Villagers See Face of Hindu Deity on Turtle’s Back
November 12, 2009
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Here’s something that you may not know about me — I’m a sucker for stories where people see religious images in their everyday lives. Most of the sightings I’ve heard about over the years have been in the United States and Christian-based visages. We’re talking Jesus’ face on a truck window, the Virgin Mary’s in a moldy ceiling stain – that kind of thing. I love these stories, partly because I’m fascinated by how seriously some people take it, and partly because most of the time the image really does look like the icon of record. And you never hear about anyone seeing Ernest Borgnine in an oil stain on the garage floor, so there’s that.
Some have been better than others — the Virgin Mary toast nabbed a cool $28,000 at auction, and that didn’t even include butter and jam! My main problem with most of these though, is that while the images generally resemble what we believe these religious icons look like, chances are they aren’t close to what they really looked like, which throws a wrinkle in the whole divine vision thing. I remember reading this story a few years ago, where some folks used forensic anthropology to construct a picture of what Jesus really looked like. Pretty cool, huh? He kind of looks more like a Middle Eastern Homer Simpson than Jim Caviezel or Willem Dafoe.
All of this brings me to the inspiration for today’s post, a vision story from India. Villagers there found a sea turtle that has symbols on its back that resemble Lord Jagannath, not to be confused with former WWF wrestler Lord Juggernaut. And once again, the image actually does resemble Jagannath, who consequently looks nothing like Jim Caviezel or Willem Dafoe. Apparently the villagers are refusing to give up the protected sea turtle, so we’ll see what happens.
My guess? Ebay.
Read:
History of India
Movies Quiz
How the Papacy Works
Comments
11 Responses to “Villagers See Face of Hindu Deity on Turtle’s Back”
Wow…the man with Jesus on his truck is from the same city as I am. How embarassing. The only other mention of my city was in the moonshine podcast where Josh talks about people living in buses. I’m going to have to move now.
Hey guys. Love your podcasts so much, I included a shout out in a podcaste I had to make for my class. See it here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IGRQ_cGveQ
Thanks for being downright awesome!!!
Even I might be inspired to get religious if it had turned out that Jesus or a deity looked like Jim Caviezel…rrowww! Ernest Borgnine or Willem Dafoe….not so much.
Hey Chuck –
If I wasn’t surfing the web at work right now, I’d take your photo off the website and render it in Photoshop so it appeared on a bearclaw or in the shadows on the surface of Mars. Instead, I’ll just write about it. Hooray for passive dreaming!
Love the show – it brings eager anticipation to my otherwise all-too-mundane Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Cheers.
dear Mr. Bryant,
I am a fan of your podcast and have even caused my friends to get addicted to the podcast. we are regular listeners and think we have some ideas for you.
1. area 51 the elite government testing facility in nevada
2. alien abductions: they are actually blamed on sleep paralysis like some fans said they had
3. how black holes and worm holes work
4. how the JFK assassination worked
5 how the face on mars worked
6 how german paranormal experiments worked (world war 2)
i would love if you could do some of these topics love the show especially the moon and fluoride episodes. if you did this you would be loved and praised by the nerd and geek community
your loyal fan… andrew
Mac and Charlie might have something to say about it.
This post reminds me of the movie Jesus of Montreal. In the movie a theater director gets hired to put on a passion play. But being a theater director the one put on is rather avant-garde. One of the stations is an archeological dig that points out that Jesus would have been middle eastern. Needless to say that those sort of things get the folks in the movie into trouble.
Yes. Great points Chuck. Who really knows if Jesus had six-pack abs. I saw David Sedaris give a talk a while back. He made reference to this topic and suggested that for all we know Jesus was a big fat dude with no hair on top but with curtains of it on the sides and in the back. In essence, comb-over Jesus. The conclusion was that nobody wanted to hang the image of comb-over Jesus next to their baby’s crib. The result – relatively hot Jesus.
This kind of stuff happends all the time in Mexico with the Virgin of Guadalupe. People then go and worship her at these sights. One lady I met said that she saw a bright light pouring out of her shower head and then the image of the Virgin was printed on her shower wall in soap scum. Lots of people came to see it.

















Tired of your boring old turtle shell that is sans a deity? Put some fruit juice in there!
For your health.