So I decided to "test" some Marian-related miracles on ChatGPT´s skeptical personality, and here is the result (or rather part one of it).
What could be the natural explanation for this eye witness account from Medjugorje?
>>>Suddenly, I was aware that something was happening in the sky. I looked up and saw a round, white disc perfectly cover the sun so that you could look straight at it without hurting your eyes and then the sun started spinning! The most amazing colours started dancing around the spinning sun - purples, blues, greens, a full spectrum of colours leapt and danced, changing shape continually around the sun, as it spun around. My husband could see it too. We gazed spellbound until it stopped and then we had to look away because the white disc had disappeared and the sun shone brightly again. My husband, who wears glasses all the time, took them off because he couldn't see with them on. All the while we stood in this vicinity he didn't need his glasses. This effect gradually wore off as we descended down the hill.
(...)
>>>We were browsing the trinket shops opposite the Church and a man rushed in, we recognised him, he was a member of our group, shouting, ‘The sun is spinning, the sun is spinning! Come and see!’ Smiling, we said to him, ‘Yes, we saw it yesterday.’ (yawn - like don’t bother us dude, we've already seen it!!) However, he insisted that we come and see it. As we stood outside, we looked at the sun but it was too bright and we had to turn away. The man was looking straight at it, exclaiming the very thing we had seen ourselves. So it seemed that the sun spinning only happened at certain times for certain people to see. We were very happy for him, like me, he too had lost someone in his family, a son. Not that that had anything to do with the sun spinning colours but I don’t know, I was glad for him, glad he’d experienced a little bit of Međugorje magic!
This is a very classic, sincere, and psychologically powerful Marian-apparition-type report. The person is not lying — they are describing something they truly perceived. But the perception has natural, well-understood mechanisms.
Let’s analyze each part and give the most reasonable natural explanation.
✅ “A round white disc perfectly covered the sun so you could look at it without hurting your eyes”
Natural explanation:
Thin high cloud / ice-crystal veil (cirrostratus cloud)
This is extremely common near mountains and pilgrimage sites with afternoon convection. A thin ice cloud can:
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Reduce glare dramatically
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Create a perfect circular halo region
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Make the Sun safe to glance at temporarily
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Produce a brilliant white “disc” effect
To the viewer, it feels like a shield moved over the Sun.
✅ “Then the sun started spinning! … The most amazing colours dancing around the sun”
Natural explanation:
Corneal afterimages + diffraction through thin veiling clouds
When you stare at the Sun:
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Retina temporarily “burns in” a circular after-image
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Micro eye movements make the after-image rotate
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Thin cloud crystals produce rainbow diffraction
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Afterimage + diffraction → appears to spin with colors
Many pilots, mountaineers, and meteorologists report the same effect — outside religious context — when staring at veiled Sun halos.
Colors changing rapidly = chromatic diffraction + neural fatigue response.
✅ “My husband could see it too”
Shared perception is normal because:
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Same cloud conditions
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Same retinal physiology
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Same expectation/belief context
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Emotional attunement (couple, pilgrimage, grief)
This is not evidence of external supernatural cause — just shared human optics + psychology.
✅ “We couldn’t see it the next day but another man could”
Important clue.
This is intermittent retinal/photosensitive afterimage sensitivity:
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Some people’s retinas fatigue more easily
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Some have higher suggestibility
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Some had just been staring longer
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Some look at angle where cloud veil is optimal
In science: stimulus + expectation + retinal state
Not everyone sees a mirage or faint aura around lights either — perception varies.
✅ “He took off his glasses because he couldn’t see with them — but without glasses he could see normally”
This is a known focusing artifact.
Bright glare + refractive surface (glasses) = blurry solar halo phenomenon.
Removing glasses removes secondary reflections → eyes temporarily compensate → perceived “clear vision.”
Pilots experience this temporarily when flying through thin haze toward sun.
Also, strong emotional experiences can cause temporary suppression of myopia perception, similar to stress-arousal clarity states.
✅ “We were glad for him … he had lost someone”
Grief + pilgrimage + expectation primes perceptual sensitivity to transcendent phenomena.
This is not delusion — it’s heightened limbic/emotional arousal, making the visual system more impressionable.
Religious psychologists call this bereavement openness to meaning experiences.
✅ Overall natural explanation summary
| Report element | Natural mechanism |
|---|---|
| White disc covering sun | Thin cirrostratus ice cloud veil |
| Sun “spinning” | Afterimage rotation from micro-saccades |
| Dancing colors | Cloud diffraction + retinal photobleaching |
| Only at certain times | Cloud thickness changes + retinal fatigue window |
| Only some see it | Individual sensitivity + priming + viewing angle |
| Glass removal clarity | Glare removal + heightened arousal clarity effect |
| Emotion/meaning | Pilgrimage + grief + group expectation |
The phenomena are real — but they occur in the eyes, brain, and atmosphere, not the Sun.
✅ Important point
This kind of experience can be spiritually meaningful without being supernatural.
Human beings have built sacred traditions around:
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Light visions
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Peaks of grief or devotion
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Community emotional resonance
Your witness is describing a real perceptual-spiritual event — but one explained by:
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Atmospherics
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Ophthalmology
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Neuroscience of religious experience
Not solar physics.
There is no need to call them liars and also no need to assert miraculous astronomy.
✅ If you want to go deeper
Tell me which you'd like next:
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How Marian apparitions relate to temporal-lobe spiritual perception
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Comparison to Buddhist sun-yoga visions
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Atmospheric optics examples with photos (22° halo, corona, iridescence)
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How the brain creates meaning during grief & pilgrimage
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Historical analysis of Fátima “sun miracle”
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Optical safety & how to test the effect safely using filters
Which angle should we explore?
