Adventures in pareidolia

Steve Gilliard explains that the winkin' blue-eyed Jesus of Hoboken is a seasonal manifestation of the endemic pareidolia of North Jersey:

This is not something special. This is the annual sighting of religious omens in North Jersey. In various years it has been toast, windows, bleeding statues. It seems to happen every summer, and it happens to draw the locals, mostly elderly Italian ladies and hispanic immigrants. Having worked in North Jersey for a decade, I no longer pay attention to these stories, because, like muggy days, frustrating Mets games and street fairs, they are part and parcel of every New York summer.

If people want to stop by some house and see a statue with an open eye or bleed or see the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast, well, that's just North Jersey.

The winking statue has gotten some play, but next year it will be something else. Some other manifestation of Catholic idolitry. It wouldn't be a summer without it.

Pareidolia, aka "seeing stuff in stuff" is by no means unique to North Jersey. Folklorist Mike Pinney of Texas A&M university has recently uploaded a huge collection of pareidolic images and simulacra from around the world.

Highlights include:

• Rose petal of Christ
• Ent Jesus
• Tree Elvis, et al. [Ed: looks more like Johnny Cash, IMO.]
• Rasputin in a kitten's ear

Comments

[battlepanda]

Lenin of the Shower Curtain

[Craig Shergold]

I have in process a design patent for a waffle press that creates the face of Jesus in every waffle.

from some damn wiki:
Jesus often is associated with a Talmudic character called Joshua ben-Pantera -- literally, "Joshua, son of Pantera." ("Jesus" is a Greek transliteration of Joshua.) A story told by the second-century satirist Celsus and preserved in Origen's "Contra Celsus" alleges that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Pantera. Interestingly, history does record one Tiberias Julius Abdes Pantera, a Sidonian archer who served in Palestine about the time of Jesus' birth and buried in Bingerbruck, Germany. While this story does little to clear up any theological debates, it may shed some light on the name of the popular metal band.

[Steve]

Have you seen the online winking Jesus? www.winkingjesus.com
Now THIS is truly a miracle!

[epistemology]

That was a prettty good Lenin in the shower curtain, though it looked more like Freud to me.

Good point about idolatory. What ever happened to the 2nd Commandment? The one about not making graven images?

[mmcc]

I can't see anything in that jesus tree--it just looks like it's melting.

epi--of course you're not supposed to make images. but if they just show up in your toast, well, what can you do?

[David]

Our Lady of the Underpass - The Slideshow

http://www.nbc5.com/slideshow/4388328/detail.html?qs=;s=1;w=320

[epistemology]

mmcc:

I was referring to the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyyan Buddahs. Shouldn't the American Taliban have been celebrating the destruction of these false idols?

And the winking Jersey Jesus is a graven image.

[Gordo]

Since our brains are designed to find patterns, even when they don't exist, we can find all sorts of images in clouds, tree bark, etc.

So why can people readily accept that the patterns in the clouds are constructs of the mind, but insist that a stain on an underpass is a sign of the divine?

I think that there is a need for miracles to serve as evidence of one's supernatural beliefs. Without miracles, what is the evidence that the Bible is true, and the Koran is false? If we can't find miracles, why can't the atheists be right?

[R. Mildred]

Yeah but if they started blowing up graven images the american catholic church would be introuble, as would most protestant churchs, and the giant stone idols that have the "make no graven image" rule written on them in the first place, would also have to go.

Then the statue of liberty who is a anthropomorphic personification of an ameircan ideal would have to go, DC would be much duller, mount rushmore might have to go too...

And what would we do with the President's King of the World Statue (which depicts a crucified George Bush being held forward by Karl Rove on the prow of the titanic, in Pure Gold) of Stubborn Christian Victory against the heathen hordes?

Also I think it was actually "worship no graven idol" graven idols are okay to make, it's the worship that makes it bad in the eyes of the lord.

[epistemology]

R. Mildred:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven above, or that
is in the earth beneath, or that is in
the water under the earth: Thou shalt
not bow down thyself to them, nor
serve them: for I the Lord thy God am
a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them
that hate me; And showing mercy
unto thousands of them that love me,
and keep my commandments.

In most of the Islamic world, depictions of even the human form is considered sacrilege. Not just worshiping the image, but making the image.

[Bostoniangirl]

Okay, I don't have anything much useful to say. That rodent did look like Rasputin. I've been having trouble posting to typepad blogs. I hope this goes through.

[mudkitty]

The whole "Thou shalt not put other gods before me" thing implies that there are other gods.

[Dan McEnroe]

When I first looked at "Ent Jesus" I saw a woman with huge boobies. Then it kinda looked like Jesus with his arms crossed. What does that say about me?

[ismael cavazos]

I find images in patterns all the time.

Check out my art:

http://www.scribblism.com

here's the breakdown:
http://www.abstractextractionism.com