I just happened to look at the 3-d animation of Sigvatr's Arena and noticed that there's a rotating blue disc of light floating above. What's interesting, however, is that the disc has text on it - Hebrew text (and a Jewish star, to boot!). Google says it's taken from two different places in Psalms:

Psalms 69, 23: "Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake" (the King James translation really is abominable).

Psalms 115, 5: "Eyes they have but they see not".

Other than the reference to eyesight, these two verses are not even connected - the first implores God to punish bad guys, the second refers to the stone idols of the pagans.

The question, of course, is what these two verses have to do with Sigvatr's Arena. Sounds like a conspiracy...

P.S. inside the disc there is more text, but I can't recognize the language. Anyone?

pics?

heh I never noticed. I'll have to talk to the animator.

I guess s/he just looked for a picture of a blue shining disc, like in the card art, and randomly hit this one. It makes for a fun Easter-egg for us Hebrew speakers.

Zavia:
Sorry, I didn't think of taking a screen shot, and I don't have a copy of the card, so I can't generate the image at will (I happened to see it when I looked at someone else's game).
If anyone does play this, please take a moment to blow up the map when you play it, and give us a picture!

*That Yaron fella is on to us and our evil conspiracy, we better talk about Aristotle to trick his mind*

I am not entirely sure why the reference to sight is not enough. Ancient Greek philosophy is filled with references to eysight as a figure/trope related to reason. 'The decision [of the virtuous person] rests with perception', Aristotle says in a passage from the Nicomachean Ethics. What he means, I believe, is that the virtuous person 'sees' what is right or wrong to do, believe or feel. This is not the actual (physical) seeing of rightness and wrongness, but more like 'the mind's eye'. But people do tend to talk about this as a kind of 'perceptual capacity'. (References can be given if needed.)

So this is, in a sense (no pun intended!), enough at least to merit some kind of connection between the verses here, i.e., that there is a long and established tradition of using these figues/tropes and that this language can be found almost everywhere, including Scripture. Whether it fits the card or whether the artist had anything like this in mind... Well, maybe there will be an answer soon

*And the enlightened shall prevail*

Hmm, I'm not sure you can apply Aristotlean logic to the Psalms - they were allegedly written centuries before Aristotle's time (and in a completely different cultural context).

The holy symbol, however, is much later, so it's certainly possible.

My (completely uninformed) guess: the symbol was made by a cabalist trying to inflict blindness on his enemies, so he just copied two verses about eyesight (or lack thereof), ignoring the original contexts...