Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and it is a Saturday, so it's
Speaker 1: time for another episode from the vault. This is going
Speaker 1: to be part one of our series on oil and
Speaker 1: Troubled Water. This originally published on July twentieth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: It's a part one of two and it gets into
Speaker 1: the fascinating interactions between oil and water and how it's
Speaker 1: factored into practices as diverse as divination, rituals and attempts
Speaker 1: to calm the sea with oil. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: We have a fun journey to tell take you on
Speaker 1: in the next couple of episodes, probably going to be
Speaker 1: a two parter, but who knows. We never know. We
Speaker 1: don't know what the future is going to bring. But
Speaker 1: this is one that on the surface of things, you
Speaker 1: might think, oh, well, oil and water, how interesting could
Speaker 1: that get? But it gets pretty interesting because you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into divination, We're going to get
Speaker 1: into the idea of pouring storm oil into the sea
Speaker 1: to calm turbulent waters. There's a lot to talk about here,
Speaker 1: but at the very base level, oil and water two
Speaker 1: things that famously don't mix. You've probably observed varying levels
Speaker 1: of the interaction before. Perhaps you've just seen like a
Speaker 1: film of oil on the surface of a puddle, or
Speaker 1: you've observed the separation of cooking oil combined with another
Speaker 1: liquid in a mixing bowl. It instantly catches the eye.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say it necessarily always captures the
Speaker 1: human imagination, but there is something about it that you
Speaker 1: can't help but know.
Speaker 3: Did you ever have one of those toys when you
Speaker 3: were a kid where there is I actually don't know
Speaker 3: what liquids they use in these, but presumably it's water
Speaker 3: and then some kind of lipid based colored liquid, maybe
Speaker 3: like red or blue, that bubbles through the water and
Speaker 3: maybe spins a little pin wheel or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. I
Speaker 1: do remember these. They're really fun for a brief period
Speaker 1: of time, and then they go into the junk drawer.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe I'm just easily amused. I remember turning mine
Speaker 3: over and over a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean it's memorable. I'm not saying it's forgotten.
Speaker 1: That it certainly ends up in the toy chest.
Speaker 3: I bet that one's really fun when it breaks. That'd
Speaker 3: be a great origin story for like a long dormant
Speaker 3: virus or something, the dangerous microorganism encased within the item
Speaker 3: of power.
Speaker 1: What strange oil did they end up using. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's not just children, It's not just the inner child
Speaker 1: as well. Humans have interactions of oil and water intriguing
Speaker 1: since ancient times. And yeah, indeed it does trace back
Speaker 1: into the realm of ancient magic and divination. You know,
Speaker 1: various tales and we'll touch on some of these of
Speaker 1: like ancient kings and so forth, seeking out the word
Speaker 1: and the wisdom of diviners who use various methods to
Speaker 1: sort of reach into the murky future and make sense
Speaker 1: of the strange shapes there. Now, divination is, of course
Speaker 1: the attempt to seek guidance concerning the future and decisions
Speaker 1: that impact future events. As we've discussed in the show before.
Speaker 1: You can certainly think of it as a as the
Speaker 1: right of supernatural guidance, which it is, but especially in
Speaker 1: the ancient context too, we might think of it as
Speaker 1: well as a means of sort of generating a randomized
Speaker 1: direction that is weighted by belief for superstition. You know,
Speaker 1: if presented with two choices, all things being equal, you know,
Speaker 1: flip a coin, but not a trivial coin, not a
Speaker 1: completely trivial coin, because this coin is weighted supernatural belief.
Speaker 1: But then also you keep it from being just you know,
Speaker 1: completely random, because it also entails an art of interpretation.
Speaker 1: It's not just a coin anyone can flip and anyone
Speaker 1: can read. You need a specialist who's going to read
Speaker 1: the coin, read whatever it is you're reading, and perhaps
Speaker 1: too you know, read the client, read the patron and
Speaker 1: or the you know, the larger events going on and
Speaker 1: so so, yeah, there's a there's an art to divination
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: So it's often interesting when you think about a lot
Speaker 3: of the stories of what the interpreter does. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are some cases where they get real specific about things,
Speaker 3: but most of the time it seems like they are
Speaker 3: adding in ambiguity that makes it harder to falsify the prediction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of the you know, there's obviously an art
Speaker 1: to the cold read, and you know, there's a level
Speaker 1: of manipulation to carrying it out as well. And also
Speaker 1: there's a lot of self preservation, especially when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with you know, dark and gloomy kings and ancient times.
Speaker 1: If you want to be a diviner that lives a
Speaker 1: long life, or even a reasonably long life, you do
Speaker 1: have to read the room and figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: kind of message you're going to relay to the ruler.
Speaker 3: Look, I always said there would be a decisive victory.
Speaker 3: I didn't say which side would get.
Speaker 1: So there are various methods of divination that have been
Speaker 1: used over the years. We talked about about many on
Speaker 1: the show before in the past, and we're going to
Speaker 1: touch on several different ones here, but specifically concerning oil
Speaker 1: and water divination, this is what the ancient Greeks would
Speaker 1: come to call lacanamancy, the use of oil poured into
Speaker 1: a basin of water to tell the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the name lacanomancy comes from the Greek lakane,
Speaker 3: meaning bowl. So this is lacanomancy meaning bowl divination. And
Speaker 3: in the literature, yeah, it seems most often to refer
Speaker 3: to omens in mixtures of oil or water, either in
Speaker 3: a bowl or in a cup and could apparently be
Speaker 3: done either way, maybe by I think more often by
Speaker 3: pouring oil into water, but maybe also by pouring water
Speaker 3: into oil. Though there are some other definitions for this
Speaker 3: word that seem to overlap with the concept of hydromancy,
Speaker 3: meaning divination through water. And since the name only means bowl,
Speaker 3: like the name doesn't mean oil, I guess it could
Speaker 3: also involve these other things, like you have a bowl
Speaker 3: of water and you drop gems in it and see
Speaker 3: what they do to get your omen, or you drop
Speaker 3: gold or silver coins in, or you like move, you know,
Speaker 3: move the water around and see which way the ripples go.
Speaker 3: There are a number of ways of doing this, but
Speaker 3: the oil and water one seems to have been prominent
Speaker 3: in the ancient Near East.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this this lines up with what I was
Speaker 1: reading as well. I was looking at a book from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one titled Oracles and Divination, and in particular,
Speaker 1: there's a section in it by O. R. Gurney that says, yes,
Speaker 1: these these practices, they tended to involve a bowl or
Speaker 1: a basin of some sort, and yes, one would either
Speaker 1: pour oil into water or water into oil, and the
Speaker 1: oil would cause various shapes on the surface of the water,
Speaker 1: and these would be used through the diviner's art or
Speaker 1: the barus art. I believe barrou is the term in
Speaker 1: ancient Babylon to predict the future. There is also a
Speaker 1: variation called al romance, which used flour instead of oil.
Speaker 1: So you know, take heart, if you're out of oil
Speaker 1: and you have some flour on hand, you can also
Speaker 1: go with that.
Speaker 3: Method make you the loosest of dose.
Speaker 1: Now. Gurney also mentions that there now are slash were
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is like the current count.
Speaker 1: This is again a text from eighty one the six
Speaker 1: known surviving tablets from ancient Mesopotamia dealing with oil omens,
Speaker 1: and the author includes a couple of examples here that
Speaker 1: I wanted to read. So these would be different nuggets
Speaker 1: of wisdom to help you the diviner interpret what's happening
Speaker 1: in the bowl. Quote. If from the middle of the
Speaker 1: oil two drops come out, one big, the other small,
Speaker 1: the man's wife will bear a sun for a sick man,
Speaker 1: he will recover. And then the next one here concerns
Speaker 1: the use of flower instead of oil. If the flower
Speaker 1: in the east takes the shape of a lion's face,
Speaker 1: the man is in the grip of a ghost of
Speaker 1: one who lies in the open country. The sun will
Speaker 1: consign it, the ghost to the wind, and he will
Speaker 1: get well.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's creepy. So wait, flower forms a lion's face.
Speaker 3: Does that mean the ghost of one who lies in
Speaker 3: the open country? Does that mean a ghost of someone
Speaker 3: who didn't receive a proper burial?
Speaker 1: Would that be? That was what it made me think of.
Speaker 1: I'm not certain, and the author doesn't go into detail
Speaker 1: on this, but yeah, it made me think of other
Speaker 1: superstitions we've discussed from other traditions involving the unburied or
Speaker 1: the improperly buried dead.
Speaker 3: This was a subject often of great concern in the
Speaker 3: literature and folklore of the ancient world, that like people
Speaker 3: like not getting a proper burial was really something you
Speaker 3: didn't want.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, another form of divination that he mentions is lebanomancy,
Speaker 1: which is divination by smoke from throwing cedar shavings on
Speaker 1: an incense burner. And this would be kind of similar,
Speaker 1: like you throw the wood shavings on their smoke billows up,
Speaker 1: and however the smoke is moving, what shapes it seems
Speaker 1: to be forming. That is the basis of your vision
Speaker 1: of the future. M Now, he writes that the use
Speaker 1: of entrails and a sacrificed animal would become more popular,
Speaker 1: but oil, flower and smoke based divination would remain a
Speaker 1: cheaper option, but also still one that would be invoked
Speaker 1: and used by various important individuals, including kings, such as
Speaker 1: when cassite Ogham the Second, he says, prayed to the
Speaker 1: god Shamish by oil before setting out on a quest
Speaker 1: to reclaim stolen statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that you mentioned lacanamancy as a cheaper alternative
Speaker 3: to reading omens in the entrails of sacrificed animals. I
Speaker 3: came across that exact same claim and some other sources.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're citing from a common source
Speaker 3: that says that, but yeah, that is interesting obviously. So
Speaker 3: I guess the benefit of reading the entrails of a
Speaker 3: sacrificed animal is you're almost like, you know, you're paying
Speaker 3: for the really high price ticket for your message from
Speaker 3: the gods, Like you're taking a good animal, getting it sacrificed.
Speaker 3: I suppose at the altar of the god you're asking
Speaker 3: for the answer from and then its entrails will tell
Speaker 3: you something. And the budget option, yeah, is just a
Speaker 3: little bit of olive oil and some water or some
Speaker 3: flour or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I'm just guessing here. I mean, maybe that's
Speaker 1: not always available. Maybe sometimes the old ways are thought
Speaker 1: the best, or maybe sometimes you have a situation where
Speaker 1: even a king is getting a second or third opinion
Speaker 1: on a matter, and it's like, well, okay, what do
Speaker 1: the Lacinda mancers have to say about this? Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: give me the answer that I want to hear now.
Speaker 1: The author here Gurney, goes on and mentions that there's
Speaker 1: also a form of Lacando mancy that was used by
Speaker 1: the Hittites that involved a basin or a tub filled
Speaker 1: with water. Certainly, but instead of adding oil or flour,
Speaker 1: you would add what might be a snake or possibly
Speaker 1: an eel, and its movements in the enclosed space of
Speaker 1: the tank would foretell the future. And it does not
Speaker 1: in this case sound like the animal was sacrificed. It's
Speaker 1: just about you put the animal in there, watch it
Speaker 1: swim around. How does it behave its movements are going
Speaker 1: to reveal what the future holds? For us now I
Speaker 1: was looking at concerning this topic appears in the Influence
Speaker 1: of surface films on interfacial flow Dynamics from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven by Sean Patrick McKenna, and this author writes that
Speaker 1: lacana manci is, of course one of the forms of
Speaker 1: divination practice during the eighteenth century BCE in the Hamarabi
Speaker 1: ruled Old Babylonian Empire, and points out, Yeah, there's several
Speaker 1: tablets of the time period unearthed in the nineteenth and
Speaker 1: twentieth centuries that list examples of the kind of mancy
Speaker 1: and guides for interpreting what's going on in the water.
Speaker 1: This author also shares some examples translated from these tablets.
Speaker 1: A few of these include the following. If the oil sinks,
Speaker 1: then rises and spreads around the water for the campaign,
Speaker 1: unfavorable consequences for the sick divine punishment. If the oil
Speaker 1: splits in two for the campaign, both camps should march
Speaker 1: together for the sick death. If a drop emerges in
Speaker 1: the east and remains stationary for the camp pain booty
Speaker 1: for the sick recovery. If two drops emerge, one large,
Speaker 1: one small, a male child will be born for the
Speaker 1: sick recovery, if the oil fills the bowl for the sick,
Speaker 1: death for the campaign, defeat for the leader.
Speaker 3: This last one actually raises questions for me, because the
Speaker 3: question is if the oil fills the bowl. Knowing what
Speaker 3: we know about the physics of oil and water today,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think what will pretty much always happen
Speaker 3: is that over time, any oil in the water will
Speaker 3: spread out as far as it can, and so it
Speaker 3: will pretty much always spread to fill the surface of
Speaker 3: water in a bowl. So it takes time for it
Speaker 3: to do that. So maybe you've got to put a
Speaker 3: time limit on it. Otherwise it's always going to be
Speaker 3: death or defeat for the leader. I would think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there has to be an immediacy to this.
Speaker 1: And obviously, if you especially if you don't have a
Speaker 1: steady hand, all of your divinations can't be you know,
Speaker 1: death for the sick and defeat for the leader of
Speaker 1: an army. That's going to be bad for business, I think.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting to see the pairings of the different
Speaker 3: interpretations with like the two different kinds of battles, the
Speaker 3: battle for health within the body, in the battle you know,
Speaker 3: for the in the military campaign going on for the King.
Speaker 3: So some of these pairings make sense to me, like
Speaker 3: unfavorable consequences for the military campaign with divine punishment for
Speaker 3: the sick death and defeat death and defeat booty and recovery.
Speaker 3: That peering makes sense. The one I was confused about
Speaker 3: is if the oil splits in two, that means for
Speaker 3: the sick death for the campaign, both camps should march together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm maud you exactly sure what to make of
Speaker 1: that either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, I like that because that's not just stating
Speaker 3: an outcome, that's giving advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, obviously another issue that all this raises is
Speaker 1: you know, what what kinds of oil are you using
Speaker 1: in what kinds of water? You know, there could conceivably
Speaker 1: be differences in the reaction that takes place. Well, one
Speaker 1: source I looked at this is from D. Tabor. This
Speaker 1: is from nineteen eighty Babylonian Lacanomancy, an ancient text on
Speaker 1: the spreading of oil on water, and in that the
Speaker 1: author suggests that the water here is likely rain water
Speaker 1: and the oil is some manner of vegetable oil. I
Speaker 1: found that interesting, like the rain water, especially because on
Speaker 1: one hand, okay, I guess this is going to be
Speaker 1: how you're going to obtain the purest water that is
Speaker 1: also free of any oils that might, you know, otherwise
Speaker 1: contaminate it. And then on the other hand, there is
Speaker 1: something kind of supernatural to it as well, like this
Speaker 1: is the water that came from the sky, from the
Speaker 1: realm of the gods, and therefore I can imagine that
Speaker 1: playing a role in all of this as well. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing that came up in one of these
Speaker 1: sources is they pointed this out Joe, that apparently in
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, in Genesis forty four five, there is
Speaker 1: a reference to lacanamancy. There's a there's a bit that goes,
Speaker 1: is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and
Speaker 1: whereby indeed he divineth he have done evil in so
Speaker 1: doing so?
Speaker 3: This is a very interesting case. I think this is
Speaker 3: not necessarily a reference to lacanomancy, though that is a
Speaker 3: good candidate for what it is referring to. It is
Speaker 3: definitely referring to a form of divination, which means I
Speaker 3: think maybe this is a good time for a digression
Speaker 3: on references to divination in the Bible. And here I
Speaker 3: have to apologize because I got seriously over zealous in
Speaker 3: pursuing this digression, which is only lightly related to the
Speaker 3: topic to begin with, So please bear with me, but
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting subject. So there are actually a
Speaker 3: lot of references to divination in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 3: or what Christians would call the Old Testament, contains references
Speaker 3: to a bunch of different methods of divination. First of all,
Speaker 3: there is actually a divination method officially sanctioned by the
Speaker 3: Torah and by the priest class in the Bible, which
Speaker 3: is known as the Urim and Thummim, which seems to
Speaker 3: have been some other kind of object. It's like a
Speaker 3: pair of objects worn on the ceremonial breastplate of the
Speaker 3: high priest. And while the exact form of these objects
Speaker 3: and the procedure for using them is not certain, it
Speaker 3: seems they would essentially be used for casting lots of
Speaker 3: some kind by the high priest in order to receive
Speaker 3: answers from God, possibly answers to yes or no questions
Speaker 3: about what would happen in the future, will we be
Speaker 3: successful in battle and so forth, or answers to questions
Speaker 3: about the guilt or innocence of an alleged sinner. Sometimes
Speaker 3: They're represented as like gems that flash with a divine
Speaker 3: light in order to project messages. I think there were
Speaker 3: some interpretations in the later rabbinical literature like this, but
Speaker 3: I think that's all sort of like later writers speculating
Speaker 3: on what these original passages in the scriptures meant.
Speaker 1: Now the urim and thummim here, if I'm correct on this,
Speaker 1: this is this kind of often depict that is kind
Speaker 1: of a multi code, like you said, crystal plate that
Speaker 1: is worn from the neck. And I remember as a child,
Speaker 1: I would experience a certain amount of excitement and maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit of confusion because at the time I
Speaker 1: would have my Star Wars books on one hand, and
Speaker 1: then I would have, you know, some of these illustrated
Speaker 1: like Old Testament stories books on the other and these
Speaker 1: looked kind of these made me think of the chest
Speaker 1: plate of Darth Vader.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, well, the chess plate of Darth Vader,
Speaker 3: Like it's got all the little tic TACs and stuff
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: Red lights and all, and oftentimes these illustrations you see
Speaker 1: some sort of like red gems in there as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think what it does, what is clear
Speaker 3: is that these objects are linked to the breastplate of
Speaker 3: the high priest in some way, like it said that
Speaker 3: maybe they are put in or put on the breastplate,
Speaker 3: but it's not exactly clear what they are. But what
Speaker 3: is clear is that they are somehow used in an
Speaker 3: officially in bounds divination process. This is what the followers
Speaker 3: of the God of Israel were supposed to use for
Speaker 3: divination purposes if they needed to. But the Hebrew Bible
Speaker 3: also contains numerous references to other forms of divination, such
Speaker 3: as necromancy. This is apparently a big concern in the
Speaker 3: era of the Mosaic Law, and despite its modern interpretation
Speaker 3: as a kind of evil sorcery used for like calling
Speaker 3: up armies of undead skeleton soldiers and zombie swarms to go,
Speaker 3: you know, get your paladins. Originally necromancy meant communication with
Speaker 3: the dead for the purpose of divination, not raising zombie soldiers.
Speaker 1: Now, to be clear, even in like the modern dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons eccusage of necromancy, yes, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: calling up the dead and using all sorts of you know,
Speaker 1: weird spectral hands and so forth. There is still a
Speaker 1: little bit of talking to the dead, though they keep
Speaker 1: it real a little bit there, and we see a
Speaker 1: bit of that in the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie.
Speaker 1: There's a whole scene of speaking with the dead and
Speaker 1: trying to gain wisdom from them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's played mostly for comedy, I recall. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like they have a fixed number of questions they can
Speaker 3: ask and so forth. Yeah, So that's what necromancy means
Speaker 3: in this context, though it's not. Yeah, it's not the
Speaker 3: zombie soldiers. It's the talking to the dead for the
Speaker 3: purposes of gaining hidden information or knowing the past or
Speaker 3: knowing the future. Anyway, in the Mosaic law there are
Speaker 3: general prohibitions against divination and wizardry and magic of all forms,
Speaker 3: but one of the forms of divination that is specific
Speaker 3: called out in these verses is necromancy. Also, there is
Speaker 3: a very famous story in the Bible about a consultation
Speaker 3: with a dead prophet. This is in First Samuel chapter
Speaker 3: twenty eight, where Saul, the King of Israel, famously he
Speaker 3: goes to a village called Indoor to meet with a
Speaker 3: wise woman or a witch who can speak to the dead.
Speaker 3: And this is significant in the story because Saul has
Speaker 3: condemned witchcraft and has previously banished all the wizards and
Speaker 3: fortune tellers from Israel. But then he's facing a military
Speaker 3: conflict with another nation, with the Philistines, and he wants
Speaker 3: to know what he should do, and apparently he tries
Speaker 3: to get an answer from the sanctioned methods of information.
Speaker 3: He tries to consult the Urim and Thumim, he tries
Speaker 3: to have a dream from God or get some kind
Speaker 3: of direct revelation, and nothing ends up with no guidance
Speaker 3: and has no idea what to do from any of
Speaker 3: the official channels, so he goes rogue. He violates his
Speaker 3: own edict. He puts on a disguise and seeks out
Speaker 3: a necromancer to speak to the dead prophet Samuel. He
Speaker 3: wants to get Samuel's advice on what he should do,
Speaker 3: and this does not go well, so he does go
Speaker 3: to the woman in disguise. She figures out it's Saul
Speaker 3: by the way. She's like, oh, wait a minute, you
Speaker 3: said we're not allowed to do this, and he's like,
Speaker 3: oh no, don't worry about it. I need you to
Speaker 3: talk to Samuel. So she raises Samuel from the grave.
Speaker 3: I think she can see him, but Saul can't, and
Speaker 3: he's trying to talk with him, and Samuel just does
Speaker 3: not help. He seems to be kind of irritated for
Speaker 3: being woken up from the sleep of death, and then
Speaker 3: he condemns Saul for his treachery. And then Samuel tells
Speaker 3: him that his army is going to be defeated and
Speaker 3: he will lose his kingship, and Samuel is right. The
Speaker 3: army is defeated and Saul falls on his own sword
Speaker 3: and dies. And this story seems to, at least in part,
Speaker 3: emphasize how you really shouldn't go off trail on divination methods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stick to the to the legal methods. Don't go
Speaker 1: into a legal divination.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you've never seen it, everyone should
Speaker 3: look up William Blake's painting of Saul and the Spirit
Speaker 3: of Samuel and the Witch of Indoor.
Speaker 1: Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, I mean all of Blake's illustrations. Those
Speaker 1: hand colored illustrations are always so great. This one's no exception.
Speaker 1: By the way, The Witch of Indoor would also come
Speaker 1: to play a part in the nineteen eighty five film
Speaker 1: The Battle for Indoor. Weird how cinema listeners may remember
Speaker 1: no real connection to the Biblical account other than other
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with a moon of indoor and there
Speaker 1: is a witch on it.
Speaker 3: You were also not supposed to divine the future with
Speaker 3: the help of Wilford Brimley. But anyway, so that's a
Speaker 3: story from the Bible from after the delivery of the
Speaker 3: Mosaic Law, which contains all of these prohibitions against divination
Speaker 3: in general, presumably with the exception of the urim and
Speaker 3: thumim and the prohibitions against necromancy in particular. But there
Speaker 3: are also interesting references to divination from before the law
Speaker 3: when it seems to have different connotations. So one of
Speaker 3: these that occurs here is the example you raised earlier.
Speaker 3: This is where we're coming back to La canamancy. This
Speaker 3: is the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 3: which is a long and complicated story, so I'll try
Speaker 3: to do the very condensed and simplified version. Joseph is
Speaker 3: one of the twelve sons of the biblical patriarch Jacob,
Speaker 3: and Jacob in the story shows favoritism toward him over
Speaker 3: his other brothers, even buying him a splendid coat of
Speaker 3: many colors. They made a musical about it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, classic story.
Speaker 3: But his brothers, who are less favored by their father,
Speaker 3: become very jealous, so one day they conspire, they beat
Speaker 3: him up, they trap him in a well, and they
Speaker 3: sell him into slavery, where he ends up being transported
Speaker 3: to Egypt. But they take Joseph's coat to their father,
Speaker 3: covered in the blood of a goat, and convince him
Speaker 3: that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.
Speaker 1: Again children's story. I remember reading it alongside My Star
Speaker 1: Wars as a child.
Speaker 3: But in Egypt, Joseph does pretty well. He manages to
Speaker 3: rise from lowly servitude and at one point he's imprisoned,
Speaker 3: he manages to rise out of that to the rank
Speaker 3: of the pharaoh's most senior lieutenant. He's like the number
Speaker 3: two in Egypt. And the way he does this is
Speaker 3: by showing a talent for divination. He is able to
Speaker 3: interpret the omens of the future in dreams, and by
Speaker 3: correctly analyzing pharaoh's dreams, he brings great prosperity to Egypt
Speaker 3: at a time of famine for all the surrounding nations.
Speaker 3: And actually, since it matters to my interpretation of this
Speaker 3: story in a minute, the specific way this works is
Speaker 3: that the pharaoh dreams of seven fat cows that are
Speaker 3: eaten they're like swallowed up by seven lean cows, and
Speaker 3: seven rotten stalks of grain that consumes seven good stalks
Speaker 3: of grain, and Joseph realizes that this means they're going
Speaker 3: to be seven years of good crops followed by seven
Speaker 3: years of famine, and so to anticipate the famine, the
Speaker 3: Egyptians must ration their good crops and store up extra
Speaker 3: grain during the years of abundance. Joseph's prediction or his
Speaker 3: interpretation of the dream comes true, and so later suffering
Speaker 3: from famine like all of the surrounding nations are, Joseph's
Speaker 3: brothers come to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, whom
Speaker 3: they do not recognize. They don't know it's him, and
Speaker 3: then they have several interactions actually, but in the last
Speaker 3: one in secret, Joseph hides his silver cup in the
Speaker 3: grain bag carried by his youngest brother Benjamin. He then
Speaker 3: arranges to have his youngest brother caught quote stealing the
Speaker 3: cup again he actually actually planted it on him, and
Speaker 3: then demands Benjamin be given to him as a slave
Speaker 3: as punishment, and instead their older brother Judah asks that
Speaker 3: he be made a slave in Benjamin's play, and this
Speaker 3: causes Joseph to break down in tears. He reveals his identity,
Speaker 3: he forgives his brothers, and the family is reunited and
Speaker 3: allowed to relocate to a fertile part of Egypt. But
Speaker 3: it is the part of the story about the silver
Speaker 3: cup that relates to divination. So when Joseph's steward finds
Speaker 3: the silver cup hidden in Benjamin's sack, he says, just
Speaker 3: as Joseph commands him to. He says, why have you
Speaker 3: repaid evil for good? Is not this the one from
Speaker 3: which my lord drinks and with which he indeed practices divination?
Speaker 3: You have done evil in so doing. Now. Of course,
Speaker 3: it doesn't say exactly what kind of divination he does
Speaker 3: in the cup, So it could be a form of hydromancy,
Speaker 3: where you would, you know, put water in the cup
Speaker 3: or some liquid and drop coins or gems or other
Speaker 3: objects into the water and see what they do. It
Speaker 3: could be maybe used for a form of scrying, since
Speaker 3: it's silver. Scrying is reading the future in reflection, and
Speaker 3: a shiny surface such as a silver cup. Often a
Speaker 3: crystal ball is used for scrying, but based on a
Speaker 3: lot of the commentaries. I found a good candidate for
Speaker 3: what is being described here is lacanomancy, where he would be,
Speaker 3: you know, dropping oil into water or doing one of
Speaker 3: the other things we've been talking about. But in any case,
Speaker 3: I think this passage is interesting because I think the
Speaker 3: staging of the theft of the silver cup used for
Speaker 3: divination is supposed to be interpreted as more profound than
Speaker 3: like mere burglary of an expensive cup. This is the
Speaker 3: cup in which Joseph receives omens about the future, and
Speaker 3: if you remember the earlier part of the story, correctly,
Speaker 3: interpreting omens about the future is how Joseph rose to
Speaker 3: his position of prominence in the first place. It was
Speaker 3: the dream interpretations, you know, the Fadoleine cows and so forth.
Speaker 3: And it's also how Egypt is currently in a good
Speaker 3: position with this grain surplus during years of famine. So
Speaker 3: in a way, I think with that gloss, it makes
Speaker 3: sense to wonder if stealing Joseph's divination cup in the
Speaker 3: story is kind of an espionage caper. It would be
Speaker 3: like stealing the codes to the nuclear arsenal in a
Speaker 3: modern spy thriller. This is a piece of supernatural technology
Speaker 3: that helps give Egypt its strategic advantage over other nations.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, that's fascinating. So I'm a little out of practice
Speaker 1: with this particular Bible story. But Joseph frames one of
Speaker 1: his brothers for stealing.
Speaker 3: It, but then he undoes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does it when another for his youngest brother. Yea,
Speaker 1: his youngest brother is then fingered for the crime, and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I didn't want to enslave him. He
Speaker 1: wanted to enslave them both.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, he didn't want to enslave any
Speaker 3: of them. I think I think he wanted to test them.
Speaker 3: It's one of those kind of stories. I think. So
Speaker 3: he plants that, Yeah, he frames his youngest brother, who
Speaker 3: he loves, for the crime. Then he says, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: make him a slave, and then because the older brother
Speaker 3: is like no, no, no, take me instead. Then I
Speaker 3: think that that softens his heart and he forgives his
Speaker 3: brothers for what they did to him.
Speaker 1: Replicated family dynamic anyway you cut it, Yes, But to
Speaker 1: your point, yeah, this is not just any cup or
Speaker 1: any silver cup. This isn't is this isn't an artifact
Speaker 1: of the art of divination that Joseph practices. So this
Speaker 1: is this is vital, this is this has strategic importance
Speaker 1: for the Egyptians.
Speaker 3: Yes, and in this specific story, it is divination in
Speaker 3: particular that has made Egypt prosperous. And so anyway, thinking
Speaker 3: about the idea of dropping oil and water in a
Speaker 3: cup or a basin to receive messages from from the
Speaker 3: heavens or from the gods. You know, while even mundane
Speaker 3: objects were often used for divination in the ancient world,
Speaker 3: it seems clear to me why the behavior of oil
Speaker 3: on water could inspire a kind of oracular fascination. Like
Speaker 3: there's that sense of strangeness and wonder about it that
Speaker 3: actually I found to be captured quite well in a
Speaker 3: passage in a letter written by Benjamin Franklin in the
Speaker 3: year seventeen seventy three. We're going to get more into
Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin, I think in the next part in this series.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to read this passage because it articulates
Speaker 3: the kind of amazing weirdness here when you really pay
Speaker 3: attention to it. So Franklin's writing to somebody named William
Speaker 3: Brownrigg in November seventeen seventy three, and he says, in
Speaker 3: these experiments. One circumstance struck me with particular surprise. There
Speaker 3: was the sudden, wide, and forcible spreading of a drop
Speaker 3: of oil on the face of the water, which I
Speaker 3: do not know that anybody has hitherto considered. If a
Speaker 3: drop of oil is put on a polished marble table
Speaker 3: or on a looking glass that lies horizontally, the drop
Speaker 3: remains in place, spreading very little. But when put on water,
Speaker 3: it spreads instantly many feet around, becoming so thin as
Speaker 3: to produce the prismatic colors for a considerable space, and
Speaker 3: beyond them so much thinner as to be invisible except
Speaker 3: in its effect of smoothing the waves. Now, as I said,
Speaker 3: we'll come back to Benjamin Franklin in the next part
Speaker 3: of the series. But while I don't know if he
Speaker 3: was the first person to notice the way that oil
Speaker 3: spreads over the water, I actually somewhat doubt that he
Speaker 3: definitely was not the first person to notice these other
Speaker 3: strange properties, like the prismatic colors that tend to shine
Speaker 3: out from oil spreading over a pool of water, And
Speaker 3: he was certainly not the first person to notice the
Speaker 3: apparent ability of oil to somehow soothe the chop of
Speaker 3: threatening waters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was the thing that drew us into
Speaker 1: this topic initially, because I know, for my part anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd come across this before, this idea
Speaker 1: of oil being used to calm storm waters, because I mean,
Speaker 1: it just sounds so completely magical, and it will continue
Speaker 1: to sound completely magical while also having a basis in
Speaker 1: fact in science to at least a limited degree. So
Speaker 1: the accounts that we have dealing with this with this idea,
Speaker 1: these come from far after the time of ancient Babylon.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest, if not the earliest. It seems
Speaker 1: to go back to the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle lived
Speaker 1: three eighty four through three point twenty two BCE, and
Speaker 1: these a lot of his writings are generally just attributed
Speaker 1: to three point fifty BCE. So Aristotle brings this up
Speaker 1: in problems or Problemata physica, asking why is it that
Speaker 1: the sea, which is heavier than fresh water, is more transparent?
Speaker 1: Is it because it's fattier composition? Now, oil poured on
Speaker 1: the surface of water makes it more transparent, and the
Speaker 1: sea having fat in it is naturally more transparent.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, okay, several things.
Speaker 1: There's also a part in I was looking up oil
Speaker 1: in various of these ancient writings, and I noticed in meteorology,
Speaker 1: Aristotle also points out that oil contains air. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, mixed information here.
Speaker 3: Purely speculating here that this could be totally wrong. But
Speaker 3: I wonder if he's tempted to think that because oil
Speaker 3: floats on the top of water, therefore like air rises
Speaker 3: like bubbles through the water.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, that sounds likely. All right. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back to Aristotle, but we're going to skip
Speaker 1: ahead now to another favorite source on the show, and
Speaker 1: that is, of course Roman historian Plenty of the Elder,
Speaker 1: who lived twenty three or twenty four CE through seventy nine. See.
Speaker 1: I have to say Plenty talks a lot about oils
Speaker 1: in the natural history. Like if you just start searching
Speaker 1: for searching up the word oil, you're going to find
Speaker 1: him mentioning all sorts of medicinal oils. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: a section titled waters which serve as a substitute for oil,
Speaker 1: concerning waters that emit light and heal wounds. So a
Speaker 1: lot in there for oil fans to consume and to
Speaker 1: try to make sense of he's in generally a big
Speaker 1: fan of oils, and he busts this out in Book two,
Speaker 1: chapter one oh six. There's a whole info dump regarding
Speaker 1: wisdom concerning the water, and he says everything is soothed
Speaker 1: by oil and that this is the reason why divers
Speaker 1: send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because
Speaker 1: it's smooth any part which is rough and transmits the
Speaker 1: light to them. M okay, So I think this is
Speaker 1: tying in with what we were talking about earlier with
Speaker 1: Aristotle as well, and I've seen this particular bit translated
Speaker 1: as sprinkled from the mouth as well, so I believe leave.
Speaker 1: The scenario here is that Plenty is sharing something that
Speaker 1: he has heard or read regarding free divers carrying some
Speaker 1: small quantity of oil in their mouths during the dive
Speaker 1: and spitting it out to make the surrounding water more
Speaker 1: visible during the dive while they're, you know, looking for
Speaker 1: something like a molluskh. Now, this the quote I read
Speaker 1: is from the Mayoff translation of Plenty, and he notes
Speaker 1: in the notes for this that while this would be
Speaker 1: proven to be correct, the effect is greatly exaggerated both
Speaker 1: here and elsewhere. So keep that in mind. As we're
Speaker 1: going here, we're dealing with, you know, second and third
Speaker 1: hand accounts of these things that the definitely seem to
Speaker 1: have a certain basis in fact, but also are greatly
Speaker 1: exaggerated in the retelling.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I imagine we'll return to the mechanics of this,
Speaker 3: if possible, in the next episode. But do you have
Speaker 3: any idea how exactly this would work that would make
Speaker 3: the water more visible?
Speaker 1: What's my understanding that that what we're dealing with here
Speaker 1: is that, Yeah, the idea is that oil will sort
Speaker 1: of smooth out the surface of troubled water, but that
Speaker 1: it will also smooth things out underneath the water, and
Speaker 1: if you are free diving looking for again, you know,
Speaker 1: fish or shells or what have you, that some small
Speaker 1: amount of oil released into that water would make it
Speaker 1: clearer and easier to see these things and or allow
Speaker 1: light to filter down more effectively. Again, we'll get into
Speaker 1: the actual science of this probably in the next episode,
Speaker 1: and we have to keep in mind that again we're
Speaker 1: doing probably the second or third hand information here. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing here this is something that Plenty had had heard
Speaker 1: regarding some free diving people, and even though he would
Speaker 1: have certainly been familiar with ships and all. I don't
Speaker 1: remember in reading anything that indicated that he himself would
Speaker 1: have any firsthand experience with diving underneath the water. Now,
Speaker 1: another author who gets into some of this is Plutarch,
Speaker 1: who have forty six through one nineteen CE. He also
Speaker 1: references Aristotle in Causes of Natural Phenomena, and according to
Speaker 1: Heinrich Hunifus in Oil Untroubled Waters a historical survey, this
Speaker 1: is likely referencing a lost portion of Aristotle's Problemata reads
Speaker 1: as follows. This is from Plutarch. What is the reason
Speaker 1: for the clearness and calm produced when the sea is
Speaker 1: sprinkled with oil? Is it as Aristotle says that the
Speaker 1: wind slipping over the smoothness so caused makes no impression
Speaker 1: and raises no swell? Or does this plausibly explain the
Speaker 1: external phenomena? Only they say that when divers take oil
Speaker 1: into their mouths and blow it out in the depths,
Speaker 1: they get illumination and can see through the water. Surely
Speaker 1: it is impossible to adduce slipping of the wind in
Speaker 1: the cause there. Consider, then, whether the oil does not,
Speaker 1: by reason of its density, push and force aside the sea,
Speaker 1: which is earthy and irregular. Subsequently, when it flows back
Speaker 1: to its former position and draws together, intermediate passages are
Speaker 1: left in it, which offer transparency and clear visibility to
Speaker 1: the organs of sight.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. So again I wonder if I'm understanding
Speaker 3: Plutarch right here, But it sounds like maybe he's saying that,
Speaker 3: like when oil is spit out under the water, it
Speaker 3: kind of clears channels in the water. I wonder if
Speaker 3: that would work by like attracting particles in the water
Speaker 3: that would be making the water cloudy into the oil,
Speaker 3: and then dragging them away with it as the oil rises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure. I couldn't find much information on
Speaker 1: this particular detail of the scenario. Maybe I'll find something
Speaker 1: for the next episode. But yeah, it's like you'd have
Speaker 1: to put ourselves in the like in the position of
Speaker 1: an ancient free diver who's you know, I assume, not
Speaker 1: using any kind of covering for their eyes. I did
Speaker 1: run across some mentions of these practices where they talk
Speaker 1: more like they were putting the oil in their eyes, which,
Speaker 1: again I don't know how that's factoring into the sort
Speaker 1: of telephone game of you know, second third and fourth
Speaker 1: hand reporting on this during ancient times, in addition to
Speaker 1: translation errors. All right, but in this we've touched on
Speaker 1: this other big area, something that we're going to have
Speaker 1: a lot more to discuss in the next episode as well,
Speaker 1: and that is, Hey, if you dump some quantity of oil,
Speaker 1: and the quantity seems to vary tremendously, if you dump
Speaker 1: that into a stormy sea, well that's just going to
Speaker 1: smooth everything out, smooth sailing thanks to the oil.
Speaker 3: Okay, what do we have any stories about how this works?
Speaker 1: We do. We have a pretty good story here, and
Speaker 1: it comes to us from the English monk Bead, who
Speaker 1: lived somewhere around six seventy two or six seventy three
Speaker 1: through seven thirty.
Speaker 3: Five, often known as the Venerable Bead. It's good if
Speaker 3: you can get venerable attached to your name.
Speaker 1: Yes. So the year here that he's talking about is
Speaker 1: six fifty one, and King Oswig sometimes it's spelled Oswig
Speaker 1: of Northumbria sends out a priest to bring his bride
Speaker 1: home from Kent, and one Bishop Aiden blesses the priest
Speaker 1: and gives him some holy oil and tells him, when
Speaker 1: you set sail, you're going to encounter some really stormy weather.
Speaker 1: There's going to be some high winds, so remember to
Speaker 1: pour this oil that I'm giving you into the sea,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna calm everything out. And this is later
Speaker 1: described as a flask, so I'm assuming we're talking about
Speaker 1: a magic potion quantity of oil here, rather than say,
Speaker 1: a barrel of oil. So Bed claimed that everything happened
Speaker 1: as the bishop said it would. When the storms came,
Speaker 1: the priest poured the flask of holy oil into the
Speaker 1: sea and the storm died down. And Bid insisted that
Speaker 1: the miracle was no mere fable, that he had heard
Speaker 1: it from reliable sources close to the matter, so you know,
Speaker 1: he was like, this works. This is not a tall tale.
Speaker 1: This is reality. Also worth noting by the way that
Speaker 1: Osweg or Oswig was said. It was said that he
Speaker 1: and his queen had been gifted multiple holy relics, including
Speaker 1: a cross with a key to it made from the
Speaker 1: chains of the apostles Peter and Paul.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, as much as this does just sound like
Speaker 3: a standard magical item legend, I think whether or not
Speaker 3: the story is plausible actually maybe more a matter of
Speaker 3: degree rather than just like it could happen or it couldn't.
Speaker 3: I don't know about using oil to stop a storm.
Speaker 3: But in the next episode we're going to end up
Speaker 3: exploring some surprising grains of truth in this kind of legend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you might be surprised too. It just what
Speaker 1: kind of legs this idea had concerning the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might want to have some oil on hand in
Speaker 1: case the water gets choppy.
Speaker 3: So maybe we got to call it there for today,
Speaker 3: but we'll be back next time to talk about pouring
Speaker 3: oil on the seas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one was more in depth than I expected,
Speaker 1: and you never expect it, but Ben Franklin often does
Speaker 1: show up. This is not the first episode where you
Speaker 1: don't expect Ben Franklin, but here he comes sauntering up
Speaker 1: with his weird energy and strange ideas, becoming a part
Speaker 1: of the story of a particular invention or natural phenomena
Speaker 1: or what have you.
Speaker 3: So tune in next time.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to listen to
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, well you'll
Speaker 1: find them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those are the core
Speaker 1: episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Own podcast feed
Speaker 1: listener mail on Monday. On Wednesday, a short form artifact
Speaker 1: or monster effect. On on Fridays, we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
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