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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 4: And we're back with the fourth and final I think

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Speaker 4: is it the final for now?

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Speaker 2: Par I mean, death is always final business. But I

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Speaker 2: don't know. We're gonna We're gonna see we have a

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Speaker 2: we have a fair amount of notes here, and it

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Speaker 2: kind of comes down to if we will get done

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Speaker 2: with them. In a way, it's kind of like the

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Speaker 2: the log. Once the log is burned to completion, then

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Speaker 2: it's over. But maybe we won't burn all of the log.

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Speaker 3: Ellieger there.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, but I was gonna say this is the fourth

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Speaker 4: and potentially final part in our series on personifications of death,

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Speaker 4: when death becomes not not a process or an abstract concept,

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Speaker 4: but a person or an embodied character. Probably won't do

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Speaker 4: a full recap of what we covered in the last

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Speaker 4: episodes because it's been a lot of ground at this point.

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Speaker 4: If you are new to this series, you probably want

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Speaker 4: to go back and listen to the earlier episodes first.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because we break down some basic categorizations and concepts

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Speaker 2: that we then returned back to again and again as

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Speaker 2: we break down other examples and so forth.

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Speaker 4: So I flagged this when we left off at the

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Speaker 4: end of the last episode, but today I wanted to

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Speaker 4: come back and talk about a specific example of a

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Speaker 4: death personification that I found really interesting as I was

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Speaker 4: reading a paper about this character. Specifically, this is a

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Speaker 4: feminine death personification that is actually, according to some scholars,

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Speaker 4: the matron deity of one of the fastest growing new

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Speaker 4: religious movements in the Americas, and this figure is known

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Speaker 4: as Santemirte, which means Saint Death or Holy death in Spanish. Rob,

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Speaker 4: I've got some imagery for you to look at in

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Speaker 4: the outline. Here, would you say, in common appearance, a

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Speaker 4: fairly typical in some ways grim repress, a female grim reaper,

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Speaker 4: kind of a skeletal figure, clothed and enrobed in a way,

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Speaker 4: with a garment covering the head, kind of a veil

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Speaker 4: or a hood. In one representation we have here, she's

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Speaker 4: drawn with a halo around her head or at least

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Speaker 4: kind of an aura around the crown coming down.

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Speaker 3: To the base of the head.

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Speaker 4: And then in another representation she's actually quite colorful. You know,

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Speaker 4: she's decked out with a sort of rainbow back drop,

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Speaker 4: with a scythe and with some interesting objects in her hands.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that second image, you know, not surprising. I

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Speaker 2: think most of us familiar with the various colorful depictions

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Speaker 2: of death iconography in Mexican culture. But yeah, just a

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Speaker 2: quick glance at this character, you know what she's all about.

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Speaker 2: She's clearly some sort of an embodiment of death, and

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Speaker 2: there's a yeah, a sense of the weighing of the scales.

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Speaker 2: And you know, I don't know if we really mentioned

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Speaker 2: this or not, but the human skull in and of itself,

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Speaker 2: you know, is a very evocative image for a number

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Speaker 2: of reasons. You know, it's what's inside our head, that's

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Speaker 2: what we look like with no skin on our head.

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Speaker 2: But also it always appears to be grinning, you know,

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Speaker 2: it is. There is a it's easy to read the

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Speaker 2: skull as smiling, as if again there's a secret joke.

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Speaker 2: And we've already described what it means when death jokes.

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Speaker 4: Grinning or grimacing, I guess, but a certain gritted teeth expression, yeah,

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Speaker 4: either going through something difficult or trying to hold the

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Speaker 4: chuckle in. But yeah, so my main source on Santa

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Speaker 4: Morte Here is going to be a twenty twenty one

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Speaker 4: paper published in the journal Religions called syncredit Santamerte, Holy

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Speaker 4: Death and Religious Bricklage by a pair of scholars named

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Speaker 4: Kate Kingsbury and Our Andrew Chestnut. Kate Kingsbury is an

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Speaker 4: anthropologist affiliated with the University of British Columbia, and Our

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Speaker 4: Andrew Chestnut is a professor of Latin American history at

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Speaker 4: Virginia Commonwealth University, and at the time this paper was published,

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Speaker 4: the authors together explained they had fifteen years of cumulative

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Speaker 4: experience studying Santa Marte across different parts of the Americas.

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Speaker 4: So these are authors who have written a lot on

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Speaker 4: the Santa Marte figure and phenomenon. So, first of all,

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Speaker 4: who is Santa Marte. She is a Latin American folk

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Speaker 4: saint with devotees concentrated especially in Mexico, but in other

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Speaker 4: countries of North, Central and South America as well. So

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Speaker 4: a folk saint is a person or figure who many people,

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Speaker 4: especially within a Catholic influenced culture, consider holy, but who

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Speaker 4: has not been officially canonized.

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Speaker 3: By the authorities of the Catholic Church.

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Speaker 4: So Rob, you and I have actually talked about some

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Speaker 4: non official saints fairly recently. I think we talked about

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Speaker 4: Saint Swithin in English traditions.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, and I believe they've been one or

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Speaker 2: two others. Yeah. I guess the thing about a folk

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Speaker 2: saint is it enough people make a case for it, bam,

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Speaker 2: folk saint. Like if enough people were saying Coffin Joe

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Speaker 2: is a saint, then we have to acknowledge the idea,

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Speaker 2: even if it is not approved by the Catholic Church.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: So, folk sainthood is recognized by the people, usually the

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Speaker 4: working classes, through a kind of emergent up from the

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Speaker 4: ground process. Folk saints can be either originally real people

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Speaker 4: who actually existed, or they can be legendary or mythical figures.

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Speaker 4: The people who believe in folk saints usually believe them

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Speaker 4: to be not only examples of holina, yes, but sources

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Speaker 4: of power, figures that possess supernatural powers and the ability

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Speaker 4: to provide blessings. And so despite not being formally recognized

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Speaker 4: by the Church and often being explicitly condemned by the Church,

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Speaker 4: the authors say that these folk saints are usually seen

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Speaker 4: as more relatable and with a greater ability to provide

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Speaker 4: healing and aid and comfort, especially to the people of

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Speaker 4: Latin American cultures, which the authors argue is in part

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Speaker 4: because the origins of these folk saints are typically closer

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Speaker 4: to the people in terms of time and space and

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Speaker 4: life experience than the origins of the canonized saints. Many

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Speaker 4: people in Latin American cultures, also, the authors say, prefer

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Speaker 4: folk saints to canonized saints, specifically because they exist outside

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Speaker 4: the sanction of the official church, and therefore their relationship,

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Speaker 4: you know, the people's relationship to the saint is kind

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Speaker 4: of freer. It is not mediated by the costs of

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Speaker 4: associating or going through the church, and it's not mediated

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Speaker 4: by the authority of a priest. So, for example, there's

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Speaker 4: no priest that can tell you what is and is

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Speaker 4: not an appropriate way to talk to or relate to

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Speaker 4: a folk saint like there would be in you know,

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Speaker 4: for official Catholic saints within the church.

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Speaker 2: So in a way it's closer to the heart and

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Speaker 2: unperturbed by the intellects of others.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 4: So, for example, there's nobody telling you what it's appropriate

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Speaker 4: to ask for or how you need to ask that

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Speaker 4: you're doing it wrong. Yeah, I mean you could say

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Speaker 4: that the official church, and you know, I'm not trying

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Speaker 4: to make a judgment here, this is just this is

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Speaker 4: a common perception the official church is laiden with moral judgment.

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Speaker 4: Like what if I need a blessing, if I need

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Speaker 4: supernatural help with something, but from the church active what

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Speaker 4: if I am not asking for an appropriate goal, or

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Speaker 4: what if the church judges me to be in a

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Speaker 4: state of sin and you know, I show up saying

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Speaker 4: I need help with a problem, but from the church's

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Speaker 4: point of view, my problem is that I need to

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Speaker 4: repent and confess my sins before I come asking for help.

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Speaker 4: And so you know, there's just kind of you're at

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Speaker 4: an impasse there about like goals and priorities with the church,

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Speaker 4: but with a folk saint, you're not going to be

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Speaker 4: dealing with a hierarchy like that.

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Speaker 3: The relation to the.

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Speaker 4: Supernatural being is more on your own terms. So yeah,

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Speaker 4: So folk saints are often seen as in some ways better,

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Speaker 4: more miraculous, or more helpful than Catholic saints for these

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Speaker 4: multiple reasons, maybe cultural affinity. Their origins are closer in

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Speaker 4: cultural proximity and thus they're more relatable, and for reasons

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Speaker 4: of freedom. There's less restriction or instruction on how you're

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Speaker 4: supposed to relate to the saint. There's no implicit or

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Speaker 4: explicit judgment.

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Speaker 3: Folk saints, the.

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Speaker 4: Authors say, often have a tragic death story, beginning as

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Speaker 4: real people who perished by violence or sometimes under the

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Speaker 4: oppression of authorities, or maybe in extreme poverty. They cite

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Speaker 4: the work of an anthropologist named Flores Matos, who calls

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Speaker 4: these figures the miraculous dead, and so they give one

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Speaker 4: example of another type of folk saint or miraculous dead

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Speaker 4: figure known of in Mexico, who is named Juan Saltados

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Speaker 4: and Wan Soldados is based on a soldier in Tijuana

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Speaker 4: who was said to have been framed for a horrible

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Speaker 4: crime and executed by firing squad in the nineteen thirties.

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Speaker 4: And then the story goes that after his death, his

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Speaker 4: ghost began to cry out from his grave to proclaim

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Speaker 4: his innocence, and the spirit of Juan Soldados started granting

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Speaker 4: people miracles, giving people miracles if they came to his

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Speaker 4: gravestone to ask for help, and a bunch of figures

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Speaker 4: like this exist with the understanding that it is so

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Speaker 4: thing about their tragic death and thus their relationship to

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Speaker 4: death that helps give them power to perform miracles. The

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Speaker 4: followers of Santa Morte often believe her to be the

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Speaker 4: most effective of these folk saints or miraculous dead, perhaps

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Speaker 4: because she's not just one of the miraculous dead, but

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Speaker 4: is the embodiment of death itself.

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Speaker 2: So for listeners out there, go ahead, describe what does

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Speaker 2: she look like? How do we know her when we

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Speaker 2: see her?

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Speaker 4: So we sort of alluded to this earlier, But she

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Speaker 4: takes the form of a female grim reaper or a

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Speaker 4: grim repress, said often to be based on a classic

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Speaker 4: Iberian grim repress figure called Laparca. So she's a grim

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Speaker 4: repress with a skeletal body and a skull face, usually

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Speaker 4: dressed in a long gown and a mantle meaning like

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Speaker 4: a cloak or a cape, often with a hood, and

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Speaker 4: the authors highlight that she has several characteristic items in

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Speaker 4: her hands in her left hand, usually a scythe. And

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Speaker 4: there's one note in the later in the paper where

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Speaker 4: the authors mention a common saying that wives whose husbands

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Speaker 4: had gone out roaming would would come back, would come

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Speaker 4: and ask Santa Marte to use her size to bring

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Speaker 4: errant husbands back. Home, so you can think of it

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Speaker 4: in that sense. It sounds almost not like a like

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Speaker 4: a blade or weapon, but like a shepherd's crook, you know,

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Speaker 4: pull them back. But I think it also has the

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Speaker 4: more common, you know, reaping imagery that we that we

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Speaker 4: just get from your classic Grim Reaper. And then so

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Speaker 4: that's her left hand. In her right hand she sometimes

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Speaker 4: has a globe like a representation of the planet Earth

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Speaker 4: or the scales of justice. She also has an animal companion,

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Speaker 4: which is an owl, and this could be for a

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Speaker 4: number of reasons. There are traditional associations between owls and

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Speaker 4: death in and some meso American religions. And then also

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Speaker 4: there is the association of the owl with wisdom in

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Speaker 4: a lot of traditions. And then to read here, I'm

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Speaker 4: going to read directly from Chestnut and Kingsbury about how

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Speaker 4: her name is put together. So they write quote in English,

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Speaker 4: she is called Saint Death or Holy Death. The name

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Speaker 4: Santa Muerte explicates her identity. In Spanish, Muerte means death.

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Speaker 4: Santa translates both as holy and as saint. But Santa,

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Speaker 4: it should be noted, is the female word for saint

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Speaker 4: in Spanish, and the saint is perceived by her followers

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Speaker 4: as of the female gender. She is a quote liminal, fierce,

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Speaker 4: feminine persona and is seen as an quote all powerful

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Speaker 4: and protecting mother who can solve all problems, who has

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Speaker 4: the power to.

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Speaker 3: Give and take away.

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Speaker 4: So this comes a bit back to when you were

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Speaker 4: talking about gender in the last episode, Rob. It seems

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Speaker 4: to me that Santa Morte is interesting because she is

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Speaker 4: one of these death figures that not only has a gender.

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Speaker 4: You know, you can imagine some death personifications that are

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Speaker 4: gender neutral or you can't really tell what gender they're

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Speaker 4: supposed to be, and then some some personifications have a

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Speaker 4: clearly intended gender, but maybe it's not necessarily supposed to

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Speaker 4: mean anything. But in this case, it seems like the

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Speaker 4: gendered embodiment is meaningful, Like she something about her being

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Speaker 4: death being a woman brings meaning to the relationship with her.

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Speaker 2: So there may be some sort of stereotypical nurturing context

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Speaker 2: to her, comforting context to her. But then, as we've

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Speaker 2: been discussing, with room for other connotations as well.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, as they say, I think the powerful

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Speaker 4: and protecting mother aspect of her is an important part

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Speaker 4: of what she is. So she's represented in all different

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Speaker 4: kinds of media. You can have pendance worn around the neck.

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Speaker 4: She might sometimes just be an image Jnan devotional candle,

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Speaker 4: or she can be in full sized statue form at

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Speaker 4: the head of a shrine. Believers will turn to her

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Speaker 4: for miracles and other aid, as you do with some

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Speaker 4: of these other folk. Saints are miraculous dead, and often

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Speaker 4: they believe she has the power to bring good health,

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Speaker 4: to bring success in love, to bring deliverance from money troubles,

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Speaker 4: and all other kinds of blessings. So it's not just

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Speaker 4: stuff that we think of as inherently connected to death.

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Speaker 4: She can bring boons of all sorts.

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Speaker 2: That is interesting yet, because you might expect her powers

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Speaker 2: to be, you know, to borrow from dungeons and dragons,

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Speaker 2: spell classification. You might expect her to be a necromancy specialist,

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Speaker 2: you know, and all her abilities would be nechromatic in

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Speaker 2: one form or another. But yeah, once you're getting into

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Speaker 2: general blessings and financial boons, then you're in different territory.

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Speaker 4: Now where does this interesting sort of wide ranging power

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Speaker 4: come from. We'll come back to that, because that's actually

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Speaker 4: a core part of what they argue in the paper.

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Speaker 4: I'm going to be focusing more on their general characterization

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Speaker 4: of Santa Marte, but they're also making an argument about

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Speaker 4: culturally where she comes from, so we'll come back to that.

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Speaker 4: Another thing that's important is that the authors note that

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Speaker 4: Santamerte has been grossly misrepresented by some sensationalist media reporting

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Speaker 4: that has treated her as some kind of Narco saint.

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Speaker 4: That's a term used to refer to her narco saint,

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Speaker 4: a sort of cult figure worshiped exclusively by criminals and

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Speaker 4: drug traffickers. The authors say this is not correct at all.

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Speaker 4: She's venerated by all kinds of people, especially by the

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Speaker 4: poor and by people without much individual access to power,

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Speaker 4: So it's not that she is never invoked by anybody

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Speaker 4: related to the drug trade or drug war. The authors

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Speaker 4: say that actually she is regularly supplicated by people on

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Speaker 4: both sides of the law within the drug war in Mexico.

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Speaker 4: But she also says that lots of people were turning

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Speaker 4: to Santa Marte for protection during the first year of

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Speaker 4: the COVID pandemic, and that she is widely seen as

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Speaker 4: a protector of women in places where there is a

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Speaker 4: special thread of gender based violence. The author is also

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Speaker 4: mentioned that there is you know, of course, no formal

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Speaker 4: authority or structure within the faith, so there's nothing like

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Speaker 4: the Catholic hierarchy. So you can have people kind of

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Speaker 4: striking out to honor her or relate to her in

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Speaker 4: whatever way they see best. So you get these chapels

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Speaker 4: and shrines that are sometimes opened and operated by independent

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Speaker 4: religious entrepreneurs, but a lot of the faith is actually

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Speaker 4: conducted in private, like in private homes and at family alters.

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Speaker 4: And because there are no formal rules, there are no structures,

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Speaker 4: there are no authorities. There's just great freedom in how

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Speaker 4: the faith of Santa Marte is practiced. And the authors

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Speaker 4: again I mentioned this a minute ago, but they identify

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Speaker 4: that freedom as a key part of the appeal. However,

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Speaker 4: so you know, that's sort of the heteropraxy aspect. There's

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Speaker 4: just a lot of diversity in how people honor and

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Speaker 4: relate to Santa Marte. But they also say there are

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Speaker 4: some common trends that they've identified in their study of

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Speaker 4: this phenomenon.

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Speaker 3: So, first of.

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Speaker 4: All, altars and chapels are important. Most devotees of Santa

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Speaker 4: Marte will visit the nearest chapel devoted to her, to

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Speaker 4: her at least like once a month, and so people

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Speaker 4: visit these chapels and they say prayers and leave offerings.

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Speaker 4: Lots of people have altars within their homes, often consisting

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Speaker 4: of like a small statue of the saint on a

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Speaker 4: table or a votive candle. And the offerings can take

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Speaker 4: a lot of forms. They might be foods, like chocolate

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Speaker 4: or other candy I've seen some. Sometimes fruits are given.

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Speaker 4: The offerings might be flowers. They could be alcoholic beverages

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Speaker 4: like beer or tequila. Sometimes it's cigarettes or other smokables.

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Speaker 4: There are bottles of water. Actually, the authors say quote

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Speaker 4: as the skeleton saint is said to be perpetually parched.

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Speaker 2: Everything she drinks it just goes right through.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: No, I don't know exactly how to read the tone

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Speaker 4: on that phrase, but I think I take that as

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Speaker 4: there being a bit of playfulness in the relationship between

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Speaker 4: her devotees and her. But she's also she's commonly understood

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Speaker 4: as a folk saint of the powerless, of the marginalized

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Speaker 4: and oppressed, So the people with the least power, or

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Speaker 4: the people who live closest to meeting death are thought

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Speaker 4: to be especially within her domain. The author's cite previous

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Speaker 4: work by a scholar named Olaskyevitch Peralba, who argues that

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Speaker 4: she is appealing quote among liminal sectors of population that

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Speaker 4: deal with transitions and transgressions, such as people working on

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Speaker 4: the streets e g. Street vendors, criminals and prostitutes, migrants, inmates, policemen, troops,

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Speaker 4: prison guards, social workers, and lawyers. So it's interesting that

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Speaker 4: it's not just like a cohort of natural allies there.

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Speaker 4: You know, you have people in all different types of professions,

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Speaker 4: maybe on both sides of the law and so forth.

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Speaker 2: But it's everybody on law and order, all the characters.

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Speaker 4: But not just that. I mean also it's a lot

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Speaker 4: of connections to maybe danger or connections to what they

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Speaker 4: say again is transitions and transgressions, liminal spaces. And the

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Speaker 4: authors say also her appeal is fairly broad, so it's

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Speaker 4: not just that domain. They say that you will find

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Speaker 4: her devotees among people everyone from housewives to fishermen, they say,

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Speaker 4: but all kinds of people, especially the poor, who feel

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Speaker 4: less connection to the priesthood of the institutional church. And

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Speaker 4: the authors argue that her appeal in modern times extends

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Speaker 4: to so many people in part because of a pervasive

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Speaker 4: feeling of unsafety and a resulting metaphysics of disorder related

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Speaker 4: to the ongoing drug war. Of course, this effects not

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Speaker 4: just people involved in the drug trade or in fighting it,

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Speaker 4: but it involves a lot of innocent people caught in

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Speaker 4: the crossfire. And the authors argue that in this context,

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Speaker 4: for many people sort of within her domain, especially poor

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Speaker 4: people in certain parts of Mexico, for these people, living

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Speaker 4: entails a feeling of constantly standing up in the face

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Speaker 4: of death.

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Speaker 3: Quote.

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Speaker 4: However, instead of standing up to death, many in Mexico

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Speaker 4: have instead entered into a religious relationship with death, wherein

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Speaker 4: she is imagined as possessing the supernatural puissance, meaning like

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Speaker 4: a power or strength to protect them from perishing. So

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Speaker 4: there's this belief, not necessarily that death is just a

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Speaker 4: bad thing to be protected from. There are elements of

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Speaker 4: that in the understanding, but it's also a power you

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Speaker 4: can appeal too to spare you and the people you love,

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Speaker 4: or to be redirected into a kind of general power

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Speaker 4: of blessing to bring you protection and boons in your life.

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Speaker 4: And so in this the authors invoke an idea of

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Speaker 4: a kind of interdependence between death and power. Just power

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Speaker 4: to act within reality.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes back to, you know, a lot of

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Speaker 2: what we've been discussing here about how these dealing with death,

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Speaker 2: dealing with complex and semi chaotic or chaotic situations, violence

359
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Speaker 2: on a mass scale. You know, we can feel lost,

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Speaker 2: untethered and are you know, we have limited abilities to

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Speaker 2: make sense of it all, but we can reach out

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Speaker 2: to something. If we personify some of what's going on,

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Speaker 2: then we have something at least in our own minds

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Speaker 2: that we can deal with, that we can reach out to,

365
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Speaker 2: we can seek to appease, that we can seek the

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Speaker 2: guidance of, and so forth.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, but especially interesting that it's not just in domains

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Speaker 4: related to death. That's like the thing that's most interesting

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Speaker 4: to me about this. So anyway, everything I've been talking

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Speaker 4: about so far is just sort of from the general

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Speaker 4: background sections of their paper. Actually, the main point that

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Speaker 4: they're arguing in this paper is they're making an interesting

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Speaker 4: argument about the origins and development of the Santamorte belief. Specifically,

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Speaker 4: the authors are making the claim that, in contrast to

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Speaker 4: some previous writing which they think over emphasized or exclusively

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Speaker 4: acknowledged the Catholic or European cultural roots of the deaths

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Speaker 4: ain't they say, In reality, Santa Morte is a syncretic figure.

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Speaker 4: A syncretic meaning a figure that emerges from the combination

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Speaker 4: or synthesis of elements from different cultures. In this case,

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Speaker 4: they're going to identify two main cultural inputs. One of

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Speaker 4: them is European Catholicism. It's the Catholic or Iberian grim Repress.

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Speaker 4: So this is a European and specifically Spanish Catholic moment

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Speaker 4: of death figure in female form, which was not a

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Speaker 4: god really as understood by the Christians, but it was

385
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Speaker 4: more of an image that served as a memento mori

386
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Speaker 4: or was a kind of teaching tool. So the image

387
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Speaker 4: reminds you that death is coming, and thus you need

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Speaker 4: to get right with Christ and confess right right.

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Speaker 2: And as we're mentioning being not completely shackled the doctrine,

390
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Speaker 2: it does leave you open to interpret it and present

391
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Speaker 2: it in various ways throughout European literature.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's one input that they say. If you

393
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Speaker 4: just acknowledge that input, the Sentamorte belief doesn't make a

394
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Speaker 4: whole lot of sense. It's hard to make sense of

395
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Speaker 4: where a lot of its features come from. So they say, actually,

396
00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:16,640
Speaker 4: a huge input on it is pre Columbian indigenous thanatologies,

397
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Speaker 4: the death deities and other personifications of death from the

398
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Speaker 4: religions and cultures of pre Hispanic meso American peoples. And

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Speaker 4: then finally after this they also talk about this you

400
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Speaker 4: might have heard in the title there's the bricolage aspect.

401
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Speaker 4: They say that after this, the Senta morte belief continued to,

402
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:39,960
Speaker 4: especially in recent years, accumulate elements from other sources, including

403
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 4: Afro Cuban, Santa Ria, Palomayumbe, and even.

404
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 3: Wicca and New Age beliefs.

405
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Speaker 4: But the main point I think they're making is that

406
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Speaker 4: you really can't understand how santamorte works today without understanding

407
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 4: the function of indigenous death deities in meso American religions,

408
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Speaker 4: which represent whole different ways of thinking about death compared

409
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Speaker 4: to European Catholic cultures. Specifically, these thanatologies in vision kind

410
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Speaker 4: of a more of a relationship between death and the

411
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Speaker 4: rest of life. I think a naive misinterpretation of this

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Speaker 4: reframing would be just that, oh, these meso American religions,

413
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Speaker 4: they didn't think death was bad, they thought death was good.

414
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Speaker 4: It's not exactly like that. I mean, in all cultures

415
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Speaker 4: you find religious expressions of aversion to death and people

416
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Speaker 4: wanting to find ways to put death off and other things.

417
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Speaker 4: But I think it is fair to say that as

418
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Speaker 4: opposed to the Catholic vision of life and death as

419
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 4: kind of binary opposite states of being, and the Catholic

420
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Speaker 4: vision of death is like a kid of a kind

421
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Speaker 4: of destruction that must be.

422
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Speaker 3: Avoided by salvation.

423
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Speaker 4: In christ the meso American religious view of death, and

424
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Speaker 4: there's not just one, obviously, there's a diversity, but fairly

425
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Speaker 4: common among them in meso American religions is the idea

426
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Speaker 4: that death has some kind of more general power over

427
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 4: life and is related to birth and regenerative properties and

428
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,679
Speaker 4: other kinds of good things in life, That in death

429
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Speaker 4: there is something cyclical and regenerative and life affirming.

430
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that life and death are linked, That the womb

431
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 2: and the tomb are linked. Yeah. We discussed some of

432
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Speaker 2: this already, about how even Mother Earth can come into

433
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Speaker 2: play in all of this, and it's not necessary. The

434
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Speaker 2: Catholic vision and the Christian tradition of it is a

435
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 2: little more set in stone, with some deviations as well.

436
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:44,640
Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm not going to have time to discuss

437
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 4: everything they get into in their paper here. It is

438
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 4: an interesting read if you want to go follow. Especially

439
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:51,880
Speaker 4: they get into the whole history of how they think

440
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:55,840
Speaker 4: the centimorte belief developed over time and more recent inputs

441
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 4: on it. But the main thing I wanted to talk

442
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 4: about from it here is their discussion of the different

443
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 4: views of the power of death, where the where death's

444
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 4: power comes from, and then also a little bit about

445
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 4: what the indigenous religious inputs on santamorte might be. So

446
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 4: first of all, again you've got this distinction between the

447
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 4: European Catholic understanding of death, which tends to be more

448
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:28,880
Speaker 4: often about destruction, death as destruction and death as finality

449
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 4: in a sense of finality as a kind of finality

450
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 4: that can be averted through you know, faith in Christ.

451
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:38,199
Speaker 4: But otherwise it's the hammer comes down and its finality.

452
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:39,640
Speaker 3: And then the.

453
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 4: Destruction has associations of chaos, disorder, violence, negativity, pain, and sacrilege.

454
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 4: And again you find these negative elements of association with

455
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 4: death in other cultures too.

456
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 3: But the authors argue.

457
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:58,439
Speaker 4: That in many of these different cultural contexts, death just

458
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 4: is believed to have more power over life, and not

459
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 4: just the power to end or destroy life, but to

460
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 4: influence and guide it.

461
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:07,679
Speaker 3: In many ways.

462
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 4: And they have a kind of interesting theory about why

463
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 4: that would be. Why would death have any power over

464
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 4: like whether you could be healed from a sickness or

465
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 4: have success in love, or could you know, have material gains,

466
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 4: whether you know you get stuff from the hunt, or

467
00:28:22,119 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 4: you know you make money, or any of these things

468
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:28,000
Speaker 4: people want. They say, you know, death is associated with

469
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:31,879
Speaker 4: what they call liminal forces, forces having to do with

470
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 4: crossing a threshold from one thing to another or making

471
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 4: a transition from one thing to another. They say, actually

472
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 4: death is the ultimate and the most mysterious transition in life.

473
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,479
Speaker 4: It's the one where we genuinely can't see what's on

474
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 4: the other side, at least for us, is there nothing?

475
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 4: Is there something? If there is something, what is it?

476
00:28:53,680 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 4: And so because liminal stages are so powerful, they're very

477
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 4: powerful and emotionally charged in our lives. Like if you

478
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 4: think about a lot of the most emotionally important and

479
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 4: you know, causally crucial things in our lives, they're these

480
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:16,600
Speaker 4: things we think of as liminal stages or turning points. Birth, death,

481
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 4: rights of passage, and initiation, marriage, stuff like that. These

482
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 4: are the points where we transition into a new phase

483
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 4: of life, and because of that, they tend to be

484
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:31,280
Speaker 4: the subject of a lot of prayer and ritual because

485
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 4: we correctly identify them as literal, causal turning points, like

486
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 4: they're the most important moments in our lives and they

487
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 4: determine the course of the future. And thus, in many cultures,

488
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 4: including these pre Hispanic meso American cultures, death was often

489
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 4: associated with the power to renew and restore life. Life

490
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 4: is guided by these very powerful liminal points, these transition points,

491
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 4: and death is the most powerful of them all. So

492
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 4: that's how I understand the argument they're making that it

493
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 4: has this association with liminality, the changes or the turning

494
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 4: points in life, and this association with liminality gives death

495
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 4: its perceived power over all important things in life, or

496
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 4: at least most important things in life. And then there's

497
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 4: another point they make that I think is interesting. They

498
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 4: say that death this is just a way that these

499
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 4: religious beliefs tend to manifest within culture. Death seems to

500
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 4: have more power over every aspect of life. If you

501
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 4: feel that you live your life in close proximity to death.

502
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 4: So if real danger is a big part of your

503
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 4: everyday experience, then a deity of death comes to feel

504
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 4: more like it has power over everything you do. Another

505
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:54,720
Speaker 4: interesting note on the power of death, the authors cite

506
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 4: an interview with a devote of Santa Marte named Zenia,

507
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 4: who is asked why she worshiped Santamorte and she said,

508
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 4: and this is a translation from the Spanish. In translation,

509
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 4: she says, because the only thing that is certain is death. Interesting. So,

510
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 4: I don't know if I'm interpreting this right, but the

511
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 4: way I took that meaning, it's kind of that death

512
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:23,800
Speaker 4: has undeniable power because unlike other spiritual entities, which you know,

513
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 4: you name another god or saint, you're kind of having

514
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 4: to put some faith in the idea that they have power.

515
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 4: With death, There's no question about it. You absolutely know

516
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 4: that it's real and it will be a factor in

517
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 4: your life. And that kind of certainty of real power

518
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 4: in the world can get mapped onto this embodiment of

519
00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 4: the thing.

520
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 3: Does that make sense?

521
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean there's so many other religious concepts,

522
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 2: personified or non personified, that are yeah, harder to grasp

523
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 2: and maybe more of a even more of an intellectual

524
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 2: pursuit to try and understand like some sort of you know,

525
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 2: deep theological concept. But yeah, death is inevitable, and not

526
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 2: only as the final destination if you will have our

527
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 2: own life, but as something that will occur multiple times

528
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 2: within proximity to our own life. We will experience it,

529
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 2: we will feel it. It has an absolute reality, and yeah,

530
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 2: as we experience the reality of death, it does kind

531
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 2: of take shape like we have Again, we have all

532
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 2: these personifications in our culture. And if you have a

533
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:39,200
Speaker 2: dominant personification like this that is just sort of like

534
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:43,000
Speaker 2: floating there, then yeah, the experience, the real experience of death,

535
00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 2: I can imagine, might bring you closer to it and

536
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 2: realize like this, you know, if this entity has dominion

537
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 2: over this thing that I feel like it's power, then

538
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 2: is something I can feel as well.

539
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 3: Yeah.

540
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, So anyway, I want to get on just briefly

541
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 4: to talk a bit about specifics of where they think

542
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 4: this comes from, examples of where they think senta morte

543
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 4: comes from, in the branch feeding into it that comes

544
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 4: from indigenous traditions. So they talk about some broad trends

545
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 4: in how death was most often spoken of in preconquest

546
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 4: Mexico as far as we know. They say that in

547
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 4: preconquest Mexican cultures, death was not as it was in

548
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:29,000
Speaker 4: the European context, thought of merely as the extinction or

549
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 4: opposite of life. It was widely associated with, as we've said, regeneration.

550
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 4: The symbols of death in pre Hispanic indigenous cultures include

551
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 4: often themes of fecundity, sexuality, and rebirth, so you have healing,

552
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 4: life giving, procreative properties. And they also say that Mesoamerican

553
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 4: death deities were often not exactly gods and goddesses, but

554
00:33:56,160 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 4: in the author's words quote conceptualized as representing or embodying

555
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 4: the vital force of death, which vital force of death

556
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 4: that almost sounds like a oxymoron, right, is the life

557
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 4: force of death. But that is sort of what they

558
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:15,279
Speaker 4: really were. It's hard, you know, to maybe identify with

559
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 4: that from the outside, but there is a life force

560
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 4: of death, and that is what they embody within their person.

561
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 4: So they sometimes symbolized the places where the dead dwell,

562
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,919
Speaker 4: and they sometimes acted as psychopomps, which we've talked about

563
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:30,799
Speaker 4: in other episodes of this, so they might guide the

564
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 4: souls or the dead in some form to their place

565
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:38,879
Speaker 4: of dwelling after death. But they also had powers especially

566
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 4: related to death, not just to cause death, but to

567
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 4: do the opposite, so you could persuade them to delay

568
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:48,839
Speaker 4: death or to heal you in sick or wounded. And

569
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:51,760
Speaker 4: the authors bring up a pair of Aztec death deities.

570
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:54,200
Speaker 4: I apologize if I get the pronunciation wrong here, but

571
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 4: they are mik Lantakoutli and mikta Kasiwatum. These are the

572
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:03,520
Speaker 4: male and female male deities associated with death and the underworld.

573
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 4: And the authors say that in pre Hispanic times their

574
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 4: domain was not exclusively death, so you would possibly approach

575
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 4: them for blessings having to do with the with preservation

576
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:19,839
Speaker 4: and enrichment of life. And in Aztec art they are

577
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 4: associated with the imagery of regeneration, birth, sex, and fecundity.

578
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:30,560
Speaker 4: I believe the female deity here, miktakasi Wato, is often

579
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 4: represented as as pregnant. Actually, so these these images include

580
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 4: everything from sexual penetration to pregnancy and lactation.

581
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 3: They quote a couple of other scholars.

582
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 4: Who have an idea about the origins of this connection,

583
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:51,279
Speaker 4: so they say quote it is assumed by McCafferty and

584
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 4: Carrasco that this is related to the and then they

585
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 4: begin to quote. These authors quote regenerative power of bones

586
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 4: as seeds, which which is evident in the journey of

587
00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:05,040
Speaker 4: Ketzlkowat to the world of the dead to steal the

588
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,320
Speaker 4: bones from which human beings.

589
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 3: Would be created.

590
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 4: So there's a like if bones are seeds, that is

591
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 4: a quite literal connection between death and both both. I

592
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 4: meant to say birth and growth, but both it is both.

593
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 4: The authors discuss how before the Spanish Conquest, the female

594
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 4: death deity miktakasi Watt presided over a roughly month long

595
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:34,320
Speaker 4: celebration of the beloved dead, which took place in the summer,

596
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 4: and this was a time when you would remember ancestors

597
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,839
Speaker 4: and you would remember family members you had lost. And

598
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 4: then after the Spanish conquest, as part of the imposition

599
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:49,320
Speaker 4: of Christianity by force, the authors say, quote, the Catholic

600
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 4: Church exercised Miktakasiwat and moved the date to coincide with

601
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 4: All Saints Day, the first of November, which is also

602
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 4: known in Mexico as Day of the Innocence for its

603
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 4: association with masses focusing on deceased infants and children, and

604
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,240
Speaker 4: All Souls Day the second of November, where the focus

605
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 4: is on departed adults. So there's this attempt by the

606
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 4: Catholic Church to kind of hammer the original festival into

607
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 4: shape and make it a part of a Catholic celebration

608
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:25,360
Speaker 4: instead of the traditional celebration. However, interestingly, for many followers

609
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 4: of Santa Morte, the Second Day of the Dead has

610
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:33,319
Speaker 4: become the Skeleton Saints feast day, and the Church, they say,

611
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 4: has tried to suppress this because the Catholic Church says,

612
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 4: this is not an approved saint.

613
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 3: You know, you should not be making.

614
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 4: This folk saint part of your celebrations. They would just

615
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 4: want to keep the focus on the church sanctioned remembrance

616
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 4: of lost loved ones. But the presence of Saint Death

617
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 4: has not gone away. And the authors note that while

618
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 4: they are intentionally trying to highlight the influence of Miktakasi

619
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 4: Watt in those traditions on the evolution of to Morte,

620
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 4: that is not the only.

621
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 3: Religion.

622
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 4: It's not only in as Tech religion that you find

623
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 4: these regenerative or life giving powers related to death deities.

624
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 4: You'll apparently find this association in traditions of the Mishtech

625
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 4: and in the Maya. So one example they bring up

626
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 4: is a Mishtech death deity named the Lady nine Grass,

627
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 4: which is portrayed in a particular set of cotticies with

628
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,439
Speaker 4: first of all, a naked, hinged jaw like you'd see

629
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 4: on a skeletal figure, so kind of a skeletal grim

630
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 4: reaper type face. But also so she's not dressed in

631
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 4: a dark hood with a scythe she is in a

632
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 4: blouse like garment that you'd normally see worn by the vibrant,

633
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 4: life giving female deities in post classic Mexican art. So

634
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 4: you've got skull like imagery and life giving or life

635
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 4: affirming imagery in the same figure. And so this seems

636
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:57,879
Speaker 4: again to be in line with beliefs about death as

637
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 4: a transition to cyclical rebirth or a figure containing powers

638
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 4: of states of change. And finally, I just want to

639
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,880
Speaker 4: mention they talk a bit about the contestation over the

640
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 4: origins of Santa Marte. So versions of Santa Marte go

641
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 4: back to the colonial period, but there's no consensus about

642
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:20,839
Speaker 4: exactly where Santa Marte comes from. That's why you get

643
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 4: these different theories abounding. So some argue that she is

644
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,439
Speaker 4: just a version of the grim reapress La Parca brought

645
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:31,360
Speaker 4: from the Iberian traditions and made into a deity. But

646
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:34,399
Speaker 4: the authors here again argue that this theory doesn't really

647
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 4: make sense because, for one thing, the grim Reaper was

648
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 4: not venerated and did not provide blessings in a Catholic context.

649
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 4: It was just an image to teach about death and

650
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,760
Speaker 4: to remind you, momento moray, remind you that death is coming.

651
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 4: Christ is the only salvation.

652
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 3: You know.

653
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 4: It had different cultural values, but none of them were like,

654
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 4: it's here to help you out and give you blessings

655
00:39:57,640 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 4: if you make an offering.

656
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't implied that you should reach out to

657
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 2: this individual. Right.

658
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that doesn't make sense, they say, But it

659
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:09,359
Speaker 4: does make sense as a sort of contribution of one

660
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 4: half of the origin is like a contribution of grim

661
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 4: Reaper imagery. They say, it makes sense if you also

662
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,759
Speaker 4: incorporate the very important influence of indigenous death deities, which

663
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 4: were venerated and did provide blessings having to do with life.

664
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 4: And then, finally, to quote from the authors quote, since

665
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 4: many turned to death deities for their earthly needs, some

666
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 4: indigenous groups, as archives prove, took the Grim Reaper for

667
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 4: a saint. Since the Grim Reaper was often referred to

668
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 4: in connection to Una Santa Marte, a holy Death, the

669
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 4: figure of Death was understood to be miraculous, much like

670
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 4: the other saints that the Catholic Church had brought over

671
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 4: to New Spain, such as Santa Marta. Believing Death was

672
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 4: a saint in its own right, some began worshiping it.

673
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 4: This is the case for the Highland Maya in the

674
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 4: state of Chiapas and Guatemala, and the Guarini in Argentina

675
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 4: and Paraguay. So yeah, so there's this idea that that's

676
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 4: their argument about the origins. I guess we don't know

677
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:14,320
Speaker 4: for sure exactly what the origins are, and they highlight

678
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 4: that that it's somewhat obscure, you know, this versions of

679
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 4: this figure popping up hundreds of years ago, and then

680
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 4: it kind of comes in and out of fashion for

681
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 4: a long time. It seems to be it is only

682
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:29,080
Speaker 4: in secret or in hiding that Santa Marte is honored,

683
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 4: and in recent decades it has become much more open,

684
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:35,759
Speaker 4: you know, an there's open honoring of Santa Marte. However

685
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 4: much the church tries to say like no don't do that.

686
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 4: That's not part of Catholicism.

687
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know.

688
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:45,399
Speaker 4: I feel like really interesting figure, really interesting history, and

689
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 4: I love thinking about where this comes from, the idea

690
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 4: that death is not just about death, that the embodiment

691
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,800
Speaker 4: of death has domain over all of life.

692
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many interesting angles to this, but I

693
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 2: love how there does seem to be a path of

694
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 2: desire here. You know, she exists slightly outside of of

695
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 2: of the actual, you know, dogmatic Catholic belief system, but

696
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 2: clearly there is a great need for her, and people

697
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 2: are drawn to the powers associated with her into and

698
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 2: into that limital space that she occupies. All right, Well,

699
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 2: I'm gonna turn over to a couple of other concepts here.

700
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 2: In both of these cases, I'm not introducing entirely new

701
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 2: concepts to our discussion, but kind of building on things

702
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:52,879
Speaker 2: we've been discussing already. And first of all, I want

703
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 2: to just take a few moments to talk about this

704
00:42:56,719 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 2: idea of death entities is not merely an idea, you know,

705
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:07,399
Speaker 2: but also an experience one might have. Because to be clear,

706
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 2: they don't have to be a death entity, a grim

707
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:13,239
Speaker 2: reaper or an angel of death or any of these things.

708
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 2: They don't have to be perceived as anything approach approaching

709
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 2: literal incarnations or functional supernatural entities to have enormous cultural

710
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 2: value obviously, but we do have to acknowledge that they

711
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 2: certainly can be perceived and experienced as entities due to

712
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 2: a number of factors. And some of these are things

713
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 2: we've touched on over the years on the show, because

714
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 2: we often talk about things that may be described as

715
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 2: paranormal experiences and when you dig underneath them, like for

716
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 2: us anyway, the really fascinating part is figuring out like

717
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 2: how this actually emerges within the natural world, within the

718
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 2: inner workings of our mind and so forth. So I'm

719
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:54,319
Speaker 2: going to just run through a few of these as

720
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 2: I related via my own experience in the last episode.

721
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:02,919
Speaker 2: Dream states are a huge factor, sometimes enhanced by environment, anxiety,

722
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 2: and the effects of certain medications, including anesthesia meds, and

723
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,720
Speaker 2: there have been many reports of people experiencing impactful visions

724
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:16,239
Speaker 2: of departed loved ones under anesthesia. Others report angels, demons,

725
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 2: and death entities are certainly on the menu as well. Also,

726
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:26,280
Speaker 2: we can have various entities come into play via tempo

727
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 2: varietal junction disruptions TPJ disruptions, So due to trauma, illness,

728
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 2: or even electrical stimulation, this can result in the brain

729
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 2: interpreting its own signals is that of some sort of

730
00:44:38,600 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 2: an other. As we've mentioned as well on the show,

731
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 2: we're hardwired not to contemplate the enormity of death, but

732
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 2: rather for more localized social interactions as social animals. So

733
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,239
Speaker 2: we've also evolved something known as agent detection as a

734
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 2: survival strategy, and this is tied in with something we've

735
00:44:58,040 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 2: talked about in the show a lot before as well,

736
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 2: idea of false positives. You know, we presume tigers to

737
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 2: be where there are no tigers because if you think

738
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 2: of tigers everywhere, then you have a survival advantage over

739
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,879
Speaker 2: people who don't think they are tigers anywhere. That sort

740
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 2: of thing, Right.

741
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 4: At some point you hit the point of diminishing returns

742
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:21,120
Speaker 4: for that payoff, Like you can be too paranoid, but

743
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 4: generally nature selects for having greater amounts of fear and caution.

744
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But alongside this, it can mean more than

745
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 2: just seeing a threat where there isn't one. It can

746
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:35,319
Speaker 2: mean seeing a will where there isn't one. So the

747
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 2: argument is that we possess a hyperactive agent detection device

748
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 2: or had D or hat I guess coined I believe

749
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 2: by cognitive psychologists Justin L. Barrett around the year two thousand.

750
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 2: We tend to assume patterns have intent, and it might

751
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:53,840
Speaker 2: just underlie just about every god, demi god, and magical

752
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 2: creature we've ever dreamed up. I feel like, for me,

753
00:45:57,120 --> 00:45:59,840
Speaker 2: like the simple version of this is and this is

754
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 2: in a way, this is like childishness on my part,

755
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 2: but I imagine many of you have done the same.

756
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 2: You stub your toe, You might very on the say

757
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 2: the coffee table. You might very well blame the coffee table,

758
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 2: curse the coffee table as an entity that has hurt you.

759
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 3: Why did it do that to me?

760
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 2: Yeah?

761
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:17,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, this.

762
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,439
Speaker 4: For a while, the hyperactive agency detection device has been

763
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 4: one of the theories kicking around about the the you know,

764
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 4: the biological origins of religion and beliefs in magic and

765
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 4: things like that. It's possible that this is in part

766
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 4: where religious beliefs come from. We don't really know one

767
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 4: way or another, whether you know, it's hard to prove that,

768
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 4: but either way, I do think it's an interesting idea,

769
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 4: and I think it's hard to deny that there is

770
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:46,400
Speaker 4: something like this at work, whether or not it's actually

771
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 4: the correct cognitive explanation for the origin of religion and

772
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 4: human history. It's clear something like this is at work

773
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:58,880
Speaker 4: within us, Like we we believe that there are animals

774
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 4: or people or things that act with intentions like animals

775
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 4: or people in situations where there are not all the time.

776
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even if it's not the primary underlying mechanism here,

777
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 2: I feel like it's got to be in the mix, right, Yeah,

778
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:20,839
Speaker 2: let's see. There's also the complex area of near death experience. Again,

779
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 2: we're often talking about entities that are said to or

780
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:31,320
Speaker 2: believe to come into play during that liminal transitional phase

781
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 2: between death and whatever comes after. And so yeah, near

782
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 2: death experiences. This is a topic undo itself, but basically,

783
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 2: the neurochemical state of the dying brain makes us more

784
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 2: susceptible to these sorts of images, and there is nothing

785
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 2: paranormal about near death experiences twenty eleven by Dean Mobs

786
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 2: and Carolyn Watt. This is and Trends and Cognitive science

787
00:47:56,480 --> 00:47:59,319
Speaker 2: that they argue that the neurochemical state of the dying

788
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:04,440
Speaker 2: brain mirror that of individuals on disassociative anesthetics, which frequently

789
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:10,760
Speaker 2: produce anthropomorphic hallucinations and out of body experiences. And finally,

790
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 2: in a way that I think is equally profound as

791
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 2: any of these, if not more so, is another concept

792
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:18,800
Speaker 2: we've touched on before, and that is that the brain

793
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,319
Speaker 2: does not just produce random static during a crisis. It

794
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:25,840
Speaker 2: uses top down processing to make sense of internal chaos.

795
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 2: So there will be all these gaps in our understanding

796
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:33,280
Speaker 2: of what's happening, and our mind draws on relevant cultural

797
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 2: symbols and scripts to piece it all together. And that

798
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 2: script might be alien abduction, that script might be angel visitation,

799
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:46,239
Speaker 2: it might be the fair folk who live unseen in

800
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 2: the woods. And the death entity is also a highly

801
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,839
Speaker 2: accessible symbol that is never that far away from us.

802
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:54,239
Speaker 3: Yeah.

803
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 2: So anyway, just food for thought here as we're thinking

804
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 2: about death. And again, I don't want to imply that

805
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 2: every manifestation of death, every personification of death is indeed

806
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 2: need to be a case where Okay, people believe they

807
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:11,759
Speaker 2: see this thing when they're close, or they see this

808
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 2: thing near a dying person. That is sometimes the case,

809
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 2: but these concepts, these personifications are just as potent and

810
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:21,280
Speaker 2: useful without that being in play.

811
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 4: Oh No, it's a great distinction, because I think the

812
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 4: majority of what we've been talking about has been artistic representation.

813
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 4: You know, it's been artistic or deliberate imagination exercises things

814
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,439
Speaker 4: like that, or just literature, you know, cases where people

815
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:42,400
Speaker 4: are talking about how they imagine death. It's a quite

816
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 4: different thing to believe. You see someone you know that, like,

817
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 4: where does that come from? That seems to maybe arise

818
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 4: by somewhat different pathways, maybe have somewhat different triggers than

819
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 4: say a deliberate imaginative exercise where you're trying to come

820
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 4: up with imagery for a painting, or a psychologist is

821
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 4: sitting you down and asking you to think.

822
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 3: What does death look like to you?

823
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, you might find out in an experience that death

824
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 4: looks different than you thought you would think.

825
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it is interesting how like we may

826
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 2: summon this personification in our mind as part of like

827
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:23,800
Speaker 2: the overarching human attempt to understand something as impactful and

828
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 2: traumatic and transitional as death in our own life or

829
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 2: in the lives of others, and then potentially have a

830
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 2: situation where then you see or experience that manifestation as well. Now,

831
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:41,800
Speaker 2: for the rest of the episode. Here I wanted to

832
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 2: follow up on another specific example of an anthropomorphic personification

833
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:52,400
Speaker 2: of death, and that is the Valkyries. We want to

834
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 2: come back to the Valkyries here, so on discord email

835
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,320
Speaker 2: us if you want to link to join the stuff

836
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 2: to blow your mind. Discord Server. A listener by the

837
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:07,799
Speaker 2: name of Gorpi wrote in and highly recommended that we

838
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 2: come back to the Valkyries and include mention of a

839
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:16,320
Speaker 2: particular Skaldic poem. It's included in chapter one fifty seven

840
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 2: of the Nile Saga. I'm going to probably butcher this pronunciation,

841
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 2: but is It is titled dar Ratha the Song of

842
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 2: the Spear, and Gorpi says that it contains quote the

843
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 2: most metal description of fate being woven, and I agree,

844
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:38,680
Speaker 2: boy does it. Ever let's hear it all right. So

845
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:41,560
Speaker 2: I have to do some setup first, because it's not

846
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:44,319
Speaker 2: going to necessarily make sense to anyone out there who

847
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 2: doesn't isn't already boned up on the loom or know

848
00:51:48,560 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 2: about weaving via allum. It's going to entail a number

849
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 2: of technology references to the loomb, specifically to the warp

850
00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 2: weighted loom. This is an upright loom that was standard

851
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:03,439
Speaker 2: for the day, you know, back back in the days

852
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 2: of the Viking sagas. So in order to get just

853
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:09,359
Speaker 2: how metal this is, you're gonna have to learn a

854
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:12,960
Speaker 2: little bit about textile crafting terminology. Okay, all right, so

855
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:15,839
Speaker 2: I'm gonna bust out some terminology here. So first of all,

856
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 2: what is the warp? I know it sounds magical and

857
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 2: and already a little metal.

858
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 4: But wait a minute, Rob, I'm sorry, is your reference

859
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 4: point for this warhammer?

860
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:27,399
Speaker 2: It is?

861
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:30,000
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, I thought I saw that in your eye.

862
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it could be you know, it could

863
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:35,400
Speaker 2: also be warp records. You know, they're different, different uses

864
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:38,920
Speaker 2: of the term. But within the world of the loom,

865
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 2: the warp is a set of lengthwise yarns stretched tightly

866
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:46,959
Speaker 2: across the loom before the weaving begins. Then you also

867
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:49,840
Speaker 2: have the weft or wolf. This is a set of

868
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:53,800
Speaker 2: horizontal or crosswise threads that are woven over and under

869
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 2: the vertical warp threads to create a piece of fabric.

870
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:00,440
Speaker 2: Up next, we have the headle. These are small or

871
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 2: strings with a hole or eye in the middle. Each

872
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 2: individual warp thread is threaded through one heddle, and when

873
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:08,759
Speaker 2: the headles are lifted or lower, they pull the warp

874
00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:11,280
Speaker 2: threads with them to create a gap called a shed.

875
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 2: All right, we also have heddle weights. These are small,

876
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 2: heavy It's like a small heavy metal rod or weights

877
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:19,759
Speaker 2: attached to the bottom of an individual heddle. We have

878
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 2: a headle rod. This is used to lift specific warp

879
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:25,320
Speaker 2: threads to create an opening. And then we have shuttles.

880
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 2: These are the tools used to pass the weft or

881
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:34,759
Speaker 2: the wolf through the warp. Okay, so I actually know

882
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 2: several loom enthusiasts in real life, but I've never discussed

883
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:42,840
Speaker 2: the use of the loom with them, so I almost

884
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,360
Speaker 2: pretty much all this terminology was new to me. I

885
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:48,560
Speaker 2: know we have some loom users out there, just it

886
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 2: has to be the case. So maybe y'all can throw

887
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:54,080
Speaker 2: in on this later on in a listener Mail episode.

888
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:57,320
Speaker 2: But again, the idea here is that while many of

889
00:53:57,400 --> 00:54:00,319
Speaker 2: us have no clue how this technology works or or

890
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 2: what everything is called, this was an essential piece of

891
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:06,839
Speaker 2: technology of the day, and as clearly illustrated when I'm

892
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 2: about to read it details, you know, its details were

893
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 2: culturally relevant, kind of like how so much computer and

894
00:54:13,680 --> 00:54:17,719
Speaker 2: internet terminology is found in our daily speech today, and

895
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 2: I included an image of this for you, Joe, to

896
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:23,920
Speaker 2: look at. I think maybe this might clarify some of

897
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:24,759
Speaker 2: the ideas here.

898
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:28,880
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm not you might clarify, but it's just

899
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:31,319
Speaker 4: like a thing that I have no familiarity with, and

900
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 4: it's like tons of parts.

901
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:36,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, so I'm going to read here.

902
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 2: I'll also add that this poem is said to concern

903
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 2: the Battle of Klundtarf in ten fourteen CE. And yeah,

904
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 2: this is the translation from M. Magnusen and H. Paulson

905
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:57,480
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty seven. Blood rains from the cloudy web

906
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:01,760
Speaker 2: on the broad loom of slaughter. The web of man

907
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:06,160
Speaker 2: gray as armor is now being woven. The Valkyries will

908
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 2: cross it with a crimson weft. The warp is made

909
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:14,360
Speaker 2: of human entrails. Human heads are used as the hadel weights.

910
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:18,640
Speaker 2: The hatel rods are blood wet spears, the shafts are

911
00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 2: iron bound, and arrows are the shuttles. With swords, we

912
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:26,719
Speaker 2: will weave this web of battle. The Valkyries go weaving

913
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 2: with drawn, swords killed and hothriml sangrid and svapal spears

914
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 2: will shatter, shields will splinter swords will gnaw like wolves

915
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,960
Speaker 2: through armor. Let us now wind the web of war

916
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:44,920
Speaker 2: which the young King once waged. Let us advance and

917
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 2: weigh through the ranks where friends of ours are exchanging blows.

918
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 2: And I'm going to skip a bit at this point,

919
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:53,760
Speaker 2: but we do indeed continue to wind the web of war. Here,

920
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 2: as our Scott Baker would put it, death comes spiraling down.

921
00:55:57,760 --> 00:55:59,279
Speaker 2: But then I'm going to pick back up at the end.

922
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 2: Here it is horrible now to look around as a

923
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:05,840
Speaker 2: blood red cloud darkens the sky. The heavens are stained

924
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 2: with the blood of men. As the Valkyries sing their song,

925
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 2: we sang well victory songs for the young King. Hail

926
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 2: to our singing. Let him who listens to our valkyrie

927
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 2: song learn it well and tell it to others. Let

928
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:23,759
Speaker 2: us ride our horses hard on bare backs with swords unsheathed,

929
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:28,239
Speaker 2: away from here. So I think you'd agree, Joe, pretty metal.

930
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:34,840
Speaker 4: That is intense. I like how the intensity is applied

931
00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:36,959
Speaker 4: to the act of making textiles.

932
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which you would normally think this is something

933
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 2: that could never harm us, would never be something that

934
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 2: would entail intrails and blood and splintered bodies. But it

935
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:50,320
Speaker 2: goes back to what we were talking about earlier with

936
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:54,239
Speaker 2: the muses, you know, and depending on the technological metaphor

937
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 2: in order to sort of make sense of how life

938
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 2: comes together, how long it lasts, and how it ends.

939
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this does. I don't know, maybe I'm

940
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 4: wrong about this, but this does at least suggest the

941
00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:14,279
Speaker 4: idea of, whereas the usual technological metaphor of death is

942
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:19,919
Speaker 4: one of cutting, severing, reducing, destroying, that this is a

943
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:21,840
Speaker 4: productive death enterprise.

944
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. Which I think that comes down to the idea

945
00:57:25,600 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 2: that it's attempting to help us understand the battle and

946
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 2: the battle field. So the valkyries here are obviously creating

947
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 2: no mere cloth. They are weaving the war winning wolf,

948
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:44,120
Speaker 2: a supernatural tapestry that ensures the king's victory or defeat.

949
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:49,000
Speaker 2: So once more, it's a textile product of destiny like

950
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:52,440
Speaker 2: we've discussed before, while also standing as a powerful metaphor

951
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 2: for the battlefield itself, a place of chaos, of death,

952
00:57:56,360 --> 00:57:59,960
Speaker 2: of strategy and will as well as fate and destiny.

953
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 2: And when everything settles, the blood, the dust, the entrails,

954
00:58:04,960 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 2: like some sort of destiny will be achieved, like a

955
00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:11,520
Speaker 2: king will rise or a king will fall. Something will

956
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:24,920
Speaker 2: have changed now in thinking about this, thinking about this

957
00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 2: idea though, of the valkyries, the choosers of the slain,

958
00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:31,080
Speaker 2: wheeling over the battlefield like carrion birds, I'm reminded once

959
00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:33,880
Speaker 2: more of the idea of reference in Herzog's Psyche and

960
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:38,840
Speaker 2: Death that the more archaic death demons in human traditions

961
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 2: are or more pure animal forms, such as wolves, snakes, horses,

962
00:58:43,560 --> 00:58:47,240
Speaker 2: and of course birds. And of these wolves and vultures

963
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 2: are exactly the sorts of creatures that would help themselves

964
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:52,439
Speaker 2: to the dead and dying on a battlefield, that could

965
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 2: conceivably like physically visit you as you are on the

966
00:58:56,000 --> 00:59:00,040
Speaker 2: threshold of death, not to do anything supernatural, but to

967
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 2: you know, wait for you to expire, or maybe get

968
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:04,880
Speaker 2: in a little early on the.

969
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 4: Goods, to exhibit the virtuars of patients.

970
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:11,960
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's interesting too that arguably one of the

971
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 2: earliest known depictions of a personification of death is that

972
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 2: of a gigantic black vulture like birds that's swarming or

973
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:24,520
Speaker 2: birds swarming over a headless human corpse. And these are

974
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 2: depicted on the seventh century BCE paintings at Chatilhuyuk in Anatolia,

975
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:35,160
Speaker 2: and it's been proposed that headless remains discovered at this

976
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:40,160
Speaker 2: location actual headless remains point to some sort of ritual

977
00:59:40,200 --> 00:59:44,640
Speaker 2: defleshing of the dead prior to their burial, which might

978
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:48,320
Speaker 2: be another angle on the significance of birds in practices

979
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 2: like this, lining up with practices like exposure or sky burial,

980
00:59:53,120 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 2: which we see practice into the modern era, where generally

981
00:59:56,240 --> 00:59:58,680
Speaker 2: in places where bodies cannot be buried all that easily,

982
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:01,280
Speaker 2: or maybe cannot be burd learned all that easily. One

983
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:05,480
Speaker 2: way of returning them to the natural cycle of things

984
01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:09,040
Speaker 2: is to allow birds to feast on the soft tissues

985
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:11,240
Speaker 2: and then you can do what you need to do

986
01:00:11,280 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 2: with the bones. So there's obviously plenty of symbolic weight

987
01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 2: to throw around with all this. But you know, birds

988
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 2: sailing from above coming down to visit the dead and

989
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,360
Speaker 2: the dying, You know what are they doing? Yes, they're

990
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 2: probably coming down to eat some eyeballs and so forth,

991
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 2: But more on the mystical realm of things? Are they

992
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:34,840
Speaker 2: death dealers? Are they psychopomps? And so forth? And so

993
01:00:35,800 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 2: these various aspects are combined with the feminine form to

994
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 2: varying degrees to bring us the likes of the valkyries,

995
01:00:42,040 --> 01:00:45,080
Speaker 2: which again are sometimes said to be clothed in feathers,

996
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 2: as well as the cares or the cares of Greek tradition.

997
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:53,360
Speaker 2: And you know, we might be tempted to describe them

998
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:56,600
Speaker 2: as harpy like, and we've discussed harpies on the show before,

999
01:00:56,640 --> 01:00:58,960
Speaker 2: but I just want to throw in that harpies are

1000
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:03,400
Speaker 2: more closely associated as personification, are more closely understood as

1001
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:08,760
Speaker 2: personifications wind so a different personification going on there in

1002
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 2: its origin. But the keras Uh were the daughters of

1003
01:01:13,480 --> 01:01:16,520
Speaker 2: Nicks where to understand the goddess of night, and they were.

1004
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:20,240
Speaker 2: They're often described as death fates and that hover over

1005
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 2: the battlefield, deciding who will fall and or looking to

1006
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:29,520
Speaker 2: exact a fate already decided by some higher deity, and

1007
01:01:29,560 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 2: then swooping down upon the dying to await their death

1008
01:01:32,760 --> 01:01:35,560
Speaker 2: so they can drag their soul into the afterlife. So

1009
01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:38,480
Speaker 2: they are scavenger like fearsome creatures of doom.

1010
01:01:38,880 --> 01:01:43,320
Speaker 4: So but that's interesting because they combine, uh, you know,

1011
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 4: the pre death selection and the psychopomp role.

1012
01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:49,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not in a good way. They're more in

1013
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 2: the drag you to hell kind of a realm with psychopomp.

1014
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:55,479
Speaker 2: Not the come, gentle traveler, I see that you are lost,

1015
01:01:55,560 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 2: let me help you. They're more like I'm going to

1016
01:01:57,640 --> 01:02:02,920
Speaker 2: grab you by the tendon and rag you into eightes. Now,

1017
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:06,520
Speaker 2: there's a Greek epic poem attributed to Hesiod titled The

1018
01:02:06,560 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 2: Shield of Heracles, and it includes an awesome description of

1019
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 2: the keras here, and I should mention that not every

1020
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 2: translation of this poem actually keeps the word keras. Some

1021
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:25,280
Speaker 2: use other words to describe them, and sometimes it's been

1022
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:28,800
Speaker 2: argue that, well, there's not really an appropriate English language

1023
01:02:28,840 --> 01:02:31,680
Speaker 2: word for this sort of thing. But I'm going to

1024
01:02:31,720 --> 01:02:35,160
Speaker 2: read from the nineteen fifty nine Richard Lattimore translation, and

1025
01:02:35,200 --> 01:02:38,800
Speaker 2: it puts it like this. And men, the seniors on

1026
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 2: whom old age had seized already, were sitting assembled outside

1027
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:46,920
Speaker 2: the gates and holding up their hands to the immortal gods,

1028
01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 2: being in fear for the sake of their children. And these,

1029
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 2: for their part, were fighting their battle. And where they

1030
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:57,080
Speaker 2: were the spirits of death, dark colored and clattering, their

1031
01:02:57,120 --> 01:03:03,080
Speaker 2: white teeth, deadly faced, grim glaring, bloody and unapproachable. We're

1032
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 2: fighting over the fallen men, all of them rushing forward

1033
01:03:06,680 --> 01:03:09,680
Speaker 2: to drink of the black blood, and each as soon

1034
01:03:09,880 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 2: as she had snatched a man down already or just

1035
01:03:13,240 --> 01:03:16,560
Speaker 2: dropping from a wound, would hook her great claws about

1036
01:03:16,600 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 2: his body while his soul went down to the realm

1037
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:24,000
Speaker 2: of hades and cold tartarus. And then the spirits had

1038
01:03:24,040 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 2: sated their senses on the blood of men's slaughter, they

1039
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:30,480
Speaker 2: would throw what was left behind them and go storming

1040
01:03:30,520 --> 01:03:33,040
Speaker 2: back into the battle clamor and the struggle.

1041
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:36,000
Speaker 4: Okay, so quite predatory vision there.

1042
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:39,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's still you know, death selectors in the

1043
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:43,920
Speaker 2: valkyrie s. But whereas the Valkyries are going to escort

1044
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 2: you to a valhalla and are ultimately seen as in

1045
01:03:47,600 --> 01:03:51,479
Speaker 2: a way deliverers like mission accomplished, You've done your part

1046
01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 2: and now you know, just reward. Yeah, this is the opposite.

1047
01:03:55,400 --> 01:03:59,600
Speaker 2: But it's interesting how many things they have in common otherwise,

1048
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:03,240
Speaker 2: and you know, we might wonder, you know, to what,

1049
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:09,120
Speaker 2: to what extent they are partially based on observations of

1050
01:04:09,360 --> 01:04:13,760
Speaker 2: raptors feasting on the dead following battles throughout human history,

1051
01:04:14,920 --> 01:04:17,479
Speaker 2: I would say that they do not. They certainly don't

1052
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:20,200
Speaker 2: feel like you should worship them. I don't and I

1053
01:04:20,240 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 2: haven't seen any any suggestions that one should.

1054
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:26,920
Speaker 3: They're not going to do much good for you.

1055
01:04:27,320 --> 01:04:30,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're doing their job, they're enjoying it. Sounds

1056
01:04:30,320 --> 01:04:32,200
Speaker 2: like a little bit too much, but I don't know

1057
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 2: they're getting it done. All right. Well, I think we're

1058
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:39,080
Speaker 2: going to go ahead and close up this episode, perhaps

1059
01:04:39,080 --> 01:04:41,160
Speaker 2: close up the series. I'm not sure we're going to

1060
01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:45,200
Speaker 2: leave it slightly open ended. Maybe we should leave it

1061
01:04:45,400 --> 01:04:49,200
Speaker 2: open ended in the long term, because I don't want

1062
01:04:50,000 --> 01:04:53,280
Speaker 2: death to think that we're we're done discussing it, that

1063
01:04:53,400 --> 01:04:56,600
Speaker 2: this is finished. So yeah, I'm going to say officially

1064
01:04:56,680 --> 01:05:00,360
Speaker 2: open ended. We may come back next episode, We come

1065
01:05:00,440 --> 01:05:05,440
Speaker 2: back years from now, so we should be permitted to

1066
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:10,120
Speaker 2: flourish in case that is the option we choose to pursue.

1067
01:05:10,280 --> 01:05:12,480
Speaker 3: But we will send our messengers ahead of us.

1068
01:05:12,800 --> 01:05:17,560
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, no doubt. All right. Just a reminder to

1069
01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:19,720
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1070
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on

1071
01:05:22,280 --> 01:05:25,760
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.

1072
01:05:25,760 --> 01:05:28,240
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns just talk about a

1073
01:05:28,280 --> 01:05:30,360
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1074
01:05:30,520 --> 01:05:34,440
Speaker 4: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.

1075
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:36,160
Speaker 4: If you would like to get in touch with us

1076
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Speaker 4: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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Speaker 4: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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Speaker 4: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 4: your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.