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It is a common trope that vision has the power to affect what it gazes upon - and there are no end of figures of speech that seem to back that up. Think: "She felt his eyes burning...", 'feel' and 'burning' suggest a tactile response to the gaze, and we are all aware of that uncomfortable feeling or prickling upon the nape of our neck, then turning to find somebody looking upon us. This has its precedent in antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision) - that the eyes emit photons or rays responsible for seeing - and while we would generally laugh there are some recent psychological studies done that seem to suggest that we still unconsciously believe it: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/328.
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Now again thanks to Montague for introducing me to a new idea. I had long accepted the Halo as an artistic convention used to highlight the divinity of certain personages.
Not so, the Halo was first attempted to illustrate the irradiation that was said to accompany people of great divinity - Saints were said to glow with a great light - and the conventions of artists were attempts at replicating this.
He then discusses the bodies of Saints which were recorded as emitting light, which I find a lot easier to believe, it might be rare but the right combination of fungi and decomposition could conceivably make a corpse luminous.
Oddly enough, Google seems to turn up results that suggest it might not be impossible: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006256 && https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15947465. A long way from a Halo, but that makes 2 things I didn't know. Curious and curiouser...
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I'm sorry. Reading Montague is an inspiration and I'm rather obliged to share some of the information. For example - The almost worldwide belief in the incorruptible nature of Saints (and there are indeed countless instances of Saints being exhumed and their bodies are in fine state of preservation which is taken as proof of their divine grace) - and Buddhists have similar traditions, and then there is the tradition in the church that the bodies of those excommunicated from the church are as well incorruptible. And - of course, the example that should have first sprung to your mind - Vampires are as well held as incorruptible, the animating force and thirst for blood keeps them bound to the earthly plane.
First and Last - Saints and Vampires - I'll leave alone, but for the second instance - those excommunicated from the church, there are endless examples of Priests or Bishops or Cardinals bowing before the wishes of family members and reversing excommunications via ceremony and the body then crumbling to dust at the instance the "Loosening" is complete. This is standard Vampire fare as well, the body crumbles to dust as soon as it is exposed to whatever ceremony is designed to banish it.
Now this, of course, leads one to wonder what circumstance would lead the Church to rescind an excommunication. And - disregarding the plain facts of the matter and dealing with the metaphor - why would changing your mind in the present free a spirit kept imprisoned in it's corpse by some charm or spell laid long before? This is but the stepping stone to another question - that there are many, many examples where - on a metaphorical level at least, some action done in the present - Usually a religious ceremony - can undo or negate something that happened in the past - and by this I don't mean a general change in attitude, in which we adopt a more generous or Christian view of the situation, it seems that there is a genuine belief that the past is not "set in stone" - that the charity of the present can somehow alter it, ...think of all the ancestor cults, that make offerings to their dead relations, and while their relations are long since gone not only are the living believed to benefit from their communion - think of the Chinese, and "Hell Money", burned offering so that their ancestors can bribe the officials of Hell. And consider the Mormons, who take it as their duty to baptize all their ancestors, and keep record, so that they too can go to heaven...
These things confuse me - I think they would confuse anyone, but, and while I may be interpreting it wrong, I believe it suggests that spirituality realizes or acknowledges that at some level our linear perception of time might be wrong, and that the present and future might have as much impact on the past as we believe the past has had on the present...
It's curious, not because it's the first time I've considered it - after all, it's a commonly bandied-about theory in Physics, but - just noting how far back it's roots go. That what science often discovers is just a reframing or rewording of very old concepts.
Just a theory. Not even a theory, really, but there's a lot of pages left to read and there will be plenty more loose ends to tie up I'm sure.
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This is a tradition that actually goes back centuries - transfusing the blood of younger people into older people to reinvigorate their youth. What is curious about this is that unless the blood types matched (and they had no knowledge of blood types) there was virtually no chance of this succeeding and a great many of these experiments - done for and by the wealthy and powerful, Popes and Kings, ended miserably for the patient.
Fast Forward a few hundred years and there comes research that actually substantiates this:
Links:
- https://www.inverse.com/article/46109-young-blood-transfusions
- https://futurism.com/fountain-youth-effect-young-blood-old-mice
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_blood_transfusion
- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133311-human-tests-suggest-young-blood-cuts-cancer-and-alzheimers-risk/
It does seem remarkably intuitive. Now when I first read of the studies, some 2 or three years ago, I imagined a wealthy philanthropist, say Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, setting up an orphanage for young children of similar blood type, free education, room and board for a liter of blood each month. Not a bad exchange. I also imagined having a little discussion with my own children about their blood types but thought that might be taking things a little far given that I've bargained away their lungs and liver. Anyways, fast forward some more to the present day:
It's not unreasonable - given the legitimacy it's fast acquiring - to imagine that this has been going on for quite a while in other countries (CHINA?) where power and influence can purchase human organs harvested fresh to order.
And - while I generally applaud almost anything that extends quality of life, it does seem that perhaps old Montague Summers was right, Vampires do still walk the earth, and maybe we are being a bit glamoured...
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In Japanese it's pronounced "Koi No Yokan". One of those phrases for which there's no English equivalent, although I think "The Premonition of Love" works quite nicely. That feeling when you see someone for the first time and you somehow just intuitively KNOW, a little more pragmatic than "Love at first sight", it implies that you need to know them first, but when you do...
Read more at the BBC's website: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180103-the-untranslatable-japanese-phrase-that-predicts-love