title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The requirements from the Swedish Air Force dictated Mach 2 capability at high altitude and Mach 1 at low altitude. At the same time, short-field take-off and landing performance was also required. Since the Viggen was developed initially as an attack aircraft instead of an interceptor (the Saab 35 Draken fulfilled this role), some emphasis was given to low fuel consumption at high subsonic speeds at low level for good range. With turbofan engines just emerging and indicating better fuel economy for cruise than turbojet engines, the former was favoured, since the latter were mainly limited by metallurgy development resulting from limitations in turbine temperature. Mechanical simplicity was also favoured, so the air intakes were simple D-section types with boundary layer splitter plates, while the fixed inlet had no adjustable geometry for improved pressure recovery. The disadvantage was that the required engine would be very large. In fact, at the time of introduction, it was the second largest fighter engine, with a length of 6.1 m and 1.35 m diameter; only the Tumansky R-15 was bigger.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Saab had originally wanted the Rolls-Royce Medway as the Viggen's powerplant. Owing to the cancellation of the Medway, the JT8D was instead chosen as the basis for modification. The RM8 became the second operational afterburning turbofan in the world, and also the first equipped with a thrust reverser. According to aviation author Christopher Chant, the RM8 has the distinction of being the first engine to be fitted with both an afterburner and a thrust reverser. It had a bypass ratio of around 1.07:1 in the RM8A, which reduced to 0.97:1 in the RM8B. The RM8A was the most powerful fighter engine in the late 1960s.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The AJ, SF, SH and SK 37 models of the Viggen had the first version of the RM8A engine with uprated internal components from the JT8D that it was based on. Thrust was 65.6 kN dry and 115.6 kN with afterburner. For the JA 37, the RM8A was developed into the RM8B, achieved by adding a third low-pressure compressor stage over the preceding model, increasing the turbine inlet temperature and fuel diffusion within the combustion chamber. Thrust is 72.1 kN dry and 125.0 kN with afterburner. Owing to the increased length and weight of the RM8B engine over its predecessor, the airframe of the JA 37 was stretched in order to accommodate it. Onboard electrical power was provided by a 60 kVA generator. In the event of an in-flight engine failure, emergency power was provided by an automatically deploying ram air turbine (RAT), capable of generating 6 kVA.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: In the early 1960s, it was decided that the Viggen should be a single seat aircraft, Saab having recognized that advanced avionics such as a digital central computer and a head-up display could perform the workload of a human navigator and entirely replace the need for a second crew member. A use of a digital computer would reduce or entirely replace analogue systems, which had proven to be expensive to maintain and alter, as had been the case of the earlier Draken, in addition to accuracy issues. The computer, called CK 37 (central calculator 37), was the world's first airborne computer to use integrated circuits. Developed by Saab, the CK 37 was the integrating unit for all electronic equipment to support the pilot, performing functions such as navigation, flight control, and weapon-aiming calculations. In practice, the CK 37 proved to be more reliable than predicted.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: On later variants of the Viggen, from the JA37 onwards, it was decided to adopt a newer and more powerful computer, the American CD107, which was license-manufactured and further developed by Saab. The computing techniques and concepts, such as distributed computing, went beyond use of the Viggen, in addition to civil-orientated derivatives, it directly contributed to the computers used on board the Viggen's replacement, the Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Various electronic countermeasures (ECM) were installed upon the Viggen, these were typically provided by Satt Elektronik. The ECM systems consisted of a Satt Elektronik radar warning receiver system in the wings and the tail, an optional Ericsson Erijammer pod and BOZ-100 chaff/flare pod. Infrared warning receivers were also later installed. In total, the electronics weighed 600 kg, a substantial amount for a single-engine fighter of the era.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The aircraft's principal sensor was an Ericsson PS 37 X-band monopulse radar, which used a mechanically steered parabolic reflector housed in a radome. This radar performed several functions, including air-to-ground and air-to-air telemetry, search, track, terrain-avoidance and cartography. On the JA 37 fighter-interceptor model, the PS 37 radar was replaced by the more capable Ericsson PS 46 X-band pulse repetition frequency, which had an all-weather look-down/shoot-down capability reportedly in excess of 50 kilometers and continuous-wave illumination for the Skyflash missiles as well as the ability to track two targets while scanning. According to Ericsson, it had a 50 per cent chance of spotting a low-flying McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II within a single scan and possessed a high level of resistance to interference from ECM.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Saab and Honeywell co-developed an automatic digital flight control system for the JA 37 Viggen, which has been claimed to be the first such system in a production aircraft. To assist low altitude flight, a Honeywell radar altimeter with transmitter and receiver in the canard wings was used. The aircraft was also fitted with a Decca Type 72 Doppler navigation radar. TILS (Tactical Instrument Landing System), a landing-aid system made by Cutler-Hammer AIL, improved landing accuracy to 30 m from the threshold on the short highway airbase system. In order to effectively enforce Sweden's air space, the Viggen was integrated with STRIL 60 national defence system. The JA 37 Viggen was also equipped with a Garrett AiResearch digital Central Air Data Computer, modified from the unit used upon the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Initially, only a single reconnaissance (S) variant was considered, but fitting cameras as well as a radar proved to be impossible. The SH 37 maritime strike and reconnaissance variant was very similar to the AJ 37 and differed mainly in a maritime-optimized PS 371/A radar with longer range, a cockpit air-data camera and tape recorder for mission analysis. "Red Baron" and a SKa 24D 600 mm LOROP camera pods were usually carried on the fuselage pylons. The centreline fuel tank was converted for a short period of time to a camera pod with two Recon/Optical CA-200 1676 mm cameras. In addition to the reconnaissance equipment, the SH 37 could also use all weapons for the AJ 37. For the photographic SF version, the radar in the nose was omitted in favour of four SKa 24C 120 mm and two SKa 31 570 mm photographic cameras as well as one 57 mm VKa 702 Infrared linescan camera and air-data camera; all of which were integrated with and controlled by the aircraft's central computer. Additional equipment, such as more camera pods, fuel tanks, ECM pods, and self-defense air-to-air missiles could also be carried upon the fuselage pylons.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The fighter-interceptor version of the Viggen, the JA 37, featured various avionics changes, including the extensive use of digital electronics alongside mechanical technology. In 1985, the "fighter link" went into service, permitting encrypted data communication between four fighters; this enabled one fighter to "paint" an airborne enemy with guidance radar for the Skyflash missiles of the three other fighters in a group while they had their search and guidance radar switched off. This system was operational ten years before any other country's. The autopilot was also slaved to the radar control to obtain better precision firing the cannon. Once in service, the Viggen's software was regularly updated every 18 months. In 1983, the mean time between failures (MTBF) was reported as 100 hours, a very high reliability level for the generation of avionics systems involved.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The displays in the original cockpit were all of the traditional analogue/mechanical type with the exception of an electronic head-up display (HUD), which Saab has claimed makes the Viggen easier to fly, especially at low altitudes during air-to-ground strike missions. Unusually for a 1970s fighter, the JA 37 variant of the Viggen featured three multi-purpose cathode-ray tube (CRT) display screens were fitted within the cockpit, in a system called AP-12, developed by Saab and Ericsson. These displays would be used to display processed radar information, computer-generated maps, flight and weapons data, along with steering cues during precision landings.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Between 1989 and 1992, the AP-12 display system was subject to a substantial upgrade. In 1999, a new tactical liquid-crystal display (LCD) system derived from the Saab JAS 39 Gripen, which replaced the CRT-based AP-12 system, began flight tests with the Swedish Air Force. On the twin-seat SK 37 trainer, the rear cockpit used by the instructor is only fitted with conventional instrumentation and lacks a HUD, computer controls and other features.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The ejection seat was the Raketstol 37 (literally; Rocket chair 37) and was the last Saab designed seat in service. A derivative of the Saab 105 trainer seat, the seat was optimized for low altitude, high speed ejections. Once activated by the pilot via triggers built into the armrests (on twin-seat models, the occupant of the forward cockpit position is able to initiate the ejection of both seats), the ejection sequence is automated, including the removal of the canopy; in the event of a malfunction, a reserve trigger can be activated. A combined parachute and seat harness is used, which features a barometric interlock to appropriately release the occupant and harness from the seat during the ejection sequence, a manual override handle is also provided for this function.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: There were dedicated warning caption panels each side of the pilot's legs. On the right console panel were numerous dedicated controls and indicators, including weapons and missile controls, nav panel, oxygen on/off, windshield de-fogging, IFF control, lighting controls. Situated on the left console panel were radar controls, canopy handle, landing gear handle, radio controls and the cabin pressure indicator. As per then-standard practice within the Swedish Air Force, all cockpit instrumentation and labeling were in Swedish.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: With the performance requirements to a large extent dictating the choice of the engine, the airframe turned out to be quite bulky compared to contemporary slimmer designs with turbojet engines. The first prototypes had a straight midsection fuselage that was later improved with a "hump" on the dorsal spine for reduced drag according to the area rule. The wing had the shape of a double delta with a dogtooth added to improve longitudinal stability at high incidence angles.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: A consequence of a tailless delta design, such as in the Viggen, is that the elevons, which replace more conventional control surfaces, operate with a small effective moment arm; their use adds substantial weight to the aircraft at takeoff and landing. Hinged leading edge surfaces can help counteract this, but an even more effective tool is the canard. The canard surfaces were positioned behind the inlets and placed slightly higher than the main wing, with a higher stall angle than the wing, and were equipped with flaps. The lifting canard surfaces act as a vortex generator for the main wing and therefore provide more lift. An added benefit was that they also improved roll stability in the transonic region. The canard flaps were deployed in conjunction with the landing gear to provide even more lift for takeoff and landing.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: To withstand the stresses of no-flare landings, Saab made extensive use of aluminium in the airframe of the Viggen, which was constructed using a bonded metal honeycomb structure; the entire rear section of the fuselage, downstream of the engine nozzle, formed a heat-resistant ring composed of titanium. The main landing gear, manufactured by Motala Verkstad, was highly strengthened as well; each leg held two small wheels fitted with anti-skid brakes placed in a tandem arrangement. The design requirements imposed by the large anti-ship missiles employed upon the Viggen necessitated that both the undercarriage and vertical stabilizer be quite tall. To accommodate this, and to allow the main landing gear to be stowed outside of the wing root, the undercarriage legs shortened during retraction. The vertical stabilizer could also be folded via an actuator in order that the aircraft could be stored in smaller hangars, hardened aircraft shelters, and underground hangars, the latter of which were employed by the Swedish military to limit the damage of preemptive attacks.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The six tanks in the fuselage and wings held approximately 5,000 litres of fuel with an additional 1,500 litres in an external drop tank. The specific fuel consumption was only 0.63 for cruise speeds (fuel consumption was rated 18 mg/Ns dry and 71 with afterburner). The Viggen's consumption was around 15 kg/s at maximum afterburner. A pair of inlets placed alongside the cockpit feed air to the engine; simple fixed-geometry inlets were adopted, similar to the Draken, except for being larger and standing clear of the fuselage.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: A weapons load of up to 7,000 kg could be accommodated on nine hardpoints: one centreline pylon, two fuselage pylons, two inner and two outer wing pylons and two pylons behind the wing landing gear. The centreline pylon was the only pylon plumbed for carrying an external fuel tank, and was usually so occupied. A pair of air-to-air missiles were intended to be placed on the outboard wing pylons, which were more lightweight than the other attachment points. The pylons behind the landing gear were not used until the JA 37D modification when BOL countermeasure dispensers were fitted to them. Ground crew would enter the munitions fitted into the aircraft's central computer using a load-selector panel, which would automatically choose the correct values for fire control, fuel consumption, and other calculations.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The AJ 37 was typically equipped with a total of seven hardpoints, three underneath the fuselage and two under each wing, a further two wing-mounted hardpoints could be optionally fitted but this facility was rarely used. Various munitions could be carried, such as several types of rockets: the 135 mm M56GP 4 kg armour-piercing, the M56B with 6.9 kg of high explosives, and the M70 with a 4.7 kg HEAT warhead.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The AJ 37 was designed to carry two RB 04E anti-ship missiles on the inboard wing pylons with an optional third missile on the centreline pylon. The RB-04 was a relatively simple cruise missile that was further developed to become the more capable RBS-15, also integrated on the Viggen. An optional load consisted of two RB 05 air-to-surface missiles on the fuselage pylons. The RB 05 was later replaced by AGM-65 Maverick (Swedish designation "RB 75") television-guided missiles. In a ground-attack role, a combination of unguided 135 mm rockets in sextuple pods and 120 kg fragmentation bombs on quadruple-mounts could be used. Other armaments include explosive mines, and 30 mm ADEN cannon pods with 150 rounds of ammunition on the inboard wing pylons.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Self-defence measures included various ECM systems, as well as either the AIM-4 Falcon (Swedish designation "RB 28") or AIM-9 Sidewinder (Swedish designation "RB 24") air-to-air missiles. At one point, the AJ 37 Viggen was under consideration as a carrier of both a Swedish nuclear weapon and chemical weapons, although no nuclear or chemical weapons were ultimately adopted by Sweden.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The JA 37 fighter interceptor, introduced in 1979, featured the Ericsson PS 46/A radar, which was capable of guiding the medium-range semi-active radar homing RB 71 "Skyflash" air-to-air missiles. Both the RB 71 and the PS 46/A radar were designed to provide the Viggen with a look-down/shoot-down capability and to engage targets at beyond visual range distances. The JA 37 could carry up to two RB 71s on the inner wing pylons; in a typical air defense loadout, these would typically have been combined with four RB 24J air-to-air missiles, a more capable and newer version of the Sidewinder missile than employed on earlier Viggen variants.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Following the evaluation of several alternative cannons, including the British ADEN cannon, the American M61 Vulcan, and French DEFA cannon, an Oerlikon KCA 30mm cannon was selected for the JA 37. The KCA was carried, along with 126 rounds of ammunition, in a conformal pod under the fuselage. The firing rate of the cannon was selectable at 22 or 11 rounds per second. It fired the same cartridge as the GAU-8, reportedly 50% heavier shells at a higher velocity than the ADEN cannon, resulting in six and a half times the kinetic energy on impact, and was effective up to 2,000 meters. This, in conjunction with the fire control system, allowed air-to-air engagements at longer range than other fighters.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Perhaps the most important improvement was the expanded STRIL datalink entered service in 1982-1985 that allowed not only ground control-aircraft communication, but also up to for aircraft simultaneously regardless if airborne or on the ground meaning flight control could be passed around as desired. Datalink information was displayed on the Horizontal Situation Display (HUD) and a tactical display, the latter using link symbology that could be overlaid with an electronic map on a multifunction display (MFD).


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: In July 1971, the first production AJ 37 Viggen was delivered to the Swedish Air Force. The Skaraborg Wing (F 7) became the first wing to receive deliveries of both the single-seat AJ 37 attack model and the twin-seat SK 37 training model of the Viggen, where upon the type began to replace their existing Lansen aircraft. Conversion training to pilot the Viggen involved a minimum of 450 flight hours performed on an initial mixture of the Saab 105, the Lansen, and finally the Viggen itself; dedicated Viggen simulators were also used, the latter of which was seen as a decisive factor in the ease of conversion to the type.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: In October 1973, Skaraborg Wing was reportedly close to achieving full operational effectiveness; by May 1974, the Swedish Air Force had two operational squadrons using the Viggen along with a third squadron in the final process of achieving that status. By 1974, the safety and reliability levels of the Viggen were reportedly above expectations, despite the overall complexity and relative newness of the aircraft. In practice, one of the most significant issues encountered with the Viggen during low-level flight, as extensively performed during a typical attack mission profile, was the threat posed by birds; as such, the Swedish Air Force paid close attention to their migratory patterns.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: During the later half of the 1970s and into the 1980s, the introduction of various variants of the Viggen proceeded; these included the SK 37, a two-seat operational-conversion trainer, introduced in 1972, the SF 37, an overland reconnaissance model, introduced in 1977, and the SH 37, a maritime reconnaissance version, introduced in 1975. By September 1980s, the JA 37 fighter-interceptor model of the Viggen was introduced, Bråvalla Wing (F 13) being the first wing of the Swedish Air Force to convert to the new type. The Viggen went on to become Sweden's primary air defense platform for many years.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: The Viggen was designed to be simple to maintain, even by conscripted flight line mechanics with limited technical training. A single Viggen could be maintained by a team of five conscripts under the supervision of a single chief mechanic. Standard turnaround, including refueling and rearming, took less than ten minutes to perform; while an engine replacement took four hours. Over the long term, the Viggen required 22-man hours per flight hour of maintenance work at the depot level, and nine-man hours per flight hour at the front line.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: By the mid-1980s, Swedish Viggen fighter pilots, using the predictable patterns of Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird routine flights over the Baltic Sea, had managed to achieve radar lock-on with radar on the SR-71 on numerous occasions. Despite heavy jamming from the SR-71, target illumination was maintained by feeding target location from ground-based radars to the fire-control computer in the Viggen. The most common site for the lock-on to occur was the thin stretch of international airspace between Öland and Gotland that the SR-71 used on the return flight. The Viggen is the only aircraft to get an acknowledged radar lock on the SR-71.<ref name = "I&F6/05"></ref>


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: By 1994, the replacement of the Viggen by the later and more advanced Saab JAS 39 Gripen was in progress, the type being progressively phased out as greater numbers of Gripen aircraft were delivered. On 25 November 2005, the last front line Viggen was formally retired by the Swedish Air Force. A few aircraft were kept in an operational condition for electronic warfare training against the Gripen at F 17M in Linköping; the last of these Viggen flights took place in June 2007.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Although Saab offered the Viggen for sale worldwide, and was the subject of a heavy marketing campaign in both European and developing countries during the 1970s, ultimately no export sales were made.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: During the 1970s, Saab proposed a new variant of the Viggen, designated the Saab 37E Eurofighter (unrelated to the later Eurofighter Typhoon), for the United States Air Force Air Combat Fighter competition to find a replacement for the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. The 37E Eurofighter competed against Dassault-Breguet's proposed Mirage F1M-53, the SEPECAT Jaguar, Northrop's P-530 Cobra (on which the YF-17 was based), and General Dynamics's YF-16; on 13 January 1975, United States Secretary of the Air Force John L. McLucas announced the YF-16 had been selected as the winner of the ACF competition.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: In 1978, the United States blocked a major prospective sale to India, which would have involved selling a number of Swedish-built Viggens in addition to a licensed production agreement under which the Viggen would also have been built in India, by not issuing an export license for the RM8/JT8D engine and other American technologies used. India later opted to procure the SEPECAT Jaguar in its place. According to leaked United States diplomatic cables, India's interest in the Viggen was reported to be entirely due to Rajiv Gandhi's influence, and had alleged have been without any input from the Indian Air Force. According to author Chris Smith, the Viggen had been the favoured candidate for the Indian Air Force prior to the deal being blocked by the US.


title: Saab 37 Viggen

text: Very little is publicized about Sweden's military air accidents and incidents, however, an incident resulting in a fatality of a Saab 37 pilot during a reconnaissance fly-by of Russian nuclear-powered battlecruiser "Pyotr Velikiy" occurred on 16 October, 1996, and is the last known operational fatality of 19 total known fatalities (in over 50 accidents) involving the Saab 37 Viggen in its almost-40 years operational history.


title: Zach Cherry

text: Zach Cherry is an American actor and improv comedian. He is known for his role as Dylan George on the Apple TV+ series "Severance".


title: Zach Cherry

text: Zach Cherry was born in . He attended Princeton Day School and Amherst College. He began taking improv lessons in 2011, and was placed on a house team at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York in 2017.


title: Zach Cherry

text: In 2018, Cherry played a lead role in season one of Netflix's series "You", as bookstore clerk Ethan Russell.


title: Zach Cherry

text: In 2022, Cherry had a lead role in the 2022 Apple TV+ series "Severance". He played Wolf on FOX's "Duncanville", Pete's manager Kevin on "Crashing" (2017–2019), and Norman on "I Feel Bad" (2018). He has also had minor roles on "Succession", "Living with Yourself", and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings".


title: Zach Cherry

text: In August 2022, it was announced that Cherry and actress Ellie Kemper would host the sixth season of "The Great American Baking Show", an American adaptation of the baking reality TV show "The Great British Bake Off". The season will air on streaming television service The Roku Channel.


title: Camera obscura

text: A camera obscura (; ) is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole.


title: Camera obscura

text: "Camera obscura" can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in which an exterior image is projected inside. Camera obscuras with a lens in the opening have been used since the second half of the 16th century and became popular as aids for drawing and painting. The concept was developed further into the photographic camera in the first half of the 19th century, when camera obscura boxes were used to expose light-sensitive materials to the projected image.


title: Camera obscura

text: The camera obscura was used to study eclipses without the risk of damaging the eyes by looking directly into the sun. As a drawing aid, it allowed tracing the projected image to produce a highly accurate representation, and was especially appreciated as an easy way to achieve proper graphical perspective.


title: Camera obscura

text: Before the term "camera obscura" was first used in 1604, other terms were used to refer to the devices: "cubiculum obscurum", "cubiculum tenebricosum", "conclave obscurum", and "locus obscurus".


title: Camera obscura

text: A camera obscura without a lens but with a very small hole is sometimes referred to as a pinhole camera, although this more often refers to simple (homemade) lensless cameras where photographic film or photographic paper is used.


title: Camera obscura

text: Rays of light travel in straight lines and change when they are reflected and partly absorbed by an object, retaining information about the color and brightness of the surface of that object. Lighted objects reflect rays of light in all directions. A small enough opening in a barrier admits only the rays that travel directly from different points in the scene on the other side, and these rays form an image of that scene where they reach a surface opposite from the opening.


title: Camera obscura

text: The human eye (and those of animals such as birds, fish, reptiles etc.) works much like a camera obscura with an opening (pupil), a convex lens, and a surface where the image is formed (retina). Some cameras obscura use a concave mirror for a focusing effect similar to a convex lens.


title: Camera obscura

text: A camera obscura consists of a box, tent, or room with a small hole in one side or the top. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where the scene is reproduced, inverted (upside-down) and reversed (left to right), but with color and perspective preserved.


title: Camera obscura

text: To produce a reasonably clear projected image, the aperture is typically smaller than 1/100th the distance to the screen.


title: Camera obscura

text: As the pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but dimmer. With a too small pinhole, however, the sharpness worsens, due to diffraction. Optimum sharpness is attained with an aperture diameter approximately equal to the geometric mean of the wavelength of light and the distance to the screen.


title: Camera obscura

text: In practice, camera obscuras use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.


title: Camera obscura

text: If the image is caught on a translucent screen, it can be viewed from the back so that it is no longer reversed (but still upside-down). Using mirrors, it is possible to project a right-side-up image. The projection can also be displayed on a horizontal surface (e.g., a table). The 18th-century overhead version in tents used mirrors inside a kind of periscope on the top of the tent.


title: Camera obscura

text: The box-type camera obscura often has an angled mirror projecting an upright image onto tracing paper placed on its glass top. Although the image is viewed from the back, it is reversed by the mirror.


title: Camera obscura

text: There are theories that occurrences of camera obscura effects (through tiny holes in tents or in screens of animal hide) inspired paleolithic cave paintings. Distortions in the shapes of animals in many paleolithic cave artworks might be inspired by distortions seen when the surface on which an image was projected was not straight or not in the right angle.


title: Camera obscura

text: It is also suggested that camera obscura projections could have played a role in Neolithic structures.


title: Camera obscura

text: Perforated gnomons projecting a pinhole image of the sun were described in the Chinese "Zhoubi Suanjing" writings (1046 BC–256 BC with material added until circa 220 AD). The location of the bright circle can be measured to tell the time of day and year. In Arab and European cultures its invention was much later attributed to Egyptian astronomer and mathematician Ibn Yunus around 1000 AD.


title: Camera obscura

text: One of the earliest known written records of a pinhole camera for camera obscura effect is found in the Chinese text called "Mozi", dated to the 4th century BC, traditionally ascribed to and named for Mozi (circa 470 BC-circa 391 BC), a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohist School of Logic. These writings explain how the image in a "collecting-point" or "treasure house" is inverted by an intersecting point (pinhole) that collects the (rays of) light. Light coming from the foot of an illuminated person were partly hidden below (i.e., strike below the pinhole) and partly formed the top of the image. Rays from the head were partly hidden above (i.e., strike above the pinhole) and partly formed the lower part of the image.


title: Camera obscura

text: Another early account is provided by Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC), or possibly a follower of his ideas. Similar to the later 11th-century Arab scientist Alhazen, Aristotle is also thought to have used camera obscura for observing solar eclipses. Camera obscura is touched upon as a subject in Aristotle's work "Problems – Book XV", asking: and further on:


title: Camera obscura

text: Many philosophers and scientists of the Western world pondered this question before it was accepted that the circular and crescent-shapes described in the "problem" were pinhole image projections of the sun. Although a projected image has the shape of the aperture when the light source, aperture and projection plane are close together, the projected image has the shape of the light source when they are farther apart.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his book "Optics" (circa 300 BC, surviving in later manuscripts from around 1000 AD), Euclid proposed mathematical descriptions of vision with "lines drawn directly from the eye pass through a space of great extent" and "the form of the space included in our vision is a cone, with its apex in the eye and its base at the limits of our vision." Later versions of the text, like Ignazio Danti's 1573 annotated translation, would add a description of the camera obscura principle to demonstrate Euclid's ideas.


title: Camera obscura

text: In the 6th century, the Byzantine-Greek mathematician and architect Anthemius of Tralles (most famous as a co-architect of the Hagia Sophia) experimented with effects related to the camera obscura. Anthemius had a sophisticated understanding of the involved optics, as demonstrated by a light-ray diagram he constructed in 555 AD.


title: Camera obscura

text: In the 10th century Yu Chao-Lung supposedly projected images of pagoda models through a small hole onto a screen to study directions and divergence of rays of light.


title: Camera obscura

text: Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham (known in the West by the Latinised Alhazen) (965–1040) extensively studied the camera obscura phenomenon in the early 11th century.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his treatise "On the shape of the eclipse" he provided the first experimental and mathematical analysis of the phenomenon.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his "Book of Optics" (circa 1027), Ibn al-Haytham explained that rays of light travel in straight lines and are distinguished by the body that reflected the rays, writing:


title: Camera obscura

text: He described a "dark chamber", and experimented with light passing through small pinholes, using three adjacent candles and seeing the effects on the wall after placing a cutout between the candles and the wall.


title: Camera obscura

text: Ibn al-Haytham also analyzed the rays of sunlight and concluded that they made a conic shape where they met at the hole, forming another conic shape reverse to the first one from the hole to the opposite wall in the dark room. Latin translations of his writings on optics were very influential in Europe from about 1200 onward. Among those he inspired were Witelo, John Peckham, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes and Johannes Kepler.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his 1088 book, "Dream Pool Essays", the Song Dynasty Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) compared the focal point of a concave burning-mirror and the "collecting" hole of camera obscura phenomena to an oar in a rowlock to explain how the images were inverted:


title: Camera obscura

text: Shen Kuo also responded to a statement of Duan Chengshi in "Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang" written in about 840 that the inverted image of a Chinese pagoda tower beside a seashore, was inverted because it was reflected by the sea: "This is nonsense. It is a normal principle that the image is inverted after passing through the small hole."


title: Camera obscura

text: English statesman and scholastic philosopher Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175 – 9 October 1253) was one of the earliest Europeans who commented on the camera obscura.


title: Camera obscura

text: English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 1219/20 – c. 1292) falsely stated in his "De Multiplicatione Specerium" (1267) that an image projected through a square aperture was round because light would travel in spherical waves and therefore assumed its natural shape after passing through a hole. He is also credited with a manuscript that advised to study solar eclipses safely by observing the rays passing through some round hole and studying the spot of light they form on a surface.


title: Camera obscura

text: A picture of a three-tiered camera obscura (see illustration) has been attributed to Bacon, but the source for this attribution is not given. A very similar picture is found in Athanasius Kircher's "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae" (1646).


title: Camera obscura

text: Polish friar, theologian, physicist, mathematician and natural philosopher Erazmus Ciołek Witelo (also known as Vitello Thuringopolonis and by many different spellings of the name "Witelo") wrote about the camera obscura in his very influential treatise "Perspectiva" (circa 1270–1278), which was largely based on Ibn al-Haytham's work.


title: Camera obscura

text: English archbishop and scholar John Peckham (circa 1230 – 1292) wrote about the camera obscura in his "Tractatus de Perspectiva" (circa 1269–1277) and "Perspectiva communis" (circa 1277–79), falsely arguing that light gradually forms the circular shape after passing through the aperture. His writings were influenced by Roger Bacon.


title: Camera obscura

text: At the end of the 13th century, Arnaldus de Villa Nova is credited with using a camera obscura to project live performances for entertainment.


title: Camera obscura

text: French astronomer Guillaume de Saint-Cloud suggested in his 1292 work "Almanach Planetarum" that the eccentricity of the sun could be determined with the camera obscura from the inverse proportion between the distances and the apparent solar diameters at apogee and perigee.


title: Camera obscura

text: Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1267–1319) described in his 1309 work "Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir" ("The Revision of the Optics") how he experimented with a glass sphere filled with water in a camera obscura with a controlled aperture and found that the colors of the rainbow are phenomena of the decomposition of light.


title: Camera obscura

text: French Jewish philosopher, mathematician, physicist and astronomer/astrologer Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344) (also known as Gersonides or Leo de Balneolis) made several astronomical observations using a camera obscura with a Jacob's staff, describing methods to measure the angular diameters of the sun, the moon and the bright planets Venus and Jupiter. He determined the eccentricity of the sun based on his observations of the summer and winter solstices in 1334. Levi also noted how the size of the aperture determined the size of the projected image. He wrote about his findings in Hebrew in his treatise "Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem" ("The Wars of the Lord") Book V Chapters 5 and 9.


title: Camera obscura

text: Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), familiar with the work of Alhazen in Latin translation, and after an extensive study of optics and human vision, wrote the oldest known clear description of the camera obscura in mirror writing in a notebook in 1502, later published in the collection "Codex Atlanticus" (translated from Latin):


title: Camera obscura

text: These descriptions, however, would remain unknown until Venturi deciphered and published them in 1797.


title: Camera obscura

text: Da Vinci was clearly very interested in the camera obscura: over the years he drew circa 270 diagrams of the camera obscura in his notebooks . He systematically experimented with various shapes and sizes of apertures and with multiple apertures (1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 24, 28 and 32). He compared the working of the eye to that of the camera obscura and seemed especially interested in its capability of demonstrating basic principles of optics: the inversion of images through the pinhole or pupil, the non-interference of images and the fact that images are "all in all and all in every part".


title: Camera obscura

text: The oldest known published drawing of a camera obscura is found in Dutch physician, mathematician and instrument maker Gemma Frisius’ 1545 book "De Radio Astronomica et Geometrica", in which he described and illustrated how he used the camera obscura to study the solar eclipse of 24 January 1544


title: Camera obscura

text: Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano described using a glass disc – probably a biconvex lens – in a camera obscura in his 1550 book "De subtilitate, vol. I, Libri IV". He suggested to use it to view "what takes place in the street when the sun shines" and advised to use a very white sheet of paper as a projection screen so the colours wouldn't be dull.


title: Camera obscura

text: Sicilian mathematician and astronomer Francesco Maurolico (1494–1575) answered Aristotle's problem how sunlight that shines through rectangular holes can form round spots of light or crescent-shaped spots during an eclipse in his treatise "Photismi de lumine et umbra" (1521–1554). However this wasn't published before 1611, after Johannes Kepler had published similar findings of his own.


title: Camera obscura

text: Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta described the camera obscura, which he called "obscurum cubiculum", in the 1558 first edition of his book series "Magia Naturalis". He suggested to use a convex lens to project the image onto paper and to use this as a drawing aid. Della Porta compared the human eye to the camera obscura: "For the image is let into the eye through the eyeball just as here through the window". The popularity of Della Porta's books helped spread knowledge of the camera obscura.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his 1567 work "La Pratica della Perspettiva" Venetian nobleman Daniele Barbaro (1513-1570) described using a camera obscura with a biconvex lens as a drawing aid and points out that the picture is more vivid if the lens is covered as much as to leave a circumference in the middle.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his influential and meticulously annotated Latin edition of the works of Ibn al-Haytham and Witelo, (1572), German mathematician Friedrich Risner proposed a portable camera obscura drawing aid; a lightweight wooden hut with lenses in each of its four walls that would project images of the surroundings on a paper cube in the middle. The construction could be carried on two wooden poles. A very similar setup was illustrated in 1645 in Athanasius Kircher's influential book "Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae".


title: Camera obscura

text: Around 1575 Italian Dominican priest, mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer Ignazio Danti designed a camera obscura gnomon and a meridian line for the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence and he later had a massive gnomon built in the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna. The gnomon was used to study the movements of the sun during the year and helped in determining the new Gregorian calendar for which Danti took place in the commission appointed by Pope Gregorius XIII and instituted in 1582.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his 1585 book "Diversarum Speculationum Mathematicarum" Venetian mathematician Giambattista Benedetti proposed to use a mirror in a 45-degree angle to project the image upright. This leaves the image reversed, but would become common practice in later camera obscura boxes.


title: Camera obscura

text: Giambattista della Porta added a "lenticular crystal" or biconvex lens to the camera obscura description in the 1589 second edition of "Magia Naturalis". He also described use of the camera obscura to project hunting scenes, banquets, battles, plays, or anything desired on white sheets. Trees, forests, rivers, mountains "that are really so, or made by Art, of Wood, or some other matter" could be arranged on a plain in the sunshine on the other side of the camera obscura wall. Little children and animals (for instance handmade deer, wild boars, rhinos, elephants, and lions) could perform in this set. "Then, by degrees, they must appear, as coming out of their dens, upon the Plain: The Hunter he must come with his hunting Pole, Nets, Arrows, and other necessaries, that may represent hunting: Let there be Horns, Cornets, Trumpets sounded: those that are in the Chamber shall see Trees, Animals, Hunters Faces, and all the rest so plainly, that they cannot tell whether they be true or delusions: Swords drawn will glister in at the hole, that they will make people almost afraid."


title: Camera obscura

text: Della Porta claimed to have shown such spectacles often to his friends. They admired it very much and could hardly be convinced by Della Porta's explanations that what they had seen was really an optical trick.


title: Camera obscura

text: The earliest use of the term "camera obscura" is found in the 1604 book "Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena" by German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer Johannes Kepler. Kepler discovered the working of the camera obscura by recreating its principle with a book replacing a shining body and sending threads from its edges through a many-cornered aperture in a table onto the floor where the threads recreated the shape of the book. He also realized that images are "painted" inverted and reversed on the retina of the eye and figured that this is somehow corrected by the brain.


title: Camera obscura

text: In 1607, Kepler studied the sun in his camera obscura and noticed a sunspot, but he thought it was Mercury transiting the sun.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his 1611 book "Dioptrice", Kepler described how the projected image of the camera obscura can be improved and reverted with a lens. It is believed he later used a telescope with three lenses to revert the image in the camera obscura.


title: Camera obscura

text: In 1611, Frisian/German astronomers David and Johannes Fabricius (father and son) studied sunspots with a camera obscura, after realizing looking at the sun directly with the telescope could damage their eyes. They are thought to have combined the telescope and the camera obscura into camera obscura telescopy.


title: Camera obscura

text: In 1612, Italian mathematician Benedetto Castelli wrote to his mentor, the Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician Galileo Galilei about projecting images of the sun through a telescope (invented in 1608) to study the recently discovered sunspots. Galilei wrote about Castelli's technique to the German Jesuit priest, physicist, and astronomer Christoph Scheiner.


title: Camera obscura

text: From 1612 to at least 1630, Christoph Scheiner would keep on studying sunspots and constructing new telescopic solar-projection systems. He called these "Heliotropii Telioscopici", later contracted to helioscope. For his helioscope studies, Scheiner built a box around the viewing/projecting end of the telescope, which can be seen as the oldest known version of a box-type camera obscura. Scheiner also made a portable camera obscura.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his 1613 book "Opticorum Libri Sex" Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist, and architect François d'Aguilon described how some charlatans cheated people out of their money by claiming they knew necromancy and would raise the specters of the devil from hell to show them to the audience inside a dark room. The image of an assistant with a devil's mask was projected through a lens into the dark room, scaring the uneducated spectators.


title: Camera obscura

text: By 1620 Kepler used a portable camera obscura tent with a modified telescope to draw landscapes. It could be turned around to capture the surroundings in parts.


title: Camera obscura

text: Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel is thought to have constructed a box-type camera obscura which corrected the inversion of the projected image. In 1622, he sold one to the Dutch poet, composer, and diplomat Constantijn Huygens who used it to paint and recommended it to his artist friends. Huygens wrote to his parents (translated from French):


title: Camera obscura

text: German Orientalist, mathematician, inventor, poet, and librarian Daniel Schwenter wrote in his 1636 book "Deliciae Physico-Mathematicae" about an instrument that a man from Pappenheim had shown him, which enabled movement of a lens to project more from a scene through the camera obscura. It consisted of a ball as big as a fist, through which a hole (AB) was made with a lens attached on one side (B). This ball was placed inside two-halves of part of a hollow ball that were then glued together (CD), in which it could be turned around. This device was attached to a wall of the camera obscura (EF). This universal joint mechanism was later called a scioptric ball.


title: Camera obscura

text: In his 1637 book "Dioptrique" French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes suggested placing an eye of a recently dead man (or if a dead man was unavailable, the eye of an ox) into an opening in a darkened room and scraping away the flesh at the back until one could see the inverted image formed on the retina.


title: Camera obscura

text: Italian Jesuit philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Mario Bettini wrote about making a camera obscura with twelve holes in his "Apiaria universae philosophiae mathematicae" (1642). When a foot soldier would stand in front of the camera, a twelve-person army of soldiers making the same movements would be projected.


title: Camera obscura

text: French mathematician, Minim friar, and painter of anamorphic art Jean-François Nicéron (1613–1646) wrote about the camera obscura with convex lenses. He explained how the camera obscura could be used by painters to achieve perfect perspective in their work. He also complained how charlatans abused the camera obscura to fool witless spectators and make them believe that the projections were magic or occult science. These writings were published in a posthumous version of "La Perspective Curieuse" (1652).


title: Camera obscura

text: The use of the camera obscura to project special shows to entertain an audience seems to have remained very rare. A description of what was most likely such a show in 1656 in France, was penned by the poet Jean Loret, who expressed how rare and novel it was. The Parisian society were presented with upside-down images of palaces, ballet dancing and battling with swords. Loret felt somewhat frustrated that he did not know the secret that made this spectacle possible. There are several clues that this may have been a camera obscura show, rather than a very early magic lantern show, especially in the upside-down image and Loret's surprise that the energetic movements made no sound.


title: Camera obscura

text: German Jesuit scientist Gaspar Schott heard from a traveler about a small camera obscura device he had seen in Spain, which one could carry under one arm and could be hidden under a coat. He then constructed his own sliding box camera obscura, which could focus by sliding a wooden box part fitted inside another wooden box part. He wrote about this in his 1657 "Magia universalis naturæ et artis" (volume 1 – book 4 "Magia Optica" pages 199–201).


title: Camera obscura

text: By 1659 the magic lantern was introduced and partly replaced the camera obscura as a projection device, while the camera obscura mostly remained popular as a drawing aid. The magic lantern can be regarded as a (box-type) camera obscura device that projects images rather than actual scenes. In 1668, Robert Hooke described the difference for an installation to project the delightful "various apparitions and disappearances, the motions, changes and actions" by means of a broad convex-glass in a camera obscura setup: "if the picture be transparent, reflect the rays of the sun so as that they may pass through it towards the place where it is to be represented; and let the picture be encompassed on every side with a board or cloth that no rays may pass beside it. If the object be a statue or some living creature, then it must be very much enlightened by casting the sun beams on it by refraction, reflexion, or both." For models that can't be inverted, like living animals or candles, he advised: "let two large glasses of convenient spheres be placed at appropriate distances".


title: Camera obscura

text: The 17th century Dutch Masters, such as Johannes Vermeer, were known for their magnificent attention to detail. It has been widely speculated that they made use of the camera obscura, but the extent of their use by artists at this period remains a matter of fierce contention, recently revived by the Hockney–Falco thesis.


title: Camera obscura

text: German philosopher Johann Sturm published an illustrated article about the construction of a portable camera obscura box with a 45° mirror and an oiled paper screen in the first volume of the proceedings of the Collegium Curiosum, "Collegium Experimentale, sive Curiosum" (1676).


title: Camera obscura

text: Johann Zahn's "Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium", published in 1685, contains many descriptions, diagrams, illustrations and sketches of both the camera obscura and the magic lantern. A hand-held device with a mirror-reflex mechanism was first proposed by Johann Zahn in 1685, a design that would later be used in photographic cameras.


title: Camera obscura

text: The scientist Robert Hooke presented a paper in 1694 to the Royal Society, in which he described a portable camera obscura. It was a cone-shaped box which fit onto the head and shoulders of its user.


title: Camera obscura

text: From the beginning of the 18th century, craftsmen and opticians would make camera obscura devices in the shape of books, which were much appreciated by lovers of optical devices.


title: Camera obscura

text: One chapter in the Conte Algarotti's "Saggio sopra Pittura" (1764) is dedicated to the use of a camera ottica ("optic chamber") in painting.


title: Camera obscura

text: By the 18th century, following developments by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, more easily portable models in boxes became available. These were extensively used by amateur artists while on their travels, but they were also employed by professionals, including Paul Sandby and Joshua Reynolds, whose camera (disguised as a book) is now in the Science Museum in London. Such cameras were later adapted by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot for creating the first photographs.


title: Camera obscura

text: While the technical principles of the camera obscura have been known since antiquity, the broad use of the technical concept in producing images with a linear perspective in paintings, maps, theatre setups, and architectural, and, later, photographic images and movies started in the Western Renaissance and the scientific revolution. Although Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) had already observed an optical effect and developed a pioneering theory of the refraction of light, he was less interested in producing images with it (compare Hans Belting 2005); the society he lived in was even hostile (compare Aniconism in Islam) toward personal images.


title: Camera obscura

text: Western artists and philosophers used the Arab findings in new frameworks of epistemic relevance. For example, Leonardo da Vinci used the camera obscura as a model of the eye, René Descartes for eye and mind, and John Locke started to use the camera obscura as a metaphor of human understanding per se. The modern use of the camera obscura as an epistemic machine had important side effects for science.


title: Camera obscura

text: While the use of the camera obscura has waxed and waned, one can still be built using a few simple items: a box, tracing paper, tape, foil, a box cutter, a pencil, and a blanket to keep out the light. Homemade camera obscura are popular primary- and secondary-school science or art projects.


title: Camera obscura

text: In 1827, critic Vergnaud complained about the frequent use of camera obscura in producing many of the paintings at that year's Salon exhibition in Paris: "Is the public to blame, the artists, or the jury, when history paintings, already rare, are sacrificed to genre painting, and what genre at that!... that of the camera obscura." (translated from French)


title: Camera obscura

text: British photographer Richard Learoyd has specialized in making pictures of his models and motifs with a camera obscura instead of a modern camera, combining it with the ilfochrome process which creates large grainless prints.


title: Camera obscura

text: Other contemporary visual artists who have explicitly used camera obscura in their artworks include James Turrell, Abelardo Morell, Minnie Weisz, Robert Calafiore, Vera Lutter, Marja Pirilä, and Shi Guorui.


title: Tulpa

text: Tulpa is a concept in Theosophy, mysticism, and the paranormal, of an object or being that is created through spiritual or mental powers. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent.


title: Tulpa

text: 20th-century Theosophists adapted the Vajrayana concept of the emanation body into the concepts of 'tulpa' and 'thoughtform'. The Theosophist Annie Besant, in the 1905 book "Thought-Forms", divides them into three classes: forms in the shape of the person who creates them, forms that resemble objects or people and may become ensouled by nature spirits or by the dead, and forms that represent inherent qualities from the astral or mental planes, such as emotions. The term 'thoughtform' is also used in Evans-Wentz's 1927 translation of the "Tibetan Book of the Dead". The concept is also used in the Western practice of magic.


title: Tulpa

text: Occultist William Walker Atkinson in his book "The Human Aura" described thoughtforms as simple ethereal objects emanating from the auras surrounding people, generating from their thoughts and feelings. He further elaborated in "Clairvoyance and Occult Powers" how experienced practitioners of the occult can produce thoughtforms from their auras that serve as astral projections which may or may not look like the person who is projecting them, or as illusions that can only be seen by those with "awakened astral senses".


title: Tulpa

text: Spiritualist Alexandra David-Néel stated that she had observed these mystical practices in 20th-century Tibet. She described tulpas as "magic formations generated by a powerful concentration of thought." David-Néel believed that a tulpa could develop a mind of its own: "Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. According to David-Néel, this happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when her body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb." She said she had created such a tulpa in the image of a jolly Friar Tuck-like monk, which later developed a life of its own and had to be destroyed. David-Néel raised the possibility that her experience was illusory: "I may have created my own hallucination", though she said others could see the thoughtforms that she created.


title: Tulpa

text: Influenced by depictions in television and cinema from the 1990s and 2000s, the term tulpa started to be used to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend. Practitioners consider tulpas to be sentient and relatively autonomous. Online communities dedicated to tulpas spawned on the 4chan and Reddit websites. These communities refer to tulpa practitioners as "tulpamancers". The communities gained popularity when adult fans of "My Little Pony" started discussing tulpas of characters from the "My Little Pony" television series. The fans attempted to use meditation and lucid dreaming techniques to create imaginary friends.


title: Tulpa

text: Surveys by Veissière explored this community's demographic, social, and psychological profiles. These practitioners believe a tulpa is a "real or somewhat-real person". The number of active participants in these online communities is in the low hundreds, and few meetings in person have taken place. They belong to "primarily urban, middle-class, Euro-American adolescent and young adult demographics" and they "cite loneliness and social anxiety as an incentive to pick up the practice". 93.7% of respondents expressed that their involvement with the creation of tulpas has "made their condition better", and led to new unusual sensory experiences. Some practitioners have sexual and romantic interactions with their tulpas, though the practice is controversial and trending toward taboo. One survey found that 8.5% support a metaphysical explanation of tulpas, 76.5% support a neurological or psychological explanation, and 14% "other" explanations.


title: Tulpa

text: Practitioners believe tulpas are able to communicate with their host in ways they sense do not originate from their own thoughts. Some practitioners report experiencing hallucinations of their tulpas. Practitioners that have hallucinations report being able to see, hear and touch their tulpas. Veissière's survey of 141 respondents found that the rates of autism, ADD and ADHD is significantly higher among the surveyed tulpamancers than in the general population. He goes on to speculate that people may be more likely to want to make a tulpa because these groups have a higher level of loneliness.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: José Pedro Castillo Terrones (; born 19 October 1969) is a Peruvian politician, former elementary school teacher, and union leader who served as the President of Peru from 28 July 2021 to 7 December 2022. On 7 December 2022, he was impeached and removed from office by the Congress of Peru after attempting a self-coup.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Born to a peasant family in Puña, Cajamarca, Castillo began working in Peru's informal economy as a teenager to earn funds for his studies in education and later returned to his hometown to become a primary school teacher. He attained political prominence as a leading figure in a school teachers' strike in 2017 and ran in the 2021 presidential election as the candidate of the Free Peru party. Castillo announced his presidential candidacy after seeing his students undergo hardships from the lack of resources in rural Peru, with the election occurring amidst the country's COVID-19 pandemic and a period of democratic deterioration in the nation. With the support of individuals living in rural and outlying provinces, he placed first in the initial round of the presidential vote and advanced to the second round where he won against his opponent Keiko Fujimori. Castillo's victory in the presidential race was confirmed on 19 July 2021 and he was inaugurated on 28 July.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: After taking office, Castillo played in between naming far-left and moderate left-wing cabinets, allegedly under the strong influence of the leader of his party, Vladimir Cerrón, and at the same time from more progressive left-wing politicians. He also appointed members of center and center-right political parties as ministers of state. He ultimately left the Free Peru party in June 2022 to govern as an independent. Castillo was noted for appointing four different governments in six months, the most in Peruvian history in such a timespan.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo faced three impeachment proceedings in the Peruvian Congress, although the first two failed to reach the necessary votes to remove him from office. Following the second failed impeachment vote in March 2022, fuel protests against high prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine along with mining protests intensified as the country's economy plummeted. On 1 December 2022, Peru's Congress approved a motion initiated by opposition lawmakers to start the third formal attempt to impeach him since he took office. On 7 December, Castillo made a declaration in which he attempted to dissolve Congress, form a provisional government, institute a national curfew, and call for the formation of an assembly to draft a new constitution. The announcement was condemned by many as a coup attempt. Castillo was impeached by Congress within the day and was detained for sedition and high treason. He was succeeded by First Vice President Dina Boluarte. After his removal, pro-Castillo protests broke out calling for new elections and the release of Castillo from detention.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo was born to an impoverished and illiterate peasant family in Puña, Tacabamba, Chota Province, Department of Cajamarca. Despite being the location of South America's largest gold mine, Cajamarca has remained one of the poorest regions in Peru. He is the third of nine children.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: His father, Ireño Castillo, was born on the hacienda of a landowning family where he performed labor-intensive work. His family rented land from the landowners until General Juan Velasco Alvarado took power and redistributed property from landowners to peasants, with Ireño receiving a plot of land he had been working on. As a child, Castillo balanced his schooling with farm work at home, completing his elementary and high school education at the Octavio Matta Contreras de Cutervo Higher Pedagogical Institute. Castillo's daily trek to and from school involved walking along steep cliffside paths for two hours.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: As a teenager and young adult, Castillo traveled throughout Peru to earn funds for his studies. Beginning at the age of twelve, each year he and his father walked for seasonal work in the coffee plantations of the Peruvian Amazonia. Castillo also sold ice cream, newspapers, and cleaned hotels in Lima. He studied Primary Education at the Octavio Carrera Education Institute of Superior Studies and gained a master's degree in Educational Psychology from the César Vallejo University.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: During the internal conflict in Peru that began in the 1980s, Castillo worked in his youth as a patrolman of "Rondas campesinas" to defend against the Shining Path. According to Farid Kahhat, a Peruvian international relations professor interviewed by "Jacobin", these groups included members with leftist beliefs combating far-left terrorism in rural areas not under the reach of the Peruvian government.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: From 1995, Castillo worked as a primary school teacher and principal at School 10465 in the town of Puña, Chota. In addition to teaching, he was responsible for cooking for his students and cleaning their classroom. According to Castillo, the community constructed the school after receiving no government assistance. Rural teaching in Peru is poorly paid but highly respected and influential within local communities, which led Castillo to become involved with teachers' unions. With his working background as a patrolman for "Rondas campesinas" and being a schoolteacher, two of the most respected jobs in Peruvian society, Castillo was able to establish a high level of political support.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In 2002, Castillo unsuccessfully ran for the mayorship of Anguía as the representative of Alejandro Toledo's centre-left party Possible Peru. He served as a leading member of the party in Cajamarca from 2005 until the party's dissolution in 2017 following its poor results in the 2016 Peruvian general election. Following his leadership during the teachers' strike, numerous political parties in Peru approached Castillo to promote him as a congressional candidate, though he refused and instead decided to run for the presidency after encouragement from unions.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In an interview with the Associated Press, Castillo said that his motivation for entering politics was seeing his students arrive to school hungry without any benefits while, at the same time, Peru experienced economic growth from mineral wealth. Castillo became a teachers' union leader during the , which sought to increase salaries, pay off local government debt, repeal the Law of the Public Teacher Career and increase the education budget. At the time, the Peruvian government sought to replace a system of career teachers with temporary unskilled educators. The strikes spread through southern Peru; due to their longevity, Minister of Education Marilú Martens, Prime Minister Fernando Zavala, and other government officials jointly announced a package of salary increases and debt relief, though the teachers remained on strike.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski offered to mediate, inviting the teachers' delegates to meet at the Government Palace to reach a solution; only the leaders of the union's executive committee and its Cuzco leaders were received while representatives of the regions led by Castillo were excluded. The strike consequently worsened as teachers from across Peru travelled to Lima to hold marches and rallies in the capital. Keiko Fujimori and her Fujimorist supporters, who were opponents of the Kuczynski administration, assisted Castillo with the strike in an effort to destabilize the president's government.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: On 24 August 2017, the government issued a supreme decree making official the benefits agreed in negotiations, issuing a warning that if teachers did not return to their classrooms by 28 August, they would be fired and replaced. On 2 September 2017, Castillo announced a suspension of the strike; he said it was only a temporary suspension.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: The 2021 presidential elections occurred amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru and a political crisis in the nation that continued during the election. These crises created multiple political currents that eventually consolidated into a growing political polarization among Peruvians.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Initial discussions between former Governor of Junín, Vladimir Cerrón of Free Peru, and Verónika Mendoza of Together for Peru, recommended a leftist coalition to support a single presidential candidate in the 2021 general election. Mendoza's advisors argued that Cerrón's beliefs were too radical and of an antiquated left wing ideology. Mendoza's camp also raised concerns about Cerrón's alleged homophobic and xenophobic rhetoric. In October 2020, Castillo announced his presidential bid, running as the candidate of Free Peru, and formally attained the nomination on 6 December 2020. His ticket included attorney Dina Boluarte and Vladimir Cerrón; Cerrón was later disqualified by the National Jury of Elections due to a corruption conviction.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo cited the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on his students as a motivation for his presidential run. In response to the pandemic, President Martín Vizcarra initiated COVID-19 lockdowns in Peru, inhibiting trade and travel to rural Peru. As a result of the lockdowns, individuals in rural regions felt an increased sense of abandonment from the national government, with political groups in these regions beginning to act in autonomous manners and experiencing growth in their legitimacy. Castillo told the Associated Press that he had attempted to continue teaching his students through the lockdowns, but the impoverished local community did not have the resources required for remote learning; almost none of his students had access to a cell phone, and educational tablets promised by the government never arrived. Using this experience of abandonment and distrust of the national government established in urban Lima, Castillo had a genuine ability to relate to rural voters and used his knowledge of their issues to establish support.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: During his campaign, Castillo said he would pardon Antauro Humala, a member of the Ethnocacerist movement and brother of former President Ollanta Humala who was sentenced to nineteen years in prison after leading the capture of a police station in Andahuaylas that had resulted in the deaths of four policemen and one gunman. At the conclusion of his initial campaign ahead of the first round of voting, Castillo held a rally in the Historic Centre of Lima, beginning at the Plaza San Martín before leading a march on horseback to the Plaza Dos de Mayo, where hundreds of supporters gathered. At the event, he told attendees that if elected, the citizens would supervise his policies, he would only receive the salary of a teacher, and sought to reduce the pay of congress and ministers by half.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Trailing throughout the entire campaign, his polling surged during the last weeks of the campaign and on election day, Castillo secured 18% of the vote in the first round, putting him in first place among eighteen candidates. His success was attributed to his focus on the large difference of living standards between Lima and rural Peru, leading to strong support in countryside provinces. He faced the second-placed candidate, Keiko Fujimori, who had also finished second place in the 2011 and 2016 general elections, in the second round of voting.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: After his victory in the first round, Castillo called for Peruvian political forces, including trade unions and Ronda Campesinas, to establish a political agreement, though he declined to make a roadmap similar that of Ollanta Humala during the 2016 general election. He established a political alliance with the left-wing former presidential candidate Verónika Mendoza in May 2021, earning her support for his campaign.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Approaching the second round of presidential elections, it became apparent that Castillo's policy proposals would be unlikely to be enacted as president and that he would be vulnerable to Congress; the newly elected Congress of Peru was made of opposing parties, with his party having only over 37 of the 130 seats in congress.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: While campaigning, Castillo was insulted on multiple occasions by individuals likening him to Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela, while Free Peru reported that he also received anonymous death threats. Third-place candidate Rafael López Aliaga issued death threats during a demonstration against Castillo, shouting: "Death to communism! Death to Cerrón! Death to Castillo!" Castillo was also criticized for his debate performance with critics raising questions on whether he understood governmental functions.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo ultimately won the election, handing Fujimori her third consecutive defeat in a presidential election.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Many observers described the second round of the presidential election as being a choice between the lesser of two evils. The transfer of the presidency to Castillo was described by the as "strengthening the current Peruvian democratic regime", as the process was peaceful and contributed to a "more prolonged democratic stability" in Peru in the early 21st century. "The New York Times" reported his victory as the "clearest repudiation of the country's establishment", and the "Financial Times" described him as "a hope for the poor", amid concerns among the establishment and the elite, which resulted in a capital flight, in a country that was hit the most by the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to excess mortality, with an economy in recession, a collapsed healthcare, a series of corruption scandals, and one third of Peruvians living in poverty.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Following Castillo's surprising success in the first round of elections, the S&P/BVL Peru General Index fell by 3.2% and the Peruvian sol saw its value drop 1.7%, its biggest loss since December 2017 during the first impeachment process against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski; in the week before the run-off vote, the sol continued to post historical lows against the U.S. dollar. An economist told the "Financial Times" that they have not seen such a serious capital flight in two decades. Optimistic observers felt that Castillo would moderate his views, citing former president Ollanta Humala as an example. Pedro Francke, a university professor of economics, rejected comparisons of his style of leadership to those seen in Cuba or Venezuela, and instead suggested that his governing style would be more similar to that of leftist leaders like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, and José Mujica. Daniel Rico of RBC Capital Markets credited Francke with calming markets fears of Castillo, who was characterized by opponents as a far-left politician.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Most regional leaders and some in Europe, such as Pedro Sánchez of Spain, extended congratulations and wished Castillo the best on being the president of the bicentennial of Peru. Lula da Silva, leftist former president of Brazil, congratulated him and said that Castillo had struck a blow to conservatism in the region, saying that "the result of the Peruvian polls is symbolic and represents another advance in the popular struggle in our dear Latin America". Like Lula, Morales, the former president of Bolivia, congratulated Castillo, stating that Castillo "won with our proposal" and that he had spoken to him on the phone previously. Mujica, the former Uruguayan president, also shared approval of Castillo's success in the first round of elections, warning Castillo to "not fall into authoritarianism", while participating in a Facebook live video call with him. Colombian president Iván Duque and Ecuadorian president Guillermo Lasso congratulated Castillo on his victory.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo was officially designated as president-elect of Peru on 19 July 2021, only a week before he was to be inaugurated. Days before his designation, Castillo and his economic advisor Pedro Francke met with Ambassador Liang Yu at the Chinese embassy in Peru to discuss a more rapid introduction of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines in Peru. The majority of ministers chosen by Castillo were from interior regions in contrast to previous governments where most ministers originated from Lima. Ministers were mainly from allied leftist and independent organizations, while three ministers were from Free Peru and another three were previous teachers close to Castillo.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo and his government's political experience and direction had been described as being unclear by observers, as he lacked notable political experience prior to his election. In a little more than his government's first six months, four different cabinets were selected after being dissolved following numerous corruption controversies affecting Castillo and his close advisors. According to political analyst Gianfranco Vigo, the Castillo administration "is governed not so much by knowledge but rather by closeness". Castillo responded to criticism of his experience in an interview with CNN, saying that governing was "a learning process" and he was not "trained to be president", explaining that he did not study abroad by choosing to stay "for the country, for the people". He also stated during the interview that Free Peru leader Vladimir Cerrón had "no influence on cabinet appointments". About Castillo's government, political scientist Paula Távara of the National University of San Marcos said it has not shown "any clear direction" and "has not yet tackled any of the promised political projects. ... Instead it is sinking into chaos, with new ministers constantly being appointed with no qualifications other than their party membership. Posts are distributed on a whim to forge political alliances."


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In April 2022, Free Peru drafted a bill calling for general elections in 2023 to elect a new president and congress.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: According to Farid Kahhat of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Castillo's economic policy was created in collaboration with Verónika Mendoza, utilizing New Peru economists who have an established history of holding public office. His first Minister of Economy and Finance was Pedro Francke, a former World Bank and Central Reserve Bank of Peru economist who assisted Castillo with moderating his policies. Kahhat explained that Castillo proposed taxing windfall profits, describing these profits as "the product of good international prices and not the merit of the company itself". Upon taking office, Castillo also appointed feminist and pro-LGBT activist Anahí Durand as head of the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations, with Prime Minister Guido Bellido releasing a statement promising to "beat racism, classism, machismo, and homophobia".


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In September 2021, Castillo announced funding of 99 million soles (US$24 million) to provide food for impoverished families, stating: "We cannot understand that, despite having so much wealth in the country, it is not balanced with development." As announced during his campaign, he launched an agrarian reform in October 2021, which he promises will not involve expropriations. It includes an industrialization plan for peasants to promote the development of agriculture, and intends to offer poor peasants fairer access to markets. Following the death of Abimael Guzmán, the founder of Shining Path, Castillo said his government's "condemnation of terrorism is firm" and he condemned Guzmán, saying he was "responsible for the loss of innumerable lives of our compatriots".


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In November 2021, Castillo announced an increase in the minimum wage from 930 to 1,000 sols ($223 to $250), the sale of the presidential jet acquired in 1995, and a ban on first-class travel for all civil servants. That month, the Central Reserve Bank of Peru reported that from July through September 2021 Peru's GDP grew by 11.4% and beat previous expectations, with Bloomberg News saying Peru experienced the fastest growing economy among Latin American nations at the time. The International Monetary Fund supported tax increases on the mining sector, reporting in December 2021 that Peru could safely increase taxes since the country had "a tax burden that is lower or similar to other resource-rich countries".


title: Pedro Castillo

text: After Castillo's aquittal of the second impeachment attempt against him in February 2022, global economic reverberations resulted from international sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, inflation in Peru rose sharply, prompting protests. By April 2022, the inflation rate in Peru rose to its highest level in 26 years, creating greater difficulties for the recently impoverished population. Inflation of basic goods, alongside increasing fertilizer and fuel prices as a result of the war, angered rural Peruvians, and shifted them from their position of supporting Castillo to protesting his government. According to "Convoca", UGTRANM leader Diez Villegas, the same individual who attempted to organize strikes in October 2021, called for a general strike of transportation workers for 4 April 2022. These strikes later expanded, culminating with the 2022 Peruvian protests.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Héctor Béjar, the newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that Peru would no longer support international sanctions during the Venezuelan crisis and did not clarify his position on recognizing Juan Guaidó as part of the Venezuelan presidential crisis. Béjar resigned on 17 August 2021, amid criticism from the opposition and some media over his statement that Peru's navy had been responsible for terrorist acts and that the CIA had created the Shining Path. During his first Foreign Relations Commission with Congress, Castillo's second foreign minister Óscar Maúrtua said that Peru would remain a member of the Andean Community, the Pacific Alliance, and PROSUR, saying that Castillo's government held the "objective of achieving South American integration, for the benefit of our peoples", while also offering refuge to Afghan refugees following the Fall of Kabul.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: For his first international trips, Castillo traveled to Mexico on 17 September 2021 and later to the United States on 19 September. During his tour in the United States, Castillo and economic minister Pedro Francke met with foreign investors, along with representatives from the United States Chamber of Commerce, Pfizer, and Microsoft. Some of Peru's largest investors, such as Freeport-McMoRan and BHP, shared positive reactions of the Castillo government following their meetings. Castillo later spoke at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September, proposing the creation of an international treaty signed by world leaders and pharmaceutical companies to guarantee universal vaccine access internationally, stating: "On behalf of Peru, I want to propose the signing of a global agreement between Heads of State and patent owners to guarantee universal access to vaccines for all inhabitants, without discrimination or privileges, which would be a sign of our commitment to the health and lives of all peoples." Castillo argued: "The battle against the pandemic has shown us the failure of the international community to cooperate under the principle of solidarity."


title: Pedro Castillo

text: During a January 2022 interview with CNN en Español, Castillo said that he would consult for a plebiscite in order to grant Bolivia access to the sea. Castillo's remarks received both positive and negative reactions in Peru. In June 2022, Castillo convened the leaders of different South American nations to treat the Venezuelan migrant crisis, with Peru being home to 1.3 million Venezuelans that fled following the crisis in Venezuela.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Congress has banned him from travelling to Colombia for the inauguration of the new president, Gustavo Petro, scheduled for August 7, 2022. According to Peruvian law, the president must have the authorization of Congress every time he wants to travel abroad. He is also denied permission to travel to the Vatican to meet with the Pope, to Thailand for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and to Mexico for a meeting of the Pacific Alliance at the end of November. The latter was cancelled and rescheduled for December 14 in Lima.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In October 2021, the website "El Foco" released recordings revealing that leaders of the manufacturing employers' organization , the leader of the Union of Multimodal Transport Guilds of Peru (UGTRANM), Geovani Rafael Diez Villegas, political leaders, and other business executives planned various actions, including funding transportation strikes in November 2021, in order to destabilize the Castillo government and prompt his removal. Far-right groups of former soldiers also allied with political parties like Go on Country – Social Integration Party, Popular Force, and Popular Renewal in an effort to remove Castillo, with some veteran leaders seen directly with Rafael López Aliaga and Castillo's former presidential challenger Keiko Fujimori, who signed the "Madrid Charter" promoted by the Spanish far-right political party Vox. These groups directed threats towards Castillo government officials and journalists, whilst also calling for a coup d'état and insurgency. OjoPúblico compared the veteran groups to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys of the United States, noting a possible threat of an event similar to the 2021 United States Capitol attack occurring in Peru.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Tensions with the Congress, dominated by conservative parties, were particularly high. Congress approved a law interpreting the constitution that restricted the executive's ability to dissolve Parliament, while Parliament retained the right to impeach the President. In December 2021, Congress passed a law that a referendum to convene a Constituent Assembly, one of Pedro Castillo's key promises during the presidential election, could not be held without a constitutional reform previously approved by Parliament. During a visit to the Spanish Parliament, the president of the Peruvian Congress, María del Carmen Alva, asked the deputies of the Popular Party to approve a declaration stating that "Peru has been captured by communism and that Pedro Castillo is a president without any legitimacy."


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Presented in visitor documents as a lobbyist for the construction company Termirex, Karelim López met with Castillo's chief of staff Bruno Pacheco multiple times. In November 2021, four months into his term, Keiko Fujimori announced that her party was pushing forward impeachment proceedings, arguing that Castillo was "morally unfit for office". That day, investigators raided the Government Palace during an influence peddling investigation and found that Pacheco had US$20,000 present in his office's bathroom. Pacheco said that the money was part of his savings and salary, though he resigned from his position in order to prevent the scandal from affecting Castillo. On 25 November 28 legislators from Fujimori's party presented a signed motion of impeachment to congress, setting up a vote for opening impeachment proceedings against Castillo. A short time later, controversy arose when newspapers reported that Castillo had met with individuals at his former campaign headquarters in Breña without public record, a potential violation of a recently created, complicated set of transparency regulations. Lobbyist Karelim López would also become entangled with the controversy in Breña after the company Terminex, who she lobbied for, won the Tarata III Bridge Consortium contract worth 255.9 million soles. Audios purportedly obtained at the residence and released by América Televisión were criticized and dismissed as a scam. Castillo responded to the impeachment threat stating: "I am not worried about the political noise because the people have chosen me, not the mafias or the corrupt." The impeachment proceeding did not occur, as 76 voted against proceedings, 46 were in favor, and 4 abstained, with a requirement of 52 favoring proceedings not being obtained. Free Peru ultimately supported Castillo through the process and described the vote as an attempted right-wing coup. Castillo responded to the vote stating: "Brothers and sisters, let's end political crises and work together to achieve a just and supportive Peru."


title: Pedro Castillo

text: In February 2022, it was reported that Fujimorists and politicians close to Fujimori organized a meeting at the Casa Andina hotel in Lima with the assistance of the German liberal group Friedrich Naumann Foundation, with those present including Maricarmen Alva, President of the Congress of the Republic of Peru, discussing plans to remove President Castillo from office. Alva had already shared her readiness to assume the presidency of Peru if Castillo were to be vacated from the position and a leaked Telegram group chat of the Board of Directors of Congress that she heads revealed plans coordinated to oust Castillo. A second impeachment attempt related to corruption allegations did make it to proceedings in March 2022. On 28 March 2022, Castillo appeared before Congress calling the allegations baseless and for legislators to "vote for democracy" and "against instability", with 55 voting for impeachment, 54 voting against, and 19 abstaining, not reaching the 87 votes necessary for impeaching Castillo.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: On 7 December 2022, hours before the Congress of Peru was scheduled to vote on a third impeachment motion against him, Castillo declared an immediate national curfew, the dissolution of Congress, and the installation of a "government of exceptional emergency." Shortly after his announcement, a majority of Castillo's cabinet resigned, and the attempted dissolution was denounced as a coup by the Ombudsman of Peru. The Constitutional Court and First Vice President Dina Boluarte also called it a coup d'état attempt, one meant to obstruct the impeachment process. Castillo was then impeached and removed from the presidency by the Congress of Peru later on 7 December, as scheduled. The impeachment passed with a majority 101 for and 6 against out of 130 votes. Boluarte, who had broken with Castillo after the announcement, ascended to the presidency. Castillo reportedly attempted to flee the country but was held and detained by the National Police.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo has been described as a far-left, socialist, populist, and social conservative. He said that he is not a communist or a Chavista. Peru's attitude towards LGBT rights has generally been hostile and is heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, and Castillo said to be more in line with his right-wing opponents on social issues, opposing abortion, LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, sex education, and the gender-equality approach in schools; this put him at odds with the progressive left that has supported him. The second round of the 2021 Peruvian general election pitted two socially conservative presidential candidates, in a highly polarized election, with two drastically different economic visions, as well as backgrounds; the pro-union Castillo, the first Peruvian president of peasant and rural origins, promoted left-wing values on government spending and foreign policy.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: "The Economist" wrote that Castillo "combines radical rhetoric with pragmatism", and cited his work with both left-wing and right-wing groups, including Keiko Fujimori's Popular Force, during the 2017 teachers' strike. "Le Monde diplomatique" wrote that Castillo maintained support prior to being elected because his positions were "rather vague". Castillo later distanced himself from the far-left of the Free Peru party, stating that "the one who is going to govern is me" and there will be "no communism" in Peru under his government. Kahhat said Castillo limited his relationship with Free Peru and separated himself from the party's leader, adding that "it is important to remember that Castillo is a candidate but not a party member. ... [W]e might even say he is more conservative than the ideals of [Free Peru] would suggest." Anthony Medina Rivas Plata, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Santa María, said that "Castillo's rise is not because he is left-wing, but because he comes from below. He has never said he is a Marxist, socialist or communist. What he is, is an evangelical."


title: Pedro Castillo

text: After winning the first round of presidential elections, Castillo presented his ideas in a more moderated manner, maintaining a balance between the leftist ideals of Free Peru and the consensus of Peruvians. Following his ascent to the presidency, Free Peru broke from Castillo, who distanced himself from Vladimir Cerrón, believing that he moderated his positions to appease businesses and opposing politicians. On 30 June 2022, Castillo resigned from Free Peru.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo has expressed his interest in moving Peru more towards a mixed economy. He promised foreign businesses that he would not nationalize companies in Peru, saying that those seeking the nationalization of industry within his party were part of the "leftist fringe". Some of his main economic proposals were to regulate "monopolies and oligopolies" in order to establish a mixed economy and to renegotiate tax breaks with large businesses. Castillo has made statements supporting increased regulation, directly criticizing Chilean companies Saga Falabella and LATAM Airlines Group. Citing the fact that LATAM owes Peru nearly $1 billion, Castillo called for a state-owned national airline. In an interview with CNN, he stated that if elected, he would hold discussions with businesses to ensure that "70% of profits must remain for the country" and that "they take 30%, not the other way around as it is today".


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo proposed increasing the education and health budgets to at least ten percent of Peru's GDP. He received criticism from EFE for not clarifying how these policies would be funded, as Peru's existing government budget is already fourteen percent of the country's GDP. Castillo believes that internet access should be a right for all Peruvians. He proposed a science and technology ministry that would immediately be tasked with combating the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Regarding mining in Peru, Castillo supports the extraction of minerals throughout Peru, "where nature and the population allow it", and welcomes international investment regarding these projects. For agrarian reform, Castillo proposed making Peru less reliant on importing agricultural goods and incentivizing food production for local use instead of solely for export.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: A main proposal of Castillo is to elect a constituent assembly to replace the constitution inherited from Alberto Fujimori's regime, with Castillo saying "it serves to defend corruption at macro scale". Castillo has said that, in his efforts to rewrite the Peruvian constitution, he would respect the rule of law by utilizing existing constitutional processes and call for a constitutional referendum to determine whether a constituent assembly should be formed or not; to hold a referendum, Castillo would require a majority vote from congress, which is unlikely and limits his chances of changing the constitution. All proposed reforms would also have to be approved by congress.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: At an event called Citizen Proclamation – Oath for Democracy, Castillo signed an agreement vowing to respect democracy, stating: "I swear with all my heart, I do swear with all my heart, that I will respect true democracy and equal rights and opportunities of the Peruvian people, without any discrimination and favoritism." Castillo also promised at the event to respect the presidential term limit of a five-year tenure, saying that if elected, he would not adjust mechanisms to extend the presidential period and would leave office on 28 July 2026. Other statements by Castillo included respecting the separation of powers and recognizing the autonomy of constitutional entities.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Proposed social policies from Castillo include creating paramilitary groups and militarizing Peruvian youth in order to promote a revolutionary experience, calling for citizens to arm themselves in order to provide justice through "socialist administration". He called for Peru to leave the American Convention on Human Rights and to reinstate the death penalty in the country. Castillo also called for stricter regulations on the media in Peru.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: According to Castillo, issues of abortion and LGBT rights "are not a priority". His socialist woman proposal ("La mujer socialista") was described as "a deeply patriarchal, gender-normative view of society disguised under seemingly liberating language" by Javier Puente, assistant professor of Latin American Studies at Smith College, while the rest of his program did not include any policies regarding LGBT groups, who are vulnerable populations in Peru.


title: Pedro Castillo

text: Castillo announced during his inauguration that youths who do not work or study would have to serve in the military; as there is no mandatory service in Peru, it was unclear whether Castillo would introduce conscription.