Our Lady of Perpetual Ice

Woman #1: Oh, that looks just like the Virgin Mary. Helen*, do you see that?

Woman #2: Oh! Ya.

Woman #1: Harry, Harry, look! Doesn’t that look like the Virgin Mary?

Man: No, I’m not religious.

I didn’t laugh out loud. I’m more polite than that. I didn’t even look behind me to figure out who was having the conversation. I just made sure Ben took a picture of the “virgin” after they moved on. That’s why we were at the Apostle Island National Lakeshore after all, to take pictures of ice.

Picture of icicles hanging from a cliffside. Outline has vaguely human proportions.
Image by Ben Zvan. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Harry’s statement was such a perfect description of culturally primed pareidolia. I didn’t see a virgin when I looked at the ice either, even though I was able to identify which formation she had to mean. I saw something else.

The angel of death released from the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pretty form.
I would see that, though. I’d seen it just a couple weeks before. Still, I think mine is closer to the actual shape of the ice. I don’t remember “Our Lady” walking around in ragged robes.

What are you primed to see?

* Names may have been changed or may be accurate. I don’t actually remember what names were used.

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Our Lady of Perpetual Ice
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19 thoughts on “Our Lady of Perpetual Ice

  1. 7

    Well, since I live in a sufficiently catholic country, yeah, with lots of imagination and being told to look for Mary, The ice formation vaguely resembles those images where her headscarf flows over her shoulders and she holds her hands downwards, plams turned to the front.
    Wirthouut the prompting I go for Cthulu as well

  2. 8

    i could tell you what it looks like to me, but it would be far from lady-like-or-dainty to do so, and I am currently scrambling for dainty and lady-like after a horrific cold (indelicately, let’s say I’ve been less than properly groomed for more than a few days) so I am going to not-share.

    Which just means that I have an eye for the indelicate. Chalk it up to motherhood.

    s.

  3. 9

    I see a pre-Victorian gentleman (Ben Franklin, maybe) with a cane in his right hand and a small lantern in his left. He’s looking slightly to his left in a very formal pose.

  4. 16

    It looks like a vaguely irritated jellyfish.

    I’m not sure how a jellyfish would be vaguely irritated, or how we would tell if it was. Actually, I’m not sure what, if any, emotional states a jellyfish is capable of, to begin with.

  5. 17

    I dunno, looks just cold to me, a good reason to stay home in front of my HDTV or behind my Kindle, under a cozy blanket. But then it’s been a long winter already.

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