Halo

“ To all these trivial things and countless others, the tone of their voices—soft, almost murmuring, with a sort of delighted gentleness—gave a high, sweet importance, a halo that neither for the world would have dislodged from where it hovered. ”

“ The halo that crowned our heads scared away the shades as we passed, like impalpable dust. Far above us the suns of all the worlds shone with scarce so much light as the twinkling fireflies of my native land. I was soaring towards the fields of air where, round about Paradise, the bodies of light are in closer array, where the azure is easy to pass through, where worlds innumerable spring like flowers in a meadow. ”

“ The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a little rapture, until once more the little lane curved wilfully, and they were walking north. ”

“ It is not our actual Country, but its halo, that we love—the halo each one of us has made for it. There are evenings under the moon, dewy mornings, late afternoons, when over field and wood, over moor or park or town, unearthliness hovers; so, over our native land hovers a glamour that burns brighter when we are absent, and flames up in glory above her when we see her driven or hard pressed. No man yet knows the depths of our love for these islands of the blessed. ”

“ It was like a singing flame. It burned continually, and from it every fire in Ireland was kindled. The glow of it reached up to the mountain tops. The glow of it reached under the forest trees. The glow of it shot into the darkness and made a halo of light far beyond the three waves of Mananaun. The mis-shapen things of the darkness came to the edge of the halo. They sunned themselves in it. They got strength from it. They began to build a habitation for themselves in the dark waters. They took shapes to themselves, and dark cunning wisdom. Balor the One-Eyed was their king. ”

“ Each pedestrian could see no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow, whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing a component of the night’s mist; and the spirit of the scene, and of the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with the spirit of wine. ”

“ The figures stand upright, with an air of inviolable repose, beneath canopies like that of the Angel-sundial, heavenly Jerusalems, miniature Zions. Their hands are glued to their sides, their drapery falls, in most cases, in straight parallel folds; a halo is, or has been, behind the head of each. ”

“ He was covering his halo with his hair; it was a rainbowed halo, too, a bump the size of a hen’s egg, of all colors, upon his right temple, sending a red streak down to his cheek-bone.
In feeling, he was more Atlas than ever, for now it seemed as if he had a lightning-shot globe upon his head, in the shape of that heroic bump, which at times spun so hard through space that it threatened to spin him round with it. But he managed to keep his feet, and the delirious throbs of pain only added to his excitement--and to the thrill of the foreman’s words in his swelling ear: “It was a good line. ”

“ Still it brightened, and now assumed the form of a ring of purest radiance, shining above his forehead; if a circle of pearls could be fire, they would appear thus. It was visible for several minutes; and whether it then vanished, or whether the eyes of the onlookers were unable any longer to discern it, was doubtful. Perhaps it was a thing which only persons of good will and pure heats could have seen at all.
They went out in silence; but the meaning of the halo sank deep into the lovers’ souls, and its light guided their life. ”

“ The halo he wears illumines the whole world. I cannot endure its radiance even a thousand miles away, so I must hurry and get out of the way!” And with that he stepped into a cloud and disappeared. The Master of the Heavens then told the mandarin what had happened, and added: “Fortunately you did not see the God of War face to face! Whoever does not possess the greatest virtue and the greatest wisdom, would be melted by the red [72] glow of his halo.” So saying he gave him a pill of the elixir of life to eat, and his blind eye gradually regained its sight. ”

“ Why, even when the solar system was still no more than a pale nebula, forming, in the ether, a fragile halo, whose circumference was a thousand times greater than the orbit of Neptune, we had all of us, for ages past, been fully conditioned, determined and irrevocably destined, and your responsibility, my dear child, my responsibility, Chevalier's, and that of all men, had been, not mitigated, but abolished beforehand. ”

“ A halo may form round the sun as well as the moon ... but a halo is more frequently noticed round the moon for the reason that we are too much dazzled by the sun’s light to distinguish faint colours surrounding its disc, and to see them it is necessary to look through smoked glass, or view the sun by reflection from the surface of still water, by which its brilliancy is very much reduced.”... ”

“ In physical science, a halo is a luminous circle, surrounding the sun or moon, with various auxiliary phenomena, and formed by the reflection and refraction of light by ice-crystals suspended in the atmosphere. ”

“ Circumscribed Halo.—A halo formed by the junction of the upper and lower tangent arcs of the halo of 22 degrees, when the luminary is about 40 degrees or more above the horizon. As the altitude of the luminary increases, the circumscribed halo gradually assumes an elliptical form and finally merges into the halo of 22 degrees. ”

“ I just brought my cloud stuff this time."
"Well," said the Forecaster, "suppose you put one of those in here as an example of cirro-stratus. There couldn't be a halo without it. All the upper clouds are made of ice crystals and it is the refraction of the sunlight through these ice crystals that forms most halos. By the way, boys, don't confuse a halo with a corona. They're quite easy to tell apart, because a halo, unless it is one of the unusual white ones, always has red as the inside [Pg 153] color and a corona always has the red on the outside." ”

“ She had used real gold dust in the paint for the halo. Michael was generous to her, and he laughed when she told him that she spent some of the money he gave her on expensive paint for an icon. The idea of a woman who painted amused him, like the bear that danced in the Hippodrome.
Beyond the gold of the halo was the ocher of the desert and, standing lonely over the saint's right shoulder, the pillar on which he had lived in penance for fifteen years, the pillar that had given him his name—Simon Stylites. ”

“ Those not spiritually evolved have a halo of a very different color! Artists of old painted a golden halo around the pictures of saints because the artists actually saw the halo, otherwise he would not have painted it. The halo is merely a very small part of the human aura, but is more easily seen because it is usually much brighter. ”

“ A halo of wonder encircles everything that he sees; he turns his light gradually upon the flowers and insects and grasses at his feet so as to disturb nothing in the mysterious processes of their existence. ”

“ And if the Hail be a little flatted, as it often is, the Light transmitted may grow so strong at a little less distance than that of 26 Degrees, as to form a Halo about the Sun or Moon; which Halo, as often as the Hail-stones are duly figured may be colour'd, and then it must be red within by the least refrangible Rays, and blue without by the most refrangible ones, especially if the Hail-stones have opake Globules of Snow in their center to intercept the Light within the Halo (as Hugenius has observ'd) and make the inside thereof more distinctly defined than it would otherwise be. ”

“ The trier wears the halo, and therefore, the halo grows as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king. This aspiration to do perfectly,—is it not religion practicalized? If we use the name of God, is this not God's presence becoming actor in us? No need, then, of being "great" to share that aspiration and that presence. The smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as well as the great ocean. Even so the humblest man or woman can live splendidly! ”

“ A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions which chafed body and soul. ”

“ The light sent through the window was too dim and too imperfectly diffused within my vessel to be serviceable, but for some time I put out the electric lamp in order that its diffused light should not impair my view of this exquisite spectacle. As thrown, after several reflections, upon the mirror destined afterwards to measure the image of the solar disc, the apparition of the halo was of course much less bright, and its outer boundary ill defined for accurate measurement. ”

“ The magical moon, with attendant stars, suddenly looking up with mild lustre from a window in the dark earth. I observed also, the same night, a halo about my shadow in the moonlight, which I referred to the accidentally lighter color of the surrounding surface, but on transferring it to the darkest patches I saw the halo there equally. It serves to make the outline of the shadow more distinct.
But now for last night. A few fire-flies in the meadow. Do they shine, though invisibly, by day? ”

“ The lunar halo is one of the phenomena thus deceptive to the view. We see all around the moon a circle or arc of light, nearly white, though sometimes faint [116] tints of colour can be perceived in it, while the space within the circle seems manifestly darker than the space outside. The appearance of the halo as seen under favourable conditions is shown in fig. 11, on the next page. In this country the dark space round the moon is not generally so well seen as in countries where the air is clearer. ”

“ Its eyes were never off me, I have never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks at a time, unaccountably.
"In total dark it is visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its eyes. It is all visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of red embers, and which accompanies it in all its movements.
"When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and in the same way. ”

“ Perhaps as near as a halo seems to girdle the light which paints it, when the vapor that bears it is most dense, at such distance round the Point a circle of fire was whirling so swiftly that it would have surpassed that motion which with most speed girds the world ”

“ It was about 60° of a circle of a smaller periphery than the halo, and well defined. The part nearest the sun was found to be 48° 17 ́ distant from that luminary, so that it did not come in contact with the halo, but the points of their nearest approach were 25° 37 ́ apart. The halo was indistinct, except in the vicinity of the mock suns, where it was well defined. Time of making observations half past three o'clock, P.M. Thermometer at the same time 5°, Barometer 28.88, atmosphere hazy, thin light clouds about sun, fresh N.W. wind. ”

“ At noon, for the first time, they could admire a magnificent solar phenomenon, a halo with two parhelia; the doctor observed it, and took its exact dimensions; the exterior bow was only visible over an extent of thirty degrees on each side of its horizontal diameter; the two images of the sun were remarkably clear; the colours of the luminous bows proceeded from inside to outside, and were red, yellow, green, and very light blue—in short, white light without any assignable exterior limit. ”

“ The halo diminishes in brightness from the centre outwards, and is probably due to the diffraction of light. Under favourable conditions four concentric rings may be seen round the shadow of the observer’s head, the outermost, which seldom appears, having an angular radius of 40°. ”

“ A halo round the moon, an obscuration of the constellation of Cancer, the pallor of a planet in opposition to the moon, the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter, and other movements and phenomena of heavenly bodies were supposed to foretell the approach of disease for man and beast. ”

“ Now it is not improbable that the halo may contribute directly to
this discussion. We can evidently attack
240
the biotite with a known number of alpha rays and determine how
many are required to produce a certain intensity of darkening,
corresponding to that of a halo with a nucleus of measurable
dimensions. On certain assumptions, which are correct within
defined limits, we can calculate, as I have done above, the
number of rays concerned in forming the halo. In doing so we
assume some value for the age of the halo. Let us take the
maximum radioactive value. ”

“ A halo round the moon arises because the air on all sides extends to the moon; or because it equably raises upwards the currents from the moon so high as to impress a circle upon the cloudy mass and not to separate it altogether; or because it raises the air which immediately surrounds the moon symmetrically from all sides up to a circumference round her and there forms a thick ring. ”

“ Halma, hal′ma, n. a game played on a checkered board of 256 squares, by two or four persons, with thirteen to nineteen men each—also Hoppity: in the Greek pentathlon the long jump with weights in the hands. [Gr.,—hallesthai, to leap.]
Halmaturus, hal-ma-tū′rus, n. a genus of kangaroos.
Halo, hā′lō, n. a luminous circle round the sun or moon, due to the presence of ice-crystals in the air: (paint.) the bright ring round the heads of saints, hence any ideal or sentimental glory attaching to a thing:—pl. Halos (hā′lōz) .—v.t. to surround with a halo.—n. ”