WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Necromantic Urge, Part 2 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:08.360 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:09.440 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.520 And I am Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:14.680 another episode from the Vault. Rob and I are out 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.599 on fall Break this week. This is part two in 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:21.680 our series on necromancy. It's called The Necromantic Urge. This 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:28.280 episode originally published October third, twenty twenty three. Enjoy Ah Necromancy, 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:33.120 Sweet Ah Wizard air udet teach me the skill that 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.960 I instill. The pain surgeons assuage in vain, nor herb 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:39.560 of all the plane can heal. 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:47.160 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:55.760 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:56.400 is Robert. 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.800 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And that poem I 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.280 just read was from Emily Dickinson and some of the 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:06.760 numbering systems. That's her poem, number one seventy seven. I 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.480 would say not one of her greatest efforts, But you know, 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:12.280 some of those poems in her collections seem like something 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.640 she just jotted on the back of a notepad real quick. 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.440 I think that's more one of those. But I still 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:22.760 like the forced rhyme of sweet with aeradite, and I 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.399 don't know, wizard feels more right than Wizard. 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.440 I like the reading. Yes, and yeah, this was not 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.280 a poem of Emily Dickinson's that I was familiar with. 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:36.880 Sometimes just it's given the title ah Necromancy Sweet, it 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.039 is a note that like, basically I was gonna just 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.840 bust out another Clark Ashton Smith poem for this episode, 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:44.479 but then I was like, who else has some poems 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:48.320 about necromancy and necromancers? And lo and behold, Emily Dickinson 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:52.120 has not one, but two, which may surprise some of you, 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.320 may not surprise some of you who are more familiar 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:55.840 with her work. 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.160 I would say I'm an Emily Dickinson fan, though I 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.360 would not have been able to tell you that she 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.360 had poems that use the word necromancy, though I know 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:07.720 a number of her poems are concerned with death. 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.960 Yeah, she saw the skull beneath the skin, that's for sure. 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.800 Oh skull of skulls. Well, anyway, we are back with 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:20.119 part two in our series on necromancy. Now, if you've 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:22.680 been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.280 know that every year, for the whole month of October, 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:29.400 we focus our attention on topics of the beastly, ghostly, 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.920 devilish or uncanny sort. And also, as we often do, 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.040 we got started a little bit early this year, So 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.560 we got started last week even though it was still 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:44.160 technically September, with the first part in a series on necromancy, 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:49.000 the practice of communicating with the dead, usually for the 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:53.680 purpose of divination, of gaining access to hidden information or truth. 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:57.800 And in that episode we talked about accounts of necromancy 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:02.480 or pseudo necromatic legends from ancient China, as well as 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.200 methods of both speaking to and exercising ghosts in the 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:10.839 first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. And today we are going 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.960 to continue our journey into the nether world talking about 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:18.200 necromancy practices and legends from ancient Greece and Rome. 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.520 That's right, We're gonna be talking about Greek accounts of 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:26.720 necromancy or things like necromancy to some extent in this episode, 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:29.120 and who knows where we'll end up in a third 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:32.760 episode on necromancy. So one of the sources that I 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:35.120 mentioned in the last episode is a paper by Czech 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:40.000 academic Andrej CapCar titled the Origins of Necromancy or how 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.960 we learn to speak to the dead great title, and 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.800 according to CapCar, the earliest mentions of necromancy, they don't 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:52.240 require a lot of inference and interpretation, can be found 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:58.480 in ancient Greece. In this we're dealing with nekia, which 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:02.160 is the practice of calling forth and asking them about 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:07.040 the future, or as we'll get into, things that are 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:11.640 maybe not the future, but that are concerned with knowledge 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:15.120 beyond what an individual has at their disposal. You know, 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.280 the dead by virtue of being dead, they can tell 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.279 you things. They can tell you things from their life, 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.719 from their place of origin, and so forth. The primary 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:26.839 example that he deals with, and indeed of a primary 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.640 example you see in a lot of discussions of what 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:34.080 is or isn't necromancy in ancient Greek traditions, takes us 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:36.839 all the way back to book eleven of the Odyssey, 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:41.120 in which Odysseus receives instructions about how to question the 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:43.960 dead and then does so. Now, Joe correct me if 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:46.320 I'm wrong, But I think we've recounted this story before 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:47.800 on the podcast. 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:49.960 Possibly, but it's been a while, so I think it's 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.000 worth refreshing on this story. 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.000 All right, Well, I'll give everyone the basics here concerning 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:58.800 this episode. So basically, you know, the deal with Odysseus 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:00.800 is trying to get home, right, He's he's been off 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.760 to war, he's seen the Trojan Wars and so forth. 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:06.680 Wants to get home, wants to be reunited with his wife. 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:11.120 A lot of misadventures occur on the way, so he 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.680 takes the scenic route does he takes the scenic route 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.360 and one of the more scenic routes ends up taking 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:19.840 He and his crew wind up on the island of 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.920 Circe in the care you might say, or under the 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:28.720 dominion of the enchantress Circe, and there's you know, there's 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.960 some misunderstanding, there's some transfiguration involved, there's a good bit 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:35.359 of seduction, and they end up staying there for like 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:41.080 a year. So they're hanging out on this island for 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:42.880 a fair amount of time. 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.799 I don't know exactly how all of this gets explained 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:46.839 Penelope later. 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.520 Well, you know, there's a possible answer to that here 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:55.000 coming up. But essentially, you know, he has time to 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:59.719 seek some some guidance, get some some advice from Circe, 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:03.000 and basically he wants to seek the advice of the 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:07.279 prophet Tyrisius, the blind Seer of Thebes, who in one 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.800 Greek myth is changed into a woman for several years 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.880 and then back into a man. But in this story, 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:16.160 this seer is dead, and that's a problem, and that's 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.400 why Circe sends Odysseus to the very gates of the 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.720 Land of the Dead in order to seek his advice. 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:25.240 So that's what the crew does. That's what the guys do. 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.039 They go to the very limits of the mortal realm, 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:31.719 right up to the border with the Land of the Dead, 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.560 and per Circe's instructions, they dig a trench, they offer libations, 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.760 they sacrifice you and a ram. These are the practices 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:44.760 of Nekia. So the blood of the sacrifice calls forth ghosts, 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.800 but it calls forth ghosts by the thousands, so it's 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.600 just just calls them all out. They all come swarming. 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.599 Key individuals that Odysseus knew in life they come forward 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.960 as well. One of them is Odysseus's own mother, an initial, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.440 so he does not let her of her spirit approach 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:06.839 the blood. But finally here comes Diyrisius. He drinks the 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:11.920 blood and then speaks and tells Odysseus how their journey 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.240 home is likely to go, and basically he breaks it 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.600 to him. Look, you you know that stuff with the 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.760 Cyclops while you offended Poseidon and he's a p pretty 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:23.400 powerful guy. You're gonna have to make amends for that. 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.880 There he outlines some of the other hurdles that are 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.040 in their path, and then Odysseus asked, well, how can 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:34.080 I speak to the ghost of my mother who I 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.560 just ran into? And he is told that he must 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.240 let the spirit drink the blood. If the spirit doesn't 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:42.440 drink the blood, then they cannot speak to the living, 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.800 and so he allows his mother's spirit to do that. 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.160 He doesn't stand in her way, and he's able to 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:51.160 speak with his mother and learn about events at home. 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.280 There are more details when I may touch on some 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:57.320 more here in a minute, but that's the basics here. 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.360 Odysseus engages in a specific rite to attract the spirits 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.559 of the deceased, appeases them, and gives them the power 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.120 of speech and their for prophecy. 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.120 Okay, so I know this passage is of interest to 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:13.680 people trying to understand the culture and the ritual practices 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.160 of ancient Greece because It's often interpreted not just as 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:21.600 an isolated story in a fictional narrative, but a reflection 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.360 of generally how the rituals of necromancy were thought to work, 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:26.520 at least to some extent. 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:29.120 That's right, Yeah, so yeah, we're doing with what an 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:33.320 eighth century BCE text that many argue as our earliest 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.720 clear look at the idea of what would come to 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.000 be known as necromancy. But at the same time, I 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:40.760 do have to highlight that I was looking around not 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:43.800 everyone is convinced that it's truly what we'd call necromancy. 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.280 We kind of get into the semantics game again. I've 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.680 seen arguments that what takes place here is essentially a 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.800 standard sacrifice to the spirits of the dead, only observed 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.480 on the physical threshold of death's own country. So I 0:08:57.480 --> 0:09:01.640 don't you know, again, theerhaps the location is the key 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.839 thing here, and the right itself is not necromancy itself, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:10.000 but takes on necromantic powers due to proximity to the 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:10.840 land of the dead. 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:13.800 That'll come back in some stuff I want to get 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:14.600 into in a little bit. 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.200 But on the other hand, plenty of commentators do equate 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.440 Nekia with necromancy. Some things to keep in mind about 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.240 what we see here in this primary example. So, first 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.400 of all, as we were discussing in the first episode, 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:32.800 this is one of those ancient accounts that involves speaking 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.720 to the dead. It does not involved controlling the dead. 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:39.680 I mean, aside from just giving them the power of 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:41.280 speech by offering them the blood. 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:43.680 Yeah, that's right, we talked about in the last episode. 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.400 How if you hear the word necromancer today, especially if 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.000 you play Dungeons and Dragons or you're familiar with general 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.400 fantasy horror literature, you're probably thinking of someone who commands 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.520 armies of skeletons to do their bidding. And that's not 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:02.000 usually what's being discussed with ancient necromancy. It's specifically a 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:06.040 divination practice. It's about communicating with the dead, usually to 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:06.920 get information. 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.000 Yeah. Now, the other interesting thing about this, and something 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.600 I rather like about this example, is that Odysseus doesn't 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:17.360 summon one dead individual from the realm of the dead. 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:19.760 He summons all of them at once, like just a 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:21.920 mass of them. It's like it's kind of like he 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.120 replied all or you know how in different organizations, there'll 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.920 be that one email address where you can, you can 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.960 contact everybody in the organization. It's like, you know, all 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:36.240 dead at underworld dot com or something to that effect. 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.160 That's what Odysseus does here. And they're like, whoa, everybody's 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:40.719 in the chat now. 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.400 And then everybody starts replying, and that's the day. You 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:47.959 get five hundred emails on the same thread and yeah, exactly, yeah, 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:49.520 and then he has to try and figure out who 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:51.040 he specifically wants to talk to. 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:57.160 Now. Aspects of this that are reflected in later traditions 0:10:57.160 --> 0:10:59.880 of necromancy. It does entail blood. There is blood and 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.360 blood sacrifice involved here. It intail it does entail the 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.200 ability to speak with the dead and learn from them. 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:10.280 And again this may work mostly due to proximity to 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.520 the Kingdom of the Dead. And you could also classify 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:16.800 this as an example of katabasis or a descent into 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.719 the underworld. I mean, even if Odysseus is only going 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:22.360 to the gates of Hell here, I mean he's essentially 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:25.480 he's essentially in the underworld, right, I mean, where do 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:29.680 you draw the line between actually going there and just 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:30.719 going to the edge of it? 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.160 Right? Well, So you could have an example like Orpheus 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.520 that I think is more a more complete katabasis. But 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:39.679 this is he's at least going part of the way. 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.080 And I think it is portrayed from what I recall 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:45.920 in the narrative as a as a harrowing journey into 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.199 a place that, you know, where mortals do not normally 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:50.720 tread exactly. 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.400 Yeah, And of course this is a major theme in literature. 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:56.400 We see it in Virgil Zania, we see it in 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.800 Dante's Divine Comedy, and so many other examples, you know, 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.320 pop culture and otherwise. When people travel into the realm 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.120 of the dead to get something, to find someone, to 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.640 get secret knowledge, et cetera, there are often complications. There's 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:14.199 often a fair amount of traunta. 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:16.520 Now, you know what. Another thing I recall from the 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.960 narrative in the Odyssey is that it presents a vision 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.840 of the underworld and of the afterlife in which being 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:28.760 dead sucks. It is really bad, and it's just it's 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:31.920 not something you want and it's not like heaven where 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.880 everybody's a nice angel and things are great, now you 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.199 know it just it depicts the afterlife is a kind 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:44.480 of miserable only half kind of pseudo existence. 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:47.880 Yeah, And it's interesting to think about that I mean, 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.160 we could have a larger discussion about various versions of 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.400 the afterlife, but certainly, very generally, there are plenty of 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:58.040 other examples where the afterlife is considered like the destination, 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.480 it is the thing, and suffering here in the mortal 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.000 realm is worth it for those treasures in the next realm. 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.040 And you know, at least on the surface, you seem 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:09.920 to see a reversal here in these traditions where like, 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:13.760 this is the life, this is the prime existence. What 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:18.319 happens next is just kind of a shadow. Now. CapCar 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.360 also singles out one of the other details of this encounter, 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.280 and that's and that concerns one of the other dead individuals, 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.839 the spirits of the dead that approaches Odysseus here from 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.960 the underworld, and that's Elpinor. This was the youngest member 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.280 of Odysseus's crew, who remember that that year that they 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.400 spent on the island of Circe. Well, during that year, 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:42.640 Elpinor becomes drunk and decides, you know what I'm gonna do. 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:45.880 I'm gonna go sleep on that roof. So he grips 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.640 and gets himself a ladder and he starts climbing up 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:50.520 that ladder to get on the roof so he can sleep, 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.640 but he falls off the ladder, he breaks his neck, 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:57.560 he dies. Well, you know, it's sad, but even sadder 0:13:57.640 --> 0:13:59.319 it turns out the boys forgot to give him a 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.439 proper burier and to grieve for him. So it's kind 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.600 of embarrassing for Odysseus. He shows up here in the 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.680 underworld and here comes Elpinor, and he says, hey, you 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:11.880 remember me. I was the youngest member of your crew, 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.079 and I got drunk, I fell off that ladder, I 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.480 broke my neck. Well, you guys didn't bury me or 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:21.400 grieve for me. Could you do that? That would be 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:25.600 really swell, And so Odysseus says, yes, we'll totally do that. 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.600 Are bad, We will bury you and grief for you. 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:33.240 And so, I don't know, I'm looking at it with 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.640 a slightly humorous lens. I don't know if that was 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:41.200 really intended in the original work, but it is in principle. 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.480 Another example of the restless Dead, which we referred to 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:46.960 in the last episode, the idea that you know there 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.120 are different types of ghosts. There are different types of 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:51.400 spirits of the dead that might speak to you. They're 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.040 the ones who were properly buried and are remembered, and 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.200 everything is sort of like squared away with them. And 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:00.480 there are those that have some kind kind of a 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:04.400 grudge something, you know, keeping them here in our world, 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:08.840 or specifically they were not properly buried and therefore cannot 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:22.200 pass on. Now. Necromancy occurs elsewhere in ancient Greece. We'll 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:24.680 get into some examples of this as we proceed here, 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.840 often involving temples devoted to an oracle of the dead. 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:30.840 So this is the place where one could specifically go 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.280 to seek to call up a spirit of the deceased. 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:38.120 Various authors wrote about such places, including Plutarch and Herodotus. 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.600 You'll find details of these oracles in their writings. 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.240 We're going to talk about some examples of those places 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:47.000 in a minute. But I really got to wondering, why 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:51.600 do people think that ghosts know anything special, you know, 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.920 other than answering questions like what's going on in the 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.040 nether world. I mean that came up in the ancient 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.600 Mesopotamian poem of Gilgah in key Do in the nether world, 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.120 where I remember Gilgamesh, he keeps like his stuff keeps 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.160 falling into the underworld into the house of Dust, and 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.360 he's like, I need my stuff back, and then in 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.280 key Do goes down in there to get it for him, 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.000 but in key Do screws up. He doesn't follow the rules. 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:18.600 He throws throwing sticks at the dead and all that, 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.560 and then he gets stuck down there, and so he's 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.840 dead now. And then he comes back up through through 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.640 a necromantic summoning and Gilgamesh is like, hey, tell me 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:30.680 what the nether world is, like, you know, what are 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:32.640 the fates of the dead down there? And so forth? 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:33.960 That that makes sense. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.600 Yeah, yeah, but other otherwise, I mean, there are certain 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.560 situations so takes take Odysseus speaking with his mother. If 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.880 memory serves, the whole situation is like his mother was 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:47.040 alive when he last saw her, and so this is 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:51.520 he's learning things about home that that details about home 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:54.640 that he's not privy too, but she experienced before her passing. 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.239 I think I'm remembering that ride. I could be misremembering 0:16:58.320 --> 0:16:59.160 part of that. 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:01.760 That's right, that there are some classes of information that 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.120 makes sense in a practical way like that, and I'll 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.520 get into that in a minute. But also like how 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:13.120 would a ghost have privileged information, so information about the future. Well, 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.320 I found an interesting article that gets into that somewhat 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.400 with respect to ancient Greek and Roman necromancy, but also 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:23.359 has a lot of other interesting general information about Greco 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:25.760 Roman practices of communicating with the dead. So I want 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:28.520 to talk about this article. It is called lay that 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:33.359 Ghost Necromancy in Ancient Greece and Rome by Daniel Ogden, 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.720 was originally published in Archaeology Odyssey back in two thousand 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.520 and two. I found a republication of it on the 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:44.679 magazine of a Biblical archaeology website. But Daniel Ogden is 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.720 a professor of ancient history at the University of Exeter 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:49.440 in England. 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.600 Yeah, this is a great question because it instantly reminds 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:56.720 me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats 0:17:56.760 --> 0:18:03.680 the pepper and has kadelic dream journey Johnny Cash. He 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:06.320 he talks to the space coyote voiced by Johnny Cash 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:08.800 and he's asking some advice of it, and he's like, 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.080 I'm just an hallucination. I don't have any new information. 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:16.920 But so sometimes it didn't have to be new information. 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:22.080 Sometimes it was like you were saying personal, practically accessible 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.639 information for the ghost One common example of this is 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:31.000 stories of necromancy from ancient Greece, where the ghost tells 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:34.800 you what you need to do to fix your relationship 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.800 with the ghost with themselves. So if somebody died an 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:42.879 untimely death and it was your fault, you could perform 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.000 necromancy to find out what was needed in order to 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:46.760 make amends. 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:49.280 Yeah, and you can almost think of this as some 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:52.399 sort of I mean, hopefully you didn't just murder the 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:55.520 person in cold blood, but even still, I guess it's 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.879 almost like some form of therapy, Like this is weighing 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.879 heavily on your conscious Let's summon up the spirit of 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.800 the dead and see what they want in order for 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:05.600 things to move on. 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.040 Sometimes it was just straight up murder. I'll mention a 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.520 couple of different examples. So the article here opens with 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:16.680 a retelling piece together from Plutarch, Thucydides, and a few 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:21.120 other sources of this story of the fifth century BCE, 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:26.600 Spartan General Pausanias. Now, just to note this, this story 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:28.919 is pieced together from a bunch of different accounts, and 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.440 it is not necessarily all history thought to be all 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:35.040 historically true. This is like the story of this guy's life. 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:39.159 But Pausanias was a Spartan regent and general who famously 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:44.840 defended Greece. He defended the Hellenic League against the Persians 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:48.600 at the Battle of Platia. So his original fame is 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.920 as a defender of Greece against Persian invasion. But then 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.960 later in life he was caught trying to betray Greece 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.359 and make a secret pact with the Persian kings or 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:01.800 Exees the Great. And in the middle of all this 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:06.280 there is a tragic story that Pausanias accidentally killed an 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:11.000 innocent young woman named Kleonisi in his bedchambers when he 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.720 was startled awake in the night. I guess he thought 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:15.919 there were assassins coming for him. He reaches for his 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.639 sword and he accidentally kills this woman, this young woman, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:21.960 and after this he is haunted by the woman's ghost. 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.320 So he sought the help of a necromancer or I 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.320 guess maybe it's debatable whether this should be called a necromancer. 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:30.840 But he sought the help of a a sort of 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:33.919 spirit guide at an oracle of the dead on the 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:37.800 southern shore of the Black Sea. So this is a 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.320 place where you would go to conjure up a ghost, 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:43.480 and so he conjures the ghost of Kleonsy so he 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.359 could learn how to make it right, and according to 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.199 the legend, the ghost told him all he needed to 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.280 do to make amends and to stop the haunting would 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:56.200 be to return home to Sparta. But this is one 0:20:56.200 --> 0:21:00.280 of those cruel tricks that ghosts sometimes play, because when 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.679 he went home to Sparta, his betrayal to the Persians 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:07.119 was exposed. So the Spartans found out about him. They 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.159 tried to seize him, and then he tried to seek 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.680 sanctuary in the Temple of Athena, where he thought his 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.360 pursuers would be unable to capture and execute him for 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:20.520 fear of impiety. You know, he's taking sanctuary in a temple. 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.439 But the story goes that they found a way around this. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.160 The Spartans bricked up the entrance and sealed him inside 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:28.600 until he starved to death. 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:29.639 Oh wow. 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:33.120 After this, however, there was an all new problem. Now 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.560 the ghost of Pausanias was haunting the Temple of Athena, 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.960 so the Spartans had to ask the oracle of Delphi 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:43.320 what to do, and then the oracle advised them that 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:47.720 they needed to bring in some exorcists. These professional Ogden 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:52.720 calls them evocators. He says, the Greek term is sucha gogoy, 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:57.440 which means soul conductors. And they came in and they 0:21:57.560 --> 0:21:59.560 checked the situation out and told them how to get 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.000 rid of the Gho of Pausanias, and they succeeded. They 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:09.480 exercised him effectively basted right. Bustin must make them feel 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:11.560 good because they came all the way from Italy to 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:16.280 Sparta to do this. And this story illustrates what Ogden 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:19.240 claims is probably the most common piece of information sought 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:22.359 from the dead in Greek and Roman necromancy, and that 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:24.679 is what does the ghost need? What will make the 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.000 ghost go away or stop haunting me, or allow the 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:30.960 ghost to achieve rest. And I thought this was interesting 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:34.920 in that it combines two different traditions that we talked 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:38.040 about separately in the last part in this series. So 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:42.280 one is necromancy seeking information from the dead, and the 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.800 other is exorcism, which is the removal of a ghost 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.879 or a spirit from an unwonted place or context. So, 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:53.520 if Ogden is correct here, the most common aim of 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:56.920 the former is actually the achievement of the latter. The 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.080 most common reason ancient Greek and Roman people would go 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:03.040 go to a necromancer was to figure out how to 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:06.480 get a ghost to stop bothering them. 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:08.840 M you know this, these series of steps there were, 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:15.119 I mean, there's some they're echoed throughout our supernatural fiction today. 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.159 But one example that instantly comes to mind is the 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:21.720 accounts of at least some versions of The Ring. And 0:23:21.720 --> 0:23:25.560 I guess I'm mainly thinking about the first American remake 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.840 of it, but in that film alone, you see sort 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.360 of the three step approach where they're like, Okay, there's 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:33.200 some sort of sort of the realization that there's a 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.520 ghost involved, some sort of a spirit. Okay, what what 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:38.840 does the ghost want? They try and answer that question, 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:42.560 They try even to get in on the whole, like let's, uh, 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.280 let's make things right with the ghosts remains. But then 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:49.800 the big reveal, of course, is that the ghost isn't 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:52.360 going to be satisfied with any of those things. This 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:55.560 is one of that that second classification of ghosts, that 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:57.240 all it wants is vengeance. 0:23:57.760 --> 0:23:59.959 Yeah, maybe less a ghost and more a demon. 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:03.280 Yeah. The only thing that we'll make it right is 0:24:03.320 --> 0:24:06.160 to just move on from VHS to some other format, 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:08.520 and I think that's the other way that's the issue 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:09.200 was ever defeated. 0:24:10.440 --> 0:24:15.560 So, speaking of classifications of ghosts, another interesting point that 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:18.919 Ogden raises in this article is the claim that in 0:24:19.160 --> 0:24:21.960 most Greek and Roman sources there were sort of two 0:24:22.119 --> 0:24:25.480 different modes in which ghosts could appear. And he does 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:27.960 not use these terms. I just made these up to 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:30.680 kind of help us sort through what he's saying. I'm 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:34.119 gonna call these categories the wild ghost and the dial 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:38.080 a ghost. So a wild ghost is off leash. It 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:42.560 is a dangerous, terrifying, and uncontrollable entity that cannot be 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:46.240 reasoned with. This is the ghost that haunts someone by 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:50.240 coming into their life or by haunting a place unbidden 0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:53.399 and attacking a person repeatedly. This is a ghost you 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:57.760 cannot talk to and you can't like bargain with in 0:24:57.800 --> 0:24:58.359 this state. 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:01.440 All right, So this is very much like the wrathful 0:25:01.520 --> 0:25:06.159 ghost Samara or Sadako from the Rain or from various 0:25:06.200 --> 0:25:07.520 other treatments. 0:25:07.640 --> 0:25:09.800 Well, yeah, but I think this is also just any 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:13.200 loose ghost. It's a ghost that's haunting a person and 0:25:13.240 --> 0:25:17.000 you have not initiated contact with through a necromantic ritual. 0:25:17.520 --> 0:25:20.560 So slimer also fits this classification. 0:25:20.920 --> 0:25:24.320 Yes, yeah, that's the wild ghost. Meanwhile, what I would 0:25:24.359 --> 0:25:26.800 call the dial a ghost is a ghost called up 0:25:26.880 --> 0:25:29.760 through the rituals of necromancy. And so this might be 0:25:29.880 --> 0:25:33.720 somebody who's just otherwise resting comfortably in the underworld. You 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:36.720 call them up through necromancy to get some information from them, 0:25:38.760 --> 0:25:42.080 or it could be one and the same as the 0:25:42.080 --> 0:25:45.800 wild ghost, but when you contact them through necromancy, apparently 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:50.000 the interaction is of a different sort. An entity called 0:25:50.080 --> 0:25:54.719 up through necromantic rituals is open to conversation and exchange. 0:25:55.720 --> 0:25:58.399 And I thought that it's interesting that these ghosts that 0:25:58.440 --> 0:26:03.520 there can be overlaps. The same exact ghost, depending on circumstances, 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:07.080 might be a wild, uncontrollable force that visits you in 0:26:07.119 --> 0:26:09.440 the night, in your nightmares, or you know, haunts your 0:26:09.480 --> 0:26:12.399 home or haunts a place and terrifies people and just 0:26:12.480 --> 0:26:14.959 keeps attacking and there's nothing you can do. But you 0:26:14.960 --> 0:26:17.920 talk to the exact same ghost, same soul through an 0:26:17.920 --> 0:26:19.919 oracle of the dead, or by going to a tomb 0:26:19.920 --> 0:26:22.920 and raising them up or whatever, then you can talk 0:26:22.960 --> 0:26:24.800 to the ghost to figure out what's going on and 0:26:24.800 --> 0:26:27.840 figure out what can be done to make it go away. 0:26:29.000 --> 0:26:33.040 Interesting. So now this makes me wonder if if if 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:36.840 the ring tape, uh, the VHS tape is actually could 0:26:36.880 --> 0:26:38.439 if you could actually think of it as sort of 0:26:38.520 --> 0:26:43.200 automated and automated necromatic rite. It is a necromatic artifact 0:26:43.320 --> 0:26:46.280 that does all of the ritual, but in a way 0:26:46.359 --> 0:26:49.919 that requires less effort on the part of the person 0:26:50.040 --> 0:26:50.480 using it. 0:26:51.320 --> 0:26:54.400 Okay, I'm trying to get there with you. Is can 0:26:54.440 --> 0:26:56.800 the can the girl in the ring ever be reasoned 0:26:56.800 --> 0:26:57.720 with or bargained with? 0:26:57.880 --> 0:27:00.560 Height No? I don't think so, not any version I've 0:27:00.600 --> 0:27:03.840 seen you can try. And in terms of what kind 0:27:03.840 --> 0:27:06.240 of information she has to relay, I don't know. Maybe 0:27:06.240 --> 0:27:10.000 it is relayed through the tape. You know, these these visions. 0:27:10.040 --> 0:27:11.960 Just because a ghost is going to tell you stuff 0:27:11.960 --> 0:27:13.560 doesn't mean it has to make sense, right, I mean 0:27:13.600 --> 0:27:16.440 they may speak cryptically, and then of course you get 0:27:16.440 --> 0:27:18.600 that phone call which just says that you're going to 0:27:18.600 --> 0:27:21.480 die in seven days, which isn't very helpful, but is 0:27:21.480 --> 0:27:23.320 a communication, okay. 0:27:24.760 --> 0:27:27.240 So often gives an example in this article of the 0:27:27.600 --> 0:27:31.560 Roman emperor Nero's mother Agrippina. So. According to this story, 0:27:31.600 --> 0:27:33.760 he murders his own mother. And by the way, the 0:27:33.840 --> 0:27:38.399 stories of her murder are very elaborate and conflicting and 0:27:38.440 --> 0:27:41.120 all that, so who knows what really happened in history there. 0:27:41.119 --> 0:27:43.000 But this is again, this is how the story is 0:27:43.080 --> 0:27:46.400 understood by like Roman historians writing the lives of the emperors. 0:27:48.400 --> 0:27:51.760 So the ghost repeatedly starts attacking Nero in the night, 0:27:52.119 --> 0:27:55.760 terrifying him with these visions and nightmares. So Nero sought 0:27:55.800 --> 0:27:58.719 the help of a Persian magas to call up her 0:27:58.720 --> 0:28:01.280 spirit so that he could make peace with it. 0:28:02.040 --> 0:28:10.479 Quick note on magi and vegas Is of Persia. I 0:28:10.520 --> 0:28:13.160 was reading a little bit about this. There's an episode 0:28:13.160 --> 0:28:18.480 from the Sasanian Empire where the first Sasanian emperor we've 0:28:18.520 --> 0:28:22.679 discussed him before, Adashir, the first, upon ascending the throne, 0:28:23.000 --> 0:28:26.040 called on all the respected magi of the empire to 0:28:26.119 --> 0:28:28.520 gather and the total was said to be something like 0:28:28.600 --> 0:28:32.720 eighty thousand. So I was reading more about this, And 0:28:32.840 --> 0:28:35.240 when we talk about the magi, we're talking about the 0:28:35.640 --> 0:28:41.040 Masidian magi, who were a priestly order of Zoroastrianism, so 0:28:41.040 --> 0:28:44.360 they were not expressly necromancers. They were into all sorts 0:28:44.400 --> 0:28:47.280 of things, you know, looking to the stars and so forth. 0:28:47.400 --> 0:28:51.240 But apparently some of their writings covered communication with the 0:28:51.320 --> 0:28:52.760 untethered spirits of the dead. 0:28:53.720 --> 0:28:56.160 Okay, but to come back to this idea of like 0:28:56.400 --> 0:28:59.160 ghosts that haunt people and sort of can't be reasoned 0:28:59.160 --> 0:29:01.920 with when they appe here for hauntings. But then you 0:29:02.040 --> 0:29:04.239 can reason with them if you do a ritual with 0:29:04.280 --> 0:29:06.680 like a megas or some other type of or an 0:29:06.680 --> 0:29:10.240 oracle of the dead, some kind of necromantic ritual, then 0:29:10.280 --> 0:29:13.320 you can figure out what they want. It strikes me 0:29:13.400 --> 0:29:16.240 that this duality does still appear in some of the 0:29:16.240 --> 0:29:18.480 ghost stories of today. Like you were talking about Rob, 0:29:18.520 --> 0:29:22.200 I mean, I think more generally about you know, a 0:29:22.240 --> 0:29:25.880 story where the ghost is just a purely bad vibe. 0:29:26.000 --> 0:29:28.960 During the direct hauntings, it just appears to scare people, 0:29:29.360 --> 0:29:33.280 but in the context of a seance, the same ghost 0:29:33.440 --> 0:29:35.440 can be intelligibly conversed with. 0:29:36.280 --> 0:29:38.600 Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's almost like, Okay, 0:29:38.720 --> 0:29:44.400 this individual ghost or mortal is causing problems. Let's get 0:29:44.400 --> 0:29:47.560 serious about this. Let's have some legal proceedings, you know, 0:29:47.600 --> 0:29:51.120 the seance, the ritual of necromancy, whatever the details are, 0:29:51.160 --> 0:29:54.920 it is like, okay, let's bust out some rule based 0:29:55.680 --> 0:29:58.640 discussion of what's going on here and get to a solution. 0:29:59.000 --> 0:30:00.640 I think that's a good way thinking about it. In 0:30:00.640 --> 0:30:02.920 a way this, you know, these rituals might be kind 0:30:02.960 --> 0:30:05.960 of like instituting a court proceeding in which the ghost 0:30:06.080 --> 0:30:06.720 must appear. 0:30:07.440 --> 0:30:09.440 Yeah, or it's a it's like an intervention in some 0:30:09.480 --> 0:30:12.600 respects as well, Like the ghost shows up and is like, 0:30:12.640 --> 0:30:15.280 all right, time to like terrify some people, and then 0:30:15.560 --> 0:30:17.600 the ghost really, oh my goodness, this is one of 0:30:17.600 --> 0:30:19.320 those again, they're going to try and reason with me, 0:30:19.440 --> 0:30:19.800 all right. 0:30:20.240 --> 0:30:24.720 So anyway, all that falls into this category of information 0:30:25.000 --> 0:30:28.040 about what could be done to appease or send away 0:30:28.200 --> 0:30:34.400 the ghost, a very common aim of Greek and Roman necromancy. Sometimes, 0:30:34.400 --> 0:30:37.160 though necromancy would just as you alluded to earlier, rob 0:30:37.200 --> 0:30:40.040 would be used to extract information from a ghost that 0:30:40.840 --> 0:30:43.920 the spirit of a person could practically be expected to 0:30:44.000 --> 0:30:47.840 know if consciousness continues after death. For example, somebody hides 0:30:47.880 --> 0:30:51.160 some money then dies without telling you where they hit it, 0:30:51.640 --> 0:30:53.680 you might need to call up a necromancer to get 0:30:53.720 --> 0:30:57.120 that information. And there are stories exactly like this. Though 0:30:57.640 --> 0:30:59.720 this one kind of puzzled me because I was thinking 0:30:59.760 --> 0:31:04.320 with specific practical information like the location of a stash 0:31:04.320 --> 0:31:08.680 of silver or something. I wonder how the necromancer dealt 0:31:08.800 --> 0:31:12.040 with what I would assume was their general inability to 0:31:12.040 --> 0:31:15.239 provide useful, correct answers, you know, like maybe that have 0:31:15.280 --> 0:31:18.440 to be very vague or to be fair, when we 0:31:18.480 --> 0:31:21.080 get to discussing what the actual rituals were in a minute, 0:31:21.280 --> 0:31:24.960 maybe it actually wasn't on the necromancer to give the information. 0:31:25.840 --> 0:31:27.280 Yeah, they would have to have some sort of an 0:31:27.280 --> 0:31:29.680 out like that, right, because again assuming that the next 0:31:29.840 --> 0:31:32.800 going with the assumption here that the necromancer cannot actually 0:31:32.840 --> 0:31:34.840 speak to the dead, and that in some of these 0:31:34.880 --> 0:31:39.200 other cases is essentially providing a like a therapeutic service. 0:31:40.120 --> 0:31:43.400 You know, that they are, you know, guiding the recipient 0:31:43.440 --> 0:31:45.880 through some sort of a you know, essentially a religious 0:31:45.960 --> 0:31:48.880 ritual to put them at ease to you know, to 0:31:49.160 --> 0:31:52.280 to help them honor the deceased, or whatever the specifics 0:31:52.320 --> 0:31:54.320 might be. But in this case, yeah, if there's an 0:31:54.360 --> 0:31:58.360 expectation of hidden treasure at the end of it, you know, 0:31:58.520 --> 0:32:00.720 the necromancer would be a fool to put themselves on 0:32:00.760 --> 0:32:02.160 the line like that, right. 0:32:02.600 --> 0:32:04.960 They won't say it's under the third bush in the garden, 0:32:05.000 --> 0:32:06.960 because then you go dig it up and then be like, well, 0:32:07.000 --> 0:32:08.840 it's not there. Why'd you tell me that? 0:32:09.200 --> 0:32:11.040 Yeah, you'd have to put a spin out, like the 0:32:11.080 --> 0:32:13.920 true hidden treasure was your friendship in life with this person, 0:32:13.960 --> 0:32:16.360 and that's what they value and therefore they don't want 0:32:16.400 --> 0:32:17.440 to tell you where the money is. 0:32:17.840 --> 0:32:19.680 But again, we'll get to something in a minute that 0:32:19.720 --> 0:32:21.640 I think might actually shed some light on this and 0:32:22.040 --> 0:32:25.400 show how the person who was sort of the guide 0:32:25.480 --> 0:32:28.960 for this process would be off the hook. So but again, 0:32:29.320 --> 0:32:33.080 what would you be looking for from speaking to a ghost? 0:32:33.200 --> 0:32:36.240 You would get this practical information the dead person took 0:32:36.240 --> 0:32:38.160 with them to the grave, like you know, where did 0:32:38.160 --> 0:32:41.160 you hide something or anything like that. Also, if the 0:32:41.200 --> 0:32:44.480 person was a murder victim, they might you might consult 0:32:44.480 --> 0:32:45.720 them to find out who killed you. 0:32:46.720 --> 0:32:49.000 Oh, this is a classic one, and this puts a 0:32:49.000 --> 0:32:51.960 different kind of pressure on the role of the necromancer here, 0:32:52.040 --> 0:32:56.120 or the alleged necromancer, because of course what they say could, 0:32:56.160 --> 0:33:00.200 depending on the society and the legal system, be in 0:33:00.240 --> 0:33:04.360 it as proof of an individual's guilt in a murder. 0:33:04.840 --> 0:33:07.440 But apart from all this stuff, where again, if you 0:33:07.480 --> 0:33:10.880 assume that consciousness actually continues after death, you could assume 0:33:10.920 --> 0:33:13.840 the person would know all these things? What about this 0:33:13.880 --> 0:33:17.560 other stuff like why ghosts would know the future? We've 0:33:17.600 --> 0:33:22.000 looked at multiple examples of necromancy being used to consult 0:33:22.040 --> 0:33:25.640 spirits on what's going to happen in the future. It 0:33:25.720 --> 0:33:29.400 turns out Greek and Roman necromancers also consulted ghosts for 0:33:29.480 --> 0:33:32.800 info about the future, for example, to predict the outcome 0:33:32.880 --> 0:33:35.840 of wars or power struggles. A common thing people want 0:33:35.880 --> 0:33:38.960 to know, why would the dead have the ability to 0:33:39.000 --> 0:33:42.320 predict the future? Well, Ogden actually does answer this question. 0:33:42.440 --> 0:33:44.920 He says, we don't know for sure, but there are 0:33:44.960 --> 0:33:49.560 a couple of big possibilities. Ogden writes, quote. One possibility 0:33:49.680 --> 0:33:53.440 is that some ancients believed the future was prepared in 0:33:53.480 --> 0:33:56.960 the realm of the dead. When Aeneas descends into the 0:33:57.040 --> 0:34:01.440 underworld in Virgil's Aeneid, he witnesses the marshaling of the 0:34:01.520 --> 0:34:05.360 souls of Rome's future heroes, even though they had not 0:34:05.560 --> 0:34:09.840 yet been born. Okay, so that's one, Ogden goes on quote. 0:34:09.960 --> 0:34:14.319 Another possibility, many ancients, Plato among them, believed that a 0:34:14.480 --> 0:34:18.680 pure soul, one separated from the dull matter of the body, 0:34:19.080 --> 0:34:23.120 had great powers of perception and could understand the hidden 0:34:23.239 --> 0:34:27.960 processes of the universe. Okay, so that sort of helps 0:34:28.000 --> 0:34:31.520 answer my question if Ogden's correct about these two explanations. Here, 0:34:31.719 --> 0:34:35.480 the dead know the future because one of two things. 0:34:35.520 --> 0:34:39.200 Either the future is written in advance, so we are 0:34:39.239 --> 0:34:41.440 faded for certain things to happen to us, and the 0:34:41.480 --> 0:34:45.280 writing of the future takes place in the nether world, 0:34:45.440 --> 0:34:49.319 so dead people in hades are essentially hanging out in 0:34:49.440 --> 0:34:52.480 the writer's room for the upcoming season of the show. 0:34:53.840 --> 0:34:57.080 Or the second explanation is if you subscribe to something 0:34:57.120 --> 0:35:01.920 like platonism, soul's rule and bodies drool, and your current 0:35:02.080 --> 0:35:05.799 knowledge of the future is limited by the extent to 0:35:05.960 --> 0:35:10.520 which your body drools. Liberated souls, no longer attached to 0:35:10.280 --> 0:35:13.359 to flesh, are sort of like gods in a way. 0:35:13.440 --> 0:35:17.400 They have extra powers of knowledge and perception, and we 0:35:17.440 --> 0:35:19.919 would all have these powers if we were liberated from 0:35:19.960 --> 0:35:21.400 the confines of our bodies. 0:35:21.800 --> 0:35:24.680 That one's in a really interesting because it also brings 0:35:24.760 --> 0:35:28.040 up some of the other examples of ancestor veneration and 0:35:28.120 --> 0:35:31.560 ancestor worship, you know, where it's like, this was a 0:35:31.600 --> 0:35:35.880 real person in a given society or a given family, 0:35:35.920 --> 0:35:38.640 what have you? They have died, and now they are 0:35:38.760 --> 0:35:42.200 still real, but in a different way and perhaps held 0:35:42.239 --> 0:35:44.400 to a like a put on a pedestal. You know, 0:35:44.440 --> 0:35:48.480 they're they're, they they're they're they're given over to certain 0:35:48.520 --> 0:35:52.359 divine characteristics, even if they are not thought of expressly 0:35:52.400 --> 0:36:01.640 as a guy. 0:35:59.880 --> 0:36:06.520 All right, So that's Ogden's opinion about why ghosts would 0:36:06.520 --> 0:36:08.600 be expected to know the future and be able to 0:36:08.600 --> 0:36:12.080 answer your questions about it. But another interesting thing brought 0:36:12.160 --> 0:36:16.440 up in this article is he talks about location where 0:36:16.560 --> 0:36:21.400 would Greco Roman necromancy take place? And it seems there 0:36:21.400 --> 0:36:25.319 are two main answers for this. One is at the 0:36:25.360 --> 0:36:28.000 tomb of the deceased. And now that one makes sense 0:36:28.000 --> 0:36:30.600 if you're trying to call up a ghost of a 0:36:30.600 --> 0:36:34.040 dead person, where better to go than to their grave 0:36:34.520 --> 0:36:37.960 and do some kind of ritual there makes sense. But 0:36:38.040 --> 0:36:40.960 the second, and I got really interested in this, was 0:36:41.200 --> 0:36:47.760 that there were essentially some geographically identified special places where 0:36:47.840 --> 0:36:50.960 you could communicate with the dead. These were known as 0:36:51.040 --> 0:36:54.160 oracles of the dead. Now where would those be? Well, 0:36:54.200 --> 0:36:57.239 Ogden says, ancient sources tell us about four of them. 0:36:57.360 --> 0:37:01.200 There are two in modern day Greece, one in Italy, 0:37:01.360 --> 0:37:04.720 and one in Turkey, and I did some additional digging 0:37:05.120 --> 0:37:07.319 for background information about a couple of these. So the 0:37:07.320 --> 0:37:11.239 first one he mentions is in northwest Greece, and this 0:37:11.280 --> 0:37:14.759 is what's known as the Acharusian Lake. So this is 0:37:14.800 --> 0:37:17.800 a lake, or perhaps I've seen in some sources mentioned 0:37:17.800 --> 0:37:20.319 as a swamp, a lake or a series of light 0:37:20.440 --> 0:37:25.040 lakes or swamp connected to the river Akron, which that 0:37:25.160 --> 0:37:29.399 river itself is very important in Greek visions of the afterlife, 0:37:29.400 --> 0:37:32.400 so there's a motif present in Greek and Roman mythology 0:37:32.440 --> 0:37:35.960 that the dead have to be carried across a river 0:37:36.400 --> 0:37:39.640 by a ghastly ferryman in order to reach Hades or 0:37:39.719 --> 0:37:42.880 the underworld. And in some sources this river is named 0:37:42.920 --> 0:37:46.080 as Styx, but in others it is the Akron. 0:37:46.520 --> 0:37:49.839 If memory serves, both names as separate rivers are used 0:37:49.840 --> 0:37:50.920 in Dante's Inferno. 0:37:51.320 --> 0:37:55.120 Oh that may be right, I don't recall, but interestingly, 0:37:55.360 --> 0:37:59.120 I wanted to note this, so Akron, the Akron is 0:37:59.160 --> 0:38:03.279 at least one definite real river in northwest Greece, so 0:38:03.320 --> 0:38:05.680 there's just the Akron. You can go to that river now, 0:38:05.960 --> 0:38:09.560 whereas the sticks at Core seems to be a mythological 0:38:09.680 --> 0:38:13.440 river in the underworld, but at some point it was 0:38:13.520 --> 0:38:17.200 also associated I think with various real waterways as well, 0:38:17.280 --> 0:38:20.120 such as like a stream in Arcadia, but the Akron 0:38:20.120 --> 0:38:25.960 seems more concretely geographically located on this world. But anyway, 0:38:26.000 --> 0:38:29.400 the story goes, so one of these lakes or swamps 0:38:29.440 --> 0:38:33.319 connected to the Akron, known as Akarusia. There was a 0:38:33.360 --> 0:38:37.239 lakeside district in which you could call up the spirits 0:38:37.280 --> 0:38:40.000 of the dead, and this was possible because of the 0:38:40.400 --> 0:38:42.800 way that the river and the lake were somehow physically 0:38:42.840 --> 0:38:46.040 connected to Hades and Rob. I've attached a couple of 0:38:46.360 --> 0:38:48.759 pictures I found online of the Akron River for you 0:38:48.840 --> 0:38:50.960 to look at here. You know, it's weird. I wonder 0:38:51.000 --> 0:38:54.760 if it's just an example of psychological priming, because I 0:38:54.800 --> 0:38:57.440 was expecting these to be associated with the underworld. But 0:38:57.480 --> 0:38:58.840 they do look kind of spooky to me. 0:38:59.280 --> 0:39:01.279 Yeah. Yes, I'm not sure how much of this is 0:39:01.440 --> 0:39:04.640 just me going into it with the expectation here, but yeah, 0:39:04.680 --> 0:39:07.040 in the first shot there's this impression of narrowing, and 0:39:07.480 --> 0:39:09.920 I don't know, I'm kind of reminded of, you know, 0:39:10.320 --> 0:39:14.040 the classic painting The Island of the Dead there a 0:39:14.040 --> 0:39:16.520 little bit, but I could be reading too much into it. 0:39:16.680 --> 0:39:19.240 I mean a river at the at the very least, 0:39:19.280 --> 0:39:22.399 a river is This is a is a moving thing 0:39:22.480 --> 0:39:25.520 that goes somewhere else. So it's easy to approach it 0:39:26.000 --> 0:39:29.360 and think of it as this thing that connects to 0:39:29.440 --> 0:39:31.279 some distant land, because it literally does. 0:39:31.840 --> 0:39:34.279 That's a good point, okay. So second place for the 0:39:34.280 --> 0:39:36.920 Oracle of the Dead. This is way over on the 0:39:36.960 --> 0:39:40.200 western coast of the Italian Peninsula. This is Lake of 0:39:40.320 --> 0:39:45.120 Vernas in Campagna. So once again this is a body 0:39:45.160 --> 0:39:48.040 of water associated with the entrance to the underworld. In 0:39:48.040 --> 0:39:51.320 this case, I thought it was geologically interesting because a 0:39:51.480 --> 0:39:56.400 Vernas is the flooded crater of an extinct volcano, so 0:39:56.440 --> 0:40:00.000 this is in a region somewhat close to Naples. Allegedly, 0:40:00.120 --> 0:40:04.640 the Lake of Verness emitted fumes of sulfur sometimes, which 0:40:04.680 --> 0:40:06.840 could be why it was thought of as the entrance 0:40:06.840 --> 0:40:09.480 to the realm of the dead. And contrary to what 0:40:09.560 --> 0:40:11.640 you might expect. You know, you might think, okay, so 0:40:11.840 --> 0:40:14.759 this lake is associated with the underworld, then maybe it's 0:40:14.840 --> 0:40:18.759 just this creepy, abandoned place with nothing going on. But no, no, no. 0:40:19.000 --> 0:40:22.080 The area around Averness was developed. It had temples, and 0:40:22.160 --> 0:40:25.880 bathhouses and all sorts of stuff. In fact, in his article, 0:40:25.960 --> 0:40:28.520 Ogden tells what I thought was a very funny story 0:40:28.600 --> 0:40:33.080 about a British archaeologist who thought he had identified the 0:40:33.160 --> 0:40:37.000 ruins of the Avernus oracle of the Dead in a 0:40:37.160 --> 0:40:40.440 Roman era tunnel near the lake came up with this 0:40:40.480 --> 0:40:45.480 whole scenario about how the oracle worked. Ogden writes, quote 0:40:45.680 --> 0:40:48.640 he speculated that visitors to the oracle were led through 0:40:48.719 --> 0:40:52.440 dark tunnels and across a hot, sulfurous spring that doubled 0:40:52.440 --> 0:40:56.480 as the river Sticks. Priestly assistants, he suggested, used lamps 0:40:56.480 --> 0:40:59.800 and wooden shadow puppets to project ghostly figures onto a 0:40:59.800 --> 0:41:02.719 wall in a kind of ancient vision of a Disneyland 0:41:02.800 --> 0:41:07.640 haunted house. So, okay, that sounds very interesting, but it 0:41:08.040 --> 0:41:11.560 turns out no, this tunnel was actually a service tunnel 0:41:11.600 --> 0:41:15.600 for a Roman bathhouse. And then there are a couple 0:41:15.640 --> 0:41:18.239 of other sites of oracles of the dead that are 0:41:18.360 --> 0:41:22.439 that were less well known. One is heraclea Pontica. That's 0:41:22.520 --> 0:41:24.960 the one on the south coast of the Black Sea, 0:41:25.280 --> 0:41:27.880 up on the north of what is today Turkey, or 0:41:27.920 --> 0:41:30.840 at the time would have been Anatolia. This is the 0:41:31.239 --> 0:41:34.759 place that Pausanias went to in that legend, and then 0:41:34.840 --> 0:41:38.560 the other one, the fourth one is Cape Tynron, which 0:41:38.680 --> 0:41:43.680 is down at the southern tip of the Peloponnesis, And 0:41:44.000 --> 0:41:46.080 I'm not sure about the Black Sea location, but I 0:41:46.080 --> 0:41:49.080 was looking up Cape Tynern and this one was also, 0:41:49.200 --> 0:41:52.600 according to some ancient sources, a gateway to the underworld. 0:41:52.640 --> 0:41:54.600 So it seems what a lot of these Oracle of 0:41:54.640 --> 0:41:58.640 the Dead locations have in common is they are thought 0:41:58.719 --> 0:42:02.440 to be in some sense of physical entry way into 0:42:02.520 --> 0:42:03.319 the underworld. 0:42:04.160 --> 0:42:07.120 Yeah, so it's not just a matter of having the 0:42:07.200 --> 0:42:10.439 rituals or the expertise. It's like, are you in close 0:42:10.560 --> 0:42:15.320 enough proximity to the underworld for that signal to reach them? 0:42:15.560 --> 0:42:17.840 Now. In the last episode, we talked about those ancient 0:42:17.840 --> 0:42:23.920 Mesopotamian tablets that shared specifics of their necromancy rituals, which 0:42:23.960 --> 0:42:27.279 involved incantations, so you had special words to say and 0:42:27.480 --> 0:42:31.880 appeals to specific gods who would sort of oversee the proceedings. 0:42:31.920 --> 0:42:35.520 Like one of the tablets specified that you know, this 0:42:35.640 --> 0:42:39.760 ritual is taking place under the auspices of the god Shamash. 0:42:39.800 --> 0:42:43.200 And then they also had recipes for potions and concoctions 0:42:43.239 --> 0:42:45.880 to make out of all kinds of stuff, you know, 0:42:46.000 --> 0:42:50.440 dust from across roads, the end of a frog's intestines, crab, tallow, 0:42:50.920 --> 0:42:53.320 hair of a dog, and a bunch of other stuff. 0:42:53.680 --> 0:42:56.440 And in one case, I guess my favorite thing was 0:42:56.520 --> 0:42:59.280 the ritual that involved a skull that you would address 0:42:59.320 --> 0:43:02.759 as oh, sk skull of skulls, and the implication is 0:43:02.800 --> 0:43:05.920 that the ghost would come into the skull and speak 0:43:05.960 --> 0:43:09.200 out of it somehow. In this case, I wonder what 0:43:09.280 --> 0:43:13.840 literally happened during these rituals, by the way, did I 0:43:13.880 --> 0:43:16.200 think we don't really know, but I have to wonder, like, 0:43:16.280 --> 0:43:19.799 did the skull somehow quote speak? If so, how was 0:43:19.840 --> 0:43:20.719 that accomplished? 0:43:21.719 --> 0:43:23.640 Yeah, because on one hand, you could have a scenario 0:43:23.640 --> 0:43:28.480 where some manner of puppetry was even utilized. But I 0:43:28.520 --> 0:43:31.759 guess perhaps more believable, at least by modern standards, would 0:43:31.760 --> 0:43:34.600 be just sort of a physical focus of what's happening. 0:43:34.680 --> 0:43:38.239 So perhaps the necromancer is listening to the skull and 0:43:39.680 --> 0:43:43.480 that becomes the object of focus during the proceedings. 0:43:44.040 --> 0:43:48.799 Right, So a question is do we have physical descriptions 0:43:48.840 --> 0:43:52.400 of what would happen during these rituals during the ghost interactions? 0:43:52.640 --> 0:43:55.680 For Greco Roman necromancy, and the answer is yes, we 0:43:55.760 --> 0:43:59.120 do have some descriptions. One example Ogden gives that I 0:43:59.120 --> 0:44:03.279 thought was interesting as the Greek playwright Escalus, in a 0:44:03.400 --> 0:44:07.160 fragment of an otherwise lost work, describes a scene at 0:44:07.200 --> 0:44:11.000 a lakeside oracle of the dead where blood from a 0:44:11.080 --> 0:44:14.680 black sheep is poured into the water, and the implication 0:44:14.880 --> 0:44:17.360 is that the ghosts would come up from the underworld 0:44:17.520 --> 0:44:20.840 through the waters of the lake and drink the sheep's blood. 0:44:21.360 --> 0:44:23.960 And this is interesting in that it connects to that 0:44:24.040 --> 0:44:28.080 scene in Homer where it's implied that or not even implied, 0:44:28.120 --> 0:44:32.080 it's explicitly stated that giving a ghost sheep's blood or 0:44:32.160 --> 0:44:36.359 rams blood to drink would make it sort of temporarily 0:44:36.480 --> 0:44:39.320 beefed up enough to party, Like now it can talk. 0:44:39.920 --> 0:44:42.759 And I think this is really interesting, this idea that 0:44:42.800 --> 0:44:46.400 you had to feed blood to a ghost so that 0:44:46.480 --> 0:44:50.319 it could I don't know, become substantial or empowered enough 0:44:50.320 --> 0:44:51.319 to interact with you. 0:44:51.920 --> 0:44:54.640 Yeah, I mean it's the dead or lacking blood, and 0:44:54.960 --> 0:44:57.560 give them blood and they can they can do living 0:44:57.600 --> 0:44:59.799 things again, at least for a very short period of time. 0:45:00.120 --> 0:45:02.279 But finally, coming back to that issue of like what 0:45:02.480 --> 0:45:05.520 form does the delivery of information from the dead take 0:45:05.840 --> 0:45:10.279 in these Greco Roman rituals, Like, how does the necromancer 0:45:10.360 --> 0:45:13.239 have to deliver the information? And in that case, how 0:45:13.239 --> 0:45:17.400 do they deal with like the information when you know, 0:45:17.480 --> 0:45:22.759 not being specific or accurate. Well, Ogden says that the 0:45:22.840 --> 0:45:25.240 contact with the ghost at an oracle of the dead 0:45:25.880 --> 0:45:31.319 was done through dream incubation. Oh, this makes sense of things, right. 0:45:31.360 --> 0:45:34.280 So this is similar to what was done at multiple 0:45:34.360 --> 0:45:37.600 kinds of temples and shrines in the ancient world. One 0:45:37.640 --> 0:45:40.560 example we've talked about on the show before was the 0:45:40.800 --> 0:45:44.160 shrines of the healing god Asclepias, where you would want 0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:47.880 to get healed from a disease or something troubling your body, 0:45:48.360 --> 0:45:50.560 and you would to seek a cure. You might go 0:45:50.600 --> 0:45:53.080 to a shrine of Asclepias and you would do some 0:45:53.200 --> 0:45:55.680 kind of ritual, probably make a sacrifice or pay a 0:45:55.719 --> 0:45:59.200 fee or something, and then you would go to sleep 0:45:59.400 --> 0:46:02.200 and then you would have a dream there where Asclepias 0:46:02.280 --> 0:46:06.799 would deliver to you information in the dream about what 0:46:06.840 --> 0:46:08.680 you could do to cure your disease. 0:46:09.400 --> 0:46:10.160 Yeah, okay. 0:46:10.520 --> 0:46:13.480 In the case of the necromancer oracles, you would do 0:46:13.600 --> 0:46:16.440 the prescribed rituals. You probably make some kind of sacrifice. 0:46:16.480 --> 0:46:19.120 It seems very likely it might involve like a spilling 0:46:19.160 --> 0:46:21.640 of some kind of animal blood to feed to the ghost, 0:46:22.200 --> 0:46:25.160 and then you would go to sleep in the designated area, 0:46:25.239 --> 0:46:26.960 and then the ghost would come to you in a 0:46:27.080 --> 0:46:31.000 dream and tell you what you needed to know. And 0:46:31.280 --> 0:46:34.000 this is interesting in multiple ways. Number One, it highlights 0:46:34.040 --> 0:46:38.120 this thing in ancient Greek thinking where sleep was sort 0:46:38.120 --> 0:46:41.480 of a state thought of as in some ways analogous 0:46:41.560 --> 0:46:45.719 to or half way to death. So you're sort of 0:46:46.640 --> 0:46:50.279 going out of the land of the living into this 0:46:50.520 --> 0:46:54.120 half dead state of sleep in order to meet the ghost, 0:46:54.200 --> 0:46:57.480 you know, as it comes out to deliver you information. 0:46:57.600 --> 0:46:59.759 But then also in a practical sense, I could see 0:46:59.760 --> 0:47:02.759 how this would mean that the priest or whatever, the 0:47:02.800 --> 0:47:05.640 professional working at the oracle of the Dead is doing, 0:47:05.719 --> 0:47:09.080 like they're not personally on the hook for like giving 0:47:09.120 --> 0:47:11.480 you the information you need. And it might be in 0:47:11.520 --> 0:47:14.440 some cases they did provide information, but it seems like 0:47:14.480 --> 0:47:17.439 in a lot of cases they use dream incubation where 0:47:17.640 --> 0:47:19.160 it's all internal to you. 0:47:19.600 --> 0:47:23.319 Yeah, it's like they're just helping to facilitate the conversation 0:47:23.560 --> 0:47:26.200 and then the conversation is left to you and your 0:47:26.239 --> 0:47:28.920 dream state, and I guess in a more like you know, 0:47:29.800 --> 0:47:35.040 skeptical approach here. Yeah, they're simply priming your brain for 0:47:35.239 --> 0:47:38.440 some sort of a dream that could be either in 0:47:38.480 --> 0:47:41.840 and of itself seemingly meaningful or could be picked apart 0:47:41.880 --> 0:47:45.760 in made meaningful due to the priming. So it's interesting 0:47:45.800 --> 0:47:48.160 how we kind of end up at the end of 0:47:48.160 --> 0:47:52.719 this episode in similar territory to our previous look at 0:47:52.960 --> 0:47:57.080 different cultures and times in which the dream world was 0:47:57.080 --> 0:48:01.000 given special significance. You know, I mean, I'm not sure 0:48:01.040 --> 0:48:03.239 you could necessarily make the case here because again this 0:48:03.320 --> 0:48:07.120 could be maybe thought of as you know, an important right, 0:48:07.440 --> 0:48:11.680 but not like a prime motivator in the trajectory of 0:48:11.920 --> 0:48:14.680 a given culture. But still, you see, like the importance 0:48:14.719 --> 0:48:18.760 of the dream space to individuals and trying to figure 0:48:18.800 --> 0:48:20.120 out their problems. 0:48:20.600 --> 0:48:23.720 Well, yeah, and it makes me see another parallel between 0:48:24.000 --> 0:48:26.120 sleep and death here is that it seems like they 0:48:26.160 --> 0:48:31.560 are both states in which people's capacities are to some 0:48:31.719 --> 0:48:35.640 extent diminished but in other ways magnified. You know that, 0:48:35.800 --> 0:48:39.919 like like during sleep you are closer to death, and 0:48:39.960 --> 0:48:44.919 so of course you know your your consciousness is diminished 0:48:44.920 --> 0:48:48.160 in a way you of course your your physical potency, 0:48:48.200 --> 0:48:50.320 like you're not moving around while you're asleep, you're prone 0:48:50.400 --> 0:48:54.439 and all that, so you are diminished or reduced in 0:48:54.560 --> 0:48:56.759 one extent. But also it is the place where you 0:48:56.840 --> 0:49:01.520 have access to wisdom beyond what's available to your mortal mind. 0:49:02.440 --> 0:49:05.640 Yeah, of course, I can't help but be reminded of 0:49:05.640 --> 0:49:08.120 Freddy Krueger and all of this. It's easy to think 0:49:08.120 --> 0:49:11.359 of Freddy Krueger as a monster, but you know, he's 0:49:11.400 --> 0:49:14.040 a monster in the general sense of the word. But 0:49:14.320 --> 0:49:18.080 he is a ghost. He has a vengeful ghost that 0:49:18.560 --> 0:49:21.800 then appears in your dreams. And I guess by virtue 0:49:21.800 --> 0:49:25.640 of having access to dreams, he has privileged information about individuals. 0:49:25.920 --> 0:49:27.640 I don't know that anyone ever really asks him for 0:49:27.680 --> 0:49:29.440 advice on anything, though, I. 0:49:29.400 --> 0:49:31.000 Mean it would be funny if you did. I don't 0:49:31.000 --> 0:49:32.399 know what kind of advice he would give. 0:49:32.920 --> 0:49:34.919 I mean, that could be a whole sequel right there 0:49:34.960 --> 0:49:39.440 where somebody or some group or like, look, we need 0:49:39.800 --> 0:49:42.240 we need the help of someone with access to dreams. 0:49:42.880 --> 0:49:45.959 I guess specifically teenager dreams. I guess maybe this would 0:49:46.000 --> 0:49:48.400 make sense for if you were designing a product to 0:49:48.440 --> 0:49:52.440 appeal to teenagers, they're like who knows teenagers. Freddy Krueger, 0:49:52.760 --> 0:49:53.600 you know what's cool? 0:49:53.800 --> 0:49:57.759 Yeah? Yeah, Oh, to get advice on sweaters, it would 0:49:57.800 --> 0:50:00.520 be like, Freddy Krueger, is this sweater cool? Is this 0:50:00.560 --> 0:50:03.200 what's going to be hip this season? And he's always 0:50:03.239 --> 0:50:05.640 just like Green and Red, that's what's going to be in. 0:50:05.960 --> 0:50:08.080 Now he knows it's a classic look and it'll eventually, 0:50:08.160 --> 0:50:11.000 you know, eventually the trends will come back around to it. 0:50:11.320 --> 0:50:14.200 Okay, well in a cap part two right there, I believe. 0:50:14.280 --> 0:50:16.560 So, yeah, we'll be back for at least a third 0:50:16.600 --> 0:50:19.920 episode on necromancy, and in the meantime, reach out to us. 0:50:19.960 --> 0:50:22.640 We'd love to hear your thoughts on these various and 0:50:22.800 --> 0:50:28.160 ancient accounts of necromancier things that could be described as 0:50:28.239 --> 0:50:31.640 necromantic and scope. Also, if you have thoughts in some 0:50:31.719 --> 0:50:35.480 of the more pop culture things that we've mentioned here, 0:50:35.520 --> 0:50:38.319 if you have thoughts on Freddy Krueger, Slimer or the 0:50:38.400 --> 0:50:42.319 Ring certainly right in. I mean, there's ultimately a lot 0:50:42.360 --> 0:50:46.000 you could dissect in the original Ghostbusters where you have 0:50:46.560 --> 0:50:50.320 ghosts that resemble the people as they were in life, 0:50:50.360 --> 0:50:52.880 and then ghosts that no longer look like human beings. 0:50:53.200 --> 0:50:57.560 You also have what ancient Mesopotamian gods entering into the 0:50:57.600 --> 0:51:01.719 picture with their be like servants. So there's a lot 0:51:01.719 --> 0:51:02.520 to unwrap there. 0:51:02.920 --> 0:51:04.759 Many knew what it was to roast in the belly 0:51:04.840 --> 0:51:05.879 of a slore that day. 0:51:06.719 --> 0:51:11.080 Indeed, all right, a reminder that's stuff to blow your mind. 0:51:11.160 --> 0:51:13.839 Is primarily a science podcast, though of course we get 0:51:13.840 --> 0:51:18.440 into the culture and history as well as especially obvious 0:51:18.440 --> 0:51:21.720 in these episodes. We do listener mail episodes on Mondays, 0:51:21.719 --> 0:51:24.800 we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode 0:51:24.840 --> 0:51:27.000 on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we set aside most serious 0:51:27.000 --> 0:51:29.480 concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird 0:51:29.560 --> 0:51:33.279 House Cinema. Oh and one more thing. If you use 0:51:33.280 --> 0:51:36.440 any of the various social media accounts and you follow us, 0:51:36.440 --> 0:51:38.319 you may notice that there's a little more life than those. 0:51:38.360 --> 0:51:42.760 Recently we have some people managing those for us once again. 0:51:43.120 --> 0:51:48.200 And you also might notice some updated photos of me 0:51:48.280 --> 0:51:51.279 and Joe. Well, that's because we visited the Museum of 0:51:51.320 --> 0:51:55.000 Illusions in Atlanta. We were there what Thursday, September twenty first, 0:51:55.000 --> 0:52:00.400 twenty twenty three. We have some great new photos. I 0:52:00.640 --> 0:52:03.000 recommend that place to anyone who is in Atlanta looking 0:52:03.000 --> 0:52:05.480 to engage with some illusions. It's a very fun place. 0:52:05.400 --> 0:52:08.880 Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If 0:52:08.920 --> 0:52:10.480 you would like to get in touch with us with 0:52:10.600 --> 0:52:13.600 feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a 0:52:13.680 --> 0:52:15.880 topic for the future, or just to say hello, you 0:52:15.880 --> 0:52:18.880 can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your 0:52:18.960 --> 0:52:27.200 Mind dot com. 0:52:27.320 --> 0:52:30.239 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 0:52:30.320 --> 0:52:33.120 more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:52:33.280 --> 0:52:50.440 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.