It was just not something you expect
We know humans tend to see faces everywhere, and that Jesus-loving humans see Jesus faces everywhere, but some are so tenuous they bend the mind a little.
Like this one. It takes a lot of good will to see a face at all, and if you do consent to see it as a face…it looks like a very grumpy scowling face of someone advanced in years, which isn’t the usual idea of Jesus. (Also of course there are no actual images of Jesus taken from the life, so nobody knows what actual Jesus actually looked like. Maybe he looked like Yasser Arafat.)
It’s nice of the guy in the blue check shirt to hold up a little image of Jesus for comparison, but since the image isn’t authoritative, it doesn’t really tell us anything. Plus even if it did does the scowly face in the cabinet look anything like it? It seems most unlikely – Jesus is hardly ever portrayed as scowly, even when knocking over tables.
The story is from the Plymouth Herald, which explains with sarcastic solemnity:
A CHURCH organist believes he can see the face of Jesus in a cocktail cabinet.
Robert Burgess-Moon, aged 35, bought the item through the classified adverts section of the newspaper.
…
Mr Burgess-Moon, who lives in Whitleigh with his partner Martin, says he was watching TV one night when he got a strange feeling.
“I thought ‘There’s a face looking at me through the cabinet’,” he said.
“It looked like the face of Jesus, the image everybody has of him.
“We were quite shocked really, it was just not something you expect, it’s like a Holy Spirit cabinet now.”
The trouble is, it doesn’t look a bit like the image everybody has of him – unless “a bit like”=has whorls that can be seen as eyes and a nose and a mouth. I guess you can decide that everything that can be seen as suggesting eyes and a nose and a mouth is an image of Jesus, but it sounds quite tiring.
Back in January former submariner Andy Metcalf believed he saw the face of Jesus in a bruise on his arm.
Mr Metcalf, aged 45, said there was “some kind of message” in the mark which appeared on his left arm after he had a fight with a friend who bit him.
Earlier this months a photographer was left stunned after seeing a creepy face resembling Lord Voldemort in a firework.
The Plymouth Herald is just having a laugh there. Naughty Plymouth Herald.
H/t The Freethinker.
In the apartment my dad lived in when I was 14, the pattern on the crappy pre-fab 1970’s-ish tub/shower insert had a spot (repeated here and there) that was the perfect profile of Albert Einstein. Seriously, it was the most perfect “accidental image” I have ever seen.
Guess must have accidentally knocked over that Holy Spirit cocktail cabinet also, and quite hard too, to leave such an imprint.
Once upon a time, in another century, when my uncle was renewing some boards on the holiday hut I happened to notice that a piece of plank had two small knots in it that could be seen as a cartoon chicken. He was so impressed by my Vision that he promptly sacrificed that fine section of wood and it subsequently held an honorary central place in the two-seater outhouse.
Hehehere endeth that sermon.
Oh sorry, I thought the correct spelling for Christ was Guessus. Still got it wrong. Culture is such a thin veneer.
Until humanity gets past the influence of simulacra and pareidolia we will never make any headway and there’s no reason to think we will given our inaccurate assessment of ourselves.
Someone reported seeing the face of god in a cloud some months back. Actually the cloud bore a striking resemblance to Charles Darwin in profile. IMO, of course.
Actually, the wood grain on that door sort of reminds me of this image of Leonardo Da Vinci.
http://myhero.com/images/Science/Vinci/g1_u8514_self.jpg
Yes it does, and I had the same thought. The cabinet looks a good deal more like that than it does like any image of Jesus I’ve ever seen.
I thought the wood grain looked a bit like Aron Ra.
Door face= Saruman.
Christopher Lee is displeased with pareidolia-man.
I genuinely do not see a face in that wood grain.
Well it’s certainly not a striking resemblance. Some sworls that can look like eyebrows & eyes, a nose, & lips – that’s all I see.
Since we’re going for LOTR references: Treebeard (which would be sort of appropriate….)
Eamon Knight – Your comment makes me wish there was a starring and/or liking system here.
I’ve stared at the picture for a longer time than I care to admit and I can sort of see a face in it – IF I ignore swirls and marks that are there but don’t add to the image. So, I can sort of see a face but only if I pick and choose.
Not unlike the way some believers read their holy books to maintain their faith.
It is known that humans have neural wiring predisposed for facial recognition; for example, I can “see” more than one face if I indulge my pareidolia (I also see one in the middle of the upper dark patch).
I can just about see a face in that door (though I fear that someone might have turned Treebeard into lumber).
Here’s a much clearer picture that proves that a magical pig lives in my bathroom door https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4LBenl7GGNzZXI1ZUl3SC14LUsxLUZ5S2VCNXkyWHhZbHdJ
(And, is a Holy Spirit cabinet what one uses to store the Frangelico and Benedictine?)
#15, ha. Also, god I love Frangelico.
Could be Saruman or Rasputin or just maybe a stormtrooper’s helmet. Galileo Galilei perhaps? Or Menator* (part of the other face – seeing faces within and beside other faces here!) from the classic old Mysterious Cities of Gold’ cartoon. Also Qui-Gon Jinn and Count Dooku and quite a few of the typical bearded Russian /German / British emperors / Kaisers / Kings / Tsars / Lords / Admirals, etc .. Oh and a vomiting Guy Fawkes mask! (Level with the edge of the cabinet, small, beard doubles as projectile spew.)
With sufficient imagination, time staring and a bit of squinting! (No drink yet though I swear!)
Actually see several faces mostly really small one or two encompassing the others.
Jesus? Well can’t say what he looked like because no records known except almost certainly old – very old style – Jewish (but young coz in his thirties at peak fame although people then looked older sooner so ..?) Probably not too much like Arafat because probably much longer and darker hair and beard, certainly Semitic features not Caucasian. Given the rabbi whose followers founded Christianity was an Essene – nature-loving ascetic “hippy”~ish (?kinda?) sub-cult – probably very long unkempt hair and beard if guestimate and vague memory of historical reading / viewing serves.
@ zubanel – August 27, 2015 at 10:46 am :
Meh, only if we take the pareidolia as something serious and real rather than pleasant whimsical products of our imaginations and artistic visions. I suspect we’ll always read imaginative patterns into clouds, flames and structures of all types and varieties and there’s nothing really wrong with that – unless we say they actually do mean something and take them for being more than what they are. Neat optical illusions.
PS. Love your nymn guess you know the proper names of the stars in Libra eh? :-)
* See image here : http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2020145664/tt0122356?ref_=tt_pv_md_2
For comparison, Menator is the one with the sidebeard whiskers and symmetrical double old man mohawks on either side of his head. Major villain in what was my alltime favourite cartoon (wellequal with ‘StarBlazers’) growing up in the 1980’s. They’ve replayed it recently and I reckon it still stands up pretty well.
Now, the pig emerging from Theo Bromine’s bathroom door is both obvious and disconcerting.
I absolutely saw Lee/Saruman (and before reading Samantha’s)…
Perhaps it’s a palantir? In the rarely-seen honey oak finish?
I was thinking it looks like the muppet from Farscape.