Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you
Speaker 2: another episode from the Vault. Rob and I are out
Speaker 2: on fall Break this week. This is part two in
Speaker 2: our series on necromancy. It's called The Necromantic Urge. This
Speaker 2: episode originally published October third, twenty twenty three. Enjoy Ah Necromancy,
Speaker 2: Sweet Ah Wizard air udet teach me the skill that
Speaker 2: I instill. The pain surgeons assuage in vain, nor herb
Speaker 2: of all the plane can heal.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And that poem I
Speaker 2: just read was from Emily Dickinson and some of the
Speaker 2: numbering systems. That's her poem, number one seventy seven. I
Speaker 2: would say not one of her greatest efforts, But you know,
Speaker 2: some of those poems in her collections seem like something
Speaker 2: she just jotted on the back of a notepad real quick.
Speaker 2: I think that's more one of those. But I still
Speaker 2: like the forced rhyme of sweet with aeradite, and I
Speaker 2: don't know, wizard feels more right than Wizard.
Speaker 1: I like the reading. Yes, and yeah, this was not
Speaker 1: a poem of Emily Dickinson's that I was familiar with.
Speaker 1: Sometimes just it's given the title ah Necromancy Sweet, it
Speaker 1: is a note that like, basically I was gonna just
Speaker 1: bust out another Clark Ashton Smith poem for this episode,
Speaker 1: but then I was like, who else has some poems
Speaker 1: about necromancy and necromancers? And lo and behold, Emily Dickinson
Speaker 1: has not one, but two, which may surprise some of you,
Speaker 1: may not surprise some of you who are more familiar
Speaker 1: with her work.
Speaker 2: I would say I'm an Emily Dickinson fan, though I
Speaker 2: would not have been able to tell you that she
Speaker 2: had poems that use the word necromancy, though I know
Speaker 2: a number of her poems are concerned with death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she saw the skull beneath the skin, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Oh skull of skulls. Well, anyway, we are back with
Speaker 2: part two in our series on necromancy. Now, if you've
Speaker 2: been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably
Speaker 2: know that every year, for the whole month of October,
Speaker 2: we focus our attention on topics of the beastly, ghostly,
Speaker 2: devilish or uncanny sort. And also, as we often do,
Speaker 2: we got started a little bit early this year, So
Speaker 2: we got started last week even though it was still
Speaker 2: technically September, with the first part in a series on necromancy,
Speaker 2: the practice of communicating with the dead, usually for the
Speaker 2: purpose of divination, of gaining access to hidden information or truth.
Speaker 2: And in that episode we talked about accounts of necromancy
Speaker 2: or pseudo necromatic legends from ancient China, as well as
Speaker 2: methods of both speaking to and exercising ghosts in the
Speaker 2: first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. And today we are going
Speaker 2: to continue our journey into the nether world talking about
Speaker 2: necromancy practices and legends from ancient Greece and Rome.
Speaker 1: That's right, We're gonna be talking about Greek accounts of
Speaker 1: necromancy or things like necromancy to some extent in this episode,
Speaker 1: and who knows where we'll end up in a third
Speaker 1: episode on necromancy. So one of the sources that I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the last episode is a paper by Czech
Speaker 1: academic Andrej CapCar titled the Origins of Necromancy or how
Speaker 1: we learn to speak to the dead great title, and
Speaker 1: according to CapCar, the earliest mentions of necromancy, they don't
Speaker 1: require a lot of inference and interpretation, can be found
Speaker 1: in ancient Greece. In this we're dealing with nekia, which
Speaker 1: is the practice of calling forth and asking them about
Speaker 1: the future, or as we'll get into, things that are
Speaker 1: maybe not the future, but that are concerned with knowledge
Speaker 1: beyond what an individual has at their disposal. You know,
Speaker 1: the dead by virtue of being dead, they can tell
Speaker 1: you things. They can tell you things from their life,
Speaker 1: from their place of origin, and so forth. The primary
Speaker 1: example that he deals with, and indeed of a primary
Speaker 1: example you see in a lot of discussions of what
Speaker 1: is or isn't necromancy in ancient Greek traditions, takes us
Speaker 1: all the way back to book eleven of the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: in which Odysseus receives instructions about how to question the
Speaker 1: dead and then does so. Now, Joe correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, But I think we've recounted this story before
Speaker 1: on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Possibly, but it's been a while, so I think it's
Speaker 2: worth refreshing on this story.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'll give everyone the basics here concerning
Speaker 1: this episode. So basically, you know, the deal with Odysseus
Speaker 1: is trying to get home, right, He's he's been off
Speaker 1: to war, he's seen the Trojan Wars and so forth.
Speaker 1: Wants to get home, wants to be reunited with his wife.
Speaker 1: A lot of misadventures occur on the way, so he
Speaker 1: takes the scenic route does he takes the scenic route
Speaker 1: and one of the more scenic routes ends up taking
Speaker 1: He and his crew wind up on the island of
Speaker 1: Circe in the care you might say, or under the
Speaker 1: dominion of the enchantress Circe, and there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: some misunderstanding, there's some transfiguration involved, there's a good bit
Speaker 1: of seduction, and they end up staying there for like
Speaker 1: a year. So they're hanging out on this island for
Speaker 1: a fair amount of time.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly how all of this gets explained
Speaker 2: Penelope later.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's a possible answer to that here
Speaker 1: coming up. But essentially, you know, he has time to
Speaker 1: seek some some guidance, get some some advice from Circe,
Speaker 1: and basically he wants to seek the advice of the
Speaker 1: prophet Tyrisius, the blind Seer of Thebes, who in one
Speaker 1: Greek myth is changed into a woman for several years
Speaker 1: and then back into a man. But in this story,
Speaker 1: this seer is dead, and that's a problem, and that's
Speaker 1: why Circe sends Odysseus to the very gates of the
Speaker 1: Land of the Dead in order to seek his advice.
Speaker 1: So that's what the crew does. That's what the guys do.
Speaker 1: They go to the very limits of the mortal realm,
Speaker 1: right up to the border with the Land of the Dead,
Speaker 1: and per Circe's instructions, they dig a trench, they offer libations,
Speaker 1: they sacrifice you and a ram. These are the practices
Speaker 1: of Nekia. So the blood of the sacrifice calls forth ghosts,
Speaker 1: but it calls forth ghosts by the thousands, so it's
Speaker 1: just just calls them all out. They all come swarming.
Speaker 1: Key individuals that Odysseus knew in life they come forward
Speaker 1: as well. One of them is Odysseus's own mother, an initial,
Speaker 1: so he does not let her of her spirit approach
Speaker 1: the blood. But finally here comes Diyrisius. He drinks the
Speaker 1: blood and then speaks and tells Odysseus how their journey
Speaker 1: home is likely to go, and basically he breaks it
Speaker 1: to him. Look, you you know that stuff with the
Speaker 1: Cyclops while you offended Poseidon and he's a p pretty
Speaker 1: powerful guy. You're gonna have to make amends for that.
Speaker 1: There he outlines some of the other hurdles that are
Speaker 1: in their path, and then Odysseus asked, well, how can
Speaker 1: I speak to the ghost of my mother who I
Speaker 1: just ran into? And he is told that he must
Speaker 1: let the spirit drink the blood. If the spirit doesn't
Speaker 1: drink the blood, then they cannot speak to the living,
Speaker 1: and so he allows his mother's spirit to do that.
Speaker 1: He doesn't stand in her way, and he's able to
Speaker 1: speak with his mother and learn about events at home.
Speaker 1: There are more details when I may touch on some
Speaker 1: more here in a minute, but that's the basics here.
Speaker 1: Odysseus engages in a specific rite to attract the spirits
Speaker 1: of the deceased, appeases them, and gives them the power
Speaker 1: of speech and their for prophecy.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I know this passage is of interest to
Speaker 2: people trying to understand the culture and the ritual practices
Speaker 2: of ancient Greece because It's often interpreted not just as
Speaker 2: an isolated story in a fictional narrative, but a reflection
Speaker 2: of generally how the rituals of necromancy were thought to work,
Speaker 2: at least to some extent.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, so yeah, we're doing with what an
Speaker 1: eighth century BCE text that many argue as our earliest
Speaker 1: clear look at the idea of what would come to
Speaker 1: be known as necromancy. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: do have to highlight that I was looking around not
Speaker 1: everyone is convinced that it's truly what we'd call necromancy.
Speaker 1: We kind of get into the semantics game again. I've
Speaker 1: seen arguments that what takes place here is essentially a
Speaker 1: standard sacrifice to the spirits of the dead, only observed
Speaker 1: on the physical threshold of death's own country. So I
Speaker 1: don't you know, again, theerhaps the location is the key
Speaker 1: thing here, and the right itself is not necromancy itself,
Speaker 1: but takes on necromantic powers due to proximity to the
Speaker 1: land of the dead.
Speaker 2: That'll come back in some stuff I want to get
Speaker 2: into in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, plenty of commentators do equate
Speaker 1: Nekia with necromancy. Some things to keep in mind about
Speaker 1: what we see here in this primary example. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, as we were discussing in the first episode,
Speaker 1: this is one of those ancient accounts that involves speaking
Speaker 1: to the dead. It does not involved controlling the dead.
Speaker 1: I mean, aside from just giving them the power of
Speaker 1: speech by offering them the blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, we talked about in the last episode.
Speaker 2: How if you hear the word necromancer today, especially if
Speaker 2: you play Dungeons and Dragons or you're familiar with general
Speaker 2: fantasy horror literature, you're probably thinking of someone who commands
Speaker 2: armies of skeletons to do their bidding. And that's not
Speaker 2: usually what's being discussed with ancient necromancy. It's specifically a
Speaker 2: divination practice. It's about communicating with the dead, usually to
Speaker 2: get information.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the other interesting thing about this, and something
Speaker 1: I rather like about this example, is that Odysseus doesn't
Speaker 1: summon one dead individual from the realm of the dead.
Speaker 1: He summons all of them at once, like just a
Speaker 1: mass of them. It's like it's kind of like he
Speaker 1: replied all or you know how in different organizations, there'll
Speaker 1: be that one email address where you can, you can
Speaker 1: contact everybody in the organization. It's like, you know, all
Speaker 1: dead at underworld dot com or something to that effect.
Speaker 1: That's what Odysseus does here. And they're like, whoa, everybody's
Speaker 1: in the chat now.
Speaker 2: And then everybody starts replying, and that's the day. You
Speaker 2: get five hundred emails on the same thread and yeah, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then he has to try and figure out who
Speaker 2: he specifically wants to talk to.
Speaker 1: Now. Aspects of this that are reflected in later traditions
Speaker 1: of necromancy. It does entail blood. There is blood and
Speaker 1: blood sacrifice involved here. It intail it does entail the
Speaker 1: ability to speak with the dead and learn from them.
Speaker 1: And again this may work mostly due to proximity to
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of the Dead. And you could also classify
Speaker 1: this as an example of katabasis or a descent into
Speaker 1: the underworld. I mean, even if Odysseus is only going
Speaker 1: to the gates of Hell here, I mean he's essentially
Speaker 1: he's essentially in the underworld, right, I mean, where do
Speaker 1: you draw the line between actually going there and just
Speaker 1: going to the edge of it?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, So you could have an example like Orpheus
Speaker 2: that I think is more a more complete katabasis. But
Speaker 2: this is he's at least going part of the way.
Speaker 2: And I think it is portrayed from what I recall
Speaker 2: in the narrative as a as a harrowing journey into
Speaker 2: a place that, you know, where mortals do not normally
Speaker 2: tread exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course this is a major theme in literature.
Speaker 1: We see it in Virgil Zania, we see it in
Speaker 1: Dante's Divine Comedy, and so many other examples, you know,
Speaker 1: pop culture and otherwise. When people travel into the realm
Speaker 1: of the dead to get something, to find someone, to
Speaker 1: get secret knowledge, et cetera, there are often complications. There's
Speaker 1: often a fair amount of traunta.
Speaker 2: Now, you know what. Another thing I recall from the
Speaker 2: narrative in the Odyssey is that it presents a vision
Speaker 2: of the underworld and of the afterlife in which being
Speaker 2: dead sucks. It is really bad, and it's just it's
Speaker 2: not something you want and it's not like heaven where
Speaker 2: everybody's a nice angel and things are great, now you
Speaker 2: know it just it depicts the afterlife is a kind
Speaker 2: of miserable only half kind of pseudo existence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting to think about that I mean,
Speaker 1: we could have a larger discussion about various versions of
Speaker 1: the afterlife, but certainly, very generally, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: other examples where the afterlife is considered like the destination,
Speaker 1: it is the thing, and suffering here in the mortal
Speaker 1: realm is worth it for those treasures in the next realm.
Speaker 1: And you know, at least on the surface, you seem
Speaker 1: to see a reversal here in these traditions where like,
Speaker 1: this is the life, this is the prime existence. What
Speaker 1: happens next is just kind of a shadow. Now. CapCar
Speaker 1: also singles out one of the other details of this encounter,
Speaker 1: and that's and that concerns one of the other dead individuals,
Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead that approaches Odysseus here from
Speaker 1: the underworld, and that's Elpinor. This was the youngest member
Speaker 1: of Odysseus's crew, who remember that that year that they
Speaker 1: spent on the island of Circe. Well, during that year,
Speaker 1: Elpinor becomes drunk and decides, you know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go sleep on that roof. So he grips
Speaker 1: and gets himself a ladder and he starts climbing up
Speaker 1: that ladder to get on the roof so he can sleep,
Speaker 1: but he falls off the ladder, he breaks his neck,
Speaker 1: he dies. Well, you know, it's sad, but even sadder
Speaker 1: it turns out the boys forgot to give him a
Speaker 1: proper burier and to grieve for him. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of embarrassing for Odysseus. He shows up here in the
Speaker 1: underworld and here comes Elpinor, and he says, hey, you
Speaker 1: remember me. I was the youngest member of your crew,
Speaker 1: and I got drunk, I fell off that ladder, I
Speaker 1: broke my neck. Well, you guys didn't bury me or
Speaker 1: grieve for me. Could you do that? That would be
Speaker 1: really swell, And so Odysseus says, yes, we'll totally do that.
Speaker 1: Are bad, We will bury you and grief for you.
Speaker 1: And so, I don't know, I'm looking at it with
Speaker 1: a slightly humorous lens. I don't know if that was
Speaker 1: really intended in the original work, but it is in principle.
Speaker 1: Another example of the restless Dead, which we referred to
Speaker 1: in the last episode, the idea that you know there
Speaker 1: are different types of ghosts. There are different types of
Speaker 1: spirits of the dead that might speak to you. They're
Speaker 1: the ones who were properly buried and are remembered, and
Speaker 1: everything is sort of like squared away with them. And
Speaker 1: there are those that have some kind kind of a
Speaker 1: grudge something, you know, keeping them here in our world,
Speaker 1: or specifically they were not properly buried and therefore cannot
Speaker 1: pass on. Now. Necromancy occurs elsewhere in ancient Greece. We'll
Speaker 1: get into some examples of this as we proceed here,
Speaker 1: often involving temples devoted to an oracle of the dead.
Speaker 1: So this is the place where one could specifically go
Speaker 1: to seek to call up a spirit of the deceased.
Speaker 1: Various authors wrote about such places, including Plutarch and Herodotus.
Speaker 1: You'll find details of these oracles in their writings.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about some examples of those places
Speaker 2: in a minute. But I really got to wondering, why
Speaker 2: do people think that ghosts know anything special, you know,
Speaker 2: other than answering questions like what's going on in the
Speaker 2: nether world. I mean that came up in the ancient
Speaker 2: Mesopotamian poem of Gilgah in key Do in the nether world,
Speaker 2: where I remember Gilgamesh, he keeps like his stuff keeps
Speaker 2: falling into the underworld into the house of Dust, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I need my stuff back, and then in
Speaker 2: key Do goes down in there to get it for him,
Speaker 2: but in key Do screws up. He doesn't follow the rules.
Speaker 2: He throws throwing sticks at the dead and all that,
Speaker 2: and then he gets stuck down there, and so he's
Speaker 2: dead now. And then he comes back up through through
Speaker 2: a necromantic summoning and Gilgamesh is like, hey, tell me
Speaker 2: what the nether world is, like, you know, what are
Speaker 2: the fates of the dead down there? And so forth?
Speaker 2: That that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but other otherwise, I mean, there are certain
Speaker 1: situations so takes take Odysseus speaking with his mother. If
Speaker 1: memory serves, the whole situation is like his mother was
Speaker 1: alive when he last saw her, and so this is
Speaker 1: he's learning things about home that that details about home
Speaker 1: that he's not privy too, but she experienced before her passing.
Speaker 1: I think I'm remembering that ride. I could be misremembering
Speaker 1: part of that.
Speaker 2: That's right, that there are some classes of information that
Speaker 2: makes sense in a practical way like that, and I'll
Speaker 2: get into that in a minute. But also like how
Speaker 2: would a ghost have privileged information, so information about the future. Well,
Speaker 2: I found an interesting article that gets into that somewhat
Speaker 2: with respect to ancient Greek and Roman necromancy, but also
Speaker 2: has a lot of other interesting general information about Greco
Speaker 2: Roman practices of communicating with the dead. So I want
Speaker 2: to talk about this article. It is called lay that
Speaker 2: Ghost Necromancy in Ancient Greece and Rome by Daniel Ogden,
Speaker 2: was originally published in Archaeology Odyssey back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two. I found a republication of it on the
Speaker 2: magazine of a Biblical archaeology website. But Daniel Ogden is
Speaker 2: a professor of ancient history at the University of Exeter
Speaker 2: in England.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great question because it instantly reminds
Speaker 1: me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats
Speaker 1: the pepper and has kadelic dream journey Johnny Cash. He
Speaker 1: he talks to the space coyote voiced by Johnny Cash
Speaker 1: and he's asking some advice of it, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just an hallucination. I don't have any new information.
Speaker 2: But so sometimes it didn't have to be new information.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it was like you were saying personal, practically accessible
Speaker 2: information for the ghost One common example of this is
Speaker 2: stories of necromancy from ancient Greece, where the ghost tells
Speaker 2: you what you need to do to fix your relationship
Speaker 2: with the ghost with themselves. So if somebody died an
Speaker 2: untimely death and it was your fault, you could perform
Speaker 2: necromancy to find out what was needed in order to
Speaker 2: make amends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can almost think of this as some
Speaker 1: sort of I mean, hopefully you didn't just murder the
Speaker 1: person in cold blood, but even still, I guess it's
Speaker 1: almost like some form of therapy, Like this is weighing
Speaker 1: heavily on your conscious Let's summon up the spirit of
Speaker 1: the dead and see what they want in order for
Speaker 1: things to move on.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it was just straight up murder. I'll mention a
Speaker 2: couple of different examples. So the article here opens with
Speaker 2: a retelling piece together from Plutarch, Thucydides, and a few
Speaker 2: other sources of this story of the fifth century BCE,
Speaker 2: Spartan General Pausanias. Now, just to note this, this story
Speaker 2: is pieced together from a bunch of different accounts, and
Speaker 2: it is not necessarily all history thought to be all
Speaker 2: historically true. This is like the story of this guy's life.
Speaker 2: But Pausanias was a Spartan regent and general who famously
Speaker 2: defended Greece. He defended the Hellenic League against the Persians
Speaker 2: at the Battle of Platia. So his original fame is
Speaker 2: as a defender of Greece against Persian invasion. But then
Speaker 2: later in life he was caught trying to betray Greece
Speaker 2: and make a secret pact with the Persian kings or
Speaker 2: Exees the Great. And in the middle of all this
Speaker 2: there is a tragic story that Pausanias accidentally killed an
Speaker 2: innocent young woman named Kleonisi in his bedchambers when he
Speaker 2: was startled awake in the night. I guess he thought
Speaker 2: there were assassins coming for him. He reaches for his
Speaker 2: sword and he accidentally kills this woman, this young woman,
Speaker 2: and after this he is haunted by the woman's ghost.
Speaker 2: So he sought the help of a necromancer or I
Speaker 2: guess maybe it's debatable whether this should be called a necromancer.
Speaker 2: But he sought the help of a a sort of
Speaker 2: spirit guide at an oracle of the dead on the
Speaker 2: southern shore of the Black Sea. So this is a
Speaker 2: place where you would go to conjure up a ghost,
Speaker 2: and so he conjures the ghost of Kleonsy so he
Speaker 2: could learn how to make it right, and according to
Speaker 2: the legend, the ghost told him all he needed to
Speaker 2: do to make amends and to stop the haunting would
Speaker 2: be to return home to Sparta. But this is one
Speaker 2: of those cruel tricks that ghosts sometimes play, because when
Speaker 2: he went home to Sparta, his betrayal to the Persians
Speaker 2: was exposed. So the Spartans found out about him. They
Speaker 2: tried to seize him, and then he tried to seek
Speaker 2: sanctuary in the Temple of Athena, where he thought his
Speaker 2: pursuers would be unable to capture and execute him for
Speaker 2: fear of impiety. You know, he's taking sanctuary in a temple.
Speaker 2: But the story goes that they found a way around this.
Speaker 2: The Spartans bricked up the entrance and sealed him inside
Speaker 2: until he starved to death.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: After this, however, there was an all new problem. Now
Speaker 2: the ghost of Pausanias was haunting the Temple of Athena,
Speaker 2: so the Spartans had to ask the oracle of Delphi
Speaker 2: what to do, and then the oracle advised them that
Speaker 2: they needed to bring in some exorcists. These professional Ogden
Speaker 2: calls them evocators. He says, the Greek term is sucha gogoy,
Speaker 2: which means soul conductors. And they came in and they
Speaker 2: checked the situation out and told them how to get
Speaker 2: rid of the Gho of Pausanias, and they succeeded. They
Speaker 2: exercised him effectively basted right. Bustin must make them feel
Speaker 2: good because they came all the way from Italy to
Speaker 2: Sparta to do this. And this story illustrates what Ogden
Speaker 2: claims is probably the most common piece of information sought
Speaker 2: from the dead in Greek and Roman necromancy, and that
Speaker 2: is what does the ghost need? What will make the
Speaker 2: ghost go away or stop haunting me, or allow the
Speaker 2: ghost to achieve rest. And I thought this was interesting
Speaker 2: in that it combines two different traditions that we talked
Speaker 2: about separately in the last part in this series. So
Speaker 2: one is necromancy seeking information from the dead, and the
Speaker 2: other is exorcism, which is the removal of a ghost
Speaker 2: or a spirit from an unwonted place or context. So,
Speaker 2: if Ogden is correct here, the most common aim of
Speaker 2: the former is actually the achievement of the latter. The
Speaker 2: most common reason ancient Greek and Roman people would go
Speaker 2: go to a necromancer was to figure out how to
Speaker 2: get a ghost to stop bothering them.
Speaker 1: M you know this, these series of steps there were,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some they're echoed throughout our supernatural fiction today.
Speaker 1: But one example that instantly comes to mind is the
Speaker 1: accounts of at least some versions of The Ring. And
Speaker 1: I guess I'm mainly thinking about the first American remake
Speaker 1: of it, but in that film alone, you see sort
Speaker 1: of the three step approach where they're like, Okay, there's
Speaker 1: some sort of sort of the realization that there's a
Speaker 1: ghost involved, some sort of a spirit. Okay, what what
Speaker 1: does the ghost want? They try and answer that question,
Speaker 1: They try even to get in on the whole, like let's, uh,
Speaker 1: let's make things right with the ghosts remains. But then
Speaker 1: the big reveal, of course, is that the ghost isn't
Speaker 1: going to be satisfied with any of those things. This
Speaker 1: is one of that that second classification of ghosts, that
Speaker 1: all it wants is vengeance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe less a ghost and more a demon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only thing that we'll make it right is
Speaker 1: to just move on from VHS to some other format,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the other way that's the issue
Speaker 1: was ever defeated.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of classifications of ghosts, another interesting point that
Speaker 2: Ogden raises in this article is the claim that in
Speaker 2: most Greek and Roman sources there were sort of two
Speaker 2: different modes in which ghosts could appear. And he does
Speaker 2: not use these terms. I just made these up to
Speaker 2: kind of help us sort through what he's saying. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna call these categories the wild ghost and the dial
Speaker 2: a ghost. So a wild ghost is off leash. It
Speaker 2: is a dangerous, terrifying, and uncontrollable entity that cannot be
Speaker 2: reasoned with. This is the ghost that haunts someone by
Speaker 2: coming into their life or by haunting a place unbidden
Speaker 2: and attacking a person repeatedly. This is a ghost you
Speaker 2: cannot talk to and you can't like bargain with in
Speaker 2: this state.
Speaker 1: All right, So this is very much like the wrathful
Speaker 1: ghost Samara or Sadako from the Rain or from various
Speaker 1: other treatments.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but I think this is also just any
Speaker 2: loose ghost. It's a ghost that's haunting a person and
Speaker 2: you have not initiated contact with through a necromantic ritual.
Speaker 1: So slimer also fits this classification.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's the wild ghost. Meanwhile, what I would
Speaker 2: call the dial a ghost is a ghost called up
Speaker 2: through the rituals of necromancy. And so this might be
Speaker 2: somebody who's just otherwise resting comfortably in the underworld. You
Speaker 2: call them up through necromancy to get some information from them,
Speaker 2: or it could be one and the same as the
Speaker 2: wild ghost, but when you contact them through necromancy, apparently
Speaker 2: the interaction is of a different sort. An entity called
Speaker 2: up through necromantic rituals is open to conversation and exchange.
Speaker 2: And I thought that it's interesting that these ghosts that
Speaker 2: there can be overlaps. The same exact ghost, depending on circumstances,
Speaker 2: might be a wild, uncontrollable force that visits you in
Speaker 2: the night, in your nightmares, or you know, haunts your
Speaker 2: home or haunts a place and terrifies people and just
Speaker 2: keeps attacking and there's nothing you can do. But you
Speaker 2: talk to the exact same ghost, same soul through an
Speaker 2: oracle of the dead, or by going to a tomb
Speaker 2: and raising them up or whatever, then you can talk
Speaker 2: to the ghost to figure out what's going on and
Speaker 2: figure out what can be done to make it go away.
Speaker 1: Interesting. So now this makes me wonder if if if
Speaker 1: the ring tape, uh, the VHS tape is actually could
Speaker 1: if you could actually think of it as sort of
Speaker 1: automated and automated necromatic rite. It is a necromatic artifact
Speaker 1: that does all of the ritual, but in a way
Speaker 1: that requires less effort on the part of the person
Speaker 1: using it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm trying to get there with you. Is can
Speaker 2: the can the girl in the ring ever be reasoned
Speaker 2: with or bargained with?
Speaker 1: Height No? I don't think so, not any version I've
Speaker 1: seen you can try. And in terms of what kind
Speaker 1: of information she has to relay, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: it is relayed through the tape. You know, these these visions.
Speaker 1: Just because a ghost is going to tell you stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it has to make sense, right, I mean
Speaker 1: they may speak cryptically, and then of course you get
Speaker 1: that phone call which just says that you're going to
Speaker 1: die in seven days, which isn't very helpful, but is
Speaker 1: a communication, okay.
Speaker 2: So often gives an example in this article of the
Speaker 2: Roman emperor Nero's mother Agrippina. So. According to this story,
Speaker 2: he murders his own mother. And by the way, the
Speaker 2: stories of her murder are very elaborate and conflicting and
Speaker 2: all that, so who knows what really happened in history there.
Speaker 2: But this is again, this is how the story is
Speaker 2: understood by like Roman historians writing the lives of the emperors.
Speaker 2: So the ghost repeatedly starts attacking Nero in the night,
Speaker 2: terrifying him with these visions and nightmares. So Nero sought
Speaker 2: the help of a Persian magas to call up her
Speaker 2: spirit so that he could make peace with it.
Speaker 1: Quick note on magi and vegas Is of Persia. I
Speaker 1: was reading a little bit about this. There's an episode
Speaker 1: from the Sasanian Empire where the first Sasanian emperor we've
Speaker 1: discussed him before, Adashir, the first, upon ascending the throne,
Speaker 1: called on all the respected magi of the empire to
Speaker 1: gather and the total was said to be something like
Speaker 1: eighty thousand. So I was reading more about this, And
Speaker 1: when we talk about the magi, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Masidian magi, who were a priestly order of Zoroastrianism, so
Speaker 1: they were not expressly necromancers. They were into all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, you know, looking to the stars and so forth.
Speaker 1: But apparently some of their writings covered communication with the
Speaker 1: untethered spirits of the dead.
Speaker 2: Okay, but to come back to this idea of like
Speaker 2: ghosts that haunt people and sort of can't be reasoned
Speaker 2: with when they appe here for hauntings. But then you
Speaker 2: can reason with them if you do a ritual with
Speaker 2: like a megas or some other type of or an
Speaker 2: oracle of the dead, some kind of necromantic ritual, then
Speaker 2: you can figure out what they want. It strikes me
Speaker 2: that this duality does still appear in some of the
Speaker 2: ghost stories of today. Like you were talking about Rob,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think more generally about you know, a
Speaker 2: story where the ghost is just a purely bad vibe.
Speaker 2: During the direct hauntings, it just appears to scare people,
Speaker 2: but in the context of a seance, the same ghost
Speaker 2: can be intelligibly conversed with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's almost like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this individual ghost or mortal is causing problems. Let's get
Speaker 1: serious about this. Let's have some legal proceedings, you know,
Speaker 1: the seance, the ritual of necromancy, whatever the details are,
Speaker 1: it is like, okay, let's bust out some rule based
Speaker 1: discussion of what's going on here and get to a solution.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good way thinking about it. In
Speaker 2: a way this, you know, these rituals might be kind
Speaker 2: of like instituting a court proceeding in which the ghost
Speaker 2: must appear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or it's a it's like an intervention in some
Speaker 1: respects as well, Like the ghost shows up and is like,
Speaker 1: all right, time to like terrify some people, and then
Speaker 1: the ghost really, oh my goodness, this is one of
Speaker 1: those again, they're going to try and reason with me,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: So anyway, all that falls into this category of information
Speaker 2: about what could be done to appease or send away
Speaker 2: the ghost, a very common aim of Greek and Roman necromancy. Sometimes,
Speaker 2: though necromancy would just as you alluded to earlier, rob
Speaker 2: would be used to extract information from a ghost that
Speaker 2: the spirit of a person could practically be expected to
Speaker 2: know if consciousness continues after death. For example, somebody hides
Speaker 2: some money then dies without telling you where they hit it,
Speaker 2: you might need to call up a necromancer to get
Speaker 2: that information. And there are stories exactly like this. Though
Speaker 2: this one kind of puzzled me because I was thinking
Speaker 2: with specific practical information like the location of a stash
Speaker 2: of silver or something. I wonder how the necromancer dealt
Speaker 2: with what I would assume was their general inability to
Speaker 2: provide useful, correct answers, you know, like maybe that have
Speaker 2: to be very vague or to be fair, when we
Speaker 2: get to discussing what the actual rituals were in a minute,
Speaker 2: maybe it actually wasn't on the necromancer to give the information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they would have to have some sort of an
Speaker 1: out like that, right, because again assuming that the next
Speaker 1: going with the assumption here that the necromancer cannot actually
Speaker 1: speak to the dead, and that in some of these
Speaker 1: other cases is essentially providing a like a therapeutic service.
Speaker 1: You know, that they are, you know, guiding the recipient
Speaker 1: through some sort of a you know, essentially a religious
Speaker 1: ritual to put them at ease to you know, to
Speaker 1: to help them honor the deceased, or whatever the specifics
Speaker 1: might be. But in this case, yeah, if there's an
Speaker 1: expectation of hidden treasure at the end of it, you know,
Speaker 1: the necromancer would be a fool to put themselves on
Speaker 1: the line like that, right.
Speaker 2: They won't say it's under the third bush in the garden,
Speaker 2: because then you go dig it up and then be like, well,
Speaker 2: it's not there. Why'd you tell me that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd have to put a spin out, like the
Speaker 1: true hidden treasure was your friendship in life with this person,
Speaker 1: and that's what they value and therefore they don't want
Speaker 1: to tell you where the money is.
Speaker 2: But again, we'll get to something in a minute that
Speaker 2: I think might actually shed some light on this and
Speaker 2: show how the person who was sort of the guide
Speaker 2: for this process would be off the hook. So but again,
Speaker 2: what would you be looking for from speaking to a ghost?
Speaker 2: You would get this practical information the dead person took
Speaker 2: with them to the grave, like you know, where did
Speaker 2: you hide something or anything like that. Also, if the
Speaker 2: person was a murder victim, they might you might consult
Speaker 2: them to find out who killed you.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is a classic one, and this puts a
Speaker 1: different kind of pressure on the role of the necromancer here,
Speaker 1: or the alleged necromancer, because of course what they say could,
Speaker 1: depending on the society and the legal system, be in
Speaker 1: it as proof of an individual's guilt in a murder.
Speaker 2: But apart from all this stuff, where again, if you
Speaker 2: assume that consciousness actually continues after death, you could assume
Speaker 2: the person would know all these things? What about this
Speaker 2: other stuff like why ghosts would know the future? We've
Speaker 2: looked at multiple examples of necromancy being used to consult
Speaker 2: spirits on what's going to happen in the future. It
Speaker 2: turns out Greek and Roman necromancers also consulted ghosts for
Speaker 2: info about the future, for example, to predict the outcome
Speaker 2: of wars or power struggles. A common thing people want
Speaker 2: to know, why would the dead have the ability to
Speaker 2: predict the future? Well, Ogden actually does answer this question.
Speaker 2: He says, we don't know for sure, but there are
Speaker 2: a couple of big possibilities. Ogden writes, quote. One possibility
Speaker 2: is that some ancients believed the future was prepared in
Speaker 2: the realm of the dead. When Aeneas descends into the
Speaker 2: underworld in Virgil's Aeneid, he witnesses the marshaling of the
Speaker 2: souls of Rome's future heroes, even though they had not
Speaker 2: yet been born. Okay, so that's one, Ogden goes on quote.
Speaker 2: Another possibility, many ancients, Plato among them, believed that a
Speaker 2: pure soul, one separated from the dull matter of the body,
Speaker 2: had great powers of perception and could understand the hidden
Speaker 2: processes of the universe. Okay, so that sort of helps
Speaker 2: answer my question if Ogden's correct about these two explanations. Here,
Speaker 2: the dead know the future because one of two things.
Speaker 2: Either the future is written in advance, so we are
Speaker 2: faded for certain things to happen to us, and the
Speaker 2: writing of the future takes place in the nether world,
Speaker 2: so dead people in hades are essentially hanging out in
Speaker 2: the writer's room for the upcoming season of the show.
Speaker 2: Or the second explanation is if you subscribe to something
Speaker 2: like platonism, soul's rule and bodies drool, and your current
Speaker 2: knowledge of the future is limited by the extent to
Speaker 2: which your body drools. Liberated souls, no longer attached to
Speaker 2: to flesh, are sort of like gods in a way.
Speaker 2: They have extra powers of knowledge and perception, and we
Speaker 2: would all have these powers if we were liberated from
Speaker 2: the confines of our bodies.
Speaker 1: That one's in a really interesting because it also brings
Speaker 1: up some of the other examples of ancestor veneration and
Speaker 1: ancestor worship, you know, where it's like, this was a
Speaker 1: real person in a given society or a given family,
Speaker 1: what have you? They have died, and now they are
Speaker 1: still real, but in a different way and perhaps held
Speaker 1: to a like a put on a pedestal. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're, they they're they're they're given over to certain
Speaker 1: divine characteristics, even if they are not thought of expressly
Speaker 1: as a guy.
Speaker 2: All right, So that's Ogden's opinion about why ghosts would
Speaker 2: be expected to know the future and be able to
Speaker 2: answer your questions about it. But another interesting thing brought
Speaker 2: up in this article is he talks about location where
Speaker 2: would Greco Roman necromancy take place? And it seems there
Speaker 2: are two main answers for this. One is at the
Speaker 2: tomb of the deceased. And now that one makes sense
Speaker 2: if you're trying to call up a ghost of a
Speaker 2: dead person, where better to go than to their grave
Speaker 2: and do some kind of ritual there makes sense. But
Speaker 2: the second, and I got really interested in this, was
Speaker 2: that there were essentially some geographically identified special places where
Speaker 2: you could communicate with the dead. These were known as
Speaker 2: oracles of the dead. Now where would those be? Well,
Speaker 2: Ogden says, ancient sources tell us about four of them.
Speaker 2: There are two in modern day Greece, one in Italy,
Speaker 2: and one in Turkey, and I did some additional digging
Speaker 2: for background information about a couple of these. So the
Speaker 2: first one he mentions is in northwest Greece, and this
Speaker 2: is what's known as the Acharusian Lake. So this is
Speaker 2: a lake, or perhaps I've seen in some sources mentioned
Speaker 2: as a swamp, a lake or a series of light
Speaker 2: lakes or swamp connected to the river Akron, which that
Speaker 2: river itself is very important in Greek visions of the afterlife,
Speaker 2: so there's a motif present in Greek and Roman mythology
Speaker 2: that the dead have to be carried across a river
Speaker 2: by a ghastly ferryman in order to reach Hades or
Speaker 2: the underworld. And in some sources this river is named
Speaker 2: as Styx, but in others it is the Akron.
Speaker 1: If memory serves, both names as separate rivers are used
Speaker 1: in Dante's Inferno.
Speaker 2: Oh that may be right, I don't recall, but interestingly,
Speaker 2: I wanted to note this, so Akron, the Akron is
Speaker 2: at least one definite real river in northwest Greece, so
Speaker 2: there's just the Akron. You can go to that river now,
Speaker 2: whereas the sticks at Core seems to be a mythological
Speaker 2: river in the underworld, but at some point it was
Speaker 2: also associated I think with various real waterways as well,
Speaker 2: such as like a stream in Arcadia, but the Akron
Speaker 2: seems more concretely geographically located on this world. But anyway,
Speaker 2: the story goes, so one of these lakes or swamps
Speaker 2: connected to the Akron, known as Akarusia. There was a
Speaker 2: lakeside district in which you could call up the spirits
Speaker 2: of the dead, and this was possible because of the
Speaker 2: way that the river and the lake were somehow physically
Speaker 2: connected to Hades and Rob. I've attached a couple of
Speaker 2: pictures I found online of the Akron River for you
Speaker 2: to look at here. You know, it's weird. I wonder
Speaker 2: if it's just an example of psychological priming, because I
Speaker 2: was expecting these to be associated with the underworld. But
Speaker 2: they do look kind of spooky to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, I'm not sure how much of this is
Speaker 1: just me going into it with the expectation here, but yeah,
Speaker 1: in the first shot there's this impression of narrowing, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm kind of reminded of, you know,
Speaker 1: the classic painting The Island of the Dead there a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I could be reading too much into it.
Speaker 1: I mean a river at the at the very least,
Speaker 1: a river is This is a is a moving thing
Speaker 1: that goes somewhere else. So it's easy to approach it
Speaker 1: and think of it as this thing that connects to
Speaker 1: some distant land, because it literally does.
Speaker 2: That's a good point, okay. So second place for the
Speaker 2: Oracle of the Dead. This is way over on the
Speaker 2: western coast of the Italian Peninsula. This is Lake of
Speaker 2: Vernas in Campagna. So once again this is a body
Speaker 2: of water associated with the entrance to the underworld. In
Speaker 2: this case, I thought it was geologically interesting because a
Speaker 2: Vernas is the flooded crater of an extinct volcano, so
Speaker 2: this is in a region somewhat close to Naples. Allegedly,
Speaker 2: the Lake of Verness emitted fumes of sulfur sometimes, which
Speaker 2: could be why it was thought of as the entrance
Speaker 2: to the realm of the dead. And contrary to what
Speaker 2: you might expect. You know, you might think, okay, so
Speaker 2: this lake is associated with the underworld, then maybe it's
Speaker 2: just this creepy, abandoned place with nothing going on. But no, no, no.
Speaker 2: The area around Averness was developed. It had temples, and
Speaker 2: bathhouses and all sorts of stuff. In fact, in his article,
Speaker 2: Ogden tells what I thought was a very funny story
Speaker 2: about a British archaeologist who thought he had identified the
Speaker 2: ruins of the Avernus oracle of the Dead in a
Speaker 2: Roman era tunnel near the lake came up with this
Speaker 2: whole scenario about how the oracle worked. Ogden writes, quote
Speaker 2: he speculated that visitors to the oracle were led through
Speaker 2: dark tunnels and across a hot, sulfurous spring that doubled
Speaker 2: as the river Sticks. Priestly assistants, he suggested, used lamps
Speaker 2: and wooden shadow puppets to project ghostly figures onto a
Speaker 2: wall in a kind of ancient vision of a Disneyland
Speaker 2: haunted house. So, okay, that sounds very interesting, but it
Speaker 2: turns out no, this tunnel was actually a service tunnel
Speaker 2: for a Roman bathhouse. And then there are a couple
Speaker 2: of other sites of oracles of the dead that are
Speaker 2: that were less well known. One is heraclea Pontica. That's
Speaker 2: the one on the south coast of the Black Sea,
Speaker 2: up on the north of what is today Turkey, or
Speaker 2: at the time would have been Anatolia. This is the
Speaker 2: place that Pausanias went to in that legend, and then
Speaker 2: the other one, the fourth one is Cape Tynron, which
Speaker 2: is down at the southern tip of the Peloponnesis, And
Speaker 2: I'm not sure about the Black Sea location, but I
Speaker 2: was looking up Cape Tynern and this one was also,
Speaker 2: according to some ancient sources, a gateway to the underworld.
Speaker 2: So it seems what a lot of these Oracle of
Speaker 2: the Dead locations have in common is they are thought
Speaker 2: to be in some sense of physical entry way into
Speaker 2: the underworld.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's not just a matter of having the
Speaker 1: rituals or the expertise. It's like, are you in close
Speaker 1: enough proximity to the underworld for that signal to reach them?
Speaker 2: Now. In the last episode, we talked about those ancient
Speaker 2: Mesopotamian tablets that shared specifics of their necromancy rituals, which
Speaker 2: involved incantations, so you had special words to say and
Speaker 2: appeals to specific gods who would sort of oversee the proceedings.
Speaker 2: Like one of the tablets specified that you know, this
Speaker 2: ritual is taking place under the auspices of the god Shamash.
Speaker 2: And then they also had recipes for potions and concoctions
Speaker 2: to make out of all kinds of stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: dust from across roads, the end of a frog's intestines, crab, tallow,
Speaker 2: hair of a dog, and a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2: And in one case, I guess my favorite thing was
Speaker 2: the ritual that involved a skull that you would address
Speaker 2: as oh, sk skull of skulls, and the implication is
Speaker 2: that the ghost would come into the skull and speak
Speaker 2: out of it somehow. In this case, I wonder what
Speaker 2: literally happened during these rituals, by the way, did I
Speaker 2: think we don't really know, but I have to wonder, like,
Speaker 2: did the skull somehow quote speak? If so, how was
Speaker 2: that accomplished?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because on one hand, you could have a scenario
Speaker 1: where some manner of puppetry was even utilized. But I
Speaker 1: guess perhaps more believable, at least by modern standards, would
Speaker 1: be just sort of a physical focus of what's happening.
Speaker 1: So perhaps the necromancer is listening to the skull and
Speaker 1: that becomes the object of focus during the proceedings.
Speaker 2: Right, So a question is do we have physical descriptions
Speaker 2: of what would happen during these rituals during the ghost interactions?
Speaker 2: For Greco Roman necromancy, and the answer is yes, we
Speaker 2: do have some descriptions. One example Ogden gives that I
Speaker 2: thought was interesting as the Greek playwright Escalus, in a
Speaker 2: fragment of an otherwise lost work, describes a scene at
Speaker 2: a lakeside oracle of the dead where blood from a
Speaker 2: black sheep is poured into the water, and the implication
Speaker 2: is that the ghosts would come up from the underworld
Speaker 2: through the waters of the lake and drink the sheep's blood.
Speaker 2: And this is interesting in that it connects to that
Speaker 2: scene in Homer where it's implied that or not even implied,
Speaker 2: it's explicitly stated that giving a ghost sheep's blood or
Speaker 2: rams blood to drink would make it sort of temporarily
Speaker 2: beefed up enough to party, Like now it can talk.
Speaker 2: And I think this is really interesting, this idea that
Speaker 2: you had to feed blood to a ghost so that
Speaker 2: it could I don't know, become substantial or empowered enough
Speaker 2: to interact with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's the dead or lacking blood, and
Speaker 1: give them blood and they can they can do living
Speaker 1: things again, at least for a very short period of time.
Speaker 2: But finally, coming back to that issue of like what
Speaker 2: form does the delivery of information from the dead take
Speaker 2: in these Greco Roman rituals, Like, how does the necromancer
Speaker 2: have to deliver the information? And in that case, how
Speaker 2: do they deal with like the information when you know,
Speaker 2: not being specific or accurate. Well, Ogden says that the
Speaker 2: contact with the ghost at an oracle of the dead
Speaker 2: was done through dream incubation. Oh, this makes sense of things, right.
Speaker 2: So this is similar to what was done at multiple
Speaker 2: kinds of temples and shrines in the ancient world. One
Speaker 2: example we've talked about on the show before was the
Speaker 2: shrines of the healing god Asclepias, where you would want
Speaker 2: to get healed from a disease or something troubling your body,
Speaker 2: and you would to seek a cure. You might go
Speaker 2: to a shrine of Asclepias and you would do some
Speaker 2: kind of ritual, probably make a sacrifice or pay a
Speaker 2: fee or something, and then you would go to sleep
Speaker 2: and then you would have a dream there where Asclepias
Speaker 2: would deliver to you information in the dream about what
Speaker 2: you could do to cure your disease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: In the case of the necromancer oracles, you would do
Speaker 2: the prescribed rituals. You probably make some kind of sacrifice.
Speaker 2: It seems very likely it might involve like a spilling
Speaker 2: of some kind of animal blood to feed to the ghost,
Speaker 2: and then you would go to sleep in the designated area,
Speaker 2: and then the ghost would come to you in a
Speaker 2: dream and tell you what you needed to know. And
Speaker 2: this is interesting in multiple ways. Number One, it highlights
Speaker 2: this thing in ancient Greek thinking where sleep was sort
Speaker 2: of a state thought of as in some ways analogous
Speaker 2: to or half way to death. So you're sort of
Speaker 2: going out of the land of the living into this
Speaker 2: half dead state of sleep in order to meet the ghost,
Speaker 2: you know, as it comes out to deliver you information.
Speaker 2: But then also in a practical sense, I could see
Speaker 2: how this would mean that the priest or whatever, the
Speaker 2: professional working at the oracle of the Dead is doing,
Speaker 2: like they're not personally on the hook for like giving
Speaker 2: you the information you need. And it might be in
Speaker 2: some cases they did provide information, but it seems like
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases they use dream incubation where
Speaker 2: it's all internal to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like they're just helping to facilitate the conversation
Speaker 1: and then the conversation is left to you and your
Speaker 1: dream state, and I guess in a more like you know,
Speaker 1: skeptical approach here. Yeah, they're simply priming your brain for
Speaker 1: some sort of a dream that could be either in
Speaker 1: and of itself seemingly meaningful or could be picked apart
Speaker 1: in made meaningful due to the priming. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: how we kind of end up at the end of
Speaker 1: this episode in similar territory to our previous look at
Speaker 1: different cultures and times in which the dream world was
Speaker 1: given special significance. You know, I mean, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: you could necessarily make the case here because again this
Speaker 1: could be maybe thought of as you know, an important right,
Speaker 1: but not like a prime motivator in the trajectory of
Speaker 1: a given culture. But still, you see, like the importance
Speaker 1: of the dream space to individuals and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out their problems.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and it makes me see another parallel between
Speaker 2: sleep and death here is that it seems like they
Speaker 2: are both states in which people's capacities are to some
Speaker 2: extent diminished but in other ways magnified. You know that,
Speaker 2: like like during sleep you are closer to death, and
Speaker 2: so of course you know your your consciousness is diminished
Speaker 2: in a way you of course your your physical potency,
Speaker 2: like you're not moving around while you're asleep, you're prone
Speaker 2: and all that, so you are diminished or reduced in
Speaker 2: one extent. But also it is the place where you
Speaker 2: have access to wisdom beyond what's available to your mortal mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, I can't help but be reminded of
Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger and all of this. It's easy to think
Speaker 1: of Freddy Krueger as a monster, but you know, he's
Speaker 1: a monster in the general sense of the word. But
Speaker 1: he is a ghost. He has a vengeful ghost that
Speaker 1: then appears in your dreams. And I guess by virtue
Speaker 1: of having access to dreams, he has privileged information about individuals.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone ever really asks him for
Speaker 1: advice on anything, though, I.
Speaker 2: Mean it would be funny if you did. I don't
Speaker 2: know what kind of advice he would give.
Speaker 1: I mean, that could be a whole sequel right there
Speaker 1: where somebody or some group or like, look, we need
Speaker 1: we need the help of someone with access to dreams.
Speaker 1: I guess specifically teenager dreams. I guess maybe this would
Speaker 1: make sense for if you were designing a product to
Speaker 1: appeal to teenagers, they're like who knows teenagers. Freddy Krueger,
Speaker 1: you know what's cool?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Oh, to get advice on sweaters, it would
Speaker 2: be like, Freddy Krueger, is this sweater cool? Is this
Speaker 2: what's going to be hip this season? And he's always
Speaker 2: just like Green and Red, that's what's going to be in.
Speaker 1: Now he knows it's a classic look and it'll eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, eventually the trends will come back around to it.
Speaker 2: Okay, well in a cap part two right there, I believe.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, we'll be back for at least a third
Speaker 1: episode on necromancy, and in the meantime, reach out to us.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your thoughts on these various and
Speaker 1: ancient accounts of necromancier things that could be described as
Speaker 1: necromantic and scope. Also, if you have thoughts in some
Speaker 1: of the more pop culture things that we've mentioned here,
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on Freddy Krueger, Slimer or the
Speaker 1: Ring certainly right in. I mean, there's ultimately a lot
Speaker 1: you could dissect in the original Ghostbusters where you have
Speaker 1: ghosts that resemble the people as they were in life,
Speaker 1: and then ghosts that no longer look like human beings.
Speaker 1: You also have what ancient Mesopotamian gods entering into the
Speaker 1: picture with their be like servants. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: to unwrap there.
Speaker 2: Many knew what it was to roast in the belly
Speaker 2: of a slore that day.
Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, a reminder that's stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Is primarily a science podcast, though of course we get
Speaker 1: into the culture and history as well as especially obvious
Speaker 1: in these episodes. We do listener mail episodes on Mondays,
Speaker 1: we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. Oh and one more thing. If you use
Speaker 1: any of the various social media accounts and you follow us,
Speaker 1: you may notice that there's a little more life than those.
Speaker 1: Recently we have some people managing those for us once again.
Speaker 1: And you also might notice some updated photos of me
Speaker 1: and Joe. Well, that's because we visited the Museum of
Speaker 1: Illusions in Atlanta. We were there what Thursday, September twenty first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. We have some great new photos. I
Speaker 1: recommend that place to anyone who is in Atlanta looking
Speaker 1: to engage with some illusions. It's a very fun place.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If
Speaker 2: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 2: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 2: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.