Vision doesn't always rely on sight.
"There are some who believe him to be blind; while others, perhaps with more reason, claim that he has travelled far beyond blindness, that indeed, he can do nothing but see: that he sees the fine traceries the galaxies make as they spiral through the void, that he watches the intricate patterns living things make on their journey through time."
The Blind Seer is an old archetype. They are blind, and yet they can see more than we can, metaphorically speaking, by using heightened senses, divination, or some type of magical powers to gain knowledge of the world around them.
It is a recurring theme in mythology; Justice is blind, Odin plucked out an eye to gain knowledge, and the Graeae had had only one eye among three of them. Time and time again, the sacrifice of sight is shown to result in greater cosmic knowledge.
This trope is the reason that being born with a caul (common with the Magical Seventh Son) is taken as a sign that a child will have seer-like powers. A common version of the legend says that the seventh son of a seventh son will be born with a caul (actually a loose flap of amniotic sac) over his face, to signify the Seer-like power.
A special case of Disability Superpower, often demonstrated with Prophet Eyes. Blindfolds are another favorite.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In AKIRA, during the "Akira Kingdom" arch, there were a lot of guys with psychic powers.
- The one psychic in charge of keeping an eye over everything in the Neo-Tokyo Empire always had his eyes blindfolded.
- Lady Miyako is also one. She's got immense Psychic Powers, but not only she's an old woman with a very feeble body but almost completely blind. She can take over someone else's body with her powers and see through their eyes, however.
- Kaname Tōsen from Bleach was born blind, and in his appearance in the series he wears clear goggles over his eyes. Instead he senses others based on their spirit energy. This is significant in the story in that it makes him immune from Sōsuke Aizen's powers of complete hypnosis, unlike characters that are able to see.
- Played with in the character of Galatea from Claymore. She was always good at sensing the whereabouts and movements of the Yoki even over great distances, earning herself the nickname God-Eye. During the seven-year timeskip, Galatea, disenchanted with the shady organization she worked for, decided to go into hiding but realized that her yellow eyes would always mark her as one of the titular Claymores and would make it easy to track her. So she slashed her own eyes and refused to let her innate powers heal them, letting them scar over and turn white, though hiding them with a blindfold. After turning blind, though, she got more in touch with her Yoki-sensing and grew stronger with it, to the point where she "sees" more than any other character.
- Though the scene is subject to interpretation, in one episode of Code Geass R2 Lelouch's blind sister Nunally determines someone to be lying by holding her hand while she speaks.
- Yin from Darker than Black was born blind, but is capable of "seeing" using any body of water as a medium.
- Dr. Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist has Niko, a blind shopkeeper whose hearing and other senses are so sharp that he is able to echolocate.
- Mel, from the fourth and fifth episodes of Genocyber tries to obtain money through fortune telling with her psychic powers.
- Shuu from Fist of the North Star, who slashed out his own eyes to spare a young Kenshiro from death. He's one of the most powerful fighters in the series and also one of the nicest guys Ken meets, which is saying something considering the nature of Ken's Crapsack World.
- Future Diary:
- Tsubaki Kasugano aka the Sixth claims to be one, or at least to have her eyesight badly damaged because of her position as the Miko for a local cult, which requires her to stay inside the darkened shrine. She's lying.
- Yomotsu Hirasaka aka the Twelfth is a blind man who's Future Diary is an audio recorder which warns him of any injustice what might occur.
- Episode 25 of Mushishi (the 2006 anime) follows a character who begins the episode blind, but over time becomes able to see everything, including the future, the past, through walls, etc.
- Princess Nepis Ilra in Red River (1995). She's a royal priestess born without sight, but her brother Kail mentions at one point that she can also send Yuri back to Japan if he's not home in time, proving she at least is as powerful a sorceress as he is.
- Rurouni Kenshin:
- Kenshin pretty much beat the living hell out of anyone whom he fought while blind, making him actually seem much more effective than he was with his eyesight.
- Usui the Blind Swordsman, a member of Shishio's Juppongatana was able to use his "Eye of Heart" to continue fighting despite his blindness. However, the secret behind his seemingly superhuman powers is actually that as a result of losing his sight, his other senses were heightened dramatically (And with him being a swordsman, they were probably pretty sharp to begin with). Hearing it from him, the trick with "Eye of Heart" is that his sense of hearing is hyper-developed, allowing him to hear motion and even blood flow.
- Saint Seiya:
- Shiryu lampshades this trope after he loses his sight. Thanks to this, he is not deceived by Saga's illusion in the Gemini temple when he and Seiya are trapped. He says he sees no obstacle and knows where the exit. Shiryu grabs Seiya and runs off dragging him by force, believed to be beaten Seiya screams as they passed the Gold Saint of Gemini, and finally ended up exiting the Temple of the Twins.
- Ikki of Phoenix uses this as well... to an extreme. In order to defeat Shaka after being killed by the Gods-Knows-What-Number-th time by the Gold Saint (and suffering Mind Rape twice from Shaka's part), he lets Shaka disable each of his senses in order to augment his cosmos to the infinite and becoming superior to God. Or something close.
- Yoh's grandmother in Shaman King is said to be one. More exactly, she's an itako or blind shaman (See Real Life).
- Subverted by Anna: she's also an itako, but she isn't blind. She is a very powerful psychic, though.
- In Slayers, Rezo the Red Priest is one of these... but he's blind because part of Shabranigdo's soul is sealed within his eyes.
- Princess Hinoto from X/1999 is blind, deaf and crippled as a result of her enormous seeing powers.
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering has Urza, an immensely powerful, immortal wizard, disguise himself as this, shown in the game as the Blind Seer
card. That's also him in the page image.
- Magic has used this trope throughout its existence, from Cyclopean Mummy's flavor text all the way to the blindfolded Skyward Eye Prophets.
Comic Books
- Invoked in Empowered with the telepath Mind████. Her brother blinded her and cut out her tongue so that she would have to use other people's senses to see and use telepathy to speak to anyone.
- Probe, a psychic from the first Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle series, literally has no eyes. She wears sunglasses when she's out and about.
- An issue of DV8 features a blind precog, Blind Lemon, though in true Warren Ellis fashion, she went blind when her teacher raped her, not when she got her powers. To be fair, she isn't strictly blind, just blind to the present; she sees the future with perfect clarity.
- In the alternate future of the Marvel Universe presented in Earth X, Bruce Banner and the Hulk are split into separate beings. Bruce reverts to a young boy who rides about on the ape-like Hulk's back. Bruce is blind, but can see from the Hulk's eyes, which presumably allows him to see into the astral realms (seeing people in astral forms is one of the Hulk's little known powers).
- Sun-Toucher in ElfQuest is blind, but his other senses (and, it's implied, ESP) more than compensate. His daughter Leetah happens to be a healer, but he refuses to let her heal his sight...
- The Avengers: Cassandra of the Gatherers is blind but can see possible futures and predict which are most likely.
- Madame Xanadu was blinded in Infinite Crisis. However, she was already a powerful psychic.
- This happens to The Mighty Thor in the finale of Thor Vol. 2, during Ragnarok. In imitation of his father Odin (see below), he gives both eyes for drinking from the Well of Wisdom and becomes even wiser than Odin. He's back to normal now.
- The Sandman (1989): Destiny of the Endless. Everything which occurs is traced by his hand in The Book, which he occasionally allows others to read, yet Destiny himself has Milky White Eyes. Dream/Morpheus has even gone to the point of saying 'Destiny is blind' and later 'Destiny has gone beyond blindness'.
- Spider-Man's mentor figure Madame Web was one of these. When the Kraven family killed her, she passed her powers onto Julia Carpenter, a.k.a. Spider-Woman II, who became the new Madame Web complete with blindness.
- Wonder Woman:
- In the Silver Age Wonder Woman, Diana trains under the blind martial arts master I-Ching who has "third sight". He can "see" things hidden to normal eyes. In Kryptonite Nevermore Superman meets I-Ching. He discovers Clark Kent's true identity, suspects his loss of powers may be of a supernatural cause, and can tell how Superman is dressed.
Superman: Incredible... You're blind — yet you could tell how I'm dressed! You have what's called... second sight?
I-Ching: My capacity is closer to... third sight! - Wonder Woman (1987): The Amazon priestess Eudia lost her sight but retained her mobility longer than her sisters when the Amazons were reverted to clay due to the Olympians who created them leaving but was still able to immediately recognize a thoroughly disguised Hercules due to his aura.
- Wonder Woman (2006): The supernaturally good Amazon archer Philomela wears a blindfold at all times, and she seems to be just as aware of what's behind her a mile away as she is of what is directly in front of her.
- Wonder Woman (2011): Milan's eyes are missing, but he can use his ties to the Mirror of Olympus to see everything.
- In the Silver Age Wonder Woman, Diana trains under the blind martial arts master I-Ching who has "third sight". He can "see" things hidden to normal eyes. In Kryptonite Nevermore Superman meets I-Ching. He discovers Clark Kent's true identity, suspects his loss of powers may be of a supernatural cause, and can tell how Superman is dressed.
- X-Men villainess Destiny. In many cases, her prophecies came to pass because of people's reactions to her telling them, which is why the X-Men abandoned their search for her fabled diaries and destroyed the copies they had. She didn't come across as the manipulative type, but one could argue that she did this on purpose at least once, such as getting Ms. Marvel out of the way by having Rogue permanently steal her powers and psyche.
- And she has a counterpart on the team itself: Blindfold. (Her powers aren't quite the same as Destiny's, though... it's complicated.) When Blindfold removed her blindfold for the first time, it was revealed that she actually doesn't have eyes.
- Warlands has Zeph, an archer/mage who has a blindfold on at all times during his apprenticeship, to develop his powers.
- The Eagles of Rome: Freya the woods witch, who predicts Ermanamer's rise to power and his rebellion against the Romans, is apparently blind, given her Prophet Eyes.
- Top 10: Robert Booker (a.k.a. Blindshot) is a blind taxi driver in Neopolis. He uses his Zen Senses to take passengers exactly where the universe needs them to be. While this is true, being blind, he is still a reckless and dangerous driver, though it seems he has yet to seriously hurt anyone (or if he has, no one has reported it to the police).
Fan Works
- Codex Equus: Prince Crimson Star, Golden Scepter's eighth son, is a blind Alicorn demigod who has the power of precognition, though it's noted in his entry that his younger brother, Prince Bright Eyes (who is based on Primarch Sanguinius), is a more powerful Seer. He originally wasn't blind in his youth, but an accident in which he saved a classmate from a runaway, out-of-control carriage left him horribly injured and took away his sight.
- Lord Potter's Own Will features Klytië Dawnsla, who has strong Seer abilities but eyes so weak that direct sunlight made her go blind during childhood.
- Midnight Sun (Fire Emblem): Shiori is a traveling blind girl who is able to detect the malice in others. This makes it useful to the group to determine who can be trusted.
- Return of the Primarchs has Magnus the Red and his Thousand Sons become soul-bound, burning their eyes out, but enhancing their warp-senses to the point that they can effectively replace their eyesight.
- A Silent Hill 4 continuation story has Henry captured by the town's cultists, who proceed to pluck his eyes out so he can become one of these.
- In The Three Kings: Hunt Serenity is blind but can tell the powers, history and abilities of a person by touching them.
- Travels Through Azeroth and Outland has one of these in the form of Velni, a Ralmanni Seeress. She doesn't see the future per se; rather she sees things that are likely to happen.
- Under the Northern Lights: Inverted. Reindeer Sight is dependent on their eyes working. As Eira is slowly goes blind, she is also losing her clairvoyant ability.
Films — Animation
- Mocked in Charming with the half-oracle. She's blind in one eye, so her insights are correct only half the time.
- Mrs. Potato Head in Toy Story 3 is missing an eye for most of the movie. However, all of her limbs are detachable, so she sees Andy's room if she covers her other eye (since that was where her missing eye was).
Films — Live-Action
- The 1953 film adaptation of Julius Caesar invokes this trope by making the soothsayer who says "Beware the Ides of March" a blind man, something not specified in Shakespeare's text.
- The Matrix Revolutions: Neo gains a mysterious "flaming truth vision" after being blinded, allowing him to see machines or computer programs via his connection to the "Source" (exactly what he's seeing, and what the Source is, in a physical and metaphysical sense, is rather obscure).
- In The Book of Eli the protagonist is completely blind throughout the narrative, wearing dark sunglasses to cover his condition and relying on his faith in the Lord, alone, to guide him to his destiny. Given what he's able to do and the odds against him it seems God really is on his side. His faith is rewarded by finding one of the only people still alive able to listen to him and interpret his memorized version of the Bible, to allow its mass printing and safekeeping, but it's implied that Eli's own callous actions on the road prevent him from being able to realize this wonder- like Moses- and before the first copy is printed he dies.
- The old blind man in O Brother, Where Art Thou?? who, being that the story was loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, was basically Tiresias.
- The seer in Krull is blind, and escorted by a young boy.
- 5ive Girls is a film about reform school girls with strange powers. The blind girl among them predictably has second sight. She later sells her soul to the Big Bad in exchange for first sight.
- Laura in Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!
- In A Christmas Carol: The Musical, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is represented in the real world by a blind elderly beggar woman, who warns him "None so blind as those who will not see".
- In Cube 2: Hypercube, the blind character Sasha can sense the hypercube environment's threats coming long before any of the others. Subverted later on when it's revealed that she actually helped to design the cube, so she knows vaguely what kind of threats there are. She probably just acted as though it were supernatural feelings that caused her to "sense" it, instead of letting people know who she was and why she knows the dangers.
- In The Pact, Stevie is a blind medium. Her psychic powers not only let her see ghosts and see into the past, but allow her to pour hot cocoa without spilling.
- Hawk the Slayer. A blindfolded witch is one of the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits assembled by the title hero. She can't see the future (except of the Vagueness Is Coming kind) but uses her powers to find the others.
- Nightfall (1988). Sor, the leader of the religious cult, is a blind man (who even dons the occasional blindfold). He lives on a planet of Endless Daytime, but his cult predicts a coming Darkness when all three suns will go into eclipse, creating the first night in living memory. So his blindness is plot-relevant, as no-one else has learnt to navigate in a world where they can't see. He even has hawks ritually eat the eyes of his followers, so they are also blinded.
- Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: There's a old blind insane lady that know who is the next person to die.
- In Ghost Town (1988), Dealer is a blind Professional Gambler who can tell the future by cutting a deck of playing cards.
- The Slavic Seeress from The Northman to his mission was blinded (and possibly killed) by the berserkers, presumably so she could not curse them. But her third eye can still see Amleth.
Literature
- Every seer in David Eddings Belgariad series is blind; they basically trade first sight for second. Those among the Dals who develop the ability to see the future simply wear blindfolds; others are physically blind. At one point Polgara "cures" a particularly irritating seeress by restoring her eyesight magically, destroying her foresight.
- The prophecies that climax in the Malloreon state that "blind chance" will dictate the fate of the world. Ironically, this is achieved by removing a seeress' blindfold, forcing her to choose which prophecied figure to trust based only on her earthly sight.
- Norwegian author Olav Duun has the story of "Blind Anders" (or "blind Andy"), a boy born blind, but gifted with an ability to "see" anyway. This makes him a rare and lovable character. Tragedy ensues when he goes to a doctor who restores his sight. This makes him unable to function as before, and he leaves the girl who loves him. She gets sick, and he returns only to find her dying. His Rage Against the Heavens ends with a lightning that strikes him down, removing his eye-sight once again, but now he is "blinder than he was when he was born".
- In The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a man born without eyes has spent his life as an armchair military strategist. When pulled into the magical land, he gains the power to see without eyes, and becomes the world's greatest general.
- Munin in the second book of the Craw Trilogy, Fenrir, is this. She had her eyes eaten by ravens to help develop her powers and she knows the future of what is destined to happen to her because she is the incarnation of one of the three pieces of Odin.
- The Dark: Research Institute of Parapsychological Study founder Jacob Kulek's near-total blindness is said to have enhanced his extrasensory sensitivity.
- Aeriel from The Dark Angel Trilogy travels to Orm to see the Sibyl, and discovers it's her old blind nursemaid, Dirna. Subverted in that Dirna has murdered the real Sibyl and has been pretending to be her for several months.
- Discworld
- Old Mother Dismass is a reoccurring character, a witch who has been fortune telling for so long she has a "detached retina in her second sight", resulting in strange phenomena like her footsteps sounding a few minutes before she makes them, or responding to something you said several years ago.
- Desiderata Hollow from Witches Abroad compensates for her blindness by training her second sight to see in the present.
- Miss Treason from Wintersmith is a blind and deaf witch who compensates by seeing and hearing through animals.
- The leader of the gods, Blind Io, has empty sockets but thousands of eyes which fly around and can supposedly see everywhere.
- In the Dragonlance novels, Crysania loses her eyesight after the torture she endured in Takhisis' realm and realizes that she was blinded by staring into the light, and now can only trying see after losing her sight. The blindness doesn't make her psychic, however, but as seen in later works, she does end up becoming the High Priestess of Paladine and therefore does have some powers of perception.
- Dragonlance: The New Adventures: Shemnara, the seer of Potter's Mill, was blinded as a child by the liquid from the Dragon Well, but in exchange gained powers of prophecy.
- Dune Messiah: After Paul loses his sight in an assassination attempt with a stone burner he discovers that his ability to have visions and see into the future is so great that he can still see his present surroundings using "vision sight". He knew this would happen and chose it.
- After Atara in Ea Cycle becomes blind she still finds out that she can use her second sight to see around him and remain a deadly archer... when her second sight feels like it. The rest of the time she's blind for real.
- Eyrbyggja Saga: Thorodd's second-sighted foster-mother has gone blind in her old age. When she urges Thorodd to slaughter the bull-calf Glaesir, Thorodd tricks her by slaughtering a different calf. Being blind, she does not realize Glaesir is alive until much later. True to her warnings, Glaesir eventually kills Thorodd.
- Experimental Film has Vasek Sidlo, a blind man with the ability to extract people's memories and record them on film.
- Contemplation from The Faerie Queene is blind from old age, but only he is able to show Redcrosse a vision of what Heaven will look like if he stays on the path of holiness.
- Firekeeper Saga: Firekeeper has a Talking Animal wolf called Blind Seer. The wolves thought he was blind because of his blue eyes, when he grew up they that realized he could see. Also, this might be a Meaningful Name in another way, as he is unusually curious and quite perceptive for a wolf.
- In the Green Hills series, Efa foretells the deaths of several other characters. On the same night her predictions come true, she loses her eyes.
- Played With in Heralds Of Rhimn. Ainzel and her god Thah are both blind prophets, but Thah was a god of prophecy long before the two of them were blinded by a failed assassination attempt on Ainzel. Thah's twin, Fraihz, is also a god of prophecy, but with a different disability.
- In the picture book King Crow, the hero, King Cormac, utilizes this trope. In reality, he's relying on a crow which tells him things.
- The Langoliers, both the film and the Stephen King short story, feature Dinah, who not only detects something horrible approaching, but uses Psychic Powers to divert a psychotic passenger into their path.
- Legends of Shannara has Prue Liss. She was never blind in the traditional sense, and had her danger sense from the start, but she sacrificed her ability to see color, which also made her eyes look completely blind to others to enhance her danger sense enough to save her friend.
- All of the soulweavers in The Legendsong Sage are silverblind. They sacrifice their normal sight for the ability to see auras and know the truth while segueing in the Void. Gained during the Darkfall process at their initiation.
- In The Lost Years of Merlin and related series, Merlin loses his eyesight in a fire when he's young but develops "second sight," which here is defined as a sort of magical vision. It also means that he can occasionally see things that others cannot, like invisible writing.
- Toc the Younger from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, a one eyed youth who originally believes the legend that the loss of an eye or eyes can result in clairvoyance. He eventually starts to have visions in Gardens Of The Moon, shortly before being lost in a warren.
- Iggy, from the Maximum Ride series, lost his sight to evil scientists when he was young. This doesn't stop him from being able to hear acutely, tell members of his Flock apart by touch or footstep, fly, fight, cook, pick locks, and build various explosives. His blindness may also have contributed to his skill of sensing colors by touch.
- Seer from Messenger was blinded by a horrific attack meant to kill him years earlier.
- Ian from the Michael Vey series, who can't see but has the power of Electrolocation, similar to that of an electric eel. This actually makes him more useful for reconnaissance than the sighted characters, because his vision can't be blocked by walls, allowing him to be aware of things for long distances.
- From the Night World series: Aradia, blind since age one and the main source of the prophesies that drive the action of the final four books.
- Played with a lot in Oedipus Rex. Tiresias is the blind soothsayer, while Oedipus is blind to the events around the horrible prophecy. Eventually when he finds out the truth (that he had indeed married his mother and killed his father,) he now sees the truth and in his agony sticks pins in his eyes, becoming physically blind.
- By the time he wrote Paradise Lost, John Milton had gone blind in Real Life. As the narrator of the epic, he occasionally suggests that he's taking on the role of the Blind Seer himself.
- Raybearer: Umansa possesses a Hallow that allows his otherwise sightless eyes to see prophecies in the stars, which he weaves into tapestries.
- Redwall is fond of this trope. Cregga Rose Eyes from The Long Patrol and Taggerung, as well as Simeon from Mariel of Redwall are both blind, yet can maneuver about the Abbey and know who's at their door. Possibly justified because they're animals, and therefore their senses of smell and hearing would possibly be better than a humans' anyway. Brian Jacques introduced these characters to pay homage to the students of a school for the blind that he used to visit when he would make deliveries to them during his days as a truck driver. He would tell stories to the children every time he'd come by their school, which eventually led to him becoming an author. For what it's worth, during a Q&A session he states that Simon and Cregga's almost supernatural abilities with their senses were lifted almost directly from things he observed the blind students accomplishing.
- In Riddley Walker, protagonist Riddley encounters a blind, clairvoyant young man named Lissener.
- Tsinga the fortune-telling wolf from David Clement-Davies' The Sight.
- Used interestingly in Star Trek: Mere Anarchy, where it's suggested the alien Payav also have this trope; one of the characters attempts to evoke it. Sinister Minister Odra maVolan was originally blind, but has since made use of new technologies to restore his vision. However, he long used his blindness as a symbol for his purity and commitment, and so kept his recovery secret. He continues to act as though he's blind in public.
- Star Wars Legends: The Miraluka, like Jerec, Visas Marr and Q'Anilia, have no eyes, seeing instead through the Force (which gives them better vision than normal humans... usually). It tends to make some of them very good at predicting the future.
- Kreia too. Although blind by choice.
- Subverted in The Seventh Tower: the Crones are described as having bizarrely colored eyes (at first bright blue, then turning to milky white as they age) such that they appear blind. But they don't seem to have any trouble seeing at all.
- In the Towers Trilogy, Ieren tells Xhea that most people with dark magic are conventionally blind but don't realize it because their power allows them to see everything ordinary people do and more. They can see in perfect darkness, detect the presence of magic both light and dark, and see ordinarily invisible ghosts; the only drawback is that they cannot perceive colors, seeing only in shades of grey.
- Jayfeather from Warrior Cats. Blind from birth, also one of three cats who "hold the power of the stars in their paws". In Jayfeather's case, he's empathic and mildly telepathic, able to appear in other cats' dreams, a power previously the exclusive domain of StarClan (the spirits of their ancestors). Not to mention, being a cat, his senses of hearing and smell are powerful enough that he has little trouble moving about in the forest.
- It's rumored that blind cats grow thicker, longer whiskers than other cats, which help them sense and avoid obstacles.
- Invoked in Wise Blood. The preacher Asa Hawks deliberately blinds himself as a very public demonstration of his faith in God, or rather, he pretended to. He's a complete charlatan who's only faking his blindness. Later, Hazel Motes has an epiphany and proceeds to blind himself in the same manner for real.
- The Witch of Knightcharm: The rookie witch Brynne has very bad eyesight and requires thick glasses to see. She also specializes in seer magic and can see into the future, a skill which she uses to help her clique cheat in orientation.
- In Zeroes, Flicker was born blind, but her superpower allows her to see through the eyes of others.
Live-Action TV
- Lodz in Carnivàle made a Deal with the Devil, telling Henry Scudder he'd "give anything to possess even a fraction of the power you possess". Scudder takes Lodz at his word, granting him clairvoyance and other psychic powers in exchange for his sight. Lodz does get back at Scudder, though, in the season one finale, where Management returns Lodz's sight for killing Ruthie so that Ben is forced to use his healing powers to resurrect her. Unfortunately, it doesn't last too long.
- Angel had a blind martial artist sent to kill three blind children who were all "seers": obviously quite good ones, as one was playing with a Rubik's Cube.
- In Season 4 of Farscape, Chiana gains the ability to see into the future at the cost of longer and longer periods of blindness the more she uses it.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Done with technology! Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge is blind (no pupils) but wears a VISOR that provides him with better than normal vision (infra-red vision anyone?). In at least two episodes, his VISOR gives him the means to solve a technological problem that was threatening someone who had just finished telling him that their society eliminates disabled people, and he makes a point of underlining the irony. By the time of the TNG movies, he switches out the VISOR for ocular implants. The implants look unusual compared to real eyes, and the idea of seeing him like this after seven seasons with his VISOR is a little jarring.
- In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?", Miranda Jones is a blind telepath who becomes an ambassador to a species whose horrific appearance drives sighted humans mad.
- The fourth season of Supernatural features a seer (and dirty-minded biker chick) named Pam whose psychic abilities actually lead to her blindness: while conducting a seance for Sam and Dean, she accidentally gazes on the true form of Castiel, an angel, and the sight of it burns out her eyeballs. She appears in a later episode with milky white glass eyes, deliberately invoking this trope for fun and profit.
- When Hercules: The Legendary Journeys first started and the series followed a revolving cast of supporting characters (ie, Herc'd bump into one of his buddies every week, and they'd hang. Also Zeus was more of a dirty old man and less of a "Scary muthafucka with a beard", one of his pals was a blind prophet.
- Christopher Wey in The Dead Zone, a character from a post-apocalyptic future who woke up blind but possessing powers like Johnny.
- Jeremiah: In "Tripwire", Damien has at least one blind eye (the other seems to have some sight) due to being prematurely born to a dying mother. He is said to have such good instincts about who to trust that the townspeople insist on having him accompany whoever they elect leader. He also correctly insinuates that Markus is in danger of dying within a minute of meeting him.
- Parodied in the MADtv (1995) character "The Blind Kung Fu Master." He only believes that his blindness is a Disability Superpower, which makes him even less able to function than an actual blind person.
- Smallville featured one of these. At the end she looks into Lex Luthor's future, which kills her.
- Jenna from Pretty Little Liars was accidentally blinded by the Liars prior to the start of the series in a deadly prank, but despite her lack of sight remains one of the most insightful and enigmatic characters in the series... it's no wonder she's one of the prime suspects for being A.
- Once Upon a Time had a blind seer in the season 2 episode "Manhattan", who gave Rumplestiltskin his ability to see the future. Although she did have eyes on the palms of her hands.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World had a blind child living in a cave who predicted the future. Challenger finds out the kid is lying, since if they leave the caves, he won't be in charge anymore.
Challenger: You'd just be a blind child in a world of light.
- Cordelia Goode from American Horror Story develops "Second Signt", but only when she's blinded.
- Vikings featured a blind seer called...The Seer. He is blind, suffering from a skin condition which may be leprosy, and implied to be hundreds of years old. He claims he knows only what the gods tell him, displays knowledge of things he shouldn't be able to know and his prophecies come true, but are often so vague that people realize them only after they come to pass... which he notes is sadly the case of prophecy.
- Sliders: When they reach a world where witchcraft and magick are commonplace, a blind seer woman foretells their future. Wade herself invokes this trope.
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Love is Blind", the blind musician has the ability to see the future. He is able to tell that Jack Haines has come to the Mustang bar to kill the man with whom his wife Elaine is seemingly having an affair. After confronting Jack, the musician explains that he is drawn to a place by a strange feeling and that a prophetic song appears fully formed in his head once he is close to its subject. He can also share his vision of the future with someone if he chooses. In order to dissuade Jack from committing murder, the musician shows him exactly what would happen if he were to go through with it: Elaine would be killed in the crossfire and it would turn out that she was meeting with his best friend Taylor in order to get him a surprise anniversary gift.
- Sara Lance temporarily becomes one in Season 5 of Legends of Tomorrow, after she sees the true form of the Fate Atropos (which should have killed her). She loses the ability in the season finale upon killing Atropos, which also restores her eyesight.
- A variation in The Sandman (2022). In the episode "24/7", John Burgess uses his powers to make Bette blind herself. He then asks the Fates to tell him his future, and they speak to him through the bodies of his victims, including Bette.
Theater
- The Wild Duck plays with this. Hedvig, half sister of Gregers Werle, and believed to be the daughter of Hjalmar Ekdahl, is said to be poor-sighted, and is in the process of losing her eye-sight altogether. In spite of this, she seems to take the hidden messages of Gregers quite fast, and it is implied she has some "seer" qualities.
- Played with, because her true father, Hakon Werle, is going blind as well, but his machinations are keeping a number of people "in the dark". With the exception of Gregers - and Hedvig.
Music
- The protagonist in the first Ayreon album, "The Final Experiment," is a blind minstrel who can see visions sent from the future.
- Blind Guardian. Guardian is a type of seer, at any rate, and their songs deal with the same subject matter as the typical Blind Seer.
- "Spider Web," Joan Osborne's dream of Ray Charles, gives a twist to the trope, because in her dream Ray can see just fine. "Then he took his glasses off, and I could look inside his head / Flashing like a thunderstorm, I saw a shining spider web." Then he takes her flying in the air and gives her some sage advice.
- The music videos for "★" and "Lazarus" by David Bowie depict David with bandages over his eyes. This is especially more powerful in "Lazarus", since he's foretelling about his upcoming death (the songs' parent album was recorded before Bowie's liver cancer became terminal, but it was declared as such during the latter video's shooting).
Myths & Religon
- Classical Mythology: Tiresias the blind prophet makes this Older Than Feudalism. How he got that way is an interesting story (in a nutshell, Zeus and Hera experimented on him to settle a bet; they made him live as a woman for several years, and then asked him his opinion on whether a man or a woman enjoyed sex more. Tiresias sided with Zeus (claiming that women did, actually—essentially, Hera was angry at men in general for being such massive perverts, but Zeus replied that women were just as perverted), so Hera cursed him with blindness, but Zeus consoled him by giving him prophecy.) According to an alternate telling, he stumbled upon Athena while she was bathing. Her immediate reaction was to blind him, but after realizing it was an accident she granted him foresight as an apology.
- Justice wasn't actually blind, but she was blindfolded (starting in the 15th century). Fortune sometimes too.
- Norse Mythology: Odin went halfway, trading one eye for a drink from the well of wisdom.
- The Bible: Ahijah the Shilonite becomes this in 1st Kings chapter 14 around the time King Jeroboam's son Abijah becomes sick. Although Jeroboam's wife is told to disguise herself when approaching the prophet so that he would not recognize her, God tells Ahijah ahead of time who's coming to see him, and so instantly addresses her and her situation the instant she steps in. He delivers her the bad news that Jeroboam's son is going to die the instant she returns home, and that's what happened.
Roleplay
- Embers in the Dusk has High Grandmaster Munstrum Ridcully, The Oracle Of Avernus. He lost his sight after witnessing the birth of Ynnead and his battle against Slaanesh. He is a diviner on par with Eldar Farseers and probably the most skilled human diviner ever.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Most any PC can take the feat "Blind Fight" which, although not granting prophetic visions, allows for them to fight when blinded or without light almost as well as if it where clear as day.
- Many powerful monsters, especially those that dwell underground, have "blindsight" or "tremorsense," which allow them to effectively fight in the dark.
- Tiresias, a pre-rolled PC in the BD&D Immortals level adventure IM3 The Best of Intentions. He was clearly based on the mythological Tiresias.
- GURPS allows characters with the Blindness disadvantage to take improved hearing and taste/smell for half cost, as partial compensation. They also get reduced penalties to fighting blind, since they are blind all the time, and (naturally) darkness doesn't affect their skills. But the obvious downsides hold: they can never learn skills like Forgery, and a lot of other tasks are harder or just plain impossible for them.
- Pathfinder has "Clouded Vision" as one of several potential oracle's curses. (And iconic character Alahazra has the Prophet Eyes to prove it.)
- In Mordheim, the millenarian spin-off to Warhammer, the Augurs of the Sisterhood of Sigmar are blind female seers. Warhammer also has Kairos Fateweaver, the daemonic Oracle of Tzeentch. One of Kairos's heads sees into the past, the other sees into the future, but both are blind to the present.
- The blind Priests of Vaul, smith god of the Elves, are something very similar. While their ritually administered blindness does not give them visions of the future, it does allow them to see the winds of magic and composition of metals with great clarity, such that they can forge powerful magic items in their forges.
- In the Warhammer 40,000 Universe, the sanctioning process for human astrotelepaths (usually shortened to "Astropaths") renders most of them blind.
- Most of them are not seers, at least not for a living. For their day job they are more like the interstellar email system, with Daemonic incursions instead of spam. Notably, the Imperium is probably the only place where Blind Seers are produced on industrial scale.
- Also inflicted on other psykers, such as Soric in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. Even before the Black Ships took him, Soric sometimes thought he saw better with his good eye closed.
His eye was dead, and so he reckoned it saw things only the dead could see.
- In Graham McNeill's Storm of Iron, the Chaos forces' sorcerer has his eyes sewn shut. This does not prevent him from staring into a fire to scry.
- The one-eyed primarch Magnus the Red has prophetic dreams; in Graham McNeill's Horus Heresy novel False Gods, he remembers having them for as long as he can remember.
- Also from the Warhammerverse is Kairos Fateweaver, a two-headed daemon who can see the past and future, but not the present.
- Lord Skrolk from Warhammer Fantasy has long since gone blind (his eyes rotted away), but The Horned Rat has granted him the ability to see the world through Aura Vision. As a priest of The Horned Rat he's also given prophecies to guide him.
- Werewolf: The Forsaken gives us the Beshilu, who can (in their Rokhan form) acquire an ability called Prophet's Eyes. This causes them to grow so many tumors that their visual cortex gives up and commits suicide; however, they gain the ability to see the future in exchange. Oddly enough, they have to look into something (pools of blood, entrails, etc.) to see said future. The sourcebook explicitly notes that nobody's sure how they see what they're divining with.
- One of the new characters in the fourth main expansion for Red Dragon Inn is Tara the Navigator, whose second sight makes her very skilled as navigator of the Crimson Drake.
- In Hero's Journey, one of the example characters used in the mechanics videos is Aurora Dahl, a blind chosen of Odin who is able to sense fate and acts as its vessel in delivering prophecy.
Video Games
- Fable: The Hero's sister loses her sight in the bandit attack, but her natural prophetic skill only gets stronger as a result.
- In Fable the Journey, Gabriel takes up this mantle in the finale.
- Warcraft:
- Illidan in the is blind, even after being transformed into a demon, and perpetually wears a blindfold. The novels reveal that he lost his eyes due to a demon "gift" that essentially replaced his normal vision. Another character in the novels has replaced his normal eyes with magical ones that are even better, allowing him to see magic energy. He mostly wears the blindfold because the empty eyesockets filled with strange smoke is a rather unnerving sight. Not that it helped him after he grew demon wings...
- Demon hunters in general tend to be blind, as part of the ritual that they use to bind a demon's essence to themselves involves stabbing their eyes out with an enchanted blade to seal the essence within their bodies. It doesn't hinder them much as they gain magical vision in return (which works like thermal imaging except with magic instead of heat). This especially grants them the ability to see and feel demons and demonic energy, whether hidden from laymen or not. A blatant example of this would be the demon hunter outside the demon camps in Nagrand (Outland), who speaks about it offhandedly.
- The orc Farseers such as Drek'thar are also blind, and able to make predictions.
- In NetHack, the player can do this to himself through intrinsic sight and a blindfold (or by being blinded). It's useful for avoiding gaze attacks (eg, a medusa's petrifying stare). One of the more difficult self-imposed challenges is to play as a blind samurai. Obtaining clairvoyance is one of the most important early steps.
- In the Adventure Game Adaptation Expansion of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, a young Jewish man is being experimented on in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The doctors have removed his eyes, and attached his raw optic nerves to what are probably his original eyeballs with wires. He can't see the real world, but he can offer prophecy when he isn't in unending pain.
- A side quest in Baldur's Gate II involved the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, who plucked out their "cursed orbs" in the belief that it would grant them divine favour. There appears to be something to it, given that they act as if they're not blind (Blindess is a Status Effect that disables AI and makes targeting anything at a range greater than melee impossible; the unseeing eye cultists do not have this penalty. Oddly enough, they can be targeted by Blindness spells and gain the normal blindness penalties when under the effects. Better not think too long about that).
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has Kreia. For most of the game, she is the only one who really knows what is going on. Then, since the game was rushed, the ending consists mostly of her looking into the future and telling you what's going to happen. It's made clear that Kreia's blindness is voluntary; her eyes atrophied because she didn't use them to see anymore, instead relying on the Force and marathon meditations to perceive the galaxy.
- Also it has Visas Marr who is a Miraluka: a race of beings who see through the Force.
- In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, there's General Kota; as an ironic twist of the trope, he loses his powers in going blind.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic lets you play a Miraluka. Sadly, your screen doesn't reflect your character's Force Sight, but they do get cosmetic ability to sense the alignment of other player characters, which can be more useful than one would think. note
- Subverted with Nessiah of Yggdra Union. He's very much blind and is known as "The Prophet" in the Imperial Army, but he's not actually a seer—he's just very much aware of everything that's going on across the continent and is ridiculously good at Xanatos Speed Chess. It probably helps that he's Really 700 Years Old, so there's the whole been-there-done-that thing, too.
- Mithras the blind seer from Sacrifice.
- Partial example from Kingdom Hearts: Riku gains this ability sometime between Chain of Memories and KH2. His normal eyesight still works fine when he takes his blindfold off, but he seems to prefer using the darkness-sensing abilities he picked up in CoM.
- Armed and Dangerous gives us Rexus, a smelly old man who although blind manages with his sixth sense.
- Con Smith from killer7. Can aim a gun fine — his first-person mode is the same as everyone else's — despite being blind and wearing a bandana that completely covers his eyes. His heightened sense of hearing also gives him a Disability Superpower that comes in handy in a few levels.
- Seers in the SSI strategy game Dark Legions (for the PC) have completely white eyes and are defined by the game as being blind in their description.
- City of Heroes has an enemy group ALSO called "Seers". They supposedly can see, but they have face-plates over their eyes. In addition, their arms and feet are bound so they can't even MOVE without the assistance of a anti-gravity jetpack, taking this trope to something of an extreme.
- Lee Sin, the Blind Monk in League of Legends is blind. He can fight just fine and has two frequently usable skills that reveal enemies in the Fog of War to his teammates (even stealthed ones).
- Geon the troglodyte warlock in Heroes of Might and Magic III. All troglodytes are blind, but Geon is able to 'see' magical energy and read the minds of his enemies. In game-mechanics terms, this gives his a bonus to his Eagle Eye skill, allowing him to learn new spells by studying his enemies in battle.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, the titular Elder Scrolls have this effect. Referred to as "Fragments of Creation," the Scrolls are of unknown origin and number which simultaneously record past, present, and future events irrefutably; what did happen, what could have happened, what might yet happen. To the untrained eye, the Scrolls will yield an odd chart that looks like it has constellations on it with odd glyphs printed over or under it. A knowledgeable reader will be able to interpret the Scrolls to a degree, but incompletely, and will be irrevocably struck blind. A well-trained reader (such as a Moth Priest, described below) will glean much more from the Scroll and will even recover their eyesight... for a finite number of times before their sight is permanently lost. The Cult of the Ancestor Moth is an order that has served the rulers of Cyrodiil by reading the scrolls since time immemorial. The Ritual of the Ancestor Moth grants them special protections which enable them to (relatively) safely read the Elder Scrolls, but they are struck temporarily blind after each reading. The periods of blindness last longer each time until the Priest's final reading, after which he is struck permanently blind. At this point, they are no longer able to read the Scrolls and are sent into retirement. Of course, the Dwemer, being the walking embodiments of refutation that they were, overcame this issue through stubborn refusal to accept this limitation and used scientific means to create a machine that could directly read an Elder Scroll without anyone suffering the side effects.
- Matoya in Final Fantasy is a blind witch who uses a Crystal Ball to see, which gets stolen by the Dark Elf sorcerer Astos and requires the party's retrieval.
- Ravenloft: Stone Prophet has Min Deir. She is blind (and mute), only able to see and speak through magical items, and sees that the player characters are instrumental in a prophecy to liberate Har'Akir. However, she subverts the trope because her blindness has nothing to do with her prophecy: She's blind because the High Priestess of Set gouged her eyes out.
- Seris from Paladins is a blindfolded oracle who was given "sight beyond sight" from the Abyss.
- In Red Dead Redemption II, Arthur Morgan or John Marston can encounter an old man on rural roads throughout the map known as Blind Man Cassidy. His often cryptic phrases foreshadow the events of both Red Dead Redemption II and Red Dead Redemption.
- Slay the Spire added The Watcher in a 2020 update. Although she is blind, her playstyle revolves around deck manipulation - using cards with the "Scry" keyword to discard unwanted cards for a chance at better draws.
- World of Warcraft: Drek'thar is an elderly orc who was born blind and, therefore, eagerly embraced the shamanic ways. Guided by the spirits of the elements and aided by his wisdom, he can briefly see the future and give cryptic prophecies about Azeroth's Cataclysm. Sometimes, he can even see alternate futures.
Webcomics
- Dominic Deegan: Dominic sometimes goes blind if he uses his second sight too much. It's called Seer's shroud.
- The Order of the Stick:
- Sangwaan constantly wears a blindfold but is largely unencumbered by it, largely thanks to being both precognitive and telepathic. Being able to cast and use True Seeing suggests that she isn't actually blind, though, and only uses the blindfold as a focus for her powers.
- After leaving the Oracle's tower and having their memories confused by its protective magic, Vaarsuvius recalls him as "an aged elf with a blindfold."
- Locus: Locus's father has an especially ironic variation: he pissed off God by using his second sight, so God blinded him as punishment.
- Digger: The Seers at the Statue of Ganesh's temple sew their eyelids shut.
- Homestuck:
- Terezi Pyrope is blind. She also bears the mythological title "Seer of Mind". Throughout the game, this manifested as a highly developed ability bordering on omniscience to observe the possible consequences of actions and events in her mind, allowing her to choose the most favourable and appropriate course of action. That her name is similar to Tiresias is more than a little bit appropriate.
- Sollux Captor, not blind, hears whispers of the voices of the imminently deceased, and predicts that he will be blinded at some point. Sure enough, he is later blinded during his duel with Eridan. Interestingly, he seems to have inverted the trope upon becoming blind — he claims that he can no longer hear the dead, indicating that he's lost the ability. On the other hand, he also considers it something of a relief. Being a seer isn't for everyone.
- Rose Lalonde, the Seer of Light, gets a large hood which covers her eyes as a nod to this trope after ascending to the God Tiers.
- Doc Scratch is an omniscient being with a perfectly featureless head resembling a large cue ball. He lacks eyes, and some of his comments state that he doesn't rely on sight and likely has no sense of sight at all. Instead, he orients himself by always knowing exactly when and where everything is.
- Sorcery 101: The more powerful the seer, the worse their eyesight is.
- Faux Pas: Myrtle claims that a mole is an all-knowing seer that guided her through life.
- Widdershins: Downplayed. Jack O'Malley can see and interact with spirits and auras, but is completely color-blind.
- The Fantasy Book Club: Eremis' mother could see the future and wore a blindfold. Averted, with Eremis, who is also a seer and her vision is perfectly fine.
Web Original
- Looming Gaia: Ginger and Itchy's daughter Cinnamon is partially blind and hard of hearing, so Mr. Ocean teaches her telepathy to see and hear though other people's minds.
- The Wold-Newton Universe article "Marvellous, Fantastic Heroes: Daredevil" proposes that all blind seers are the results of a breeding program by the Nine from Philip José Farmer's A Feast Unknown and sequels. Blind characters whose other senses are superhuman (such as the title character) actually have a limited version of this.
Western Animation
- Fasir from the Aladdin: The Series. His blindfold is actually masking the fact that he is a cyclops. With sight presumably.
- In an episode of Animaniacs, Yakko parodies the concept of Justice being blind, standing by a statue of her and saying, "Justice isn't blind... She's cross-eyed." (And then taking her blindfold off to prove it.)
- Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender can sense the vibrations of the Earth, and is able to sense underground, behind walls and most everything that a normal person can see. She can also tell whether someone is lying by sensing their heart rates. Incidentally, she is perhaps the greatest earthbender in the world of Avatar, having learned earthbending from its original source, the blind badgermoles that are able to move earth, and likewise earthbends in a style inspired by a different martial art than most earthbenders do, a martial art which was coincidentally invented by a blind woman, or so the folklore states. However, it's not a perfect substitution for being able to see. Toph is still unable to read or look at anything written on paper, has difficulty making out details of her surroundings on sand, and anything up in the air might as well be invisible to her (shown twice in her debut episode; first when Aang manages to defeat her in her debut episode by airbending himself out of her way rather than walk, and second when Sokka accidentally hits her in the head with a championship belt by throwing it at her rather than handing it over).
- In The Legend of Korra, Toph is still around despite being roughly 85 and lives in a swamp where a tree has spread its roots around the world. Toph has taken to sensing the world through its roots, letting her know more or less what's going on in the outside world.
- Parodied on Clone High. Magical Negro Toots tried to accomplish this, if not literally, then at least by understanding everyone's secret feelings. Yet despite his catchphrase of "Now I may be blind, but I can still see that..." he is arguably the most out-of-it character on the show, remaining completely unaware the entire Love Triangle scenario, and mostly just supplying the viewer with lots of hilarious blind jokes.
- In a notable episode of Spongebob Squarepants Mrs.Puff is deemed incompetent and fired. She is replaced with a driving instructor that is determined to teach SpongeBob to drive via very Unorthodox methods. He first makes him crawl the course blindfolded, then walk the course blindfolded and drive the course blindfolded. When the moment of truth arrives he removes the blindfold and instructs SpongeBob to drive only to discover that in lieu of turning him into an expert driver he has turned blindness into a Disability Superpower for SpongeBob. He can drive perfectly while blindfolded but not at all otherwise. He's arguably worse at driving with sight now than he was when Mrs. Puff was his teacher.
- The Challenge of the GoBots episode "The Seer" had the Renegades target a blind boy who was able to see visions of the future in his dreams.
- Steven Universe: Played With as Sapphires such as the main one, are a Seer. The main one seems unencumbered by her bangs. She only has one eye, though. Another type of sapphire, Padparadscha, can see the... past. Between a minute and a few seconds ago, specifically. This can be useful — she is the one who points out they're pushing the wrong button to start their starship's engine, for example — but far from the trope.
- Hit-Monkey: At a Shinto temple, there is a blind monk who can communicate with both Hit-Monkey and the ghostly Bryce. At one point, he makes a prediction that Lady Bullseye will die by their hands.
Real Life
- In a primitive society with low technology and scarce resources, it would be natural for the handicapped (who cannot fight or gather food) to earn their keep by mastering an arcane skill as say a healer, a craftsman or a bard. Some of those tales may reflect the memory of this.
- Something like this, according to Slate, is why a disproportionate number of revered Muslim clerics are blind. Also, one of the original job requirements for muezzins (men who chant the adhan to call the faithful to prayer) was blindness. As their job required them to stand on top of minarets all day, a sighted man might be tempted to peek into people's yards.
- Some fortune tellers pretend to be blind so that they can show their talent by "guessing" their customers' characteristics without seeing them.
- An Itako is a type of Always Female Japanese shamans, said to be able to speak to the dead and exorcise spirits. All of them are blind women who subject themselves to Training from Hell before becoming this.
- Baba Vanga has been said to be this. She went blind in her youth after surviving a tornado, and has been said to have correctly predicted the start and end of World War II, the Chernobyl disaster, the 9/11 attacks, and even the exact date of her death. However, some other predictions failed to happen - for one thing, she said that a World War would last from November 2010 to October 2014.
