The Incredible Likeness of Beings: Religious Simulacra and Pareidolia
Edwardson Tan
June 20, 2005
Some two years ago I saw the Virgin Mary. I was waiting for the light to turn green at the intersection of Taft and Quirino Ave. in Manila and whiled the time away by doing some cloud-gazing. Then she appeared, out of the blue (it was a sunny day). I found myself staring at the immaculate white cumulus silhouette of a lady garbed in a long flowing robe with a hood. If I had a camera then I could've hastily taken a picture. But then again she didn't stay for more than a couple of seconds. She quickly transmogrified into a man in a suit (Dick Tracey perhaps?). Moments later he too was gone and the cloud turned into a shape I couldn't associate with anything (I was never quite good in imagining things).
Had I witnessed an apparition of Mary the mother of Jesus? That is rather doubtful, even if I was once a Catholic. More likely I had merely apprehended a likeness of Mary as I've seen her depicted in sculptures and paintings, just as I identified the man in the clouds as Dick Tracey, having seen several pictures of this character in the past.
Three terms come up in a critical discussion of seeing, in this case, faces of notable Christian (supernatural) personalities in various objects and places. These are simulacrum, pareidolia, and apophenia.
Simulacrum (plural, simulacra) simply means a likeness or semblance. Thus, an effigy of a politician being hoisted by demonstrators is a simulacrum of the person.
While simulacrum refers to the likeness itself, pareidolia refers to the human tendency/ability/capacity to perceive simulacra. Here are some definitions:
- "Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable" (Explore Dictionary of Psychology)
- "Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct" (Skeptic's Dictionary)
- "Misperception of an ambiguous stimulus as something specific" (The Folklorist)
- "The erroneous or fanciful perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually ambiguous or random" (Word Spy)
The phenomenon of apophenia is a very close cousin of pareidolia. According to psychologist James Alcock, apophenia is
a common perceptual phenomenon whereby we spontaneously perceive connections and find meaningfulness in unrelated things. In other words, it involves seeing or hearing patterns where in reality, none exist.... A common example of apophenia occurs when people are in the shower, and mistakenly think that they hear their door bell or telephone ringing. The white noise produced by the shower contains a broad spectrum of sounds, including those that make up ringing bells. The ear picks out certain sounds from the spectrum, and we "detect" a pattern corresponding roughly to a bell" (Electronic Voice Phenomena).
Alcock says apophenia is "virtually synonymous" with pareidolia, the latter being
an illusion involving misperception of an external stimulus; an obscure stimulus is viewed as something clear and distinct....This perception, or misperception, does not involve conscious effort or any particular mental set, and the illusion does not vanish even when one pays closer attention to the stimulus because it is so ambiguous that it has no objective meaning at all" (ibid.).
In my case, then, I perceived a simulacrum of Mary as I remembered her depicted by the Christian culture, and my perception of her likeness is attributable to the psychological process known as pareidolia.
The following table lists some reported instances of simulacra of Christian personalities sighted in various objects and places. Click the link to see photos (when available) and read more about them. (I will add to this list as I stumble on more simulacra)
NOTES:
- Two good photos of the Clearwater, Florida building window can be seen at Perception of Faces
- This simulacrum came to the public's attention in 2005, but some individuals claim to have seen it years earlier.
- See also a cropped image of Supernova 1987a
- Thus far, to my knowledge only myself and one other person (in Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog have perceived this as a simulacrum of a deity)
While going through a number of photographs during the early 20th century the Spanish painter Salvador Dali came across a photograph which he thought was that of an unknown painting by Picasso, as it resembled a portrait done in cubist style.
Then Dali realized that it was in fact a photo of an African village. Dali then showed the photo to Andre Breton without telling him what it really was. Breton said it looked like the picture of Marquis de Sade.
The above painting is Dali's very close rendition of the original photo. It's been turned clockwise 90 degrees.
(Analysis of "Paranoiac Visage," 1935; Guthrie, Fig. 5-34 caption)
Faces in the clouds. Faces in sandwiches, clam shells, celestial images, etc. It's all in our mind or brain--we have a penchant for recognizing, with the faintest of stimulus from the environment, the likeness of our fellow humans. Owing to this inclination of ours, even painter Salvador Dali initially misidentified a photo (see inset). We are quick to see simulacra of human faces because we are predisposed to perceive them (Guthrie, p. 102-103). Carl Sagan tells us that recognizing human faces is "hardwired in our brains" and that
the pattern-recognition machinery in our brains is so efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of other detail that we sometimes see faces where there are none. We assemble disconnected patches of light and dark and unconsciously try to see a face. (Sagan, p. 45)
Even nonhumans have the propensity. Thus, "a few simple lines and dots are readily accepted as 'a face,' not only by civilized Westerners, who may be suspected of having agreed among one another on such 'sign language,' but also by babies, savages and animals" (Rudolph Arnheim, quoted in Guthrie, p. 103).
Our species has a tendency to make sense of the environment and find patterns therein even where there is none. Howard Margolis tells us that
the brain has a bias favoring seeing something rather than nothing, so that it tends to jump to a pattern that makes sense of a situation. Hence, even if there is no pattern objectively there it tries to impute one. (quoted in Guthrie, p. 42)
"We etch meaning into the meaningless" (Schick & Vaughn, p. 37). Given this and our face-recognition predisposition we are apt to read into things. We are a species that is, for better or for worse, built to express and experience pareidolia.
The drawbacks of pareidolia come to fore when the face is that of a prominent personality of one's religion since "believers tend quickly to deduce the hand of God" in these simulacra, deeming them to be apparitions of the divine (Sagan, p. 46). And so when Mary and Jesus "appear," they elicit much public attention, prompting a pilgrimage of sorts to the apparition sites. The supernatural is believed to have manifested in the profane, and so what was merely mundane is now considered sacred.
It must be noted, however, that no one knows how Jesus and Mary--taken for granted they are actual historical persons--or any preternatural entity look like. We have no photographs of them. All we have are artistic renditions of how these people may have looked like and how these supernatural entities would look should they manifest themselves. If anything, we have preconceptions of how any of them should appear, for that is the only way we can recognize them (to identify them again). With no prior notion of how they look like we wouldn't be able to tell whose face it is we're gazing at even if we can clearly see the outlines of a face, even if that face is painted by an artist. And so children are taught that this is a picture of Jesus and that statue in that cathedral is Mother Mary's. Recognition depends on a previous knowledge of how a person looks. It is contingent upon memory. What we don't have is knowledge of how Jesus and Mary and any supernatural entity in fact look like. Hence, the most that people can claim when they report these apparitions is that they have seen what appears to be the likeness of their preconceived idea of the face or silhouette of Jesus, Mary, the Devil, God, .... Nothing more.
The claim that Mary and Jesus are making themselves seen (perhaps to communicate with us) could be taken more seriously if the only simulacra that exist all involve Jesus and Mary (and other Christian personalities). Were this the case, we would have to give weight to the supernatural hypothesis. The fact is, however, simulacra have not been limited to them. People have seen the likeness of a whole assortment of people and things. For starters here is a smattering of non-religious simulacra:
- The Perception of Faces pages has a worthy collection of simulacra of humanoid faces in landscapes, rocks, and clouds.
- The Fortean Times features a number of simulacra of different organisms, including mythical beings. (Personally, the snapdragons win hands down).
- Astronomer Phil Plait has seen Lenin watching him as he was taking a shower.
- Several celestial objects have been named on the basis of what they look like: Horsehead Nebula, Mice Galaxies, Tadpole Galaxy, Eagle Nebula, among others.
- There are the geological features of planets such as Mars. There is the spine-chilling Face on Mars. And with that face goes a heart. In fact, Mars has a second heart. Moreover, the red planet sports a smiley face (I'd smile too if I had such a big heart, a pair of them at that). Other simulacra found on Mars include Kermit the Frog, Senator Ted Kennedy, an anteater, and a panda (More Faces on Mars).
- The asteroid Eros has a face and it isn't lovely at all. In fact it bears a resemblance to the terrible Freddie Kruger of the horror film Nightmare on Elm Street. Eros also has a paw print on it (Freddie's dog?).
- People have of course for a long time seen the man on the moon (even as I can't).
The formation of what we perceive as simulacra on various objects is, in all probability, just accidental. For instance what appeared on a garage door to be the image of a crucified Christ was "later found to be caused by reflections from two street lights that had merged with shadows of a bush and a real-estate sign" (Look! It's Jesus!). Here's another prosaic happenstance:
Arlene Granger saw the face of Christ on the side of an old refrigerator she had dragged out onto her porch. The image was created by the neighbor's porch light reflecting off the side of the appliance. After several thousand visitors traveled to the Tennessee site, Arlene's neighbors disconnected their porch light, ending the sightings. (Seen Jesus Lately?)
Closer scrutiny and scientific investigation of seemingly extraordinary phenomena can greatly help us understand the event. And not infrequently we eventually discover its nature and it becomes not so extraordinary anymore. To date there has not been a single phenomenon that's been determined to be preternatural. Naturalistic explanations have thus far been the most fruitful. For example, in 1996 people noticed multi-colored markings on the window panels of a bank in Clearwater, Florida bank. To a number, the pattern made by these stains resembled the outlines of a hooded woman, and the simulacrum was promptly designated as the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, even as no face was at all visible to identify who the lady being portrayed may be.
What has not been publicized is that this isn't an isolated case. Other glass panels on the building also bear similar multi-colored stains, but formed different patterns. The one on the west wall for instance has been called the Buddha. Suspiciously all these stains appear where the water sprinklers are, thus pointing to water being sprayed as the probable culprit. Indeed a chemist who's analyzed glass for 40 years concludes that "the iridescent stain had been produced by water deposits combined with weathering, yielding a chemical reaction like that often seen on old bottles." (Rorschach Icons) Rather than an apparition of the Virgin Mary, it is much more likely that the simulacra of Mary and Buddha (and others that may be apprehended thereat) were created accidentally by purely natural causes. With a brain that's primed for pareidolia, just a slight semblance of a female humanoid figure from a thin-film interference pattern created by water deposits on the windows was all that was necessary for people in a Christian culture to latch onto this 35-foot tall outdoor "water painting" and declare it to be that of Mary. (Spill a drop of diesel on a pool of water, do this a number of times, and you'll almost surely obtain various interesting simulacra with the same iridescent colors).
Upon closer inspection some simulacra may cease to exist. For example, there is the hawk that bears Jesus' face on its back, but whose feather markings cease to look like a face once a better image is available. A famous (and infamous) and captivating example is the "Face on Mars," a simulacrum of a face which appeared on one of the photos snapped by the Viking probe in 1976. After a much higher resolution image became available a quarter of a century later through the Mars Global Surveyor satellite, the face that's unmistakably there just vanishes, and the Cydonia feature becomes clearly apprehended for what it really is--simply another a nondescript mesa, just as the scientists have been telling us.
In the following case, the object on the beach seems to resemble a man in deep prayer or meditation. However, walking toward the "person" and changing one's angle of approach drastically alter the figure that's perceived, and the thing is finally recognized for what it really is--driftwood.
One problem with perceiving simulacra in objects such as a tortillas, sandwiches, or potato chips is that it all depends which side is designated "up" or "top." This is all arbitrary, and it is not improbable that the individuals who discovered the simulacra did so because the object was oriented properly for the face or figure to jump out at them, so to speak, and be apprehended by them. Had the sandwich or chip been held at different angle, it probably would've ended up in someone's mouth rather than in a display box or in e-bay to be auctioned off. Thus, rather than see a face in the Mars Cydonia mesa, author Martin Gardner sees "a nude torso of a woman, complete with dark pubic hair, small breasts, and an enlarged belly button slightly off center" (Schick and Vaughn, p. 38). There is no "right side up" to the Viking photo or for that matter any image of celestial objects or portion thereof. Rotate the photo, as Gardner did, and you can read other things into it. Dali's amusing experience bears remembering.
Salvador Dali's Paranoiac Visage, 1935. Painting of an African village, from a photograph original
You still keep seeing the "face," don't you? That's normal. "Psychologists point out that once we see a particular image in the clouds or smoke, we often find it difficult to see anything else, even if we want to" (Schick & Vaughn, p. 37).
James Randi employed this same simple procedure with an Italian woman who claimed to be able to see things in pictures she took of herself. Because she snapped the shots at very close range, under inadequate lighting conditions, and handled the camera quite unsteadily--jabbing the shutter--the Polaroid prints that came out were sorely underexposed and blurry. Since the instant prints were in a square format Randi was, surreptiously, able to rotate 180 degrees at least one photo after Mrs. Petrignani had given her initial interpretation of it. After going through a set of photos, Randi picked out the now rotated print and asked her to tell him again what she saw in it. This time around Petrignani gave a different interpretation, i.e., she saw a totally different scene in the same photo. (Randi, p. 294-295) Thus, this woman was essentially doing a quasi Rorschach test with the dark, blurry photos she had taken.
The bottom line is: Just because something looks like the face of a person doesn't mean that it really is a face. And when we see the likeness of a deity or religious figure in some object, it doesn't mean that a supernatural manifestation or event has occurred. What seems so may not be so. We have to be skeptical and critical when something extraordinary pops up, and pull out and engage Occam's Razor. A naturalistic explanation for the phenomenon will almost certainly suffice and be the correct one.
Print References
- Guthrie, Stewart. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Randi, James. 1982. Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.
- Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine.
- Schick, Theodore, Jr. and Lewis Vaughn. 1999. How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
For Further Reading Online:
- Believing is Seeing, by Robert Novella
- Rorschach Icons, by Joe Nickell