Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Land.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back to part two
Speaker 3: of our Halloween season series called it Lurks in the
Speaker 3: Mind Shaft, about creatures and spirits said to haunt the mines.
Speaker 3: In part one, we talked about red caps, blue caps,
Speaker 3: and the Cornish mining spirit known as the Knocker or
Speaker 3: Tommy Knocker, which was originally the subject of labor lore
Speaker 3: in Southwest England, but was later imported through immigrant oral
Speaker 3: tradition to the minds of the Western United States. And
Speaker 3: we're back today to talk about more so, rob In
Speaker 3: the last episode we talked a bit about the creature
Speaker 3: from German folklore known as the Cobald. Would you mind
Speaker 3: if we do a little bit more on this one
Speaker 3: because I found an interesting geological history connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this will be fun to get into. The Cobald,
Speaker 2: of course, is also well known to Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 2: players as the low level dragon kin creature that is
Speaker 2: generally encountered at low levels and in beginner campaigns, but
Speaker 2: has apparently become increasingly popular as a character choice for players.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's a whole very popular meme among younger D
Speaker 2: and D faults where you would have three Cobalts in
Speaker 2: a trench coat pretending to be a person and like
Speaker 2: people make you know, there's all sorts of fan art
Speaker 2: of this. You can find three D printed miniatures and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you said a low level dragon form. This
Speaker 3: is a draconic reptilian type creature, but also humanoid, kind
Speaker 3: of a long snout with scales and.
Speaker 2: A tail exactly. Yeah, basically goblinoid creatures with dragon features
Speaker 2: ch iconic features. Yeah. So not a lot to do
Speaker 2: with what we're going to get into here, except that they,
Speaker 2: you know, typically live underground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, underground small stature would have been common with the
Speaker 3: real folklore. But the creature from actual historical folklore doesn't
Speaker 3: have any reptilian features that I read about. That seems
Speaker 3: to be a pure D and D invention. So this
Speaker 3: originally came up in the context of talking about the
Speaker 3: Tommy Knockers, because there is a lot of overlap between
Speaker 3: these two creatures. So I'm going to go more lightly
Speaker 3: on the things that are essentially the same between them.
Speaker 3: The cobalt seems to have been well known in German
Speaker 3: sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and is usually
Speaker 3: described as a type of goblin or fairy like creature,
Speaker 3: looking like a little old man. I believe Georgia's Agricola,
Speaker 3: who we mentioned last time, says that they are about
Speaker 3: twenty seven inches tall. Other times they're said to be
Speaker 3: two feet tall, somewhere in that range. They are sometimes
Speaker 3: described as wearing a conical hat and pointy shoes, or
Speaker 3: they can be dressed like a human miner in mining
Speaker 3: clothes and mining gear. Sometimes friendly, but often delicious and deceitful.
Speaker 3: The I don't know the moral alignment of the cobalt
Speaker 3: from what I was reading, seems to have the same
Speaker 3: range as the Tommy knocker, but it with a little
Speaker 3: more emphasis on the meaner side of the scale. Okay,
Speaker 3: the cobalt is most notably associated with mines, but it's
Speaker 3: not limited only to minds. It can also inhabit households
Speaker 3: on the surface, so it can be a household trickster,
Speaker 3: like many of these other spirits we've talked about. In
Speaker 3: either place, it would often play tricks, even nasty tricks,
Speaker 3: on people. So in your house. It might throw sawdust
Speaker 3: all over the floor, or kick ashes around up of
Speaker 3: the fireplace, or drop sand in your milk. In the mine,
Speaker 3: it could lead you astray, making you think you had
Speaker 3: discovered a great vein of silver, only for you to
Speaker 3: waste so many hours working on it and later realize
Speaker 3: you had been fooled. The element cobalt actually gets its
Speaker 3: name from the impish form of the cobalt, because early
Speaker 3: modern miners believed the presence of cobalt or near a
Speaker 3: vein of silver was problematic in some way. It made
Speaker 3: the silver harder to get out, or damage the purity
Speaker 3: of the silver in some way, So cobalt was a
Speaker 3: demonic or mischievous mineral. One interesting thing about the cobalt
Speaker 3: is that I found references to a passage where Martin Luther,
Speaker 3: the father of the Protestant Reformation, talks about the cobalt
Speaker 3: as a type of devil or minion of satan. I
Speaker 3: came across this reference in a book called Early Modern
Speaker 3: Supernatural The Dark Side of European Culture fourteen hundred to
Speaker 3: seventeen hundred. This is a book from twenty twelve by
Speaker 3: an author named Jane P. Davidson, who is a professor
Speaker 3: of art history at University of Nevaderino. Davidson is in
Speaker 3: the middle of writing about the blurring between categories of
Speaker 3: supernatural beings and interesting that that's something that came up
Speaker 3: in part one one of this series, that sometimes you
Speaker 3: have these creatures where it's not quite clear are they
Speaker 3: considered a fairy type creature, something other than human, or
Speaker 3: a ghost of a dead human. Sometimes there is a
Speaker 3: crossing of boundaries between these categories. A creature can be
Speaker 3: considered one or the other, or maybe both at the
Speaker 3: same time. In the case of the cobalt, some early
Speaker 3: modern authors treated them as a type of fairy or gnome.
Speaker 3: Others treated them as ghosts, having qualities similar to a
Speaker 3: Poultergeist noisy ghost moving things around and making a rucus.
Speaker 3: But also they were sometimes considered to have the qualities
Speaker 3: of a demon or an imp, and some authors embraced
Speaker 3: a fully Christian theological framing and simply said they were
Speaker 3: devils of Satan. So Martin Luther is an example of
Speaker 3: the latter. In a passage from his table talk, he says,
Speaker 3: in translation of course quote, the devil vexes and harasses
Speaker 3: the workmen and the mines. He makes them think they
Speaker 3: have found new veins of silver, which when they have
Speaker 3: labored and labored, turn out to be more illusions. Even
Speaker 3: in open day on the surface of the earth, he
Speaker 3: causes people to think they see a treasure before them,
Speaker 3: which vanishes when they would pick it up. I have
Speaker 3: never had any success in the minds, but such was
Speaker 3: God's will, and I am content. And I thought this
Speaker 3: was interesting because it recasts the mining imp as one
Speaker 3: associated not so much with the mine as a place,
Speaker 3: but with the mental space of searching for treasure. You know,
Speaker 3: he says, even in open day on the surface of
Speaker 3: the earth, if your mind is in prospector mode, if
Speaker 3: you are looking for treasures and riches, searching for little
Speaker 3: signs of ways to profit and get rich, this devil
Speaker 3: will find you and take advantage of your greed or
Speaker 3: your hope. So this made me think, is it worth
Speaker 3: thinking about the difference between devils with a theological framing
Speaker 3: and goblins or fairy folk with a more secular folklore framing.
Speaker 3: The latter seems to me to be more part of
Speaker 3: the geography or the environment, sort of a part of
Speaker 3: the natural world, but a magical part of the natural world,
Speaker 3: whereas the former the devil is part of a very
Speaker 3: human focused cosmology. It's hard to think of a devil
Speaker 3: as something leading a life of its own, living a
Speaker 3: parallel existence in a hidden world where you might get
Speaker 3: in trouble for spying on it going about its business.
Speaker 3: You know, like these stories we have the Knockers, where
Speaker 3: people are peeking in on the knockers working and they
Speaker 3: get caught, and that's no good for them. That it's
Speaker 3: not really going to happen with a devil because devils
Speaker 3: have no business. They're not going about their own business.
Speaker 3: Their business is exclined lusively the tempting and tormenting of
Speaker 3: human souls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to use a very late example, you can look
Speaker 2: at C. S. Lewis's The screw Tape Letters, in which, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the demons are expressly concerned with us. They have no
Speaker 2: other business, like, this is their entire life, this is
Speaker 2: their identity.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've ever thought about it in
Speaker 3: quite these terms before, but this strikes me as a
Speaker 3: potent distinction between different types of creatures or imps a
Speaker 3: person could believe they were crossing paths with You have
Speaker 3: this more fairy folk tradition where these creatures are just
Speaker 3: part of the world and you might by chance cross
Speaker 3: paths with them, and you know, things, lots of things
Speaker 3: could happen from that accidental meeting, But the meeting is
Speaker 3: an accident. The meeting with a devil is never an accident.
Speaker 3: The devil is looking for you, you know, and if you
Speaker 3: meet it, it is because you have done something wrong
Speaker 3: and you have allowed it the opportunity to get you,
Speaker 3: which is something it's all trying to do.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Yeah, this is fascinating to think about because obviously,
Speaker 2: if you experience an hallucination or see something in the
Speaker 2: natural world that you don't have context for, you could
Speaker 2: go with either explanation. But then you can also think
Speaker 2: about like the purpose these different supernatural motifs serve. And
Speaker 2: in the unique environment of a mind like a deep
Speaker 2: rock mind, you have both the interaction with the natural world,
Speaker 2: and therefore you can see yourself leaning more towards these
Speaker 2: embodiments of nature, nature spirits, nature guardians, nature deities. But
Speaker 2: then you are also in a highly social environment, you know,
Speaker 2: working with people, trusting people, having weird feelings about how
Speaker 2: your foreman is treating you, and so forth. And all
Speaker 2: of that seems like maybe a little richer area for
Speaker 2: the devils to do their work.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I guess the other thing to stress, you know,
Speaker 2: talking about how different people have characterized these things. I
Speaker 2: guess this is always the problem when you have you know,
Speaker 2: at some later point an academic or a best eerie
Speaker 2: rider wants to categorize everything something that existed in an
Speaker 2: oral tradition and may you know, differ from mind to mine,
Speaker 2: from storyteller to storyteller, and even you know, situation to situation.
Speaker 3: I think you can get a lot of things exactly
Speaker 3: like that, where something is much more in the fairy
Speaker 3: folk mold, in how it is discussed among the people,
Speaker 3: that's its oral tradition mode of being. And then when
Speaker 3: it's time for someone to come along and catalog that
Speaker 3: belief in a book, it gets very much recategorized in
Speaker 3: the theological framing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we want to know what is its challenge rating?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it a fairy or is it a devil? You
Speaker 2: have to tell me faye or you know, infernal fay
Speaker 2: or fiend? Which is it?
Speaker 3: Well, I've got another little alley to go down if
Speaker 3: you want to play some more fair fiend games. Would
Speaker 3: you like to look at some creatures of Scandinavian mining folklore,
Speaker 3: Let's do it, okay? So for this I turned to
Speaker 3: a book called Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend by a
Speaker 3: couple of scholars named Rymond Kevitaland and Henning K. Simsdorf.
Speaker 3: This book is from the University of Minnesota Press, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight, and the authors note that while mining legends
Speaker 3: are prolific throughout continental Europe, they're actually a little bit
Speaker 3: less common, though still present in Scandinavia. So they were
Speaker 3: able to collect five different varieties of mining legend here
Speaker 3: based on accounts from different times in places from Sweden
Speaker 3: and Norway. It seems mostly collected in the first half
Speaker 3: of the twentieth century. So in contrast to the most
Speaker 3: common subterranean mining spirit found elsewhere in Europe, which as
Speaker 3: we discussed last time, was usually this elf like being
Speaker 3: shaped like a tiny old man, the creature that haunts
Speaker 3: a mine in Norway or Sweden is most often described
Speaker 3: as a solitary female being, often a fine lady. There
Speaker 3: are a few examples here that go by different names.
Speaker 3: You have the Groovra, the ruler of the mine, the
Speaker 3: groove Froken, the Lady of the Mine, or the Soulvmora,
Speaker 3: the Silver Mother. Almost exactly like the Tommy Knocker and
Speaker 3: other spirits we've discussed, the spectral Lady of the Mind
Speaker 3: has a dual nature. In some tellings, she is benign
Speaker 3: and even helpful, leading the miner to loads of ore
Speaker 3: or protecting him from danger. But in other situations she
Speaker 3: is a jealous guardian of the riches of the earth,
Speaker 3: and she can cause disaster and strike the greedy miner dead.
Speaker 3: In addition to the Lady of the Mine and the
Speaker 3: Silver Mother, there are also stories in Scandinavian legend that
Speaker 3: depict mythological beings as miners themselves. For example, mythical dwarves
Speaker 3: are often depicted as in dustus miners and smiths, and
Speaker 3: they could carry dangerous and powerful magic of their own.
Speaker 3: So the authors include a few specific tales. First, I'll
Speaker 3: mention a couple having to do with a lone female
Speaker 3: mining spirit like the Silver Mother. One story from Middle
Speaker 3: Sweden involves silver miners in a place called Holifores Forest.
Speaker 3: The story goes when the mine first opened up, the
Speaker 3: miners worked for a while without finding much, but then
Speaker 3: one day they heard the voice of a lady calling
Speaker 3: out to them. It was a woman's voice, and she said,
Speaker 3: keep to the left, otherwise you disturb the foot of
Speaker 3: my bed. These miners were, you know, they paid heed
Speaker 3: to the voice. They followed her instructions, keeping to the
Speaker 3: left of the pit, and what do you know, they
Speaker 3: struck silver. So turned out well for them. Who knows
Speaker 3: what would have happened if they had done otherwise, Maybe
Speaker 3: they would have angered the silver mother. Another story collected
Speaker 3: from near the same place in the Swedish province of
Speaker 3: Vostmanland call. This one was called the Lady of the
Speaker 3: mine warned them. It goes like this quote. In Clack Mountain,
Speaker 3: there was a mining pit called Sunshine Mountain. My father
Speaker 3: heard from my grandfather who worked there in his time,
Speaker 3: that one day the miners had emerged from the mine
Speaker 3: and were eating their noon meal in a shack. Suddenly
Speaker 3: a fine lady appeared and said, go down into the shaft,
Speaker 3: pick up your gear, and go home. The older men
Speaker 3: did as she told them, but the younger fellows just
Speaker 3: laughed and stayed. The mine collapsed and they were all
Speaker 3: buried under the rocks. It was the lady of the mine,
Speaker 3: who had warned them whenever she showed herself, a miner
Speaker 3: would lose his life. Interesting detail here. The old men
Speaker 3: listen and are saved, the young men ignore her and die.
Speaker 3: Are the old men simply more cautious or is it
Speaker 3: that the old men have respect for the legend and
Speaker 3: thus are saved.
Speaker 2: Ah, you know, I think it's probably both. I mean,
Speaker 2: the youth of today they just don't listen to to
Speaker 2: the Silver Mother like like like the old codgers know
Speaker 2: how to do.
Speaker 3: What did the young men think the Silver Mother was?
Speaker 3: Was she just like, oh, that's just a crazy, random
Speaker 3: lady coming out of the mine.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe you know what it probably is,
Speaker 2: you know, getting back to some of what we were
Speaker 2: discussing in the last episode and discussing in this one.
Speaker 2: It probably comes back to that gut understanding of the mine.
Speaker 2: It sounds, it's in some cases it smells, you know,
Speaker 2: being able to sort of feel the mine, and the
Speaker 2: young people they just don't have the experience and or
Speaker 2: they're more brash, whereas the old men like they've been
Speaker 2: down there in the mine long enough. I mean, they
Speaker 2: didn't they didn't become old miners by not listening to
Speaker 2: the mine.
Speaker 3: As George Orwell reports, they can feel the weight upon them.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, okay, So we have the Silver Mother leading
Speaker 3: you to or and the Silver Mother warning you of danger.
Speaker 3: And then finally they also include a short remembrance from
Speaker 3: a place called the Nasa Mine, near the border between
Speaker 3: Norway and Sweden, and that goes like this. Nils Olsen
Speaker 3: from then from northern Rana tells how his father once
Speaker 3: went over to look at the minds of Nasa. As
Speaker 3: it turned out, he stayed away for quite a long time,
Speaker 3: and when he finally returned, the people were just getting
Speaker 3: ready to come after him. They had feared that the
Speaker 3: Silver Mother in Nasa had taken him. So here the
Speaker 3: Silver Mother herself seems to be the threat, a malicious
Speaker 3: figure who in fact in the story does not harm anyone,
Speaker 3: but the people assumed could seize you on a solitary
Speaker 3: survey and make you disappear forever. But fortunately the father
Speaker 3: and the story was spare. Okay. Now a couple more
Speaker 3: Scandinavian tales in the other tradition, not the Lady of
Speaker 3: the mines or the Silver Mother, but the spirits and
Speaker 3: beings who are minor themselves, or at least make some
Speaker 3: claim over the ore in the mine. One of them
Speaker 3: is a story collected from Norway concerning a place called
Speaker 3: Klett Mountain, a mountain with silver hidden inside it. The
Speaker 3: main character of the story is a ferryman who works
Speaker 3: a boat taking people across a nearby sound. One day,
Speaker 3: two men come over and hire him to take them
Speaker 3: across the sound, and one of them is carrying a
Speaker 3: load of silver so big it almost sinks the boat.
Speaker 3: The ferryman asks them where they got all the silver.
Speaker 3: They tell him it's from Clett Mountain. He asks them
Speaker 3: if there is more silver still in the mountain. They say, yes,
Speaker 3: there's a bunch more there, and they tell him the
Speaker 3: secret of where to find it. But when the boat
Speaker 3: reaches the other shore, the two miners disembark, and as
Speaker 3: soon as they leave the boat, they vanish into thin air.
Speaker 3: I don't know if the implication is that they were
Speaker 3: actually dwarves, but there was some kind of spectral miner here,
Speaker 3: you know, they knew where to get the ore, and
Speaker 3: they gave him the secret, and then they're gone.
Speaker 2: And here well outside of the mine too. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: That's like if you were to encounter spectral dwarves on
Speaker 2: Wall Street. Yeah, yeah, trading in like silver stocks or something.
Speaker 2: And then like where did they go? Oh they were dwarves.
Speaker 3: The taxi driver, yeah yeah, that drops them off and
Speaker 3: they disappear.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then finally, here's one last story, also collected from
Speaker 3: vast Minland in Sweden in nineteen oh two. I'm just
Speaker 3: going to read this one directly. This one is called
Speaker 3: he lost his eyesight quote. According to legend, the copper
Speaker 3: deposits at Leunsnarberg were discovered at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: seventeenth century by a man named Martin Finn. One day
Speaker 3: he went fishing and slept by his fire. He was
Speaker 3: awakened by the sound of hammering and pounding in the mountain.
Speaker 3: A rough voice shouted the first, who are treasure? A
Speaker 3: spies will lose both eyes. When he pushed aside the
Speaker 3: coals to quench the fire, the rock was laid bare
Speaker 3: and there glistened the copper. But as soon as the
Speaker 3: exploitation of the find began, Martin Finn went blind. So
Speaker 3: that story is interesting because there's some ambiguity, at least
Speaker 3: to me, in the way it's being told. I think, though,
Speaker 3: I am not sure that this should be interpreted as
Speaker 3: another example of supernatural miners, or at least supernatural claimants
Speaker 3: to the discovery of the ore there. But it could
Speaker 3: also be like supernatural guardians or protectors of the mind,
Speaker 3: more like the Silver Mother. I guess it depends on
Speaker 3: how you interpret the sound of the hammering and pounding
Speaker 3: that woke Martin up. Was that the sound of the
Speaker 3: beings that cursed him pounding the rock trying to reach
Speaker 3: the ore first? In other words, is the speaker of
Speaker 3: the curse a competing spectral miner, or was that hammering
Speaker 3: the sound of human mind workers or explorers who were
Speaker 3: there at the same time as Martin. If it's the latter,
Speaker 3: I think you could interpret this more like the malevolent
Speaker 3: version of the Silver Mother, like I am the spiritual
Speaker 3: owner or guardian of this mine, and I will curse
Speaker 3: and punish the first person who finds the ore I
Speaker 3: have hidden there. But it reads to me more like
Speaker 3: these are you know, the dwarfs or whatever other spectral beings.
Speaker 3: They want the ore, They want to get there first.
Speaker 3: You know that I saw it first, and if you
Speaker 3: lay your eyes on it, I will punish.
Speaker 2: You supernatural competition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was trying to think, are there any
Speaker 3: consistent moral themes in this Scandinavian mining lore like we
Speaker 3: saw in the early Cornish legends of the Tommy Knockers,
Speaker 3: Because remember in the Cornish examples, there were moral punishments,
Speaker 3: and what was punished was disrespect of the knockers themselves,
Speaker 3: excessive curiosity like spying on the spirits, or excessive greed
Speaker 3: and ambition trying to take more than your fair share
Speaker 3: or trying to swindle the spirits. By contrast, I tried
Speaker 3: to actually separate out what is being punished in the
Speaker 3: three Scandinavian examples here that feature punishment or feature the
Speaker 3: threat of punishment. In one, it seems to be simply
Speaker 3: looking at the minds, like trespassing or possibly spying. That
Speaker 3: could be a curiosity punishment, but it could also just
Speaker 3: be a jealous guardianship of the mind. In another, it
Speaker 3: seems to be not listening to the warning of the
Speaker 3: Silver Mother. This might actually not be seen as a
Speaker 3: punishment but merely a consequence. And in the third, it
Speaker 3: is accidentally laying eyes on or that the spirits either
Speaker 3: guard or seek to extract themselves, and this one to
Speaker 3: me doesn't feel like a moral punishment. It seems just random.
Speaker 3: So I think there's really no evidence here of punishment
Speaker 3: for greed or excessive ambition. The magical violence feels more capricious,
Speaker 3: random and purely dangerous.
Speaker 2: M yeah, as in keeping with a natural force.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. And I was also thinking about the silver
Speaker 3: Does the fact that it is a regal, somber, solitary
Speaker 3: woman change anything, comparing it to the idea of a
Speaker 3: cadre of mischievous, diminutive, old gray bearded men. Does that
Speaker 3: change how the legend is received and told by the
Speaker 3: people who believe in it. And I would note also
Speaker 3: that the curses here are more acute than we saw
Speaker 3: in the Cornish legends, because if you remember the original
Speaker 3: Cornish Tommy Knockers, they would curse you if you crossed them,
Speaker 3: but that curse tended to be bad luck or bad
Speaker 3: luck in mining. If the Silver Mother or any of
Speaker 3: these Scandinavian beings curse you, it seems more likely to
Speaker 3: mean violent death or being struck blind, something really acute.
Speaker 3: And that's more like the later American evolution of the
Speaker 3: Tommy Knockers, which tended to give omens about death and disaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is interesting to think about. They're more likely
Speaker 2: to be like little Gromlin type creatures or or little
Speaker 2: men if they are just cursing your luck. But then
Speaker 2: if we're looking at it as a like a death
Speaker 2: dealer or or death itself, then you know, what does
Speaker 2: it mean that it is gendered and given this kind
Speaker 2: of you know, almost the stature of a goddess. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've I've been thinking about that recently. You know, we
Speaker 2: see you know, feminine versions of death in various cultures,
Speaker 2: in pop culture as well, and like what does that mean? Yeah,
Speaker 2: valkyries are a great example. What does that mean? You know,
Speaker 2: looking I guess considering like the the heteronormative male view
Speaker 2: on sexuality, is it is it an eroticism of death
Speaker 2: or is it something more maternal? I mean is it
Speaker 2: all these things? You know? And then what what service
Speaker 2: does it do? Does it kind of lessen the blow
Speaker 2: uh or the fear of an approaching death? You know?
Speaker 2: I want to change the subject. I want to come
Speaker 2: back to something that I was thinking very early on
Speaker 2: in this and that is that J. R. R. Tolkienah
Speaker 2: for the student of European myth of course, nicely explored
Speaker 2: and reused many of these concepts with his depictions of
Speaker 2: the dwarves of Kaza Doom later known as Moria who digged,
Speaker 2: who were digging too greedily and too deep in the
Speaker 2: relentless mining for the precious metal mythrill, and of course,
Speaker 2: you know, unlocked their own doom and released the ball
Speaker 2: Rock upon them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great connection, and it seems to have
Speaker 3: a lot in common with some of these tellings, though
Speaker 3: I would note that Tolkien actually makes the legend much
Speaker 3: more epic and grim. You know, the warning of awaking
Speaker 3: this demon of the ancient world, something that is more
Speaker 3: dangerous than anything you've ever seen, does seem it seems
Speaker 3: like it goes much further beyond any of these actual
Speaker 3: old bits of folklore where the worst thing that's going
Speaker 3: to happen is like there's a being that causes a
Speaker 3: cave in or seizes you in the mine, and it's
Speaker 3: just sort of death. I mean, it's not it doesn't
Speaker 3: have this epic monstrous form like.
Speaker 2: The ball Rog. Yeah, the Ballrog is like the destroyer
Speaker 2: or ultimately a civilization like it did, you know, it's
Speaker 2: that level of threat to the dwarves that unlock it.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, it makes sense that next we're going
Speaker 2: to be diving a bit into German legend here, and
Speaker 2: like all these things that you know, all these concepts
Speaker 2: have some degree of interconnectedness, and you know, Scandinavian and
Speaker 2: Norse mythology has strong connections going into German mythology and folklore.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about one that was new
Speaker 2: to me that I found very exciting, and that is
Speaker 2: der berg Munch, which is translated as the mountain monk
Speaker 2: or even the mine monk. More often than not, I
Speaker 2: found this entity described as the mine monk amazing.
Speaker 3: Let's let's hear about this monk.
Speaker 2: So one of the main sources I turned to for
Speaker 2: this was the work of the brothers grim In. There
Speaker 2: were a couple of volumes that they put out titled
Speaker 2: German Legend in eighteen sixteen, in eighteen eighteen, and I
Speaker 2: was working from a nineteen eighty one translation by Donald Ward.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so we have the mind monk here. Sometimes
Speaker 2: he's given a proper name, meister Hammerling or something like
Speaker 2: Master of Hammering, you know, other times mountain monk, mind monk,
Speaker 2: and so forth. And concerning the translation here I found
Speaker 2: I have to stress this is something that's not directly
Speaker 2: about the mind Monk, but is talking about a German
Speaker 2: poem that references the mind Monk, and how we might
Speaker 2: translate that into English. This was from nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2: Leonard Dhalty commented on the translation of the name meister
Speaker 2: Hammerling in the poetry of nineteenth century German poet Henrik Heine,
Speaker 2: and this is from notes on Translating Heina from the
Speaker 2: Texas Review. Basically, the author here notes that there are
Speaker 2: a few different possible meanings tied up in the name.
Speaker 2: So first of all, is it is on its own
Speaker 2: like a hateful gnome or cobalt who hammers underground. We've
Speaker 2: been talking about this throughout these episodes. And is therefore
Speaker 2: like a trickster, a devil, or even a clown. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a sins, there's a there's a wide spectrum by
Speaker 2: which this entity might manifest. The hammer also in German,
Speaker 2: takes on the connotation of bully. Apparently that's something to
Speaker 2: consider as well when when a hammer or the Hammerling
Speaker 2: is mentioned. And the poem in question that the author
Speaker 2: is commenting on here in concerns a passage where the
Speaker 2: poet is pleading for Master Hammerling to build a bridge
Speaker 2: for the poet, like, you know, like hey, master of Hammering,
Speaker 2: build me a bridge. And sometimes in English that gets
Speaker 2: transmitted into Hangman, apparently because I guess English readers aren't
Speaker 2: going to necessarily pick up on the mind monk thing,
Speaker 2: and you need some sort of ominous press like that
Speaker 2: you were calling to, like hey, hey Hangman, or even
Speaker 2: like hey, Death, build me a bridge. So I found
Speaker 2: that interesting and perhaps speaks to the intimidating nature of
Speaker 2: the monk in question, because descriptions of this entity sound
Speaker 2: rather intimidating. We're not talking about a little person here.
Speaker 2: We're talking about a gigantic figure in a dark robe,
Speaker 2: a giant. And the Grim's right that he frequently appears
Speaker 2: in several different minds that he mentions. One is the
Speaker 2: Gara Bunden Alps, but especially on Fridays, that's when you
Speaker 2: will find him in the in the shafts. He's generally
Speaker 2: seen there emptying a bucket of ore into another bucket
Speaker 2: and then back again. So once more we have this
Speaker 2: idea of the supernatural entity in the mind creating a racket,
Speaker 2: messing with the tools and equipment, but not getting any
Speaker 2: work done.
Speaker 3: Okay, we've seen this before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in this case, you know, basically, the Grims
Speaker 2: tell a few different stories, and the Grimms explained that
Speaker 2: the mine owner in this particular case was well aware
Speaker 2: of this particular spirit and made sure everyone left him alone, Like,
Speaker 2: don't object to what he's doing. It seems pointless, but
Speaker 2: just leave him alone and he won't harness. And so
Speaker 2: he kept to himself, didn't cause any trouble. But then,
Speaker 2: of course, one day a reckless miner, probably a young miner,
Speaker 2: scolded and cursed at the mine monk, and this did
Speaker 2: not go well for him. They explained that the giant
Speaker 2: hooded figure lunged at this reckless I assume youth. They
Speaker 2: pick him up, It picks him up and then shakes
Speaker 2: him so severely that his face turns inside out. Like
Speaker 2: it doesn't kill him, but for the rest of his
Speaker 2: life he walks around with an inside out face.
Speaker 3: Just one curse of that monk and your inside out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, how are we supposed to interpret this? I
Speaker 2: couldn't find a lot of scholarly breakdown on this. This
Speaker 2: is not a grim story that's translated a lot apparently,
Speaker 2: but you know, we can easily imagine this as being
Speaker 2: a description of a very real disfigurement from a mining accident.
Speaker 2: It could very well just be a magical, you know,
Speaker 2: inversion of the face, or it could be something related
Speaker 2: to trauma, you know, some sort of like a look
Speaker 2: of fear locked into the facial features or something. All Right,
Speaker 2: So there are more mind monk stories, though they share
Speaker 2: some accounts of the annamine. They say a dozen men
Speaker 2: were working in the silver rich Rosenkrantz shaft when a
Speaker 2: mine monk appeared, or the mine monk appeared and breathed
Speaker 2: on them, causing them all to drop dead, and the
Speaker 2: shaft was abandoned thereafter.
Speaker 3: Oh and bad breath.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is very interesting too because it speaks
Speaker 2: to the very real dangers of mind gases, which are
Speaker 2: in mind terminology called damps. This comes from the German
Speaker 2: a damph, which means vapor. So we have I was
Speaker 2: not familiar with this, but we have various types of
Speaker 2: damps that can occur in a mine environment. Again, in
Speaker 2: the language and terminology of miners, you have fire damp.
Speaker 2: This is a gas that occurs naturally in coal seams.
Speaker 2: It's apparently nearly always methane, highly flammable and explosive at
Speaker 2: higher concentrations. Then we have white damp or carbon monoxide,
Speaker 2: particularly toxic and perhaps a reasonable fit for the breath
Speaker 2: of the mine bunk because the correct or the wrong concentrations,
Speaker 2: it can cause death within a few minutes, and this
Speaker 2: is a risk, particularly in coal mines. We have black damp.
Speaker 2: This is a situation where the atmosphere won't allow you
Speaker 2: to light a lamp, usually because of an excess of
Speaker 2: carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the air. Then there's stink
Speaker 2: damp hydrogen sulfide, so you have the smell, the rotten
Speaker 2: egg smell. And then there's after damp, and this is
Speaker 2: a mixture of gases found in a mine after an
Speaker 2: explosion or a fire.
Speaker 3: So a lot of different gas hazards occurring in a mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I like this idea of presenting one
Speaker 2: of these damps, again, probably white damp, as like the
Speaker 2: killing breath weapon of the mind monk. Yeah, though in
Speaker 2: this case, I don't, you know, it doesn't sound like
Speaker 2: they did anything to particularly offend the mind monk except
Speaker 2: maybe went into a shaft, went into a part of
Speaker 2: the mountain they were not supposed to venture into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it could be that this story in particular
Speaker 3: has less of a moralistic bent and is instead an
Speaker 3: attempt to magically explain a natural phenomenon exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And in most of these stories, I'll get to
Speaker 2: one where the mind Monk talks, But most of the
Speaker 2: time it seems like the mind Monk doesn't speak. You
Speaker 2: just encounter it. It's fearsome to look at, and you know,
Speaker 2: hope that he just continues to pour oar from one
Speaker 2: bucket to another and doesn't breathe on you. Now, let's
Speaker 2: see a few other tails of the mind Monk. They
Speaker 2: mentioned that in the Ana Mine, the mine Monk appeared
Speaker 2: as well, in the shape of a steed with a
Speaker 2: long neck and terrifying eye, so an alternate form here.
Speaker 2: And in the Saint George Mine it said that he
Speaker 2: appeared in his standard form, you know, the tall, black
Speaker 2: robed giant grabbed a young miner, lifted him up into
Speaker 2: a silver rich shaft, and then sat him back down
Speaker 2: so violently that he injured all of the youth's limbs.
Speaker 2: And in the Harz Mountains, the mind Monk was said
Speaker 2: to punish a foreman who was cruel to his workers
Speaker 2: by positioning himself above the entrance to a particular shaft,
Speaker 2: and when the foreman emerged beneath him, he caught the
Speaker 2: man's head between his legs and crushed his skull. Whoa, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so now we have a little bit of the like
Speaker 2: the moral even you could maybe say devil work of
Speaker 2: the entity here because he's punishing a cruel foreman. Yeah
Speaker 2: all right. But the best story, and this is one
Speaker 2: where the mine monk speaks, is the tale they tell
Speaker 2: of the mind monk of the Harz Mountains, which I
Speaker 2: found some nice similarities between this and the Japanese ghost
Speaker 2: story concerning the Yuki. Oh no, the Lady of the Snow.
Speaker 3: Is this the story of the woman whose secret is
Speaker 3: kept for many years but then when the secret is revealed.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, and she's at once like a natural force,
Speaker 2: but also she takes pity on mortals, but you know
Speaker 2: it does ask for that secrecy in return.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: Okay. So in this story, we have a pair of miners.
Speaker 2: They work as a team, and they descended into their
Speaker 2: shaft one day and then uh oh, they realized that
Speaker 2: they didn't have enough lamp oil to complete their shift.
Speaker 2: They'd have to go all the way back home to
Speaker 2: get more lamp oil, and of course that was just
Speaker 2: going to tick off the mine foreman in the process.
Speaker 2: So it seemed like a real losing situation. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: then what occurs, Well, they see a light appearing down
Speaker 2: the shaft, deeper in the shaft, you know, coming from
Speaker 2: a you know, deeper into the mountain, and blow and behold,
Speaker 2: approaching them is a towering figure in a black robe
Speaker 2: carrying a miner's lamp. It is the mine monk, and
Speaker 2: the two miners are of course terrified here, but the
Speaker 2: mine monk actually speaks to them and tells them not
Speaker 2: to be afraid. Quote, do not fear. I shall do
Speaker 2: you no harm. But rather good, All right, what's he
Speaker 2: gonna do? Well, he pours some of his lamp oil
Speaker 2: into their lamps, and then he grabs their tools and
Speaker 2: begins to work, doing a week's worth of work in
Speaker 2: a single hour. It seems like a good deal. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read another passage here. Tell no one that
Speaker 2: you have seen me here, he says, and then he
Speaker 2: slammed his fist against the shaft wall, which shattered, revealing
Speaker 2: a long vein sparkling with pure gold and silver. So
Speaker 2: once more, you know, a spirit of the mountain revealing
Speaker 2: a rich vein of treasure inside the wall.
Speaker 3: It's like boone, boone, boone. He gives them the oil,
Speaker 3: but in fact they didn't even necessarily need the oil,
Speaker 3: because he did all the work for them for a
Speaker 3: whole week's worth, and then is like, here as a bonus,
Speaker 3: here's another vein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really hit the jackpot with this sky. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the mind Monk breathes toxic death on you. Other
Speaker 2: times he just gives you gift after unearned gift.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: But this one. It gets a little weird here because
Speaker 2: at this point the gold and silver is so blinding,
Speaker 2: so dazzling, that the two mortal miners have to look away,
Speaker 2: and when they look back, the mind Monk and the
Speaker 2: vein of riches are gone. The grims here add that
Speaker 2: if these miners had been quicker, they might have heaved
Speaker 2: a pick into the shaft that had been opened or
Speaker 2: the vein that had been opened, but it was too late,
Speaker 2: so they didn't get the full riches and the mine
Speaker 2: that the mine monk had revealed to them. But the
Speaker 2: oil in their lanterns proved inexhaustible and it gave them.
Speaker 2: This of course, gave them a huge advantage over other miners.
Speaker 2: Other miners their lamps can run dry and then they
Speaker 2: have to go out and get more lamp oil. But
Speaker 2: these two, their lamps have been blessed by the mine
Speaker 2: Monk's lamp oil, and they'll just burn, you know, without end.
Speaker 3: That seems even better than the vein, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: you can use that the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the mine Monk did say, hell, no one
Speaker 2: that you have seen me here. And one Saturday night,
Speaker 2: what do they do. They're out drinking with their friends
Speaker 2: and the tavern and they tell the whole story. They
Speaker 2: end up breaking their word to the mine Monk, and
Speaker 2: the magical oil in their lanterns promptly gives out. So,
Speaker 2: I mean it's terms in terms of bad things that
Speaker 2: could happen after encountering the mine Monk, this isn't too bad.
Speaker 2: They just basically lost the boon that the entity had
Speaker 2: given them. And it's similar to what occurs in the
Speaker 2: Lady of the Snow. You know she in most tellings anyway,
Speaker 2: she does not kill the man who has finally revealed
Speaker 2: what happened on that fateful night during the snowstorm. But
Speaker 2: she does leave him, and I believe takes the children
Speaker 2: that she has had with him as well.
Speaker 3: But it's not in this story like the mine monk
Speaker 3: breathes on them.
Speaker 2: Now they're told, yeah, they told, so they lost the
Speaker 2: magical lamp oil that he had given. So I like
Speaker 2: how we see in this tale of the mind monk.
Speaker 2: Several were these various tales in the mind monks, several
Speaker 2: recurring themes of mind shaft entities. We got that pointless
Speaker 2: labor that is sometimes beneficial, a power not to be offended,
Speaker 2: revelation of riches, deadly gas lights in the dark, and
Speaker 2: also sudden violent action not unlike a cave in or
Speaker 2: various other related events. There are various sorts of rapid
Speaker 2: high release energy phenomena inside of a mine that could
Speaker 2: stand in for, you know, one of these encounters where
Speaker 2: again like the mind monk is picking you up and
Speaker 2: shaking you, or even like picking you up and putting
Speaker 2: you in, sticking you into a shaft and then dropping
Speaker 2: you back down again. You have things like mind trimmers
Speaker 2: and rock burds, seismic events, methane, cold dust explosions, and
Speaker 2: ground falls. As for the lights, you know, you have
Speaker 2: sensory deprivation that might result in visual hallucinations in a
Speaker 2: mining environment, but then also methane or cold dust explosions,
Speaker 2: open flame ignitions, and even electrical arcing and lightning strikes
Speaker 2: in mines. This is apparently a significant risk for some
Speaker 2: mining operations, which you know, might seem counterintuitive to a
Speaker 2: lot of folks that you know, don't know anything about mining.
Speaker 2: You would think, oh, you're underground, you're safe. Not necessarily
Speaker 2: the case. And then mythologically, I can only assume there
Speaker 2: is at least some connection here between again the towering
Speaker 2: mine monks and tales of stone giants such as you
Speaker 2: know the ootin of Norse myth which included yes, like
Speaker 2: storm giants and so forth, but also and ice giants,
Speaker 2: but also mountain giants divided between mountain dwellers and cliff giants.
Speaker 2: A number of Norse mythological concepts find their way into
Speaker 2: German traditions, and this includes the figure of Rubsol or
Speaker 2: the Lord of the Mountains, and there are various versions
Speaker 2: of him and other European traditions as well. Joe I
Speaker 2: included a painting of this character rubes All, the Lord
Speaker 2: of the Mountains here. This is from eighteen fifty nine
Speaker 2: by Morse von Schvend. I believe I'd seen this before
Speaker 2: in a book from my childhood. Maybe it was one
Speaker 2: of those fantastic legends from time life books, a series
Speaker 2: on giants. But you know, we see like a monk
Speaker 2: type figure with a jutting beard just walking through the
Speaker 2: forest here.
Speaker 3: Looks like he's wearing flip flops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some sort of old timey crocs.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I like it.
Speaker 2: So I have two more entities I want to discuss here,
Speaker 2: and there were international entities which I think roalms things
Speaker 2: out rather nicely. The first I want to bring up
Speaker 2: is Lteo of Bolivia. The author Luke Fodder explored this
Speaker 2: one in a twenty nineteen Atlas Obscure article that has
Speaker 2: some great photographs with it as well. So basically, the
Speaker 2: practices associated with this entity occur in the silver mines
Speaker 2: Osirio Rico in the Bolivian Andes and here otherwise Catholic
Speaker 2: Christian local miners leave cigarettes at the base of some
Speaker 2: apparently six hundred shrines to alto, which I believe translates
Speaker 2: to the uncle, and this is a goatish, devil looking
Speaker 2: figure with horns like red skin, a goateee, and generally
Speaker 2: a jutting erection. They'll soak his impish likeness in alcohol
Speaker 2: lah blah. Blood is apparently offered once a year as well.
Speaker 2: There are some different accounts of that. And then you
Speaker 2: also will make offerings of cigarettes or even light a
Speaker 2: cigarette in his lips, and the degree to which the
Speaker 2: cigarette burns down might be a sign of good luck.
Speaker 3: From what I understand, lt O. Much like many of
Speaker 3: these other figures we've been talking about, is is a
Speaker 3: being of both blessings and curses that you know you
Speaker 3: can you can do well by appeasing him, or you
Speaker 3: could incur wrath and danger by not appeasing him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely getting into this idea of its standing
Speaker 2: as a kind of nature entity. So, as Fodder explains
Speaker 2: in the art, there seem to be several forces at
Speaker 2: work with the genesis of this practice. So under Spanish
Speaker 2: rule colonial rule, the mountain was mined under just really
Speaker 2: brutal conditions, he writes, quote between four and eight million
Speaker 2: Kachuan Indians and enslaved Africans died mining the mountain, and
Speaker 2: among other names, the mountain was known as the Mountain
Speaker 2: that Eats men. So brutal conditions here, and you had
Speaker 2: this influx too of Christianity and its devil likeicnography, melding
Speaker 2: of course with local folk beliefs and those of enslaved
Speaker 2: people from Africa, again in a dangerous environment. I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that's so captivating about any
Speaker 2: of these mining tales is that we have folkloric elements
Speaker 2: being developed and nurtured, like right at the edge of
Speaker 2: life and death. I mean, that's often the case, I
Speaker 2: guess in life anyway, actual life and death scenarios, perceived
Speaker 2: life and death scenarios. But in the mind everything feels
Speaker 2: perhaps heightened, right, It's like it's a pressure for folkloric belief.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I guess there is a temptation sometimes to
Speaker 3: think of the creativity that drives the emergence of new
Speaker 3: pieces of folklore, creatures and stories as coming from an
Speaker 3: environment of ease and idleness. When do you make up stories?
Speaker 3: Maybe when when you're chilling, when you've got nothing else
Speaker 3: to do, not much to worry about, but no in fact,
Speaker 3: in reality, people are often making up the most interesting
Speaker 3: in creative stories. Folklore is developing under really harsh conditions,
Speaker 3: under times when people are facing threats of death or
Speaker 3: when they've got, you know, a lot to worry about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sometimes it's the case. Yeah, you may,
Speaker 2: you may make up the story or elements the story
Speaker 2: when in your leisure time when things are nice. But
Speaker 2: when things are bad, when maybe when the Silver Mother
Speaker 2: is not too far off in the distance, that's when
Speaker 2: you find out what the story means.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: So, I don't know, it's interesting to think about here.
Speaker 2: But coming back to lt O here, Yeah, there apparently
Speaker 2: seems to be a strong sense that in order to
Speaker 2: take from the mountain, to take silver from the mountain,
Speaker 2: you have to give back to the spirit of the mountain.
Speaker 2: And that's what these offerings to lt O or about.
Speaker 2: That it's ultimately a force that might bring good luck
Speaker 2: or terrible doom, depending on how you've honored and respected him.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, clearly influenced by some visual ideas
Speaker 2: concerning the Christian devil, but he seems very rooted in
Speaker 2: indigenous ideas of earth deities and the entities Phallus would
Speaker 2: seem to speak to this as well. You know that
Speaker 2: he's an entity that is associated with sometimes doom, but
Speaker 2: also life, But where does that life spring from? It
Speaker 2: would seem to be more elemental in nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's another mining related entity from the and Dan
Speaker 3: region known as Muki that has some characteristics in common
Speaker 3: with lto here. But the Muki in the Indian minds
Speaker 3: is a being that sometimes, like many of the other
Speaker 3: stories we've talked about, sometimes can lead people to riches
Speaker 3: or sometimes can lead them to danger and curses.
Speaker 2: All right, I have one more I want to mention here,
Speaker 2: and this is one that I was initially reading about
Speaker 2: in Carol Rose's book of Fairies and Leprechauns. She brings
Speaker 2: up an example of a spirit that is also tied
Speaker 2: to both virility, again coming back to the phallus of Altio,
Speaker 2: but is also associated with mines, and that is the
Speaker 2: trickster spirit essue of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. So
Speaker 2: apparently he according to de Rose, I'm going to caveat
Speaker 2: this in a minute. This entity is portrayed as both
Speaker 2: a trickster and a protector, is the patron of both
Speaker 2: mothers and childbirth. And miners in Nigerian coal fields, and
Speaker 2: he's depicted as having a large lock of plaited hair
Speaker 2: sculpted like a penis. Now elsewhere I've seen this described
Speaker 2: as more of a huge backward curving horn or like
Speaker 2: a horned head dress, and the god, while usually regarded
Speaker 2: as male, also sometimes either takes a fine form or
Speaker 2: features feminine features such as breasts. I've also read Assue
Speaker 2: described as the anger of the gods, and as one
Speaker 2: might expect, religions from Afar, such as Christianity, have often
Speaker 2: attempted to recast Essue as more of a devil figure,
Speaker 2: though clearly he seems to have a more nuanced presence,
Speaker 2: sometimes described as a god of trickery but also a
Speaker 2: god of surprise, and I found that really interesting. But
Speaker 2: again a god that, according to these sources, was both
Speaker 2: associated with mining but also childbirth and surprise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so interesting that figures associated from mining with from
Speaker 3: all these different parts of the world and different cultures,
Speaker 3: have a few things seemingly in common. One is the
Speaker 3: bivalent nature that they can represent either dangers or boons
Speaker 3: and blessings, that they might be helpful or they might
Speaker 3: be harmful, and also that they are so often associated
Speaker 3: with tricks and miss pranks. Yeah, that seems like that
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like I mean, obviously I don't have I'm
Speaker 3: not a miner, so I have no experience in the mind.
Speaker 3: But you I think the lay person who has no
Speaker 3: experience would not assume a natural connection between the environment
Speaker 3: of a mine and the concept of tricks, trickster behavior
Speaker 3: or mischief or pranks. But that does seem to be
Speaker 3: very common.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And as I mentioned in the last episode,
Speaker 2: I'm sure we have some listeners out there who are
Speaker 2: miners or have been in the mining business before. If
Speaker 2: that's the case, I would love to hear from anyone
Speaker 2: out there if you have particular insight on the just
Speaker 2: the headspace of of miners. If not some of these
Speaker 2: traditions or remnants of these traditions that may may or
Speaker 2: may not still exist today. I mean some of them
Speaker 2: definitely do. But I again, I would just like to
Speaker 2: hear from from actual folks out there who have real
Speaker 2: life experience in the.
Speaker 3: Minds contact at Stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, where we're gonna go ahead and close off
Speaker 2: this shaft for today, But we'd love to hear from
Speaker 2: everyone out there, if you have some favorite mind spirits
Speaker 2: that we didn't cover in this episode, also right in
Speaker 2: with that, or anything from like the wide world of
Speaker 2: you know, pop culture, magic things inspired. You know, we
Speaker 2: mentioned dungeons and dragons a bit, but you know, any
Speaker 2: other fantasy spin on any of these concepts that we
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you on that as well.
Speaker 2: Just to remind it that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do a short form episode
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us as always at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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