From the Vault: The Halo, Part 1

to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, I wanted to start off with a kind of thought experiment that I think we've actually used on the show before, but we'll use it again because I think it is useful.

It's it's the Martian Archaeologists thought experiment. Uh and so uh imagine an exo archaeologist from another planet is coming to study the physical remains of human civilizations long after humanity has gone. Who knows what we did. We we screwed up somehow, and there are none of us around here anymore, but the physical remains of our cities and institutions are still hanging about the earth. I've seen enough episodes of out our Limits to to make a few

guesses as to how it could have happened. Right, Yeah, the neutron bombs of the Facebook wars, they did the job. Or hey, maybe maybe there's a better option, and maybe we we warped ourselves into the seventeenth dimension and escaped this world, you know, not a bad end. So this alien archaeologist is trying to understand lost cultures of humankind through the works of art that they created and preserved,

and at some point she ends up browsing museums. Maybe she's walking through the louver and looking at the paintings that we're you know, we're once housed and revered here. And if she were to look over many of the famous paintings of of medieval and Renaissance Europe, she might arrive at a question that would be weird to us, but I think perfectly reasonable to her, And that would be why did so many of the people considered wholly by these artists where wide brimmed gold hats or gold

wires around their heads? Now, of course, with enough cultural context, we ourselves know that these are not hats in the paintings there. You know, they're not even supposed to represent real physical objects. This, of course is the artistic convention

known today as the halo. But I think it's interesting that in a lot of these paintings there might not be anything in the painting that would tell you that in isolation, it just looks like people have something that's yellow or gold, often circular, sometimes square shaped, or just like a cloud or a kind of glow or radiance around their head. Yeah, it is well discuss it. It ranges from something that is very subtle to to sometimes things that are very unavoidable, even where it goes beyond

the halo and becomes this all encompassing nimbus. But but you know, you mentioned earlier how the alien might look and say, why why are these people considered holy? Why do they have the halo? But I think it would go even beyond that, like why did these other organisms that are represented in these works of art, why do they have like they wouldn't know they're they're they're holy, not necessarily you know, they're true, they're the subject of

a painting. But otherwise, you know what, they might not even be able to piece together what this signifies, what it means. Why is it there? You know, why was it that some of these humans but not others appear to have bioluminescence? Like why does their hair emit light? You know, did they have a do they have like chemo luminescence in the keratin of their hair cells or something?

And then I think the exo archaeologists might notice something that a lot of us don't tend to notice when we grow up looking at images of like Jesus and saints and stuff with halo uh, And that would be the similarity of the iconography here the glow or the or the gold circle or disk around the heads of saints and and God's in a Christian context, the similarity of that to depictions of God's from other religions, religions that still exist in the world today or the religions

of ages past. Absolutely, you can easily start looking at these halos and things like halos, and you could just go crazy with a conspiracy theory connection board, right um. I mean, it's it's easy to do. Even if you're

not prone to conspiracy thinking. You could think like, oh, well, look, clearly they're all describing the same thing, either the same mysterious light source that it is forbidden to represent an art that is always positioned directly behind a person, or this the same like alien disks that we're interacting with ancient people's or you know, you could also go h and and use it to prop up various theories such as say that, you know, the bicameral mind hypothesis, things

like that, you know, which I think actually will probably uh come to people's minds a lot as we roll through this episode in particular, Oh yeah, there will be some very specific and interesting connections there. But anyway, so to come back to the idea of you know, what we do know about the Halo, the fact that it's

an artistic convention. This is one of these subjects that I really love because it's something that I've seen and just taken for granted my entire life without ever stopping to wonder where it comes from, what it means, and how it connects to history and religion and science. So for the next couple of episodes, we wanted to take a look at the Halo from a bunch of different angles and see what kind of sense we can make

of it now? That opening question I asked of imagining an alien archaeologist looking at these depictions in art that weren't supposed to be physical golden hats, but could have been mistaken for such. Uh. This actually connects to an episode of the Artifacts that I did back in January about ancient Egyptian head cones. If you to get the full story, you can go and listen to that episode.

But the short and simplified version goes like this. A lot of ancient Egyptian art shows people with these weird white cones on top of their heads. You know, maybe about the size of a soft ball, but cone shaped. And there has long been a debate about what these

cones were supposed to represent. One popular theory is that this is a depiction of a real thing from ancient Egypt, which would have been lumps of unguent or perfumed animal fat, which would melt into the scalp and then perform a kind of ritual purification as as the oils came down over your head. It would be somewhat analogous to the to the kind of anointing with oil rituals that we see in other ancient Near Eastern traditions that you can

even find in the Bible. But because until recently these cones had only been seen in art and never explicitly given physical grounding, there was always some reason to wonder, well, were these cones maybe not physical objects at all, but symbolic artistic conventions like halos. Well, a few years back, some physical examples of head cones were actually found in some graves in Egypt, so we now know that at least some of them were physical objects. Though a lot

of questions still remain about about these head cones. But the analogy to Halo's really got the gears turning in my brain and got me wondering about halo's themselves. Yeah, it's it's ultimately a fascinating subject. Again, I'm in the same boat, like I grew up seeing all these images of halos, to the point where halos didn't even feel

suitably weird or even majestic. And I think part of that is the part of that comes from uh angel costumes and cartoon depictions of angel costumes, where even someone like Tom and Jerry will have some sort of a halo above their head made out of maybe like foiled cardboard, and it is visibly held in place by some sort of wire that goes down to the back of their net. You know what I'm talking about, Oh, exactly. Yeah, the domestication of this imagery really kind of takes the awe

inspiring element out of it. Yeah, it ends up making it look kind of stupid, you know. Um and um and and I think you also see some of that in the actual tradition of the halo, with a sort of eventually falling out of favor except in places where it was really firmly established. Um. But but of course, like we said already, you'll see so many different versions of the halo, even in um, you know, Western art

depicting Christian saints and important holy individuals. Uh. The one that I ran across it I really liked was Carravaggio's The Madonna di Loretto, or more at least a detail from that. Um and it's such a faint halo you could easily you could easily miss it, perhaps, but it but it also really stands out at you because it that the lines in it run counter to the vertical lines behind her. Yeah, and I like that in Carvaccio's art because the it suggests that in a way, holiness

is something that is subtle to the human imagination. Maybe it would be obvious to the heavens, but you know, here on Earth, it's just the faintest glimmer of a circle. Yeah, you have to look for it. Yeah. Um. You know our Scott Baker and some of his fantasy books that they're particularly magical individuals who occasionally developed halos around the palms of their hands, and it's not visible all the time,

but just at certain moments by certain people. And I feel like that kind of captured some of the energy that you see in illustrations such as this um. But but other times you see realizations of the halo and art that are just they look very much like some sort of a physical ring or a physical disc, like they have one of the Golden records that we sent into space situated either right above their head or directly

behind it. Yeah. I've read that this I think was especially common among like Florentine artists of the Renaissance, who would start depicting the halo almost as if it was a disc in three dimensional space that was balanced on the back of the head. Yeah. One of my favorite saints from Art was the subject of some paintings that I saw at the Louver. It's this guy named Peter of Verona, who is usually shown with a machete sticking

out of his head. Here is with blood and everything. Yeah, blood, and I feel like these paintings of Peter of Verona should be the new this is fine meme because he really looks like, you know, we're making it work. Um. Peter was a thirteenth century inquisitor. I think he was

some kind of heresy hunter. I think he preached against the Cathars, and the story goes that the Cathars hired an assassin to kill him and then he got hit in the head with a blade of some kind, like this guy brained him with an axe, and then the I think, according to the story, he wrote out the Apostles Creed or part of the Apostles Creed in his own blood as he was dying. He also, in both of these has the images that you shared with me.

He also has a blade piercing his heart. It looks like he was stabbed in one of them and backstabbed in the other depiction. Yeah, so he I mean, ultimately, the jump between this and full blown Clive Barker cinobyte is not that far, you know. And yes, he's very close to a cinobyte, the machete head, cinobyte, serene face and all. I mean the sign between, I mean, there's there's probably a direct line to be made between his vision of the cinobytes and the depictions of saints suffering

but not not suffering on holy tortures. What's medieval Latin for savior tears? It's a waste of good suffering. I don't know. I don't have that one an easy recall for it from me. But the funny thing is about with Peter and so in both of these he's got like a machete or a butcher knife stuck in just in his head, like you know, like the lightning bolt or the arrow party gag headset just sticking out at

the top of his head. And you're you're so fixated on the weapon you don't even notice that he's got a faint circle around his head or behind it. Yeah, yeah, there it is the halo the and and you know it's you think it's helpful too to think about, to

ask yourself, like, what could it be? What is this thing behind the head you know, the physical plate, a glow an aura, but also you see various interpretations where you can think of it as the Sun itself or the moon, some sort of cosmic entity, or perhaps a window, a portal uh to another realm. Like all of all of these things uh you see arise at different times and interpretations of the halo, and things that inspired the halo or seemed to have inspired it, or just have

some just basic connection to it based on similar symbology. Yeah, since there's so many variations on the halo and the related concept of the aureole, I think that it's best to think about the halo not as something that has like strict criteria for what counts as a halo, but more a a collection of family resemblance. It's kind of

like the definition of a game in the Wittgensteinian sense. Um. You know, It's just like there are a lot of things that you can tell they're all related in some way, but there's no set of criteria area that all of them meet. But I think we can at least generally say that a halo is something like an area of light or golden color, or some kind of radiant cloud, usually circular but not always surrounding the head of a holy or revered figure. It's also sometimes called a nimbus.

I think we've mentioned that already, but it is related to and with significant overlap on, the concept of an aureole, which is a glow or area of brightness that surrounds

a person, especially their head. So I think there's some looseness with the language here, but as best I can tell, halo usually refers to the disc or ring or light around the head specifically, and the aureole would include halos, but would would also include something like the full body being surrounded by a glow or a golden shine or or fire. Yeah, and that's a U r e O l e ario, not oreo, though in an artistic depiction you could have an oreo areole. Uh, it's entirely possible.

It's the right shape. Oh, you certainly could. Oh. Have you ever noticed that sometimes products in uh, in TV commercials and in advertisements are given a kind of aureole, Like a box of cereal will be lit as if there's a light bulb right behind it, so there's a glow emanating from all the sides. Yeah, yeah, I mean that that's one of the reasons I started thinking about, you know what some of these uh, these these paintings we see in these images where it looks like there

is a light behind the head. You know, you can easily imagine panning to one side and there is a tripod back there and there's the photographer's light, you know, and then ultimately that's what we we do to backolet things today. UM. But yeah, you do see you see things that are like halos, and sometimes things that are very much like halos in modern photography, and a lot of it is just by virtue of that sort of positioning.

We're talking about either a light position behind the individual just by happenstance because the light's got to go somewhere, or it's some sort of the existing symbol or decoration. And I want to draw a specific example here that I've I've been kind of obsessed with the last couple of months, um, back since the since the most recent

presidential election. UM. You will see photographs of the US president or presidential Canada is president elect, etcetera in which the presidential seal is positioned directly behind the individual's head, sometimes in sharper focus, but other times blurred a bit just by virtue of being behind them in a way

that looks a lot like halo iconography. Oh yeah, so I did not know about this before you brought it up, but now that you have mentioned it, or or since I read that you were writing about this, I was seeing it all over the place. Yeah. So you can see George W. Bush with a halo, Barack Obama with a halo. Just seems like there's often enough a big circular seal behind their head when they're getting photographed that

these things just naturally happen. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's because you generally have a back drop back there, and then that's where the presidential seal is. The presidential seal is circular um, and yeah, it ends up looking like halo. And I was thinking about this. I'm like, well, this is interesting, but I'm sure some people do not like it. I'm sure sure enough. I found a wonderful Associated Press blog post about it from and this was from Paul

co Ford. The APIs former vice president of media Relations, and he points out that the so called halo issue has been around for a while and that no matter who happens to be president at a given time, people complain about it, you know it because they can make the charge like, what are you doing. You're taking pictures of this president who I don't like, and you're making them look like they are anointed by God? Like, clearly you have an agenda here in the way that the

presidential seal is positioned behind their skull. Well, I would say whether I like the president or not if somebody if I thought the photographer was doing that on purpose, I wouldn't like it. I mean, you know, right, yes, But knowing a bit about photography and perspective, I can actually see why this might be something that's difficult to avoid. Yeah, Go for drives home that it's never the intention of

a photographer to give the president a holy glow. But in according to J. David A. Key, a P. Washington's then assistant chief of the Bureau for Photography, quote, the out of focus presidential seal is simply a tool to celebrate, to separate the subject from the background so he is

not speaking in a sea of black. And then he adds that they try to make it clear that it's the seal and it's not some sort of glowing blur, And they've tried different things they've tried shooting a lot closer, you know, getting like cropping in tighter to the individual's face so nothing is seen around the head. But then if you do that, well, first of all, you just have like a real close tight shot of somebody's face

and you can give me the president. But then also more to the point, you lose any sense of context or sense of location. And that's one of the things you're supposed to do as a photographer too, is to provide that contact in sense of location. And then if you do the reverse, like you pan out more, uh and you know, try and move that seal around in the background, well, then you risk creating a photo that's

not suitable for many uses such as mobile use. You know, you don't want to be you know, pull up your news app and you're you're flipping through it and then you're like, who's that. I don't I don't know. There's some some white haired dude there in the background. Oh, it's the president. I had to zoom in to see it.

I think the real solution is that presidents just should not have the presidential seal behind them and instead should have like a big, like psychedelic tableau you know, like the like the cover of the of the Jimmy Hendrix Axis Bold as Love album. Yeah, yeah, maybe so. I mean basically, one of the things that comes down to

is this is a shot. This is a photograph that gets taken a lot every time the president gives an address or what have you, and the typical background just doesn't really give photographers much to work with, and photographers are constantly trying to figure out how to frame things up in a way that is visually appealing. So, at least for now, until they shake things up and get that new mural background you're talking about, the presidential halo

is largely unavoidable. Like you can play around with it yourself, and Matt put yourself in the photographer's shoes and try to imagine what your options are there. Like, ultimately, the

halo is kind of the best way to go. Well, maybe we can help you out with that today, just by helping you, as the viewer, reframe you're thinking about the halo so that it is not only the projection of a Christian saint, but in fact is an older and more widespread tradition of showing the radiance around the head or body of an interesting or important figure throughout

world mythology. Yeah. Yeah, but but I will I will say that once you start looking for the halo and identifying the halo, you will see it more and more places. So certainly, listeners, as you encounter photographs of people with unintended halos or even intended halos just by virtue of their environment, send those to us. Share those with us, Go go to the discussion module, the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module, that's the Facebook group. Share them there.

I think it'll be a lot of fun. Bring them on. Thank thank Now. One thing we've already touched on is that not all halos or aureoles are circular in nature, but an awful lot of them are. There's a reason that you couldn't mistake a lot of halos in paintings for being you know, disc shaped gold hats. So so maybe we should probe the circular element here for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. The halo, and it's it's most traditional form, is of course going to be either a pair of concentric circles.

It's gonna be or it's gonna be a disc, or it's just gonna be a circle or a hoop of some sort. Um and you know, part of this is we've always been fascinated by circles because the circle is the shape of the sun, it's the shape of the moon, it's the shape of the pupil and our eyeballs. You know, it's just an irresistible It's it's a line that goes on forever. I mean, you can, you can go on and on, like the circle is fascinating in the same way that the triangle in the square are fascinating, will

never stop, you know, finding wonder in these shapes. Yeah. And the fact that there are no perfect circles in nature, but so much of the physical and biological world ends up imperfectly approximating circles and spheres. Um. And then and then it gets even more mysterious and gets into like mathematical mysticism once once you have consciousness of geometry, because

there you get all kinds of ideas. You know, I think, uh, the circle has special mystical allure because of its special status among two dimensional shapes like uh, you know, it has this relationship to the strange mathematical constant pie and uh. And the fact that if you try to think about it as a polygon, I guess maybe it's technically not a polygon, but if you were to try to frame it as one, it would have to be a polygon

with like an infinite number of sides. But the Sun, I think is is a particular note here, and not only because of its circular shape and sort of it's it's all consuming place and human myth making, but also because of of what we call solar halos. And that's something we'll get into more in second episode. But there you know recordings of depictions of solar halos dating back

to antiquity. Um you know, in particular the eruption of Mount Etna in one two and forty four b C resulted in rainbow like halos that were observed at that time. UM I was reading Ancient Meteorological Optics by Richard Stouther's in the Classical Journal from two thousand nine, and he goes into this and includes a list of such observations from roughly two oh three b C e on up till three C in addition to mocks sons, which is

another optical phenomenal will discuss in the next episode. Uh. And these have been recorded from as far back is five b C in Egypt. Up through Roman observations. In one, so the observation of light based discs and rings in space and in the sky, I think could naturally, uh suggest some associations between those types of shapes or figures and holiness because of the long standing religious associations with

celestial objects, space and the sky. Right. And then on top of that too, you start thinking about just symbol making and uh in the creation of of lines, the etching of lines into things. And as you begin to juggle different symbols and combining symbols, it's it's inevitable that you would combine the human form with the circle, with

the sun, disc, etcetera. All Right, so we've already mentioned that the halo is a very common uh piece of religious symbolism in Christian art, especially in like the Medieval through the Renaissance period. Um. So, so how exactly does that happen? How does the halo become a part of

how Christians depict their their God and their saints. So these only pop up in Christian religious art after the fifth century see and before that it was used to highlight literally highlight right, um, important secular people such as

kings and emperors. Yeah, there is a long tradition going back before Christianity in the Greco Roman world of showing like kings and emperors, I think, especially when associated with Apollo or Helios, gods that are gods of the sun or associated with the Sun, to show these figures with rays of light emanating from their heads which are very similar to or in some cases basically the same as a halo. And so you could get a pagan emperor with a halo before any depictions of say Jesus with

a halo. Yeah, exactly, And as pointed out by Derek, could see siting Um Tavino, Perry, and Ramsden. I'll discuss them in a minute in the impact of the symbolism and iconography of the ax Sun disc and wild jet Ie on on modern Western society, saints and other religious figures. At this time we're just shown as normal humans. Meanwhile, yes, the secular rulers, they were the ones with the halos.

So that's funny. You've got to imagine, like how would that be reversed, like if if Christians and say the second century in the Roman Empire, we're seeing depictions of the the perhaps hated Roman emperor with a Halo. How would they end up putting that same kind of imagery on Jesus. Yeah, exactly. So it's really fascinating to turn that on its on its on its head here at least for like I say, modern consideration of the past. Uh So that that tavannor Perry paper, that's J. Tavynor Perry.

It was a nineteen o seven paper titled The Nimbus and Eastern Art. And despite being a nineteen o seven publication, you can you can pull this up in j store and it's a short, very succinct little piece with some

wonderful illustrations. And you know, this points out and also uh cutsy was was commenting on this, is that while there's certainly an urge to connect halo's in the Western tradition to the ancient Egyptian use of the sun disc um, they conclude that that although the halo came from uh the ancient Near East, it stem seems to stem from Aspotamian and Persian use that had been appropriated by the

Greeks and then later by the Byzantines. Okay, so, if if this tracing of the history is correct, A's saying that there are analogies to the Halo in ancient Egyptian iconography.

But it looks like the Christians got their use from the Greeks and Romans, who in turn got the halo ideas from the ancient cultures that would have occupied present day like Iraq and Iran, Right, yeah, so the ideas, yeah, the you know, the Roman usage of it would have been like, hey, we really like this motif, let's use it. Let's use it to signify our rulers, and then eventually

it passes on to Christian use. I mean, it's kind of a story of the of just how irresistible a and alarming or or captivating images or a combination of symbols happens to be. Now that other piece e. H.

Ramston Uh, this is a much longer piece. It's a lengthy notice in the same publication Burlington Magazine from nineteen forty one titled the Halo a fur their inquiry into its origin, and this one points to the influence of Zoroastrianism on Christianity in general, which would which would bring with it the Cavarna or the Havarna, which the author

here describes as quote the Great Havarn. No. The main symbol of royal power and age, old motif of Iranian art, and so Ramsden draws a connection between these artistic motifs and what was to come in both Christian and Buddhist traditions. So it's literally a glory or splendor indicating a divine force guiding the individual. Also comes from i'me seeing a sort of you know, like divine goodwill. It's a kind

of holy spotlight reserved for kings and leaders. And I guess that's something to keep in mind too when we're thinking about this, you think about the role of the divine king in older traditions, you know, it's like that's that's the individual who, you know, the whole system is describing as being the chose and one of God or

the gods, etcetera. Yeah, and so, at least for me, it's not hard to see how halo imagery would have been more thoroughly integrated into Christian artwork in a period after Christianity was made socially acceptable in a widespread way in the in the Roman Empires, say under Constantine and then eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire. There you would see a unification of Christianity with the

with the state power in the Roman Empire. Yeah. Um. So it's interesting to think about what the halo does, and especially in later art, about how it it signifies

that the individual you're looking at is indeed holy. Um. And it's it's weird when you look at the at the quality of the arts, and maybe not the quality of the art, but the changing detail of the art, the changing lifelike qualities of the art over time, because it would it would seem to me, as as someone who's not an expert in these things, that once you get into the age of Carravaggio, you know, you don't need the halo to show, you know, divine suffering in

an individual individual. You don't need that halo to realize that the individual in the painting is divine. Like they're all these other tools, all these other leverage you can pull, pull to make it so um, and and yet they're

they're still there. Um. That I was reading this, this wonderful piece, very well written by Amelia Arena's titled Sex, Violence and Faith the Art of Caravaggio, and they point out that the halo, along with other symbolic inclusions, were often the only way to recognize any given individual in a painting before car Carravaggio and the traditions before him, uh,

that this was a particular saint, etcetera. They'll be like, oh, well, there's the halo, where there's the you know they're holding, um, you know, a particular object or some sort of a grizzly uh sign of their passing that sort of thing, right, because these saints wouldn't have been somebody, you know, it wasn't like they had people magazine where you know what the famous figures looked like. Know, there were no photographs and you probably never would have seen these people, so

there wasn't like one way that a figure looked. You would have to use cues in the painting itself to identify who they are or to identify which of the figures in the painting was the person, right, and they rain as rights that in the older tradition, you know a lot of these people with the halos or other symbols, they were basically interchangeable looking because they just looked like other rich people of the time. And then by the time Caravaggio is coming along, he's making them look more

and more like like actual people. And this is interesting too though, because you you know, you you hear about the sort of behind the scenes stuff on various famous paintings, and you learned that, oh, well, this person that's portraying Jesus or whoever, that was just some strapping lad from in somewhere around town that came in to pose for some paintings. Uh. So there's still you know, not actual depictions of of in order there supposed to you know,

be actual depictions of the person. You know, it's not a snapshot of of an historic Jesus or anything, but it's some body that's put there. And then you add these other things, either other symbols that allow you to, uh to gain something from it. And I think that gets too into the role the like the long standing role of religious art that you see not only in

Christianity but in Hinduism, Buddhism, etcetera. And that is the use of the image to convey often complex uh theological ideas that you know that that maybe even be difficult to explain with language, things such as the transfiguration of Christ and UH the various complex roles and and powers of Hindu deities and UH and and also meditative practices in Um Tibetan Buddhism. Uh. You know, these are all things that are often, you know, laboriously baked into the

the visual image that you're presented with. Even if you're an outsider, you don't necessarily pick up on all of these things. I think a lot of times. One thing that religious painting tends to do is to inject a kind of visceral passion into stories that are actually told just in pure linguistic terms, in a kind of spare way. Like reading the text of the crucifixion narrative in the Gospel of Mark is going to ask you to sort of do a lot of work of like reading, you know,

passionate imagery into it. It's actually a rather lean narrative, but you can do a painting of it that's just full of pathos and anguish and uh and and showing

the full suffering that the artists want to depict. Yeah. Absolutely, Now, I guess it's time to get into some interesting examples of other religious and artistic traditions around the world that show something that might be considered analogous to the halo or aureole outside of the Christian artistic tradition UM one of the oldest analogs to the image of the halo that that I came across might be something that is

found in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. So I want to start off with a specific fig example from the many stories of Gilgamesh. Now, in the Gilgamesh narratives, there is a recurring theme where Gilgamesh and his his friend or his servant in ky Do have to travel to the dreaded Cedar forest to slay a monstrous giant called who wah Wah or Humbaba, who is the terrifying guardian of the woods, whose roar is as a flood, whose mouth is fire,

and whose breath is death itself. One version of the story I was looking at included a line that was something like Huahwa like a man eating lion, he does not wipe the blood from his slaver, and some some interpretations this right in Keto is kind of a beast man himself, right, yes, I think so. Now I'm not an expert in this. I think in the actual epic of Gilgamesh, which is a later sort of built out version of the recurring motif, he is I don't know, wild man at least a beast man. Oh yeah, he's

on the locusts and honey diet. But anyway, there are tons of different versions of this story from ancient Mesopotamian poetry and mythology, where Gilgamesh or Gilgamesh and in ky Do have to go kill this monster in the cedar forest, and in many versions of the story found in different ancient texts, Huawa or Humbaba is said to be surrounded

by seven layers of something. Sometimes this something is interpreted as a more straightforwardly to a type of cloak or armor that protects him, So he's got seven layers of armor, seven cloaks. Other times it is interpreted as hum Baba's seven terrors, or even his seven auras that inflict a horror, a supernatural terror on his enemies. And in one Sumerian version of the early story gilgame and huah Wa, it says that when the warriors neared Huahwa, the monsters are

a sped towards them like a spear. Oh wow, so they're like, it's like he's got seven shield tokens that they're not only protect him but can be used offensively as well. Wait, what are the shield tokens? You know, in various board games, you would have tokens for your shields. So he's like seven shields, so like you'd have to combat your way through all seven shields before you could actually hurt the creature itself. Yes, it's clear they have

some kind of defensive effect. They also have some kind of offensive effect, and it's it's very ambiguous exactly what they are. There are a thing that can be taken on and off, and they protect him, and they are an emanation of supernatural power that is sometimes represented as a kind of light or glow. And in many versions of the story, what happens is Gilgamesh entices huah Wa to take off and hand over his seven terrors or his seven auras, one at a time by offering gifts

and flattery and return. So Gilgamesh will come up to him, and he will go to HuaHua and say, no one knows where you live in the mountains. I want to be like you. I want to be one of your kinsmen. Here is a gift of lapis lazuli. Hand over your fifth aura. And so then HuaHua hands over his, you know, each of one of his seven auras in succession. At some point, Gilgamesh offers one of his sisters to huahwa Is, a concubine. At some point he offers him I think,

uh some kind of special flower grain. But eventually, once all of the auras or terrors are removed, Gilgamesh can suddenly beat the monster up. Like in some versions that says, immediately Gilgamesh punches him in the face. And I was reading about there's one specific version of this story, uh that involves a great debate about whether to chase after the auras. It seems like the auras like fly off

on their own. I was reading about this in the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Babylonian Epic Poem and other Texts in Acadian and Sumerian by Andrew George from Penguin in two thousand two. And this example is in what's known

as the East Kali Tablet. It's a tablet that contains one version of the story supposedly dated to the eighteenth century b c. E. And uh So, in this version of the story, in ky Do and Gilgamesh, after huahwa Is is defeated, uh inky Do says to Gilgamesh, hey don't spare your foe, but Gilgamesh wants to go hunt down hua was auras, like they they've somehow gotten away uh And the text here describes them as radiant, numinous

powers that Huahwa wears his protection. And Gilgamesh is like, no, we gotta go get them, and in ky Do suggests that they can easily do that later. Instead, we've got to stay here and kill Huahwa. And then after we kill HuaHua, we can go find the auras. And to quote from the tablet and translation, said in ky Do to him to kill Gamesh, smite Huahwa, the ogre, who your God's abhor Why, my friend, do you show him mercy? Said Gilgamesh to him. Two in ky Do, Now, my friend,

we must impose our victory. The auras slip away in the thicket. The auras slip away, their radiance grows dim, said in key Do to him, to Gilgamesh, my friend, catch a bird, and where go it's chicks. Let us look for the aura's later as the chicks run here and there in the thicket. Yeah, I love that. I mean it almost takes on a comical um uh air for sure, but it also reminds me just thinking about I mean, I love the idea of thinking about these is sort of is haunted auras that surround him in

energy fields, etcetera. But of course I'm I'm going back to our episode. I think it was the Horned helm episode that we talked about the invention of a little bit about the inventions of armor and helmets, and we talked about how the cloak uh itself is an important piece of armor in many older traditions, you know, it was a basic way to protect your body and combat um. And so perhaps these are just like many different living,

animate cloaks that he wore uh. And isn't it interesting that even today we have imagined beings with animate cloaks like I know, for example, I think Uh, I think Dr Strange has a living cloak that has a mind of its own. And I want to say that Spawn does as well. I'm not an expert on spawn, but I think there's something about his cloak being alive as well. Oh that's great, yes, Spawn. His Spawn's got a cape

or something. It's like a big in the movie. It's this giant c g I cape that does magic stuff. But so here, I guess the idea is that this monster had the seven whatever these are the auras, the terrors, the seven sort of defensive, magical, glowing, full body halo type things, and that he can take them off and put them back on, and when he takes them off after he's defeated, they'll scatter all over the place, and you have to go catch them if you want to.

I don't know if you want to, I guess domesticate his halos and put them to your own uses. So I was reading further about this concept of these ancient Mesopotamian auras or halo type things in a book called God's Demons and Symbols by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green from the University of Texas Press in nine and uh and so that they're also talking about the story of Huaha or Humbabah, and they translate the word for the seven layers as terrifying radiance, and they they relate this

to a broader entry. They've got on a couple of concepts from ancient Mesopotamian religion called milam and nie uh. These are both Sumerian words. Melam's a caddy and equivalent is milamu, and melom refers to a specific type of divine power, while Nie seems to refer to the effect that melom has upon humans. So if you are walking through the cedar forest and you hear a rustling in the bushes, and then Huawa pops out and you witness

his melom, you will probably be stricken with knee. And no, I do not know if there is any connection to the monty python thing, but I can't wonder. Yeah, but Black and Greenwright quote the exact connotation of melam is difficult to grasp. It is a brilliant, visible glamour which is exuded by God's heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of great holiness, and by God's symbols and emblems. While it is in some ways a phenomenon of light,

melam is at the same time terrifying, awe inspiring. Knee can be experienced as a physical creeping of the flesh. And they say that both Sumerian and a Cadian are rich in words to describe this phenomenon and its effects. So, in keeping with the story we were looking at a minute ago, they say that gods are sometimes said to where their melom like a garment or like a crown.

And they say that like a garment or a crown, the mellom can be taken off, you can shed it, and if you kill a god, it's melom will vanish or run away. They also stressed that while the melom is apparently always supernatural, it is not inherently good. Both revered gods and monstrous demons where the melom alike, it seems to be a visual representation of overwhelming supernatural power. That is, that is imagined as some kind of emanation

of light or glow fascinating so holy or unholy aura. Yeah, and this is one of those things that I just feel like, oh, I wish I could know, like where does this concept come from? Like does this have some kind of basis in the natural world or is this pure imagination or does it have some basis in I don't know, quirks of human psychology. I mean, I guess we'll get more into sort of natural phenomenon in psychology in the second episode. But but man, yeah, this this

this gets the years going. Like I said earlier, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean I love that even you know, with I guess the mystery even makes the these tales resonate even even more so, Like if it were. If it were more clear that we were just talking about a bunch of cloaks, you know, or just basic cloak metaphors, then uh, it wouldn't be as magical. Now, well, from here, let's let's travel over to ancient Egypt, because we mentioned earlier

the idea of sun disks and um. There are several directions to go in when considering the sun disc in ancient Egypt, but the one that probably comes to mind most readily, of course, is the state worship of the

sun disc often under Menno tap the fourth. This was a basic basically, he he was he decreed that, okay, we're gonna put the pan be on more or less aside, We're gonna we're gonna instead of focusing on on the pantheon or are certain individuals in the pantheon of gods, we're just going to worship this glorious sun disc often and um, we could do a whole episode on this because it's such a fascinating story. But basically, this was

an unpopular move that was reversed after his death. You know, it's it's it's tough to introduce a new god and a new twist on religion. And expect everyone else to just stay with that change. Yeah. Now, I know there are some people who claim here that that Amenhotep is in some ways like the inventor of monotheism. I think

that might be a little bit oversimplifying the issue. It seems from what I recall, I haven't studied this deeply in a while, but it seems like from what I recall, the the attend sun Disc that he was revering was sort of like already a figure in Egyptian religion, but now he said like, well, this is now just the only god that we're going to worship, and the other ones are all subordinate to that god. Yeah, yeah, this

is this is this is basically my understanding as well. Yeah, there's there's if you're saying that he converted the Egyptians to monotheism, that's yeah, that's that's exaggerating a bit. But certainly the sun Disc in general pops up in various places throughout Egyptian iconography and oftentimes looks similar to what

we might think of as a halo today. So just to run through a few key examples that I think illustrate this, Well, first of all, there's there's not the sky goddess who's sometimes rendered as a giant nude woman arched above the earth. Um. You can look up images of this. It's where you know, it's like she has she's kind of in uh cat cow, I guess yoga wise, uh, but she is the vaulted sky. But I don't, I

don't know that yoga pose. Tell me, Oh, it's you know, you're on all fours and you're kind of like you're either like a cat or you like a cow. Okay, you should try it. It's great for the spine. But but yeah, she's kind of in that position, and her arched body is the cosmos. Like you you're looking up at her belly when you're looking up at the stars. But sometimes she's seen as she's represented as a giant cow with star markings and a sun disc positioned between

the cow's horns. Again, she's associated with the sky she uh uh and this also signify according to Geraldine Pinch in Egyptian mythology, this signifies her as the sky god lifting up the sun god ray Or or Hurrah, and she mentions that this quote becomes the insignia of several goddesses, so ray or Raw the Sun God himself is depicted in various ways as well, including a sun disc with

a scarebon it or in it. But you also see him depicted, as you know, in his hybrid form with the sun disc above his head or on top of his head. Now to be clear, you see this with other deities and characters in the Egyptian pantheon as well. The symbol of their role or entity is simply stacked atop their head like a hat, like they made like a scorpion is up on your head to signify, uh, you know that you're scorpion like qualities, etcetera. Um. So again,

think about the necessity of delivering information through symbols. There are only so many ways to present the idea of man plus son equal Sun God, right, and it's just here's a man, or here's a hybrid of a man, and then here's the sun and they are the Sun God.

When you were talking about the goddess Newt with the representation as the cow with the sun disc above the head, I was trying to think, is this the same as the imagery I've already seen or is there another ancient Egyptian deity or figure often depicted as a bo vine with a with a halo or sun disc over its head. And I think the thing I was thinking about was the oppicue bull, which is I think somewhat different. So

there's another one. Apparently ancient Egyptian religion has multiple bulls with halos, I mean, in the loose sense of halo, a bull with the sun disc between its horn. Well, um, that I actually have the answer to that, and that is because APIs Uh is the offspring of the said to be the offspring of another Egyptian goddess, and that is hath Or, and she's the golden goddess of childbirth um.

And she's often depicted as a beautiful woman with a red solar disc positioned above her head between a pair of cow horns, and she's associated with raw and ray as well. I think it's kind of complex and like it varies, like sometimes she's more like the offspring and other times she's more like a consort um, etcetera. Or it seemed a little ambiguous when I was reading about it, but but yeah, so the the appis bowl is the

offspring of hath Or. Hath Or is tied to the sun god, so it's it's like the sun disc is there to show that they are aligned or descended from him. Now, if the scholars that you were looking at earlier, if their theory about the history of the halo iconography that led to Christian religion is true, even the it would sort of make sense to look at the oppice bowl or any of these gods you've been talking about with a sun disc over their head and say, ah, that

inspired the the Christian halo symbol. It seems like at least they were arguing that's not the case, which if they're correct about that, that would just make it seem like almost a case of cultural convergent evolution, right, something that just so naturally comes to mind that multiple different

cultures have produced very similar imagery. Yeah. Now, I mean, part of it could be I just haven't come across and read an argument to the contrary, But yeah, it seems like it's just a situation of different people's playing with some of the same symbols and doing the obvious

things with those symbols. Because while it might seem like this would be a great connection, Like it seems like you could put Um hath Or on your conspiracy board and then put Um the archangel Michael on your on your conspiracy board and just draw a line between the two. It does not seem as if there's actually a line to be drawn there, you know, in the actual spread of embolism, and you know, artistic motifs. It might actually go back more to Humbaba or HuaHua, right, but the

or just generally the Mesopotamian concept. But I've got another one, another one from the pre Christian ancient world with some interesting uh similarities to halo iconography. And this would be the Achaian halo. Could you believe that there is something like a halo in the Iliad? This this got me by surprise as well. Yeah, yeah, I guess a lot of people have read this and not necessarily noticed the similarities. Again, you know, they're always gonna be some differences, but the

similarities are interesting. Um. So, there's one passage in book eighteen of the Iliad that that strikes me as very very pretty darn halo ish. So it comes in book eighteen of the Iliad. The context is that the great Achaean warrior Achilles, he learns that his beloved companion Patroclus has been killed in battle by the Ojan hero hector, and the exact relationship between Achilles and patric LUs has

been the subject of enormous debate over the centuries. At the very least, they are supposed to be the closest of friends, you know, they're brothers in arms, their confidants. Some scholars also believe there's an implication that their lovers that's not stated explicitly, but some really think it's sort

of there subtly in the text. Whatever the exact nature of their relationship, they care very deeply for one another, and Patroclus is killed in battle, and when Achilles learns that Patroclus has died, he almost literally goes insane with grief, and then that grief turns into rage and a thirst for vengeance. And the Trojans and the Achaeans are in the middle of fighting to claim Patroclus's body from the battlefield.

So the goddess Athena intervenes and she pours her godpower into Achilles so that he can be comes so frightening that the Trojans will flee in terror, and Patroclus's body can be brought back behind the Achaean lines. And the way this is visually depicted is very interesting. So I want to read from actually from the recent translation of the Iliad by Caroline Alexander, which is very good. Rachel and I started reading this. We we haven't made it all the way through yet, but we we started reading

this and I really like it. So if you're looking to read the Iliad for the first time or the fiftieth, I recommend this one. Um. But the passage here goes like this. Achilles, beloved of Zeus, arose and Athena cast the tasseled aegis about his mighty shoulders, she shining among goddesses. Encircled round his head a cloud of gold, and from

it blazed bright, shining fire. And as when smoke rising from a city reaches the clear high air from a distant land, which enemy men fight round, and they the whole day long are pitted in hateful warfare around their city walls. But with the sun's setting, the beacon fires blaze torch upon torch, and flaring upward, the glare becomes visible to those who live around, in the hope that

they might come with ships as allies against destruction. So from achilles head the radiance reached the clear high air, and going away from the wall. He stood at the ditch, nor did he mix with the Achaeans, for he observed his mother's knowing command, and standing there he shouted, and from the distance Pallace Athena cried out to unspeakable was the uproar he incided in the Trojans, as when a clarion voice is heard, when chries the trumpet of life,

destroying enemies who surround a city. Such then was the clarion voice of Eacities. And when they heard the brazen voice of Eacities, the spirit and each man was thrown in turmoil. The horses, with their fine man wheeled their chariots back, for in their hearts they forebode distress to come. And the charioteers were struck from their senses when they saw the weariless, terrible fire above the head of Pelias's great hearted son blazing. And this the gleaming eyed goddess

Athena caused to blaze. That's wonderful. I mean, that's the that's the spotlight of the gods right there, that's the light of Athena shining through Achilles, through achilles brain and through his rage. Yeah, it's it's it's amazing. So there's some things in common with the melam or milamu. Uh, some things in common with what could later be seen in Christian halo's. You could say that the radiance here is a phenomenon of light. It's described as blazing like fire,

like a beacon of light. Uh. It surrounds the head. It is a godpower. It's conferred supernaturally, and it strikes terror in the heart of those who behold it. Wow. Yeah, I I absolutely you love that. And of course this, this especially is one of those examples that you can easily tie into ideas concerning the bicameral mind. You know, the idea that, especially in this moment, that Achilles is

you know, completely overcome by this. Uh, this this inspired rage. Um. But but it's but one interesting thing here is you would never, no matter how you're looking at Achilles here, you probably would not make the argument that Achilles is in an enlightened state, that he has no he is experiencing enlightenment. Um. And yet that is another way that you see halo or halo like um symbols used in

other artistic traditions, particularly in Buddhist traditions. Oh yeah, because there's a whole class of of halo or aureole type glows that can be found throughout Hindu and Buddhist art. Yeah, and in Tibetan art, for example, You're a form of a halo is often used to signify enlightenment and or divinity. You'll see it on the Buddha himself, but also on important monks. And I was reading a description of a twelfth century Buddha from Kurt Batterans Tibet in India Buddhist

Traditions and Transformations, two thousand fourteen. From the mat quote, he this is just his description of this particular work. Quote. He sits on a lotus, conveying ideas of purity and perhaps suggesting his radiance in a cosmic realm, and his head is encircled by a flaming halo. So b Aren't also describes a Buddhas statue that, in its original form seems to have possessed a halo that was surrounded by branches, in reference to the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha

first attained enlightenment. Yeah, and I feel like I'm not certain, but I feel like I've seen depictions of the Buddha surrounded by fire. Yeah. We see this kind of flaming nimbus in Chinese and also in Islamic traditions as well. Uh, there's also a really neat when in Japanese traditions that's referred to as the carea flame. Carea is essentially like a Japanese garuda, you know, the sub bird like magical

holy creature. Um. But the carra flame here is often represented as a kind of traditional halo behind the head, this kind of hoop design, but with portions, at least portions of it on fire. Um, and I included an image of you here, image of it here for you, Joe um described as the carua inco. Yeah, it's almost like it's like a hoop with a bonfire at each

of the cardinal directions on it. Now, if we broaden our definition from halo to also things that are more like you know, the ariolas and even uh mandola, which is a kind of halo that emanates from or behind the entire body, you know, kind of kind of in keeping with those those various auras of of the monster we described earlier, of whom baba there. There are plenty

more examples as well. We certainly see this in Christian traditions, but it's also widespread throughout the iconography of India, particularly

Buddhist images and in Hinduism. Statues are often depicted with a uh prahamandela placed above the statue and particularly the head to indicate hallowed status, and these are often very ornate, with animals and decorative designs in them uh sometimes you know, they're often crafted of shining metal with red paint, and they're signifying the object or being here as as something that should be venerated now and looking at images of the problem Mandala, one thing I really like about the

especially compared to a lot of the Christian iconography of the halo, which is often very smooth, it's just kind of a radiance or it's a smooth looking almost gold metal type disc. The problem Mandala is very textured. It's very busy, there's a lot of stuff happening in it. You you almost get more of the sense of the complexity and the almost like uh, I don't know, like

teeming ant like radiance of the lexity of the real world. Now, another very I think a pretty famous rendition of the prohab Mandala that a lot of you've probably seen is when you see statues of the dance of Shiva, there's kind of this uh, this flaming hoop that is around Shiva uh, and it is um. It's it's less it's less intricate as this, like it's not a big solid thing. It is more of a hoop. But that's probably one that a lot of you've seen before. And I believe

this is typically referred to as a as anaraja. Yeah, like a big hoop halo surrounding the entire body with the flames all around. It's almost like, I mean, it's um coming back in the other sense. So we've talked about the way that objects in the natural world like the sun, might cause you to want to frame an image of a god as something that's emanating light or has its head surrounded by a glowing or gleaming disk.

But it just occurred to me also, I mean, I wonder in what ways could you could you talk about just the practical necessities of framing the subjects of art as having an influence on on these various traditions of halos and orioles and and problem mondalas and things like that, because often these things do serve as a frame there like a visual focusing tool. Yeah, certainly they It tells you where to look at, what to focus on. I'm looking at a dance of Shiva within the not not

a raja that uh, it's got a bunch of snakes. Yeah, yeah, it again. It's just so interesting to look at how even within a particular religion or um or you know, regional tradition, over time you'll see so many different takes on it. Like artists have just always had to, uh, you know, sort of reinvent in this case the halo

or something like a halo. You know, what can I do that that sets it apart, That makes it exciting again, that makes it uh, you know, convey the power, the majesty, the you know, the rage or whatever it is, the the the enlightenment, whatever you're trying to convey through the imagery. How to keep that present? That's well put um, which which leads me to Mortal Kombat. Um. There's a just

in passing and we mentioned fictional characters earlier. There In the latest rendition, there is a goddess character named centre On and you get to change the way your characters look. And one of the things you can do is you change the various halo like things emanating around her head? Um, and uh yeah, it's it's actually quite interesting, like it's gonna be rocks, Is it gonna be jewels? Is it gonna be something you know, nature like stick like at all?

But uh, you know, ultimately they managed to work a lot of a lot of what we're talking about into that particular character design. Now, in any of those uh like w W E Build a Wrestler games, can you build a wrestler with the halo? I bet you could. I don't remember it specifically, but I bet there was some sort of hokey looking halo that you could put on a character. There's probably been somebody who's wrestled in

a uh, you know, a goofy angel costume. Now I'm well, you know now that I say that, though, I bet there's a luchador that has a halo. There are a lot of luchadors that have uh you know, Catholic imagery tied up in their masks a halo, does he well, not Santo, but there are others, Like you know, there are other Catholic themed luchadors. And I bet there's one that I'm just not thinking of that maybe mystico or somebody has some sort of Halo iconography wrapped up in

their design. That's homework for next time. Yeah, to come back and report. Yeah, so, Luca fans out there, let me know who I'm forgetting. Okay, Well, I think that's got to wrap it up for part one. Yeah. Yeah, Well this has been fun and it it lays the groundwork for the next episode, where we'll I think will inevitably touch touch on some more you know, cultural examples

and cultural ideas of halos. But we'll also get into some of the optics that we tease briefly in this episode, and of course, in the meantime, we'd love to hear from everybody. You know, what are your favorite examples of halo likenography from art history, from archaeological uh finds, etcetera. From fiction you know, or they're they're particularly particularly interesting renditions of of halo imagery that you like. I was always partial to uh um, what's his name, uh, Michael

William Kaluda's angel drawings. He would do. He had some very bizarre looking angel drawings that he created with like flaming halos and halos of eyes and the like so, I'm sure there's some other great examples out there, so send them our away in the meantime as well, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed wherever you get your podcasts. Uh there you will find core episodes science and culture on

Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'll find listener mails on Mondays, Wednesday, that's the that's the the day we bust out our short form artifact episodes. And Friday it's Weird House Cinema. That's right, you gotta catch the mall uh so huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. 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, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows