Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 2: it's Saturday. We're heading on down into the vault for
Speaker 2: an older episode of the show. This is part three
Speaker 2: of our series on necromancy called The Necromantic Urge, originally
Speaker 2: published on October fifth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Enjoy but Macmore and Sodosma were necromancers who came from
Speaker 1: the dark Isle of Nat to practice their baleful arts
Speaker 1: in Tinniath beyond the shrunken seas. But they did not
Speaker 1: prosper in Tinniath, for death was deemed a holy thing
Speaker 1: by the people of that gray country, and the nothingness
Speaker 1: of the tomb was not lightly to be desecrated, and
Speaker 1: the raising up of the dead by necromancy was held
Speaker 1: in abomination. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production
Speaker 1: of by Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 2: three in our series on necromancy. The ancient practice of
Speaker 2: consulting the dead or the spirits of the dead for
Speaker 2: the purpose of divination, of accessing hidden knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yes, despite the fact that a lot of our modern
Speaker 1: pop cultuy uses of necromancy tend to involve raising of
Speaker 1: the dead. And actually that quote that I read at
Speaker 1: the top of this episode is from the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two short story The Empire of the Necromancers by Clark
Speaker 1: Ashton Smith, and it is full of raising the dead
Speaker 1: via the necromantic arts. But as we've discussed in these
Speaker 1: episodes so far, necromancy, as we loosely categorize it, is
Speaker 1: more situated in the realm of divination.
Speaker 2: Well, in the previous episodes in the series, which if
Speaker 2: you haven't listened to yet, you should probably go check
Speaker 2: those out first. But in these previous episodes we talked
Speaker 2: about accounts of necromancy or pseudo necromantic legends from ancient China.
Speaker 2: We talked about accounts of how necromancy was practiced or
Speaker 2: may have been practiced in ancient Mesopotamia, including consulting these
Speaker 2: tablets that have descriptions of the incantations to use and
Speaker 2: the potions to prepare if you want to speak to
Speaker 2: the dead through a prepared skull in a special ritual.
Speaker 2: In part two, we talked about a lot of accounts
Speaker 2: of necromancy as practiced or at least as used as
Speaker 2: a plot device in stories from ancient Greece and Rome
Speaker 2: and today, we wanted to come back and finish out
Speaker 2: the discussion by talking about necromancy a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We're going to jump around a little bit here
Speaker 1: later on in the episode. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: get into some medieval Christian ideas about necromancy, what it was,
Speaker 1: and whether you should do it or not. A spoiler
Speaker 1: in tended to say no, don't do it, but with
Speaker 1: some caveats, so I'll get into.
Speaker 2: I also want to interrogate the boundaries of necromancy a
Speaker 2: little bit and maybe pick apart the concept somewhat. But
Speaker 2: before we do that, there's a question that's been coming
Speaker 2: up because we've been looking at examples from the ancient
Speaker 2: world of how this may have been practiced, or at
Speaker 2: least was thought by some to be practiced in the
Speaker 2: ancient world. My question would be, well, how far back
Speaker 2: does it go? What's the earliest evidence we have of
Speaker 2: people trying to communicate or consult with the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's get into that a little bit again,
Speaker 1: with the huge caveat that the term necromancy can be
Speaker 1: applied very broadly or very specifically, and is ultimately just
Speaker 1: a word. So with that in mind, I will refer
Speaker 1: back briefly to the paper The Origins of Necromancy or
Speaker 1: How We Learn to Speak to the Dead by Czech
Speaker 1: academic Andres Kabcar. He argues for a connection potentially between
Speaker 1: ancient shamanistic practices and what we might think of as necromancy,
Speaker 1: with individual human beings often serving as psychopomps. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, guardians guide there to guide one spirit from
Speaker 1: this world into the next. Other functions that would put
Speaker 1: a living mortal shaman in some form of communication with
Speaker 1: the deceased are also imaginable. This in addition to just
Speaker 1: general ancestor veneration, ancestor cults, and ancestor worshiped. So it's
Speaker 1: not it's not inconceivable to consider all of this potential
Speaker 1: hallmark of human spiritual and religious thought going back to
Speaker 1: very early human culture as a coping method for the
Speaker 1: emotionally and socially devastating reality of death. Right.
Speaker 2: We don't know, but it seems perfectly plausible that it
Speaker 2: could be something like first people, you know, just merely
Speaker 2: emotionally missed their dead loved ones and wanted to you know,
Speaker 2: continue thinking about them and talking about them and so forth,
Speaker 2: and maybe from this arose some kind of culture of
Speaker 2: keeping their memory alive, out of which arose some kind
Speaker 2: of idea that, well, maybe there are ways to still
Speaker 2: talk to them somehow, and maybe they have something to
Speaker 2: say to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, we undeniably have a desire to
Speaker 1: speak to them. I mean, that's that's proven out in
Speaker 1: so many countless examples, including our own individual experiences. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have visited the grave
Speaker 1: of a deceased loved one and spoken to them, you know,
Speaker 1: varying degrees of understanding or expectation of them hearing us well,
Speaker 1: and certainly of them speaking back to us. But to
Speaker 1: speak to the dead, I think is not necessarily this
Speaker 1: you know, this alien supernatural thing. I think it comes
Speaker 1: from a very natural place in the human psyche, and I
Speaker 1: mean probably gets back into this idea that, yeah, when
Speaker 1: someone dies is it is emotionally and soually devastating and
Speaker 1: we have to find ways to deal with it.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, while you can imagine that historical
Speaker 2: or prehistoric development and it certainly seems plausible. It's hard
Speaker 2: to have decisive evidence for things like that, or to
Speaker 2: have decisive evidence of practices of communicating with and getting
Speaker 2: knowledge from the dead from before times of say literary
Speaker 2: writings about such.
Speaker 1: Right, right, because the literature gives us more insight into
Speaker 1: what was done, why it was done, and what the
Speaker 1: expectation was. In many instances, sometimes you know there are
Speaker 1: still questions, certainly, but otherwise what are you left with?
Speaker 1: You're left with human remains, and you can sort of
Speaker 1: look at like two broad categories, situations where human remains
Speaker 1: have not been manipulated by human beings and situations where
Speaker 1: they have been manipulated by human beings and added caveat.
Speaker 1: As we've discussed in the show before, and we've recently
Speaker 1: had a guest in the show to discuss this, like
Speaker 1: sometimes that's up for dispute too, with one side saying,
Speaker 1: I don't think these bodies were manipulated by human beings.
Speaker 1: I think they were manipulated by predatory animals, and then
Speaker 1: the other side saying, no, this is evidence of humans
Speaker 1: manipulating their dead, and intentional manipulation of the dead has
Speaker 1: been going on for a very long time. At least
Speaker 1: since the time of the Neanderthals. We move bodies, and
Speaker 1: we've moved bodies for various purposes, and a rich global
Speaker 1: heritage of funerary practices have grown out of these traditions.
Speaker 1: But with the oldest burials, you look at them and yeah,
Speaker 1: we just have very little to go on when we're
Speaker 1: trying to decide, try and figure out what was the
Speaker 1: intent behind this practice? It was it a practice and
Speaker 1: what was the intent? Right?
Speaker 2: So, given those extreme caveats, what are some of these
Speaker 2: pieces of ambiguous evidence people might point to to think,
Speaker 2: I wonder if this was used for romantic purposes, for necromancy.
Speaker 1: Well, Kapcar highlights ancient archaeological sites linked to ancestor cults
Speaker 1: as being some of the main candidates for some form
Speaker 1: of ancient necromancy in the Middle East. And I should
Speaker 1: add that he's not arguing, like one hundred percent this
Speaker 1: is necromancy. He's just saying, like, Okay, beyond what we
Speaker 1: can be certain about, what evidence could we make an
Speaker 1: argument about. A specific mention is made of the plaster
Speaker 1: covered heads of cattle hook dating back to seventy five
Speaker 1: hundred to fifty seven hundred BCE. We've mentioned this place
Speaker 1: on the show before, specifically in our invention episodes on
Speaker 1: the coffin, the toilet, and the Mirror, as well as
Speaker 1: our stuff to Blow your Mind episodes on brain and
Speaker 1: head theft. Because there does seem to be some sort
Speaker 1: of ritual removal of the head here.
Speaker 2: Well, let's zero in on the example of plastered human
Speaker 2: skulls from the ancient Fertile Crescent to see what we
Speaker 2: can figure out from them. A rob, I've attached a
Speaker 2: picture for you to look at here. This is a
Speaker 2: famous plastered skull from I think dates given or sometimes
Speaker 2: nine thousand or nine thousand, five hundred years ago. This
Speaker 2: is sometimes known as the Jerre Coast skull. It is
Speaker 2: one of the skulls recovered from the tell or the
Speaker 2: mound of the ancient settlement of Jericho, and this is
Speaker 2: from the Neolithic period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is quite intriguing to look at because again
Speaker 1: you have a human skull, but it has been covered
Speaker 1: in plaster in a way to sort of it seems like,
Speaker 1: to recreate the flesh of the dead. And then we
Speaker 1: have what I believe these are shells that have been
Speaker 1: placed in where the eyes would be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So there are multiple artifacts of this type
Speaker 2: from the ancient Levant and some from Turkey, from again
Speaker 2: the site of Chattelhuyuk and is essentially what these are,
Speaker 2: real human skulls, sometimes without the mandible, so without the
Speaker 2: lower jaw, filled in with earth or plaster, and then
Speaker 2: covered on the outside in plaster at least on the front,
Speaker 2: and decorated with individual facial features. So as you said,
Speaker 2: rob seashells for eyes, they might be clamshell or cowie shells,
Speaker 2: some kind of shells, marine shells to simulate eyeballs, and
Speaker 2: then plaster facial structure, so maybe even like eyelids, overlapping
Speaker 2: the seashells in a way, and of course painting on
Speaker 2: the outside, so hair and eyebrows, mustaches and so forth
Speaker 2: would be painted on the plaster. I was actually watching
Speaker 2: an interview with a curator at the British Museum, coincidentally
Speaker 2: another in the series Curator's Corner, which I mentioned in
Speaker 2: part one of this series for unrelated reasons. That was
Speaker 2: just an interview with an author named Irving Finkel who
Speaker 2: we were reading a paper from that was about ancient
Speaker 2: Mesopotamian exorcism practices. This is an interview with a curator
Speaker 2: from the British Museum named Alexandra Fletcher about the Jericho skull,
Speaker 2: and she opines that the Jericho skull, the one you're
Speaker 2: looking at here, rob is probably the oldest example of
Speaker 2: portraiture in the British Museum's collection because of the assumption
Speaker 2: that it was made to resemble a specific person, though
Speaker 2: we don't know that. We don't know for sure, but
Speaker 2: these skulls are usually assumed to have been made to
Speaker 2: resemble the person the skull belonged to in life.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense, right. I mean, if you're gonna do
Speaker 1: a plaster sculpture of someone and you have their skull
Speaker 1: on hand, like there you go, that's the perfect foundation
Speaker 1: upon which to create your art.
Speaker 2: And there's an interesting scientific and technological parallel to this
Speaker 2: that comes up in a second. So Fletcher goes into
Speaker 2: describing some work, like analysis work that has been done
Speaker 2: on the Jericho skull. She says, as background, he was
Speaker 2: part of a group of seven people who were buried
Speaker 2: together uncovered in the nineteen fifties, and she talks about
Speaker 2: research to try to analyze the human skull underneath without
Speaker 2: damaging the plaster surrounding it, at least at least surrounding
Speaker 2: the front of the skull. The back is more exposed,
Speaker 2: and she says that the researchers used CT scanning to
Speaker 2: create an image of the bone underneath without hurting the place,
Speaker 2: and that revealed some interesting stuff. For example, this man's
Speaker 2: nose was broken sometime in life, and it shows how
Speaker 2: it had been broken and healed. And as a child,
Speaker 2: this man had had his head bound to possibly to
Speaker 2: shape the skull. As the man grew up, so there
Speaker 2: was a sense in which the skull was sort of pinched,
Speaker 2: and you can see a ridge in the skull where
Speaker 2: it was pinched that way. And this as he developed,
Speaker 2: he had slightly elongated skull for this reason.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, not an uncommon practice in certain parts
Speaker 1: of the ancient world.
Speaker 2: After death, the inside of the skull was stuffed with
Speaker 2: soil and clay, and there's a hole in the back
Speaker 2: of the skull where Fletcher says you can still see
Speaker 2: the indentations of the fingers of the person who packed
Speaker 2: the clay into the brain cavity.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But the interesting parallel to the ancient plaster surrounding the
Speaker 2: skull is that by analyzing the bone structure, modern scientists
Speaker 2: were able to with a good degree of accuracy, they think,
Speaker 2: reconstruct this man's face. The process is considered not exact,
Speaker 2: but pretty accurate, to the extent that Fletcher claims that
Speaker 2: if people who knew this man in life walked into
Speaker 2: the room and saw the reconstruction, she says she thinks
Speaker 2: they would instantly recognize him. So, in a way, we
Speaker 2: have used modern technology to reconstruct this man's face around
Speaker 2: the basis of the skull, much like ancient people used
Speaker 2: I guess probably memory of what this man looked like
Speaker 2: to reconstruct his face in plaster around the skull.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating, though again we can't know one
Speaker 1: d you know why they did this, and certainly you
Speaker 1: can make arguments for the lifelike qualities being bestowed upon
Speaker 1: the skull in order to communicate with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's certainly the hard nechromatic angle to take on it,
Speaker 1: and others have found this interesting as well. These skulls
Speaker 1: are brought up by Julian James in his book The
Speaker 1: Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Biicameral Mind
Speaker 1: as being you know, one of the many different bits
Speaker 1: of evidence or alleged evidence from the ancient world that
Speaker 1: he uses to back up this this hypothesis of the
Speaker 1: biicameral mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he probably is leaning heavily on the interpretation that
Speaker 2: people talk to these skulls, which again I want to
Speaker 2: really emphasize, like, we don't know that. All we have
Speaker 2: are the artifacts. There are not there's not literature describing
Speaker 2: how these skulls were used in the ancient world, So
Speaker 2: we just don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know if they spoke to the skulls.
Speaker 1: For the most I mean, we don't know the skull
Speaker 1: We assume the skulls did not answer, though Jane's would
Speaker 1: argue that they possibly did. And yes, if Julian Jane's
Speaker 1: hypothesis was correct, that would impact everything we've been discussing
Speaker 1: about in terms of necromancy, because it would mean that, yes,
Speaker 1: there here is a neural logical way that the dead
Speaker 1: not only could speak to human beings, but spoke to
Speaker 1: them on a regular basis. Go back and listen to
Speaker 1: our old episodes on his hypothesis if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about that. But yeah, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like did they just simply recreate these faces
Speaker 1: in order to honor them, to remember them, and if
Speaker 1: they were speaking to them, like we can sort of
Speaker 1: imagine like a broad scale a spectrum of possible necromancy,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's you know, there are certainly versions
Speaker 1: of this interpretation in which they might have been speaking
Speaker 1: to these skulls, but we're not actually seeking knowledge from
Speaker 1: the dead.
Speaker 2: That's right. So I want to get deeper into that
Speaker 2: in a minute. But in a way, this connects to
Speaker 2: what I thought was an interesting little side comment that
Speaker 2: this British Museum researcher Alexander Fletcher makes in this interview
Speaker 2: where she just kind of says that, you know, the
Speaker 2: longer you work with work with these skulls, do research
Speaker 2: on them, especially maybe from the you know, the reconstruction
Speaker 2: of the face, the more you come to see the
Speaker 2: skulls not just as an artifact but as a person.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wow, maybe I am over interpreting,
Speaker 2: but that seems perhaps revealing about the effect they might
Speaker 2: have had on the people who originally made them as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to come back to the idea of adding
Speaker 2: some sort of complications to the idea of necromancy or
Speaker 2: divination through the dead as a coherent and discreet practice.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking about this, and I was thinking
Speaker 2: about how in a lot of these early settlements where
Speaker 2: these plaster skulls are found, you know, the settlements with
Speaker 2: permanent structures like chattlehou Yuk which you mentioned in Jericho,
Speaker 2: there are other interesting features about how the dead were
Speaker 2: dealt with as well, not just the creation of plaster skulls,
Speaker 2: But in these settlements, it seems sometimes the bodies of
Speaker 2: the dead were buried inside people's houses. So maybe your grandparents'
Speaker 2: bones might not be often a cemetery somewhere else that
Speaker 2: you go and visit from time to time, but right
Speaker 2: in the house with you, maybe buried under the floor
Speaker 2: or under your bed. Again, we don't know for sure
Speaker 2: why they did this. All kinds of speculation abounds. In
Speaker 2: some cases, it looks like the bodies might have been
Speaker 2: removed elsewhere for the flesh to rot off the bones
Speaker 2: or be picked off the bones. Maybe the bones were
Speaker 2: defleshed somewhere else and then maybe brought back inside the house,
Speaker 2: and then they would live under the floor, under your
Speaker 2: bed or something. But these are also places where we
Speaker 2: encounterplastered skulls. So it just seems it seems possible to
Speaker 2: me that if the skull had some kind of significance
Speaker 2: as a conduit for communication with the dead, I wonder
Speaker 2: if it wasn't a spec discrete, transactional event ritual like
Speaker 2: we've been talking about in some of these Greek stories,
Speaker 2: you know, where you like you go to the oracle
Speaker 2: and you know what I mean, like it being a
Speaker 2: special event. I wonder if it's more like just a
Speaker 2: kind of continuous belief that, yes, Grandma is still here
Speaker 2: with us, she's in the house, she lives with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I can easily imagine that that being
Speaker 1: the case. Again, it's not too far away from sort
Speaker 1: of the mild background supernatural ideas that many of us
Speaker 1: may may dabble in, you know, like to think about
Speaker 1: a deceased loved one being nearby, you know. I think
Speaker 1: it is something that a lot of us probably do
Speaker 1: to some degree without even being on the level of,
Speaker 1: like I believe in ghosts, you know.
Speaker 2: And so if the situation were something more like that,
Speaker 2: to the extent that you would seek advice from your
Speaker 2: grandparent in this context, I wonder if it would give
Speaker 2: kind of the wrong impression to call that necromancy, because
Speaker 2: again of the all the stories we have in which
Speaker 2: the necromancy is usually more a like I was saying,
Speaker 2: a discrete, transactional kind of event ritual versus something that
Speaker 2: is just intimate and continuous in part of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so many of these stories, ancient and modern, depict
Speaker 1: necromancy as kind of an extreme thing. You do, you know,
Speaker 1: when other attempts to remedy a situation have not worked,
Speaker 1: that's when you seek out the necromantic solution.
Speaker 2: But then again, just to emphasize how little we know
Speaker 2: for sure, there could be totally different explanations as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe burying the bones in the house and
Speaker 2: putting a plaster face over your ancestor skull, maybe that
Speaker 2: was just merely a form of honoring and remembering people,
Speaker 2: just like you might I don't know, have a photo
Speaker 2: of a dead relative on the wall today or something
Speaker 2: buried with them. You know, we miss our ancestor who
Speaker 2: has passed on. So maybe we keep the bones or
Speaker 2: plaster the skull in a way under the house or
Speaker 2: in the house in a way of remembering them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so certainly these are not neutral skulls. These
Speaker 1: are skulls that are conceivably connected to loved ones, but
Speaker 1: still like even like human understanding and appreciation of skulls
Speaker 1: is kind of complex because they take on all these
Speaker 1: symbolic meanings, but then they're also there's also this sort
Speaker 1: of like coolness to the skull that has seem to
Speaker 1: exist for a long time, and you know, we get
Speaker 1: into this with other skull based traditions and artifacts as well.
Speaker 1: Is discussed in their recent either recently rerun or about
Speaker 1: to be rerun episode where I interviewed Brian Hoggart about
Speaker 1: anti witchcraft precautions, some of which involved putting skulls, particularly
Speaker 1: horse skulls, in the foundation of a building. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of it's just kind of like, well, horse skulls
Speaker 1: are really interesting looking. They don't look like horses, but
Speaker 1: yet they are horses, and horses have this important place
Speaker 1: in human lives. So yeah, there are a number of
Speaker 1: different ways you can go in and try and figure
Speaker 1: out like why was this important?
Speaker 2: Right, So there's just so much like we don't know
Speaker 2: anybody who has too confident or too certain a theory
Speaker 2: about what these remains meant and how they were used.
Speaker 2: I think you should be highly skeptical of that, but
Speaker 2: I do think one interesting piece of information that we
Speaker 2: can use is not from the ancient world itself, but
Speaker 2: just from looking at practices of ancestor veneration today by analogy,
Speaker 2: which is a totally common practice all over the world.
Speaker 1: That's right, we discussed We've discussed some of these already,
Speaker 1: at least in Passing, particularly the importance of ancestor veneration
Speaker 1: in Chinese culture, right.
Speaker 2: And so I was looking for some documentation of people
Speaker 2: today with religious practices that could be considered to include
Speaker 2: strong elements of ancestor veneration and also something that could
Speaker 2: be considered divination via deceased ancestors. And I think from
Speaker 2: what I can tell, this combination of beliefs is not
Speaker 2: especially unique or unusual. Lots of people around the world
Speaker 2: practice forms of ancestor veneration that might include some way
Speaker 2: of establishing contact with the dead or getting information or
Speaker 2: messages from them. But I wanted to find one clear
Speaker 2: example with documentation of specifics so we're not just dealing
Speaker 2: with generalities. And I came across an interesting paper looking
Speaker 2: at the Bupeti people. So this was by Maura kang
Speaker 2: E k Lebaka, who is a scholar at the University
Speaker 2: of South Africa specializing in African musical arts and ethnomusicology.
Speaker 2: The paper was called the Art of Establishing and Maintaining
Speaker 2: Contact with Ancestors, a study of Bapeti tradition published in
Speaker 2: the journal HTS Theological Studies in the year twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: So the Buppetti people mostly live within northern South Africa,
Speaker 2: and Lebaca, synthesizing the work of some previous ethnographers, describes
Speaker 2: a common view of ancestors among the Bapeti people. Again,
Speaker 2: same caveat with all of the examples we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Beliefs are not usually universal within a culture. All you
Speaker 2: can do is describe commonly found beliefs. He says, first
Speaker 2: of all, in the words of a scholar named Mibiti,
Speaker 2: there is a widespread belief in many African traditional religions
Speaker 2: that quote, death does not annihilate life, and the departed
Speaker 2: continue to exist in the hereafter, so the dead are
Speaker 2: not gone, they remain spiritually alive in some sense. Also,
Speaker 2: Lebacca says that the character of ancestors is believed to
Speaker 2: remain fundamentally unchanged since they were alive dead ancestors go
Speaker 2: on existing. They remain themselves in good and bad ways,
Speaker 2: so they can protect and advise their descendants. But they
Speaker 2: are also not like perfect, perfected, ethereal beings. They're like us,
Speaker 2: and they are like they were in life, so also
Speaker 2: prone to jealousy and motivations of that sort. He says,
Speaker 2: the spirits of ancestors have the power to affect the
Speaker 2: fates of the living, and this can be for good
Speaker 2: or for ill. Their behavior toward the living depends largely
Speaker 2: on if they are properly honored and venerated, and Lebaca
Speaker 2: argues that veneration is different from worship. Veneration is more
Speaker 2: like the respect that the young are expected to give
Speaker 2: to their elders, except extended beyond the bound boundary of death,
Speaker 2: and does have special rituals involved. He says ancestral spirits
Speaker 2: guard and enforce morality within the family and prevent feuds
Speaker 2: and conflicts between living members of the family. This is
Speaker 2: mentioned later in the article, but it's worth noting that
Speaker 2: ancestors are believed to be powerful and can cause supernatural
Speaker 2: outcomes to affect people, but they're not omnipotent. They can't
Speaker 2: do anything Lebaca says that sometimes but petty ancestors need
Speaker 2: to be contacted, need to be communicated with, and he
Speaker 2: says there are a couple of main ways to establish contact.
Speaker 2: There are these communal music and dance ceremonies known as
Speaker 2: the Malopo ritual, and that appeases the ancestral spirits. But
Speaker 2: there is also a way of seeking help of traditional healers,
Speaker 2: especially with the use of divination bones. Now, I want
Speaker 2: to note that, as far as I could tell, these
Speaker 2: are not the bones of ancestors. The paper doesn't address
Speaker 2: this question directly, but it seemed to me, based on
Speaker 2: a photo included in the paper and the fact that
Speaker 2: it was not specified otherwise, that these would probably be
Speaker 2: normal kind of bones that would be used in practices
Speaker 2: of osteomancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in other instances of bones being used
Speaker 1: as essentially, you know, dies of some sort, they've always
Speaker 1: been animal bones. I don't remember off hand an example
Speaker 1: of them being human bones, but it may exist elsewhere.
Speaker 2: I only specified that because we were just talking about
Speaker 2: examples of bones being kept like within the houses of
Speaker 2: the living, So I think we're not talking about ancestors
Speaker 2: bones here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right, they would assurely specified if
Speaker 1: that was the case.
Speaker 2: So Lebaca in this paper includes a number of interviews
Speaker 2: with traditional healers, one of whom describes that direct communication
Speaker 2: between healers and their own ancestors happens through music and
Speaker 2: through dreams, and that the purpose of the use of
Speaker 2: music and group singing in ritual contact with ancestors is
Speaker 2: quote to create harmony between the living and the ancestors.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was interesting because it reminds me
Speaker 2: of the way that, of course singing can be used
Speaker 2: to create a sense of togetherness among the living alone,
Speaker 2: you know, just like a people a group of people
Speaker 2: singing together. I think almost everybody will know what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about when I say the way that creates this
Speaker 2: weird sense of emergent harmony and sort of group identity.
Speaker 2: And so maybe by inviting the dead to be a
Speaker 2: part of that as well, you're sort of bringing them
Speaker 2: to the table in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: But this paper a naturalistic approach of observing malopo rituals
Speaker 2: and interviewing traditional healers about the function of ancestor veneration
Speaker 2: in Bapetti society. And there's one story recounted in the
Speaker 2: paper Told by a Healer that that goes basically as follows.
Speaker 2: I'll do a shorter summary the healer. Before she was
Speaker 2: a traditional healer, she had been sick and had experienced
Speaker 2: trouble sleeping, and then she had a dream of a
Speaker 2: man who gave her a plastic bag full of divination bones,
Speaker 2: and so she went to her Christian church to find
Speaker 2: out what to do, and they gave her some instructions
Speaker 2: of things she could do, but she did not follow
Speaker 2: the instructions and started having encounters with snakes, like there
Speaker 2: was a snake in her pillowcase one night, and then
Speaker 2: the encounters got worse. She and her husband encountered a
Speaker 2: much bigger snake. So she and her husband went to
Speaker 2: visit a traditional healer and he used divination bones to
Speaker 2: discover that her grandfather had been a traditional healer himself,
Speaker 2: and he wanted her to become a healer as well,
Speaker 2: and the illness, the insomnia, and the snakes were signs
Speaker 2: to push her onto this path. So in her story,
Speaker 2: she accepted the call became a healer, and after her training,
Speaker 2: she came home and was welcomed back with a malopo ritual,
Speaker 2: and the snakes and the pain and the insomnia were gone.
Speaker 2: There are also other stories included here of ill health
Speaker 2: and frightening experiences brought on by ancestors to sort of
Speaker 2: pressure the living descendants to follow their advice and Lebaca
Speaker 2: this is not a point Lebacca raises in the paper,
Speaker 2: but I just happened to note that in the cases
Speaker 2: documented in this study, the communication with dead ancestors sought
Speaker 2: with the help of healers, does not provide information about
Speaker 2: like objective future outcomes, such as you know what will
Speaker 2: happen in the future, who's going to ascend to the throne,
Speaker 2: who's going to win the war, like we talked about
Speaker 2: in some of these ancient examples. Rather, it seems to
Speaker 2: be providing the ancestor's personal perspective. So in this case
Speaker 2: of divination, it has less of a prophetic quality than
Speaker 2: in some of the like, especially the fictional accounts, and
Speaker 2: seems more to me like it's focused on seeking the
Speaker 2: ancestors advice, like it allows the person to understand the
Speaker 2: ways that the ancestor is influencing their life for good
Speaker 2: or for ill, and kind of the same way a
Speaker 2: chat with a living elder might provide both personal advice
Speaker 2: of things that they think you should do with your life,
Speaker 2: but also explanations of why and how the elder is
Speaker 2: treating you the way they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sort of serving to bring the current generation
Speaker 1: in line with past generations and the will and the
Speaker 1: expectations of ancestors. This reminds me of how, in certain
Speaker 1: analysis I've read of traditional Chinese ancestor generation, that you
Speaker 1: could think of it as a kind of structural completeness,
Speaker 1: that the family unit is not just a thing that exists,
Speaker 1: you know, with borders and a certain head count in
Speaker 1: the present, but it is a thing that exists in
Speaker 1: the present and stretching back through the past, and therefore,
Speaker 1: like being in line with the will of ancestors is
Speaker 1: about like keeping the structure sound and making sure that
Speaker 1: everything is lined up and has this structural completeness, which
Speaker 1: I think can be a slightly alien concept to many
Speaker 1: of us, especially if you tend to sort of view
Speaker 1: like the family is a thing that exists solely in
Speaker 1: the present, maybe it sinks back a little bit in time,
Speaker 1: but is not deeply rooted in the past.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it seems to me to highlight how culturally variable.
Speaker 2: The idea of the family is like what constitutes the
Speaker 2: family and as especially as like a functional unit still
Speaker 2: having an effect on all members within. Yeah, but so anyway,
Speaker 2: to look at a few assessments from this paper, Lebacca
Speaker 2: says that there's a common belief among people of the
Speaker 2: Bipetti society that the main thing ancestors want is to
Speaker 2: be remembered and respected by their descendants. And if the
Speaker 2: living faithfully remember and venerate their ancestors, they're going to
Speaker 2: be blessed with good health, healthy livestock and crops, good weather,
Speaker 2: and so forth. And sometimes for a healing to take place,
Speaker 2: a healer will have to consult the spirits of ancestors
Speaker 2: directly to find out what to do. Another interesting thing
Speaker 2: he notes is that he says Bipetti often feel that
Speaker 2: it is inappropriate to approach their supreme deity or God directly,
Speaker 2: and instead would use their ancestral spirits as sort of
Speaker 2: intermediaries or emissaries between themselves and God. So I thought
Speaker 2: this was an interesting layer of perspective that gives us,
Speaker 2: I think, a more nuanced view of what it means
Speaker 2: to be in contact in communication with the dead, because
Speaker 2: here's one case where people today certainly do use rituals
Speaker 2: such as communal music and dance and consultation with healers
Speaker 2: using divination bones to get in contact with the dead,
Speaker 2: But it does not seem to me, at least not
Speaker 2: in the cases documented in this study, to usually be
Speaker 2: for the purpose of like knowing the future in advance,
Speaker 2: but rather for the purpose of gaining perspective on the
Speaker 2: present and the past. You establish communication with the dead
Speaker 2: in order to receive wisdom and to receive advice, and
Speaker 2: to find out what your ancestors want you to do
Speaker 2: or expect you to do, and to find out how
Speaker 2: the ancestors advice and desires are connected to the trials
Speaker 2: and other things you are experiencing in your daily life.
Speaker 2: And this really got me thinking, because it made me
Speaker 2: think that actually, even in a lot of the cases
Speaker 2: we've already been looking at from you know, accounts from
Speaker 2: the ancient world and so forth, a lot of the
Speaker 2: cases of divination through spirits of the dead that we
Speaker 2: looked at did not consist of a person seeking to
Speaker 2: know the future in the kind of you know, the
Speaker 2: fictional sorcerer sense we think about, where like somebody wants
Speaker 2: ultimate power, and so they want to know what happens
Speaker 2: ahead of time to exploit that. Instead, it very often
Speaker 2: seemed to involve a much more personal, intimate, interactive kind
Speaker 2: of knowledge, like knowledge useful for the exorcism of an
Speaker 2: unwanted ghost, or knowledge useful to get advice, or you know,
Speaker 2: wisdom from an ancestor or other knowledge of that kind
Speaker 2: of personal sort. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean in a way it almost puts
Speaker 1: things more in line with this idea that what we
Speaker 1: think of as necromancy is maybe more in line with
Speaker 1: various shamanistic practices going stretching back through various human cultures,
Speaker 1: very far back in human existence. But yeah, not the
Speaker 1: but a lot of like smaller practices aimed at sort
Speaker 1: of realigning your life, things that almost could be thought
Speaker 1: of as having a therapeutic property to them. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like something feels out of line in my life.
Speaker 1: I need to get right with the ancestors. I need
Speaker 1: to touch base with the ancestors in one form or another.
Speaker 2: But that makes me feel like maybe we should come
Speaker 2: back and further explore the other side of the scale
Speaker 2: as well. If that's a view of divination seeking communication
Speaker 2: with the dead as a kind of intimate, wholesome, integrated
Speaker 2: thing within people's lives and culture that helps provide the
Speaker 2: perspective of ancestors and wisdom. There are also culturally very
Speaker 2: different views that would place it back in the category
Speaker 2: of like a special extreme, transactional kind of event ritual.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And in this we're gonna we've been talking
Speaker 1: about sort of bottom up necromancy, necromancy, things like necromancy
Speaker 1: that have emerged as part of traditional practices. Now let's
Speaker 1: turn back to medieval Christian Europe and think about sort
Speaker 1: of like the top down view of a Christian hierarchy
Speaker 1: looking to stamp out necromatic practices and necromatic texts, because,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned several times already, there is this general
Speaker 1: attitude in medieval Christian Europe, again very top down, not
Speaker 1: talking about like traditional pre Christian beliefs that are still
Speaker 1: resonating among the various peoples of Europe and various peoples
Speaker 1: under the control of Christian forces, but rather this top
Speaker 1: down view that first of all, the dead cannot be
Speaker 1: communicated with, and they should not be communicated with. If
Speaker 1: you attempt necromancy, you may well speak with something, but
Speaker 1: it will be a demon rather than a ghost, and
Speaker 1: so only ill can come of it. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: necromancy and necromatic texts certainly existed and were circul related.
Speaker 1: At times, they were greatly feared by the Church, as
Speaker 1: pointed out by Richard Keikeffer in nineteen ninety sevens Forbidden Rights.
Speaker 1: When Franciscan Friar Bernard de Lussius was accused by the
Speaker 1: Holy Inquisition of using necromancy against the Pope in thirteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: he was cleared of the charge, but he was still
Speaker 1: sent to prison for merely possessing a book of alleged necromancy.
Speaker 2: Simon, I'd rather see you dead.
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean that the movie you're referencing does does
Speaker 1: present this various top down view of forbidden knowledge and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: We're talking about The Devil Rides Out by the Way,
Speaker 2: where Christopher Lee's character like, Oh, it's okay for him
Speaker 2: to know about all of the forbidden magical rituals, but
Speaker 2: it's not okay for his friend Simon to know about them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean within one of these cultural situations,
Speaker 1: it's always okay for someone to know about them, to
Speaker 1: know about these things, and those are the ones who
Speaker 1: get to tell everyone else that they're not allowed to
Speaker 1: know about them. The witch hunters get all the cool texts. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Fears and accusations of clergy possessing and or using necromantic
Speaker 1: writings continued afterwards. However, Keir Keffer discusses these books as
Speaker 1: concerning quote explicitly demonic magic as well, and this seems
Speaker 1: to have been the case during the Middle Ages as well,
Speaker 1: where sometimes something described as necromancy did involve divination via
Speaker 1: the dead, but other times it was used interchangeably with
Speaker 1: demonic magic. By most theological definitions. However, communication with demons
Speaker 1: and demonic divination would not be the same as merely
Speaker 1: speaking with the dead, unless you're getting into this again
Speaker 1: this very specific Christian caveat about the distinction or the
Speaker 1: lack of a distinction between the two key Keffer writes quote.
Speaker 1: One possible reason for the conflation of these terms and
Speaker 1: concepts was the widespread assumption that when one engaged in
Speaker 1: necromancy in the area sense conjuring the spirits of the deceased,
Speaker 1: the spirits which in fact appeared were demons in the
Speaker 1: forms of the dead and the biblical example here that
Speaker 1: is often summoned up to support this is the shade
Speaker 1: of Samuel being conjured by the Witch of Indoor, and
Speaker 1: it is said that this is not really the spirit
Speaker 1: of Samuel, this is a demon in the guise of
Speaker 1: his spirit.
Speaker 2: I don't think the Bible says that. I think in
Speaker 2: the Bible it is pretty much understood to be Samuel.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but again you get into like, what are
Speaker 1: the official interpretations of a given religious text, right, Yeah, Still,
Speaker 1: there was discussion of pure necromancy in various texts. A
Speaker 1: couple of examples are brought up here. There's the Rowlinson
Speaker 1: Necromatic Manuscript, as it's popularly known. This is a Latin
Speaker 1: and Middle English collection of texts on magic and divination,
Speaker 1: including the invocation of angels as well as the dead.
Speaker 1: Its name for Richard Rowlinson, an eighteenth century clergy member
Speaker 1: and collector of rare books and manuscripts. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: contains instructions for necromantic magic, as does the so called
Speaker 1: Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, a fifteenth century Godick grimour.
Speaker 1: Instructions from the Munich Manual via Keith Kefer involve the
Speaker 1: creation of multiple magic circles, a sword and a ring,
Speaker 1: and you can use these rights to speak to the dead, certainly,
Speaker 1: but also you can make a living person appear dead.
Speaker 1: You can also make a living person fall in love
Speaker 1: with you, and many other things. Hmm. Now. In one section,
Speaker 1: ki Keffer adds some interesting ideas about the idea of
Speaker 1: necromancy and nonsense. We often assume that everyone considering necromancy
Speaker 1: in medieval times was either an eager believer or a
Speaker 1: fearful inquisitor when it came to this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: so he writes the following quote. One might add to
Speaker 1: this that it is not altogether anachronistic to see the
Speaker 1: notion of necromancy as nonsense. As it's at its most playful,
Speaker 1: it was a deliberate violation of sense, a fantasy of illusion,
Speaker 1: perhaps intended more for imaginative entertainment than for actual use.
Speaker 1: Yet the boundaries between sense and nonsense are rarely quite stable,
Speaker 1: and themes that seem to an outsider absolutely nonsensical could
Speaker 1: be taken in deadly earnest by some observers within the
Speaker 1: culture quote and the deadly earnest observers in this particular case,
Speaker 1: he would be referring to would be like the witch
Speaker 1: hunters and so forth, the demonology theorists that brought about
Speaker 1: so much actual, real misery in the world.
Speaker 2: Ah, So he's exploring the possibility that it was the
Speaker 2: inquisitors and so forth who would who were taking the
Speaker 2: concept more literally than the people who practiced it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think maybe suggesting that there is again
Speaker 1: kind of a it's not just necromancy and non necromancy.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a broad spectrum of various beliefs, practices, rights,
Speaker 1: but also stories, legends, myths that may concern speaking with
Speaker 1: the dead that are understood to varying degrees within a
Speaker 1: given group to not be reality, you know, to in
Speaker 1: the same way that myth is somewhere between reality and fiction.
Speaker 1: You know that some of these traditions hold that place.
Speaker 1: But then you have someone come in with an agenda,
Speaker 1: with a violent agenda, and they're here to stamp out
Speaker 1: practices that are a threat to the church, to stamp
Speaker 1: out individuals that are a threat to the church. Well,
Speaker 1: then they can take any of these things and use
Speaker 1: them to support their case. Now for a little more
Speaker 1: detail on where the church stood on necromancy, and again
Speaker 1: you're dealing with. We're dealing with a with centuries here,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with all sorts of individuals coming in with
Speaker 1: different ideas. So this is not presented to be like
Speaker 1: the word on necromancy. But I thought it would be
Speaker 1: interesting to turn to the famous writings of Thomas Aquinas,
Speaker 1: who lived twelve twenty five through twelve seventy four. This
Speaker 1: is from the Summa Theologica, or the Summary of Theology.
Speaker 1: The book covers a great deal of ground, but it
Speaker 1: does mention necromancy in a few places and gets to
Speaker 1: the meat of what it was thought to be at
Speaker 1: the time in terms of divination. So this is from
Speaker 1: a translation of a Summa theological quote. All divinations seek
Speaker 1: to acquire for knowledge of future events by means of
Speaker 1: some council and help of a demon who is either
Speaker 1: expressly called upon to give his help, or else thrust
Speaker 1: himself in secretly, in order to tell certain future things
Speaker 1: unknown to men but known to him the demon in
Speaker 1: such manners as to have been explained in Isaiah fifty
Speaker 1: seven to three.
Speaker 2: The statement almost seems like a direct argument against what
Speaker 2: we were just talking about with respect to the subtlety
Speaker 2: and complex range of different kinds of communication with the
Speaker 2: dead that might take place, especially in a culture that
Speaker 2: practices common forms of ancestor veneration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is like, clearly we're dealing with
Speaker 1: a situation where it is not thought that there is
Speaker 1: any room for this sort of thing within within the
Speaker 1: Christian world, and anything outside of the Christian world that
Speaker 1: even looks like this is probably against the rules.
Speaker 2: It's always to know the future, and it's always a demon.
Speaker 1: Yes, So Aquinas continues to in states when demons are
Speaker 1: expressly invoked, they are wont to foretell the future in
Speaker 1: many ways. Sometimes they offer themselves to human sight and
Speaker 1: hearing by mock apparitions in order to foretell the future,
Speaker 1: and this species is called the digitation because man's eyes
Speaker 1: are blindfolded. Sometimes they make use of dreams, and this
Speaker 1: is called divination by dreams. Sometimes they employ apparitions or
Speaker 1: utterances of the dead, and this species is called necromancy,
Speaker 1: for as Isidore observes, in Greek, necron means dead and
Speaker 1: mantilla divination, because after certain incantations and the sprinkling of blood,
Speaker 1: the dead seem to come to life to divine and
Speaker 1: to answer questions so he goes on to discuss other
Speaker 1: forms of divination. Divination, he says, which is practiced without
Speaker 1: express invocation of demons, occurs in two forms, one by
Speaker 1: observing things in nature, and the other by observing things
Speaker 1: due to human action, like rolling dice or flipping through
Speaker 1: a book. He writes again in translation, accordingly, it is
Speaker 1: clear that there are three kinds of divination. The first
Speaker 1: is when the demons are invoked openly. This comes under
Speaker 1: the head of necromancy. The second is merely an observation
Speaker 1: of the disposition or movement of some other being, and
Speaker 1: this belongs to augury, while the third consists in doing
Speaker 1: something in order to discover the occult, and this belongs
Speaker 1: to sordilach. Under each of these, many others are contained
Speaker 1: as explained above, And he says, in all the afore said,
Speaker 1: there is the same general, but not the same special
Speaker 1: character of sin, For it is much more grievous to
Speaker 1: invoke the demons than to do things that deserve the
Speaker 1: demon's interference. So he's saying, look, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: do let's say you're trying to speak to the spirit
Speaker 1: of the dead, and a demon intercepts the call, as
Speaker 1: they always will and then manipulates you through that communication.
Speaker 1: That's one thing, like, that's bad, you've messed up, But
Speaker 1: you haven't messed up as badly if you had gone
Speaker 1: out and done a demonic ritual and said, hey, demons,
Speaker 1: I need you to come here because we have things
Speaker 1: to talk about now. I did find it interesting that
Speaker 1: Aquinas stresses that merely speaking to a demon or inquiring
Speaker 1: of the truth from a demon is not unlawful, in
Speaker 1: part because Christ spoke to the demon legion. He spoke
Speaker 1: to the demons that were in the swine or were
Speaker 1: driven into the swine. However, it is unlawful to invoke
Speaker 1: a demon. So by this classification, I would think, if
Speaker 1: a demon comes up to you and is like, hey, suck,
Speaker 1: you have every right to go suck back, but it
Speaker 1: is unlawful to summon the demon and then go suck. Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So if you encounter a demon, you can talk
Speaker 2: to you, probably you can argue with it or whatever,
Speaker 2: but you can't say like, hey, demons, if any demon
Speaker 2: is out there, come debate me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like if you're Martin Luther and the demons
Speaker 1: show up, you can cuss at them and throw things
Speaker 1: at them. And drive them away, right, that's not demonic
Speaker 1: witchcraft or what have you. But if you summon them,
Speaker 1: I guess even if you summon them to cuss at
Speaker 1: them like, that's bad.
Speaker 2: I would assume so. But especially if you summon them
Speaker 2: in order to gain power from them, that's bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Aquina says, quote. Now, it is one thing
Speaker 1: to question a demon who comes to us of his
Speaker 1: own accord, and it is lawful to do so at
Speaker 1: times for the good of others, especially when he can
Speaker 1: be compelled by the power of God to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: and another to invoke a demon in order to gain
Speaker 1: from him knowledge of things hidden from us. Now that
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems to me like that opens
Speaker 1: up a gray area. Are like, are you just could
Speaker 1: you put yourself in a position where you're just in
Speaker 1: the right place to encounter demons, so you're not quite
Speaker 1: summoning them, but you're like, you're not baiting the demon,
Speaker 1: but you are hanging out in a place or a
Speaker 1: position where they might show up.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, I'm gonna just keep moving my
Speaker 2: arms this way, and if they happen to touch a
Speaker 2: wija board, that that's its problem, not mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm or yeah, I'm going to hang out in
Speaker 1: this this this haunted crypt and we'll just see what happens. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also mentions that divination by the stars is fine
Speaker 1: so long as you're not invoking a demon. So again,
Speaker 1: this is just a snapshot at some of the top
Speaker 1: down ideas about speaking to the dead and why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do it, and ultimately a little bit of demonology
Speaker 1: splashed in there as well. But you know, there's so
Speaker 1: much that would have been going on in different cultures
Speaker 1: throughout the centuries covered by the Middle Ages here. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of traditions involving, you know, speaking
Speaker 1: to the dead, conjuring the dead at crossroads and so forth,
Speaker 1: and then there's so many on top of that, there's
Speaker 1: so many different traditions, legends, ghost stories, et cetera that
Speaker 1: deal with this sort of thing that again may not
Speaker 1: have a like literal role within the culture saying this
Speaker 1: is how you speak to the dead, but like here
Speaker 1: is an idea of speaking to the dead, and it
Speaker 1: can still have a great deal of importance within a
Speaker 1: given culture.
Speaker 2: Now, seeing these different views of communicating with the dead
Speaker 2: side by side, it really highlights how how one, I
Speaker 2: think could easily be mistaken for the other by an
Speaker 2: unsympathetic observer, like somebody who's got a particular theological point
Speaker 2: of view and who looks into a culture, one of
Speaker 2: the many cultures that practice's forms of ancestor veneration that
Speaker 2: may involve some type of ritual of consulting with the
Speaker 2: dead with the ancestors seeking their wisdom or getting information
Speaker 2: about how they're continuing to affect your life. Like that,
Speaker 2: an unsympathetic observer looks in on a culture and sees that,
Speaker 2: and they say, oh, they're doing witchcraft in order to
Speaker 2: get power from the dead so that they can like
Speaker 2: no events in advance and you know, and manipulate people.
Speaker 2: It seems very clear how that kind of mistaken impression
Speaker 2: could be formed. And I wonder if that gives rise
Speaker 2: to some legends of necromantic practices that probably weren't ever
Speaker 2: actually practiced, that were just like unsympathetic observer looking in
Speaker 2: on ancestor veneration of some form in another culture and
Speaker 2: saying like, ah, they're they're consulting the dead in order
Speaker 2: to do something malicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And then at the same time, I mean,
Speaker 1: you have things like the veneration of saints within uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Catholic Christian traditions that you know, you could
Speaker 1: make an argument for sort of you know, scratching the
Speaker 1: same itch. So you know, a lot of this falls
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this depends on who's judging,
Speaker 1: who's laying out the laws, and who's saying what is
Speaker 1: acceptable and what is not acceptable. When we consider individuals
Speaker 1: and generations that came before us.
Speaker 2: Do you think Aquinas was saying it's okay to talk
Speaker 2: to a demon if you didn't summon it, because like
Speaker 2: he did that one time, Like he's a actually that's
Speaker 2: not a problem.
Speaker 1: Well, there there are so many you know, I enjoy
Speaker 1: reading about this occasionally, like getting into exactly what was
Speaker 1: thought of as correct concerning demons at various points in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, like what could they do and what
Speaker 1: could they not do in accordance with divine will? And
Speaker 1: there's some of that in Aquinas's writing, for sure, and
Speaker 1: you see that in the writings of other key individuals
Speaker 1: as well, like can they like one classic example of
Speaker 1: this we just we've discussed multiple times is can an
Speaker 1: incubus or succubist take on a complete disguise as a
Speaker 1: beautiful human to seduce humans, And there's the ideal, No,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be fair to the faithful. So there'll always
Speaker 1: be some sort of a tell like duck feed or
Speaker 1: some sort of goat feed or something just so that
Speaker 1: you'll have so the faithful will have an out that
Speaker 1: you know, and so there's a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Can demons do miracles and so forth.
Speaker 2: Though I think as we discussed with the idea of
Speaker 2: the duck feed, I wonder if the idea was was
Speaker 2: really about the faithful having out or more about saying like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you did succumb to an incubus or a succubus,
Speaker 2: it's your fault because there was something there you should
Speaker 2: have noticed, right. It's about saying, like, you, you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't unfair to you. You should have been more
Speaker 2: on the lookout.
Speaker 1: Right, And also like what would a just god allow
Speaker 1: under his domain? You know? And you know, there's of
Speaker 1: course the more pressing side of that, like why do
Speaker 1: bad things happen to good people? Why is there suffering
Speaker 1: in the world, and so forth, And that's I guess
Speaker 1: the larger concern. But then when you get into demonology,
Speaker 1: like that's a whole other area. Like, Okay, well these
Speaker 1: demons get to run around and just do whatever. That
Speaker 1: doesn't seem right. They're like, well, no, no, no, they can
Speaker 1: do certain things. And I believe Aquinas writes that, like,
Speaker 1: they are allowed to do certain things because by allowing
Speaker 1: the demons a certain amount of freedom, it actually has
Speaker 1: a positive impact on the faithful, you know, because like
Speaker 1: in having to deal with all this demonic stuff, like
Speaker 1: it's going to end up bolstering your faith to some extent.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: But it's complicate. It's complicated. That's why. That's why people
Speaker 1: like Aquinas did so many words to it.
Speaker 2: Okay, should we wrap up necromancy there?
Speaker 1: I believe we will, but you know, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there. If there's an example of
Speaker 1: outright necromancy and fiction, legend and lore, or various examples
Speaker 1: of communication with spirits or ancestor veneration that you think
Speaker 1: are notable and you'd like to bring up, well, write in.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you. We can keep
Speaker 1: discussing this topic on future editions of listener Mail. Listener
Speaker 1: Mail publishes on Mondays and The Stuff to Blow your
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Speaker 1: or Artifact episode, and then on Fridays we set aside
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Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.
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