Speaker 1: Hey, you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, and we have
Speaker 1: for you today of alt episode The hearth Part two
Speaker 1: of two, originally published twelve nineteen, twenty twenty four. This
Speaker 1: is the continuation of our look at the importance of
Speaker 1: the fireplace in the hearthstone in human culture, psychology, and myth.
Speaker 1: So let us gather around its gentle warm glow.
Speaker 2: Here here is certitude you swore below this lightning blasted tree,
Speaker 2: where once it strikes, it strikes no more fool. And
Speaker 2: you sang, Here is a three, And in this three
Speaker 2: love lies unshaken as now, so must it always be.
Speaker 2: You sang, with harsh notes, to awaken that ancient toad
Speaker 2: who sits and mirrored within your hearthstone light forsaken. He
Speaker 2: knows that limits long endured must open out in vanity,
Speaker 2: that gates by bolts of gold secured must open out
Speaker 2: in vanity.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick, and we are back
Speaker 2: with part two in our series on the Fireplace and
Speaker 2: the hearth that reading at the opening was an excerpt
Speaker 2: from not the whole poem, but an excerpt from a
Speaker 2: poem called Essay on Knowledge by the poet Robert Graves,
Speaker 2: the author of I Claudius, or as some might call it, Iclavdivs.
Speaker 2: And so this poem, we were a little confused because Rob,
Speaker 2: you dug this up, and I'd never read it before,
Speaker 2: but I really liked it. But we were confused because
Speaker 2: we were finding multiple versions of the same poem. And
Speaker 2: it turns out that's not an error. There actually are
Speaker 2: multiple versions of this poem. So it's kind of like
Speaker 2: with some of these Walt Whitman poems, where like, you know,
Speaker 2: he published multiple drafts of the same work. That's going
Speaker 2: on here. Graves published an early version of the poem
Speaker 2: called Essay on Knowledge, and then a later one called Vanity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's I mean, it's really getting into some
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind territory, because not only do
Speaker 1: we have a hearthstone with an ancient toad beneath it,
Speaker 1: we also have a lightning blasted tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an unintended resonance there. But as I said,
Speaker 2: I'd never read this before. I really love it now.
Speaker 2: It seems to describe the poet's internal struggle between reason
Speaker 2: and passion. So he's characterizing half of his soul as
Speaker 2: a kind of unflappable scholar aspiring to aloof rationality, that
Speaker 2: part of himself attached to the day side kingdom of
Speaker 2: Christendom and the Enlightenment. And then the other part of
Speaker 2: him hidden underneath this thonyan pagan dragon of weird emotion, emotion, lust,
Speaker 2: and magic, I think are the themes of the suppressed part.
Speaker 2: In fact, we didn't quote this part of the poem,
Speaker 2: but in an earlier stanza he refers to it as
Speaker 2: a dragon, and the balance of the poem seems to
Speaker 2: suggest that as much as the rationality of civilization tries
Speaker 2: to rule over the self, the dragon of lust and
Speaker 2: emotion and passion will inevitably at some point be unleashed
Speaker 2: from his tomb and reign again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, he's saying, I really want to be a
Speaker 1: good Christian scholar, dude, but somebody buried this pagan psychomania
Speaker 1: frog underneath my hearth and there's nothing I can do
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: But anyway, the focal lines for us are interesting because
Speaker 2: when I first read the poem. You know, I thought
Speaker 2: that it was supposed to be the speaker's suppressed emotion
Speaker 2: and carnal desire that were embodied as that ancient toad
Speaker 2: who sits and mirrored within your hearthstone light forsaken. In
Speaker 2: other words, I took the toad as another form of
Speaker 2: the pagan dragon. However, I was reading an essay about
Speaker 2: Graves called Philosophical Speculations, mock Beggar Hall, Welchman's Hose and
Speaker 2: Poetic Unreason by a critic named Patrick Quinn. Not otherwise
Speaker 2: familiar with this critic, but Quinn writes about this part
Speaker 2: of the poem that quote the cries awaken only an
Speaker 2: ancient toad symbol of the philosophic awareness of the Apollonian
Speaker 2: and Dionysian duality in man's nature, referring to that division
Speaker 2: between the sort of Apollonian reason and Dionysian passion that
Speaker 2: is discussed in Plato's dialogue The Feedrus. But anyway, so
Speaker 2: you get that line after that in the poem, where
Speaker 2: Graves says he knows the limits long endured must open
Speaker 2: out in vanity, and the he in that line seems
Speaker 2: to be the toad. So if Quinn is correct, the
Speaker 2: toad is not the dragon of passion and emotion, not
Speaker 2: that Dionysian half of the struggle, but in dead the
Speaker 2: sage who observes and describes the struggle to us, the
Speaker 2: toad immurred beneath the hearth is Socrates. But anyway, this
Speaker 2: line kind of reminds me of that thing. So like,
Speaker 2: the toad is buried beneath the hearthstone, and it reminds
Speaker 2: me of the thing we talked about in the previous
Speaker 2: episode of the void buried amulets, where you know, by
Speaker 2: symbolic law of contagion that now means Socrates is a
Speaker 2: witch bottle full of urine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and later on in the episode we'll get back
Speaker 1: to some things buried under the hearthstone and there will
Speaker 1: be toads.
Speaker 2: Now. To recap a bit about the previous episode, if
Speaker 2: you haven't heard it, I would recommend going back and
Speaker 2: checking that out first. But in part one of the series,
Speaker 2: we talked about what interior fireplaces mean to us culturally
Speaker 2: by looking at the characteristics of hearthfire simulations such as
Speaker 2: the Assorted Fireplace for your Home style media offerings that
Speaker 2: have become very popular as ambient streaming video in recent years,
Speaker 2: including with we talked about some kind of burn barrel
Speaker 2: for your home linked to some dystopian movie, and also
Speaker 2: your witcher fireplace beloved in your house, Rob.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know if I mentioned this one,
Speaker 1: but there's a squid Game one. Now. Did I mention
Speaker 1: that in the last episode.
Speaker 2: You mentioned just finding out about it?
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, I haven't watched it yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm excited. This is the most exciting thing I know
Speaker 1: about on Netflix. Is this squid Game fireplace? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: may fire it up tonight.
Speaker 2: Nice. But also in the last episode, we talked briefly
Speaker 2: about research into the prehistory of humans and our close
Speaker 2: hominin relatives, how our relationship too and then control of
Speaker 2: fire probably developed over the last couple of million years,
Speaker 2: and how fire fundamentally changed so much about human life,
Speaker 2: from nutrition to technology to our relationship with the climate
Speaker 2: and with wildlife. After this, we talked about how a
Speaker 2: modern domestic fireplace is usually constructed and how it works, or,
Speaker 2: depending on your emphasis, how it doesn't work given it's
Speaker 2: massive inefficiency as a heat source for the home. Estimates vary,
Speaker 2: but something like eighty or ninety percent of the heat
Speaker 2: put out by a standard wood fire is lost just
Speaker 2: straight up the chimney and goes right out the flu
Speaker 2: And depending on the design, a wood fireplace can sometimes
Speaker 2: even make a house colder overall, even though it heats
Speaker 2: up one room, you know, makes one room nice and toasty,
Speaker 2: but freezes out the rest of the house. We discussed
Speaker 2: the mechanics of that in Part one, and of course
Speaker 2: all of this material energy analysis is useful to know,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to make hearthfire any less beautiful
Speaker 2: or attractive or magical to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as well as deeply nostalgic and comforting. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: connecting with something very primal when we view a fireplace. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And on that note, finally, in the last episode, we
Speaker 2: talked about the idea of the fireplace and its a
Speaker 2: connected ventilation system as a portal for magical entrances and
Speaker 2: exits in many full beliefs, as a sort of for
Speaker 2: one thing, I sort of transporter platform to the gods,
Speaker 2: but beyond that, as a weak spot in the homes
Speaker 2: defense against spells and witchcraft. And this led to interesting
Speaker 2: examples of apotropaic magic associated with the hearth So thinking
Speaker 2: of the fireplace as a gap in the armor that
Speaker 2: had to be protected, perhaps by witch traps or other
Speaker 2: magically potent items, maybe shoes. Yeah. Now, in the last episode,
Speaker 2: one idea that I mentioned briefly and said I would
Speaker 2: come back to today was about the idea of domestic
Speaker 2: hearth fire and the nature of the light it provides.
Speaker 2: When you think about it, firelight is different both in
Speaker 2: quantity of light produced and in quality from daylight, and
Speaker 2: that fact should not be overlooked when understanding the role
Speaker 2: of fire in culture, especially if it is the primary
Speaker 2: or the only source of artificial light, but even in
Speaker 2: cases where you're just sort of optionally choosing to have
Speaker 2: a room lit by a fire. And this brings me
Speaker 2: to an interesting paper I came across about a less material,
Speaker 2: less economic, but probably no less important way that control
Speaker 2: of fire may have altered human culture all over the
Speaker 2: world in prehistory. So this paper was by a scholar
Speaker 2: named Polly Weissner, who is an anthropology professor at the
Speaker 2: University of Utah, and it is called Imbers of Society
Speaker 2: Firelight Talk among the Jutuan ce Bushmen, published in Proceedings
Speaker 2: of the National Academy of Sciences twenty fourteen, and so
Speaker 2: the author here, Weisner, acknowledges that there has been a
Speaker 2: lot of research on how the human control of fire
Speaker 2: may have affected lots of things about us, may have
Speaker 2: affected our physical evolution and anatomy. This again is a
Speaker 2: reference to the interesting but not completely proven cooking hypothesis,
Speaker 2: which we talked about a bit in the last episode.
Speaker 2: And there's no doubt that it has affected our technology
Speaker 2: and the design of our social and living spaces. But
Speaker 2: then Licener writes, quote, However, little is known about what
Speaker 2: transpired when firelight extended the day, creating effective time for
Speaker 2: social activities that did not conflict with productive time for
Speaker 2: subsistence activities. And I thought this was so interesting. So
Speaker 2: this sort of acknowledges that while fire can extend the
Speaker 2: amount of time in the day in which you can
Speaker 2: stay awake and stay awake and conduct some activities, the
Speaker 2: light of a campfire is not sufficient to illuminate the
Speaker 2: majority of subsistence activities, like the main economic duties of survival,
Speaker 2: such as gathering and processing food. So when there's firelight,
Speaker 2: there is enough light that it gives you time to
Speaker 2: be awake and to see each other and to interact,
Speaker 2: But not really good enough light to do much useful work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again this is something that we so easily
Speaker 1: take for granted in our so easily illuminated world. I know,
Speaker 1: just for my own part, my immediate neighbors usually don't
Speaker 1: have their backyard floodlights on during the night. But if
Speaker 1: they do come on in the night, or they're left
Speaker 1: on during the night by accident, I'll sometimes notice that.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I could read a book here
Speaker 1: in my bedroom at three in the morning, Like it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible based on the ampient illumination provided by their floodlights.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's just acc at that level of
Speaker 1: accidental illumination was just not something you had for the
Speaker 1: majority of human history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that highlights how, of course, firelight is different
Speaker 2: from daylight, but electrical light is different once again from firelight.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, how does the availability of this different kind of
Speaker 2: time in the day change a culture or in the
Speaker 2: author's words, did firelight quote simply give more time or
Speaker 2: did it create a qualitatively different time and space? So
Speaker 2: Weisner offers several potential observations and ideas in the introductory section.
Speaker 2: One is that the sort of different climate or weather
Speaker 2: conditions during the night time, which is during which activities
Speaker 2: can be extended by firelight kind of leads to some
Speaker 2: different social dynamics. For example, during hot seasons, air cools
Speaker 2: after sunset, but if you can have firelight, you can
Speaker 2: still see each other after it gets dark, and people
Speaker 2: can release pent up energy, you know, maybe dancing or
Speaker 2: interacting socially in various ways. Meanwhile, during cold seasons, of
Speaker 2: course the fire is useful for warmth, and people will
Speaker 2: tend to huddle near the fire warmth. It kind of
Speaker 2: has this gathering effect like we talked about with fires
Speaker 2: even inside the home. She also says that fireside gatherings
Speaker 2: are sometimes, though not always, characterized by social mixing, so
Speaker 2: mixing of the sexes, mixing of people of different age
Speaker 2: groups who might spend much of the economically productive part
Speaker 2: of the day segregated. And then another thing she said,
Speaker 2: I thought this was very interesting quote. The moon and
Speaker 2: Starlit skies awaken imagination of the supernatural as well as
Speaker 2: a sense of vulnerability too. Malevolent spirits, predators and antagonists
Speaker 2: countered by security in numbers. So the argument here is
Speaker 2: that nighttime is a time of the imagination for possibilities,
Speaker 2: both good and bad. It kind of expands that the
Speaker 2: possibilities that you envision. You might think about the gods
Speaker 2: or of powers beyond the normal, but you can also
Speaker 2: think about dangers lying beyond the firelight in the dark.
Speaker 2: So the light that keeps you up at night keeps
Speaker 2: you aware and active during this imagination rich time of
Speaker 2: the day. Another thing she says, I thought was very
Speaker 2: interesting quote body language is dimmed by firelight, and awareness
Speaker 2: of self and others is reduced. Facial expressions flickering with
Speaker 2: the flames are either softened or, in the cases of
Speaker 2: fear and anguish, accentuated. And I'm not sure I've ever
Speaker 2: considered this before, but I think that's absolutely right. Different
Speaker 2: light environments change how we look and thus change what
Speaker 2: kinds of emotional expression we are sensitive to or that
Speaker 2: we're aware of other people being sensitive to in us,
Speaker 2: and I think this could be a reason that we
Speaker 2: associate like a romantic evening with candle light as opposed
Speaker 2: to with like really bright lights. I don't you know,
Speaker 2: there could be multiple reasons for that, but I don't
Speaker 2: have proof of this, but I think it's quite plausible
Speaker 2: that fire based light decreases our ability to register body
Speaker 2: language and facial expressions that would normally cause us social anxiety,
Speaker 2: both because of our constant tracking of these signals in
Speaker 2: others and because of our awareness and regulation of it
Speaker 2: in ourselves, our awareness of being observed. In other words,
Speaker 2: firelight could be a naturally socially disinhibiting environment. Does that
Speaker 2: make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, because there is a huge difference between
Speaker 1: you know, of course, stark daylight anywhere anything from stark
Speaker 1: daylight all the way towards dusk and absolute darkness. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a world in between where the illumination is
Speaker 1: not harsh, but is atmospheric and can certainly have this
Speaker 1: sort of emotional vibe to it. Yeah, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: It's almost like did sexy times exist? Didn't romance exist
Speaker 1: before firelight? I mean it did that, you know in
Speaker 1: the way that we're thinking about it. You know, candle
Speaker 1: at dinner and so forth, or any romantic scene you've
Speaker 1: ever seen in a motion picture, you know it probably
Speaker 1: takes place in some sort of a lighting environment like this. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously the romantic example is just one type
Speaker 2: of scenario where we want to be socially disinhibited where
Speaker 2: we want like our social anxieties and our fear of
Speaker 2: being perceived to be reduced. I think that's also the
Speaker 2: case more in just general social interactions, where we want
Speaker 2: to be like, you know, bonding with people and trying
Speaker 2: to build up good relationships and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, on the other hand, here the author says
Speaker 2: that overt expressions of fear and anguish could in some
Speaker 2: cases be accentuated by firelight, and you can imagine that
Speaker 2: being powerful as well for sort of capturing the capturing
Speaker 2: of attention with storytelling or ritual.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't help but think about the fact that a
Speaker 1: central fire, be it in a fireplace or a campfire,
Speaker 1: or even just a lantern that people are gathered around,
Speaker 1: it becomes the focal point. It becomes the thing you
Speaker 1: look at. And on one hand, yeah, you're not looking
Speaker 1: necessarily looking directly in people's faces while you're talking to them.
Speaker 1: It's kind of getting into that whole zone where like
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, a parent and their child can have
Speaker 1: a more intense conversation whilst the parent is driving a car,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like eyes forward. We can kind
Speaker 1: of have this slightly disconnected but deep personal conversation. And
Speaker 1: then likewise, if everybody staring at the fire, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, attention is on the flames, but we
Speaker 1: can still have this close conversation but without looking each
Speaker 1: other dead in the eyes, and then the flames can
Speaker 1: also kind of become the almost kind of like the
Speaker 1: primordial television set where the telling of tales and the
Speaker 1: invocation of wild concepts and imagined realities.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good observation. I didn't think
Speaker 2: about the comparison to the car or to the TV,
Speaker 2: but yes, totally. Now there's another interesting general observation Weisner
Speaker 2: makes in the introductory section, which is quote, whereas time
Speaker 2: structures interactions by day because of economic exigencies, by night,
Speaker 2: social interactions structure time and often continue until relationships are right.
Speaker 2: And she summarizes this by saying that people in hunter
Speaker 2: gatherer societies, they tend to focus interactions on efficiency during
Speaker 2: the daytime and effectiveness during the night time. So during
Speaker 2: the day we need to get this problem resolved quickly
Speaker 2: so we can move on with what we're doing, whereas
Speaker 2: at night we can address this until it's fixed. And
Speaker 2: so the author here says that her goal is to
Speaker 2: investigate how firelit time is used to achieve three things,
Speaker 2: and this is, in the author's words, the first thing
Speaker 2: is a more accurate understanding of the thoughts and emotions
Speaker 2: of others, particularly those not immediately present. Second, bonding within
Speaker 2: and between groups, and third the generation, regulation and transmission
Speaker 2: of cultural institutions. So, in order to investigate the role
Speaker 2: of firelight and creating productive space for these goals, the
Speaker 2: author analyzed and quantified the differences in daytime and then
Speaker 2: firelit nighttime conversation topics among the jutwan people of Southern Africa.
Speaker 2: And so she is working mainly from a sample of
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy four memorialized conversations that took place
Speaker 2: in among a group of people in northern Botswana in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, and then this was supplemented with subsequent
Speaker 2: visits and re recordings of some stories. And then also
Speaker 2: the analysis of this direct sampling of Jutwanzi conversations and
Speaker 2: activities was supplemented by a survey of written translated texts
Speaker 2: on day night differences in conversation topics in other cultures.
Speaker 2: Now the author is clear about the limitations of this
Speaker 2: kind of research, because it's very important to remember when
Speaker 2: you're looking at anthropology studies of this kind. Studying the
Speaker 2: habits of one culture does not necessarily tell you how
Speaker 2: another culture in some overlapping circumstances will function. So if
Speaker 2: you see a behavior among one group of hunter gatherers today,
Speaker 2: that does not give you certainty that all prehistoric hunter
Speaker 2: gatherers did the same thing. In fact, you don't even
Speaker 2: know that other hunter gatherer groups in the modern world
Speaker 2: do the same thing. In fact, it doesn't even show
Speaker 2: you that the exact same group of people would keep
Speaker 2: doing the same thing at a different time. And in
Speaker 2: the case of the Jutwan people, the paper notes that
Speaker 2: for many of them, the structure of life has changed
Speaker 2: significantly since the mid nineteen seventies, around the time when
Speaker 2: these conversations were initially recorded, with many people settling more
Speaker 2: into more permanent villages with a more mixed economy, some
Speaker 2: traditional subsistence foraging, but also wage labor and selling crafts
Speaker 2: and things like that. But still, this kind of cultural
Speaker 2: observation does tell you something. It doesn't show you how
Speaker 2: it always is, but it does show you with certainty
Speaker 2: one way it can be. So it's important to understand
Speaker 2: the strengths and the weaknesses of this kind of anthropological research.
Speaker 2: Studying one culture doesn't prove universal patterns, but it does
Speaker 2: establish a precedent something you can see. Okay, here's one
Speaker 2: way it could work. So coming back to the question
Speaker 2: the author was trying to figure out here, does firelight
Speaker 2: simply give us more time or does it create a
Speaker 2: different type of time and space? And in the specific
Speaker 2: case of the people observed here, the author found some
Speaker 2: strong differences in what people talked about during the day
Speaker 2: versus after sunset when the illumination was based on fire.
Speaker 2: So the author said that daytime conversations strongly centered around
Speaker 2: economic matters, meaning things having to do with work, so
Speaker 2: the acquisition of food through hunting and foraging, plans for
Speaker 2: the acquisition of food, resource availability, conversations about technology. All
Speaker 2: of this economic talk about work represented about thirty one
Speaker 2: percent of the daytime talk that was sampled. Another thirty
Speaker 2: four percent of the daytime conversation sampled was what the
Speaker 2: author calls quote, verbal criticism, complaint, and conflict, and this
Speaker 2: basically covers all talk that is designed to regulate social
Speaker 2: relationships and hash out personal disputes, and a lot of
Speaker 2: this seems to be based on maintaining egalitarian social relationships
Speaker 2: and preventing other people from acquiring social dominance or sort
Speaker 2: of unfair social advantage.
Speaker 1: So bickering is that I think of this thirty four percent.
Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't want to put like afrmative negative spin
Speaker 2: on it, but in a way, yes, this is social
Speaker 2: regulatory talk where people are addressing social problems that they
Speaker 2: perceive or some kind of conflict between people and addressing
Speaker 2: those addressing those issues and trying to resolve them, which
Speaker 2: in this broad understanding, this is also a huge part
Speaker 2: of conversation I would say among basically any people anywhere, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Now during the daytime, another sixteen percent was devoted to jokes,
Speaker 2: joking around. Another nine percent was devoted to land rights
Speaker 2: discussion of the use of land, four percent was about
Speaker 2: interactions with other ethnic groups, and six percent was made
Speaker 2: up of storytelling. But the author describes how as the
Speaker 2: day went on and families would gather for the evening
Speaker 2: meal around the fire, the mood would tend to mellow out,
Speaker 2: losing a lot of the harshness of daytime talk. After
Speaker 2: the sun went down and in the darkness around the
Speaker 2: fire major activities shifted and they were music, dance, and conversation.
Speaker 2: So what was that conversation about. Well, during the firelit time,
Speaker 2: she found at least among these people in this sample
Speaker 2: it was radically different. Quote, night activities steer away from
Speaker 2: tensions of the day to singing, dancing, religious ceremonies, and
Speaker 2: enthralling stories, often about known people. And the difference is huge.
Speaker 2: I've got a pie chart for you to look at, Rob,
Speaker 2: and I remember during the daytime, like thirty one percent
Speaker 2: of the talk was about economic issues, things related to work,
Speaker 2: thirty four percent was the resolving of these social disputes,
Speaker 2: only six percent was stories. During the night eighty one
Speaker 2: percent of conversation with stories, the radical shift was shifting
Speaker 2: almost overwhelmingly to story mode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is considerable, especially seeing it on the pigraph here.
Speaker 1: Eighty one percent it just consumes everything. I mean, you
Speaker 1: got some small percentage still allotted to you know, shop
Speaker 1: talk and bickering ben in some of these other areas,
Speaker 1: and then four percent for myth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so I think the myth there connects to
Speaker 2: the idea of storytelling as well, because one of the
Speaker 2: broad observations that the author makes here is that is
Speaker 2: of the idea of the night as a time of bigger,
Speaker 2: broader thinking, and she gives an example where like, Okay,
Speaker 2: during the daytime, you might have people devoting a significant
Speaker 2: amount of conversation to a personal dispute about marriage. They're
Speaker 2: discussing a marital dispute, whereas during the night instead, you
Speaker 2: would have interesting and amusing stories about marriages of people
Speaker 2: in the past, the marriage disputes of sort of characters
Speaker 2: that are known or people who lived in generations ago.
Speaker 2: Or during the day you might have a sort of
Speaker 2: work related conversation about a certain kind of you know,
Speaker 2: hunting pursuit, or about a kind of gift exchange scenario
Speaker 2: that's a part of the culture. And then during the
Speaker 2: night instead you would have conversations about stories about people
Speaker 2: who engaged in those activities in the past, or in
Speaker 2: the distant past, or in the recent past. So in
Speaker 2: the daytime you talk about the issues and problems that
Speaker 2: you're currently facing. At nighttime, you hear stories of others
Speaker 2: who faced similar issues, and those issues are put in
Speaker 2: the context of some kind of big picture. The author
Speaker 2: emphasizes the use of nighttime talk and conversation as a
Speaker 2: way of creating, generating, and regulating ideas about the bigger
Speaker 2: picture beyond the little things you do here and there
Speaker 2: to get through the day. The big picture of sort
Speaker 2: of what are people are and what life is and
Speaker 2: so forth that arises from these nighttime conversations that are
Speaker 2: largely storytelling and about storytelling. So the author writes, quote,
Speaker 2: night talk plays an important role in evoking higher orders
Speaker 2: of theory of mind via the imagination, conveying attributes of
Speaker 2: people in broad networks or virtual communities, and transmitting the
Speaker 2: big picture of cultural institutions that generate regularity of behavior, cooperation,
Speaker 2: and trust at the regional level. And so I thought
Speaker 2: this was so interesting because again I want to stress
Speaker 2: the caveats I mentioned earlier. You can't know what all
Speaker 2: people long ago did based on what one group of
Speaker 2: people have more recently done. But this kind of observation
Speaker 2: does show one way people respond to a certain type
Speaker 2: of environment, the regime of technology and environmental surroundings of
Speaker 2: meeting by firelight after the sun sets. And I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting. It's interesting as a sort of precedent that
Speaker 2: possibly the introduction of fire may have opened up new
Speaker 2: dimensions of creativity and abstract thinking about about ourselves and
Speaker 2: about what our societies are, this idea of sort of
Speaker 2: big picture ideas about what life is, specifically by creating
Speaker 2: this kind of imaginative storytelling space of economically unproductive time.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like time where you can't you can't
Speaker 2: really effectively get work done, but you're you're here, and
Speaker 2: so you can think in terms of stories, to think
Speaker 2: about the past and explore models of the world out loud.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I know you probably you've probably
Speaker 1: thought along similar lines. But I'm instantly reminded of the
Speaker 1: lyrics to Rocky Erickson's if you have Ghosts in the Night,
Speaker 1: I am real?
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I did not think about that, but yeah, because.
Speaker 1: I mean, depending on how you slice it here, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a time when one can become more real,
Speaker 1: like your existence becomes you know, this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that Marsati Iliati I think would have gotten into. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that when you start you in
Speaker 1: yourself within the context of like the mythic realms and
Speaker 1: stories that have been told, like the self can become
Speaker 1: more actualized, can become more real. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, in many ways. In one way, by gaining
Speaker 2: perspectives on our individual problems by placing them within this
Speaker 2: like larger context of stories about the past, or stories
Speaker 2: about mythical figures and characters and and so forth who
Speaker 2: may have faced similar issues and overcome them in some
Speaker 2: way or another. It allows you to just kind of
Speaker 2: like to see another side of many things, and to
Speaker 2: the extent that this might be a more general pattern
Speaker 2: of how humans respond to you know, light, where nighttime
Speaker 2: is illuminated primarily with fire, it makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 2: do we still kind of activate some of these ways
Speaker 2: of thinking when we when we seek out fire in
Speaker 2: any context, when we seek out fire as a light source,
Speaker 2: even optionally or and also makes me think about and
Speaker 2: the author actually does into this into the paper the
Speaker 2: contrast with electrical lighting. So like, say you move out
Speaker 2: of this kind of environment and into an environment where
Speaker 2: in the nighttime you can have super bright lights on,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, might as well get some more
Speaker 2: work done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's one of the gifts of the electronic
Speaker 1: age is oh, well there's enough illumination to work all
Speaker 1: the time. It's true enough you know, work on you know,
Speaker 1: passion projects, certainly, but also work on chores, work on
Speaker 1: your day work, and so forth, your homework.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I wonder if having all this productive time
Speaker 2: and electric lights is maybe robbing people of some time
Speaker 2: that they might otherwise really benefit from getting kind of
Speaker 2: a storytelling and imaginative, big picture perspective on life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and likewise, I can't help but think
Speaker 1: about that other fire, the holy fire of television, you know,
Speaker 1: because you know, we think about oh, you know, you
Speaker 1: sort of what netflix and chill. I guess this is
Speaker 1: the saying, right or is that that means watching television, right?
Speaker 1: Or is that something else?
Speaker 2: It means something else?
Speaker 1: Okay, well, okay, one could interpret it as me just
Speaker 1: watching television. Though. So let's just like the idea of Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to chill in the evening. I just want
Speaker 1: to watch some shows. I want to watch a movie,
Speaker 1: or I want to settle down with a good book,
Speaker 1: or I want to play a nice narrative video game
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know. It's like, based on what we've
Speaker 1: been discussing here, like this is the time to do it.
Speaker 1: This is the time to at once lose yourself in
Speaker 1: the narrative but also kind of expand yourself within that
Speaker 1: narrative and allow yourself to sort of like leach on
Speaker 1: to these mythic ideas of self and struggle and so forth.
Speaker 1: But in a weird way, that too is kind of
Speaker 1: like put it odds with the electrically illuminated world, where
Speaker 1: we're like, well, I could be working instead of watching Netflix,
Speaker 1: instead of reading you know, a book that is you know,
Speaker 1: maybe has nothing to do with with your day job,
Speaker 1: or isn't like you know, it's just kind of a
Speaker 1: guilty pleasure read or what have you, or certainly in
Speaker 1: whatever video game you're into. You know, you could be working, Yes,
Speaker 1: but maybe all of this is still vitally important to
Speaker 1: who you are and your ability to continue on through
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, that's what I have on the qualitative difference
Speaker 2: of firelight. And I don't know, I'm still having lots
Speaker 2: of ideas about this, but I think I got to
Speaker 2: stop there for now. But I know you had some
Speaker 2: more on the toad Buried beneath the Hearthstone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you know, now that we've discussed the illumination
Speaker 1: by firelight and then all the ways that it changes
Speaker 1: the human experience, it's time to really get down and
Speaker 1: discuss human and animal sacrifice. That's the way we like
Speaker 1: to land things with our holiday episodes. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: want you to think back first, first of what we
Speaker 1: talked about in the initial episode regarding artifacts and symbols
Speaker 1: that have been secreted away in homes and voids in
Speaker 1: the walls and under the hearthstone and behind the fireplace,
Speaker 1: you know, as a form of apotropaic magic, protective magic
Speaker 1: wards against witchcraft, demons, fairies and ghosts. Secondly, I'll bring
Speaker 1: you back to that cold open that exert from the
Speaker 1: poem by Robert Graves and it's invocation of not only
Speaker 1: a lightning touch tree, but an animal buried beneath the hearthstone.
Speaker 1: In the case of the poem, it was a frog.
Speaker 1: So we've discussed animal and human sacrifice before on the show,
Speaker 1: and today is going to be more of the same.
Speaker 1: Why Christmas, you might ask, Well, I would say, well,
Speaker 1: what better time than Christmas? To quote the late great
Speaker 1: Terry Pratchett in his holiday book The Hogfather. There was
Speaker 1: a great TV adaptation of this as well, quote the
Speaker 1: very oldest stories are sooner or later about blood. So
Speaker 1: you find, of course examples of blood sacrifice in every
Speaker 1: human culture. We've discussed this plenty of times before, and
Speaker 1: one pervasive form of alleged right of sacrifice concerns the
Speaker 1: sanctification of ground upon which something is built, or is
Speaker 1: being built or is about to be finished in its construction.
Speaker 1: And in some cases it has been alleged that these
Speaker 1: were carried out while the victims yet breathed, though obviously
Speaker 1: there's plenty of room for such builders' rights and construction
Speaker 1: sacrifices to be distorted through the telling of history. So
Speaker 1: you know, you can very well imagine a scenario where
Speaker 1: an animal is sacrificed but not entombed alive, but then
Speaker 1: it becomes entombed alive in the telling of the tale.
Speaker 1: We can't really get into all the nuances right now,
Speaker 1: but suffice to say, burying something in or under the
Speaker 1: foundation of a building has long been a symbolic, superstitious,
Speaker 1: or outright religious right, and it's one that still echoes
Speaker 1: through modern practices, you know, such as laying relics, you know,
Speaker 1: in such a place, or or even a time capsule.
Speaker 1: The bearing of a time capsule is ultimately kind of
Speaker 1: connected to these ideas as well, and we've actually touched
Speaker 1: on in recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: on some examples of animals or humans allegedly entombed within
Speaker 1: or alongside constructions. This came up in our Haunted Railways episodes,
Speaker 1: and it also came up in our discussion of the
Speaker 1: Horned Lizard. Mmm. Oh yeah, I forget what building in
Speaker 1: Texas the horned lizard in question was was walled up
Speaker 1: in but then was unearthed and said to be still alive.
Speaker 2: I remember there was something funny about it, so I
Speaker 2: had to look it up. It was the name they
Speaker 2: called him, Old Rip.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Old Rip.
Speaker 2: I guess named after Rip van Winkle. But yes, I
Speaker 2: think the story was that, you know, you know that
Speaker 2: this thing was really alive after decades of being buried
Speaker 2: without food or water, because there's like a judge in Eastland,
Speaker 2: Texas who said.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah. As I go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that episode if you want to hear more on it.
Speaker 1: But for our purposes here today, we're trying to stay
Speaker 1: more hearth and hearth adjacent. So I want to refer
Speaker 1: back to Brian Hoggard's excellent twenty nineteen book Magical House
Speaker 1: Protection The Archaeology of counter witchcraft. We talked about witch
Speaker 1: bottles and shoes, but two other items are also frequently
Speaker 1: found in the voids of homes, according to Hoggard, and
Speaker 1: those are dried cats and horse skulls. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about dried cats first, and I will I will add
Speaker 1: that my own cat has decided to set in my
Speaker 1: lap just for this part as a few since that
Speaker 1: it was going to be feline related. So along those lines,
Speaker 1: no shame if you want to skip this part. I'm
Speaker 1: a cat person, and I don't love the idea of
Speaker 1: anyone hurting a cat. Obviously is okay, if they hurt us,
Speaker 1: that's the deal we made with them. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: am going to discuss dead cats in walls and floors
Speaker 1: and alleged cases of animal sacrifice with cats. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get into gory details, but you know, fair enough, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm strapped in Okay. So yeah, this was, at least
Speaker 1: to some extent a thing. As Hagard discusses, there's a
Speaker 1: case to be made that practices involving shoes, which are
Speaker 1: discussed in the last example, are simply replacements for older
Speaker 1: rights involving the sacrifice of animals. And you know, there
Speaker 1: are examples of this and other cultures as well, where
Speaker 1: one you know, may move away from one form of sacrifice,
Speaker 1: but then you end up with proxies and replacements and
Speaker 1: so forth. But yeah, the reality is dried up cat
Speaker 1: carcasses are frequently found in old homes in Europe, parts
Speaker 1: of North America, and even in Australia, so you know,
Speaker 1: basically coming out of European, you know, very much deeped
Speaker 1: in European traditions, but then flowing over into some colonial
Speaker 1: areas as well. They're found in roof spaces, under floors,
Speaker 1: between walls, and sometimes in voids that seem quite inaccessible.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the cat has actually been posed we're talking with
Speaker 1: like wire work, so that it looks like they are
Speaker 1: actively hunting. And sometimes there is a rodent or two
Speaker 1: or three added as well, perhaps in the cat's clutches
Speaker 1: or about to be killed by the cat, a haunting tableau,
Speaker 1: again hidden away in the wall or under the floor.
Speaker 2: Now, I would imagine in some of these cases it
Speaker 2: might be disputable whether a dried up cat hidden under
Speaker 2: a floor was I mean, in some cases it might
Speaker 2: be clear, like if there's no way it could have
Speaker 2: gotten in, it's a closed off space, but I guess
Speaker 2: in some cases there would be dispute about whether a
Speaker 2: cat actually just got stuck and died there, or whether
Speaker 2: it is a dried cat that was intentionally deposited.
Speaker 1: That's correct. Yeah, the idea of accidental enclosure, because if
Speaker 1: you know cats, you know that they are little explorers.
Speaker 1: They'll go places they're not supposed to go, and it's
Speaker 1: not impossible that they could get stuck. And that's something
Speaker 1: Haggard discusses here. So a lot of people all that
Speaker 1: many of these bodies, these cat carcasses, these dried cats,
Speaker 1: are due to cats becoming trapped, perhaps during construction or
Speaker 1: otherwise crawling into such spaces and dying from some pre
Speaker 1: existing injury or illness. You know, cats loves often will
Speaker 1: crave that kind of seclusion for their final moments. Haggard does.
Speaker 1: He entertains this idea, but he suggests that there are
Speaker 1: probably fewer cases of accidental trappings. He argues that, Okay,
Speaker 1: a cat crawling into a wall or a floor of
Speaker 1: your house and then dying and decaying, that's obviously going
Speaker 1: to create an odor. It's going to be hard to ignore.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, he argues that it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's often difficult or impossible to tell if many of
Speaker 1: these animals wound up due to happenstance or intentional human activity.
Speaker 1: It's certainly on the table. Some of these dried cats
Speaker 1: inevitably got there on their own. It basically comes into
Speaker 1: comes down to a discussion of what are the most
Speaker 1: likely situations for some of these cats, like what why
Speaker 1: are they there? And Hoggard sites they nineteen fifty one
Speaker 1: paper by Margaret M. Howard published in the journal Man.
Speaker 1: I had to look at it look it up to
Speaker 1: get more of the details about it, but it's titled
Speaker 1: Dried Cats. And in this Howard lays out three different
Speaker 1: theories as to why cats pop up in these situations.
Speaker 1: And so these are the three. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: and give you number three. Number three that she entertains
Speaker 1: is accidental enclosure, which we just talked about. She acknowledges
Speaker 1: that accidental enclosure is always a possible explanation for cases
Speaker 1: that don't strongly suggest either of the aforementioned theories. The
Speaker 1: aforementioned theories that I'm about to explain, So sorry getting
Speaker 1: into a little backwards, but I mean, obviously the case
Speaker 1: is if the cat has been wired up to look
Speaker 1: like it's hunting rats, you know, all but taxidermied within
Speaker 1: a void in the wall. That cat had some help.
Speaker 1: That is not accidental enclosure. Right. So a cat that
Speaker 1: is put there in the wall, under the floor, where
Speaker 1: have you? How does it get there? Well, the first
Speaker 1: theory is indeed a foundation sacrifice, and Howard highlights the
Speaker 1: use of foundations sacrifices in global cultural practices and points
Speaker 1: to human sacrifice as the obvious forerunner, with examples from
Speaker 1: European history and lore such as Irish abbot Saint Colomba
Speaker 1: was calling for a human to venture into the foundations
Speaker 1: of the Church at Iona to offer themselves as a sacrifice,
Speaker 1: as just one example of a right that originated in
Speaker 1: practices to appease earth spirits or deities and the construction
Speaker 1: of a building, and then gets passed down ultimately in
Speaker 1: non human sacrificial echoes of the original practices. She also
Speaker 1: points to roof tree sacrifices to forest gods that were
Speaker 1: also made in olden days, with the blood flowing down
Speaker 1: the sides of the roof, and she also highlights just
Speaker 1: the general bad time that cats had through the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages and into the Renaissance, they were often seen as
Speaker 1: ill omens, as agents of the devil, which is familiars,
Speaker 1: and all of this despite their positive reputation as Mouser's
Speaker 1: and she suspects, but she suspects that broadly speaking, cases
Speaker 1: of foundation sacrifice, these are actually occurring later in the
Speaker 1: record than the next example, the next theory and that
Speaker 1: I'm going to discuss, and it ultimately foundation sacrifices are
Speaker 1: perhaps less probable an explanation compared to this one. And
Speaker 1: this is the idea that they were vermin scares. So again,
Speaker 1: think to that idea of a lifelike positioning of a
Speaker 1: mummified cat scaring away rodents, perhaps with two or three
Speaker 1: rodents in its clutches. The idea here is that it
Speaker 1: kind of functions like a scarecrow. It's intended to scare
Speaker 1: rodents away from the insides of your walls and the
Speaker 1: you know, the insides of your house, from the crawl
Speaker 1: space and what have you. Like, Let's actually stuff a cat,
Speaker 1: put it in there, have some rodents there, because it's
Speaker 1: going to be more effective if the dead cat is
Speaker 1: in this grizzly tableau of dispatching rodents.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is the if I only had a
Speaker 2: brain version of the cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, essentially, And of course, this idea of vermin scares,
Speaker 1: I think it probably goes without saying, but this is
Speaker 1: not a non supernatural, non superstitious idea, Like obviously there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of superstition to this as well. There's
Speaker 1: like a there's a power to this tableau that clearly
Speaker 1: goes beyond the idea of well, when a rat looks
Speaker 1: at this, they're going to leave the house. They're not
Speaker 1: going to hang around here, because look at this horror show,
Speaker 1: you know it's it clearly goes beyond that as well.
Speaker 1: So that is that is the theory that Howard seemed
Speaker 1: to favor. But I think you tend to encounter a
Speaker 1: certain amount of drift on which of these three primary
Speaker 1: explanations are going to be employed. And obviously there are
Speaker 1: going to be cases where it's very clear that the
Speaker 1: cat was put in there for some sort of a
Speaker 1: ritual or and or vermin scare purpose.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mentioned Terry Pratchett earlier, and I
Speaker 1: had actually already put the Terry Pratchett quote in the
Speaker 1: notes before I've found Haggard referencing Terry Pratchett. In this
Speaker 1: section of the book. He brings up this idea suggested
Speaker 1: by Terry Pratchett that sacrifices, those foundation sacrifices would have
Speaker 1: been made not only to deities but to the buildings themselves.
Speaker 1: The idea that you know later on, you know, various
Speaker 1: tragedies can befall a person in a building, and in
Speaker 1: a sense it's like, that's the house's doing, that's the
Speaker 1: building's doing, and so you want to appease not necessarily God's,
Speaker 1: but the house itself, which is an interesting concept.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go ahead and pre pay my tax here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, coming back to hearthstones specifically, Haggard does cite
Speaker 1: an example from England's Blackton Hall. You can look up
Speaker 1: Blackden Hall. There's a Wikipedia page on it and you
Speaker 1: can see a picture of it. This was a building
Speaker 1: built in the sixteenth entree. But he points out that
Speaker 1: beneath the hearthstone, during some construction they found a quote
Speaker 1: constructed chamber into which the live cat was placed and
Speaker 1: it contained a dried cat.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not entirely certain if indeed this would have
Speaker 1: been a live cat. That was placed there, but in
Speaker 1: anyway we end up with a dead, dried cat. So
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks for yourself. Now, since we mentioned
Speaker 1: thunder and toads in the Cold Open, I also want
Speaker 1: to point out that Hoggard lists thunderstones as being an
Speaker 1: item that is sometimes hidden away in homes. These are stones,
Speaker 1: often actually arrowheads of thought to have been created by
Speaker 1: lightning strikes and thus they would protect it was thought
Speaker 1: they would protect a building as lightning never strikes. Twice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we mentioned thunderstones a little bit in the series we.
Speaker 1: Did a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Well it was when we were talking about lightning strikes
Speaker 2: of trees that would be enclosed, but as sacred trees.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the idea of thunderstones. Often these were, as
Speaker 2: you said, arrowheads or like hand axes. They were tools
Speaker 2: made by stone Age peoples that were later found and
Speaker 2: then like, yeah, this must be the gods doing or
Speaker 2: lightning did that.
Speaker 1: And also reminds me of our episodes on elf shot
Speaker 1: as well memory serves. Sometimes arrowheads were interpreted as being
Speaker 1: like clear evidence of elf shot.
Speaker 2: Yep, stone age arrowheads found and then people were like
Speaker 2: that must be the elves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now as for toads. Yes, toads and frogs also
Speaker 1: pop up in Hoggard's book. Sometimes they are inside of
Speaker 1: witch bottles, or at least pieces of them are in
Speaker 1: witch bottles, but also just in general so that they
Speaker 1: were associated with magic and sometimes secreted away in parts
Speaker 1: of a house as a ward against illness. There's an
Speaker 1: example of like pinned frogs, I think, behind a wall.
Speaker 1: And there's also a story he shares about how it
Speaker 1: was said that they're like a witch might keep live
Speaker 1: toads under the floorboard, and they'd be like a hole
Speaker 1: for easy access.
Speaker 2: So I wonder if Graves actually had this practice in
Speaker 2: mind when talking about the toad underneath im mirrored underneath
Speaker 2: the hearthstone, or is that just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems I mean, Graves seems like
Speaker 1: the kind of chap who would have been well read
Speaker 1: on these matters.
Speaker 2: He was very interested in like Celtic paganism, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: wrote stuff about it that, from what I understand, is
Speaker 2: completely wrong and not useful at all in terms of
Speaker 2: informational value, but is a pretty great read nonetheless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yeah, I imagine he was very much all
Speaker 1: this was on his right high. All right, one final
Speaker 1: idea concerning bits of animals buried under the hearthstone, and
Speaker 1: that is the idea of horse skulls buried under the hearthstone.
Speaker 1: This is something in augur It also talks about, and
Speaker 1: this is another thing that I chatted with him about
Speaker 1: in a past interview episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: He goes into more detail, but basically, horse skulls have
Speaker 1: been found in the floors of homes throughout Europe, the
Speaker 1: British Isles, and the United States, and he specifically cites
Speaker 1: cases where they are found under the hearthstone itself. According
Speaker 1: to Haggard, there are three primary theories regarding such horse
Speaker 1: skulls and their placement. One is that they are the
Speaker 1: remains of a foundation sacrifice, as we've been discussing, you know,
Speaker 1: appease the deities, make the ground holy, or appease the
Speaker 1: house itself. Another is that it's simply they're simply there
Speaker 1: as a token of luck or you know, perhaps getting
Speaker 1: into some of these areas of apertubeic magic. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a spell, it's protecting us, and in this case especially,
Speaker 1: you get into sort of things we've talked about concerning
Speaker 1: the horse before on the show that the horse is
Speaker 1: like this very close animal to human existence, but it
Speaker 1: is often the case you take all the meat off
Speaker 1: of it. But the horse skull looks really weird and
Speaker 1: seems to be grinning, a demonic grin. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine that serving as like a sort of Gorgonian head
Speaker 1: to ward away evil. But another theory, a very popular theory,
Speaker 1: is that these skulls served partially or primarily as an
Speaker 1: acoustic enhancer. What so the idea here is that horse
Speaker 1: skulls were placed in the floor in order to enhance
Speaker 1: the acoustics of dancing, like on the dance hall or
Speaker 1: threshing floors, both activities with positive and protective supernatural associations,
Speaker 1: and in this the practice is reminiscent of the ceiling
Speaker 1: of acoustic vases in the walls of medieval churches. He writes,
Speaker 1: which were These were apparently based on some of the
Speaker 1: writings of Vitruvius on architecture, and it was thought to
Speaker 1: enhance choral music. So have these like sealed vases inside
Speaker 1: the walls of a church?
Speaker 2: Bizarre? I've never heard of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Hoggard ultimately argues that he thinks that the horse
Speaker 1: gulls were primarily used to ward off evil, and that
Speaker 1: a particular Norfolk account suggests a form of foundation sacrifice.
Speaker 1: And he also argues that that really, when you start
Speaker 1: looking around at the records about the use of horse
Speaker 1: skulls and the foundations and under the hearthstone and so forth,
Speaker 1: if it were merely for acoustics, you would probably see
Speaker 1: more written about it, because people would be upfront. They'd
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I'm dumping a bunch of horse heads
Speaker 1: under my floorboards. It's about acoustics, man, Do you want
Speaker 1: the sound to sound like trash in here? No?
Speaker 2: Like church is fine with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like people would be upfront about it. But if
Speaker 1: it was for a magical purpose, you know, then you're
Speaker 1: going to be maybe more secretive about it because the
Speaker 1: church isn't telling you to bury horse skulls under your
Speaker 1: floor You're doing it because you have a plan B
Speaker 1: to keep the evil away, and they might not approve
Speaker 1: of it, but you know that it's absolutely necessary.
Speaker 2: Well, I would never harm an animal for this purpose,
Speaker 2: but assuming I can source some already available carcasses, I've
Speaker 2: really got decisions to make if I ever build my
Speaker 2: own hearthstone. So do I go horse, Do I go cat?
Speaker 2: Do I go toad?
Speaker 1: Well, you can get some horseheads, yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: are there are sources for that, right you can. You
Speaker 1: can get them used. You don't have to make the
Speaker 1: head yourself.
Speaker 2: Oh I can get you a horse head. By three
Speaker 2: o'clock this afternoon, well, I think we're out of time
Speaker 2: for today's episode. But you know, it's funny, we still
Speaker 2: had some other stuff we wanted to talk about. I
Speaker 2: don't know how exactly this will mesh with our schedule
Speaker 2: because next week we got some some days off for
Speaker 2: the holiday, But we definitely had more fireplace stuff we
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about. So I don't know. Maybe we'll
Speaker 2: come back to it yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't even get to even get into my
Speaker 1: whole thing about how thinking about evil spirits crawling out
Speaker 1: of the fireplace or out of the hearth, and then
Speaker 1: comparing the hearth to the television, of course, just brings
Speaker 1: us right to the ring and the idea of this
Speaker 1: evil wraith like entity crawling out of your televisions that like,
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense if you think of the television
Speaker 1: as a hearth.
Speaker 2: You know, well, actually that would be a good static
Speaker 2: ambient TV. So you've got you know, logs burning. You
Speaker 2: could have Andy Warhol's Empire where you're just watching the
Speaker 2: skyscraper through the night, or you could just watch that
Speaker 2: well see if anything happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a seven hour video, but sometimes something happens,
Speaker 1: but you don't know when it's going to happen, or
Speaker 1: if you have the cut where it happens. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to go and close it out there.
Speaker 1: Then happy Holidays if you celebrate. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: new episodes after next week, and we have some fun
Speaker 1: vault episodes and Weird House rewinds to keep you happy
Speaker 1: while we're out.
Speaker 2: Oh but we still have a new Weird House coming
Speaker 2: out tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course, and it's a holiday episode. Gosh,
Speaker 1: darn't it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's one end ever.
Speaker 1: All right. So yeah, just a reminder of stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Primarily Science and Culture podcast with core
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns to just talk about weird films
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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