Blind Seer



""Geez, they have a chick that can read minds, but she can't find the figures they want in a sealed box...""

- Haley Starshine, Order of the Stick

The Blind Seer is an old archetype. They are blind, and yet they can see more than we can. This seems to be a recurring theme in mythology; justice is blind, Odin plucked out an eye to gain knowledge, and the Graeae had only had one eye between three of them. Time and time again, the sacrifice of sight is shown to result in greater cosmic knowledge.

A special case of Disability Superpower, often demonstrated with Prophet Eyes. Blindfolds are another favorite.

Anime & Manga

 * Princess Hinoto from X 1999 is blind, deaf and crippled as a result of her enormous seeing powers.
 * Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin is so awesomely badass, he can see after being blinded for a while.
 * 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.
 * Also, 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).
 * Mel, from the fourth and fifth episodes of Genocyber tries to obtain money through fortune telling with her psychic powers.
 * Shaka of Virgo from the Anime/Manga Saint Seiya augmented his power by closing his eyes and so increasing his other 6 senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing, intuition (or mind) and cosmos (that's the important one)... also to be somewhat prophetic. Or at least that's the explanation that's given to why he's always with his eyes closed... except that this defeats the sense of the affirmation that when he opens his eyes he becomes as powerful as God or somesuch...
 * Regarding Shaka: while he keeps his eyes closed, he's actually meditating. Any thought he gives to his enemy, any action he takes, is just some minor annoyance that doesn't distract him from his trance. Once he opens his eyes, it means he is devoting his entire attention on you. And you do NOT want the reincarnation of the Buddha giving you his undivided attention when he wants to kill you.
 * Actually, it's both. He negates his sight, so he can increase the rest of his senses, but also meditates, to save all that extra power. Not only when he opens his eyes he is completely focused in you, he is releasing all that cosmo he was keeping.
 * Ikki of Phoenix uses this as well... to an extreme.  Now that I think about it, the whole Saint Seiya manga/anime is pretty much about the Bronze saints measuring theirs on the table against everyone they face.
 * Shiryu lampshades this trope after he loses his sight (the first time, I think).
 * 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.
 * from Claymore.
 * Bat from Ginga Densetsu Weed.
 * 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.
 * In Slayers, Rezo the Red Priest is one of these... but he's blind because.
 * Yin from Darker Than Black was born blind, but is capable of "seeing" using any body of water as a medium.
 * In Akira, during the "Akira Kingdom" arch, there were a lot of guys with psychic powers. And the one in charge of keeping an eye over everything always had his eyes blindfolded.
 * Lady Miyako is also one.

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.
 * Magic has used this trope throughout its existence, from Cyclopean Mummy's flavor text all the way to the blindfolded Skyward Eye Prophets.

Comics

 * Probe, a psychic from the new Blue Beetle, literally has *no eyes*. She wears sunglasses when she's out and about.
 * 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.
 * An issue of Warren Ellis' Dv8 featured a blind precog, Blind Lemon, though in true Ellis fashion, she went blind when her teacher raped her, not when she got her powers. To be fair, she wasn't strictly blind... she was just blind to the present; she saw the future with perfect clarity.
 * The quintessential Comic Book example would be Daredevil, who lost his sight in an accident related to radioactive substances, but gained a radar "vision" and heightened senses in exchange.
 * It's gone past poetic significance to the point where Daredevil can do practically everything a sighted person can do, including reading regular text by sensing the ink on the page, and has to fake his disability when living as his secret identity. Lampshaded in Alias when Jessica Jones makes a habit of waiting outside his apartment and not ringing the doorbell out of spite, because she knows he can sense her but doesn't want to break character.
 * From Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: 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'.
 * Sun-Toucher in Elf Quest 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...
 * Warlands has Zeph, an archer/mage who has a blindfold on at all times during his apprenticeship, to develop his powers.
 * 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 presumeably allows him to see into the astral realms (seeing people in astral forms is one of the Hulk's little known powers).
 * Spider-Man's mentor figure Madame Web was one of these.
 * Marvel's Batman Expy Shroud was blinded in a ritual at the culmination of his training, by having his eyes burned away with a branding iron in the shape of the goddess Kali. He gained a mystic perception of his surroundings, unhindered by darkness.
 * Madame Xanadu was blinded in Infinite Crisis. However, she was already a powerful psychic.

Fan Works

 * 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.
 * 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.

Film - Animated
""Y'all want to be human, but ya blind to what ya need!""
 * 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).
 * Mama Odie from The Princess and the Frog

Film

 * The Matrix: 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).
 * The old blind man in O Brother, Where Art Thou?? who, being that the story was loosly based on Homer's Odyssey, was basically Tiresias.
 * Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman
 * Krull
 * 5ive Girls is a film about reform school girls with strange powers. The blind girl among them predictably has second sight.
 * Laura in Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!
 * Cass from The Hills Have Eyes Part II
 * Cass from The Hills Have Eyes Part II

Literature

 * Dune: After Paul loses his sight in an assassination attempt he discovers that his ability to have visions and see into the future is so great that he can still see using "vision sight". He knew this would happen and chose it.
 * Parodied with Mother Dismass in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. She 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. Discworld also has Miss Treason from Wintersmith, a blind and deaf witch who compensates by seeing and hearing through animals. Desiderata Hollow from Witches Abroad compensates for her blindness by training her second sight to see in the present.
 * Every seer in David Eddings's 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 Langoliers, both the film and the Stephen King short story, feature Dinah, who not only detects something horrible approaching, but
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Iggy, from the Maximum Ride novels, 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.
 * The Miraluka, like Jerec, Visas Marr and Q'Anilia, have no eyes, seeing instead through the Force (which incidentally 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Played with a lot in Oedipus Rex. Tiresias is the blind soothsayer, while Oedipus is blind to the events around the horrible prophecy.
 * 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.
 * Blind Hari Krooguh in Robert Adams' Horseclans novels.
 * Tsinga the fortune-telling wolf from David Clement-Davies' The Sight.
 * Apollonius of Tyana from the novel The Circus of Doctor Lao.
 * As well as the movie adaptation Seven Faces of Dr. Lao.
 * 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.
 * There was this one fantasy novel where a mind-reading blind character could use his magic to read a book through the eyes of a sighted person...
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Invoked Trope in Wise Blood. The preacher Asa Hawks deliberately blinds himself as a very public demonstration of his faith in God, . Later, Hazel Motes has an epiphany and proceeds to blind himself in the same manner.
 * In the Dragonlance novels, 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Live Action TV

 * Lodz in Carnivale 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 . 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.
 * from Farscape gains the ability to see into the future at the cost of longer and longer periods of blindness the more she uses it.
 * Done with Technology! Lt Cmdr Geordi LaForge from Star Trek: The Next Generation is blind (no pupils) but wears a visor that provides him with better than normal vision (infra-red vision anyone?).
 * 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 prophit.
 * 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.
 * Parodied in The Mad TV 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.
 * The Dochraid from Merlin.

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.

Mythology

 * Tiresias the blind prophet (pictured above) 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. Tiresias sided with Zeus, 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 constantly blindfolded.
 * Odin went halfway, trading one eye for some kind of insight.

Tabletop Games
"His eye was dead, and so he reckoned it saw things only the dead could see."
 * In the Warhammer 40000 Universe, the sanctioning process for human astrotelepaths renders most of them blind.
 * It's 'Astropath', actually, and most of them are not seers, they are more like a interstellar email system, with Demonic 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  in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. Even before the Black Ships took him,   sometimes thought he saw better with his good eye closed.


 * 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 demon who can see the past and future, but not the present.
 * In Dungeons and 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 just as well as if it where clear as day.
 * Many powerful monsters, especially those that dwell underground, have "blind fight" 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.
 * 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.
 * Pathfinder has "Clouded Vision" as one of several potential oracle's curses. (And iconic character Alahazra has the Prophet Eyes to prove it.)

Video Games

 * Ys Seven plays it straight with Mishera.
 * Fable:
 * Matoya from Final Fantasy I.
 * Illidan in the Warcraft series is blind, even after being transformed into a demon, and perpetually wears a blindfold.
 * Although 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 exept with magic instead of heat).
 * The orc Farseers such as Drek'thar are also blind, and able to make predictions.
 * A bit of a stretch, but it's worth noting that in Final Fantasy X, the same events that cost Auron his eye revealed to him the true threat to the world that nobody else knew, save for a handful of collaborators. Through the whole course of the game, Auron is consistently the one character who's always aware of what's really going on.
 * By that logic, the same can be said of Guts, who lost an eye during the Eclipse, and is the only one to have seen firsthand what Griffith is capable of.
 * Onin from Jak 2. She's also apparently mute, and communicates through gestures interpreted by her wisecracking monkey-parrot companion Pecker.
 * 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 clarvoyance 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 Standard 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).
 * Leknaat from Suikoden.
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has Kreia. For most of the game, she is the only one who really knows what is going on.
 * Although 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 percieve the galaxy.
 * Also it has Visas Marr who is a Miraluka: a race of beings who see through the Force.
 * It doesn't stop there; in The Force Unleashed, there's.
 * 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.
 * 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 Killer 7. 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.
 * The Blind Monk in League of Legends is blind. He can fight just fine.
 * 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.
 * Heroes of Might and Magic V's background features order of Blind Brothers.
 * The obscure 3DO game Blade Force had a villainous version of this trope in Reverend Beeyotch.
 * Blindness is one of the side effects of reading an Elder Scroll.

Web Comics

 * Dominic Deegan sometimes goes blind if he uses his second sight too much.
 * Infernomancers are like the DD Universe's version of Demon Hunters from Warcraft. They wear blindfolds with large spikes in them, as tribute to whatever Lord of Hell they've sold their souls to. If Tim is a typical example, they seem to have no trouble seeing.
 * Sangwaan from Order of the Stick.
 * Plus there's the (retroactive illusion) version of the Oracle that appears to Vaarsuvius, "an aged elf with a blindfold."
 * The title character's father in Locus has an especially ironic variation: he pissed off God by using his second sight, so God blinded him as punishment.
 * Digger is fairly squicked when she's introduced to the Seers at the Statue of Ganesh's temple. They sew their eyelids shut...
 * Boneclaw Mother likes to play with this trope, just to keep her mystique as Village Elder. Really, though, she's just a Cool Old Lady.
 * 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. Interestingly, he seems to have inverted the trope upon  - 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, presumably as a nod to this trope, after
 * Also of note re: Terezi is that after she was blinded, her lusus taught her to "see" by smelling and tasting colors. Smell isn't quite as clear a picture for her, so she's occasionally known to lick her computer screen if she's having trouble reading it.
 * In Sorcery 101 the more powerful the seer, the worse their eyesight is.

Western Animation

 * 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.
 * Fasir from the Disney's Aladdin TV series. His blindfold is actually masking the fact that he is a cyclops. With sight presumably.
 * Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender could only become one of the strongest Earthbenders ever, because she was blind: She started to play with Badgermoles, the primal Earthbenders who were blind like her, and learned how to compensate her disability from them by developing Seismic Sense like them.

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.
 * Some fortune tellers pretend to be blind so that they can show their talent by "guessing" their customers' characteristics without seeing them.
 * Itakos are blind Japanese shamans who are said to be able to speak to the dead and exorcise spirits.