Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 4: And we're back with the fourth and final I think
Speaker 4: is it the final for now?
Speaker 2: Par I mean, death is always final business. But I
Speaker 2: don't know. We're gonna We're gonna see we have a
Speaker 2: we have a fair amount of notes here, and it
Speaker 2: kind of comes down to if we will get done
Speaker 2: with them. In a way, it's kind of like the
Speaker 2: the log. Once the log is burned to completion, then
Speaker 2: it's over. But maybe we won't burn all of the log.
Speaker 3: Ellieger there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I was gonna say this is the fourth
Speaker 4: and potentially final part in our series on personifications of death,
Speaker 4: when death becomes not not a process or an abstract concept,
Speaker 4: but a person or an embodied character. Probably won't do
Speaker 4: a full recap of what we covered in the last
Speaker 4: episodes because it's been a lot of ground at this point.
Speaker 4: If you are new to this series, you probably want
Speaker 4: to go back and listen to the earlier episodes first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we break down some basic categorizations and concepts
Speaker 2: that we then returned back to again and again as
Speaker 2: we break down other examples and so forth.
Speaker 4: So I flagged this when we left off at the
Speaker 4: end of the last episode, but today I wanted to
Speaker 4: come back and talk about a specific example of a
Speaker 4: death personification that I found really interesting as I was
Speaker 4: reading a paper about this character. Specifically, this is a
Speaker 4: feminine death personification that is actually, according to some scholars,
Speaker 4: the matron deity of one of the fastest growing new
Speaker 4: religious movements in the Americas, and this figure is known
Speaker 4: as Santemirte, which means Saint Death or Holy death in Spanish. Rob,
Speaker 4: I've got some imagery for you to look at in
Speaker 4: the outline. Here, would you say, in common appearance, a
Speaker 4: fairly typical in some ways grim repress, a female grim reaper,
Speaker 4: kind of a skeletal figure, clothed and enrobed in a way,
Speaker 4: with a garment covering the head, kind of a veil
Speaker 4: or a hood. In one representation we have here, she's
Speaker 4: drawn with a halo around her head or at least
Speaker 4: kind of an aura around the crown coming down.
Speaker 3: To the base of the head.
Speaker 4: And then in another representation she's actually quite colorful. You know,
Speaker 4: she's decked out with a sort of rainbow back drop,
Speaker 4: with a scythe and with some interesting objects in her hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that second image, you know, not surprising. I
Speaker 2: think most of us familiar with the various colorful depictions
Speaker 2: of death iconography in Mexican culture. But yeah, just a
Speaker 2: quick glance at this character, you know what she's all about.
Speaker 2: She's clearly some sort of an embodiment of death, and
Speaker 2: there's a yeah, a sense of the weighing of the scales.
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't know if we really mentioned
Speaker 2: this or not, but the human skull in and of itself,
Speaker 2: you know, is a very evocative image for a number
Speaker 2: of reasons. You know, it's what's inside our head, that's
Speaker 2: what we look like with no skin on our head.
Speaker 2: But also it always appears to be grinning, you know,
Speaker 2: it is. There is a it's easy to read the
Speaker 2: skull as smiling, as if again there's a secret joke.
Speaker 2: And we've already described what it means when death jokes.
Speaker 4: Grinning or grimacing, I guess, but a certain gritted teeth expression, yeah,
Speaker 4: either going through something difficult or trying to hold the
Speaker 4: chuckle in. But yeah, so my main source on Santa
Speaker 4: Morte Here is going to be a twenty twenty one
Speaker 4: paper published in the journal Religions called syncredit Santamerte, Holy
Speaker 4: Death and Religious Bricklage by a pair of scholars named
Speaker 4: Kate Kingsbury and Our Andrew Chestnut. Kate Kingsbury is an
Speaker 4: anthropologist affiliated with the University of British Columbia, and Our
Speaker 4: Andrew Chestnut is a professor of Latin American history at
Speaker 4: Virginia Commonwealth University, and at the time this paper was published,
Speaker 4: the authors together explained they had fifteen years of cumulative
Speaker 4: experience studying Santa Marte across different parts of the Americas.
Speaker 4: So these are authors who have written a lot on
Speaker 4: the Santa Marte figure and phenomenon. So, first of all,
Speaker 4: who is Santa Marte. She is a Latin American folk
Speaker 4: saint with devotees concentrated especially in Mexico, but in other
Speaker 4: countries of North, Central and South America as well. So
Speaker 4: a folk saint is a person or figure who many people,
Speaker 4: especially within a Catholic influenced culture, consider holy, but who
Speaker 4: has not been officially canonized.
Speaker 3: By the authorities of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 4: So Rob, you and I have actually talked about some
Speaker 4: non official saints fairly recently. I think we talked about
Speaker 4: Saint Swithin in English traditions.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, and I believe they've been one or
Speaker 2: two others. Yeah. I guess the thing about a folk
Speaker 2: saint is it enough people make a case for it, bam,
Speaker 2: folk saint. Like if enough people were saying Coffin Joe
Speaker 2: is a saint, then we have to acknowledge the idea,
Speaker 2: even if it is not approved by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, folk sainthood is recognized by the people, usually the
Speaker 4: working classes, through a kind of emergent up from the
Speaker 4: ground process. Folk saints can be either originally real people
Speaker 4: who actually existed, or they can be legendary or mythical figures.
Speaker 4: The people who believe in folk saints usually believe them
Speaker 4: to be not only examples of holina, yes, but sources
Speaker 4: of power, figures that possess supernatural powers and the ability
Speaker 4: to provide blessings. And so despite not being formally recognized
Speaker 4: by the Church and often being explicitly condemned by the Church,
Speaker 4: the authors say that these folk saints are usually seen
Speaker 4: as more relatable and with a greater ability to provide
Speaker 4: healing and aid and comfort, especially to the people of
Speaker 4: Latin American cultures, which the authors argue is in part
Speaker 4: because the origins of these folk saints are typically closer
Speaker 4: to the people in terms of time and space and
Speaker 4: life experience than the origins of the canonized saints. Many
Speaker 4: people in Latin American cultures, also, the authors say, prefer
Speaker 4: folk saints to canonized saints, specifically because they exist outside
Speaker 4: the sanction of the official church, and therefore their relationship,
Speaker 4: you know, the people's relationship to the saint is kind
Speaker 4: of freer. It is not mediated by the costs of
Speaker 4: associating or going through the church, and it's not mediated
Speaker 4: by the authority of a priest. So, for example, there's
Speaker 4: no priest that can tell you what is and is
Speaker 4: not an appropriate way to talk to or relate to
Speaker 4: a folk saint like there would be in you know,
Speaker 4: for official Catholic saints within the church.
Speaker 2: So in a way it's closer to the heart and
Speaker 2: unperturbed by the intellects of others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: So, for example, there's nobody telling you what it's appropriate
Speaker 4: to ask for or how you need to ask that
Speaker 4: you're doing it wrong. Yeah, I mean you could say
Speaker 4: that the official church, and you know, I'm not trying
Speaker 4: to make a judgment here, this is just this is
Speaker 4: a common perception the official church is laiden with moral judgment.
Speaker 4: Like what if I need a blessing, if I need
Speaker 4: supernatural help with something, but from the church active what
Speaker 4: if I am not asking for an appropriate goal, or
Speaker 4: what if the church judges me to be in a
Speaker 4: state of sin and you know, I show up saying
Speaker 4: I need help with a problem, but from the church's
Speaker 4: point of view, my problem is that I need to
Speaker 4: repent and confess my sins before I come asking for help.
Speaker 4: And so you know, there's just kind of you're at
Speaker 4: an impasse there about like goals and priorities with the church,
Speaker 4: but with a folk saint, you're not going to be
Speaker 4: dealing with a hierarchy like that.
Speaker 3: The relation to the.
Speaker 4: Supernatural being is more on your own terms. So yeah,
Speaker 4: So folk saints are often seen as in some ways better,
Speaker 4: more miraculous, or more helpful than Catholic saints for these
Speaker 4: multiple reasons, maybe cultural affinity. Their origins are closer in
Speaker 4: cultural proximity and thus they're more relatable, and for reasons
Speaker 4: of freedom. There's less restriction or instruction on how you're
Speaker 4: supposed to relate to the saint. There's no implicit or
Speaker 4: explicit judgment.
Speaker 3: Folk saints, the.
Speaker 4: Authors say, often have a tragic death story, beginning as
Speaker 4: real people who perished by violence or sometimes under the
Speaker 4: oppression of authorities, or maybe in extreme poverty. They cite
Speaker 4: the work of an anthropologist named Flores Matos, who calls
Speaker 4: these figures the miraculous dead, and so they give one
Speaker 4: example of another type of folk saint or miraculous dead
Speaker 4: figure known of in Mexico, who is named Juan Saltados
Speaker 4: and Wan Soldados is based on a soldier in Tijuana
Speaker 4: who was said to have been framed for a horrible
Speaker 4: crime and executed by firing squad in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 4: And then the story goes that after his death, his
Speaker 4: ghost began to cry out from his grave to proclaim
Speaker 4: his innocence, and the spirit of Juan Soldados started granting
Speaker 4: people miracles, giving people miracles if they came to his
Speaker 4: gravestone to ask for help, and a bunch of figures
Speaker 4: like this exist with the understanding that it is so
Speaker 4: thing about their tragic death and thus their relationship to
Speaker 4: death that helps give them power to perform miracles. The
Speaker 4: followers of Santa Morte often believe her to be the
Speaker 4: most effective of these folk saints or miraculous dead, perhaps
Speaker 4: because she's not just one of the miraculous dead, but
Speaker 4: is the embodiment of death itself.
Speaker 2: So for listeners out there, go ahead, describe what does
Speaker 2: she look like? How do we know her when we
Speaker 2: see her?
Speaker 4: So we sort of alluded to this earlier, But she
Speaker 4: takes the form of a female grim reaper or a
Speaker 4: grim repress, said often to be based on a classic
Speaker 4: Iberian grim repress figure called Laparca. So she's a grim
Speaker 4: repress with a skeletal body and a skull face, usually
Speaker 4: dressed in a long gown and a mantle meaning like
Speaker 4: a cloak or a cape, often with a hood, and
Speaker 4: the authors highlight that she has several characteristic items in
Speaker 4: her hands in her left hand, usually a scythe. And
Speaker 4: there's one note in the later in the paper where
Speaker 4: the authors mention a common saying that wives whose husbands
Speaker 4: had gone out roaming would would come back, would come
Speaker 4: and ask Santa Marte to use her size to bring
Speaker 4: errant husbands back. Home, so you can think of it
Speaker 4: in that sense. It sounds almost not like a like
Speaker 4: a blade or weapon, but like a shepherd's crook, you know,
Speaker 4: pull them back. But I think it also has the
Speaker 4: more common, you know, reaping imagery that we that we
Speaker 4: just get from your classic Grim Reaper. And then so
Speaker 4: that's her left hand. In her right hand she sometimes
Speaker 4: has a globe like a representation of the planet Earth
Speaker 4: or the scales of justice. She also has an animal companion,
Speaker 4: which is an owl, and this could be for a
Speaker 4: number of reasons. There are traditional associations between owls and
Speaker 4: death in and some meso American religions. And then also
Speaker 4: there is the association of the owl with wisdom in
Speaker 4: a lot of traditions. And then to read here, I'm
Speaker 4: going to read directly from Chestnut and Kingsbury about how
Speaker 4: her name is put together. So they write quote in English,
Speaker 4: she is called Saint Death or Holy Death. The name
Speaker 4: Santa Muerte explicates her identity. In Spanish, Muerte means death.
Speaker 4: Santa translates both as holy and as saint. But Santa,
Speaker 4: it should be noted, is the female word for saint
Speaker 4: in Spanish, and the saint is perceived by her followers
Speaker 4: as of the female gender. She is a quote liminal, fierce,
Speaker 4: feminine persona and is seen as an quote all powerful
Speaker 4: and protecting mother who can solve all problems, who has
Speaker 4: the power to.
Speaker 3: Give and take away.
Speaker 4: So this comes a bit back to when you were
Speaker 4: talking about gender in the last episode, Rob. It seems
Speaker 4: to me that Santa Morte is interesting because she is
Speaker 4: one of these death figures that not only has a gender.
Speaker 4: You know, you can imagine some death personifications that are
Speaker 4: gender neutral or you can't really tell what gender they're
Speaker 4: supposed to be, and then some some personifications have a
Speaker 4: clearly intended gender, but maybe it's not necessarily supposed to
Speaker 4: mean anything. But in this case, it seems like the
Speaker 4: gendered embodiment is meaningful, Like she something about her being
Speaker 4: death being a woman brings meaning to the relationship with her.
Speaker 2: So there may be some sort of stereotypical nurturing context
Speaker 2: to her, comforting context to her. But then, as we've
Speaker 2: been discussing, with room for other connotations as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, as they say, I think the powerful
Speaker 4: and protecting mother aspect of her is an important part
Speaker 4: of what she is. So she's represented in all different
Speaker 4: kinds of media. You can have pendance worn around the neck.
Speaker 4: She might sometimes just be an image Jnan devotional candle,
Speaker 4: or she can be in full sized statue form at
Speaker 4: the head of a shrine. Believers will turn to her
Speaker 4: for miracles and other aid, as you do with some
Speaker 4: of these other folk. Saints are miraculous dead, and often
Speaker 4: they believe she has the power to bring good health,
Speaker 4: to bring success in love, to bring deliverance from money troubles,
Speaker 4: and all other kinds of blessings. So it's not just
Speaker 4: stuff that we think of as inherently connected to death.
Speaker 4: She can bring boons of all sorts.
Speaker 2: That is interesting yet, because you might expect her powers
Speaker 2: to be, you know, to borrow from dungeons and dragons,
Speaker 2: spell classification. You might expect her to be a necromancy specialist,
Speaker 2: you know, and all her abilities would be nechromatic in
Speaker 2: one form or another. But yeah, once you're getting into
Speaker 2: general blessings and financial boons, then you're in different territory.
Speaker 4: Now where does this interesting sort of wide ranging power
Speaker 4: come from. We'll come back to that, because that's actually
Speaker 4: a core part of what they argue in the paper.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be focusing more on their general characterization
Speaker 4: of Santa Marte, but they're also making an argument about
Speaker 4: culturally where she comes from, so we'll come back to that.
Speaker 4: Another thing that's important is that the authors note that
Speaker 4: Santamerte has been grossly misrepresented by some sensationalist media reporting
Speaker 4: that has treated her as some kind of Narco saint.
Speaker 4: That's a term used to refer to her narco saint,
Speaker 4: a sort of cult figure worshiped exclusively by criminals and
Speaker 4: drug traffickers. The authors say this is not correct at all.
Speaker 4: She's venerated by all kinds of people, especially by the
Speaker 4: poor and by people without much individual access to power,
Speaker 4: So it's not that she is never invoked by anybody
Speaker 4: related to the drug trade or drug war. The authors
Speaker 4: say that actually she is regularly supplicated by people on
Speaker 4: both sides of the law within the drug war in Mexico.
Speaker 4: But she also says that lots of people were turning
Speaker 4: to Santa Marte for protection during the first year of
Speaker 4: the COVID pandemic, and that she is widely seen as
Speaker 4: a protector of women in places where there is a
Speaker 4: special thread of gender based violence. The author is also
Speaker 4: mentioned that there is you know, of course, no formal
Speaker 4: authority or structure within the faith, so there's nothing like
Speaker 4: the Catholic hierarchy. So you can have people kind of
Speaker 4: striking out to honor her or relate to her in
Speaker 4: whatever way they see best. So you get these chapels
Speaker 4: and shrines that are sometimes opened and operated by independent
Speaker 4: religious entrepreneurs, but a lot of the faith is actually
Speaker 4: conducted in private, like in private homes and at family alters.
Speaker 4: And because there are no formal rules, there are no structures,
Speaker 4: there are no authorities. There's just great freedom in how
Speaker 4: the faith of Santa Marte is practiced. And the authors
Speaker 4: again I mentioned this a minute ago, but they identify
Speaker 4: that freedom as a key part of the appeal. However,
Speaker 4: so you know, that's sort of the heteropraxy aspect. There's
Speaker 4: just a lot of diversity in how people honor and
Speaker 4: relate to Santa Marte. But they also say there are
Speaker 4: some common trends that they've identified in their study of
Speaker 4: this phenomenon.
Speaker 3: So, first of.
Speaker 4: All, altars and chapels are important. Most devotees of Santa
Speaker 4: Marte will visit the nearest chapel devoted to her, to
Speaker 4: her at least like once a month, and so people
Speaker 4: visit these chapels and they say prayers and leave offerings.
Speaker 4: Lots of people have altars within their homes, often consisting
Speaker 4: of like a small statue of the saint on a
Speaker 4: table or a votive candle. And the offerings can take
Speaker 4: a lot of forms. They might be foods, like chocolate
Speaker 4: or other candy I've seen some. Sometimes fruits are given.
Speaker 4: The offerings might be flowers. They could be alcoholic beverages
Speaker 4: like beer or tequila. Sometimes it's cigarettes or other smokables.
Speaker 4: There are bottles of water. Actually, the authors say quote
Speaker 4: as the skeleton saint is said to be perpetually parched.
Speaker 2: Everything she drinks it just goes right through.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, I don't know exactly how to read the tone
Speaker 4: on that phrase, but I think I take that as
Speaker 4: there being a bit of playfulness in the relationship between
Speaker 4: her devotees and her. But she's also she's commonly understood
Speaker 4: as a folk saint of the powerless, of the marginalized
Speaker 4: and oppressed, So the people with the least power, or
Speaker 4: the people who live closest to meeting death are thought
Speaker 4: to be especially within her domain. The author's cite previous
Speaker 4: work by a scholar named Olaskyevitch Peralba, who argues that
Speaker 4: she is appealing quote among liminal sectors of population that
Speaker 4: deal with transitions and transgressions, such as people working on
Speaker 4: the streets e g. Street vendors, criminals and prostitutes, migrants, inmates, policemen, troops,
Speaker 4: prison guards, social workers, and lawyers. So it's interesting that
Speaker 4: it's not just like a cohort of natural allies there.
Speaker 4: You know, you have people in all different types of professions,
Speaker 4: maybe on both sides of the law and so forth.
Speaker 2: But it's everybody on law and order, all the characters.
Speaker 4: But not just that. I mean also it's a lot
Speaker 4: of connections to maybe danger or connections to what they
Speaker 4: say again is transitions and transgressions, liminal spaces. And the
Speaker 4: authors say also her appeal is fairly broad, so it's
Speaker 4: not just that domain. They say that you will find
Speaker 4: her devotees among people everyone from housewives to fishermen, they say,
Speaker 4: but all kinds of people, especially the poor, who feel
Speaker 4: less connection to the priesthood of the institutional church. And
Speaker 4: the authors argue that her appeal in modern times extends
Speaker 4: to so many people in part because of a pervasive
Speaker 4: feeling of unsafety and a resulting metaphysics of disorder related
Speaker 4: to the ongoing drug war. Of course, this effects not
Speaker 4: just people involved in the drug trade or in fighting it,
Speaker 4: but it involves a lot of innocent people caught in
Speaker 4: the crossfire. And the authors argue that in this context,
Speaker 4: for many people sort of within her domain, especially poor
Speaker 4: people in certain parts of Mexico, for these people, living
Speaker 4: entails a feeling of constantly standing up in the face
Speaker 4: of death.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 4: However, instead of standing up to death, many in Mexico
Speaker 4: have instead entered into a religious relationship with death, wherein
Speaker 4: she is imagined as possessing the supernatural puissance, meaning like
Speaker 4: a power or strength to protect them from perishing. So
Speaker 4: there's this belief, not necessarily that death is just a
Speaker 4: bad thing to be protected from. There are elements of
Speaker 4: that in the understanding, but it's also a power you
Speaker 4: can appeal too to spare you and the people you love,
Speaker 4: or to be redirected into a kind of general power
Speaker 4: of blessing to bring you protection and boons in your life.
Speaker 4: And so in this the authors invoke an idea of
Speaker 4: a kind of interdependence between death and power. Just power
Speaker 4: to act within reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes back to, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: what we've been discussing here about how these dealing with death,
Speaker 2: dealing with complex and semi chaotic or chaotic situations, violence
Speaker 2: on a mass scale. You know, we can feel lost,
Speaker 2: untethered and are you know, we have limited abilities to
Speaker 2: make sense of it all, but we can reach out
Speaker 2: to something. If we personify some of what's going on,
Speaker 2: then we have something at least in our own minds
Speaker 2: that we can deal with, that we can reach out to,
Speaker 2: we can seek to appease, that we can seek the
Speaker 2: guidance of, and so forth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but especially interesting that it's not just in domains
Speaker 4: related to death. That's like the thing that's most interesting
Speaker 4: to me about this. So anyway, everything I've been talking
Speaker 4: about so far is just sort of from the general
Speaker 4: background sections of their paper. Actually, the main point that
Speaker 4: they're arguing in this paper is they're making an interesting
Speaker 4: argument about the origins and development of the Santamorte belief. Specifically,
Speaker 4: the authors are making the claim that, in contrast to
Speaker 4: some previous writing which they think over emphasized or exclusively
Speaker 4: acknowledged the Catholic or European cultural roots of the deaths
Speaker 4: ain't they say, In reality, Santa Morte is a syncretic figure.
Speaker 4: A syncretic meaning a figure that emerges from the combination
Speaker 4: or synthesis of elements from different cultures. In this case,
Speaker 4: they're going to identify two main cultural inputs. One of
Speaker 4: them is European Catholicism. It's the Catholic or Iberian grim Repress.
Speaker 4: So this is a European and specifically Spanish Catholic moment
Speaker 4: of death figure in female form, which was not a
Speaker 4: god really as understood by the Christians, but it was
Speaker 4: more of an image that served as a memento mori
Speaker 4: or was a kind of teaching tool. So the image
Speaker 4: reminds you that death is coming, and thus you need
Speaker 4: to get right with Christ and confess right right.
Speaker 2: And as we're mentioning being not completely shackled the doctrine,
Speaker 2: it does leave you open to interpret it and present
Speaker 2: it in various ways throughout European literature.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's one input that they say. If you
Speaker 4: just acknowledge that input, the Sentamorte belief doesn't make a
Speaker 4: whole lot of sense. It's hard to make sense of
Speaker 4: where a lot of its features come from. So they say, actually,
Speaker 4: a huge input on it is pre Columbian indigenous thanatologies,
Speaker 4: the death deities and other personifications of death from the
Speaker 4: religions and cultures of pre Hispanic meso American peoples. And
Speaker 4: then finally after this they also talk about this you
Speaker 4: might have heard in the title there's the bricolage aspect.
Speaker 4: They say that after this, the Senta morte belief continued to,
Speaker 4: especially in recent years, accumulate elements from other sources, including
Speaker 4: Afro Cuban, Santa Ria, Palomayumbe, and even.
Speaker 3: Wicca and New Age beliefs.
Speaker 4: But the main point I think they're making is that
Speaker 4: you really can't understand how santamorte works today without understanding
Speaker 4: the function of indigenous death deities in meso American religions,
Speaker 4: which represent whole different ways of thinking about death compared
Speaker 4: to European Catholic cultures. Specifically, these thanatologies in vision kind
Speaker 4: of a more of a relationship between death and the
Speaker 4: rest of life. I think a naive misinterpretation of this
Speaker 4: reframing would be just that, oh, these meso American religions,
Speaker 4: they didn't think death was bad, they thought death was good.
Speaker 4: It's not exactly like that. I mean, in all cultures
Speaker 4: you find religious expressions of aversion to death and people
Speaker 4: wanting to find ways to put death off and other things.
Speaker 4: But I think it is fair to say that as
Speaker 4: opposed to the Catholic vision of life and death as
Speaker 4: kind of binary opposite states of being, and the Catholic
Speaker 4: vision of death is like a kid of a kind
Speaker 4: of destruction that must be.
Speaker 3: Avoided by salvation.
Speaker 4: In christ the meso American religious view of death, and
Speaker 4: there's not just one, obviously, there's a diversity, but fairly
Speaker 4: common among them in meso American religions is the idea
Speaker 4: that death has some kind of more general power over
Speaker 4: life and is related to birth and regenerative properties and
Speaker 4: other kinds of good things in life, That in death
Speaker 4: there is something cyclical and regenerative and life affirming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that life and death are linked, That the womb
Speaker 2: and the tomb are linked. Yeah. We discussed some of
Speaker 2: this already, about how even Mother Earth can come into
Speaker 2: play in all of this, and it's not necessary. The
Speaker 2: Catholic vision and the Christian tradition of it is a
Speaker 2: little more set in stone, with some deviations as well.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm not going to have time to discuss
Speaker 4: everything they get into in their paper here. It is
Speaker 4: an interesting read if you want to go follow. Especially
Speaker 4: they get into the whole history of how they think
Speaker 4: the centimorte belief developed over time and more recent inputs
Speaker 4: on it. But the main thing I wanted to talk
Speaker 4: about from it here is their discussion of the different
Speaker 4: views of the power of death, where the where death's
Speaker 4: power comes from, and then also a little bit about
Speaker 4: what the indigenous religious inputs on santamorte might be. So
Speaker 4: first of all, again you've got this distinction between the
Speaker 4: European Catholic understanding of death, which tends to be more
Speaker 4: often about destruction, death as destruction and death as finality
Speaker 4: in a sense of finality as a kind of finality
Speaker 4: that can be averted through you know, faith in Christ.
Speaker 4: But otherwise it's the hammer comes down and its finality.
Speaker 3: And then the.
Speaker 4: Destruction has associations of chaos, disorder, violence, negativity, pain, and sacrilege.
Speaker 4: And again you find these negative elements of association with
Speaker 4: death in other cultures too.
Speaker 3: But the authors argue.
Speaker 4: That in many of these different cultural contexts, death just
Speaker 4: is believed to have more power over life, and not
Speaker 4: just the power to end or destroy life, but to
Speaker 4: influence and guide it.
Speaker 3: In many ways.
Speaker 4: And they have a kind of interesting theory about why
Speaker 4: that would be. Why would death have any power over
Speaker 4: like whether you could be healed from a sickness or
Speaker 4: have success in love, or could you know, have material gains,
Speaker 4: whether you know you get stuff from the hunt, or
Speaker 4: you know you make money, or any of these things
Speaker 4: people want. They say, you know, death is associated with
Speaker 4: what they call liminal forces, forces having to do with
Speaker 4: crossing a threshold from one thing to another or making
Speaker 4: a transition from one thing to another. They say, actually
Speaker 4: death is the ultimate and the most mysterious transition in life.
Speaker 4: It's the one where we genuinely can't see what's on
Speaker 4: the other side, at least for us, is there nothing?
Speaker 4: Is there something? If there is something, what is it?
Speaker 4: And so because liminal stages are so powerful, they're very
Speaker 4: powerful and emotionally charged in our lives. Like if you
Speaker 4: think about a lot of the most emotionally important and
Speaker 4: you know, causally crucial things in our lives, they're these
Speaker 4: things we think of as liminal stages or turning points. Birth, death,
Speaker 4: rights of passage, and initiation, marriage, stuff like that. These
Speaker 4: are the points where we transition into a new phase
Speaker 4: of life, and because of that, they tend to be
Speaker 4: the subject of a lot of prayer and ritual because
Speaker 4: we correctly identify them as literal, causal turning points, like
Speaker 4: they're the most important moments in our lives and they
Speaker 4: determine the course of the future. And thus, in many cultures,
Speaker 4: including these pre Hispanic meso American cultures, death was often
Speaker 4: associated with the power to renew and restore life. Life
Speaker 4: is guided by these very powerful liminal points, these transition points,
Speaker 4: and death is the most powerful of them all. So
Speaker 4: that's how I understand the argument they're making that it
Speaker 4: has this association with liminality, the changes or the turning
Speaker 4: points in life, and this association with liminality gives death
Speaker 4: its perceived power over all important things in life, or
Speaker 4: at least most important things in life. And then there's
Speaker 4: another point they make that I think is interesting. They
Speaker 4: say that death this is just a way that these
Speaker 4: religious beliefs tend to manifest within culture. Death seems to
Speaker 4: have more power over every aspect of life. If you
Speaker 4: feel that you live your life in close proximity to death.
Speaker 4: So if real danger is a big part of your
Speaker 4: everyday experience, then a deity of death comes to feel
Speaker 4: more like it has power over everything you do. Another
Speaker 4: interesting note on the power of death, the authors cite
Speaker 4: an interview with a devote of Santa Marte named Zenia,
Speaker 4: who is asked why she worshiped Santamorte and she said,
Speaker 4: and this is a translation from the Spanish. In translation,
Speaker 4: she says, because the only thing that is certain is death. Interesting. So,
Speaker 4: I don't know if I'm interpreting this right, but the
Speaker 4: way I took that meaning, it's kind of that death
Speaker 4: has undeniable power because unlike other spiritual entities, which you know,
Speaker 4: you name another god or saint, you're kind of having
Speaker 4: to put some faith in the idea that they have power.
Speaker 4: With death, There's no question about it. You absolutely know
Speaker 4: that it's real and it will be a factor in
Speaker 4: your life. And that kind of certainty of real power
Speaker 4: in the world can get mapped onto this embodiment of
Speaker 4: the thing.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean there's so many other religious concepts,
Speaker 2: personified or non personified, that are yeah, harder to grasp
Speaker 2: and maybe more of a even more of an intellectual
Speaker 2: pursuit to try and understand like some sort of you know,
Speaker 2: deep theological concept. But yeah, death is inevitable, and not
Speaker 2: only as the final destination if you will have our
Speaker 2: own life, but as something that will occur multiple times
Speaker 2: within proximity to our own life. We will experience it,
Speaker 2: we will feel it. It has an absolute reality, and yeah,
Speaker 2: as we experience the reality of death, it does kind
Speaker 2: of take shape like we have Again, we have all
Speaker 2: these personifications in our culture. And if you have a
Speaker 2: dominant personification like this that is just sort of like
Speaker 2: floating there, then yeah, the experience, the real experience of death,
Speaker 2: I can imagine, might bring you closer to it and
Speaker 2: realize like this, you know, if this entity has dominion
Speaker 2: over this thing that I feel like it's power, then
Speaker 2: is something I can feel as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So anyway, I want to get on just briefly
Speaker 4: to talk a bit about specifics of where they think
Speaker 4: this comes from, examples of where they think senta morte
Speaker 4: comes from, in the branch feeding into it that comes
Speaker 4: from indigenous traditions. So they talk about some broad trends
Speaker 4: in how death was most often spoken of in preconquest
Speaker 4: Mexico as far as we know. They say that in
Speaker 4: preconquest Mexican cultures, death was not as it was in
Speaker 4: the European context, thought of merely as the extinction or
Speaker 4: opposite of life. It was widely associated with, as we've said, regeneration.
Speaker 4: The symbols of death in pre Hispanic indigenous cultures include
Speaker 4: often themes of fecundity, sexuality, and rebirth, so you have healing,
Speaker 4: life giving, procreative properties. And they also say that Mesoamerican
Speaker 4: death deities were often not exactly gods and goddesses, but
Speaker 4: in the author's words quote conceptualized as representing or embodying
Speaker 4: the vital force of death, which vital force of death
Speaker 4: that almost sounds like a oxymoron, right, is the life
Speaker 4: force of death. But that is sort of what they
Speaker 4: really were. It's hard, you know, to maybe identify with
Speaker 4: that from the outside, but there is a life force
Speaker 4: of death, and that is what they embody within their person.
Speaker 4: So they sometimes symbolized the places where the dead dwell,
Speaker 4: and they sometimes acted as psychopomps, which we've talked about
Speaker 4: in other episodes of this, so they might guide the
Speaker 4: souls or the dead in some form to their place
Speaker 4: of dwelling after death. But they also had powers especially
Speaker 4: related to death, not just to cause death, but to
Speaker 4: do the opposite, so you could persuade them to delay
Speaker 4: death or to heal you in sick or wounded. And
Speaker 4: the authors bring up a pair of Aztec death deities.
Speaker 4: I apologize if I get the pronunciation wrong here, but
Speaker 4: they are mik Lantakoutli and mikta Kasiwatum. These are the
Speaker 4: male and female male deities associated with death and the underworld.
Speaker 4: And the authors say that in pre Hispanic times their
Speaker 4: domain was not exclusively death, so you would possibly approach
Speaker 4: them for blessings having to do with the with preservation
Speaker 4: and enrichment of life. And in Aztec art they are
Speaker 4: associated with the imagery of regeneration, birth, sex, and fecundity.
Speaker 4: I believe the female deity here, miktakasi Wato, is often
Speaker 4: represented as as pregnant. Actually, so these these images include
Speaker 4: everything from sexual penetration to pregnancy and lactation.
Speaker 3: They quote a couple of other scholars.
Speaker 4: Who have an idea about the origins of this connection,
Speaker 4: so they say quote it is assumed by McCafferty and
Speaker 4: Carrasco that this is related to the and then they
Speaker 4: begin to quote. These authors quote regenerative power of bones
Speaker 4: as seeds, which which is evident in the journey of
Speaker 4: Ketzlkowat to the world of the dead to steal the
Speaker 4: bones from which human beings.
Speaker 3: Would be created.
Speaker 4: So there's a like if bones are seeds, that is
Speaker 4: a quite literal connection between death and both both. I
Speaker 4: meant to say birth and growth, but both it is both.
Speaker 4: The authors discuss how before the Spanish Conquest, the female
Speaker 4: death deity miktakasi Watt presided over a roughly month long
Speaker 4: celebration of the beloved dead, which took place in the summer,
Speaker 4: and this was a time when you would remember ancestors
Speaker 4: and you would remember family members you had lost. And
Speaker 4: then after the Spanish conquest, as part of the imposition
Speaker 4: of Christianity by force, the authors say, quote, the Catholic
Speaker 4: Church exercised Miktakasiwat and moved the date to coincide with
Speaker 4: All Saints Day, the first of November, which is also
Speaker 4: known in Mexico as Day of the Innocence for its
Speaker 4: association with masses focusing on deceased infants and children, and
Speaker 4: All Souls Day the second of November, where the focus
Speaker 4: is on departed adults. So there's this attempt by the
Speaker 4: Catholic Church to kind of hammer the original festival into
Speaker 4: shape and make it a part of a Catholic celebration
Speaker 4: instead of the traditional celebration. However, interestingly, for many followers
Speaker 4: of Santa Morte, the Second Day of the Dead has
Speaker 4: become the Skeleton Saints feast day, and the Church, they say,
Speaker 4: has tried to suppress this because the Catholic Church says,
Speaker 4: this is not an approved saint.
Speaker 3: You know, you should not be making.
Speaker 4: This folk saint part of your celebrations. They would just
Speaker 4: want to keep the focus on the church sanctioned remembrance
Speaker 4: of lost loved ones. But the presence of Saint Death
Speaker 4: has not gone away. And the authors note that while
Speaker 4: they are intentionally trying to highlight the influence of Miktakasi
Speaker 4: Watt in those traditions on the evolution of to Morte,
Speaker 4: that is not the only.
Speaker 3: Religion.
Speaker 4: It's not only in as Tech religion that you find
Speaker 4: these regenerative or life giving powers related to death deities.
Speaker 4: You'll apparently find this association in traditions of the Mishtech
Speaker 4: and in the Maya. So one example they bring up
Speaker 4: is a Mishtech death deity named the Lady nine Grass,
Speaker 4: which is portrayed in a particular set of cotticies with
Speaker 4: first of all, a naked, hinged jaw like you'd see
Speaker 4: on a skeletal figure, so kind of a skeletal grim
Speaker 4: reaper type face. But also so she's not dressed in
Speaker 4: a dark hood with a scythe she is in a
Speaker 4: blouse like garment that you'd normally see worn by the vibrant,
Speaker 4: life giving female deities in post classic Mexican art. So
Speaker 4: you've got skull like imagery and life giving or life
Speaker 4: affirming imagery in the same figure. And so this seems
Speaker 4: again to be in line with beliefs about death as
Speaker 4: a transition to cyclical rebirth or a figure containing powers
Speaker 4: of states of change. And finally, I just want to
Speaker 4: mention they talk a bit about the contestation over the
Speaker 4: origins of Santa Marte. So versions of Santa Marte go
Speaker 4: back to the colonial period, but there's no consensus about
Speaker 4: exactly where Santa Marte comes from. That's why you get
Speaker 4: these different theories abounding. So some argue that she is
Speaker 4: just a version of the grim reapress La Parca brought
Speaker 4: from the Iberian traditions and made into a deity. But
Speaker 4: the authors here again argue that this theory doesn't really
Speaker 4: make sense because, for one thing, the grim Reaper was
Speaker 4: not venerated and did not provide blessings in a Catholic context.
Speaker 4: It was just an image to teach about death and
Speaker 4: to remind you, momento moray, remind you that death is coming.
Speaker 4: Christ is the only salvation.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It had different cultural values, but none of them were like,
Speaker 4: it's here to help you out and give you blessings
Speaker 4: if you make an offering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't implied that you should reach out to
Speaker 2: this individual. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that doesn't make sense, they say, But it
Speaker 4: does make sense as a sort of contribution of one
Speaker 4: half of the origin is like a contribution of grim
Speaker 4: Reaper imagery. They say, it makes sense if you also
Speaker 4: incorporate the very important influence of indigenous death deities, which
Speaker 4: were venerated and did provide blessings having to do with life.
Speaker 4: And then, finally, to quote from the authors quote, since
Speaker 4: many turned to death deities for their earthly needs, some
Speaker 4: indigenous groups, as archives prove, took the Grim Reaper for
Speaker 4: a saint. Since the Grim Reaper was often referred to
Speaker 4: in connection to Una Santa Marte, a holy Death, the
Speaker 4: figure of Death was understood to be miraculous, much like
Speaker 4: the other saints that the Catholic Church had brought over
Speaker 4: to New Spain, such as Santa Marta. Believing Death was
Speaker 4: a saint in its own right, some began worshiping it.
Speaker 4: This is the case for the Highland Maya in the
Speaker 4: state of Chiapas and Guatemala, and the Guarini in Argentina
Speaker 4: and Paraguay. So yeah, so there's this idea that that's
Speaker 4: their argument about the origins. I guess we don't know
Speaker 4: for sure exactly what the origins are, and they highlight
Speaker 4: that that it's somewhat obscure, you know, this versions of
Speaker 4: this figure popping up hundreds of years ago, and then
Speaker 4: it kind of comes in and out of fashion for
Speaker 4: a long time. It seems to be it is only
Speaker 4: in secret or in hiding that Santa Marte is honored,
Speaker 4: and in recent decades it has become much more open,
Speaker 4: you know, an there's open honoring of Santa Marte. However
Speaker 4: much the church tries to say like no don't do that.
Speaker 4: That's not part of Catholicism.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I feel like really interesting figure, really interesting history, and
Speaker 4: I love thinking about where this comes from, the idea
Speaker 4: that death is not just about death, that the embodiment
Speaker 4: of death has domain over all of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many interesting angles to this, but I
Speaker 2: love how there does seem to be a path of
Speaker 2: desire here. You know, she exists slightly outside of of
Speaker 2: of the actual, you know, dogmatic Catholic belief system, but
Speaker 2: clearly there is a great need for her, and people
Speaker 2: are drawn to the powers associated with her into and
Speaker 2: into that limital space that she occupies. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna turn over to a couple of other concepts here.
Speaker 2: In both of these cases, I'm not introducing entirely new
Speaker 2: concepts to our discussion, but kind of building on things
Speaker 2: we've been discussing already. And first of all, I want
Speaker 2: to just take a few moments to talk about this
Speaker 2: idea of death entities is not merely an idea, you know,
Speaker 2: but also an experience one might have. Because to be clear,
Speaker 2: they don't have to be a death entity, a grim
Speaker 2: reaper or an angel of death or any of these things.
Speaker 2: They don't have to be perceived as anything approach approaching
Speaker 2: literal incarnations or functional supernatural entities to have enormous cultural
Speaker 2: value obviously, but we do have to acknowledge that they
Speaker 2: certainly can be perceived and experienced as entities due to
Speaker 2: a number of factors. And some of these are things
Speaker 2: we've touched on over the years on the show, because
Speaker 2: we often talk about things that may be described as
Speaker 2: paranormal experiences and when you dig underneath them, like for
Speaker 2: us anyway, the really fascinating part is figuring out like
Speaker 2: how this actually emerges within the natural world, within the
Speaker 2: inner workings of our mind and so forth. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to just run through a few of these as
Speaker 2: I related via my own experience in the last episode.
Speaker 2: Dream states are a huge factor, sometimes enhanced by environment, anxiety,
Speaker 2: and the effects of certain medications, including anesthesia meds, and
Speaker 2: there have been many reports of people experiencing impactful visions
Speaker 2: of departed loved ones under anesthesia. Others report angels, demons,
Speaker 2: and death entities are certainly on the menu as well. Also,
Speaker 2: we can have various entities come into play via tempo
Speaker 2: varietal junction disruptions TPJ disruptions, So due to trauma, illness,
Speaker 2: or even electrical stimulation, this can result in the brain
Speaker 2: interpreting its own signals is that of some sort of
Speaker 2: an other. As we've mentioned as well on the show,
Speaker 2: we're hardwired not to contemplate the enormity of death, but
Speaker 2: rather for more localized social interactions as social animals. So
Speaker 2: we've also evolved something known as agent detection as a
Speaker 2: survival strategy, and this is tied in with something we've
Speaker 2: talked about in the show a lot before as well,
Speaker 2: idea of false positives. You know, we presume tigers to
Speaker 2: be where there are no tigers because if you think
Speaker 2: of tigers everywhere, then you have a survival advantage over
Speaker 2: people who don't think they are tigers anywhere. That sort
Speaker 2: of thing, Right.
Speaker 4: At some point you hit the point of diminishing returns
Speaker 4: for that payoff, Like you can be too paranoid, but
Speaker 4: generally nature selects for having greater amounts of fear and caution.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But alongside this, it can mean more than
Speaker 2: just seeing a threat where there isn't one. It can
Speaker 2: mean seeing a will where there isn't one. So the
Speaker 2: argument is that we possess a hyperactive agent detection device
Speaker 2: or had D or hat I guess coined I believe
Speaker 2: by cognitive psychologists Justin L. Barrett around the year two thousand.
Speaker 2: We tend to assume patterns have intent, and it might
Speaker 2: just underlie just about every god, demi god, and magical
Speaker 2: creature we've ever dreamed up. I feel like, for me,
Speaker 2: like the simple version of this is and this is
Speaker 2: in a way, this is like childishness on my part,
Speaker 2: but I imagine many of you have done the same.
Speaker 2: You stub your toe, You might very on the say
Speaker 2: the coffee table. You might very well blame the coffee table,
Speaker 2: curse the coffee table as an entity that has hurt you.
Speaker 3: Why did it do that to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this.
Speaker 4: For a while, the hyperactive agency detection device has been
Speaker 4: one of the theories kicking around about the the you know,
Speaker 4: the biological origins of religion and beliefs in magic and
Speaker 4: things like that. It's possible that this is in part
Speaker 4: where religious beliefs come from. We don't really know one
Speaker 4: way or another, whether you know, it's hard to prove that,
Speaker 4: but either way, I do think it's an interesting idea,
Speaker 4: and I think it's hard to deny that there is
Speaker 4: something like this at work, whether or not it's actually
Speaker 4: the correct cognitive explanation for the origin of religion and
Speaker 4: human history. It's clear something like this is at work
Speaker 4: within us, Like we we believe that there are animals
Speaker 4: or people or things that act with intentions like animals
Speaker 4: or people in situations where there are not all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even if it's not the primary underlying mechanism here,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's got to be in the mix, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's see. There's also the complex area of near death experience. Again,
Speaker 2: we're often talking about entities that are said to or
Speaker 2: believe to come into play during that liminal transitional phase
Speaker 2: between death and whatever comes after. And so yeah, near
Speaker 2: death experiences. This is a topic undo itself, but basically,
Speaker 2: the neurochemical state of the dying brain makes us more
Speaker 2: susceptible to these sorts of images, and there is nothing
Speaker 2: paranormal about near death experiences twenty eleven by Dean Mobs
Speaker 2: and Carolyn Watt. This is and Trends and Cognitive science
Speaker 2: that they argue that the neurochemical state of the dying
Speaker 2: brain mirror that of individuals on disassociative anesthetics, which frequently
Speaker 2: produce anthropomorphic hallucinations and out of body experiences. And finally,
Speaker 2: in a way that I think is equally profound as
Speaker 2: any of these, if not more so, is another concept
Speaker 2: we've touched on before, and that is that the brain
Speaker 2: does not just produce random static during a crisis. It
Speaker 2: uses top down processing to make sense of internal chaos.
Speaker 2: So there will be all these gaps in our understanding
Speaker 2: of what's happening, and our mind draws on relevant cultural
Speaker 2: symbols and scripts to piece it all together. And that
Speaker 2: script might be alien abduction, that script might be angel visitation,
Speaker 2: it might be the fair folk who live unseen in
Speaker 2: the woods. And the death entity is also a highly
Speaker 2: accessible symbol that is never that far away from us.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyway, just food for thought here as we're thinking
Speaker 2: about death. And again, I don't want to imply that
Speaker 2: every manifestation of death, every personification of death is indeed
Speaker 2: need to be a case where Okay, people believe they
Speaker 2: see this thing when they're close, or they see this
Speaker 2: thing near a dying person. That is sometimes the case,
Speaker 2: but these concepts, these personifications are just as potent and
Speaker 2: useful without that being in play.
Speaker 4: Oh No, it's a great distinction, because I think the
Speaker 4: majority of what we've been talking about has been artistic representation.
Speaker 4: You know, it's been artistic or deliberate imagination exercises things
Speaker 4: like that, or just literature, you know, cases where people
Speaker 4: are talking about how they imagine death. It's a quite
Speaker 4: different thing to believe. You see someone you know that, like,
Speaker 4: where does that come from? That seems to maybe arise
Speaker 4: by somewhat different pathways, maybe have somewhat different triggers than
Speaker 4: say a deliberate imaginative exercise where you're trying to come
Speaker 4: up with imagery for a painting, or a psychologist is
Speaker 4: sitting you down and asking you to think.
Speaker 3: What does death look like to you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you might find out in an experience that death
Speaker 4: looks different than you thought you would think.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it is interesting how like we may
Speaker 2: summon this personification in our mind as part of like
Speaker 2: the overarching human attempt to understand something as impactful and
Speaker 2: traumatic and transitional as death in our own life or
Speaker 2: in the lives of others, and then potentially have a
Speaker 2: situation where then you see or experience that manifestation as well. Now,
Speaker 2: for the rest of the episode. Here I wanted to
Speaker 2: follow up on another specific example of an anthropomorphic personification
Speaker 2: of death, and that is the Valkyries. We want to
Speaker 2: come back to the Valkyries here, so on discord email
Speaker 2: us if you want to link to join the stuff
Speaker 2: to blow your mind. Discord Server. A listener by the
Speaker 2: name of Gorpi wrote in and highly recommended that we
Speaker 2: come back to the Valkyries and include mention of a
Speaker 2: particular Skaldic poem. It's included in chapter one fifty seven
Speaker 2: of the Nile Saga. I'm going to probably butcher this pronunciation,
Speaker 2: but is It is titled dar Ratha the Song of
Speaker 2: the Spear, and Gorpi says that it contains quote the
Speaker 2: most metal description of fate being woven, and I agree,
Speaker 2: boy does it. Ever let's hear it all right. So
Speaker 2: I have to do some setup first, because it's not
Speaker 2: going to necessarily make sense to anyone out there who
Speaker 2: doesn't isn't already boned up on the loom or know
Speaker 2: about weaving via allum. It's going to entail a number
Speaker 2: of technology references to the loomb, specifically to the warp
Speaker 2: weighted loom. This is an upright loom that was standard
Speaker 2: for the day, you know, back back in the days
Speaker 2: of the Viking sagas. So in order to get just
Speaker 2: how metal this is, you're gonna have to learn a
Speaker 2: little bit about textile crafting terminology. Okay, all right, so
Speaker 2: I'm gonna bust out some terminology here. So first of all,
Speaker 2: what is the warp? I know it sounds magical and
Speaker 2: and already a little metal.
Speaker 4: But wait a minute, Rob, I'm sorry, is your reference
Speaker 4: point for this warhammer?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, I thought I saw that in your eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it could be you know, it could
Speaker 2: also be warp records. You know, they're different, different uses
Speaker 2: of the term. But within the world of the loom,
Speaker 2: the warp is a set of lengthwise yarns stretched tightly
Speaker 2: across the loom before the weaving begins. Then you also
Speaker 2: have the weft or wolf. This is a set of
Speaker 2: horizontal or crosswise threads that are woven over and under
Speaker 2: the vertical warp threads to create a piece of fabric.
Speaker 2: Up next, we have the headle. These are small or
Speaker 2: strings with a hole or eye in the middle. Each
Speaker 2: individual warp thread is threaded through one heddle, and when
Speaker 2: the headles are lifted or lower, they pull the warp
Speaker 2: threads with them to create a gap called a shed.
Speaker 2: All right, we also have heddle weights. These are small,
Speaker 2: heavy It's like a small heavy metal rod or weights
Speaker 2: attached to the bottom of an individual heddle. We have
Speaker 2: a headle rod. This is used to lift specific warp
Speaker 2: threads to create an opening. And then we have shuttles.
Speaker 2: These are the tools used to pass the weft or
Speaker 2: the wolf through the warp. Okay, so I actually know
Speaker 2: several loom enthusiasts in real life, but I've never discussed
Speaker 2: the use of the loom with them, so I almost
Speaker 2: pretty much all this terminology was new to me. I
Speaker 2: know we have some loom users out there, just it
Speaker 2: has to be the case. So maybe y'all can throw
Speaker 2: in on this later on in a listener Mail episode.
Speaker 2: But again, the idea here is that while many of
Speaker 2: us have no clue how this technology works or or
Speaker 2: what everything is called, this was an essential piece of
Speaker 2: technology of the day, and as clearly illustrated when I'm
Speaker 2: about to read it details, you know, its details were
Speaker 2: culturally relevant, kind of like how so much computer and
Speaker 2: internet terminology is found in our daily speech today, and
Speaker 2: I included an image of this for you, Joe, to
Speaker 2: look at. I think maybe this might clarify some of
Speaker 2: the ideas here.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm not you might clarify, but it's just
Speaker 4: like a thing that I have no familiarity with, and
Speaker 4: it's like tons of parts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, so I'm going to read here.
Speaker 2: I'll also add that this poem is said to concern
Speaker 2: the Battle of Klundtarf in ten fourteen CE. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this is the translation from M. Magnusen and H. Paulson
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty seven. Blood rains from the cloudy web
Speaker 2: on the broad loom of slaughter. The web of man
Speaker 2: gray as armor is now being woven. The Valkyries will
Speaker 2: cross it with a crimson weft. The warp is made
Speaker 2: of human entrails. Human heads are used as the hadel weights.
Speaker 2: The hatel rods are blood wet spears, the shafts are
Speaker 2: iron bound, and arrows are the shuttles. With swords, we
Speaker 2: will weave this web of battle. The Valkyries go weaving
Speaker 2: with drawn, swords killed and hothriml sangrid and svapal spears
Speaker 2: will shatter, shields will splinter swords will gnaw like wolves
Speaker 2: through armor. Let us now wind the web of war
Speaker 2: which the young King once waged. Let us advance and
Speaker 2: weigh through the ranks where friends of ours are exchanging blows.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to skip a bit at this point,
Speaker 2: but we do indeed continue to wind the web of war. Here,
Speaker 2: as our Scott Baker would put it, death comes spiraling down.
Speaker 2: But then I'm going to pick back up at the end.
Speaker 2: Here it is horrible now to look around as a
Speaker 2: blood red cloud darkens the sky. The heavens are stained
Speaker 2: with the blood of men. As the Valkyries sing their song,
Speaker 2: we sang well victory songs for the young King. Hail
Speaker 2: to our singing. Let him who listens to our valkyrie
Speaker 2: song learn it well and tell it to others. Let
Speaker 2: us ride our horses hard on bare backs with swords unsheathed,
Speaker 2: away from here. So I think you'd agree, Joe, pretty metal.
Speaker 4: That is intense. I like how the intensity is applied
Speaker 4: to the act of making textiles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which you would normally think this is something
Speaker 2: that could never harm us, would never be something that
Speaker 2: would entail intrails and blood and splintered bodies. But it
Speaker 2: goes back to what we were talking about earlier with
Speaker 2: the muses, you know, and depending on the technological metaphor
Speaker 2: in order to sort of make sense of how life
Speaker 2: comes together, how long it lasts, and how it ends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this does. I don't know, maybe I'm
Speaker 4: wrong about this, but this does at least suggest the
Speaker 4: idea of, whereas the usual technological metaphor of death is
Speaker 4: one of cutting, severing, reducing, destroying, that this is a
Speaker 4: productive death enterprise.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Which I think that comes down to the idea
Speaker 2: that it's attempting to help us understand the battle and
Speaker 2: the battle field. So the valkyries here are obviously creating
Speaker 2: no mere cloth. They are weaving the war winning wolf,
Speaker 2: a supernatural tapestry that ensures the king's victory or defeat.
Speaker 2: So once more, it's a textile product of destiny like
Speaker 2: we've discussed before, while also standing as a powerful metaphor
Speaker 2: for the battlefield itself, a place of chaos, of death,
Speaker 2: of strategy and will as well as fate and destiny.
Speaker 2: And when everything settles, the blood, the dust, the entrails,
Speaker 2: like some sort of destiny will be achieved, like a
Speaker 2: king will rise or a king will fall. Something will
Speaker 2: have changed now in thinking about this, thinking about this
Speaker 2: idea though, of the valkyries, the choosers of the slain,
Speaker 2: wheeling over the battlefield like carrion birds, I'm reminded once
Speaker 2: more of the idea of reference in Herzog's Psyche and
Speaker 2: Death that the more archaic death demons in human traditions
Speaker 2: are or more pure animal forms, such as wolves, snakes, horses,
Speaker 2: and of course birds. And of these wolves and vultures
Speaker 2: are exactly the sorts of creatures that would help themselves
Speaker 2: to the dead and dying on a battlefield, that could
Speaker 2: conceivably like physically visit you as you are on the
Speaker 2: threshold of death, not to do anything supernatural, but to
Speaker 2: you know, wait for you to expire, or maybe get
Speaker 2: in a little early on the.
Speaker 4: Goods, to exhibit the virtuars of patients.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's interesting too that arguably one of the
Speaker 2: earliest known depictions of a personification of death is that
Speaker 2: of a gigantic black vulture like birds that's swarming or
Speaker 2: birds swarming over a headless human corpse. And these are
Speaker 2: depicted on the seventh century BCE paintings at Chatilhuyuk in Anatolia,
Speaker 2: and it's been proposed that headless remains discovered at this
Speaker 2: location actual headless remains point to some sort of ritual
Speaker 2: defleshing of the dead prior to their burial, which might
Speaker 2: be another angle on the significance of birds in practices
Speaker 2: like this, lining up with practices like exposure or sky burial,
Speaker 2: which we see practice into the modern era, where generally
Speaker 2: in places where bodies cannot be buried all that easily,
Speaker 2: or maybe cannot be burd learned all that easily. One
Speaker 2: way of returning them to the natural cycle of things
Speaker 2: is to allow birds to feast on the soft tissues
Speaker 2: and then you can do what you need to do
Speaker 2: with the bones. So there's obviously plenty of symbolic weight
Speaker 2: to throw around with all this. But you know, birds
Speaker 2: sailing from above coming down to visit the dead and
Speaker 2: the dying, You know what are they doing? Yes, they're
Speaker 2: probably coming down to eat some eyeballs and so forth,
Speaker 2: But more on the mystical realm of things? Are they
Speaker 2: death dealers? Are they psychopomps? And so forth? And so
Speaker 2: these various aspects are combined with the feminine form to
Speaker 2: varying degrees to bring us the likes of the valkyries,
Speaker 2: which again are sometimes said to be clothed in feathers,
Speaker 2: as well as the cares or the cares of Greek tradition.
Speaker 2: And you know, we might be tempted to describe them
Speaker 2: as harpy like, and we've discussed harpies on the show before,
Speaker 2: but I just want to throw in that harpies are
Speaker 2: more closely associated as personification, are more closely understood as
Speaker 2: personifications wind so a different personification going on there in
Speaker 2: its origin. But the keras Uh were the daughters of
Speaker 2: Nicks where to understand the goddess of night, and they were.
Speaker 2: They're often described as death fates and that hover over
Speaker 2: the battlefield, deciding who will fall and or looking to
Speaker 2: exact a fate already decided by some higher deity, and
Speaker 2: then swooping down upon the dying to await their death
Speaker 2: so they can drag their soul into the afterlife. So
Speaker 2: they are scavenger like fearsome creatures of doom.
Speaker 4: So but that's interesting because they combine, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: the pre death selection and the psychopomp role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not in a good way. They're more in
Speaker 2: the drag you to hell kind of a realm with psychopomp.
Speaker 2: Not the come, gentle traveler, I see that you are lost,
Speaker 2: let me help you. They're more like I'm going to
Speaker 2: grab you by the tendon and rag you into eightes. Now,
Speaker 2: there's a Greek epic poem attributed to Hesiod titled The
Speaker 2: Shield of Heracles, and it includes an awesome description of
Speaker 2: the keras here, and I should mention that not every
Speaker 2: translation of this poem actually keeps the word keras. Some
Speaker 2: use other words to describe them, and sometimes it's been
Speaker 2: argue that, well, there's not really an appropriate English language
Speaker 2: word for this sort of thing. But I'm going to
Speaker 2: read from the nineteen fifty nine Richard Lattimore translation, and
Speaker 2: it puts it like this. And men, the seniors on
Speaker 2: whom old age had seized already, were sitting assembled outside
Speaker 2: the gates and holding up their hands to the immortal gods,
Speaker 2: being in fear for the sake of their children. And these,
Speaker 2: for their part, were fighting their battle. And where they
Speaker 2: were the spirits of death, dark colored and clattering, their
Speaker 2: white teeth, deadly faced, grim glaring, bloody and unapproachable. We're
Speaker 2: fighting over the fallen men, all of them rushing forward
Speaker 2: to drink of the black blood, and each as soon
Speaker 2: as she had snatched a man down already or just
Speaker 2: dropping from a wound, would hook her great claws about
Speaker 2: his body while his soul went down to the realm
Speaker 2: of hades and cold tartarus. And then the spirits had
Speaker 2: sated their senses on the blood of men's slaughter, they
Speaker 2: would throw what was left behind them and go storming
Speaker 2: back into the battle clamor and the struggle.
Speaker 4: Okay, so quite predatory vision there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's still you know, death selectors in the
Speaker 2: valkyrie s. But whereas the Valkyries are going to escort
Speaker 2: you to a valhalla and are ultimately seen as in
Speaker 2: a way deliverers like mission accomplished, You've done your part
Speaker 2: and now you know, just reward. Yeah, this is the opposite.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting how many things they have in common otherwise,
Speaker 2: and you know, we might wonder, you know, to what,
Speaker 2: to what extent they are partially based on observations of
Speaker 2: raptors feasting on the dead following battles throughout human history,
Speaker 2: I would say that they do not. They certainly don't
Speaker 2: feel like you should worship them. I don't and I
Speaker 2: haven't seen any any suggestions that one should.
Speaker 3: They're not going to do much good for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're doing their job, they're enjoying it. Sounds
Speaker 2: like a little bit too much, but I don't know
Speaker 2: they're getting it done. All right. Well, I think we're
Speaker 2: going to go ahead and close up this episode, perhaps
Speaker 2: close up the series. I'm not sure we're going to
Speaker 2: leave it slightly open ended. Maybe we should leave it
Speaker 2: open ended in the long term, because I don't want
Speaker 2: death to think that we're we're done discussing it, that
Speaker 2: this is finished. So yeah, I'm going to say officially
Speaker 2: open ended. We may come back next episode, We come
Speaker 2: back years from now, so we should be permitted to
Speaker 2: flourish in case that is the option we choose to pursue.
Speaker 3: But we will send our messengers ahead of us.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, no doubt. All right. Just a reminder to
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 4: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
Speaker 4: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 4: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 4: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 4: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 4: your Mind dot com.
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