Speaker 1: Oh, tonight's classic episode bit Esoteric. We've talked about Solomon
Speaker 1: in the past, right, the commander of jen and Spirits,
Speaker 1: a guy known to practitioners of magic throughout the world.
Speaker 1: But what is the key of Solomon?
Speaker 2: This one?
Speaker 3: Isn't it about the rings? There's some real D and
Speaker 3: D stuff going on in this story where you can
Speaker 3: you can get an accessory that's probably a random drop
Speaker 3: on like a level forty I don't know, creature, and
Speaker 3: then you can command demons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's nuts because Solomon is such a tremendous
Speaker 1: historical and religious figure, and you know, out of this
Speaker 1: panoply of characters in religions from this part of the world,
Speaker 1: he stands apart as sort of a prospero, a high magician.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I gotta be honest with you, guys,
Speaker 1: I still don't fully understand the key of Solomon.
Speaker 4: Wow, why don't we make an episode about it?
Speaker 2: And then in the past.
Speaker 4: That's some witchy stuff right there.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into the groom WAW.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the show. My name is Noel as
Speaker 4: a spirit conduit for Matt, who usually starts the show
Speaker 4: but is away on adventures.
Speaker 1: And will return shortly. They call me Ben. We are
Speaker 1: joined with our super producer, Paul the Necroman decond Most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are here, You are you, and that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: You know, Ben, I thought the necronomicon was real until
Speaker 4: you told me otherwise last time we had that conversation.
Speaker 1: Right, this is going to be an episode that those
Speaker 1: of you who enjoyed our grimwa episode will find particularly fascinating.
Speaker 1: I love that you mentioned the Necronomicon at the top
Speaker 1: of the show, Nol, because for everyone listening, if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of horror movies, you're intimately familiar with that
Speaker 1: old trope of the Cursed Book and Lovecraft's Necronomicon. Howard,
Speaker 1: Philip Lovecraft, he made this book. It's a perfect example
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about, because for years and years
Speaker 1: and years after he admittedly wrote it in a work
Speaker 1: of fiction, as a work of fiction mentioned in other
Speaker 1: fictional stories, people liked it enough that they just started
Speaker 1: saying let's all agree that it's real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think my thing is it just
Speaker 4: as becomes such a stand in for like cursed books.
Speaker 4: Like you said, I almost thought it was more of
Speaker 4: a word than a specific volume, like calling something a
Speaker 4: necronomicon or a grimoire, you know, right, that was what
Speaker 4: my brand did.
Speaker 1: Like how nowadays instead of saying search the Internet, we
Speaker 1: just say Google, regardless of which search, or xerox for copy.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting comparison not. The Necronomicon may be the
Speaker 1: most widely known fictional book of magic in the Western world,
Speaker 1: but there are other ones too, you know. On a
Speaker 1: lighter note, there's the spell Book in Disney's hocus Pocus,
Speaker 1: which I recently rewatched and stand by it is an
Speaker 1: enjoyable movie, if not a film. Today, these books are
Speaker 1: almost universally thought of as little more than clever bits
Speaker 1: of fiction, maybe an extra detail added to flesh out
Speaker 1: a fictional world. But as we explored in the previous
Speaker 1: video and audio episodes on Grimwaws, these books were real things.
Speaker 1: They were physical, tangible books in the real world. They
Speaker 1: were often mistakenly or purposefully misattributed to other authors. There
Speaker 1: are multiple counterfeit versions, and numerous books took the same
Speaker 1: name or something very much like it to increase their
Speaker 1: occult street cred. But the books themselves were real, and
Speaker 1: in many many cases, various people throughout the centuries would
Speaker 1: read these books and attempt the experiments or rituals outlined
Speaker 1: in those tones. Today's episode is about one of the
Speaker 1: most famous grimoiws in existence, the book or slash books
Speaker 1: known as the Key of Solomon. We're going to delve
Speaker 1: into the fact and fiction surrounding this book with one
Speaker 1: other huge question that we'll get to near the end.
Speaker 1: What is this supposed to do and does it actually work?
Speaker 1: So here are the facts.
Speaker 4: The Key of Solomon is kind of is this sort
Speaker 4: of an umbrella term that is assigned to several different books.
Speaker 4: And there's a legend that says the book was originally
Speaker 4: created by the biblical King Solomon of mining mining fame.
Speaker 4: He had a mine, King Solomon's mind.
Speaker 1: Right, he had a seal, he made a temple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: according to you'll hear it being phrased as something mentioned
Speaker 1: in just Judeo Christian beliefs, but mentioned of King Solomon
Speaker 1: also occurs in Holy Books of the Bahai and also
Speaker 1: in the Qur'an. According to these legends, these stories, the
Speaker 1: man known as King Solomon was the son of the
Speaker 1: famous Goliath slaying David, who went on Solomon did went
Speaker 1: on to become the ruler of israel An approximately nine
Speaker 1: sixty seven BCE, and he was ruling this enormous kingdom
Speaker 1: that extended from the Euphrates in the north to Egypt
Speaker 1: in the south. And in the religious text he is
Speaker 1: presented as one of the wisest men in the history
Speaker 1: of civilization. He's kind of and this is not a
Speaker 1: one to one comparison religious scholars in the audience, he's
Speaker 1: kind of a Tony Stark. He's a genius inventor. He's
Speaker 1: a ladies man.
Speaker 4: He's super rich.
Speaker 1: He's super rich exactly.
Speaker 4: And potentially practices the dark arts.
Speaker 1: And God appeared to him in a dream during the
Speaker 1: early days of his reign, and he said, Solomon, you
Speaker 1: can have whatever you desire because you act, you know
Speaker 1: how to worship me, and you're honoring me in the
Speaker 1: ways and the methods that your father David instructed you to.
Speaker 1: And when we say this guy's clever, we're drawing on
Speaker 1: numerous anecdotes, and the most famous one which I think
Speaker 1: everybody has heard, whether or not you are religious, and
Speaker 1: whether or not you're that familiar with Western religion, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard the story of the baby right where he
Speaker 1: is a judge and these two women come to his
Speaker 1: court and they have a baby, and both both of
Speaker 1: these people say that is my child.
Speaker 4: I misspoke as well. Solomon is not known for practicing
Speaker 4: any dark arts, but there are things that he codified
Speaker 4: and committed to text that were used as sort of
Speaker 4: a lexicon by others that practiced said dark arts. Is
Speaker 4: that accurate, you know?
Speaker 1: And I think the term dark art too, is something
Speaker 1: that undergoes an evolution. That's a very good point, because
Speaker 1: according to a legend, he was practicing some stuff, but
Speaker 1: later it would be called dark arts right by church authorities.
Speaker 4: Okay, then all right, so I was too too far
Speaker 4: spot on.
Speaker 1: But back to these back to these women. These are
Speaker 1: the days before DNA testing, obviously, so they say this
Speaker 1: is my kid. This lady's Lyne, and the other lady
Speaker 1: says no, this person's line, this is truly my child.
Speaker 1: And Solomon's solution was to really double down on this.
Speaker 1: He said, Okay, you've both convinced me in your own way,
Speaker 1: tell you what, Just cut the baby in half, be
Speaker 1: done with it. And then one woman was prepared to
Speaker 1: accept the decision, but the other one begged King Solomon, please,
Speaker 1: it is my child, but give it to this other woman.
Speaker 1: I don't want the baby to die.
Speaker 4: Classic trope and sci Fi. When you have clones, you know,
Speaker 4: and to see which one, or like the evil double
Speaker 4: or whatever, to see which one's the real one, sort of,
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Was sci Fi draws a lot from religion, that's true,
Speaker 1: earlier religion, so of course we know how. We know
Speaker 1: how Solomon acted next once he saw one lady giving
Speaker 1: up the baby to spare its life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess what I'm getting at with like that.
Speaker 4: If there's an evil twin, you can usually tell in
Speaker 4: sci Fi who's the real one, because the real one
Speaker 4: will take a bullet for his lady love or something,
Speaker 4: while the evil one will, you know, behave more less
Speaker 4: chivalrously right.
Speaker 1: Right, And in the case of Solomon, he says, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you have proven to me that you are the true mothers,
Speaker 1: so that's obviously your child. Again. According to legend, people
Speaker 1: from surrounding nations came to hear Solomon's wisdom. He composed
Speaker 1: three thousand proverbs, one thousand and five songs. He wrote
Speaker 1: the Song of Songs, the Book of Proverbs, and other
Speaker 1: religious works. In the Jewish tradition, he is thought to
Speaker 1: be the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem and
Speaker 1: the last ruler of the Kingdom of Israel before it
Speaker 1: was divided into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom
Speaker 1: of Judah. And in the tradition concerning the Key of Solomon,
Speaker 1: or also in the Lesser Key of Solomon, which well,
Speaker 1: we'll have to mention because it's fascinating, the king used
Speaker 1: his powers, including a special seal and his magic ring,
Speaker 1: to summon and bind spirits, and it was these spirits
Speaker 1: that were his workforce for the First Temple. So going
Speaker 1: back to dark arts, you know, centuries later, summoning spirits
Speaker 1: and spirits of the dead to.
Speaker 4: Literally do your dirty work, right, or at least, you know,
Speaker 4: the work that you don't feel like doing because masonry breaking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this these are the claims about this individual, and
Speaker 1: we can get into those a little bit later. We
Speaker 1: want to set that up and bracket it. But now
Speaker 1: we've got to talk about what's actually in this book,
Speaker 1: because the key of Solomon is, as you said, nol
Speaker 1: an umbrella term for multiple different translations for multiple I
Speaker 1: don't know, differing interpretations of the text. The book itself
Speaker 1: is composed of an introduction and then like two smaller books,
Speaker 1: and the introduction is a story about how the book
Speaker 1: allegedly came to be.
Speaker 4: So in the introduction to the book, readers get a
Speaker 4: story about the creation of said text. Solomon writes the
Speaker 4: book for his son Rio Boham and tells his son
Speaker 4: to hide the book in a sepulchrp upon Solomon's dead.
Speaker 4: What's a sepulcher man? That's like a kind of like
Speaker 4: a It's like a mausoleum. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like a too small room usually built a stone
Speaker 1: or cut into rock, where you put a dead.
Speaker 4: Body, okay, or a book, or a dead body with
Speaker 4: a book. It's about us. It could be clutching it.
Speaker 1: So what happens next?
Speaker 4: Well next, and by next I mean years and years later.
Speaker 4: Babylonian philosophers find the text while they're repairing Solomon's tomb.
Speaker 4: Solomon himself his tomb. No One can understand the text,
Speaker 4: so they pray to God for understanding, and so lo
Speaker 4: and behold, an angel appears and grants one of the
Speaker 4: philosophers the ability to read the text, after he swears
Speaker 4: that he will keep it safe and hidden from the
Speaker 4: unworthy and the wicked. This is obviously, of course, this
Speaker 4: is legend, has it?
Speaker 1: Yes, legend has it? As this story goes, yeah, this
Speaker 1: legend says that the philosopher accepts the bargain and learns
Speaker 1: these ancient secrets, and then to keep his word to
Speaker 1: these divine forces, this philosopher places a spell on the book,
Speaker 1: or what they call conjuration, making it so that even
Speaker 1: if you manage to read it, if you are unworthy, unpious,
Speaker 1: you're unwise, you don't obey God, or you don't fear God,
Speaker 1: you can do every single ritual in here to the
Speaker 1: letter and it just won't work, which is very clever.
Speaker 4: Isn't interesting too? How the term philosopher used to mean
Speaker 4: much more of a almost wizardly type, like I think
Speaker 4: even one of the Harry Potter books. In the British
Speaker 4: printing it's called the Philosopher's Stone, and then the US
Speaker 4: it's called the sorcerer's stone, so they're kind of like
Speaker 4: a one to one.
Speaker 1: Thing and the philosopher's stone being alchemical exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but now we think of philosophers, we just think
Speaker 4: of high minded academics that you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and either way could be either way could apply
Speaker 1: because it just means lover of wisdom, that's true. But
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. A lot of times people who were
Speaker 1: practicing what we would think of as very esoteric rituals
Speaker 1: and belief systems were considered philosophers, right, So this is
Speaker 1: the intro And one thing that's incredibly clever about this
Speaker 1: introduction is that it already bakes in a defense mechanism
Speaker 1: for people who say the book is fake or it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. It puts the blame for a lack of
Speaker 1: success in these rituals, not on the book itself, not
Speaker 1: on the nature of magic, but on the audience, the reader,
Speaker 1: the practitioner. If you didn't make to turn invisible, then
Speaker 1: it's not because that's impossible. It's because you were unworthy,
Speaker 1: or you're unwise, or you didn't fear God, which will
Speaker 1: come into play later. But let's get into the actual
Speaker 1: substance of the book. The text itself the Key of Solomon.
Speaker 4: Should we take a little quickie break first.
Speaker 1: Though, fantastic idea, let's do it. We have returned. As
Speaker 1: we said earlier, the book is divided into two sections.
Speaker 1: In book one, you'll learn an astonishing amount of conjurations, curses,
Speaker 1: invocations meant to summon and bind spirits. Now we mentioned
Speaker 1: spirits before, let's outline let's clarify this a little bit.
Speaker 1: Spirits in this sense could be the ghost of dead
Speaker 1: human beings or other worldly creatures like angels or demons.
Speaker 1: And in many cases a lot of anthropologists will tell
Speaker 1: you these and they're correct. Many of these things presented
Speaker 1: as demons are built off of earlier what we would
Speaker 1: call pagan myths or pagan gods, like the god of
Speaker 1: lightning Baal who became Bael. And this is very apparent
Speaker 1: in some books that which we'll get to in a moment,
Speaker 1: and some books that came after the Key of Solomon
Speaker 1: that actually named these demons. The first book, in addition
Speaker 1: to these descriptions, contained spells which are called operations or experiments.
Speaker 4: Very mathematical sounding and they kill right right.
Speaker 1: So the idea is one series of operations or experiments
Speaker 1: can turn the practitioner invisible their spells to make people
Speaker 1: like you or fall in love with you, to help
Speaker 1: you find stolen or lost items. So there's some practical
Speaker 1: stuff in there, and that's just the first book.
Speaker 4: In book two he gets into detailing a lot of
Speaker 4: purification rituals that a practitioner of philosophy must undertake, things
Speaker 4: like the kinds of clothing they're supposed to wear. The
Speaker 4: spell caster or operator, you know, that was the earliest
Speaker 4: version of that job, an operator, and it was also
Speaker 4: called an exorcist in different translations. So, like you say, Ben,
Speaker 4: the translation can make a lot of difference in the
Speaker 4: way we look at that particular activity or you know, role,
Speaker 4: and it's different. You know, how they should go about
Speaker 4: constructing the various tools that they need to do the rituals,
Speaker 4: and what kinds of animals should be sacrificed, along with
Speaker 4: exactly how to go about sacrificing them.
Speaker 1: With one example here from chapter fourteen of that book.
Speaker 1: It's on the chapter fourteen is of the pen ink
Speaker 1: and Colors. Just to show you how weird this gets,
Speaker 1: or how it's may seem weird to us now, how
Speaker 1: specific it gets all things employed for writing, et cetera
Speaker 1: in this art should be prepared in the following manner.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a voice. Thou shalt take a
Speaker 1: male ghostlin from which thou shalt pluck the third feather
Speaker 1: of the right twing, and didn't pluck it it. Thou
Speaker 1: shalt say abermei habli lai sami ta athabasiever I don't
Speaker 1: I banish from this pen all deceit and arraw, so
Speaker 1: that it may be a virtue and efficacy to write
Speaker 1: all that tide desaye a been I.
Speaker 4: Deny is Hebrew? How deny is like a prayer? Believe?
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are names in vacations.
Speaker 4: I just remember it from choir from when I was
Speaker 4: a kid. It's a very beautiful. Yes, I'm sorry. It's
Speaker 4: the Hebrew name for God's That's what that is. But ben,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. The third feather on the right wing? How
Speaker 4: do off one determine the third feather? There are a
Speaker 4: lot of feathers on a wing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right? Do you count from the outside in or
Speaker 1: the inside out.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like your grandma's recipes. You know, it's
Speaker 4: like a pinch or it doesn't even give you, like
Speaker 4: actual measurements. It's a basic ratio, you know, so maybe
Speaker 4: the third it doesn't matter, just so if you count,
Speaker 4: you know, you use the honor system for plucking feathers.
Speaker 1: So the important part here too, And it has further
Speaker 1: instructions for what to do after plucking that quill, and
Speaker 1: how to make it into a pen, what to do
Speaker 1: with the ink. And one thing that's incredibly important about
Speaker 1: this is that each of these physical acts are accompanied
Speaker 1: by this incantation that one must recity. To simply pluck
Speaker 1: a feather from anywhere on the gosling is going to
Speaker 1: completely sink the entire experiment. So everything you do has
Speaker 1: to be attached to these pronunciations.
Speaker 4: I cannot get over the idea of these as experiments.
Speaker 4: It totally goes hand in hand with the kind of
Speaker 4: scientific nature of like alchemy and all of that, and
Speaker 4: how it all is just kind of like trial and
Speaker 4: error type stuff. I really like that.
Speaker 1: And there's and just like modern day experiments, there's intense ritualization.
Speaker 1: There's an effort to account for all the variables and
Speaker 1: reduce possible intervening variables, right, which is strange because you know,
Speaker 1: now safe to say most modern day scientists would not
Speaker 1: take kindly to being compared to sorcerers or wizards.
Speaker 4: Now I think that Saki and the in the mouth, it's.
Speaker 1: Science, sock you. Yeah, yeah, But there's there's an interesting
Speaker 1: parallel here. And while this is all fascinating, it's safe
Speaker 1: to say that almost anyone could sit down and make
Speaker 1: something like this up from whole cloth. We could. We
Speaker 1: could say, okay, if you want to if you want
Speaker 1: to summon rainfall, then here's what you do. And if
Speaker 1: we're making it up, it doesn't matter really to us.
Speaker 1: If it works. We say, you find a you find
Speaker 1: a stray cat, you make it wear this special headdress
Speaker 1: that you made out of grass while you're saying these words,
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 4: Boom, you're making this up.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, And the question is this any different or
Speaker 1: is this just an older example? How real quote unquote
Speaker 1: real is the actual key of Solomon. Here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy, and this is strange. There are actually several
Speaker 1: here's where it gets crazy moments.
Speaker 4: Here you're going to say it all every time. No,
Speaker 4: I think just once, wonder cup. I'm sort of an umbrella.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: True, it's like a key of Solomon. Kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So first, in virtually every translation, this book appears to
Speaker 1: be what we call pseudo epigrapha, so meaning falsely attributed
Speaker 1: to a legendary author.
Speaker 4: Oh a book like that? Wait what so okay? Go on.
Speaker 1: So, for instance, this happened a lot in early Western
Speaker 1: religious developments. Three hundred, four hundred, seven hundred years after
Speaker 1: something occurred, or after someone was alive, an enterprising scholar
Speaker 1: would write a book and say, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the book that this guy wrote. I know you've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of imitations, but except no imitations, this is
Speaker 1: the real book of you know, this disciple or this person,
Speaker 1: right from the Torah or something. And experts estimate that
Speaker 1: the earliest versions of something like the Key of Solomon
Speaker 1: weren't actually written until somewhere between the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: We have a quote from a researcher named Arthur Edward
Speaker 1: Waite that says essentially that there's no ground for attributing
Speaker 1: the Key of Solomon in its present form a higher
Speaker 1: antiquity than the fourteenth or fifteenth century. A lot of
Speaker 1: people latch onto that present form thing and say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this version we understand isn't true, but maybe those
Speaker 1: Babylonian philosophers really did find some tattered scrolls by a skeleton,
Speaker 1: and those scrolls just decayed over time, and people just
Speaker 1: kept recopying the.
Speaker 4: Story you're talking about, like in the clutches of Solomon's
Speaker 4: Dead Hands.
Speaker 1: Right, they're saying in the separate supulch.
Speaker 4: Sorry, man, I'm having a I'm having a bit of
Speaker 4: a day, Ben. Yeah. Yeah, I can't pronounce words.
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce words. You know, I'll never forget one
Speaker 1: time in elementary school, I gotta I gotta b because
Speaker 1: I did a report on Carl Jung swinging a miss.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have many people to speak with.
Speaker 4: You know what's been in our business, And by that
Speaker 4: I mean the business that is pod.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: You're gonna, you're gonna You're gonna have a few pronunciation
Speaker 4: misses every now and then. It's just gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you have to wonder what would happen if
Speaker 1: we were practitioners of magic?
Speaker 4: Oh what if mispronouncing a word totally yielded a an
Speaker 4: undesirable or cataclysmic results?
Speaker 1: And furthermore, just while we're on this subject, the act
Speaker 1: of making a podcast is in many ways similar there's
Speaker 1: a ritual, right that we undergo as individuals, that we
Speaker 1: undergo as a group when we're recording that you undergo
Speaker 1: as you listen, right, And there's something that we're all
Speaker 1: doing together in a way. We're making this strange working together.
Speaker 4: It is strange. And also the ritualism of it all
Speaker 4: is why I get so thrown every time Matt's not here.
Speaker 4: We both get so thrown and we look at each
Speaker 4: other because we don't know how to start.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's true. And when we say it's true,
Speaker 1: we mean it is not just true for us right now,
Speaker 1: but it is true for all time. You can go
Speaker 1: back to the very beginning of our show and you
Speaker 1: can hear those moments that we have just described. Those
Speaker 1: moments have something called historocity. Historocity is something that comes
Speaker 1: up in the Search for or the Key of Solomon
Speaker 1: as well. Historosity is just the fun to say word
Speaker 1: that describes the historical authenticity of a given person, place, event,
Speaker 1: or thing.
Speaker 4: I love this word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a great one because when okay, so,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen those specials on the History Channel
Speaker 1: or National Geographic or something wherein they have a documentarian saying,
Speaker 1: all right, now we're journeying to this mountain in Turkey
Speaker 1: to search for the real Noah's arc. Of course, their
Speaker 1: questing for historosity. They want to prove the legends. One
Speaker 1: example of this that we return to time and time
Speaker 1: again would be the search for the ancient city of Troy,
Speaker 1: which was for a long time after was lost, it
Speaker 1: was believed to be a myth until someone found it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks like we were talking about finding Genghis
Speaker 4: Khans burials, side anything, Thelocity of Atlanta's whatever, and it's
Speaker 4: all kind of myth and hubbub until you actually do
Speaker 4: discover something like that. Is that historoicity there?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, So multiple scholars even today as we
Speaker 1: record this, they've examined the works describing King Solomon, and
Speaker 1: they've attempted to square these texts with existing physical evidence
Speaker 1: or secular contemporary writing, so non religious community based, and
Speaker 1: the debate over this stuff continues today. There are some
Speaker 1: scholars like this professor Israel Finkelstein, who argue that the
Speaker 1: story surrounding the rule of King Solomon are not factually accurate,
Speaker 1: and he and people who agree with him, do not
Speaker 1: believe the Biblical descriptions of anything should be taken literally.
Speaker 4: Wait, so like you they're saying, like Solomon was like
Speaker 4: a character, kind of like a made up cartoon.
Speaker 1: They're not quite going that far. Often they're saying that
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff attributed to him doesn't count
Speaker 1: because there are people who believe they've found the tomb
Speaker 1: of the king of Israel. Right, And you're absolutely correct
Speaker 1: though in that there are other scholars who totally say
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Philip Davis who says Solomon himself
Speaker 1: is totally invented, just made up character, maybe a literary
Speaker 1: device to explain the story of Israel at the time,
Speaker 1: or various other political circumstances. And then there are still
Speaker 1: other scholars who are completely on the other side, like
Speaker 1: William Deaver who believed that the biblical stories of Solomon
Speaker 1: and his kingdom are more or less trustworthy. So even
Speaker 1: now in twenty eighteen, we have three camps of people.
Speaker 1: We have a group of people saying yes, totally absolutely,
Speaker 1: mostly true, for a group of people saying, well, something
Speaker 1: was true but it got exaggerated. And then we have
Speaker 1: a group of people who are saying bunk, flim flam, malarkey,
Speaker 1: and Hui, all of them, all of them. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the search for physical evidence that would be the real
Speaker 1: smoking gun, right. The search for physical evidence continues, and
Speaker 1: in the Middle East today, various people argue that they
Speaker 1: have found physical evidence of things described in religious works.
Speaker 1: And then there's another camp of people who argue that
Speaker 1: these ruins are being purposely conflated with other ancient stories
Speaker 1: for one reason or another. And one of the big
Speaker 1: accusations is that these reasons are politically motivated to give
Speaker 1: one group or another in the modern day a more
Speaker 1: quote unquote legitimate claim to land. I see, there's another
Speaker 1: piece of physical evidence, several pieces that we haven't really
Speaker 1: talked about, but we should at least mention. Let's get
Speaker 1: to them. After a word from our sponsor, we're back.
Speaker 1: The thing about this physical evidence is that we are
Speaker 1: still producing new physical evidence, new cultural iterations ultimately derived
Speaker 1: from the Key of Solomon in the modern day. You know,
Speaker 1: we mentioned there are other books that came later, like
Speaker 1: the Testament of Solomon or the Lesser Key of Solomon.
Speaker 1: That's the one with the seventy two demons and their
Speaker 1: properties named. You know, that's where we can see the
Speaker 1: trace of these pagan gods. Those works are still inspiring
Speaker 1: works in the modern day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I think we've talked about maybe we have
Speaker 4: it on this show. But the movie Hereditary, which I
Speaker 4: think you and I'm both enjoyed, enjoy is maybe a
Speaker 4: weird way of putting it. It's a quite unpleasant film.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well those are your people, man, all right, No, no, no,
Speaker 4: but yes, it's a very expertly done kind of psychological
Speaker 4: horror show with family drama kind of at its heart.
Speaker 4: But this is slight spoilers, slight.
Speaker 1: Spoilers, barely abandoned all hope of not being spoiled. Ye
Speaker 1: who listen here?
Speaker 4: Yes, but we're not going to do major as well.
Speaker 4: It was just the inclusion which if you had your
Speaker 4: p's and q's of demonology down, you would have noticed
Speaker 4: very early on in the movie that there's a certain
Speaker 4: symbol that shows up that is the symbol of one
Speaker 4: of the gods or not demons. Rather in this this
Speaker 4: lesser key of Solomon called Peymon, and Peymon was one
Speaker 4: of the kind of dukes of Hell I believe, or
Speaker 4: like one of Satan's you know, what, a prince of Hell.
Speaker 4: How would you call him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a often described as a great king, but
Speaker 1: he's obedient to Lucifer, so he's not in charge charge,
Speaker 1: but he commands many other, many other.
Speaker 4: Spirits, that's right. And he's depicted as having sort of
Speaker 4: effeminine features, writing upon a camel, and he commands the
Speaker 4: ability to control people and summon other demons, and also
Speaker 4: is a big fan of the arts.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, and you'll see folks like the
Speaker 1: occultist Carol Poke Runyan, who will come up later, Carol
Speaker 1: Poke Runyan who suggests that this name ultimately derives from
Speaker 1: a pre existing pagan god. And he says this because
Speaker 1: some of those manuscripts depict Payment as a woman writing
Speaker 1: a camel. And this goes back to the overall claim
Speaker 1: that the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Key of
Speaker 1: Solomon themselves are actually rooted in pre existing Mesopotamian mythology.
Speaker 1: So again we see the cultural evolution here and it
Speaker 1: continues today. That's the thing. History is not so distant
Speaker 1: as people would have you believe. The story Hereditary again,
Speaker 1: we'll end the spoilers after this. The story of Hereditary
Speaker 1: does some excellent research into the foundations of what is
Speaker 1: perceived as a demon today and once was not necessarily
Speaker 1: associated with anything inherently bad, you know, and it's it's fester.
Speaker 1: We have to wonder where the evolution is going to go.
Speaker 1: But we said, there's another thing we've run into. What
Speaker 1: the Key of Solomon? One of the big questions we're
Speaker 1: talking about in this episode. Does it actually work? Meaning
Speaker 1: is there some sort of operation or experiment that you,
Speaker 1: fellow listeners, Paul and Nola and I could do that
Speaker 1: would create a reproducible, predictable outcome. Multiple people maintain that
Speaker 1: this is the case that experiments or operations outlined in
Speaker 1: the book actually do work, just perhaps not the way
Speaker 1: you might assume if you're thinking about magic as the
Speaker 1: sort of thing we see in horror movies. According to
Speaker 1: this guy we mentioned earlier, pok Runyan, who's an author,
Speaker 1: a cultural anthropologist, and we have to say, to be fair,
Speaker 1: a complete magic practitioner himself, he is actually doing this stuff.
Speaker 1: According to him, the Key of Solomon is more an
Speaker 1: example of Western shamanism, and these operations, experiments, and rituals
Speaker 1: explained in the text are actually early forms of psychological
Speaker 1: psychological experiments, therapy, even.
Speaker 4: Really, Yeah, that would never have occurred to me. So
Speaker 4: it's almost more along the lines of kind of like
Speaker 4: the mystics we talked about on our other show, Ridiculous History,
Speaker 4: and the hermits of the Ridge of the Cave of Kelpius,
Speaker 4: or the cults. It's like a doomsday cult that was
Speaker 4: headed by a philosopher slash astronomer who practice some of
Speaker 4: these kind of end times philosophies, but did seem to
Speaker 4: be kind of rallying around ritual and this idea of
Speaker 4: these sort of mystic arts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's an excellent point because in that episode
Speaker 1: we mentioned that in the modern age, or what appears
Speaker 1: to be modern for us, we often have this harsh
Speaker 1: and bright divide between what we see as the realm
Speaker 1: of the esoteric and the mystic, and the realm of
Speaker 1: the ration and the scientific. But the truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is, for most of human civilization, those two things
Speaker 1: were not considered mutually exclusive. I believe we use the
Speaker 1: example of Isaac Newton, who did some profoundly groundbreaking scientific
Speaker 1: work but also believed in alchemy, you know. And this
Speaker 1: the presence of mysticism in early philosophy, or the presence
Speaker 1: of these ritualistic beliefs does not mean that everything was
Speaker 1: automatically wrong. And if we look at it from an
Speaker 1: anthropological perspective, maybe they were making some psychological breakthrough similar
Speaker 1: to that episode we had about the inherent mysticism in
Speaker 1: the bicameral mind theory. Right, you're hearing a voice.
Speaker 4: That's right, yeah, and that voice is driving your human train.
Speaker 1: And the voice is you the voices Surprise, surprise, that's
Speaker 1: going to be such a shyamal on twist. You know,
Speaker 1: I almost wish.
Speaker 4: But Ben, who are you?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Who are we? What are we? That's what we're here
Speaker 4: to discuss.
Speaker 1: That's that's what we're getting towards.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So from an anthropological perspective, then does this sort of
Speaker 1: thing work or do operations in here work? According to Runyon,
Speaker 1: it's a exploration of the underlying cognitive structure of the
Speaker 1: human mind, which sort of functions in terms of symbol
Speaker 1: before it functions in terms of language. I think we
Speaker 1: may have mentioned on an earlier episode, but the Kekule
Speaker 1: problem with Cormack McCarthy who wrote he wrote this article
Speaker 1: Nautilus about the relationship between language and the original function
Speaker 1: of the human mind and the inspiration.
Speaker 4: For this is.
Speaker 1: The common or not infrequent occurrence where some scientists or
Speaker 1: some great thinker is attempting to figure out a problem
Speaker 1: and they rack their brains and they picture a gigantic
Speaker 1: chalkboard and they just go crazy and throw everything everywhere,
Speaker 1: and then they fall asleep and they get the answer
Speaker 1: in a dream. But it's never in words, it's in
Speaker 1: a symbol.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 1: So the reason this is important is because with that
Speaker 1: emphasis on symbols, with that emphasis on these visual aspects,
Speaker 1: these emotional states, over what we call language, Runyan traces
Speaker 1: a narrative starting from ancient mystery religions all the way
Speaker 1: to more modern theorists like Carl Jung who believed in
Speaker 1: the concept of the great unconsciousness and archetypes. And this
Speaker 1: means to run you in that the magic is working
Speaker 1: because there's the inducement of trances and the use of
Speaker 1: ritual that takes the mind to strange and new or
Speaker 1: perhaps old and strange places. So several of the acts described,
Speaker 1: or the operations rather are in his mind actually means
Speaker 1: of self discovery and self hypnosis. But these symbols are important,
Speaker 1: and that's before we I think we may be doing
Speaker 1: a disservice if we don't talk a little more about
Speaker 1: those symbols, because no, you pointed out in early on
Speaker 1: in Hereditary demonologist in the crowd notice that symbol, right.
Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, a friend of ours actually who is
Speaker 4: a local practitioner of witchcraft or Weakanism. And also, I believe,
Speaker 4: as in the Atlanta chapter of the Church of Satan,
Speaker 4: Hale recognize it right off the bat and knew exactly
Speaker 4: where the movie was going. So good on him. But Ben,
Speaker 4: I maybe being a dummy, but I would like a
Speaker 4: little more clarification as to what separates the lesser key
Speaker 4: from the you know, just the regular key, and why
Speaker 4: is it lesser?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, So part of it comes from the textual history.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that there were many, many different books that
Speaker 1: were either translations of something pre existing, or they were
Speaker 1: snatched from other grimwaws, or they were just slapped with
Speaker 1: the title of something that would be familiar to the audience,
Speaker 1: to the crowd. So the Lesser Key of Solomon Is
Speaker 1: is based on another book, or a couple of different books,
Speaker 1: one by a guy named Johann Weier Johann Wire called
Speaker 1: De Prestigious Damonim and it seems like the Lesser Key
Speaker 1: of Solomon was pulled from this other book, not so
Speaker 1: much from the Key of Solomon itself. So the big
Speaker 1: question is, and it does have a lot of the
Speaker 1: same ideas, the big question is if it just got
Speaker 1: that title because somebody decided to name it that it's
Speaker 1: there's no known author for the book, and it appears
Speaker 1: like it was pulled from several different sources, including Buyer.
Speaker 1: It was compiled in the mid seventeenth century, mostly from
Speaker 1: things that were a couple of centuries older, so it
Speaker 1: kind of came after it, which is probably why it
Speaker 1: was called the Lesser Key. I see, not inferior quality,
Speaker 1: just Rea.
Speaker 4: So and again, like from from the top of the show,
Speaker 4: we said this idea of the Key of Solomon was
Speaker 4: an umbrella term for several different translations, And yeah, I
Speaker 4: can see that that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So we're encountering we're encountering a couple of things that
Speaker 1: we're encountering possibilities of literary hoaxes, which I don't know
Speaker 1: if we should be too comfortable with, because the idea
Speaker 1: that it would be a literary hoax implies that the
Speaker 1: authors may have been cynical and may not have believed
Speaker 1: what they were writing, and I don't think that was
Speaker 1: always the case at all. We're also encountering the possibility
Speaker 1: of deep psychological experimentation in ancient days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, now that's fascinating to me, the idea that
Speaker 4: some of this sort of ritualism and mysticism was kind
Speaker 4: of early forms of psychological healing or control or I'm
Speaker 4: not like almost like you'd see at a revival of
Speaker 4: some kind, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting, yes, and a good point, because what we
Speaker 1: do know is that whether or not this text was
Speaker 1: based on some earlier texts before the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: or whether it was just made up in the fourteenth
Speaker 1: or fifteenth centuries based on non written or orally transmitted traditions,
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that people who practice
Speaker 1: this stuff now may feel like they are practicing something
Speaker 1: that is psychologically impactful to them. Right, So is magic
Speaker 1: like beauty something in the eye and mind of the ballholder?
Speaker 1: We're of course not saying. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you know, I've never done some ritual to try
Speaker 1: to appear invisible and.
Speaker 4: Never even warn Camo or anything. No, no, even Scott never, never.
Speaker 1: The best way to be visible in a place is
Speaker 1: not to go there.
Speaker 4: That's also true. You've definitely done that before.
Speaker 1: I have done that. I'm notorious at the office for that.
Speaker 1: But we're not knocking this at all because at heart,
Speaker 1: whether you feel this is fascinating folklore, whether you feel
Speaker 1: this is a belief system that calls to you, or
Speaker 1: whether you feel this is just something fascinating to learn about,
Speaker 1: the truth is there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with practicing a belief system of your own choice,
Speaker 1: so long as and this is the most important part,
Speaker 1: so long as you are not hurting anyone. And back
Speaker 1: in the day, we had received a number of letters
Speaker 1: and notes from your fellow listeners who had said that
Speaker 1: they had had strange, inexplicable experiences with everything from Ouija
Speaker 1: board to incantations or something that they had found online
Speaker 1: or in a library, or even just staring into a mirror,
Speaker 1: which is an intensely meditative act. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's one of the acts that or it's one of
Speaker 1: the rituals that Poke Runyan himself practices. You can find
Speaker 1: him online. He's got a very particular way of speaking.
Speaker 1: I think we've played some a little bit off air.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: It's very much a storyteller. But if you have had
Speaker 1: those sorts of inexplicable experiences, or if you have attempted
Speaker 1: to operate one of the experiments mentioned in the Key
Speaker 1: of Solomon or its many translations, please do right to us.
Speaker 1: We would like to hear your story. We would like
Speaker 1: And that's whether or not you think something strange happened,
Speaker 1: or whether you thought it was all a waste of time.
Speaker 1: We don't, by the way, we don't think that automatically
Speaker 1: means you are unworthy, unbiased.
Speaker 4: Or don't fear God, unpious, unpious. I first, I think
Speaker 4: you said unbiased, unbiased. That's different.
Speaker 1: That is different. That's a great point either way. You
Speaker 1: can you can find us on Instagram, you can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook, especially
Speaker 1: our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Where you
Speaker 1: can you can see Nol and Matten myself popping up
Speaker 1: in digital person.
Speaker 4: You can invoke us. Yeah, we even have little avatars
Speaker 4: that we use. That's not true, but we can get them.
Speaker 1: We can get them, we can make them. We have
Speaker 1: the rituals and we have the ability to successfully enact.
Speaker 4: Those operations mainly you mean admin privileges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mainly, that's what they call them now exactly.
Speaker 4: So the times have changed.
Speaker 1: The times have changed, but wizardry in some form or
Speaker 1: another continues. We would like to hear your experiences with
Speaker 1: it as always. Thank you so much for checking out
Speaker 1: the episode, and thank you to Paul who we did
Speaker 1: not run that nickname past no so we might get
Speaker 1: it at the end of this. But Noel, what do
Speaker 1: people do if if they don't want to find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter, If you don't want to find us on Instagram,
Speaker 1: if you say I would, I know? You have a
Speaker 1: phone number one A three three std wytk. That's usually
Speaker 1: Matt's part two.
Speaker 4: I see what you're doing here. You're trying to invoke
Speaker 4: a bit of ritual.
Speaker 1: You're spot on, Noel.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's the end of this classic episode. If
Speaker 2: you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
Speaker 2: can get into contact with us in a number of
Speaker 2: different ways. One of the best is to give us
Speaker 2: a call. Our number is one eight three three stdwytk.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, you can send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
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