Sunday, January 13, 2008
I think this is fake. But how was it done?
This blog often deals with non-political subjects on weekends, although rarely do we focus on something this off-beat.
Popular lore holds that the Virign Mary has -- over the past few decades -- made a number of non-subjective appearances in, around and over various Coptic churches in Egypt. The most famous series of apparitions occurred in Zeitun (a Cairo suburb) in 1968-1971.
The most recent putatively paranormal occurrences took place in Assiut, in 2000, in the vicinity of the Church of St. Mark, named after the evangelist traditionally thought to have carried Christianity to Egypt. The video above was taken in Assiut.
Some background: "Copt," derived from the Greek for "Egyptian," has become an all-purpose term meaning "Egyptian Christian." The vast majority of that nation's Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, headed by Pope Shenouda III, which split from the Roman church in the fifth century.
Assiut (or Asyut) is the largest city in upper Egypt. It has a major university and a large Coptic population, although it was also known as a stronghold of Islamic militancy in the 1990s. After outbursts of violence threatened the tourism trade, the Egyptian government used draconian means to squelch extremism. Nevertheless, many Copts maintain that they have been persecuted, and in 2004, Bishop Abanob of Assiut made public claims that Islamic militants were abducting Coptic women and forcing them to convert. (The same Bishop also pronounced the Church of St Mark apparitions to be genuine.)
It is worth noting that, over the past few decades, Coptic apparitions have tended to occur at times of Christian/Islamic tension. A skeptic may find in that conjunction a possible motive for a hoax. Most Egyptian Muslims seem to appreciate the "miracles" as much as the Copts do.
I'm not sure why the phenomenon captured in the above video is labeled "Marian," since I do not see a figure of any kind. The majority of videos documenting the Assiut phenomena show flashing lights illuminating the Church of St. Mark. The flashes never last more than a split-second. At times, they seem to emanate from within the domes, although more often they illuminate the church from all sides. The light show was witnessed by thousands of people, who cheered as though witnessing a rock concert.
The video below offers a particularly striking demonstration of the phenomenon:
It is said that, during these displays (which took place almost nightly, over a period of weeks), the local authorities cut off all electrical power to the Church, and that the police made diligent efforts to determine the origin of the lights.
Alas, we do not possess any detailed, formal reporting. Any official documentation has not been translated into English. The closest thing to an objective report that I can find is this BBC dispatch.
Although the flashes obviously derive from a source much more powerful than the average still camera flashbulb, I remain skeptical. The light seems to emanate from a finite number of sources. If the phenomenon were supernatural, why would the bursts of light come from the same location repeatedly? If you study the direction of the shadows, you'll note that the building never seems illuminated from above.
However, I don't have a theory for the "cross on fire" effect seen at the beginning of our top video. Can you think of a reasonable explanation?
Incidentally, you can work up a fine night's entertainment simply by typing the word "apparition" into the Google Video search engine. The funniest example of the genre is this indescribable bit of lunatic genius. (Is it meant to be taken seriously? I have no idea!) My favorite, though, is the following superbly-done bit of Blair Witchery, best viewed all alone at 2:00 in the morning:
Boo!
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14 comments:
Um ... if you like, I could patch together something involving plasma physics, St. Elmo's Fire clinging around high, pointy things, subterranean fault lines, and the tendency of poltergeist phenomena to appear under conditions of strong emotional tension and religious hysteria. It might even be plausible.
See, for example, Charles Fort on the mysterious light phenomena associated with the Welsh religious revival of 1904-05. That event also involved things like this:
"In the English Mechanic, 86-100, Col.Markwick writes that, according to the Cambrian Natural Observer, something was seen in the sky, at Llangollen, Wales, Sept.2, 1905. It is described as an intensely black object, about two miles above the earth's surface, moving at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. Col.Markwick writes: 'Could it have been a balloon?' ...In the Cambrian Natural Observer, 1905-35--- the journal of the Astronomical Society if Wales--- it is said that, according to accounts in the newspapers, an object had appeared in the sky, at Llangollen, Wales, Sept.2, 1905. At the schoolhouse, in Vroncysylite...the thing in the sky had been examined through powerful field glasses. We are told that it had short wings, and flew, or moved, in a way described as 'casually inclining sideways.' It seemed to have four legs, and looked to be about ten feet long. According to several witnesses it looked like a huge, winged pig, with webbed feet. 'Much speculation was rife as to what the mysterious object could be.' "
St. Elmo's fire? What were the atmospheric conditions?
Did you read the comments under that blob of wax ?
No wonder we have Bush.
Flo
If you haven't seen Meetings With Remarkable Men (1979), you ought to, for a short version's explanation of how it was done. Longer versions would include a few works by P.D. Ouspensky, who was one of Gurdjieff's pupils. Here is a minimalist version: music, dance, and architecture (among other human endeavors, like psychology) have been containers and conveyances of very ancient and esoteric knowledge (pre-Xtian), learned only in esoteric schools, and exclusively through oral transmission. In MWRM, there's a mention of a Coptic Brotherhood (which Gurdjieff may have made up). Why are you skeptical, why do you think it's a fake? Do you also think Harry Houdini, Sandy Koufax, Muhammad Ali, and Tiger Woods have been fake?
St Elmo's Fire is the least unsatisfactory explanation so far, I guess. But what we see in the video does not really jibe with what I've read about the phenomenon.
Keven McClure wrote an excellent long piece about the Welsh business. He's known as a skeptic, Kevin is, but the "Egryn lights" (as they are called) seem to have stumped him.
Flo, what can I say? You are SO right...
Aitch, I saw MWRM when it came out. I was young and arrogant and impudent, and had missed a lot of sleep, so...well, I might as well confess it. I thought that picture was HILARIOUS. All I can now recall are the whirling dervishes. That, and the image of a wizened old sage saying "DIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE....to your conscious self!"
That's the point where I started laughing and could not stop.
Refresh my memory. Was there anything in that flick about atmospheric light phenomena?
Hmmm. Apparently, Asyut isn't just any old random place in Egypt. What follows is from the Whiskey Bar archives. It does seem that these kinds of bizarre metaphysical outbursts are almost invariably rooted in rapid and destabilizing social change giving rise to a fundamentalist backlash. That was true of the Salem witch trials, it was true of the 1904-05 Welsh religious revival, and it appears to be the case in Egypt as well.
Throughout the 1990s, Middle Egypt was the epicenter of a dirty war between the government and Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) – a militant offshoot of the Ikhwan: the Muslim Brotherhood. And at the epicenter of the epicenter was the city of Asyut, capital of the governorate ...
There was nothing obvious – or at least, nothing I could see from the train – that identified the city as the Ramadi of Egypt, unless it was the many bearded men in skull caps and galabayas visible on the street or waiting at the train station. But for more than 30 years Asyut played a leading role in the Islamist struggle against the “near enemy” – Egypt’s secular government, the kleptocratic relic of Nasser’s Arab socialist revolution. The Islamic Group was founded by students at the provincial university, where their spiritual and political guide, Omar Abdul-Rahman (a.k.a. the blind sheikh) was a professor of theology. On the day Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, militants tried to seize control of the city’s main police station, hoping to trigger a national revolt.
Egypt’s version of the Easter Rising was even less successful than the Dublin original, but for the next twenty years Asyut remained the movement’s main base of operations. The countryside around the city became something of a no go zone for the Egyptian police – both because of the mujhadeen and the bandits who took advantage of the situation to establish their own local sanctuaries. But the tourist attacks of the mid-90’s (particularly the 1997 Luxor massacre, carried out by a hit team from Asyut) finally goaded the Mubarak regime into abandoning its cautious policy of repression combined with negotiation. For the next few years, Middle Egypt was the target of a textbook counterinsurgency campaign – a kind of low-key version of the brutal war of attrition waged in Algeria at about the same time. It worked: By the end of the decade, most of the Islamic Group’s leaders were in prison, or dead, as were those of its chief rival, Al-Jamaat Jihad Al-Islamiyya (Islamic Jihad.) Meanwhile, the movement had split, with the mainstream Islamists announcing a unilateral ceasefire and Dr. Zawahari and the rejectionists fleeing to Afghanistan. ...
Certainly, the fact that Egypt’s most famous stronghold of Islamic fundamentalism overlaps with the country’s densest concentration of native Christians isn’t exactly calculated to produce ecumenical harmony. And it probably doesn’t help that many local Copts occupy a familiar niche, one filled in other lands and times by Jews, Chinese, Parsees, Koreans and other ethnic and religious minorities. Copts are, at least by reputation, the shop owners, goldsmiths, crop buyers and petty lenders of the local economy, roles almost guaranteed to produce conflict – in rural Egypt as much as in L.A.’s South Central District. The worst recent outbreak of violence, in the village of el-Kosheh on the other side of the Nile in 2000, reportedly started with a dispute between a Muslim customer and a Coptic storeowner. By the time it was over, 20 Copts and one Muslim were dead.
Joseph, I don't believe you about MWRM, I think you are merely pretending that you were pseudo-hip back then. Truly I don't remember anything in MWRM after G was a kid and watched the cliff crumble from the musical frequencies, and that may have been before the titles came on. Was I abducted at that moment? It felt like it, like what people say about being abducted. You tell me, amigo: What are movies if they are not "atmospheric light phenomena"?
It takes a strong enough electric field to ionize atmospheric air--or a weaker one if the right concentration of gasses are introduced--to produce the St Elmo's fire effect. The coronal discharge is easiest to create where the field is strongest at end points like ship masts or crosses on church domes.
You can create such a field with a judiciously applied tesla coil, Van de Graaff generator or similar technology that's existed since the late 19th century.
Likewise, the flashing lights could be bolt discharges across a strong electromagnetic potential. You wouldn't necessarily know the source was there, but it would always discharge in the same location. In that case, however, there'd be an accompanying noise. It's very difficult to hear over the crowd, of course.
Very interesting, solodoco. I like the way you're thinking.
However: I've seen -- and heard -- a Tesla coil in action. (They used to have one in the Griffith Park Observatory.) That damned thing was ear-splitting. Never mind the audio track in these video clips -- if a Tesla coil were in action, wouldn't the eyewitness testimony mention the accompanying roar?
Also, the reports hold that the city authorities shut off all electricity going to the church. Could you run a Tesla coil off of a gas-powered generator?
Hm.... if we're already looking at Tesla and then i guess possibly HAARP and Scalar prayerbooks :p ...then I guess my suggestion is too little and too late, but it makes me think of Thought Forms by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, which thanks to Project Gutenberg, i can link to. Specifically when they look at the thought forms created in a Church...
OK it's silly, but not as silly as blaming Emilio Estaves, Rob Lowe Demi Moore and Judd Nelson(!)
personally I'd be skeptical of the "reports" claiming electricity has been shut off
icerat: Obviously, I would like confirmation on that point. (A newsclip would do; I'm not so very picky.) But I don't see any overwhelming reason to doubt the allegation, based on what I know of the political/religious situation in Assiut.
The governor and city authorities are Muslim. The Copts and the Islamic clerics tend to be paranoid of each other -- they accuse each other of trying to convert the hoi polloi. The average Muslims tend to enjoy the spectacles. The Islamic militants have been dampened but not eradicated.
Put it all together, and the authorities have every reason to keep a lid on anything that could inflame passions.
Looking at the discharge that occurs at 33s into the video I'm absolutely certain this is produced using an electric field. Now I just have to work out the technical details, which means that I'll have to dust off my long unused physics and electronics education.
I believe that you could demonstrate this without a sustainable power supply as long as you can avoid repeated discharges between the corona and ground. If the the voltage needed to bridge that gap is higher than that needed to sustain the corona, then that shouldn't be a problem. I'm just imagining this as a capacitor with the building acting as the nonconducting barrier between positive and negative sides--or a giant battery that's slowly leaking voltage through the corona. That's an oversimplification, of course. If it's a valid one, then a man-made capacitor could power the effect, allowing you to store the needed voltage well in advance of the performance.
I wish I could say that I'm thinking about trying this out only in the interests of science, but as someone who can't help but look down on the non-skeptical I also want to rain on their parade. To do it on my budget I think I'd have to build a capacitor and charge it "Back To The Future"-style via inexpensive lightning. This may add a nice dramatic mad scientist flare to the whole thing if not a Darwin award.
zolo, I love it.
But a thought occurs to me: How could a bunch of Coptic priests (who strike me as time travellers from the 1400s) engineer a thing like this? I mean, if it's EASY, then why aren't geeky tech guys doing this sort of thing all the time around (say) Royce Hall at UCLA?
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