's closest
to a one hundred and eighty degree angle of reflection
near where your shadow's head is, so the light front
(15:35):
reflected from the surface around that area is brighter. If
you could see it, it would be brightest exactly where
your head is, but your head's in the way. One
way of demonstrating this actually visually, that's quite simple. As
I've seen online, somebody takes a photo of themself with
the highlgenshine and the camera is right in front of
their face, and then they hold the camera away from
(15:58):
their head over to the side, and the glow is
around the camera and not around their shadow's head.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Ah. There you go.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
One other tidbit from the American Meteorological Society entry the
glossary entry, though, is that while it's entirely true that
this effect is much stronger on wet irregular surfaces like
dewy grass, there's actually a weaker version of the shadow
halo effect that occurs even on dry surfaces. They write, quote,
(16:27):
when an observer's shadow is cast on a dry irregular
surface such as gravel or vegetation, each irregularity near the
antisolar point covers its own shadow in other directions. The
average brightness results from a mixture of sunlit and shaded surfaces.
The lower the sun in the sky, the longer the shadows,
and so the greater the contrast with the brighter region
(16:50):
near the antisolar point. So even if there's no dew,
you're still going to have the effect that if you
look around the world places that are farther away from
your anti solar point, you're going to be seeing light
reflected kind of bouncing in all directions from both brightly
sunlit areas and shaded areas. But when you're looking straight
(17:13):
at your antisolar point the stuff right around there, you're
pretty much only going to be seeing non shaded areas
because shaded areas are blocked by the objects right.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Right, all right. So it sounds then like that Seleni
probably had a case here. He was actually seeing this
optical phenomenon when he was out walking in the fields
and there was dew on the grass and so forth.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
That's right, there's no reason to doubt his story that
he saw this. Lots of other people have seen it.
You can probably see it too in the right conditions. However,
I am doubtful about Chilini's claims that other people could
see his halo. Remember he says, like, I've showed it
to a few special people and they said, yes, it's there.
The highligenshine is a phenomenon that is dependent on the
(18:01):
position of the viewer. It is not actually an object
out there in the world. Like you and I can
stand and look at a tree from different angles and
both see the tree. The highligenshine is about the angle
of reflected rays of light hitting your eyes, and the
rays are actually being reflected in this manner all over
(18:22):
the surface of the earth, the sunlit side of the Earth.
It just happens to be around your shadow's head that
you see it, because that's your particular antisolar point. So
I don't know. Maybe they could see it if they
got really close to him, like cheek to cheek, and
then they'd be like, oh wow, yeah, there is a
glow around our heads. I'm curious how close exactly you
(18:44):
would have to be to see the same thing. Maybe
you don't have to be cheek to cheek, but you'd
basically have to be looking from the same perspective that
he is.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, I mean, I guess you can well imagine being
a scenario where since it's a subtle enough effect, if
it was, if he's there like pointing it out to you,
you might say, okay, I think I see something. Or
this is a guy that seemed to have a very
strong personality, yes, and there were at least stories about
him stabbing people. You know, you might be inclined to
(19:13):
just be like, yeah, totally, I do see that halo
around your shadow. No, no, no, we don't have to.
I don't have to put my head next to yours.
It's fine, I got you. I can see it. Too.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yes, you're a genius. Yes you're really cool. Yes that
coat looks cool on you.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Please put the dagger away.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So that's the Highligan shine. But I am I am
so interested in this bombastic weirdo. I might try to
find another way to keep reading about ben Venudo Cellini
and see if I can bring him back to the
show in the future.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And then he sounds like a big character who had
a lot of thoughts about a lot of topics, so
I won't I wouldn't be surprised if he pops back
up again. All right, I want to come back to
a couple of things. In the last episode, we talked
(20:06):
about people and things that, due to some sort of
supernatural reason do not cast a shadow, or a thought
to not cast a shadow, and how this is generally
a comment on something going on with their soul or
lack thereof. As I was telling my wife about all
of this, she was like, well, you've got to mention
that episode of The Simpsons. I believe this is the
(20:28):
episode where Lisa becomes a vegan for a little bit,
or at least she encounters a vegan. I know she
becomes vegan for an episode, but I can't remember if
this is the same episode.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
I think she becomes a vegetan, unless this happens more
than once. She becomes a vegetarian, and then she ruins
Homer's barbecue.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, and then there's another episode where she meets and
falls in love with a vegan who claims that he
is a level five vegan and he doesn't eat anything
that casts a shot. Now, I have to admit, you know,
sometimes looking back on, especially at vegetarian and vegan jokes
from the nineteen nineties, a lot of them hit unnecessarily hard,
(21:11):
and especially you know, as a vegetarian I and someone
has lots of vegan friends, you know, I often will
be like, I think that's that's a bit much nineties comedy.
But this one, I don't know. I've always liked this
one because, you know, at one hand, it's it's a
parody of it's poking fun at a particular dietary choice.
(21:32):
But on the other hand, this idea of eating something
that doesn't cast a shadow, it does line up with
a lot of what we were talking about, the idea
that like, okay, this is a creature with diminished or
non existent personhood and therefore or a plant. Even I
guess more and more likely it would be the scenario
like this particular stalk of corn that doesn't cast a shadow,
(21:55):
and therefore it is okay to eat corn from this plant.
Like a lot of comedy, if you think about it
too hard, it doesn't work. But I always found it
a bit funny, all right, So I had to mention
that one Another thing, This is another one that came
up and talking about these episodes with my wife, she said, oh,
you've got to mention zero shadow days. So it's worth
noting that if you're standing in just the right place
(22:17):
at just the right time, you might well encounter a
world with I don't want to say no shadows, but
let's say significantly decrease shadow activity, Like if you were
let's say you're an individual in a supernatural horror show
and you always have to be on guard for shadow
monsters climbing out of the shadows and dragging you to hell. Well,
(22:38):
these are the places you would want to be because
you would, I guess, have fewer pools of shadow from
which things might crop. As pointed out on NASA's Night
Sky Network website, this is a reality of the solstice
in the tropics between the Tropic of Cancer and the
Tropic of Capricorn. Here people experience two zero shadow days
per year, so called when the sun is directly overhead
(23:00):
at solar noon, and this makes objects and people cast
a minimal shadow. It's often been observed that you may
have to jump in the air to see your own shadow.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
So it's not literally zero shadow, but it's as close
as it gets on Earth to zero shadow because the
sun is directly overhead, so you're not casting. There's really
no horizontality to your shadow.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Right right, no lengthen shadows for the most part. Yeah,
it's a minimal shadow activity. Ooh.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
You know though, I wonder if you could say that
there's actually even less shadow on days when the sun
is obscured by clouds, because then the directionality of light
is greatly reduced and light is more just kind of diffuse,
So you know, there's much I guess you still have
a shadow, but it's much much less intense.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's very faint, yeah, fainter shadows. And then of course
we also have to take into account our world of
so much modern illumination, artificial illumination, it's going to continue
to cast all sorts of interesting shadows as well. In fact,
that's kind of a defining aspect of sort of the
modern urban environment. You know, we've talked about that before,
(24:15):
These various realities and conceptions of the big city. You know,
having like gulches of shadow between skyscrapers that our positioned
too closely or don't taper off as they climb into
the sky, that sort of thing, And then you get
into you know, various forms of artificial illumination, particularly at night.
I mean, this is a defining character of so many
(24:38):
visuals that we have with you know, from various noir films,
you know, where it's like this this shadowy nightscape, urban
nightscape in which there are all these places where one
may hide, but also all these places where one will
be starkly illuminated and be in more vulnerable perhaps to
the nighttime city.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Well, yeah, the environment of the modern city makes where
you can almost kind of recreate the striking lighting of
like stage effects, but within a realistic context. You know,
having like a dark street with a single street lamp
illuminating something. It's like a spotlight, but you know it's
plausible to reality.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, like that classic what is the the movie poster
for the Exorcist works that way. You know, it's got
you know, a sort of noir styling to the poster.
But also it's like, hey, here comes the Exorcist front
and centers spotlights on you, buddy, Time to put on
a show for the devil.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
The way he's got the bag, yet it almost looks
like he's gonna put on like a costume and tap
dancing shoes or something.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Like the suitcase is full of like prop comedy.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, got a can of spring snakes.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Oh man, the devil won't see that kind of Yeah,
what devil?
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Would you like a boiled peanut?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Now, at this point, I'd like to get once more
into the world of art and shadow and get a
little bit into philosophy and history here as well. And yeah,
this is gonna be like a big tint discussion. I'm
not gonna get into all the details here, because ultimately,
you know, shadows have always been with us. They've they're
never far from us. And so anytime throughout history when
you've had a particularly contemplative individual who's gonna indulge in
(26:17):
a bit of navel gazing, uh, the shadow was always
there to aid us. And yeah, there's there's been a
lot of deep thoughts about shadows, about what is and
isn't a shadow? Can you actually look at a shadow?
Does a moving bird cast one shadow or multiple shadows?
And so forth? And I'm not saying it isn't interesting,
but it all, it all kind of started turning my
(26:39):
my brain upside down after a bit. So I'm gonna
skip around a bit here. But I was initially reminded
once more of our episode on necromancy, or one of
our episodes on necromancy, when we briefly discussed shadow puppetry
and its possible connections to shamanistic practices and or necromancy
(27:01):
in the sense of some sort of ritualistic way of
attempting to speak with the dead or to create the
illusion of speaking with the dead.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Right, So, the example from the necromancy episode was a
story about a Chinese emperor long ago who had a
sort of wizard like advisor who told him that he
could resurrect the spirit of a concubine who he had
loved very much but who had passed away, and that
she could speak to him again, but she would appear
as like a shadow behind a screen, and that this
(27:31):
was attributed later to shadow puppetry.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Right, it's unknown exactly how this played out or you know,
ultimately you know how true this account is. And there
were some thoughts that it was like a statue behind
the screen or scrim that it was more traditional shadow
puppetry or that, and also disagreements over to what extent
the Emperor would have been conned by this. But it's
(27:55):
an interesting slice of history. But at any rate, setting
off that aside, shadow theater anyway you slice that is
an ancient performance. Are that probably began in Central Asia
or China or possibly India during the first millennium BC.
That's at least, I mean, who knows ultimately how far
back it goes, because of course people along before that
(28:17):
were aware of their shadows, and they might have caught
on two ways that you might manipulate that shadow. So
as it stands, shadow puppetry contains a number of different
styles and traditions, you know, their use of puppets cut
out or otherwise. Also you have instances where individuals are
(28:39):
using their own bodies. I think the most famous example
of this is of course shadow graphy or the use
of you know, like making a little bunny out of
your hands and far more complicated things, and then using
that with light to create a shadow creature. And then
that's a you know, you may think of that as
just like a quick little you know, dad or something,
(29:01):
but it's actually a very refined craft and it is
likely it likely originated in China or the Far East
as well.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
In my limited recent experiences doing a hand shadow puppetry
for my daughter, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
The way that.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
It's unlike some other art forms in that by reshaping
your hand in front of the to block the light
and looking at the shadow, you can kind of get
a instant, continuous feedback on how close you're getting to
the object you're trying to represent as you move your
hand around. You know, it's unlike I would say in
(29:38):
my experience drawing, which I'm not good at at all,
which is a more laborious path to the realization of
the image, and then if you make a mistake, it's
laborious to undo it and try to change it. With
the shadow puppet, I felt like my hand kind of
became a form of jelly that was just automatically adjusting
itself to try to look more and more like a
dinosaur head.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, it's probably worth keeping in mind this act of
making your hand into this three dimensional object, this three
dimensional arrangement of digits that can then be manipulated in
three D space in order to change a two D
silhouette and make it resemble something else. We're thinking about
it when we get into a discussion of shadows as
(30:19):
truth and shadows as lies or manipulation. So at any rate,
I think you know, shadow publishing is worth thinking about here, though,
of course, we can easily become lost in discussions over
to what extent we're talking about shadow in these various
performances rather than shade, silhouette, translucent materials, et cetera. You know,
there's a lot going on in any given example of
(30:40):
shadow theater, But what about shadows elsewhere in art? This
is another huge topic that we're not going to be
able to do full justice too. But I was reading
a bit about this in a really excellent jay Store
article type Jaystore Daily article titled do we actually see
shadows by a rule? Sorensen, an article that I recommend
(31:02):
for anyone wanting a nice look at the various philosophical
arguments over whether we can see a shadow or not
when you look at a shadow, are you looking at
something or are you looking at nothing? That sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
This seems exactly the perfect kind of debate to like
occupy the minds and debate space of medieval scholastics.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yes, yeah, so there's a great deal in there. This
article also gets into some of these theological discussions. What
does it mean that a shadow moves over the deep,
et cetera. But it covers a lot of ground in here.
At one point he mentions quote shadows were fringe phenomena
in the European Dark Ages. They are rarely depicted in
(31:43):
the era's paintings. Perhaps the artists portrayed only what they
believe to be visible. So coming back to this idea
that maybe a sort of negative view of the shadow
was maybe more predominant during this period of time.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Oh, I'm having an idea, it's only sort of half formed.
I'm thinking about how when you look at like a
medieval artwork that might to some modern critics appear kind
of primitive somehow, because it's like a maybe a representation
of a human that shows no optical effects or effects
(32:17):
of perspective at all, Like, so it doesn't show any
differences in illumination by the direction of light. It doesn't
have any shadows or anything like that. That might look
kind of unsophisticated as an artwork because it doesn't show
all these all the tricks and plays of light that
are so prized in the you know, in the passionate
(32:38):
realistic artworks of I don't know, the Renaissance or whatever.
But you could look at that and say, actually, by
taking out all of those light effects, that is a
that is a more highly processed visual representation. That is
what the brain. That is the information the brain is
trying to interpret in a scene, because, as we talk
(33:00):
talked about in the last episode, the brain has to
kind of ignore a lot of things about shadows and
effects of light to try to just get information about
what are the physical objects in my space and what
are the physical agents in my space that I need
to understand as possibly having relevance to what I'm about
to do. You know, you need to be able to
(33:21):
see that there are two people standing in the room
in front of you, and there's a rock right there
that you could trip on, and not be confused by
shadows and changes and shading due to the position of
the light source that might be literal differences that you
see with your eyes, but are but are not relevant
information about what the objects in your space are. So
(33:42):
when you see that artwork that is like a picture
of a person without any effects of light sources or
shadows or anything like that, that is kind of a
mental representation of a person. That's not how we actually
see the world.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, yeah, so it is. It's still a true image.
And again you can also factor into these various discussions
about whether or not we actually see a shadow that
sort of thing. But Sorenson does get back to the
idea of shadow theater in ways that I was not expecting.
He writes, quote, if shadows were not seen as figures,
(34:17):
shadow plays would be as visually inert as radio plays.
Shadows are enlivened by actions such as jumping, bowing, and kissing.
This animation raised medieval concerns about idolatry to appease the
pious puppets were perforated. The dots of light were reminders
that shadows are lifeless effects of positive causes.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Seems like even if it's perforated, the principle remains. But
I don't know that just seems like one of those
funny kind of ineffectual gesture is to try to appease
somebody who just wants to complain about something.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it also reminds me of other
stories and tales we've read about where it's like, if
you don't complete a highly realistic painting, then there's less
risk of it coming alive, like do not dot the
dragon's eye, less the dragon climb out of the painting,
that sort of thing. Now, it is true that puppetry
(35:15):
has at times raised the ire of iconoclasts and raised
fears of idolatry, though at the same time it's also
been utilized by religious groups and it's still utilized by
religious groups today. I mean, puppetry is just, generally speaking,
a performance medium that is very ancient and well entrenched
in human tradition. But I was curious about this idea
of perforation, the idea like we were discussing that, Okay,
(35:37):
here's this shadow thing we've created on the wall, but
don't worry, it has holes in it. It can't possibly
be real because, on one hand, outside of European context especially,
you see plenty of examples of shadow puppetry, thinking especially
of Indonesian traditions that depend on perforated puppets structures in
(35:59):
order to allow light to pass through and enhance the
overall effect like it's those holes, at least to me
as a viewer, they help bring the things alive more,
not make them seem less alive. I don't know where
you would stand on the argument of making it less real,
but I did find something written about this as it
(36:20):
concerns traditional Turkish shadow puppetry. This is from the article
Karagauz and Hazavad Projections of Subversion and Conformance by James Smith.
This was an Asian theater journal from back in two
thousand and four. The author rights Islamic Sufi thought, one
of the most powerful cultural forces within Islamic society from
(36:43):
the twelfth century on, also affected Karrago's performance. According to
Karrago's expert Linda Merceades, Turkish shadow puppetry was designed both
to entertain and to achieve religious experience, based on the
Sufi islam doctrine that man is but a shadow manipulated
by his creator. The opening poem, typically recited by either
(37:05):
Kara or Hasavat, is a ghazal. The rules against forms
of representation expressed by the Quran in Sorotu are fairly strict,
but Sufi clerics defended Karaga's performance. A complex theological argument
was formulated. Because Islam forbids the representation of animate beings,
(37:26):
and furthermore, because shadow puppets were perforated by holes, there
was no possible reason to think of shadow puppets as
animate beings. Thus shadow puppet shows could be performed. Now
there's a lot to process there that I think is
just fascinating. On one hand, this idea of human beings
as shadows cast by God, and thus God is far
(37:50):
beyond us as a human being is beyond the substance
of his own shadow. I think that's all really really
deep and cool to think about. And we'll also see
some reflections of that in another religious example coming up.
And then we have this idea that, hey, puppets have
holes in them and therefore they can't possibly be mistaken
(38:10):
for living, animate creatures. It's interesting as well, it seems again,
I still feel like the holes overall in any given
shadow puppetry example, they do aid to bring the thing
to life more. But it's interesting to think of it
as kind of like a theological loophole as well. All right,
(38:37):
Now moving along to some other areas, this is another
one that I imagine is on listeners' minds already. It's worth
at least noting that Plato's allegory of the cave concerns
shadow images on a wall, essentially shadow puppets, I guess
you could say. And this of course regards humanity's ability
to see beyond the material world and into something far greater.
So it's an hour in which shadows on a wall
(39:02):
are taken for reality because there's no additional context for
the viewer to understand them. And we also have this
idea of shadows ultimately as something less than reality, something
that can mislead us about the true nature of reality. Now,
to come back to visual art, yeah, there is often
the lack of shadows, like we've been discussing in older works,
unless shadow is key to the work itself. During the
(39:25):
Dark Ages, again, Soresen suggests that perhaps artists were just
more concerned with the visible as opposed to the invisible
world of shadows. But shadows would of course become more
popular again during the Renaissance as perspective became increasingly important
in works of Western art and post Renaissance shadows became
just standard in all manner of Western art. As William
(39:46):
Chapman Sharp points out in a twenty seventeen article for
the Oxford University Press titled What's going On in the Shadows?
A Visual arts Timeline, you eventually get to a point
in the nineteenth century where standalone shadows without an in
picture source, so like the shadow is cast by someone
essentially out of frame or off screen. If you will,
(40:08):
these begin to pop up. He specifically points to an
eighteen thirty three piece by William Collins that you can
look up online titled Rustic Civility.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Oh boy, I don't know if this is the intended effect.
Maybe I'm just in the Halloween mindset, but I'm finding
this painting rather spooky. So what we see here is
like a sort of road leading through a gate into
a wooded grove, and there's a house in the distance.
The gate is open, and there are three children standing
(40:38):
beside the gate. They're sort of like squinting in the sun.
I think one is holding up a holding up a
hand to block the sun over his eyes, and two
of the children seem to be kind of hiding behind
the third, and then we see in the foreground on
the road just a shadow of a figure and a hat.
I think it's a man mounted on a horse.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Maybe. Yep, that's the impression I get.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
We don't see the figure itself, we just see its shadow,
but it seems rather ominous.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, I think that's a valid interpretation. Again, I'm not
sure offhand what the artist's exact intent was here, but
you could look at this like, oh, Dad's home. The
kids are excited. The kids don't look particularly fearful, but
they are children. Yeah. The other interpretation is that this
is a stranger and then therefore we have no idea
what the intent is. But we don't see the individual
(41:32):
in this painting. All we see is the shadow they
cast on the road in front of the children.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
Well, I apologize to William Collins if I've read menace
into his artwork that he did not intend. But yeah,
this is looking to me, this is kind of like
some of those paintings by Edward Hopper, like gas by
Hopper that just to me always look more and more
foreboding and ominous the more I look at them.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but but if nothing else, you know,
it's an example of a case where in a painting
the shadow is not merely incidental. The shadow is key
to the work. It's not just oh, it's nice that
things have shadows and people have shadows. Now like that,
the shadow is key to whatever the artist is trying
to say here. Now, once we reach the age of
(42:18):
photography and then cinema, of course, shadow becomes increasingly essential.
In fact, the author of this Oxford University Press piece
sharp points out that Henry Fox Talbot originally discussed photography
as a matter of fixing a shadow, and various others
made this connection between photography and shadow as well. I mean,
(42:39):
you can't engage in photography without at least thinking about shadows, right,
if not exploiting them and using them. One example though,
of people of the time period thinking about shadows and
photography apparently a poet Elizabeth Barrett wrote to a friend
in eighteen forty three that a photograph was like quote,
the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever.
(43:01):
Oh yeah, going around with your cameras just snatching shadows
left and right. And then, of course, once we get
into the era of film, which we touched on earlier, you,
especially when you look at the work of German expressionists
during the Silent Era. They made terrific use of shadow,
not only is just a way of capturing the mood,
but making them become an active part of the visual narrative,
(43:23):
which of course brings us back to Nosferatu. And you
know those scenes of Nosferatu, the vampire creep or I
guess his name's not nos Faratu, it's called crown Count
Orlock or Lock, you know, creeping up the stairs. His
shadow lengthened and menacing. The shadow is an active part
of the narrative that is being presented on the screen. Now,
(43:46):
rewinding things a bit, our old friend Plenty of the
Elder famously chimed in on the role of shadow in art.
In the natural history, he shares the story of the
Corinthian Buttades, who allegedly invented the art of modeling via shadow,
or at least the art of modeling clay in relief
utilizing shadow. In translation quote, it was through his daughter
(44:09):
that he made the discovery, who, upon being deeply in
love with a young man about to depart on a
long journey, trace the profile of his face as thrown
upon the wall by the light of the lamp. Upon
seeing this, her father filled in the outline by compressing
clay upon the surface and so made a face in relief,
which he then hardened by fire along with other articles
(44:30):
of pottery.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Oh interesting, But so I would think via that method
you could only get a two dimensional silhouette a not
a three dimensional cast, right.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Right right, So he would have to add in additional
details via his craft, but he would have at least
some aspect, at least the silhoe out of the individual
is captured on the wall. So it's interesting, especially when
you sort of compare it to Plato. And again Plato
is making other points. Plato's not just talk talking about Hey,
let me tell you all about shadows and what they're
(45:02):
up to. He's using it to make a different point.
But instead of shadow being a dangerous deceiver regarding the
true nature of reality, in this case, it actually allows
reality to at least a certain degree, be captured, to
be recreated or duplicated. And this story would apparently become
a popular painting subject in and of itself in the
(45:24):
eighteenth century. And again because you're getting into a time
period where painters want to make use of shadow, and
here is a story about artistic creation or recreation via shadow.
So it's a perfect topic to consider in your art
in the topic itself, and the idea of using silhouettes
and shadow and portraits also became popular again in this
(45:46):
time period. All right, And finally, I want to return
back to the world of shadows and mythology and religion
here just for a couple of examples that I didn't
turn up earlier that turned out kind of late in
my recent church, but they're they're both really good. First
of all is the idea that in Hinduism there is
a Hindu goddess of shadows, and her name is Chaiah.
(46:10):
And Chaia is an interesting goddess from Hinduism. She is
the cast shadow of the goddess Saranyu, that the first
wife of the sun and the sun god Surya. And
I've seen some treatments that discuss her as a sort
of shadow clone. I've seen the word clone used a lot.
She becomes Surya's wife after the first wife, Saranyu temporarily
(46:33):
temporarily leaves him and Uh and and together they actually
Uh the shadow wife here and the son actually have
three children. He has other children with other wives, but
at different points, but yeah, they have they he has
three children with the shadow wife. But anyway, this idea
of like the shadow actually taking on the likeness of
(46:55):
that which casts the shadow is really interesting. And then
finally this is really interesting as well. I'd read a
little bit about this before, certainly, but the idea of
the shadow in ancient Egyptian religion and culture is also fascinating.
The shadow is what would be called a shut or
(47:17):
I've seen it. I think it's pronounced shut, but it's
sometimes spelled swt in English translation. And you know, it
should come as no surprise that many of the same
elements we've discussed already concerning shadows in these episodes also
is in play here. So first of all, the idea
of the shadow as darkness, you know, they're almost used
(47:39):
interchangeably in a lot of languages and traditions. But then,
of course we have the idea of the shadow as
the soul, or in the case of the ancient Egyptian religion,
one aspect of the human soul alongside at least the ba.
So the shadow or shoot is more spiritual in nature,
while the ba is more physical, or at least that's
(48:02):
the rough overview of it. The concepts of the soul
and ancient Egyptian religion are rather complicated and have multiple.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Parts to them.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
And then also the idea of the shadow as a
copy of something, and particularly it's interesting with the idea
of a shadow of a god as a kind of
manifestation of the God. So apparently a statue of a
god was sometimes discussed as a shadow, and even a
temple to a god was considered that God's shadow. All right,
(48:33):
So I don't think any of those ideas comes as
a complete shocker or anything, But there are two additional
contexts here that I thought were rather fascinating. One is
that shadows are associated with quick movement without any sound,
which I suppose is key given this, you know, the
speedy and silent movement of the shadow, a thing that,
(48:53):
according to may Ahmed Hasani in light, darkness and shadow
in ancient Egypt was considered a physical entity. So it
was largely thought like the shadow as being more or
less physical in form.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
So it's like a substance that moves, but it does
so without making a sound and even without generating a breeze.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, Now, a lot of what we've discussed in terms
of supernatural and mythic and religious treatments of shadows. You know,
they get down to some sort of deep metaphysical truth.
You know, it's connected to the soul, or it is
connected to the darkness. Right, So this last bit I
found very fascinating, and this is something that Hasti mentions
in the article, the idea that also to the ancient Egyptians,
(49:35):
shadow was associated with protection from the sun and the heat.
And also when you start factoring in these various divine invocations,
it becomes a metaphor for the protection of the gods.
You know. So it's one of those things that once
it's pointed out to you, it seems kind of like
a no brainer, because obviously, under the intense Egyptian sun,
(49:57):
shadow is also a refuge, a place of protection or rest.
But yeah, you factor in these divine aspects and so
you know, Hasting points out that shadow becomes a symbolic
word for protection from the sun god, a metaphor for
protection in general, in addition to being part of a
human being's essence that survives moral death.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Oh yeah, so you can see how that complex of
different symbols converging could generate some very interesting, I don't know,
mythological grammar, like the idea that the shadow is both
a reflection, like sort of a soul copy of a person,
but it is also the place in which you could
stand to be sheltered by that person.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Right, Yeah, so this idea of like, step into my
shadow would be an an invitation to enter into my
protection that sort of thing. And then we also get
back to this idea that we referenced earlier about like
a shadow of something, especially if we're talking about a god,
a divine being of some sort, like the shadow is creation,
shadow is replication, at least to some lesser extent. Yeah,
(51:04):
I see that. So just some final mythological and religious
ideas about shadows, I think to sort of take us
home for these episodes. It's been fascinating to go through
all this. There were a lot of things I expected
to find and expected to see other takes in the
shadow that I just was blisifully unaware of, or you know,
we're not in the forefront of my mind when we
(51:26):
first ventured into it. I know we didn't even we
didn't even really get into any I guess real shadow
monsters we talked about, not in like the sort of
dungeons and dragons sense of the word. I did a
little bit of looking around to see about mentions of
shadows and shades and a couple of my favorite monster
guides and so forth, but nothing else really came up.
(51:51):
Maybe I missed something. It also can get a little
difficult to research things related to the word shadow, because
of course shadow is used so frequently to refer to
things that are not specifically shadows, or things that are
just metaphorically shadows.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
I'm sure some of you out there are thinking of
a shadow monster right now that you want to tell
us about, right in.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
That's right, send us your shadow monsters. We'd love to
talk about them in a future Listener Mail episode. All right, Well,
on that note, we're going to go ahead and close
out this episode. But yeah, right in, we'd love to
hear from you. On Mondays we do Lister Mail. Tuesdays
and Thursdays are core episodes. On Wednesdays we do a
short form monster fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
(52:34):
a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. Also, I want
to stress, hey, you might have noticed that we have
new host photos for Stuff to Blow your Mind if
you haven't seen them, run by our recently revived social
media presences all linked off of Stuff to Blow Yourmind
dot com, or you can look them up independently. Maybe
you already follow them. We are STBYM podcast on Instagram,
(52:55):
so you can go there. You can see these new
photos of Joe and myself. If you're wondering, well, where
did you take these fabulous and strange photos with these cool,
weird mirrors and so forth, Well, we visited Museum of
Illusions Atlanta, a delightful and educational attraction located in Atlantic Station.
They feature a whole host of visual illusions, including illusion
(53:16):
rooms you can walk into and interact with, and that
includes using the cameras there or your own cameras to
take some selfies and some cool shots. This is a
real fun place, good for all ages, the whole family.
These are not scary mirror rooms. These are ode inspiring
mirror rooms. These are whimsical mirror based illusions and other
(53:38):
sorts of illusions that you encounter.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
Yeah, it's not like a creepy haunted house though, well,
I don't know if they do something for October maybe
they do, but.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
I think they put some decorations up now. The other
thing is, since a number of the rooms do involve mirrors,
if you yourself are creepy, then I'm afraid that your
experience might be creepy because it will be built upon
your own. And if you have lost your reflection due
to some sort of wizardry, mishap or undead status, well
(54:07):
I don't think you can get your money back.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
It's a great place to find that out though.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yes, so yeah. If you want to learn more about
Museum of Illusions Atlanta, visitm OI Atlanta dot com.
Speaker 3 (54:17):
It's a great place check it out. Huge thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
The data
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday once more,
so we have another vault episode for you. This is
Where the Shadows Lie, Part two. It originally published ten
twenty six, twenty twenty three. Let's jump right.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
In Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And our month of
creepy topics continues. We are back with part two in
our series on shadows. In part one, we talked about
historical examples of people infusing the concept of the shadow
with strange power or supernatural connotations. We talked about how
the brain perceives shadows, and some cognitive science research regarding shadows,
(01:01):
including the interesting finding that a lot of the time
people do not detect when shadows apparently cast by objects
are physically impossible. We also talked about legends of the
Icelandic wizard who lost his shadow when it was snatched
away by the devil, a kind of a violent tuition
extraction for his fees for going to which school. But
(01:24):
also we talked about what it was understood to mean
that a vampire had no shadow at the time Bram
Stoker was writing the novel Dracula. Today we're back to
examine the shadows yet again. And to get started today,
I wanted to talk about shadows with halos. So to
(01:45):
introduce this item, I'm going to read a passage from
the memoirs of one ben Venudo Cellini, a sixteenth century
Italian sculptor and goldsmith who I had never heard of before.
But this this guy is interesting. He told his life
story in a weird, passionate, melodramatic autobiography full of bragging
(02:09):
that became widely celebrated in translation long after his death.
This memoir was especially beloved by artists and authors of
the Romantic movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rob,
just so you can get a quick flavor of Chillini's
comprehensive too muchness of personality, I attached an image for
(02:31):
you to look at. This is a famous salt seller
that Benvenudo Chillini designed. This was used to store salt,
like for cooking.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
You know, I always find it weird that it's essentially
a salt box, and I think it's sometimes called a
salt box, but it's also called a salt cellar and
a salt pig. Neither of these terms really feel very
true to what the thing is, at.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Least to be even less so in this case. So
let me just describe for those of you who cannot
see the image. What we have here is a sculpture
with two towering nude gods, one male, one female. They
are lying back, their legs entangled with one another's, suggestively.
The male immortal here is pointing with a trident, kind
(03:19):
of holding it out sort of languidly. He's like almost
like he's, you know, very tired from having feasted long,
but he's still he still wants that thing over there,
so he's sort of gesturing with his trident as if
to a servant, like bring me that. Meanwhile, the goddess
here appears to be sort of pinching her own breast.
(03:40):
Both figures are huge, they're made of gold. They are
over a landscape of blue water crashing on a rocky shore,
with golden horse heads shrieking from the surf, a golden
temple with three archways under the giant goddess's shadow. I
think this is supposed to be Poseidon in Gaya playing
(04:01):
foot see here, or rather I guess in a Roman
context it would be Neptune and Tara Mater. And if
you think about it, the gods selected are actually on
theme here because this is a salt cellar and these
are If it's a Neptune and Terra mater, this would
be gods of the earth and sea.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
And I think those are hippocampi there right behind the
male god right, so that would be a strong indicator
of aquatic divinity.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Ah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I didn't think of that.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Another thing here, So there's a dish next to the
two gods and the salt I guess goes in the dish.
But rob you see that little temple at the bottom
underneath the goddess. That's for peppercorns.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh okay.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Also strange fact, this salt cellar was stolen from a
museum in Austria in two thousand and three by a
man who ran an alarm system company. I was reading
about this in an article in the Guardian. The man
the suspect, later claimed that the theft was quote all
rather spontaneous. The salt seller was valued at thirty five
(05:08):
million pounds at the time. I think the thief tried
to get a ransom, maybe from the insurance company or something,
but eventually he was caught and the museum got.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
The piece back. Well that's good.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So in his memoirs Benvenudo, Cellini tells the story of
creating this masterpiece. At one point he says that he
took a mock up design and showed it to the
King of France at the time, Francis the First, who
was so impressed by this model that he commissioned him
(05:38):
to make the salt cellar out of gold from his
own treasury. And he was like, Chillini, you are a genius,
You're the best ever. And then Chillini says, okay. So
he gets the gold. He's carrying it back to his
workshop in a basket to make to cast the design
in gold. When he was set upon by four armed
highwaymen and then he had to draw his sword and
(06:01):
defeat them single handedly, he says.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
He also brags about a time that he decided to
stab some guys who had sued him and prevailed in court.
He writes, in translation quote, I perceived that my cause
had been unjustly lost I had recourse for my defense
to a great dagger I carried.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
All right.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
By the way, if you want to read more about
the salt cellar in particular, there's a good Jaystore Daily
feature about this story by Giovanni Garcia Finitch. But needless
to say, Chilini seems to have had a fairly grandiose
idea of his own personal genius and historical significance. He
thought he was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I mean, he sounds pretty cool just from this account, right,
And he's going around getting into sword fights, stabbing people
in legal disputes.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
He says, But I don't know who knows.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Maybe.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Among Chilini's many adventures and travails, at one point he
found himself imprisoned in Castle San Angelo in Rome after
being accused of embezzlement. By the way, he escaped from
prison later, Oh, and then he got caught and returned
to prison. But then he got busted out of prison
by the like a rich family. Anyway. He tells stories
(07:22):
of his time in prison in his memoirs, including the
fact that he had a dream in which an angel
came to him and wrote words of great importance on
his forehead with a red and he says, when he
woke up that morning, he found that his forehead actually
had marks on it, and he concludes that he was
at the time receiving messages from a heavenly angel. But
(07:43):
here we get to the passage that brings us back
to shadows. Cillini writes, quote another circumstance, I must not omit,
which is one of the most extraordinary things that ever
happened to any man, And I mention it in justice
to God and the wondrous ways of His providce towards me.
From the very moment that I beheld the phenomenon, there
(08:04):
appeared strange to relate a resplendent light over my head,
which has displayed itself conspicuously to all that I have
thought proper to show it to, but those were very few.
This shining light is to be seen in the morning
over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and
it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is
(08:26):
moist with dew. It is likewise visible in the evening
at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I
was at Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in
that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much
plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent.
But I can still see it even here and show
it to others, though not to the same advantage as
(08:48):
in France.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
All right, well, no, that's cool. Not only is he
going around getting into sword fights and stabbing people in
legal disputes, but he has some sort of mysterious halo
that is about his shadow, at least for certain parts
of the day, during certain environmental conditions.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
That's right, He says, God likes me so much that
he sometimes puts a halo around my shadow's head, and
you can see the shadows radiance. Especially in the morning
when the grass is wet with dew, there will be
visible to all a seraphic light in circling the face
of my shadow, as if my shadow's head contained a
second sun.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
But not between the hours of two and six that's
Willie's time. I get.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
That's all right. So it's a fantastic story. But the
more fantastic part of it would probably do injury to
Chillini's sense of specialness, because, unfortunately for him, other people
have seen this same effect. In fact, it's very common
when standing over a field of grass in the morning sunlight,
(09:53):
you can often see a ring of golden light surrounding
your shadow's head. Rob, I've attached some pictures for you
to look at here. Presumably the people who took these
pictures are not specially blessed by God. They were not
given a you know, plus four modifier on sword fighting bandits.
They're they're not the most genius goldsmith that ever existed.
(10:15):
These are just photographers. And what do you know they're
looking at in the field. They're taking a photo and
there is a ring, like a sort of emanation of
radiance off of the top of their shadow.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I see it.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Folks at home, you can look this up yourself with
the term I'm about to give you. The phenomenon is
known as highligenshine h e i l I g e
n s c h e i n, meaning the light
of the Holy One or holy light, sometimes also known
as Chillini's halo after the passage in question, and it
(10:50):
is not in fact the flame of the Lord's favor
for the rattus dude in Renaissance Italy. It is an
optical effect created by the interplay of sunlight and certain
types of backgrounds, especially backgrounds containing drops of dew.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Also not to be confused with heinekenshine. That's a different
opical phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
So much like Chilini describes, the hiligenshine is most often
seen in fields early in the morning, when the sun
is at a low angle and the observer has a
long shadow falling over wet grass. The fact that the
light is brightest right around your shadow's head here is
of course not magic. It's also not really anything special
(11:31):
about your shadow or the head of your shadow. Rather,
it's about perspective. It's about light sources and reflecting backgrounds
and perspective. The halo is located around your shadow's head
because your eyes are in your head, and thus the
head of your shadow is the place exactly opposite the
(11:52):
sun from your eyes. Maybe even never thought about it
that way before, but that's always true. This point opposite
the sun from your head is known as your antisolar point.
And another way to picture this concept is that you
can always draw a straight line in three dimensional space
from the sun through your head to your shadow's head.
(12:15):
Your shadow's head is at one end of that line,
the sun is at the other. The line goes straight
through your face.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
All right, all right, I can picture it.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
So the explanation for the optical effect usually goes like this.
The intensity of light reflected off of a drop of water,
or through a drop of water and back towards you
depends on the angle of reflection. Rays of light that
reflect straight back through a droplet of water are most intense.
(12:44):
That this straight bounce back angle of reflection would be
one hundred and eighty degrees right, going straight into and
back like your reflection looking straight into a mirror. As
the angle of reflection shifts further away from one hundred
and eighty degrees, the reflect light becomes significantly less bright.
Why would that be? Well, I was reading about this
(13:04):
in the American Meteorological Society's Glossary of Meteorology, and they write, quote,
dew drops held off the surface of the leaf by
small hairs focus sunlight on the leaf where it is
diffusely reflected. The drop, acting in a manner similar to
the lens of a lighthouse, then collects a large fraction
(13:26):
of this diffusely reflected light that would have otherwise gone
in other directions, and sends it back toward the source
and the observer. So in other words, the dew drop
acts as a kind of focusing lens to reflect light
directly back at the sun. Again, that's one hundred and
eighty degrees the angle of reflection. Of course, when you
(13:48):
look out at a field in the sunlight, no light
from the sun is reflected to your eyes from exactly
one hundred and eighty degrees because your head is in
the way right that's where your shadow is, so you're
blocking the exact at one hundred and eighty degree reflection point.
But light reflected in droplets from right around your antisolar
(14:08):
point can be pretty close to one hundred and eighty
degrees and thus significantly brighter when when the rays are
focused by the droplets like this than the light from
all around. This is especially true if the angle of
the sun is low and your shadow is long, and
your antisolar point on the ground is thus farther away
(14:28):
from you, And if you think about it for a minute,
this makes sense because as your shadow's head gets farther
away from your eyes because the sun is lower, the
difference in the angle between like your exact antisolar point
and some point on the ground maybe eight inches to
the side of it that difference in angle becomes smaller
(14:49):
and smaller as the antisolar point gets farther away. You
could compare this to like, if you are aiming a
bow and arrow at two targets that are one foot
apart from each other, You'll have to make a larger
adjustment if those targets are one foot apart from each
other and ten feet in front of you than you
would if they were one foot apart from each other
(15:12):
and thirty feet in front of you. That smaller adjustment
in aim is a smaller angle of difference. So this
holy glow around your shadow's head has to do with
the angle of reflected light hitting your eyes. It's closest
to a one hundred and eighty degree angle of reflection
near where your shadow's head is, so the light front
(15:35):
reflected from the surface around that area is brighter. If
you could see it, it would be brightest exactly where
your head is, but your head's in the way. One
way of demonstrating this actually visually, that's quite simple. As
I've seen online, somebody takes a photo of themself with
the highlgenshine and the camera is right in front of
their face, and then they hold the camera away from
(15:58):
their head over to the side, and the glow is
around the camera and not around their shadow's head.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Ah. There you go.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
One other tidbit from the American Meteorological Society entry the
glossary entry, though, is that while it's entirely true that
this effect is much stronger on wet irregular surfaces like
dewy grass, there's actually a weaker version of the shadow
halo effect that occurs even on dry surfaces. They write, quote,
(16:27):
when an observer's shadow is cast on a dry irregular
surface such as gravel or vegetation, each irregularity near the
antisolar point covers its own shadow in other directions. The
average brightness results from a mixture of sunlit and shaded surfaces.
The lower the sun in the sky, the longer the shadows,
and so the greater the contrast with the brighter region
(16:50):
near the antisolar point. So even if there's no dew,
you're still going to have the effect that if you
look around the world places that are farther away from
your anti solar point, you're going to be seeing light
reflected kind of bouncing in all directions from both brightly
sunlit areas and shaded areas. But when you're looking straight
(17:13):
at your antisolar point the stuff right around there, you're
pretty much only going to be seeing non shaded areas
because shaded areas are blocked by the objects right.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Right, all right. So it sounds then like that Seleni
probably had a case here. He was actually seeing this
optical phenomenon when he was out walking in the fields
and there was dew on the grass and so forth.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
That's right, there's no reason to doubt his story that
he saw this. Lots of other people have seen it.
You can probably see it too in the right conditions. However,
I am doubtful about Chilini's claims that other people could
see his halo. Remember he says, like, I've showed it
to a few special people and they said, yes, it's there.
The highligenshine is a phenomenon that is dependent on the
(18:01):
position of the viewer. It is not actually an object
out there in the world. Like you and I can
stand and look at a tree from different angles and
both see the tree. The highligenshine is about the angle
of reflected rays of light hitting your eyes, and the
rays are actually being reflected in this manner all over
(18:22):
the surface of the earth, the sunlit side of the Earth.
It just happens to be around your shadow's head that
you see it, because that's your particular antisolar point. So
I don't know. Maybe they could see it if they
got really close to him, like cheek to cheek, and
then they'd be like, oh wow, yeah, there is a
glow around our heads. I'm curious how close exactly you
(18:44):
would have to be to see the same thing. Maybe
you don't have to be cheek to cheek, but you'd
basically have to be looking from the same perspective that
he is.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, I mean, I guess you can well imagine being
a scenario where since it's a subtle enough effect, if
it was, if he's there like pointing it out to you,
you might say, okay, I think I see something. Or
this is a guy that seemed to have a very
strong personality, yes, and there were at least stories about
him stabbing people. You know, you might be inclined to
(19:13):
just be like, yeah, totally, I do see that halo
around your shadow. No, no, no, we don't have to.
I don't have to put my head next to yours.
It's fine, I got you. I can see it. Too.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yes, you're a genius. Yes you're really cool. Yes that
coat looks cool on you.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Please put the dagger away.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So that's the Highligan shine. But I am I am
so interested in this bombastic weirdo. I might try to
find another way to keep reading about ben Venudo Cellini
and see if I can bring him back to the
show in the future.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And then he sounds like a big character who had
a lot of thoughts about a lot of topics, so
I won't I wouldn't be surprised if he pops back
up again. All right, I want to come back to
a couple of things. In the last episode, we talked
(20:06):
about people and things that, due to some sort of
supernatural reason do not cast a shadow, or a thought
to not cast a shadow, and how this is generally
a comment on something going on with their soul or
lack thereof. As I was telling my wife about all
of this, she was like, well, you've got to mention
that episode of The Simpsons. I believe this is the
(20:28):
episode where Lisa becomes a vegan for a little bit,
or at least she encounters a vegan. I know she
becomes vegan for an episode, but I can't remember if
this is the same episode.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
I think she becomes a vegetan, unless this happens more
than once. She becomes a vegetarian, and then she ruins
Homer's barbecue.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, and then there's another episode where she meets and
falls in love with a vegan who claims that he
is a level five vegan and he doesn't eat anything
that casts a shot. Now, I have to admit, you know,
sometimes looking back on, especially at vegetarian and vegan jokes
from the nineteen nineties, a lot of them hit unnecessarily hard,
(21:11):
and especially you know, as a vegetarian I and someone
has lots of vegan friends, you know, I often will
be like, I think that's that's a bit much nineties comedy.
But this one, I don't know. I've always liked this
one because, you know, at one hand, it's it's a
parody of it's poking fun at a particular dietary choice.
(21:32):
But on the other hand, this idea of eating something
that doesn't cast a shadow, it does line up with
a lot of what we were talking about, the idea
that like, okay, this is a creature with diminished or
non existent personhood and therefore or a plant. Even I
guess more and more likely it would be the scenario
like this particular stalk of corn that doesn't cast a shadow,
(21:55):
and therefore it is okay to eat corn from this plant.
Like a lot of comedy, if you think about it
too hard, it doesn't work. But I always found it
a bit funny, all right, So I had to mention
that one Another thing, This is another one that came
up and talking about these episodes with my wife, she said, oh,
you've got to mention zero shadow days. So it's worth
noting that if you're standing in just the right place
(22:17):
at just the right time, you might well encounter a
world with I don't want to say no shadows, but
let's say significantly decrease shadow activity, Like if you were
let's say you're an individual in a supernatural horror show
and you always have to be on guard for shadow
monsters climbing out of the shadows and dragging you to hell. Well,
(22:38):
these are the places you would want to be because
you would, I guess, have fewer pools of shadow from
which things might crop. As pointed out on NASA's Night
Sky Network website, this is a reality of the solstice
in the tropics between the Tropic of Cancer and the
Tropic of Capricorn. Here people experience two zero shadow days
per year, so called when the sun is directly overhead
(23:00):
at solar noon, and this makes objects and people cast
a minimal shadow. It's often been observed that you may
have to jump in the air to see your own shadow.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
So it's not literally zero shadow, but it's as close
as it gets on Earth to zero shadow because the
sun is directly overhead, so you're not casting. There's really
no horizontality to your shadow.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Right right, no lengthen shadows for the most part. Yeah,
it's a minimal shadow activity. Ooh.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
You know though, I wonder if you could say that
there's actually even less shadow on days when the sun
is obscured by clouds, because then the directionality of light
is greatly reduced and light is more just kind of diffuse,
So you know, there's much I guess you still have
a shadow, but it's much much less intense.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's very faint, yeah, fainter shadows. And then of course
we also have to take into account our world of
so much modern illumination, artificial illumination, it's going to continue
to cast all sorts of interesting shadows as well. In fact,
that's kind of a defining aspect of sort of the
modern urban environment. You know, we've talked about that before,
(24:15):
These various realities and conceptions of the big city. You know,
having like gulches of shadow between skyscrapers that our positioned
too closely or don't taper off as they climb into
the sky, that sort of thing, And then you get
into you know, various forms of artificial illumination, particularly at night.
I mean, this is a defining character of so many
(24:38):
visuals that we have with you know, from various noir films,
you know, where it's like this this shadowy nightscape, urban
nightscape in which there are all these places where one
may hide, but also all these places where one will
be starkly illuminated and be in more vulnerable perhaps to
the nighttime city.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Well, yeah, the environment of the modern city makes where
you can almost kind of recreate the striking lighting of
like stage effects, but within a realistic context. You know,
having like a dark street with a single street lamp
illuminating something. It's like a spotlight, but you know it's
plausible to reality.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, like that classic what is the the movie poster
for the Exorcist works that way. You know, it's got
you know, a sort of noir styling to the poster.
But also it's like, hey, here comes the Exorcist front
and centers spotlights on you, buddy, Time to put on
a show for the devil.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
The way he's got the bag, yet it almost looks
like he's gonna put on like a costume and tap
dancing shoes or something.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Like the suitcase is full of like prop comedy.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, got a can of spring snakes.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Oh man, the devil won't see that kind of Yeah,
what devil?
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Would you like a boiled peanut?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Now, at this point, I'd like to get once more
into the world of art and shadow and get a
little bit into philosophy and history here as well. And yeah,
this is gonna be like a big tint discussion. I'm
not gonna get into all the details here, because ultimately,
you know, shadows have always been with us. They've they're
never far from us. And so anytime throughout history when
you've had a particularly contemplative individual who's gonna indulge in
(26:17):
a bit of navel gazing, uh, the shadow was always
there to aid us. And yeah, there's there's been a
lot of deep thoughts about shadows, about what is and
isn't a shadow? Can you actually look at a shadow?
Does a moving bird cast one shadow or multiple shadows?
And so forth? And I'm not saying it isn't interesting,
but it all, it all kind of started turning my
(26:39):
my brain upside down after a bit. So I'm gonna
skip around a bit here. But I was initially reminded
once more of our episode on necromancy, or one of
our episodes on necromancy, when we briefly discussed shadow puppetry
and its possible connections to shamanistic practices and or necromancy
(27:01):
in the sense of some sort of ritualistic way of
attempting to speak with the dead or to create the
illusion of speaking with the dead.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Right, So, the example from the necromancy episode was a
story about a Chinese emperor long ago who had a
sort of wizard like advisor who told him that he
could resurrect the spirit of a concubine who he had
loved very much but who had passed away, and that
she could speak to him again, but she would appear
as like a shadow behind a screen, and that this
(27:31):
was attributed later to shadow puppetry.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Right, it's unknown exactly how this played out or you know,
ultimately you know how true this account is. And there
were some thoughts that it was like a statue behind
the screen or scrim that it was more traditional shadow
puppetry or that, and also disagreements over to what extent
the Emperor would have been conned by this. But it's
(27:55):
an interesting slice of history. But at any rate, setting
off that aside, shadow theater anyway you slice that is
an ancient performance. Are that probably began in Central Asia
or China or possibly India during the first millennium BC.
That's at least, I mean, who knows ultimately how far
back it goes, because of course people along before that
(28:17):
were aware of their shadows, and they might have caught
on two ways that you might manipulate that shadow. So
as it stands, shadow puppetry contains a number of different
styles and traditions, you know, their use of puppets cut
out or otherwise. Also you have instances where individuals are
(28:39):
using their own bodies. I think the most famous example
of this is of course shadow graphy or the use
of you know, like making a little bunny out of
your hands and far more complicated things, and then using
that with light to create a shadow creature. And then
that's a you know, you may think of that as
just like a quick little you know, dad or something,
(29:01):
but it's actually a very refined craft and it is
likely it likely originated in China or the Far East
as well.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
In my limited recent experiences doing a hand shadow puppetry
for my daughter, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
The way that.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
It's unlike some other art forms in that by reshaping
your hand in front of the to block the light
and looking at the shadow, you can kind of get
a instant, continuous feedback on how close you're getting to
the object you're trying to represent as you move your
hand around. You know, it's unlike I would say in
(29:38):
my experience drawing, which I'm not good at at all,
which is a more laborious path to the realization of
the image, and then if you make a mistake, it's
laborious to undo it and try to change it. With
the shadow puppet, I felt like my hand kind of
became a form of jelly that was just automatically adjusting
itself to try to look more and more like a
dinosaur head.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, it's probably worth keeping in mind this act of
making your hand into this three dimensional object, this three
dimensional arrangement of digits that can then be manipulated in
three D space in order to change a two D
silhouette and make it resemble something else. We're thinking about
it when we get into a discussion of shadows as
(30:19):
truth and shadows as lies or manipulation. So at any rate,
I think you know, shadow publishing is worth thinking about here, though,
of course, we can easily become lost in discussions over
to what extent we're talking about shadow in these various
performances rather than shade, silhouette, translucent materials, et cetera. You know,
there's a lot going on in any given example of
(30:40):
shadow theater, But what about shadows elsewhere in art? This
is another huge topic that we're not going to be
able to do full justice too. But I was reading
a bit about this in a really excellent jay Store
article type Jaystore Daily article titled do we actually see
shadows by a rule? Sorensen, an article that I recommend
(31:02):
for anyone wanting a nice look at the various philosophical
arguments over whether we can see a shadow or not
when you look at a shadow, are you looking at
something or are you looking at nothing? That sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
This seems exactly the perfect kind of debate to like
occupy the minds and debate space of medieval scholastics.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yes, yeah, so there's a great deal in there. This
article also gets into some of these theological discussions. What
does it mean that a shadow moves over the deep,
et cetera. But it covers a lot of ground in here.
At one point he mentions quote shadows were fringe phenomena
in the European Dark Ages. They are rarely depicted in
(31:43):
the era's paintings. Perhaps the artists portrayed only what they
believe to be visible. So coming back to this idea
that maybe a sort of negative view of the shadow
was maybe more predominant during this period of time.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Oh, I'm having an idea, it's only sort of half formed.
I'm thinking about how when you look at like a
medieval artwork that might to some modern critics appear kind
of primitive somehow, because it's like a maybe a representation
of a human that shows no optical effects or effects
(32:17):
of perspective at all, Like, so it doesn't show any
differences in illumination by the direction of light. It doesn't
have any shadows or anything like that. That might look
kind of unsophisticated as an artwork because it doesn't show
all these all the tricks and plays of light that
are so prized in the you know, in the passionate
(32:38):
realistic artworks of I don't know, the Renaissance or whatever.
But you could look at that and say, actually, by
taking out all of those light effects, that is a
that is a more highly processed visual representation. That is
what the brain. That is the information the brain is
trying to interpret in a scene, because, as we talk
(33:00):
talked about in the last episode, the brain has to
kind of ignore a lot of things about shadows and
effects of light to try to just get information about
what are the physical objects in my space and what
are the physical agents in my space that I need
to understand as possibly having relevance to what I'm about
to do. You know, you need to be able to
(33:21):
see that there are two people standing in the room
in front of you, and there's a rock right there
that you could trip on, and not be confused by
shadows and changes and shading due to the position of
the light source that might be literal differences that you
see with your eyes, but are but are not relevant
information about what the objects in your space are. So
(33:42):
when you see that artwork that is like a picture
of a person without any effects of light sources or
shadows or anything like that, that is kind of a
mental representation of a person. That's not how we actually
see the world.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, yeah, so it is. It's still a true image.
And again you can also factor into these various discussions
about whether or not we actually see a shadow that
sort of thing. But Sorenson does get back to the
idea of shadow theater in ways that I was not expecting.
He writes, quote, if shadows were not seen as figures,
(34:17):
shadow plays would be as visually inert as radio plays.
Shadows are enlivened by actions such as jumping, bowing, and kissing.
This animation raised medieval concerns about idolatry to appease the
pious puppets were perforated. The dots of light were reminders
that shadows are lifeless effects of positive causes.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Seems like even if it's perforated, the principle remains. But
I don't know that just seems like one of those
funny kind of ineffectual gesture is to try to appease
somebody who just wants to complain about something.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it also reminds me of other
stories and tales we've read about where it's like, if
you don't complete a highly realistic painting, then there's less
risk of it coming alive, like do not dot the
dragon's eye, less the dragon climb out of the painting,
that sort of thing. Now, it is true that puppetry
(35:15):
has at times raised the ire of iconoclasts and raised
fears of idolatry, though at the same time it's also
been utilized by religious groups and it's still utilized by
religious groups today. I mean, puppetry is just, generally speaking,
a performance medium that is very ancient and well entrenched
in human tradition. But I was curious about this idea
of perforation, the idea like we were discussing that, Okay,
(35:37):
here's this shadow thing we've created on the wall, but
don't worry, it has holes in it. It can't possibly
be real because, on one hand, outside of European context especially,
you see plenty of examples of shadow puppetry, thinking especially
of Indonesian traditions that depend on perforated puppets structures in
(35:59):
order to allow light to pass through and enhance the
overall effect like it's those holes, at least to me
as a viewer, they help bring the things alive more,
not make them seem less alive. I don't know where
you would stand on the argument of making it less real,
but I did find something written about this as it
(36:20):
concerns traditional Turkish shadow puppetry. This is from the article
Karagauz and Hazavad Projections of Subversion and Conformance by James Smith.
This was an Asian theater journal from back in two
thousand and four. The author rights Islamic Sufi thought, one
of the most powerful cultural forces within Islamic society from
(36:43):
the twelfth century on, also affected Karrago's performance. According to
Karrago's expert Linda Merceades, Turkish shadow puppetry was designed both
to entertain and to achieve religious experience, based on the
Sufi islam doctrine that man is but a shadow manipulated
by his creator. The opening poem, typically recited by either
(37:05):
Kara or Hasavat, is a ghazal. The rules against forms
of representation expressed by the Quran in Sorotu are fairly strict,
but Sufi clerics defended Karaga's performance. A complex theological argument
was formulated. Because Islam forbids the representation of animate beings,
(37:26):
and furthermore, because shadow puppets were perforated by holes, there
was no possible reason to think of shadow puppets as
animate beings. Thus shadow puppet shows could be performed. Now
there's a lot to process there that I think is
just fascinating. On one hand, this idea of human beings
as shadows cast by God, and thus God is far
(37:50):
beyond us as a human being is beyond the substance
of his own shadow. I think that's all really really
deep and cool to think about. And we'll also see
some reflections of that in another religious example coming up.
And then we have this idea that, hey, puppets have
holes in them and therefore they can't possibly be mistaken
(38:10):
for living, animate creatures. It's interesting as well, it seems again,
I still feel like the holes overall in any given
shadow puppetry example, they do aid to bring the thing
to life more. But it's interesting to think of it
as kind of like a theological loophole as well. All right,
(38:37):
Now moving along to some other areas, this is another
one that I imagine is on listeners' minds already. It's worth
at least noting that Plato's allegory of the cave concerns
shadow images on a wall, essentially shadow puppets, I guess
you could say. And this of course regards humanity's ability
to see beyond the material world and into something far greater.
So it's an hour in which shadows on a wall
(39:02):
are taken for reality because there's no additional context for
the viewer to understand them. And we also have this
idea of shadows ultimately as something less than reality, something
that can mislead us about the true nature of reality. Now,
to come back to visual art, yeah, there is often
the lack of shadows, like we've been discussing in older works,
unless shadow is key to the work itself. During the
(39:25):
Dark Ages, again, Soresen suggests that perhaps artists were just
more concerned with the visible as opposed to the invisible
world of shadows. But shadows would of course become more
popular again during the Renaissance as perspective became increasingly important
in works of Western art and post Renaissance shadows became
just standard in all manner of Western art. As William
(39:46):
Chapman Sharp points out in a twenty seventeen article for
the Oxford University Press titled What's going On in the Shadows?
A Visual arts Timeline, you eventually get to a point
in the nineteenth century where standalone shadows without an in
picture source, so like the shadow is cast by someone
essentially out of frame or off screen. If you will,
(40:08):
these begin to pop up. He specifically points to an
eighteen thirty three piece by William Collins that you can
look up online titled Rustic Civility.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Oh boy, I don't know if this is the intended effect.
Maybe I'm just in the Halloween mindset, but I'm finding
this painting rather spooky. So what we see here is
like a sort of road leading through a gate into
a wooded grove, and there's a house in the distance.
The gate is open, and there are three children standing
(40:38):
beside the gate. They're sort of like squinting in the sun.
I think one is holding up a holding up a
hand to block the sun over his eyes, and two
of the children seem to be kind of hiding behind
the third, and then we see in the foreground on
the road just a shadow of a figure and a hat.
I think it's a man mounted on a horse.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Maybe. Yep, that's the impression I get.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
We don't see the figure itself, we just see its shadow,
but it seems rather ominous.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, I think that's a valid interpretation. Again, I'm not
sure offhand what the artist's exact intent was here, but
you could look at this like, oh, Dad's home. The
kids are excited. The kids don't look particularly fearful, but
they are children. Yeah. The other interpretation is that this
is a stranger and then therefore we have no idea
what the intent is. But we don't see the individual
(41:32):
in this painting. All we see is the shadow they
cast on the road in front of the children.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
Well, I apologize to William Collins if I've read menace
into his artwork that he did not intend. But yeah,
this is looking to me, this is kind of like
some of those paintings by Edward Hopper, like gas by
Hopper that just to me always look more and more
foreboding and ominous the more I look at them.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but but if nothing else, you know,
it's an example of a case where in a painting
the shadow is not merely incidental. The shadow is key
to the work. It's not just oh, it's nice that
things have shadows and people have shadows. Now like that,
the shadow is key to whatever the artist is trying
to say here. Now, once we reach the age of
(42:18):
photography and then cinema, of course, shadow becomes increasingly essential.
In fact, the author of this Oxford University Press piece
sharp points out that Henry Fox Talbot originally discussed photography
as a matter of fixing a shadow, and various others
made this connection between photography and shadow as well. I mean,
(42:39):
you can't engage in photography without at least thinking about shadows, right,
if not exploiting them and using them. One example though,
of people of the time period thinking about shadows and
photography apparently a poet Elizabeth Barrett wrote to a friend
in eighteen forty three that a photograph was like quote,
the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever.
(43:01):
Oh yeah, going around with your cameras just snatching shadows
left and right. And then, of course, once we get
into the era of film, which we touched on earlier, you,
especially when you look at the work of German expressionists
during the Silent Era. They made terrific use of shadow,
not only is just a way of capturing the mood,
but making them become an active part of the visual narrative,
(43:23):
which of course brings us back to Nosferatu. And you
know those scenes of Nosferatu, the vampire creep or I
guess his name's not nos Faratu, it's called crown Count
Orlock or Lock, you know, creeping up the stairs. His
shadow lengthened and menacing. The shadow is an active part
of the narrative that is being presented on the screen. Now,
(43:46):
rewinding things a bit, our old friend Plenty of the
Elder famously chimed in on the role of shadow in art.
In the natural history, he shares the story of the
Corinthian Buttades, who allegedly invented the art of modeling via shadow,
or at least the art of modeling clay in relief
utilizing shadow. In translation quote, it was through his daughter
(44:09):
that he made the discovery, who, upon being deeply in
love with a young man about to depart on a
long journey, trace the profile of his face as thrown
upon the wall by the light of the lamp. Upon
seeing this, her father filled in the outline by compressing
clay upon the surface and so made a face in relief,
which he then hardened by fire along with other articles
(44:30):
of pottery.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Oh interesting, But so I would think via that method
you could only get a two dimensional silhouette a not
a three dimensional cast, right.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Right right, So he would have to add in additional
details via his craft, but he would have at least
some aspect, at least the silhoe out of the individual
is captured on the wall. So it's interesting, especially when
you sort of compare it to Plato. And again Plato
is making other points. Plato's not just talk talking about Hey,
let me tell you all about shadows and what they're
(45:02):
up to. He's using it to make a different point.
But instead of shadow being a dangerous deceiver regarding the
true nature of reality, in this case, it actually allows
reality to at least a certain degree, be captured, to
be recreated or duplicated. And this story would apparently become
a popular painting subject in and of itself in the
(45:24):
eighteenth century. And again because you're getting into a time
period where painters want to make use of shadow, and
here is a story about artistic creation or recreation via shadow.
So it's a perfect topic to consider in your art
in the topic itself, and the idea of using silhouettes
and shadow and portraits also became popular again in this
(45:46):
time period. All right, And finally, I want to return
back to the world of shadows and mythology and religion
here just for a couple of examples that I didn't
turn up earlier that turned out kind of late in
my recent church, but they're they're both really good. First
of all is the idea that in Hinduism there is
a Hindu goddess of shadows, and her name is Chaiah.
(46:10):
And Chaia is an interesting goddess from Hinduism. She is
the cast shadow of the goddess Saranyu, that the first
wife of the sun and the sun god Surya. And
I've seen some treatments that discuss her as a sort
of shadow clone. I've seen the word clone used a lot.
She becomes Surya's wife after the first wife, Saranyu temporarily
(46:33):
temporarily leaves him and Uh and and together they actually
Uh the shadow wife here and the son actually have
three children. He has other children with other wives, but
at different points, but yeah, they have they he has
three children with the shadow wife. But anyway, this idea
of like the shadow actually taking on the likeness of
(46:55):
that which casts the shadow is really interesting. And then
finally this is really interesting as well. I'd read a
little bit about this before, certainly, but the idea of
the shadow in ancient Egyptian religion and culture is also fascinating.
The shadow is what would be called a shut or
(47:17):
I've seen it. I think it's pronounced shut, but it's
sometimes spelled swt in English translation. And you know, it
should come as no surprise that many of the same
elements we've discussed already concerning shadows in these episodes also
is in play here. So first of all, the idea
of the shadow as darkness, you know, they're almost used
(47:39):
interchangeably in a lot of languages and traditions. But then,
of course we have the idea of the shadow as
the soul, or in the case of the ancient Egyptian religion,
one aspect of the human soul alongside at least the ba.
So the shadow or shoot is more spiritual in nature,
while the ba is more physical, or at least that's
(48:02):
the rough overview of it. The concepts of the soul
and ancient Egyptian religion are rather complicated and have multiple.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Parts to them.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
And then also the idea of the shadow as a
copy of something, and particularly it's interesting with the idea
of a shadow of a god as a kind of
manifestation of the God. So apparently a statue of a
god was sometimes discussed as a shadow, and even a
temple to a god was considered that God's shadow. All right,
(48:33):
So I don't think any of those ideas comes as
a complete shocker or anything, But there are two additional
contexts here that I thought were rather fascinating. One is
that shadows are associated with quick movement without any sound,
which I suppose is key given this, you know, the
speedy and silent movement of the shadow, a thing that,
(48:53):
according to may Ahmed Hasani in light, darkness and shadow
in ancient Egypt was considered a physical entity. So it
was largely thought like the shadow as being more or
less physical in form.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
So it's like a substance that moves, but it does
so without making a sound and even without generating a breeze.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, Now, a lot of what we've discussed in terms
of supernatural and mythic and religious treatments of shadows. You know,
they get down to some sort of deep metaphysical truth.
You know, it's connected to the soul, or it is
connected to the darkness. Right, So this last bit I
found very fascinating, and this is something that Hasti mentions
in the article, the idea that also to the ancient Egyptians,
(49:35):
shadow was associated with protection from the sun and the heat.
And also when you start factoring in these various divine invocations,
it becomes a metaphor for the protection of the gods.
You know. So it's one of those things that once
it's pointed out to you, it seems kind of like
a no brainer, because obviously, under the intense Egyptian sun,
(49:57):
shadow is also a refuge, a place of protection or rest.
But yeah, you factor in these divine aspects and so
you know, Hasting points out that shadow becomes a symbolic
word for protection from the sun god, a metaphor for
protection in general, in addition to being part of a
human being's essence that survives moral death.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Oh yeah, so you can see how that complex of
different symbols converging could generate some very interesting, I don't know,
mythological grammar, like the idea that the shadow is both
a reflection, like sort of a soul copy of a person,
but it is also the place in which you could
stand to be sheltered by that person.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Right, Yeah, so this idea of like, step into my
shadow would be an an invitation to enter into my
protection that sort of thing. And then we also get
back to this idea that we referenced earlier about like
a shadow of something, especially if we're talking about a god,
a divine being of some sort, like the shadow is creation,
shadow is replication, at least to some lesser extent. Yeah,
(51:04):
I see that. So just some final mythological and religious
ideas about shadows, I think to sort of take us
home for these episodes. It's been fascinating to go through
all this. There were a lot of things I expected
to find and expected to see other takes in the
shadow that I just was blisifully unaware of, or you know,
we're not in the forefront of my mind when we
(51:26):
first ventured into it. I know we didn't even we
didn't even really get into any I guess real shadow
monsters we talked about, not in like the sort of
dungeons and dragons sense of the word. I did a
little bit of looking around to see about mentions of
shadows and shades and a couple of my favorite monster
guides and so forth, but nothing else really came up.
(51:51):
Maybe I missed something. It also can get a little
difficult to research things related to the word shadow, because
of course shadow is used so frequently to refer to
things that are not specifically shadows, or things that are
just metaphorically shadows.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
I'm sure some of you out there are thinking of
a shadow monster right now that you want to tell
us about, right in.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
That's right, send us your shadow monsters. We'd love to
talk about them in a future Listener Mail episode. All right, Well,
on that note, we're going to go ahead and close
out this episode. But yeah, right in, we'd love to
hear from you. On Mondays we do Lister Mail. Tuesdays
and Thursdays are core episodes. On Wednesdays we do a
short form monster fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
(52:34):
a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. Also, I want
to stress, hey, you might have noticed that we have
new host photos for Stuff to Blow your Mind if
you haven't seen them, run by our recently revived social
media presences all linked off of Stuff to Blow Yourmind
dot com, or you can look them up independently. Maybe
you already follow them. We are STBYM podcast on Instagram,
(52:55):
so you can go there. You can see these new
photos of Joe and myself. If you're wondering, well, where
did you take these fabulous and strange photos with these cool,
weird mirrors and so forth, Well, we visited Museum of
Illusions Atlanta, a delightful and educational attraction located in Atlantic Station.
They feature a whole host of visual illusions, including illusion
(53:16):
rooms you can walk into and interact with, and that
includes using the cameras there or your own cameras to
take some selfies and some cool shots. This is a
real fun place, good for all ages, the whole family.
These are not scary mirror rooms. These are ode inspiring
mirror rooms. These are whimsical mirror based illusions and other
(53:38):
sorts of illusions that you encounter.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
Yeah, it's not like a creepy haunted house though, well,
I don't know if they do something for October maybe
they do, but.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
I think they put some decorations up now. The other
thing is, since a number of the rooms do involve mirrors,
if you yourself are creepy, then I'm afraid that your
experience might be creepy because it will be built upon
your own. And if you have lost your reflection due
to some sort of wizardry, mishap or undead status, well
(54:07):
I don't think you can get your money back.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
It's a great place to find that out though.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yes, so yeah. If you want to learn more about
Museum of Illusions Atlanta, visitm OI Atlanta dot com.
Speaker 3 (54:17):
It's a great place check it out. Huge thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
The data
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