Sightings

Rippling abs or penis enlarger?

From time immemorial, people have been plagued by visions, omens, and dreams that seem to speak of future events or realities normally hidden from our tear-filled or distracted vision. And it’s still going on today.

Being devoutly superstitious as result of my fine Catholic upbringing, I pay attention to such things. So I’ve begun to collect them too, and will share examples of what I find here.The general phenomenon is called pareidolia from the Greek words meaning “besides the image”, the Man in the Moon being a familiar example. (They say the Face on Mars is another one, the fools.)

Sometimes such images mean something profound, and sometimes, as the image above suggests, they can suggest something very different indeed.

There is no doubt, however, that such out of place images are fascinating. That they are culturally biased is obvious, when one considers that in the West, people see Jesus or Mary (along with the occasional Elvis) in tortillas, or stains, or treebark. In Muslim lands where such images are forbidden, they see the name of God in Arabic.

Whether these images come from God or our own brains, who knows? In art these depictions may not always be subconscious, but may be deliberate – like Michelangelo’s famous depiction of God Creating Adam in the Sistine Chapel wherein the Supreme Being is framed in a swirling drapery that looks very much like a human brain, implying that we make God’s image in our brains.