Here is a twitter thread I am very certain you will enjoy:
You must certainly click through and read the whole thing. Although some of the photos are more dramatic than this one I’ve linked here, I have to say, this somewhat more subtle phenomenon strikes me as especially beautiful.
What would this be in an SFF world? Aliens, obviously; that’s one possibility. But in fantasy? I’m considering creating a fantasy phenomenon that would look like this because it’s just so amazingly cool to look at.
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The Pillars of the Sky!
Mary beat me to it. Also “they don’t exist” isn’t quite right. But it surely is not an optical phenomenon I’d seen before. I *have* seen Floating Islands though, while driving across the Bonneville salt flats on I-80.
I’d seen pictures of sun pillars on apod.nasa.gov, but never such a lot, in lots of colours.
And never in real life. It looks quite magical!
They exist just like rainbows exist.
Mary, I thought exactly the same thing. Narrow view of “existence,” that one.
Putting the image in a fantasy context, I’m not sure why I think they look more like people from Earth ascending/being drawn up rather than celestials descending from the sky, but that’s what I see.
Rachel–
Oh yeah, I thought of the Five Gods world too, where Cazaril sees souls ascending, then slipping across to heaven.