Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. It's vault time.
Speaker 2: This is an older episode of the show that originally
Speaker 2: published May twenty six, twenty twenty two, and it's part
Speaker 2: two of our series on the Cauldron. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 2: two of our series about cauldrons.
Speaker 1: That's right. In the last episode, we talked about cauldrons
Speaker 1: and mostly an introduction into the idea of the cauldron
Speaker 1: is both a mundane tool for heating water and making soup,
Speaker 1: but also getting in a little bit to the idea that, okay,
Speaker 1: this is something that also ends up taking on sacred
Speaker 1: and supernatural characteristics in various traditions. But for the most
Speaker 1: part we talked about soup technology, which in and of
Speaker 1: itself is pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we pondered the foggy distant prehistory of salmon soups
Speaker 2: in Japan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of this episode is going to
Speaker 1: look at the cauldron in Chinese traditions and in Chinese history,
Speaker 1: in mythology. So in Chinese culture and history, the ancient
Speaker 1: cauldron is known as the ding, a cooking cauldron with
Speaker 1: two looped handles and three or four legs. The three
Speaker 1: legged ones tend to have a more of a circular pot,
Speaker 1: while the four legged ones tend to have a rectangular
Speaker 1: pot and appear more like what we might think of
Speaker 1: as a chest or something in Western traditions. It's maybe
Speaker 1: a little less recognizable as a cauldron if you're basing
Speaker 1: your expectations on cauldrons in Western traditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made me wonder, like, wait a minute, why
Speaker 2: are pots always round? I mean, they don't have to be.
Speaker 2: So this is a pot that's got corners and it
Speaker 2: looks like something that link would pop open and pull
Speaker 2: a treasure out of. Oh it's the hook shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean these are ultimately artifacts that have
Speaker 1: a number of supernatural associations with them. But in terms
Speaker 1: of the actual Chinese cauldrons or ding that have survived.
Speaker 1: For instance, one example that came up in my research
Speaker 1: is from the Warring States period around This is from
Speaker 1: around four to thirty three BCE found in the Leodoun
Speaker 1: Tombs in central China. Upon its discovery, it still had
Speaker 1: ox bones inside it and soot on its base, meaning
Speaker 1: that it was apparently used for cooking, perhaps as part
Speaker 1: of a funerary feast. It was made of bronze and
Speaker 1: also include did lifting hooks and a ladle lifting hooks?
Speaker 2: Does that mean something you'd like put some hooks in
Speaker 2: to move it out of the fire?
Speaker 1: Correct in this In this case, now, when we get
Speaker 1: into later discussions of cauldrons, you also get into the
Speaker 1: idea of flesh hooks for your cauldron. They have to
Speaker 1: do with, obviously, for the manipulating a flesh, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of meat that you're cooking inside of said cauldron.
Speaker 1: But these I believe, Yeah, we're just to move the
Speaker 1: cauldron around while it was heated.
Speaker 2: Okay, So a cauldron, we know, can be used for
Speaker 2: the chores that sustain everyday life, cooking food and washing
Speaker 2: and so forth. But in Chinese traditions, cauldrons have a
Speaker 2: much more culturally and religiously charged significance. Even though they
Speaker 2: could be used for those same mundane tasks, they might
Speaker 2: also decide the very fate of your existence.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I do want to stress that a
Speaker 1: lot of this will also end up lining up with
Speaker 1: traditions in the West as well. That will get into
Speaker 1: much later. But yeah, this thing that for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes is about heating water for soup or maybe
Speaker 1: for laundry or something like that ends up taking on
Speaker 1: greater significance. So in Chinese tradition, the ding became associated
Speaker 1: with power and land ownership, and it was used not
Speaker 1: only for food production and also for storage. It was
Speaker 1: also used to make sacrifices to the gods.
Speaker 2: And the idea of gods here might also well include
Speaker 2: ancestral spirits, right, the sort of a blurring of the
Speaker 2: distinction there that, like appeasing one's ancestors, was believed to
Speaker 2: play a role in determining your fortune right now.
Speaker 1: One of the sources I was looking to for this
Speaker 1: episode is an article titled Visions of Hell in Asia
Speaker 1: from twenty eighteen published in the Journal of the Oriental
Speaker 1: Society of Australia by scholar Paul Morablai, and in it
Speaker 1: the author rites quote in ancient China, the cauldron was
Speaker 1: the alchemical recipient par excellence for the sacrifices animals and
Speaker 1: humans required in order to transmute them into immortal creatures
Speaker 1: when mixed with certain minerals and metals. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to stress that he's talking very broadly here. This is
Speaker 1: not to imply that all of these various cauldrons, including
Speaker 1: the specific one I just mentioned, was used for anything
Speaker 1: like human sacrifice. But of course, human sacrifice is something
Speaker 1: that one encounters in the ancient traditions of every human culture.
Speaker 1: Just about so. But yeah, this idea that we touched
Speaker 1: on very briefly in the last episode, that what is
Speaker 1: a cauldron, what is a cooking pot? But other than
Speaker 1: something that transforms one thing into another state.
Speaker 2: Right, so, it might transform say a tough piece of
Speaker 2: game meat into a nutritious broth and a much more
Speaker 2: tender piece of meat. And it might transform various ingredients
Speaker 2: living and dead into a bunch of fumes, a pillar
Speaker 2: of smoke, or a burnt offering that would be seen
Speaker 2: as pleasing to the gods or to one's ancestors.
Speaker 1: Correct. Now, when it comes to the sacred thing, there is,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned earlier, it also has this prestige with it.
Speaker 1: It signifies power, and it can also signify divine right
Speaker 1: of rule. And in this there's no greater example than
Speaker 1: the nine cauldrons of You the Great. Now we've discussed
Speaker 1: You the Great before and stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: See as the legendary ruler of the Shia dynasty of
Speaker 1: the second and third millennium BCE. Born from the belly
Speaker 1: of his father's corpse, he's said to have quelled the
Speaker 1: Great floods and established dynastic rule in China. His control
Speaker 1: of the flood is attributed differently in different tales, but
Speaker 1: I think we can summarize it as entailing the defeat
Speaker 1: of monsters, the possible Promethean theft of the sacred self,
Speaker 1: renewing soil from the gods, the help of various gods,
Speaker 1: and also the use of damn and irrigation technology. So
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's a culture bearer. And oh, he's
Speaker 1: also said to have measured the earth, and in some
Speaker 1: accounts he stands eight feet tall. But the other feet
Speaker 1: attributed to You the Great is that he also cast
Speaker 1: the nine cauldrons upon rising to power, as yang An
Speaker 1: and Turner discussed in the Handbook of Chinese Mythology quote,
Speaker 1: those cauldrons had the divine function to teach people to
Speaker 1: distinguish between faithfulness and treachery, and to keep evils and
Speaker 1: demons from harming people. So they were treated as national treasures.
Speaker 2: And I believe it's that this story is related to
Speaker 2: the idea that the cauldron itself is a sort of
Speaker 2: symbol of power, both in a literal and metaphorical sense,
Speaker 2: like that in the literal sense that you would have
Speaker 2: to be a rich and powerful person in ancient China
Speaker 2: to own one or more of these cauldrons, and also
Speaker 2: that the cauldron was kind of like a symbol of
Speaker 2: some one's power or political dominance.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And in this case, there are nine of them,
Speaker 1: because there were nine cauldrons for the nine provinces, but
Speaker 1: then nine also had cosmologically important connections as well. There's
Speaker 1: also this tradition of saying that the nine cauldrons sometimes
Speaker 1: are scattered and lost, and it was said that whoever
Speaker 1: wished to claim imperial power and rain by the mandate
Speaker 1: of heaven would need to collect all these nine cauldrons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I recall reading somewhere that there's an
Speaker 2: expression means something like seeking after cauldrons, or something that
Speaker 2: means like ambition for power.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. There are a number of different sayings in
Speaker 1: Chinese tradition that allude to cauldrons and make use of
Speaker 1: the motif. In the book Chinese Mythology and Introduction and
Speaker 1: Burial ads that while you the Great forge the vessels,
Speaker 1: they are said to have been cast by feeling the Dragon,
Speaker 1: god of wind. The cauldrons could and would change weight
Speaker 1: and size, or even vanish completely or reappear at will
Speaker 1: quote according to the virtue or decadence of the dynasty
Speaker 1: possessing them. Whoa, so yeah, this gets pretty interesting. For instance,
Speaker 1: if a dynasty is virtuous, then the cauldrons would become
Speaker 1: so massive that they would be almost impossible to lift.
Speaker 1: It was said that when the child people over through
Speaker 1: the shung, the child's virtue was such that it took
Speaker 1: ninety thousand men to lift a single cauldron. But then
Speaker 1: when the chin overthrew the chow, one of the cauldrons
Speaker 1: just like immediately flew into the river.
Speaker 2: Oh so the inanimate objects have a will of their own.
Speaker 2: It's almost like the one ring, except that yes, way,
Speaker 2: the cauldrons are virtuous, whereas the ring is wicked.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's also specifically noted that it is the
Speaker 1: weight that is important, not the size. So you might
Speaker 1: have a dynasty that is corrupt, and the cauldrons might
Speaker 1: look enormous, but they weigh little, and thus signifying that
Speaker 1: you know that they are morally impoverished. But then the
Speaker 1: opposite is also true. You might have a noble dynasty
Speaker 1: and the cauldrons are very small, but it would take
Speaker 1: like ninety thousand men to lift a single one of them,
Speaker 1: because such is the virtue of these rulers.
Speaker 2: Oh, that resonates in a very pleasing way, because you imagine,
Speaker 2: like an evil dynasty having these giant cauldrons that are
Speaker 2: easily blown over by the wind. Yeah, big surface area
Speaker 2: and very little mass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it works on so many levels.
Speaker 1: They are said to have been cast in iron and
Speaker 1: also said to be illustrated with images of the gods
Speaker 1: and forged from metals offered up by the nine regional stewards.
Speaker 1: There is also discussion of them being important to distinguish
Speaker 1: malign creatures, which are sometimes translated as goblins and trolls.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure if that's meant to mean that
Speaker 1: the cauldrons also depicted these quote unquote adverse beings, but
Speaker 1: because it doesn't seem like it's explicitly stated. But at
Speaker 1: the very least they had images of gods on them. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the use of cauldrons and sacrifice, an burl
Speaker 1: includes a wonderful passage from the ancient text the Book
Speaker 1: of Songs or the Classic of Poetry. The passage in
Speaker 1: question is celebrating the agricultural culture hero and god Huji
Speaker 1: aka Lord Millet. Here is part of it, in translation,
Speaker 1: of course, describing the sacrifice, our sacrifice. What is it
Speaker 1: like some pound, some baiale, some sift, some tread. We
Speaker 1: wash it soaking, soaking wet. We steam it, piping, piping hot.
Speaker 1: Then we plan with thoughtful care, gathering southern wood, offering
Speaker 1: rich fat. We take a ram to make the wayside sacrifice,
Speaker 1: roasting and broiling to usher in the new year. The
Speaker 1: bronze pots filled the brim, the bronze pots and cauldrons.
Speaker 1: As soon as there aroma rises up odd on high.
Speaker 1: Enjoys it with pleasure. The rich fragrance is right and proper.
Speaker 1: For Hoji inaugurated the sacrifice with no fault or blemish.
Speaker 1: His people have continued it to the present day.
Speaker 2: I like the line on here about as the aroma
Speaker 2: rises up, God on high enjoys it with pleasure. Because
Speaker 2: that that is not unique to this poem or to
Speaker 2: Chinese religious traditions. That it's a it's a common feature
Speaker 2: of many religions mentioning God enjoying God, or God's enjoying
Speaker 2: the smell of a burning sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of this that is
Speaker 1: that is ultimately a universal. It's fascinating. Now for the
Speaker 1: second episode in a row, I'm going to also cite
Speaker 1: a children's book. This is another children's book. This one
Speaker 1: is titled Two of Everything, and Chinese American author Lily
Speaker 1: toy Hong wrote this It's fun, and she credits it
Speaker 1: is being based on a Chinese folk tale, and I'd
Speaker 1: love to read another telling of it, but I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to find one. I'm sure it's out there.
Speaker 1: But it does involve some sort of a magical pot
Speaker 1: or cauldron in this story, which is which has some
Speaker 1: some wonderful illustrations an elderly couple in China. And this
Speaker 1: has a historical setting, by the way, so it's not
Speaker 1: I don't think it's supposed to be like modern China.
Speaker 1: But this elderly couple, they happen to happen upon this
Speaker 1: pot or this cauldron, and they quickly find out that
Speaker 1: anything you drop or place inside the cauldron comes out duplicated.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine how this story goes. You know, food,
Speaker 1: gold gets duplicated, and finally somebody's going to fall in
Speaker 1: that cauldron. The old man falls in the cauldron, and
Speaker 1: now there are two old men. So the story ultimately
Speaker 1: ends on a happy note, with the couple deciding, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to put the pot away. We're not going
Speaker 1: to use it unless we absolutely have to. But by
Speaker 1: this point they're living side by side with their own
Speaker 1: doppelgangers who have a replica of everything that they have.
Speaker 1: So I was looking around to try and find another
Speaker 1: version of this story and I was not able to.
Speaker 1: But in the process, I found another story that includes
Speaker 1: cauldron's as a key plot point that I think will
Speaker 1: transition into something else we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: a bit. It's a wonderful little story called the Wizard's Lesson.
Speaker 1: This story appeared in the book Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies,
Speaker 1: edited and translated by Moss Roberts, a professor of East
Speaker 1: Asian Studies at NYU. The original title is Tuzu Chun
Speaker 1: and it is included in the Suswan Kwi Lu, an
Speaker 1: early ninth century CE collection compiled by Li Fu Yin,
Speaker 1: though there seemed to be some disagreements on the exact
Speaker 1: date of when this original text was published or written.
Speaker 1: This story is awesome, yeah, I think at times per play.
Speaker 1: I've seen some online like some sort of blog style
Speaker 1: discussions where people are like, what is this about? But
Speaker 1: it has some wonderful wizardry in it. So basically the
Speaker 1: story goes like this. We have this character too, Zuchun,
Speaker 1: and he's a scoundrel. Basically, he's spent all his money,
Speaker 1: He's burned all his friends and family members, you know,
Speaker 1: borrowing money and so forth. So he finds himself on
Speaker 1: the street with nothing, and then up comes an old
Speaker 1: man and ask him, hey, look there, buddy, how much
Speaker 1: money would it take to set you right? Like how
Speaker 1: many strands of coins will it take? And tuzu Chun
Speaker 1: names a sum and the old man just kind of scoffs,
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh, you should probably go higher than that,
Speaker 1: and he gives him another sum, and the old man agrees,
Speaker 1: and he gives him enough cash on the spot for
Speaker 1: a night's rest somewhere and says, meet me tomorrow in
Speaker 1: the market and I'll give you the full amount. So
Speaker 1: this goes exactly as promised, and the next day he
Speaker 1: receives his first millions from the old man. Like it's
Speaker 1: it's a true fortune, enough for him to have a
Speaker 1: real proper start at rebuilding everything in his life, and
Speaker 1: then some. But you can imagine what happens next. He
Speaker 1: immediately blows it all on a lavish lifestyle, and before
Speaker 1: long he's back on the street again. Then here comes
Speaker 1: the old man approaches him again, and this basically the
Speaker 1: same thing happens once more, only this time he squanders
Speaker 1: an even greater fortune. The third time, however, the old
Speaker 1: man warns him that if an even greater fortune won't
Speaker 1: do the trick this time, then there's clearly no helping him.
Speaker 1: So finally Tuzu Chun has a change of heart. He
Speaker 1: finally realizes, Okay, this old man has been so kind
Speaker 1: and patient with me and just overly generous, and I've
Speaker 1: done nothing for him. He has this change of heart
Speaker 1: and realizes that he shouldn't be spending this all on himself.
Speaker 1: He should try and do some good in the world.
Speaker 1: And he tells the old Man that he is going
Speaker 1: to do this. He's going to go help the widows
Speaker 1: and the orphans, he's going to make men's with family members,
Speaker 1: and then at the end he's going to meet up
Speaker 1: with the old man wants more and do right by
Speaker 1: him as well.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so you might expect this to be the
Speaker 2: end of the story. He's learned his lesson.
Speaker 1: But no, it keeps going and I I, you know,
Speaker 1: this might be a situation where you have sort of
Speaker 1: combined stories, you know, to become one at some point.
Speaker 1: But what happens next is the old man he he
Speaker 1: you know, he goes out in the world, he does
Speaker 1: all the things he's going to do, and then he
Speaker 1: meets up with the old Man again. The old Man
Speaker 1: takes him up to the mountain to a splendid residence
Speaker 1: and inside here's an alchemist furnace, guarded by a white
Speaker 1: tiger and a black dragon. It's written that jade white
Speaker 1: fairy women stand by. And the old man is no
Speaker 1: longer dressed like the old man that he met in
Speaker 1: the market. Those those three times. No, now he's dressed
Speaker 1: in yellow and scarlet robes. He's dressed as a dallist wizard.
Speaker 2: Oh so immediately at this point, I'm like picturing him
Speaker 2: as played by Chinying Lamb from the Mister Vam movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that would be a wonderful stern performance of
Speaker 1: this character. So at this point, he presents tuzoo Chone
Speaker 1: with a beaker of wine and three white pills. He
Speaker 1: tells him to take the pills, and no matter what happens,
Speaker 1: no matter what he sees and the visions that are
Speaker 1: about to hit him, he must not speak. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read a quote from the story here. Take care
Speaker 1: not to speak. The wizard cautioned, be it a revered spirit,
Speaker 1: vicious ghost, demon of hell, wild beast, hell itself, or
Speaker 1: even your own closest relatives, bound and tormented in a
Speaker 1: thousand ways, nothing you see is truly real. It is
Speaker 1: essential that you neither speak nor make any movement. Remain
Speaker 1: calm and fearless, and you shall come to no harm.
Speaker 1: Never forget what I have said. With that, the wizard departed.
Speaker 2: Okay, so none of it's going to be real as
Speaker 2: long as you keep your mouth shut, You'll be all.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And then the visions begin to hit him.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just kind of like one way of
Speaker 1: the visions after the other. So first a swarming army
Speaker 1: rides up on him in a ten foot tall general
Speaker 1: in armor it's just referred to as the General comes
Speaker 1: up on an armored horse and demands that he to
Speaker 1: identify himself. He remains quiet. The general leaves in a rage.
Speaker 1: And then and then to Tusu Chun is tormented by
Speaker 1: snakes and spiders and other beasts. There's a there's he's
Speaker 1: a rasped by storms.
Speaker 2: This is the devil rides out, this is the Christopher.
Speaker 2: Lee is like, he's got him in the circle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, instead, only this time it's the circle is silence.
Speaker 1: He cannot break that silence.
Speaker 2: Tuzu Chune. I'd rather see you dead than speak.
Speaker 1: So after the storms, the general returns, and this time
Speaker 1: he has his men place a great cauldron in front
Speaker 1: of tuzu Chun. And in the story it's written the
Speaker 1: general return this time leading an ox headed sergeant and
Speaker 1: his soldiers of Hell. Together with the other weird faced ghosts,
Speaker 1: they placed a huge cauldron of boiling water before tuzu
Speaker 1: Chun enclosed in on him with spears, swords and pitchforks,
Speaker 1: and so at this point they threaten him, they say, look,
Speaker 1: identify yourself or we're going to boil you alive. He
Speaker 1: doesn't speak, So then they drag his wife before him
Speaker 1: and they start beating her, and he still refuses to speak.
Speaker 1: So they chop her up into little pieces, and he
Speaker 1: still doesn't say anything, and finally the general denounces him
Speaker 1: as a quote master of the Black Arts and has
Speaker 1: his soldiers behead him. Well, the scuy gory, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: gets gory, and hurry this story, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: We got to remember what was said at the beginning.
Speaker 2: The Taoist wizard promised him none of this is going
Speaker 2: to be real, it's just visions. Just don't say anything.
Speaker 1: Right, So then tuzu Chun's soul passes on and he
Speaker 1: and he comes before the King of the Dead, who
Speaker 1: identifies him. He says, hey, you're that heretic and orders
Speaker 1: him cast into the hells. Quote Zuchun tasted the torments
Speaker 1: of hell to the fullest molten bronze, the iron rod pounding, grinding,
Speaker 1: the fire pit, the boiling cauldron, the Hill of Knives
Speaker 1: the Forest of Swords, but he kept the Wizard's words
Speaker 1: firmly in mind and bore the pain without letting a
Speaker 1: moan pass his lips. Then the tortures reported to the
Speaker 1: king that the punishments were completed, and at this point
Speaker 1: the King of the dead says, okay, that's good. He
Speaker 1: can go on and be reincarnated. Now, let's have him
Speaker 1: reincarnated as a woman. And so he's born again as
Speaker 1: a small female child. And now the female Tuzuchun, as
Speaker 1: an infant, still doesn't cry out, grows up a mute.
Speaker 1: Mary's has a child herself at this point, and then
Speaker 1: her husband finally has an episode and accused and accuses
Speaker 1: her of being improper by refusing to speak to him,
Speaker 1: and murders their child before her. So finally, after a
Speaker 1: life and yet it's brutal, and after a life time
Speaker 1: of silence, now she finally breaks her vow and unleashes
Speaker 1: a cry of anguish, and at this point the whole
Speaker 1: vision collapses, and once more, here's tuzu Chun himself again,
Speaker 1: still seated in the Wizard's pavilion with an empty wine
Speaker 1: flask in his hand, and the Wizard's just cursing at
Speaker 1: him for failing. He tells him, if you'd only remain
Speaker 1: silent a little longer, you would have been able to
Speaker 1: purify yourself of all your passions. You'd already purified yourself
Speaker 1: of all your passions except for love, and you blew it.
Speaker 1: And now you're not going to be immortal.
Speaker 2: That is harsh. No, he already he got killed. He
Speaker 2: had watched all his people get killed. He got killed,
Speaker 2: He got sent to hell, tortured in hell, then lived
Speaker 2: a whole other life. But the Wizard is like, you
Speaker 2: just had to hold out a little bit longer. How
Speaker 2: was he supposed to know how long it would be?
Speaker 1: He had no idea. He was just supposed to keep going.
Speaker 1: But supposedly he was close, like this was the last
Speaker 1: test and he was not able to overcome it.
Speaker 2: Remember how this started with this guy like blowing all
Speaker 2: his money on parties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is a it's a weird story. What
Speaker 1: I may I may have to look into more to
Speaker 1: see if I can, uh, you know, grasp some of
Speaker 1: the the deeper meanings involved here, But on the surface level,
Speaker 1: like coming back to cauldrons, it does feature cauldrons, twice,
Speaker 1: and both of them in a very threatening manner. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea that if you don't speak, I'm going to
Speaker 1: boil you alive, and then once you're in Hell you
Speaker 1: may be boiled as well.
Speaker 2: A well, this would not be the only vision of
Speaker 2: hell or negative afterlife that involved boiling, and in fact,
Speaker 2: there are some famous boiling puddles, ponds, and rivers in
Speaker 2: Dante's Inferno, though I don't recall there ever being a cauldron.
Speaker 2: Maybe there is. I think they're just various boiling rivers
Speaker 2: and puddles.
Speaker 1: Well, Paul Mirapole mentions this. I thinks this as a
Speaker 1: brief aside, because you know, I think for starters, the
Speaker 1: papers mostly mostly dealing with Asian visions of hell, but
Speaker 1: mentioned that there are certain saints who had visions of
Speaker 1: hell and they might mention boiling, but they don't mention cauldrons.
Speaker 1: And part of that could be the legacy of sacred
Speaker 1: cauldrons in some of the European traditions, the pre Christian
Speaker 1: European traditions that we'll discuss in the future, like the
Speaker 1: idea being that if the cauldron is sacred, you would
Speaker 1: not find that in hell, and of course that might
Speaker 1: you might well ask, well, what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 1: You You've already talked about sacred cauldrons in Chinese traditions,
Speaker 1: and here they are popping up in Chinese. Hell, what's
Speaker 1: going on there? Well, I will get back to that,
Speaker 1: and I think it'll ultimately wind up making sense.
Speaker 2: But yeah, clearly, whatever its particular religious significance, I think
Speaker 2: it's also got to be highlighted in this story just
Speaker 2: because it's like a horrific way to threaten somebody with death.
Speaker 1: Right. And you know, certainly when we start talking about
Speaker 1: weird forms of capital punishment and execution, I mean the
Speaker 1: line between that and and sacrifice is often a bit blurred.
Speaker 1: You know, both spectacles are doing something beyond simply killing
Speaker 1: an individual or burning a piece of meat, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes in history they appear to have been
Speaker 2: sort of the same thing that, like some human sacrifice
Speaker 2: in history was clearly carried out on people who were
Speaker 2: believed to have committed some kind of crime or people
Speaker 2: who were like prisoners of war.
Speaker 1: Right, And so death by boiling pops up many times
Speaker 1: in global tales and traditions, often as a means of
Speaker 1: state execution. For all sorts of things like sorcerers, bandits, counterfeitters, poisoners,
Speaker 1: and traders. Some accounts maybe legendary, but there are plenty
Speaker 1: of very believable historic cases of boiling executions, and it
Speaker 1: was practiced into the sixteenth century in France and Germany
Speaker 1: as a punishment for clipping coins. This is when you
Speaker 1: would scrape the edges off of coins and then melt
Speaker 1: those scrapings down to new coins, a practice that was
Speaker 1: finally defeated by milling the edges of coins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, several of the main examples I found of actual
Speaker 2: use of capital punishment by boiling took place in England
Speaker 2: in the sixteenth century, where it was apparently used as
Speaker 2: a as a punishment for poisoning. There was famously a
Speaker 2: guy named Richard Rouse who made some porridge that they
Speaker 2: I think he was a cook, and he made some
Speaker 2: poison porridge that poisoned like a bishop, and then just
Speaker 2: a bunch of other people who happened to eat it,
Speaker 2: and at least a couple of people died, and he
Speaker 2: was put to death through a public boiling.
Speaker 1: It was pretty gruesome, very gruesome. It's interesting, like I guess,
Speaker 1: with the with the with the clipping of coins. There's
Speaker 1: sort of a hey, if you boil clippings from our money,
Speaker 1: will boil you, sort of a thing like you melt money,
Speaker 1: you get melted. I'm not sure exactly what the poisoning
Speaker 1: thing is, except that like poisoning was just something they
Speaker 1: really wanted to to to to draw a line on,
Speaker 1: you know, and say, look, this is really bad, and
Speaker 1: therefore you get boiled if you do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't prove this, but I have a gut suspicion,
Speaker 2: and it's that poisoning is a type of crime that
Speaker 2: is especially horrifying to kings and royal people. You know,
Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing they could imagine happening to them.
Speaker 1: Right, don't mess with the king's money or the king's food.
Speaker 1: Both must be deterred in the strongest sense. It's also
Speaker 1: interesting looking at the European use of boiling executions because
Speaker 1: you would see this tradition later on, as you know,
Speaker 1: tales were being told of what is surely going on
Speaker 1: in various foreign parts of the world, be at Africa
Speaker 1: or Asia. You know, there would be the especially in
Speaker 1: like sort of the pulp era. This idea of boiling
Speaker 1: people is something that the other does whereas history tells them.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly they are examples of boil in various cultures,
Speaker 1: but clearly there was a long history of it occurring
Speaker 1: in Europe as well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, clearly you can see that as just part
Speaker 2: of a fiction that sort of exoticizes other parts of
Speaker 2: the world by imagining like horrific, horrific things that might
Speaker 2: happen there, probably without any evidential basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, turning briefly to Greek mythology, of course, we
Speaker 1: have to remember that this is a boiling alive is
Speaker 1: the way that the master artificer datalist kills King Minos,
Speaker 1: trapping him in a bath that boils him alive. Clever,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the very sort of revenge that
Speaker 1: datalists would use against his enemy.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't remember that part of the story.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I believe it is depicted in one of
Speaker 1: the Jim Henson Greek Storyteller episodes. They have, I think
Speaker 1: two different ones that involve datalists back to Eastern depictions
Speaker 1: of Hell. So there's that line in Big Trouble in
Speaker 1: Little China. I believe it's from the character Eddie who
Speaker 1: says the Chinese have a lot of hells, and indeed
Speaker 1: you'll find Eastern depictions of hell often will include generally
Speaker 1: eighteen different die you or underworlds. And the exact nature
Speaker 1: of these hells or underworlds vary from text to text,
Speaker 1: but each one has a different flavor. They're a different
Speaker 1: like this is where you'll encounter the hill of knives,
Speaker 1: or this is the one where you'll encounter the boiling feces,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Several of them were listed in
Speaker 1: that passage I read earlier from the story of the
Speaker 1: Wizard's Lesson.
Speaker 2: And I actually don't know the answer here. Would these also,
Speaker 2: like in some of the classic Christian depictions of hell,
Speaker 2: have specific tortures for people who's depending on their characteristic sin.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, and in case in this case the hell
Speaker 1: of oil cauldrons would be reserved for thieves and a
Speaker 1: few other kind of related transgressions. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: I'd like to come back to that Paul Marabul article
Speaker 1: Visions of Asian Hell, in which he discusses Asian visions
Speaker 1: of hell at length, and as mentioned previously, he singles
Speaker 1: out the alchemical nature of cauldrons and Chinese traditions which
Speaker 1: it seems very key here. So on the mundane level,
Speaker 1: it is a piece of technology that allows us to
Speaker 1: transform the nature of various ingredients into food, and then
Speaker 1: on the sacred level, it allows us to transform flesh
Speaker 1: into something befitting of a god. And so Mirabile discusses
Speaker 1: examples of boiling cauldrons and the hells of Tibetan Buddhism, which,
Speaker 1: to remind everyone, does center around the continuation of souls
Speaker 1: within the wheel of Samsara, which is a karma based
Speaker 1: system in which souls tumble through incarnations that may be
Speaker 1: human or animal, but may also be incarnations such as
Speaker 1: hungry ghosts, heavenly and power devas, or indeed, you might
Speaker 1: be reborn into the hell realms of Naraka. And the
Speaker 1: goal is, ultimately, in the grand scheme of Buddhism, to
Speaker 1: remove oneself from this endless wheel and attain freedom from
Speaker 1: the cycle of death and rebirth, because that's the only
Speaker 1: way to just sort of win. I guess you would say, like,
Speaker 1: if you keep playing the game of Samsara, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna pinball around, you know, so you might ascend on
Speaker 1: high into the form of a demi god, a deva
Speaker 1: but then perhaps all that power and wrath you have
Speaker 1: at your disposal that ends up corrupting you and propels
Speaker 1: your soul back down into the hell realm. So the
Speaker 1: hell's in this case, they're not really, It's not about
Speaker 1: permanent suffering like you encounter in some interpretations of Western
Speaker 1: depictions of Christian hell, where it's like, well, you screwed up,
Speaker 1: you went with the wrong side, now you're in hell.
Speaker 1: For let's say, ever, No, in this case, hell is
Speaker 1: a place you are moving through. Your soul is moving
Speaker 1: through here, and you'll in all likelihood be reincarnated into
Speaker 1: a different incarnation in one of these other realms. So,
Speaker 1: as Mirabola discusses these visions often depicted in art, they
Speaker 1: already have this feel of transformation or purging to them.
Speaker 1: So demonic beings might be cooking human souls, but to
Speaker 1: what end? Right, we have to remember that cooking again
Speaker 1: is a transformation, and the form of cooking in the
Speaker 1: cauldron of sacrifice is supernaturally so.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, So I think I see the connection he's
Speaker 2: making here, the same way you might say. In some
Speaker 2: Chinese traditions use a ding or a cauldron to make
Speaker 2: a burnt sacrifice to the gods in order to appease
Speaker 2: them to improve your fortune. In for example, this Buddhist
Speaker 2: vision of hell, you may also be put into a
Speaker 2: cauldron yourself, but in a similar way are transformed into
Speaker 2: something potentially holier.
Speaker 1: Yes, And this ends up being reflected in Dallas traditions
Speaker 1: as well, which in Daoism is perhaps more concerned with
Speaker 1: transformation of the soul or self and immortality, but it
Speaker 1: ends up being influenced by Buddhism when Buddhism enters into
Speaker 1: China from India roughly two thousand years ago. And so,
Speaker 1: in considering images of cauldrons in Hell and the Chinese
Speaker 1: temple of ching Wang in Linza Shu in western China,
Speaker 1: Mirabule says quote, in fact, we could interpret the Dallast
Speaker 1: Hell as some enormous cauldron into which have been poured
Speaker 1: the ingredients necessary to permutate the present state of imperfect
Speaker 1: beings into their possible perfection by long and painstaking alchemical assimilations.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I really love that idea. And again it
Speaker 1: comes back to again question You might ask, well, if
Speaker 1: some Europeans were hesitant to take a sort of divine
Speaker 1: legacy of the cauldron and then place it in depictions
Speaker 1: of hell. Even if you're dealing sort of different religious traditions,
Speaker 1: why would you see it in Chinese traditions? And I
Speaker 1: think it is because you have this different view of
Speaker 1: what Hell is doing, this idea that these depictions of
Speaker 1: torment are not about like in game suffering, they are
Speaker 1: about changing you into something else, which is the purpose
Speaker 1: of the daying, the purpose of the cauldron, whether you're
Speaker 1: dealing with the process on Earth or something more celestial,
Speaker 1: or indeed something in one of the hells. And I
Speaker 1: should also point out, yeah, that you also see these
Speaker 1: visions of hell outside of Chinese traditions and outside of
Speaker 1: Indian divisions. It also pops up in Japanese views of
Speaker 1: hell and so forth. All Right, we're going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and close out this episode then, but i'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there if you have additional
Speaker 1: things you'd like to add about Chinese traditions of cauldrons,
Speaker 1: be they the Nine cauldrons of You the Great or
Speaker 1: these various depictions of Dallast and Buddhist Hell. I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone out there. Likewise, any sort of
Speaker 1: pop culture and fiction related treatments of cauldrons that kind
Speaker 1: of match up with what we've discussed here today totally.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find
Speaker 1: those episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: On Tuesdays and Thursdays we publish our core episodes. Those
Speaker 1: are the main episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: and then on Mondays we do listener mail. On Wednesdays
Speaker 1: we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode
Speaker 1: in on Fridays, we cut loose, We put aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns and we just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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