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