Conference hydra::dejavu

    See if you can locate a copy of "The Book of Imaginary Beings" by Jorge
    Luis Borge.  There is an entry on dopplegangers in it.  Here's what
    I've heard, off the top of my head:
    
    In many European cultures, to see your own double is fatal.  (Perhaps
    it means your soul has left your body.)  On the other hand, in
    Scandinavia, premonitory hauntings of the living are regarded as no
    more than curious.  (Daddy comes home, puts down his briefcase, and
    vanishes; fifteen minutes later, he does it all again but is here for
    real and doesn't vanish.  According to the tale I read, the family got
    so used to it, the mother usedit to time when to put coffee on.)
    
    The ancient Egyptians had a rather elaborate (or confused) metaphysical
    anatomy, including the "ka," which was the person's double.  At death,
    the person dissociated into at least two kinds of ghost, ba, ka, and
    perhaps other things like "shadow."  (Steve Kallis will probably know
    more about this.)
    
    Borge cites a Talmudic legend that meeting your double is a sign of
    spiritual enlightenment.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I think it has to do with time loops and stuff like that..  some places
    have stronger geomagnetic fields or something.

Re .0 (Jim):

	>My son has a project (as part of his English Literature
	>studies) involving d�ppelgangers.  The three source books	
	>are The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, and The 
	>Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.

Interestingly, none of the main subjects of _any_ of the source books involve
doppelgangers.  As Earl correctly said, a doppleganger is an exact double; this
might be an extension or complement of the "changeling" myth, where a baby is 
switched for a fairy child.

The doppelganger concept is often one tinged with menace (as modern science-
fiction equivalent was Charles Finney's _Invasion ,of the Body Snatchers_, where
the pod people eventually _replaced_ the originals, who disintegrated).

Re .1 (Earl):

    >The ancient Egyptians had a rather elaborate (or confused) metaphysical
    >anatomy, including the "ka," which was the person's double.  At death,
    >the person dissociated into at least two kinds of ghost, ba, ka, and
    >perhaps other things like "shadow."  (Steve Kallis will probably know
    >more about this.)

Well .... to simplify, the ba was the closest to what we'd think of as "the 
soul"; the ka was its spiritual double.  Upon a person's death, the ba 
generally was conducted to the halls of judgement (by Anubis, presided over by
Osiris, and recorded by Thoth); the ka took up residence in/around the body,
something like a protector.  This is well outside the doppelganger sphere, though.

There are echoes of the "it's bad luck to see your double" in modern times.
The principle that no thing can be at two different places at the same time
is a "scientific" refinement of that belief.

FWIW, most people seeing their exact double wouldn't recognize it immediately;
we're too used to seeing our reflections, which are reversed.

Steve Kallis, Jr. 

 

RE .4 (PAUL):

>Hmmm...so you're saying A. E. vanVogt was taking poetic license with us with
>the famous last line of _The World of Null-A_?? ;-) 

Absolutely; particularly since the previous Gosseyn variant was much older. :>P

One way to see what you look like as others see you is to put two (preferably
first-surface and) frameless mirrors so they form a dihedral right angle.
Look in the ("concave") "corner," and you'll see a rectified reflection.

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Another way to see yourself as others see you is to find a store with
    TV security monitors hanging from the ceiling near the camera ...
    provided the others who see you are color-blind and astigmatic.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe.

Didier

    I certainly hope that's not true! i.e: " bad luck to see your exact double"
    I have identical twins, they see their exact double all the time!! 
      

    This note has reminded me of an minor event that happened nearly 15
    years ago.  I was watching on public tv the finalists in the Nuremburg
    (sp?) Foundation Award, one of the most prestigious US piano
    competitions.  One of the 5 finalists looked so much like me it was
    like looking at an identical twin.  I watched in shock as she played
    the Liszt b minor sonata.  Interestingly, 1 or 2 years earlier I had
    become nearly addicted to that piece, and was still playing my recording 
    of it almost daily (I never became a good enough pianist to learn
    something that virtuosic).  Also interesting is that my mother had
    wanted me to be a concert pianist, but the intensity of her "stage
    mother" personality led me to refuse to play from age 8 until I was 20
    or so.  
    
    Mary

    Sometimes your doppelganger can be active and you don't know it.
    Sometimes your doppelganger can be active and you don't know it.
    
    Joel
    Joel
    

    
    Re.11
    
    Haven't I seen you someplace before?
    
    Cindy

    re: .12 (Cindy)
    
    Yes, I'm your tax bill.
    
    Joel
    

    Wouldn't your double also have a different hair style; longer, shorter,
    etc.  Also maybe a beard?  Thinner/heavier?  Why would he/she have
    to look exactly like you?  So, this would make it even harder to
    spot your double.  People have come to me many times insisting they
    saw me somewhere at a specific time when I know I wasn't there.
    Someone here at Dec said they even came up and talked to me and
    handed me some papers and the person who was supposed to be me looked
    at them like they were crazy.

    Well, I suppose you would firstly notice a "double" if there was a
    strong resemblance to yourself, ie, glasses if you wear them, skinny if
    you are also skinny. Other than that, there may countless "variations"
    of you but you would not see any resemblance because the variation is
    too different,fatter skinnier, hairstyle etc.
    
    Also, we humans are very much influenced by our physical shape. We will
    tend to take on a portion of similar mannerisms as someone with an
    identical frame and metabolism etc. 
    
    I am amused when watching the BBC Open University on TV. At times the
    scientists will almost be clones of each other.. brown clothing,
    relatively little colour coordination, a tie not quite straight,
    irregularly groomed hair, similar body language...
    
    In Holland they have "VOETGANGERS" and at times they all look the same
    to me ;^)
    
    	-Brian

    >In Holland they have "VOETGANGERS" and at times they all look the same
    >to me ;^)
    
    I assume that this condition usually occurs when you are driving.

    Jamie.

    There's also some source material in the Casteneda books (I'll leave it
    to the Literati to quote chapter and verse) about the double, dreaming
    the double and the dangers of meeting the double.
    
    Brian

    I am sorry but I refuse to believe that nature would repeat a mistake
    by making a double of me.

    BTW what happens to the doubles of well known people, like for example
    Einstien. Surely someone would have noticed another brilliant mind like
    that. 

    Jamie.

    >BTW what happens to the doubles of well known people, like for example
    >Einstien. Surely someone would have noticed another brilliant mind like
    >that. 
    
    True, but I am keeping my latest theories quiet until I can find a
    simple way to introduce them to mere mortals...
    
    ;^)
    
    No..not signing this one ;^)

    
    Re.-1
    
    Uncle Al!  You're back!  (;^{
    
    In "A Brief History Of Time", I recall Stephen Hawking writing that if
    you meet your anti-matter double, that you should not touch each other
    because you would both disappear.
    
    Cindy

	Ref: basenote ....

	Thank you for all the responses to the original 
	request.  

	My son has found several of them useful, and all 
	of them interesting.

	Jim

    I was rather amused this morning on my ride in on the tram. There was
    this guy sitting opposite me and when he picked up his book to read, I
    saw the title in big white letters; "DUBBELGANGERS" (The Dutch
    equivalent!) 
    
    Funny how the things you say come back to haunt you ;-)
    
    	-Brian

    But did he look like you?
    
    Jamie.

    -1. Thank goodness he didn't ! On a Monday morning, someone who looks
    like me! That would have been fatal!!
    
    :^)
    
    Brian

    I haven't been reading this topic very closely, but i just figured out
    what it was about.  I have seen my double's picture.   I also believe
    that I have many doubles (kinda makes me feel not quite as unique as
    we are told we are :-})  Most people have been told from time to time
    that they look like someone else, but this picture was really eerie.  
    
    I had just gone to England, while in the Air Force, to a new base and
    met some new friends.  There was a man there who said his heart stopped
    because he thought I was the girlfriend that he left behind in the
    States.  I thought this was just a line, but then I saw the picture. 
    It was a professional picture, like the ones we got at high school
    (probably WAS her high school picture) so it was very clear.  Anyway,
    she looked EXACTLY like me!  NOTHING was different, except our selves.
    
    				REALLY!
    
    					Kathleen

    ... the time streams overlap sometimes...  maybe it was you.. a
    different you

    ngaaaah!  I hadn't thought of that!
    
    
    				KKKKKKathleen

RE:                     <<< Note 1525.26 by VERGA::STANLEY >>>

�    ... the time streams overlap sometimes...  maybe it was you.. a
�    different you

    Or perhaps, far-fetched as it may seem, the simple statistics of a
    couple of billion people of the same racial characteristics are such
    that a close facial match is more than just feasible, but likely.
    
    Laurie.

    Laurie, why do you have to come up with the most complex and unlikely
    solutions when the most obvious and simple one was clearly stated.

    Jamie.

    Yes, for years, I was accused of starting trouble, fights,
    what-have-you in the old Par 3 bar and golf course in Tyngsboro Mass.
    Never having been in the place, this was confusing to me. People would
    come up to me and swear that they saw me there. Because this was in my
    immediate geographical area, I used to fear that the cops would come
    and arrest me sometime for it. That never happened, but the place
    burned down several years ago and is now a mall and theater complex and
    I've heard no more on my "EVIL TWIN". I work with a woman who is an
    exact match for my cousin who lives in New York, though.
    
    PJ

    Seems like there's Dopplegangerism (excuse the non-word) all over. Last
    night I was reading the new issue of Connoisseur magazine and there was
    an article on collecting crime memorabilia. To make a long sotry short,
    they were talking about a type of measurement (I forget the name, it
    was French, I think) they used to use because they thought no two
    people would have the same measurements until in 1903 in Leavenworth
    (?) prison two inmates were found who not only had the same
    measurements, and looked alike but one was named William West and the
    other Willie West; they were not related in anyway. Weird, huh?
    
    There were no pictures of this, but I would have loved to have seen
    the two guys.
    
    
    Marilyn

    Marilyn,
    
    I've seen pictures of the two Willie West's many times.  They don't
    look that much alike to me, but to people who are used to
    differentiating people by color of hair, eyes, and skin, they would
    look alike, since both were of predominantly African ancestry.
    
    The measurement system is called bertillionage after its inventor,
    and for anyone *but*  Bertillion himself, includes a margin for
    error of plus or minus two or three millimeters.
    
    						Ann B.