Thinking Sideways: Miracle of the Sun

no credit cards, no payment needed at all. So got a credit Karma dot com or download the Credit Karma app now credd SRD SORR. Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as usual joint by Devin and Joe, and this week we're gonna talk about something that is classified as a miracle by the Catholic Church. So that makes it a mystery, does because not everybody believes that the Church is right, and this is known as the Miracle of the Son or

the Miracle of Fatima. I do want to say that this was a listener's suggestion suggested by Mel, so thank you, Mel appreciated this was a good one. So Here's what happened is, according to accounts by witnesses, on the October nineteen seventeen, as promised, a miracle took place. And what that miracle was was that the sun appeared to dance across the sky, to move closer to and then farther away from the earth, and to shine in many different colors.

So that that is the miracle itself right there. Before we talk about the miracle and the mushrooms, there's some backstory we should cover that, so let's get that part first. But quick disclaimer. Yeah, okay, So this story deals with Catholic faith and religious iconography and practices, and I am by no means an expert in that, and I've done my best here, but if I flubb something, give me

a little bit of a little bit of room here. Uh. And also, as always with stories that are seated in religious faith, I don't want anybody to take what we're saying is in any way, shape or form mocking. That's not the intention. We're simply talking about the subject at hand. This is not, you know, something we're talking overarching about the Catholic or any other religious faith. Just understand that we love everyone except for Nazis. Yeah, lots of things.

We can't go into that now, okay, so let's go into this instead. So our story takes place in the little town of Fatima in Portugal. There were in the spring of nineteen sixteen or nine seventeen, excuse me, three children. It's ten year old Lucia Santos and her cousins, seven year old Jacinta and nine year old Francisco Marto. They were watching Lucia's father's flock of sheep in an area that is locally known as covid Aria. I hope, I that's I think that's what I remember hearing it, but

I could be wrong. But translated that translates to the cove of Irene in English. The accounts of their day vary. There's a whole as with it. A story like this and of this age. There's always variations because they're like you know, ten and seven right well, and so most of the stories they say that they lead the flock to the cove and then they ate their lunch and they played. Some versions say they spent time under a large tree. Others say that they spent time in a

cave to avoid a rainstorm. Either way, at around noon, the three children said their rosaries their prayers, and at that point they said they saw an apparition which was bright light that to them looked like lightning. But they said that was weird because it wasn't cloudy, which means

that must not have been raining. Probably I'm thinking this is the non rain storm because it was raining, it might have just been lightning, right exactly, so, but no, okay, So there's so in this accounting, it seems that maybe this is a non raining version, so that that bright light happens, and in it they see a figure and they approached that figure. The figure doesn't immediately identify itself, but eventually they would come to to find out that

Bruce Willis, it's not Bruce Willis. Eventually they would come to discover that it was the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. She told the children that she wanted them to and she gave them a set of instructions. Those instructions were to say they're rosaries every day and to come back to that location on thet of each month for a total of six months, and in exchange, she would share not only her identity because at this point don't know who she is, but they would She would

also impart to them knowledge. She would give them some visions and then eventually they would ask through their meetings, they would then ask, you know, for proof, and then that's where the miracle of the sun happened. It was on the seventh month. So once Mary has done sharing her vision, she rises into the sky and halo of bright light and disappears into the distance, and that's their first encounter with the Virgin Mary. They do need to point out so as Devin briefly mentioned, they are ten,

nine and seven, so their accountings. How accurate this is, it is hard to say. The other problem with it is that all of this story primarily and its written form comes from Lucia Santos, because she would write down an accounting of what happened in her visions twenty some years after the fact, so a little bit of fact in fiction time. It's hard to piece the two apart um. But she said, at least in the accounting, is that this was not the first time that the children had

been visited by an apparition. In the prior year nineteen sixteen, they had been visited by an angel on three separate occasions, which appears to be in preparation for their meeting with Mary screen the Holy screaming that maybe it UM. Now I'm gonna I've truncated the heck out of the encounters and what was said, and if anybody's interested in that, will put a link on the website that has the text included. You may also be familiar with UM, a

televised rendition of this story. Yes that I will not say exactly what it is, but you probably have seen it. Probably so continuing on UM so that the children hold up there into the deal. They pray the rosaries every day, and they plan to go back on the thirteenth of the month. And they do go back on the thirteenth of each month, and people, somehow word gets out about

what they say they saw. I d told everybody, well at least one of them spilled the beans, and then word got around, and so witnesses, people who wanted to witness what the children were seeing, would show up on the thirteenth around noon to see it as well. It's unclear to me if anybody besides the children was seeing her. The accounts that I've read of this is that lots of people kept going back every month and more and more all the time, and nobody else ever saw the

vision Mary besides the kids. That was my understanding as well. But it was also my understand that there were a number of people who believed that it was okay that they weren't being given the gift of seeing the kids interact with her or whatever was like proof enough that it was actually happening in their eyes at least. Yeah. Some people were also like, I can't see here, what's going on? Yeah, there's nothing going on here that's obviously

not real, and they'd leave it off. Yeah, I guess I'm making if it is really you know, what's the point of being here? If you know she's not going to show yourself to me, I might as well go ahead and read about it later. Yeah, it's very time standing around here. Yeah. So, through these encounters, Mary would eventually share the visions with the children. Visions one and two where the visions of what heaven looked like and

what hell looked like. Vision three is weird, and it didn't come out till the She didn't write and tell share what it was Lucia until the mid forties, maybe the late mid I thought it was like but the Church didn't release it until the sixties. Yeah, I thought

it was like late thirties, but I could be wrong. Yeah. Again, I'm not sure, because the church sealed it right away and they wouldn't let it out because of course it was time sensitive, I guess because it was talked about the war, like you know, World War Two at that time. But it what's really weird about it is that it talks about the role of Russia in the world, and how if they I'm in my interpretation or understanding of this, how if they didn't take on Catholicism properly, they were

going to lead the world down a wrong path? What's they kind of did? She was right well in the way she was, but a lot of people have interpreted her message and there's been ridicule of this third message. So I don't know what to think of it. It's very confusing to me, but I'm not very good with

with these kind of theology things. So well, the thing about it is is that if she did indeed right it twenty years later, and I think she did that, it was well known by that point at what that what path Russia was on, So it's kind of it doesn't look that miraculous, like that miraculous of prediction really,

even though lots of it came true. Well you know, uh, you read the papers, you get an idea you're writing, right, Yeah, it would be miraculous if in nineteen seventeen, though the Russian Revolution was happening and nobody knew that it was going to turn out to be hell on Earth and the way it did, right yeah, yeah, which and maybe maybe when she first wrote it, maybe she wrote had a version of early memo of it, and that's why the church seal didn't said, you can't write all this

till later on. I have no idea. And the recording of it again, there are so many versions that it makes it really tough. Yeah, okay, I mean that we've started to fall down a is theological, Yeah, it is. It's a theological rabbit hole. We started to fall down that, and I think we need to kind of dance around that because that's not really the focus of the episode. The miracle of the sun itself is um. So this

is uh. The children were told that on the thirteenth of October seventeen, that would have been the seventh month, right, that would be the seventh month, really really badass in her own work. To quote her directly, she didn't use that word. She did. Yeah, she was gonna make a miracle happen at noon. Yeah. Okay. So like with the appearances, the early visits of Mary, when the children we were talking about, people were showing up, A bunch of people

showed up because this miracle. They blabbed and told everybody. We don't know how many people were really there. The it is recorded as somewhere between ten thousand and one hundred thousand people were there a lot. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how big the covid irene was, but it seems to me it wasn't big enough for d Yeah, I really I don't. I don't think it could have sat that many. And that's like a hundred times more listeners than we have, so I don't think, yeah, that's

not possible. I think that doesn't. That actually took me off as three three annoying little kids and had more listeners. But but no. So so all of these people show up to witness the miracle and accounts say, okay, again, this is where it varies. Either it started reigning the night before or the morning of the predicted miracle, but the rain would stop just before noon. The ground was wet with from the rain. And there are photos and you see people with umbrellas, but I think I've only

seen one photo actually where people had umbrellas. I've seen two or three, but you know, it's it's not a time and an air where people had umbrellas with them. You know, it's part of fashion. So it's hard to say, but it looks like a clear day to me in those images. It doesn't look like it's cloudy. It actually kind of looks like a nice, bright sunny day, to be very honest. Sports ago, I understand the whether there was kind of nice. Yeah, and at that time of

years we'll talk about later. It's not really a bad season. But regardless of what the weather was at noon, everyone looked up towards the sun because it was clear baby that so they looked up at the sun to see the miracle take place. And here's what they say they saw. People say they the sun appear as an opaque spinning disc in the sky. That the spinning wheel of death. I got on my computer sometimes. Yeah, but it goes much faster than that, so it doesn't have all the

colors obvious. No, so it was a spinning disc in the sky. It was said to be significantly duller than normal, and it also supposedly cast multi colored lights on everything, so the landscape, the people, the surrounding clouds. Uh. The sun was also reported to koreem towards the landscape and the people, and then to bounce around in the surrounding

or sky before going back to its normal position. The previously wet clothes of people who were there, as well as the ground from the rainstorm they were wet, dried out because the sun got closer and so it got warm and it dried them all out, so it was suddenly incompletely dry. But just like the earlier visions, not all of the people who were there say they a something happened. Some of the a lot of them would report one of those things, but not all of those things.

But a great many people also said I didn't see anything, so I'm not insure entirely sure either. How long this whole thing lasted. Did it take a minute, did it take ten We don't know. But the people who were there, a great majority of them were convinced that it truly was a miracle proabn for ten minutes straight. I really hope that's really bad for you. Don't do that. We just had an eclipse. Everybody knows sun safety, good glasses, don't stare at the sun. Don't do it because it

embarrasses the sun. Staring as rude. Good. So a lot of the information that we have about the miracle of the Sun was done because an Italian priest named father, Oh God help me here, John Demarci, Right, marcias the middle of the still allibles always just say it like I'm saying, Luigi, John Demarci. I mean, honestly, yes, we'll go with that. Sorry. So John de Marchi would research the miracle of the Sun, and he would interview a

whole bunch of people who were there that day. Sadly, he didn't start doing this until six years after the fact, which is kind of a long time to get their stories straight. To let him grow. If you wander him, write, your stories will always grow. So he spent about seven years researching the miracle, and he actually wrote more than one book about it. But I'm going to take a couple of quotes of what people said they saw, and we're gonna share him here just so you can get it.

Kind of a direct quote idea. I want you to to help me. So who wants to start? You want me to start? When you want can start. The Sun, at one moment, surrounded with scarlet flame, at another are old in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be an exceedingly swift and whirling movement, and at times appearing to be loose from the sky and to be approaching the earth strongly radiating heat. Nice, I'll do the next one, all right. The Sun's disc did not remain a mobile.

This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirld. When suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance, threatening upon the earth, as if to crash to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible. Mushrooms. Oh okay, my turn, I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the Sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes,

looking like a ball of snow. Revolving on itself. It suddenly seemed to come down in a zigzag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people who are weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment unquote. Yeah, So if I gotta say, you know, when the sun's crashing into the earth, I'm just gonna

go hide in the crowd. That'll save me. I So there's yeah, no, I mean, but this kind of gives you an idea of the way, at least in their account recollections words things in their recollections, how they remembered what they saw and felt. So the Catholic Church, as we said, would eventually come to recognize and accept the miracle of the sun. They categorize it as an event of genuine supernatural character. That's evidently how their categorization. Catholics

speak yep for miracles. This obviously, though, didn't happen right away. The Catholics, they actually going to have to look in Yeah, they actually investigate stuff crazy. But in nineteen thirty Pope Pious the eleventh would approve the whole thing. What's kind of funny, though, is that in nineteen fifty Pope Pious the twelfth, because it was Pious the eleventh and thirty, and then I think Pious the eleventh died in their nine so the twelve came on, so Pious the twelfth.

Though in nineteen fifty he actually said that he also saw the miracle of the Sun in nineteen fifty while he was, you know, walking around. I can't remember what religious ceremony he was at, but he walked and he was in front of the statue of our Lady of Lards. I believes how you pronounced that one when he witnessed it, And he witnessed it three days in a row, which is funny, Like, hey, I want to get on the bandwagon.

I want to see a way more needs something you people do like it just seems a weird thing to forty years later, suddenly claimed to start seeing well, Pope Pius the twelve had a different name, and it was Pope the Overachiever. They called him. That did they um? All right, so let's go back to the day of the event. Though after everything settled down, everyone seems to have left and gone back of their lives as normal. Sadly, for Jacinta and Francisco Marto, they came down with influenza

and died in nineteen nineteen. A lot of people we've talked about Lucia Santo's would end up devoting the rest of her life to religion. She lived as a sister until her death in two thousand and five. So she lived well into her nineties something like that. Yeah, she lived an amazingly long life. Um. And so that leads us with a question of you know what happened he did? Did people really see your miracle on that day in

October nineteen seventeen or did they not. We're gonna look into it, but first we're gonna take a quick break, all right, folks. So holidays, they are finally past us. We're all just a little cheppier than we were before. And of course we've all got those New Year's resolutions

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break down very simply into two theories. It's real or it's not. Okay, pretty much. That's really the only two directions this can go. So first off, let's be honest here and admit that none of us really actually know how deities work. And it is entirely possible, especially from a believer's perspective, that the Virgin Mary could have the

power to alter human senses. So if you follow that train of logic, then it's possible that the sun did not actually move in the sky, but she made it appear to do that, which would be the equivalent of a heavenly parlor trick. I mean, that's that's it's a vision at that point, absolutely. I mean obviously in that sense too, it's real that that the sun really zigzag and come closer to the Earth. Well, obviously it didn't

because billions of people would have seen that, correct. But still, you know, if the version of Mary, as you said, can actually make everybody see the same thing, it's akin to a mass hallucination. You know, you'll all be given the same thing, except of course not everybody saw it, but maybe it was customized to the level of the believer, and you know where you worthy of receiving it or not. We we we honestly can't say that we know the

answer to that, right. One of the things that makes it look like not maybe so much is the well we've talked about this little bit, is that there's the photos and it looks like a bright sunny day. Problem is with the photos is we don't actually we don't know when they were taken. I always presumed at the beginning that those were taken before of the miracle, but we don't actually know if those photos weren't taken after

the miracle had taken place. So that might explain why it's not wet while the people kneeling on the ground, because the ground is dried. They've dried, the sun has come out and is super bright. It happened the photos were taken afterwards, or they could have been taken long afterwards, because I mean, the you know, this didn't become a big story until after And that's one probably reporters and

photographers studied going up there. Well, they were all their pre before the actual reporters because because word had spread across the country, across Portugal, so people came from all over the country. That's how we got to this summer between ten to a hundred thousand visitors, and part of those guys were part of the press. They also might be part of the problem, and they're the ones who were spreading the rumors of the size of the event. So it made That's why I say, I don't I

mean probably know there was a thousand people there. I don't know, but there were reporters there who gave firsthand account reports was a decent little crowd, and no doubt it was exaggerated. That happens. Yeah, I mean, so that's really what I have here. I don't know if you guys have any more to add to the what could make it have actually been a real event. Well, I mean, when it comes down to it, there's no it's hard

to like argue this right because we don't have proof. Clearly, the classic Catholic Church feels there proof is strong enough because they do. I mean, Joe was saying, like they really do actually investigate and actually try to find proof of these things, and you know, from multiple sources. But really, when it comes down to it, it's real just means hey take on faith that this deity did this thing right.

So it's much easier to say, here's all of the reasons we think it's fake, but it could be real if you believe in that sort of thing. And I read there's one side. I know, I shared it with you guys that read. I at first thought it was it was on the side of this whole thing was fake, And it turned out I very quickly learned it was a debunking of the debunking of the story, and it actually yeah, and it had a whole lot of stuff of you know, information from the Bible and from scriptures

to prove to counteract the negative claims were made. And the problem, I would say that the problem, but the difficulty is, of course, how do you say that that's not right? Because I don't know. So that's that's why this isn't interesting, right, is because we can well, I know, we're about to talk about here's all the reasons we think it's not it's not real. But yeah, there are plenty of people out there who have, you know, evidence or their version of evidence or whatever. It's a leap

of faith. Yeah, that's what miracles are. Yes, and yeah, exactly, and so like the just a mere fact that all these people went there expecting to see it, they were, you know, wanting to see it, and they saw it. Yeah, there you go, like you say, But that's where the others as not real. I am not about to disagree with the Vatican. So you guys are you guys are

on your own? Okay, Well, from here on out, we're solo without Joe's I think it's just you because I also would like not to get killed by the Vatican. Find you too, I'll finish this one on my own, going ahead and leave, okay, not really Okay, Well, let's go on to the second theory, though, which is that it did not actually happen. Comes home first and foremost.

I think we all know that the sun does not normally move radically through the sky, and as Joe said earlier, nobody else on the planet or even the surrounding countryside reported seeing the sun fly all over. Yeah. I would think that it would be pretty obvious. So that is an immediate strike against the story. Uh. If you remember I talked about supposedly there was a big rainstorm right

before and how it ended just before the miracle. Well, I actually was able to pull historical rainfall records from the area. Turns out, in nineteen seventeen, in that area of Portugal, they got a total of thirty three millimeters, which is about an inch and a half of rain that month, and the month before it was only nine millimeters or point three five of an inch. So the accounting say the ground was sodden from all of the

rain that fell. Well, that seems to me like that would that would take a lot more rain than what's listed here. And this is the rain over the course of a month. I don't know, I mean technically, yes, of course of a month. It could have all been one one rainy day. Fair And granted we live in a pretty rainy place, and you know, an inch and a half of rain doesn't sound like a ton, but uh, you know, you remember, like the first rain after a big drought, how the ground just doesn't soak anything up.

It's just kind of like sits on top of it for a little bit. I mean, you know, it's possible if it was a kind of a droughty time. But I agree, I think it's I just think the accounts of this, this torrential rain storm might be a bit overblown. Well here's another thing to think about, is if they don't get a lot of rain there an inch of rain or even a half of inch of rain. It's one day. That seems like a lot, right, But but to us it seems like nothing. True, So that's possible

to actual even for us. And an inch and half in a day is a substantial amount, I suppose. Yeah, we just got a whole bunch of it today and it came down and just droves. Yeah, so let's let's keep talking. We've we've talked about the photos a couple

of times. I do want to point out one thing to everybody, which is when you look up the Miracle of the Sun online, you will find a photo out there that was found in the nineteen fifties that is taken on the day of the Miracle of the Sun. At least it says it was taken on the day of the Miracle of the Sun. And the sun looks weird, almost looks like somebody's put a twirl blur filter on the Sun. It's kind of it's kind of turns on itself. Take a little photoshopping, might have got down. No, it's

actually not of that day. It is of a solar eclipse. So it is a weird light effect caused by the solar eclipse that happened many years later. So if you see that, and like I kept seeing the same one, come up where someone I love this when people get into MS paint or whatever and they draw the arrow and then they it's it'sn't red and the text isn't red on top of it, kept same one over and over and over, but it is it is not from that time. So I would just want to have you

understand that from from the outset. Well, you'll be happy to know that MS paint no longer exists. Yes, I am actually very happy about that. Uh So here's here's another explanation of why this might not be real and what people saw. This is a good explanation of what people saw, which putting it very simply is staring at the sun is bad for you and you shouldn't do it.

We've all looked at the sun momentarily by accident, and you get that burned after image of the sun on your retinas, and then you know, you look around and that spot moves around. So it is entirely possible that these people were staring at the sun in anticipation, well past the point of normal sanity and when it affected

their eyes. So when they were looking around the sun seemed to change and or move, and believe it or not, there are actually accounts out there of people who in some um some religious event, we're told to stare at the sun to receive some message, and they stared at it way too long, and a couple of people have gone blind, but a lot but more of them have actually suffered serious vision damage. Can't you stare at the sun?

Because I've never stared at it for more than a millisecond myself, I think, yeah, I think that if you stare at it for a minute, you're in trouble unless you use your hand to kind of block it out a little bit of it and you're getting that that light bend things. Don't do that. I'm sorry. I knew

a guy when I was in school. He was arc welding, and he was arc welding without the mass and he did it for about a minute and a half and he burned his eyes and he had to lay around with you know, his eyes closed and cold compresses on his eyes for about a week. He never did it again. I didn't think he was smart as trying to start with, but he never did it again. I mean, he was lucky that he didn't do serious lasting damage to his eyes. So, but if you think about it, that would then tell

you why these people are seeing these things. You know why it seems to move and grow and dance around, the dance around the skies as you looked at that after images moving around, and you know it's that dog of if you, if you are a true believer enough, you will be given the vision. So that encourages these people to do it longer than they really should have. Is doc moother right term for that? I don't know that. Actually, dogma might not be the right term there. Yeah, maybe not.

I'll strike the word dogma from the record. I just put something or another. Yes, there we go. Um okay. Next up in this theory section, and this is pretty simple and easy to riff on, is um group speaker that that mass belief group think. People are going, oh my god, do you see that next thing? And everybody's like ticking. No, I must be okay, yeah, I must not be blessed enough yeah to see something right, Oh dang, don't want to seem unblessed. Well, yeah, of course, yeah

I see it. Yeah, Oh my gosh, it's spinning right at me. It's so scary it's it's the same thing is that you see. You guys have read about or seeing those experiments where people will be in the city and they'll just stare at the top of a building and then people crowd around him, and slowly they build the crowd and then let's walk away, and the crowd will just actually because they're all trying to figure out

what's out there. The one I like is the one in the waiting room where they like, every time a noises made, everybody stands up, and then they introduced like one person and everybody else gets called into the doctor's office, and that person is still like habitually standing up and down as the noises being made, even though they have no idea why they're doing it. It's crazy. Humans are crazy, and he never thinks to ask, like, why are you

people standing up? Yeah, we easily, we easily follow instruction. It turns out it doesn't even have to be an actual instruction. We just mirror people's behavior. That's kind of scary. Yeah. Um, So the next two parts of this are more they're less addressing the movement of the sun and more they're talking about that reported color changing. Because if you remember the people reported the sun seemed much paler than normal, and then there's the color changes that are going on.

One count or one set of reporting says that possibly what's going on is that sand from the Sahara Desert is pulled up into the atmosphere and then blown across at that time at that place, so it's blotting out the sun. And then as that, you know, as it thins out, the silica or the crystalline structure of the sand is actually creating reflections or refractions of the lights.

It's acting like a prism. And that could but be what these people are seeing that are causing these big bands of color or these these casts of color on not only the clouds, but maybe the people in the ground around them. What about like, I mean, this happens in Portland a lot where it'll be raining, but you look up and you're like, there's not a cloud above me, and what's going on? And then you look at this sun you go, oh, look at that cool rainbow dancing

around over there. I mean, what about something like that, especially if it had been raining prior and we will that's actually the next up in this section. Oh we got that dog not Yeah, Well, the one thing I do want to say real quick though about the whole duster sand thing, is that if that was what it was, I would expect to have found more accounts of this kind of colored light. Yeah. But the thing about it is, though, is that, you know, you would think it would happen

more often, not just that one day. But let's say there was an especially you know, big sandstorm that day and conditions were sets that way more than usually got sucked up into the jet stream or whatever. But the fact that and the fact of the matter is is that people all over the place in Portugal, Spain, wherever it could have seen this, but everybody else was just doing their jobs or else they were taking a napsis

or whatever. You know, only in this one place where there are thousands of people standing there staring up in the sky. You know, although I will say that it's a pretty incredible coincidence that that giant sandstorm happened to happen. Maybe that's the miracle. Maybe it was the miracle, and that was America is a natural miracle. Yeah, maybe maybe not, I don't know. So let's move to what Joe was just talking about. The sun dogs, which helped me out here.

Do either of you know how to print par helion? I believe is that that's that's the kind of event that a sun dog is. So those of you who don't know, sun dogs are kind of a rainbow. But they happen in rings around the sun. They form rings or halos where and they only happen when there's sufficient ice crystals in the upper atmosphere too. Again, just like with the sand theory, refract and reflect the light and turn it kind of into a prism effect. And by

the way, the moon does it off also occasionally. Usually, but they're they're pretty hard to see. Yeah, I'm some pretty good ones that they stood out pretty good. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean it's but it's the same effect that there's enough cold ice crystals up there to to create that, hey, or the prism effect. Uh. And sometimes sun dogs will fully circle the sun. I don't know.

I think I showed you guys that photo I took several years back where I've actually got had to hold up my hand in front of my camera to block out the sun and then you can see the full degree ring. And sun dogs typically they start out uh God, is I think they Yeah, they start out they cycle from orange in the center and then they go out towards blue as they get farther away from the center of the circle. Yeah, but there are also other ones which are much cooler looking, and these have to be

at a perfect degree angle apparently. But on the left and the right side you'll get these giant arcs that are super bright and so they're kind of a warped diamond shape and they are phenomenal. I saw a photo not but three weeks ago, and it was somebody up on some ski slope and everybody at slope just stopped because it was just so bright and so clear, and

there's just really cool sun dog. So that kind of thing is the other one that people are like, Listen, maybe the sun moving around wasn't real, but maybe people really did see colors, but not knowing how to explain it, that's what they say. Well, maybe it was a combination of a couple of things, right, I mean, I think it's safe to say it's possible that it was a sun dog or something like that. Again, do sun dogs typically happen at noontime? Yeah? Yeah, sun dogs are not

as far. I mean, the one that I saw like around noon it just you know, in general, maybe it was or whatever. Again, a pretty big coincidence and lucky

for those kids that something happened on that day. But um, but you know, and then a combination with a bunch of people being like, oh my god, that's so cool, that's that's a miracle and staring at the sun even more, and then you know, it's it kind of helps explain why some people maybe didn't see anything because they were like, I'm not going to look at the sun, I'm gonna

glance at it, and they didn't see any thing. Other people saw these dancing things because they were staring at the sun and burning their eyes, and other people just saw light. And I mean, I don't know if that helps explain all the different experience it could, you know, doing things differently, because people always do different things differently

from one another, even an event like that. I mean, it's that old thing if we could all go to, you know, see a speaker talk and only one of us might see the bird that lands on the side of the stage because we're looking here and there, I'm doing something or I'm drinking my coke or whatever it is. So yeah, I mean, it's possible that that's why there are all those different accounts. I the sun Dog is the only thing that I can really get behind in

this entire story. I think that it's an amazing, amazing coincidence that all of these people were here, as we said before, maybe that's the real miracles that they all happen to be in one place at the right time

to see it. Oh yeah, and just an amazing and coincidence or or and uh, you know, I think this has some supports that we'll see as little friends, Francisco Marto, we're actually little entrepreneurs that they were selling kool aid at that at the place that they want and let's say the mushroom with mushroom mushrooms, and so I think that you know, that's what it was. It was air got ergo, Yeah, I got because everybody came and they had to eat the bread, and everyone was like, we're

doing we're going a new communion. So here's your little pieces of bread, and everybody got like a little high and then yeah, well yeah, if if if there were, if there actually that's conceivable, even though again it's a remarkable coincidence, but it's conceivable because then that explains why some people didn't experience it because some people would have brought their own bread, you know, far away, and other people ate some bots of bread locally and ate it

and and got hot. Yeah, gott have been something like that, and and some people know and some people are going to eat more bread and get a bigger dose, you know. And so that would explain why there was a big variety and what people saw. Some people really saw a lot of wild stuff, and some people not quite so much, and again some not at all. So I don't even I don't even know that you necessarily want to pin

it on her or the other two children. But it could be that somebody was there selling something and it was you know, it'd gone south. Yeah, a lot of things go bad and have the hustory effects on people back in those days and the days before refrigeration. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's hard. It's hard to say exactly what happened that day because I know that all the research has

been done on it. Uh. And there was a guy named Kevin mclu who wrote a book about this, like you know, back in the eighties, and he saw just about all the accounts and he said he'd never seen some many contradictory statements as about what happened there. So it's really kind of hard to say exactly what happened, whether it's a miracle or not. It's hard to say even what happened. You know. It's weird. Yeah, it picks.

It turns out I picked two stories in a row that have the same flaw in them, because last episode that I did was the t w A story. All those conflicting witness stories. Yeah, I mean that's and that's these are you know, ninety years apart or eighty years apart. And look, we're having the same problem when we have lots and lots of witnesses. Human beings haven't changed that I was gonna say that, not that much. They haven't changed at all. Yeah, I really haven't changed. I gotta

say that. During the time all this was happening, in the months leading after the big miracle, She's mother was actually pretty skeptical herself. Oh yeah, I think she ever got She called a childish nonsense, called her her daughter nothing but a fake. Actually, her family once she was an adult, they they kind of semi disowned her because they're like, oh yeah, no, she she lives in a

fantasy land, Like they really went against her that whole time. Yeah, that was a friar who knew who really well, his name was, what was his name? Mario di Alveda. Olivera gave an interview to the UK Sunday Times in two thousand and talked about her she was still alive at the time and if she died as she said in two thousand five, and he said that she experienced religious hallucinations, and he also said that she lives in the delirious

world of infantile fantasies. Uh. And this is like, you know, again fairly recently, and this is somebody who knew her well. Uh, it might just be that just the power of suggestion.

All these people came there expecting and wanting to see a miracle, and so damn it they you know, most of us saw something well, and and her, the way that she clung to it in a way could be partially explained by the death of her cousins, because if you read the transcripts of what was said between the children and Mary, uh, they you know, they ask is is Lucia going to go to heaven? Is Jacinta going

to go to heaven? And all and Francisco or wait, is thesnesscouh And she says, yes he will, but he's got a prey to his rosaries a lot. And then but in that text, it's hinted at that those two children, the younger too, are going to go much sooner than she is, and so that there could be some kind of, you know, some religious form of survivors guilt there that has made her just hang on to it so firmly for so long. And then when she has to write about it, she may have been so far into it

that she didn't know what to do. And so because her writings, people have said they borrow a lot from a lot of other religious scriptures and are kind of a repeat of that kind of information. So, I mean, I don't know what that says, but I mean, maybe she just was so far in that by the time she thought maybe I should get out of this, she didn't really see a way to to step away from it anymore and just had to, you know, fully commit I don't know, Yeah, I think yeah, And that and

it was her deal. I mean, she couldn't really back away from it. She couldn't obviously come clean and say it was all bus and I just let everybody astray, especially when she devoted her life to the church so much. Yeah, that that would be really not a good career move. Yeah. And also because it turns out, I mean, according to look at that that that same friar I was. I just mentioned a moment ago Mario Olivia that he also said that he believed those two kids died from religious

fasting and not from the flu. Really yeah, yeah, he did say that in the same interview he said, d card quit. It could be that they were so weakened by fasting that when the flu came along they would have survived, but since they were so weak, they died. And maybe maybe after all that, after fanatically convincing the cousins to the point where while they died, I can't exactly, like, you know, say, oh never mind, change my mind, Kevin, Do you have any other final thoughts before we wrapped

this one up? Because I mean, I think I've said what I feel it is. I think she saw the Virgin Mary. You know, I don't know, I feel like we need to say that, Okay, I feel like one of us has to be pro her. I mean, you know, we can't all say we think she just made the whole thing up. We can, I mean, we could. I

think we just did. But I just don't think. I mean, I I think there's a lot tied up in this, and I am not willing to say, like, no, she definitely didn't see anything, but I'm not willing to say that she totally saw everything she said, especially with the premonitions and stuff like that. I mean, you know, when we say visions, yeah, when you know, I just don't don't. I think that probably came later. But I believe that

they believe they saw something great. One thing about it is is, yeah, there are people out there who are delusional they sincerely believe what they're what they're saying. But there are also people who just say, he doesn't have to necessarily be delusional, they just have to have it's the words conviction is the word I'm going to use. They are very convinced believe and their faith, and that is what it is, and that is informing how they're

seeing and operating in the world. All right, Well, we're gonna wrap up on that. So if you have any thoughts or theories of your own, you're welcome to share that with us. You can do that by sending us an email at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. We have a website, Thinking sideways podcast dot com where we will have this story and some of the links, as well as a list of all prior stories. There's

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all of it. So I think we're gonna wrap this one up and we will talk to everybody next week. I'm going to ascend from I'm going to go stare at the sun. It's a good thing. It's nighttime right now. Bye, guys. Ye