Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: in our series on Personifications of Death.
Speaker 2: We were thinking about calling these episodes faces of Death,
Speaker 2: but then we realized that it might be confusing title lies. Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, was that like when you were in I think
Speaker 3: it was when I was in high school. I remember
Speaker 3: people watching those things.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I remember seeing them in video stores. Never
Speaker 2: watched them myself, but it always felt like like the
Speaker 2: ultimate video, the ultimate forbidden video on the shelf.
Speaker 3: Were those a mix of real footage of executions and
Speaker 3: then fake footage pretending to be of real executions.
Speaker 2: That's my understanding. Yeah, that it's like and not just
Speaker 2: actual death. Especially they got further into the series. I
Speaker 2: think it also got into stuff like, you know, just
Speaker 2: footage from around the world, maybe like footage of big
Speaker 2: snakes things like that. But yeah, I never saw them
Speaker 2: and I've never sought them out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, oh, here's a snake that ada tortoise and
Speaker 3: then ruptured or something. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, we're
Speaker 3: back with part two of the series on Personifications of Death.
Speaker 3: We should do a brief refresher on what we talked
Speaker 3: about in the last episode. So last time we mostly
Speaker 3: talked about common types of death figures. So one distinction
Speaker 3: we talked about was between the moment of death figure
Speaker 3: like the grim reaper, the kind we usually think of
Speaker 3: as appearing to someone while they're still living, either to
Speaker 3: cause death or to signal that death is near. And
Speaker 3: we thought about that versus a different type of character
Speaker 3: known as the psychopomp. This is from the Greek for
Speaker 3: soul guide or soul conductor. This is the figure who
Speaker 3: shepherd's the soul of the recently dead into the afterlife.
Speaker 3: The analogy we use for the distinction between these two
Speaker 3: was that the reaper is like the bouncer who tells
Speaker 3: you you're cut off you have to leave the bar,
Speaker 3: and the psychopomp is the cab driver who takes you home. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We also explored an influential framework from the psychology of death,
Speaker 3: tracing back to a book called the Psychology of Death
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy two by Robert Castenbaum and Ruth Eisenberg.
Speaker 3: In this framework, the authors used surveys to study how
Speaker 3: US participants were most likely to personify death, and these
Speaker 3: authors ended up arguing that most of the personifications fell
Speaker 3: into one of four general categories. You had a grim, terrifying,
Speaker 3: and threatening figure that they called the macabre. There was
Speaker 3: a soothing, welcoming character that they called the gentle comforter.
Speaker 3: There was an attractive and exciting but dangerous trickster figure
Speaker 3: they called the gay deceiver. And note that the use
Speaker 3: of gay there was not intended as any reference to
Speaker 3: sexual orientation. It's just the older usage, meaning like jolly
Speaker 3: or carefree. And finally, there was a cold, impersonal entity
Speaker 3: they called the automaton. And then after this we got
Speaker 3: into some general findings about how these different personifications were
Speaker 3: usually expressed, how that's changed over time, and we ended
Speaker 3: up talking about some more recent experiments which found, among
Speaker 3: other things, in one small study conducted on American university students,
Speaker 3: subjects were relatively more likely to imagine death as a
Speaker 3: comforter type figure when they thought about their own death
Speaker 3: as opposed to other people's deaths. And hard to know
Speaker 3: exactly what to make of that, but I kind of
Speaker 3: interpret this as a suggestion that maybe we're more likely
Speaker 3: to personify death as a coping strategy than as like
Speaker 3: a raw expression of unresolved fears the way you might think,
Speaker 3: you know, we would get to an image like the
Speaker 3: grim macob figure. And then we also talked about a
Speaker 3: study linking these different archetypes to particular circumstances of death.
Speaker 3: So it's like some of these are more surprising than
Speaker 3: others not very surprising, or the findings like you're more
Speaker 3: likely to think about the macab grim reaper type figure
Speaker 3: with the skeletal, you know, sadistic kind of visage if
Speaker 3: you imagine a murder taking place outside the home, whereas
Speaker 3: the deceiver figure the trickster was more likely to be
Speaker 3: associated with a heart attack. That's kind of interesting. And
Speaker 3: of course, one line running through the discussion last time
Speaker 3: was that most of the psychology research we cited was
Speaker 3: conducted on Americans, and the evidence is pretty clear that
Speaker 3: the personification of death is highly culturally variable. It's not
Speaker 3: like there's one type of death character that's hardwired into
Speaker 3: the brain of the human animal. Though I think it
Speaker 3: is interesting that despite the huge very in how death
Speaker 3: is personified within and across cultures, in some way, almost
Speaker 3: every culture does it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I think that is indeed, one of
Speaker 2: the fascinating things about this is that there's something going
Speaker 2: on in every human mind and in every human culture.
Speaker 2: You know, Crunching this idea of death and these personifications
Speaker 2: of death are one way of dealing with it. And
Speaker 2: you know, so this is where we dig into, like
Speaker 2: what does it mean? Why are we building these things?
Speaker 2: And what do all the pieces mean? So I want
Speaker 2: to follow up on some of the concepts that we
Speaker 2: discussed in the last episode. One of the books that
Speaker 2: I dug into for these episodes is Psyche and Death
Speaker 2: by Edgar Herzog. I believe this was a nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: three publication originally published by the C. J. Young Institute
Speaker 2: in Zurich, and I believe the book the text of
Speaker 2: the book is based on some like older presentations that
Speaker 2: Herzog gave, so naturally, all of this is steeped in
Speaker 2: union concepts. But I thought it was all really fascinating
Speaker 2: and it really puts an interesting spin on some of
Speaker 2: what we discussed last time. Okay, So Herzog goes through
Speaker 2: some of the common animal forms of death personified in
Speaker 2: different cultures and certainly in ancient times. So he singles
Speaker 2: out the wool for dog, the bird, the snake, and
Speaker 2: the horse, and I believe this gets this gets especially
Speaker 2: it makes me think of episodes we've recorded in the past.
Speaker 2: We've talked about the horse skull and the potent symbol
Speaker 2: of the horse skull and how it becomes this totem
Speaker 2: that goes beyond like the remnant of an important domesticated animal.
Speaker 3: I don't really recall what we concluded, but didn't we
Speaker 3: talk about the idea that for some reason, the horse
Speaker 3: skull seems grimmer than other skulls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does that. Yeah. But anyway, he
Speaker 2: refers to all of these different personifications of death in
Speaker 2: this case and beast form as death demons. That's this
Speaker 2: sort of catch all phrase, so I'll use that as well,
Speaker 2: and certainly when I read some quotes from him here.
Speaker 2: But then he goes on to discuss the death demon
Speaker 2: and the human form, and he argues, first of all
Speaker 2: that the various animal forms of the death demon were
Speaker 2: quote the externalization of inner images by means of which
Speaker 2: the human psyche expresses its reaction to the experience of death. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's basically that makes sense. That falls in mind what
Speaker 2: we've been talking about, and he also stresses that they
Speaker 2: were still at the same time the quote inner crystallization
Speaker 2: of numinous experience into an image, and the human form,
Speaker 2: which is only explicitly developed later, is secretly contained within them.
Speaker 2: So this is understandable as well. While death might be
Speaker 2: conceptualized as some sort of a great beast, say a
Speaker 2: giant bird, we're still going to anthropomorphize that great beast.
Speaker 2: But then Herzog argues that in time the shift occurs
Speaker 2: where the death demon becomes implicitly human in form or
Speaker 2: mostly human in form. And I'm going to read this
Speaker 2: quote here that I thought was really telling, and there
Speaker 2: might have been an I don't know if there was
Speaker 2: an error in translation, but I'm going to throw an
Speaker 2: iz in there that isn't there in the actual text
Speaker 2: that to my understanding clarifies things. But if I messed
Speaker 2: it up, my apologies to mister herzag quote. It is
Speaker 2: not until the death demon becomes explicitly anthropomorphized that the
Speaker 2: full richness of the incomprehensible event that death is begins
Speaker 2: to emerge, even though it can never be wholly contained
Speaker 2: in an image. When it is given human form, the
Speaker 2: nature of the death demon is enriched and deepened and
Speaker 2: related to the totality of the universe, the individual, and
Speaker 2: life in a succession of new ways. So he points
Speaker 2: out that by making death more human in form again
Speaker 2: anthropomorphized death, death made to a being, we also firmly
Speaker 2: allow death then to do things that humans do, such
Speaker 2: as use tools and weapons, which you know, coming back
Speaker 2: to the arguably and many you know, certainly in the
Speaker 2: Western culture, the most sort of famous version is the
Speaker 2: grim Reaper. We've referred to this already multiple times. This
Speaker 2: is the version of death that will show up in
Speaker 2: your like Far Side cartoons and so forth, or on
Speaker 2: just you know, probably SpongeBob as well. You know, anywhere
Speaker 2: you have death step in, we take it for granted,
Speaker 2: oh he has a scythe there. But the human technology
Speaker 2: used by a death figure a death demon allows us
Speaker 2: to employ technological metaphors laid in with additional meanings.
Speaker 3: Okay, so one that comes to mind for me immediately
Speaker 3: would be the technological metaphor of harvesting with a scythe there.
Speaker 3: That is something that we use a tool to do.
Speaker 3: But you can think of it now that death is out,
Speaker 3: collecting is out harve people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like the scythe really does a lot to
Speaker 2: inform how we're supposed to feel about the reaper, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's certainly implied violence of cutting away. It is
Speaker 2: the way it's sometimes brandished. It feels like a weapon,
Speaker 2: like don't chase me with that thing.
Speaker 3: Also makes you feel not very special, like you are
Speaker 3: one of many. Yeah, I am a grain among the
Speaker 3: grains of the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, strong sense of cyclical harvest. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: something that happens all the time to everybody. But there
Speaker 2: is also an implied violence of severing. So yeah, the
Speaker 2: inclusion of something like that can can do a lot
Speaker 2: of lifting.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think though, that what's the next tool
Speaker 3: where there's a good technological death metaphor?
Speaker 2: Oh well, we'll get to we'll get to one in
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 3: But okay.
Speaker 2: He also folds in the hybrid body plans of monsters
Speaker 2: into this, so like claws, but he calls out knives, tridents,
Speaker 2: the hook, the net by which the Nordic oceanic deity
Speaker 2: run is said to collect the drown dead, and he
Speaker 2: also calls up the dogs of various wild hunt traditions.
Speaker 2: So ultimately wrapping up human domestication and not exactly a tool,
Speaker 2: but a thing that humans do. And by making death
Speaker 2: human or humanoid, death can do those things too and
Speaker 2: take on those additional meanings.
Speaker 3: This is a really good point, and I don't know
Speaker 3: if I've ever thought about before the idea of how
Speaker 3: the tool you imagine in death's hand affects how you
Speaker 3: think about death. I mean, yeah, so it's clear with
Speaker 3: something like the scythe you could go in interesting places
Speaker 3: with it. So if you give death a frying pan,
Speaker 3: how do you think about that? I guess there it
Speaker 3: makes it sound like a kind of torture, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: What if it's a mandolin slicer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I think if you gave death
Speaker 2: a frying pan, it makes it feel like death was
Speaker 2: doing other things. Death was making breakfast, and maybe this
Speaker 2: isn't the primary thing that death does. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: if you give death a long sword, and I think
Speaker 2: sometimes you see depictions of death with some you know,
Speaker 2: a grim reaper type figure with a long sword. Well,
Speaker 2: now he's holding something that is a weapon. It is
Speaker 2: it has no other purpose but to cut down and
Speaker 2: murder people, or at least in nothing else to intimidate
Speaker 2: them with the threat of murder. So it changes the
Speaker 2: vibe to a very large degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, death as lethal enemy, not like I am not
Speaker 3: metaphorically grain in a field here, I'm not a sheaf
Speaker 3: of wheed. I am just a person being killed in battle. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so Herzog points out that like hooks and ropes
Speaker 2: associated with different death figures, this conveys a sense of
Speaker 2: snatching away sudden demise and maybe even a bit of
Speaker 2: malice as well. A net. On the other hand, he
Speaker 2: says that this is more passive collective. You know, you
Speaker 2: can't feel too bad about this character that's out there
Speaker 2: collecting the drowned dead with the net. And so in
Speaker 2: all this we observe that the tools of death can
Speaker 2: adjust their symbolic impression to convey any of the four
Speaker 2: basic death types that we've talked about previously, the macop,
Speaker 2: the gentle comforter, the gay deceiver, and the automaton. He
Speaker 2: also points out that the humanoid form also enables the
Speaker 2: adjustment of the image via clothing choices, and this is
Speaker 2: something that we kind of take for granted with the
Speaker 2: robes of death, right, the robes of the reaper you
Speaker 2: know it just to be shrouded is to be to
Speaker 2: take on that sense of darkness and obscurity, that same
Speaker 2: darkness and obscurity that death will drag the human soul
Speaker 2: into in many of these traditions. Other traditions involve magical
Speaker 2: caps of invisibility, which would seem partial to the way
Speaker 2: that death moves through our world, you know, unseen, certainly
Speaker 2: striking out of nowhere and so forth, on top of
Speaker 2: it being you know, if we're to take it literally,
Speaker 2: some sort of supernatural entity moving through our world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I want to come back to something else that
Speaker 2: we mentioned in the last episode, the idea that death
Speaker 2: should end up looking like the dead, as well as
Speaker 2: one of those attributed death anxieties that came up in polling,
Speaker 2: the fear of seeing a human corpse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was an interesting irony that came up when
Speaker 3: we were talking about the four archetypes of death from
Speaker 3: Castenbaum and the Eisenberg, which specifically came up with reference
Speaker 3: to the macabre, because this is the scariest of the
Speaker 3: four death personifications, and yet it's also the only one
Speaker 3: that looks like it is a victim of the thing
Speaker 3: it symbolizes. It is often represented as dead and decayed,
Speaker 3: but none of the other three are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again this is something that we're so used
Speaker 2: to seeing in our representations of death, particularly with the
Speaker 2: Grim Reaper, that we don't really stop to think how
Speaker 2: interesting it is. Why does this bringer of death look
Speaker 2: like death itself? It may seem like, well, yeah, well
Speaker 2: how else would it be? Maybe you stop and look
Speaker 2: at it, you know, you have to ask why, and
Speaker 2: herz Our expresses that many characteristics found in the humanoid
Speaker 2: death demon quote arise out of the experience of seeing
Speaker 2: human corpses. To see a human corpse is to, you know,
Speaker 2: to have to contemplate all of these realities of death.
Speaker 2: It of course can be keep scary, anxiety or raising,
Speaker 2: and certainly something one would fear seeing, particularly if you
Speaker 2: get into specifics like I am afraid of seeing the
Speaker 2: corpse of this particular person or this particular person that
Speaker 2: I know, and you know, coming back to something we
Speaker 2: mentioned as well, In our contemporary world, we make it
Speaker 2: more and more possible to avoid seeing human corpses, at
Speaker 2: least for much of our lives. But of course someone
Speaker 2: has to see them, and historically most people would have
Speaker 2: had a stronger connection to the physical reality of death.
Speaker 2: Herzog also discusses the idea that masks of death play
Speaker 2: into all of this as well, because when one dies,
Speaker 2: the face becomes like a mask, and of course the
Speaker 2: idea of a mask plays right into the trope of
Speaker 2: the gay deceiver that we discussed, especially in the form
Speaker 2: of quote one whose back is wholly different from his
Speaker 2: appearance in front, which of course I want him like,
Speaker 2: that's what a mask does, right, It's like, I hold
Speaker 2: the mask in front of my face, and if you're
Speaker 2: looking at me from the front, I have a different face.
Speaker 2: And he points to a number of feminine death forms
Speaker 2: and also some male death forms where it's not mere
Speaker 2: monstrous hybridity like with sirens or harpies. But there's this
Speaker 2: idea that the death demon is all beauty in the
Speaker 2: front and decay in the back, so not a mix again,
Speaker 2: not like a harpy. It's like, oh well, it looks
Speaker 2: pretty in some ways, but it also has big claws
Speaker 2: and vulture rings, but no one where if you're standing
Speaker 2: direct in front of them looks like a fair form.
Speaker 2: Standing directly behind them, you would see that they are gross.
Speaker 3: The woman in the bathtub in the Shining.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's rotten. Yeah, Oh, she's rotten in the back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's a beautiful woman when yeah, and Jack Nicholson
Speaker 3: starts to kiss her and then he sees in the
Speaker 3: mirror that she is a rotten corpse from behind.
Speaker 2: Been a while since I've seen that scene, and historically
Speaker 2: I didn't get to see that scene because I would
Speaker 2: watch television. It's kind of a hidden easter egg for.
Speaker 3: The Shining, censored for television. Amazing, amazing choices.
Speaker 2: But that that sounds like it may have been well
Speaker 2: inspired by by some of these examples that I'm about
Speaker 2: to roll out. First up, there's the Nordic Haldron, and
Speaker 2: this is an entity where the front is said to
Speaker 2: look like a beautiful fair form, like a beautiful woman,
Speaker 2: but then the back of the individual is hollow, like
Speaker 2: a kneading trough.
Speaker 3: So that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, the back yeah yeah, just like hollow, like
Speaker 2: a big cavity of decay. They are also apparently particular
Speaker 2: Austrian devils that Herzog brings up, namely a Styrian and
Speaker 2: Corinthian in which you'll have a captivating lover in the front,
Speaker 2: but then the back is all hallowed out, like this,
Speaker 2: hollowed out with decay. There's a fraul Hola and the
Speaker 2: Woman of the Woods, again beautiful in the front, but
Speaker 2: in this case like a hollowed out log in the back.
Speaker 2: And I think this one may be connected more to
Speaker 2: like earthy nature motifs.
Speaker 3: Interesting recurring theme the hollow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of his examples are you know,
Speaker 2: certainly Germanic and European and origin, but we also have
Speaker 2: He also brings up the example of the wahout of
Speaker 2: the luis no An indigenous people of southern California, and
Speaker 2: this is a pretty woman with long hair in the front,
Speaker 2: but in the back there's no flesh on her.
Speaker 3: You know, this may be entirely off base, but I'm
Speaker 3: thinking of this recurring theme of the form that appears
Speaker 3: beautiful in the front but in the back is not
Speaker 3: just ugly or you know, dead or something, but is
Speaker 3: actually hollow. It almost makes me think of fruit of produce. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know if that's actually what's leading
Speaker 3: to this, but I'm sure we've all had the experience
Speaker 3: of you know, you're at the market and you're picking
Speaker 3: up a nice looking piece of fruit, or vegetable or
Speaker 3: something that looks great on one side you pick it
Speaker 3: up and the other side is not just not beautiful,
Speaker 3: but is hollow, is eaten away.
Speaker 2: Literal bad apples, these death demons. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 2: more interesting examples he brings up, in part because I
Speaker 2: found like actual visual visuals of these more forthcoming on
Speaker 2: the internet is fraul Veldt or Lady World. She pops
Speaker 2: up in medieval European iconography and in poetry, and again
Speaker 2: we have a case where it's generally a beautiful woman
Speaker 2: in the front, but her back is hollow and or
Speaker 2: infested with snakes and toads. I had to look her
Speaker 2: up in Carol Roses Encyclopedias of Mythical Creatures, and she
Speaker 2: describes this figure as a female supernatural lover or a
Speaker 2: fairy mistress, one that particularly preys on monks, members of
Speaker 2: the clergy, and so forth, with vibes of a succubus
Speaker 2: demon or an incarnation of the devil.
Speaker 3: It's the idea that monks are especially easy to get
Speaker 3: or especially hard to get.
Speaker 2: Or right, maybe they're the only ones writing about them.
Speaker 2: I go, oh, yeah, but yeah, this is you'll actually
Speaker 2: find sculptures of this figure, and indeed it'll be like
Speaker 2: a you know, some it almost looks like they're wearing
Speaker 2: a hospital gown because in the front they are clothed
Speaker 2: and fair, and in the back the gown is open
Speaker 2: and we just see decay. And also you'll see examples
Speaker 2: of it looks like there are toads and or snakes
Speaker 2: like swimming in the pestilence of their back and their
Speaker 2: legs and their buttocks.
Speaker 3: One of these statues you've included an image of for me.
Speaker 3: Here it's shrunken down, so I can't quite tell, but
Speaker 3: it kind of looks like it has crabs all over it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we find a similar image but flipped to the
Speaker 2: mail in the sculpture Foolish versions Seduced by the Tempter
Speaker 2: featured on the Strausburg Cathedral. Here the male tempter has
Speaker 2: the back of decay, and I believe he's holding out
Speaker 2: an apple, and he has animals swimming in his back
Speaker 2: as well. And in this I'm also briefly reminded of
Speaker 2: the accounts we have a vampires in which once you've
Speaker 2: slain the creature, they just turn into a torrent of
Speaker 2: snakes and bugs. Some spontaneous generation wrapped up in all
Speaker 2: of this, to be sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, notes of Halloween three, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: And speaking of films, this of course made me think
Speaker 2: of some possible exam They are possible examples of this
Speaker 2: from horror cinema especially. There's a shot in particular from
Speaker 2: John Carpenter's in the Mouth of Badness nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: There's a scene where the character Linda Styles embraces the
Speaker 2: enigmatic Sutter Caine, and so in the front he just
Speaker 2: looks like Sutterkane. This you know, commanding and you know,
Speaker 2: ruggedly handsome. Horror writer Jurgen prac now it is yes,
Speaker 2: okay and a great role. And as she embraces him
Speaker 2: and kisses him with her own eyes bleeding from the
Speaker 2: revelations he's given her that the shot moves back and
Speaker 2: we see that the back of him is just all monstrous,
Speaker 2: like weird kind of decay, and there's a face back
Speaker 2: there on the back of his head.
Speaker 3: It's really more like Lovecraft goo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lovecraft goo, I think is a good description. I
Speaker 2: was looking around. It looks like there are some other
Speaker 2: examples of this as well. Some of them go they'll
Speaker 2: get more into the direct trope of face back of
Speaker 2: the head, and I'm not there's one in particular that
Speaker 2: ended up spoiling a movie for me, so I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna mention that one. But if folks have seen it,
Speaker 2: you probably know what I'm talking about. And I'm not
Speaker 2: talking about Harry Potter and the Sorcer of Stone. There's
Speaker 2: a different one. But frau Veldt here is a terrific
Speaker 2: example of the gay deceiver in that she is supposed
Speaker 2: to represent the mortal world of sin and therefore death.
Speaker 2: Something Herzog drives home really well is that within the
Speaker 2: Christian tradition, death largely becomes not a natural aspect of creation,
Speaker 2: but an unfortunate byproduct of human sin, and a byproduct
Speaker 2: that may eventually be reversed or erased. So that a
Speaker 2: very consequential way to spin a natural occurrence.
Speaker 3: Right, So, because Adam and Eve are kicked out of
Speaker 3: the Garden of Eden, death and sin come into the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So frau Veldt reveals the wages of earthly sin.
Speaker 2: Herzog cites a poem by twelfth and thirteenth century German
Speaker 2: poet and barred Walter von der Vogelweida and in the
Speaker 2: poem frau Veldt speaks. She says, I am the world
Speaker 2: looked now upon my back and see the wage I bring.
Speaker 2: He looked and saw her back hollow. It was San's flesh,
Speaker 2: all full of toads, crawling with worms and stinking like
Speaker 2: a putrefying dog. Uugh, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: But why a dog? I mean putrefying anything. It's specific.
Speaker 4: You want to be specific, you know. And presumably he's
Speaker 4: singing this as well, by the way, like this is
Speaker 4: this was probably a song because he was again like
Speaker 4: a traveling bard.
Speaker 2: Now. Her Zog ultimately argues though, that images like this
Speaker 2: one they end up betraying a deeper understanding, or at
Speaker 2: least a deeper contemplation of the polarity of death in life,
Speaker 2: and one that continues to sort of resonate hidden behind
Speaker 2: the Christian reworking of things, something quote so deeply disturbing
Speaker 2: that it can't be grasped and permanently held. And so
Speaker 2: you know, you have this image of a fraul Velt
Speaker 2: and you know, again beauty on the front and on
Speaker 2: the back, all decay and death, life on one end,
Speaker 2: death on the other. And it's presented as if like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, sin looks like this from one angle, but
Speaker 2: it's really this but beyond this lesson of this morality
Speaker 2: lesson that's that they're trying to teach with this image,
Speaker 2: there's this kind of like deeper understanding that death isn't
Speaker 2: only darkness and decline, but it's also light and the scent,
Speaker 2: because one side of this thing is not and cannot
Speaker 2: merely be the true essence of the thing, like both
Speaker 2: are the true face. And so yeah, even as you're
Speaker 2: if you're taking this image in as a teaching implement,
Speaker 2: a religious teaching implement, like it ultimately betrays even deeper
Speaker 2: contemplations of life and death.
Speaker 3: And possibly also brings a comforting side. Again back to
Speaker 3: the idea of the personification as a coping strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even though it's rolled out just to say, hey,
Speaker 2: don't sin, or death will happen and so forth, and
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, that's one for me. The big takeaway
Speaker 2: from Herzog's discussion of Yungi interpretations of this kind of
Speaker 2: imagery is that all of these depictions have been generated
Speaker 2: as a way of attempting to cope with and understand death,
Speaker 2: which is in so many ways something that is just
Speaker 2: too huge and varied to fully hold in our minds.
Speaker 2: It's overwhelming, it's multifaceted, but that is one of the
Speaker 2: powers of symbology, of poetry, of song, and of all
Speaker 2: human art. We can capture like some sense of that
Speaker 2: overpowering ambiguity, polarity and ineffability of the thing, and then
Speaker 2: as you hold it up to the light, you can
Speaker 2: kind of catch it in different ways. Now, in the
Speaker 2: rest of this episode, we're going to expand on some
Speaker 2: of those classifications we discussed in the previous episode some more,
Speaker 2: while also getting into the role fate plays and some
Speaker 2: of humanity's anthropomorphic personifications of death. Because of course, broadly
Speaker 2: death is fate. It's the one true certainty in human
Speaker 2: life and something we spend much of our lives coming
Speaker 2: to terms with in different ways. So in that sense,
Speaker 2: the idea of death personified or not, is innately tied
Speaker 2: to the concept of fate.
Speaker 3: Huge number of stories illustrating the concept of fate center
Speaker 3: around predictions of death. This will come up in the
Speaker 3: Greek context, which I'm going to talk about in a minute.
Speaker 3: It's it is certainly not the only aspect of fate.
Speaker 3: Fate is everything about our lives. But for some reason,
Speaker 3: the most central event in stories about fate is death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the one thing that's guaranteed to happen, yea,
Speaker 2: even though it doesn't always happen. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: in our stories often we don't always get to see
Speaker 2: our lead character eventually die. It's kind of like Barbie
Speaker 2: doesn't have to have a bathroom in her dream house,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. We should also note that while
Speaker 2: the terms fate and destiny are often used interchangeably, and
Speaker 2: we may use them interchangeably here in this episode a
Speaker 2: little bit, they are often considered different concepts historically. So
Speaker 2: fate is passive, it's the course in life that was
Speaker 2: predetermined for you. Destiny, however, is active and must be achieved.
Speaker 2: So one becomes resigned to one's fate, while one sets
Speaker 2: out after their destiny. So death in and of itself
Speaker 2: not much of a destiny, but a key aspect of
Speaker 2: any given fate. Now, we could do a whole series
Speaker 2: of course on fate and destiny, as well as huge
Speaker 2: tactics as well for human contemplation, but we are talking
Speaker 2: about death, the anthropomorphic personification of death, and this ties
Speaker 2: in nicely with some very old concepts, concepts that are
Speaker 2: in fact again based on a metaphor of human technology,
Speaker 2: thread spun from a spindle, and this metaphor can be
Speaker 2: found in pretty much all Indo European cultures. The technology
Speaker 2: involved here dates back to Neolithic times at least. The
Speaker 2: spindle enables one to transform a seemingly chaotic mass of
Speaker 2: fibers into a purposeful thread. So out of what seems
Speaker 2: like chaos comes order. We get purpose and direction. Out
Speaker 2: of the direction lists, we get a narrowing of focus.
Speaker 2: We get a thread, a line with a beginning and
Speaker 2: an end. So how could we not see ourselves and
Speaker 2: our world in this process, in this technology.
Speaker 3: That is true. I was also thinking about, speaking of
Speaker 3: technological metaphors, the way that thread as a metaphor kind
Speaker 3: of flattens our existence. Like, you know, thread, like any
Speaker 3: object really existing in space is a three dimensional object,
Speaker 3: but in a metaphorical sense, it is a one dimensional object.
Speaker 3: Like the metaphor of thread is something that only has lef,
Speaker 3: that doesn't even have width, you know, not to speak
Speaker 3: of depth. And yeah, I wonder how that also feeds
Speaker 3: into the use of thread as a metaphor for human life.
Speaker 3: It sort of reduces everything to one factor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's almost it almost you can almost imagine
Speaker 2: a situation where we see other lives as thread. I mean,
Speaker 2: I feel like I do this all the time, you know,
Speaker 2: I look back on an actor and an older film,
Speaker 2: and what do I want to know? I want to
Speaker 2: know like the basic thread of everything. I want to
Speaker 2: know the timeline, you know, that's just part of our
Speaker 2: linear existence. And then how do we experience ourselves? Well,
Speaker 2: sometimes I feel like we do think of ourselves as threads,
Speaker 2: and we think of ourselves as a linear story. But
Speaker 2: we also, I think, experience ourselves as just that mass
Speaker 2: of chaotic fiber. So yeah, interesting to think about this,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it one can only you know, imagine how
Speaker 2: these sorts of contemplations originally came together, you know, via
Speaker 2: this crafting technology. And so let's go ahead and turn
Speaker 2: into what it's probably, at least in the Western world,
Speaker 2: the most famous example of this from Hellenistic tradition. You
Speaker 2: want to talk about the fates, let's get in there. Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: These are the Greek fates, also known as the Moirai.
Speaker 3: They are three divine sisters with individual names They are
Speaker 3: named Clotho, Lacasis, and Atropos, usually depicted as three women
Speaker 3: who respectively spin out the thread of life, measure it
Speaker 3: to size, and then cut it off. They're depicted with
Speaker 3: their implements, usually for their individual jobs, so you know,
Speaker 3: like with this tool theme we've talked about, they also
Speaker 3: have tools. Clotho usually has a spindle, Lacsis holds sometimes
Speaker 3: a measuring rod, and Atropos most famously wields a pair
Speaker 3: of scissors or shears to snip the thread of life.
Speaker 3: And these tools are not always consistent in some tellings.
Speaker 3: For example, Lacsis has casting lots instead of a rod,
Speaker 3: and that's actually there in her name. I think I
Speaker 3: forget exactly, but I believe Lacsis means something like the
Speaker 3: one who casts lots or something signifies her agency in
Speaker 3: basically rolling the dice on what kind of life you
Speaker 3: will have. She is the determiner of the length and
Speaker 3: type of life. And sometimes instead of shears, Atropos has
Speaker 3: a knife or in some cases a document like a
Speaker 3: scroll or some other kind of document, which I think
Speaker 3: signifies something like reading out your death sentence.
Speaker 2: In any case, though, I can't help but think about
Speaker 2: what we were talking about earlier, Like whatever you specifically
Speaker 2: put in her hand, it does kind of change the
Speaker 2: nature of what she's doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the scissors make her a little creepier. The
Speaker 3: document makes her sinister in a different way, Like she's
Speaker 3: the judge, you know, telling you, Okay, here's here's what
Speaker 3: you got coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's also like, hey, what can you do
Speaker 2: this was I've got this decree, I've got to follow it,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: So the three sisters together are responsible for enforcing the
Speaker 3: laws of fate and destiny to make certain that the
Speaker 3: lives of mortals unfold as they are preordained. And often
Speaker 3: this involves, or not often, I guess always this involves
Speaker 3: a fated form of death. So the fates altogether represent
Speaker 3: first of all, the guaranteed finitude of life. But I
Speaker 3: would say that Atropos in particular has some grim reaper
Speaker 3: like qualities, because as the one who cuts the thread
Speaker 3: of life with her shears, she's the one who most
Speaker 3: directly seals your doom. And also, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: like the reaper, she has a sharp instrument. A big
Speaker 3: thing that I want to discuss about the Greek fates
Speaker 3: is the most common theme of stories about them, both
Speaker 3: in stories about them as goddesses and in stories about
Speaker 3: fate as a principle. Is this common theme is that
Speaker 3: a mortal person might find a way to temporarily escape
Speaker 3: their fate or destiny, but somehow the faded outcome will
Speaker 3: find a way to happen. All apparent escape hatches are
Speaker 3: actually just detours and delays, which in a way is
Speaker 3: literally true about death. Like, we can find ways to
Speaker 3: put it off in a sense, though there are questions,
Speaker 3: I guess in strictly physical terms about what that means
Speaker 3: to put it off. I mean, you're going to die.
Speaker 3: When you're going to die, you can, compared to the
Speaker 3: general population, hopefully do things that will increase your chances
Speaker 3: of living longer. But you know, there's not like any
Speaker 3: way you could have of knowing that, Oh I would
Speaker 3: have died at this earlier time had I not done X.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're obviously a number of facts involved, many of
Speaker 2: which are completely out of our control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But so we can find ways to put it off,
Speaker 3: but eventually death always comes, no matter your efforts, and
Speaker 3: that is what fate is like in most Greek storytelling.
Speaker 3: There are tons of stories in Greek mythology that are
Speaker 3: used to illustrate this principle. One example I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about is the story of the hero Melieger. You
Speaker 3: know this one.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's meant with this one.
Speaker 3: Okay. So Melieger's parents are the king and Queen of
Speaker 3: the Greek kingdom of Caledon. When Melieger is born, the
Speaker 3: fates come to his mother, Althea, and they tell her
Speaker 3: that her newborn son is doomed and he's going to
Speaker 3: die as soon as the log currently burning in the
Speaker 3: fireplace is consumed. But notice they gave her a clause
Speaker 3: there there's an or a win. So Althea thinks she
Speaker 3: has found a cheat code to escape the fate. She
Speaker 3: extinguishes the fire, and she takes the wood out of
Speaker 3: the hearth and hides it in a secret box.
Speaker 2: So kind of a don't eat daddy's soul donut sort
Speaker 2: of situation here.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, So, yeah, it seems like she's found a workaround.
Speaker 3: Mellieger grows up strong and handsome, and he eventually falls
Speaker 3: in love with the fleet footed huntress Atalanta, and then,
Speaker 3: after the slaying of the monstrous Caledonian boar, Mellieger gives
Speaker 3: the boar's hide to his new love, to Atalanta. This
Speaker 3: gift makes Mellieger's maternal uncles his mom's brothers angry because
Speaker 3: they want the boar's hide for themselves and they feel
Speaker 3: insulted that Mellieger is giving it to a woman instead,
Speaker 3: so they try to steal it from Atalanta by force,
Speaker 3: and for this Mellieger kills them, kills his uncles, So
Speaker 3: now Mellieger is a kin killer, and his mother, Althea,
Speaker 3: becomes torn between family loyalties. She loves her son, but
Speaker 3: her son has killed her brothers, and ultimately, in an
Speaker 3: act that can be interpreted multiple ways, you could think
Speaker 3: of this as retaliation or punishment, or maybe even contrition
Speaker 3: for her earlier attempt to cheat the fates. For whatever reason,
Speaker 3: she takes the hidden log out of the chest and
Speaker 3: throws it back into the fireplace, and when the wood
Speaker 3: is consumed by the fire, Mellyager drops dead. So you
Speaker 3: thought you could avoid fate, but somehow it happened anyway.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a good one. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 2: had heard this one before, and I think there might
Speaker 2: have been a ted ed video about it. Certainly. Once
Speaker 2: you introduced the log I was like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is the one.
Speaker 3: So you know, that's a common format of the fate
Speaker 3: stories in Greek telling. But I was looking for more
Speaker 3: stories on this theme. And there's actually a whole section
Speaker 3: dedicated to fatalism in this book I've got. It's William
Speaker 3: Hannahson's Book of Greek and Roman folk Tales, Legends and Myths,
Speaker 3: from Princeton University Press, twenty seventeen. And I thought a
Speaker 3: couple of these were really interesting. So one of these
Speaker 3: stories is a later tale told by the Roman author Alien,
Speaker 3: and it takes place in Athens after the Peloponnesian War.
Speaker 3: This was the war in the fifth century BCE where
Speaker 3: Athens and its allies fought Sparta and its allies. Sparta
Speaker 3: won this war and afterwards installed a new government over
Speaker 3: Athens made up of Spartan controlled oligarchs who were known
Speaker 3: as the Thirty Tyrants or just the thirty. And so
Speaker 3: I think there may be some different versions of this story,
Speaker 3: but this is the version told in this telling by
Speaker 3: Alien that is recounted in this book by Hansen. So
Speaker 3: the story goes that the Athenian statesman Theramones has been
Speaker 3: hanging out in a particular house in the city, and
Speaker 3: one morning he gets up, he walks out of the
Speaker 3: front door of the house, and immediately afterwards the whole
Speaker 3: building collapses behind him, leaving him unharmed. So if he'd
Speaker 3: been inside a moment longer, he would have been crushed.
Speaker 3: So people come from all around. They are astonished at
Speaker 3: his good luck. But while all the neighbors are really
Speaker 3: happy for him, Theremines himself gives a more cautious response.
Speaker 3: He says, zeus, for what occasion have you preserved me?
Speaker 3: And then right after that alien narrates quote. Not long afterward,
Speaker 3: he was put to death by the thirty condemned to
Speaker 3: drink himlock some notes of final destination here. So the
Speaker 3: idea is, after one incredibly lucky escape from death, you're
Speaker 3: kind of in debt to the fates, and your account
Speaker 3: will soon be settled by other means. In the Greek context,
Speaker 3: I think it's also significant that the death from a
Speaker 3: collapsing house, the death that Theram these escapes here, would
Speaker 3: be a relatively quick and neutral death in terms of honor.
Speaker 3: So he's spared that relatively quick and neutral death, only
Speaker 3: too soon after be condemned to a much nastier and
Speaker 3: more humiliating end where he's you know, so he misses
Speaker 3: out on being instantly taken by an act of the
Speaker 3: gods and instead gets wiped out in a reign of
Speaker 3: terror by his victorious enemies.
Speaker 2: I mean, still could have been worse, but but yeah,
Speaker 2: I got your meaning.
Speaker 3: And note that there's no personification of the fates in
Speaker 3: these stories. They didn't always have to be personified. That
Speaker 3: the principle of fatalism and the cosmic balance comes through.
Speaker 3: Another awesome story that Hanson includes in this book is
Speaker 3: from the Greek historian Herodotus, and this one is called
Speaker 3: the Last Days of mike Karenos. Mike Arnos is the
Speaker 3: Greek name of the Old Kingdom Egyptian pharaoh Mencora. So
Speaker 3: this story is interesting because it is the closest anybody
Speaker 3: seems to get to escaping their fate in the stories
Speaker 3: I was reading, but only in a way that's questionable
Speaker 3: as an actor. So here's how Herodotus tells it. So it's
Speaker 3: like the pharaoh mike Karenos gets an oracle from a
Speaker 3: city called Bhutto that he will only live for six
Speaker 3: more years and will die in the seventh year. Hence,
Speaker 3: he does not like hearing this, obviously, and he sends
Speaker 3: a message back to the oracle saying, this is not fair.
Speaker 3: You know, my father and my uncle who ruled before me,
Speaker 3: they both lived to a ripe old age, and they
Speaker 3: were constantly doing things to anger the gods. They shut
Speaker 3: down temples, they forgot to make sacrifices, and they also
Speaker 3: did tons of murder. They're terrible guys. I, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I am pious, I honor the gods. I'm
Speaker 3: not a murderer. It does not make sense that the
Speaker 3: gods would get give them longevity and cut my own
Speaker 3: life short. And then a message comes back from the oracle,
Speaker 3: this is great. Turns out, it is because you are
Speaker 3: pious and righteous that your life is being snuffed out early,
Speaker 3: because you are refusing to fulfill your evil destiny. Whoa see.
Speaker 3: It turns out that before your father was king, before
Speaker 3: your father and uncle were king, it was faded that
Speaker 3: Egypt would suffer and be afflicted with horrors for one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty years. Your father and uncle understood that
Speaker 3: they had to fulfill their destiny and be terrible rulers,
Speaker 3: so they made sure that things were really bad around here,
Speaker 3: but look, we're still on the clock. Egypt is still
Speaker 3: faded to suffer, and you are doing too good of
Speaker 3: a job. So Herodotus says. Quote. When Mike Karenos heard
Speaker 3: that his lot had already been decided, he had a
Speaker 3: large number of lamps made, lighting them at night, and
Speaker 3: he drank and enjoyed himself without cease, day and night.
Speaker 3: He roamed the marshlands, groves, and any other pleasant place
Speaker 3: of enjoyment that he came to know. He devised this
Speaker 3: strategy in order to prove that the oracle was mistaken.
Speaker 3: By making his nights into days, he had twelve years
Speaker 3: to live instead of six.
Speaker 2: Oh man, what a life hack. I feel like I've
Speaker 2: heard versions of this song from influencers in recent years.
Speaker 3: Not the only person to have figured out this hack. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you double your lifespan by never sleeping. It's true. So
Speaker 3: several interesting themes here. One is this story depicts different
Speaker 3: ways that you cannot escape fate. So as with the
Speaker 3: other stories, like you cannot escape your own personal fate.
Speaker 3: You know, the King's death prophesied by the oracle here,
Speaker 3: except maybe through changing your mindset the external events won't change.
Speaker 3: You will still die, you know, for six years, because
Speaker 3: that's what you're fated to do, But you can change
Speaker 3: the way you think about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I mean that's a message that still
Speaker 2: resonates today.
Speaker 3: Also, there's the message that the gods will kill you
Speaker 3: if you try to resist or alter a broader, more
Speaker 3: collective form of fate. So Egypt, it's supposed to be
Speaker 3: bad here. It is destined to be a terrible place
Speaker 3: for one hundred and fifty years. It's only been like
Speaker 3: one hundred and six years, and you're being too nice
Speaker 3: and ruling too well. So we've got to kick you
Speaker 3: out so we can get a solid, incompetent tyrant in
Speaker 3: here to play ball.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is a good one.
Speaker 3: One more interesting note about the role of fate in
Speaker 3: Greek theology. I was reading this in a brief note
Speaker 3: in the Oxford Encyclopedia of World Mythology edited by David Leming,
Speaker 3: and they're Leaming notes that the fates seem to present
Speaker 3: a paradox or a theological problem within Greek mythology because
Speaker 3: they are depicted as being in some cases the ultimate
Speaker 3: authority over life and death, though in other contexts Zeus
Speaker 3: is said to be that authority, So who is really
Speaker 3: the master of life and death? This really does present
Speaker 3: a kind of could God create a boulder so big
Speaker 3: he couldn't lift it problem within Greek religious thinking, And
Speaker 3: this is never fully resolved anywhere. There are just some
Speaker 3: texts that have one answer, some texts have a different answer.
Speaker 3: Some texts don't seem to have an answer to this question.
Speaker 3: But it is it is who is really the master
Speaker 3: of life and death? Is it Fate or is it
Speaker 3: the God Supreme?
Speaker 2: By having apoltheistic structure like this and all fully loaded pantheon,
Speaker 2: it does seem like you allow these sorts of paradoxes
Speaker 2: a little more room to breathe, right.
Speaker 3: I guess so? But yeah, well, I mean you can
Speaker 3: resolve some Paradoix boxes and create others. So like within
Speaker 3: a polytheistic pantheon, you don't have the Odyssey problems like
Speaker 3: you do with the belief in like a single God
Speaker 3: who is all good and all powerful. You know, why
Speaker 3: do bad things happen to good people? Well, if you've
Speaker 3: got polytheism, you've just got like lots of different thoughts
Speaker 3: with different motives and different levels of power and there's
Speaker 3: just like you know, that's just what happens. So that's
Speaker 3: like a kind of problem you don't really have as
Speaker 3: much with polytheism. I don't know, people probably still find
Speaker 3: their way there sometimes sometimes, but seems easier to resolve
Speaker 3: if there is a diversity of greater powers than humankind.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you create new problems like this, like you,
Speaker 3: you come up with competing domains and there will probably
Speaker 3: be conflicting beliefs about who's really in charge of what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see some of this reflected in what we're
Speaker 2: going to turn to next. Having talked about the fates,
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about what are
Speaker 2: essentially the fates of Norse mythology, the Norn. They line
Speaker 2: up in a number of ways with the fates, and
Speaker 2: in some tellings, to be clear, stories about the Norns
Speaker 2: may have been influenced by these traditions of the fates
Speaker 2: and so forth. But we're also dealing with just some
Speaker 2: very ancient ideas that a number of Indo European cultures
Speaker 2: have in common. So yeah, we have the Norn again,
Speaker 2: the fates of the Norse, if you will. They are
Speaker 2: said to be the daughters of Dabblin, the dwarf, the
Speaker 2: slumbering one, and they are also known by other names
Speaker 2: such as the noor Ear and the words This is
Speaker 2: apparently associated with a term that means to turn. So
Speaker 2: there are three of them, much like the fates of
Speaker 2: Hellenistic traditions, and we're told that they dwell at the
Speaker 2: base of the Great World tree ill where they reside
Speaker 2: over one of the three wells or well springs, and
Speaker 2: this water is used to water the Great Tree. They're
Speaker 2: sometimes described as being dressed all in gray with gray veils,
Speaker 2: other times as appearing like they're covered in feathers, like
Speaker 2: they're wearing feathers, as the Valkyries often are, as well
Speaker 2: more on the Valkyries in a minute. They also are
Speaker 2: given names. So of the Norn, we have Urdur, the
Speaker 2: Norn of the past, also sometimes known as Weird like
Speaker 2: w Yrd Weird. We also have Randi, the Norn of
Speaker 2: the present, and then we have Skulled, the Norn of
Speaker 2: the future, And there's a lot of overlap between the
Speaker 2: Norn and like the Valkyries, Scold is also sometimes said
Speaker 2: to be the name of a valkyrie. So they spin
Speaker 2: not and weave the thread of fate for a new
Speaker 2: born babe. But they also seem to serve as agents
Speaker 2: of death in more of an atomon fashion, so like
Speaker 2: the fates, they spin and eventually cut the thread. But again,
Speaker 2: the actual technological metaphors sometimes varies with weaving accounts, perhaps
Speaker 2: influenced by the Greek or some common source. Other sources
Speaker 2: mentioned carving rooms on wooden slips, and then there are
Speaker 2: other accounts that really focus more on the watering of
Speaker 2: the roots of the world tree. But in general it
Speaker 2: seems fair to sort of classify them as serving the
Speaker 2: role of the fates. Here we also see the idea
Speaker 2: that the norns are highly mysterious and they actually may
Speaker 2: vary greatly in number. In the prose ed, for example,
Speaker 2: we see the idea that in addition to the main
Speaker 2: three norns, there are additional both good norns and evil norns,
Speaker 2: and this is why there is such a lack of
Speaker 2: uniformity in the way life unfolds for people. It's mentioned like, well,
Speaker 2: why does why did this guy have such bad luck?
Speaker 2: And why did he die so soon so horribly and
Speaker 2: so forth, and they're like, oh, well, his life was
Speaker 2: probably overseen by an evil norn, as opposed to a
Speaker 2: good norn. And there's also discussion about how like norns
Speaker 2: are drawn from different species as well, like that could
Speaker 2: have been an elf norn or something to that effect.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it was a bad norn, and not that
Speaker 3: he was too nice and he was supposed to be
Speaker 3: a bad friend to all his friends because he was faded.
Speaker 3: Call back there, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Basically you can end up blaming it on a bureaucracy
Speaker 2: of norns, like oh, sorry, you got a real bummer norn.
Speaker 2: There happens. But the norns are closely associated with some
Speaker 2: other spirits and Norse traditions. There's the philja, which are
Speaker 2: like hereditary protective guardians, though apparently rarely seen except in
Speaker 2: dreams or at the time of death. There are hamongjas,
Speaker 2: which are like household guardian spirits, but also spirits of
Speaker 2: luck and happiness. So indeed, beginning to get a sense of,
Speaker 2: perhaps all told, a rather large bureaucracy of supernatural beings
Speaker 2: that are attending to the direction of your life. And then,
Speaker 2: of course we have the valkyries. The choosers of the
Speaker 2: slain generally describe more as psychopomps than anything, you know,
Speaker 2: they escort the souls of the dead onto Odin's valhalla,
Speaker 2: you know, the portion of the afterlife that is reserved
Speaker 2: for the valiant dead, where they get to keep fighting
Speaker 2: and killing each other, but then also setting down having
Speaker 2: a you know, whole bunch of drinks and it's lit
Speaker 2: by the light of their swords.
Speaker 3: Only special certain dead go there.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and you get to eat that magical boar
Speaker 2: that never dies, so you know, good stuff. And of course,
Speaker 2: the Valkyries are also closely associated with Hell, the name
Speaker 2: given to both the underworld and the female deity that
Speaker 2: rules over it, but she only rules over a portion
Speaker 2: of the overall dead. Multiple gods, including Odin, oversee the
Speaker 2: dead of different sorts, and there are different gatherers of
Speaker 2: the dead we already discussed Ran, the ocean goddess who
Speaker 2: collects the drown dead via a net and then presides
Speaker 2: over them again. They are often said to be three
Speaker 2: valkyries as well, with varied attributed names. Beautiful virgin female
Speaker 2: warriors sometimes closed in feathers, and their name literally means
Speaker 2: she who chooses the dead. Borges in the book The
Speaker 2: Book of Imaginary Beings points out that the Valkyries were
Speaker 2: invoked in Anglo Saxon spells against muscle pain, and in
Speaker 2: medieval Christian England the term was apparently closely associated with
Speaker 2: the witch just sewing you know, you know, under you.
Speaker 2: In Christian times, house and many of these older concepts
Speaker 2: become simplified and vilified in their treatment. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: norns here do seem to fulfill a similar purpose in
Speaker 2: Norse mythology, Like they are there at the beginning, deciding
Speaker 2: more or less, like how things are going to turn
Speaker 2: out for you? Like is what is the course of
Speaker 2: your lives? And really both of these models, you know,
Speaker 2: get down to some of those deep contemplations that our
Speaker 2: ancestors had throughout their lives, just as we have them
Speaker 2: throughout our lives, like why is my life the way
Speaker 2: it is? Why why are my days numbered like they are?
Speaker 2: And asking these same questions for everyone around them, like
Speaker 2: why does this seemingly awful person just live forever doing
Speaker 2: bad things whereas like the best of us are cut
Speaker 2: down in their prime. That sort of thing. It's always
Speaker 2: been a conundrum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess the gears are kind of turning in
Speaker 3: my head about what difference it makes when when fade
Speaker 3: is personified versus just a process or a principle of
Speaker 3: the universe, because you know, obviously you can think about
Speaker 3: it as an impersonal force or just a process, a
Speaker 3: natural balancing that occurs. Yeah, how is it different when
Speaker 3: it's in a body? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in these cases, is particularly with the norns and
Speaker 2: the fates, there is a sense that no matter how
Speaker 2: nasty those scissors are that ultimately cut the life string,
Speaker 2: they're not the only individual involved in the process. Like
Speaker 2: they're just responding to the way the thread was measured out,
Speaker 2: and the person who measured the thread out didn't actually
Speaker 2: make the thread. So it does point seemingly in large
Speaker 2: part to a more automaton view of death, and more
Speaker 2: of an automaton death figure with less cruelty. But then
Speaker 2: also room for it is in the Norse example, room
Speaker 2: for bad norns, you know, room for situations where oh,
Speaker 2: well you really you really did you know, get kind
Speaker 2: of a you know, a Boem sentence there with this
Speaker 2: particular reading. So again we generate these different ideas out
Speaker 2: of contemplation of these largely unanswerable questions of fate and death.
Speaker 2: All right, well, with that, we must draw out our
Speaker 2: scissors and cut the string on this episode of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind, but we're going to be back.
Speaker 2: We're going to continue this series because there's so much
Speaker 2: we haven't gotten into, so it's always difficult to say
Speaker 2: how many more episodes will do. I figure we'll at
Speaker 2: least do one more episode on anthropomorphic personifications of death,
Speaker 2: maybe one more. Ultimately, we don't know how much thread
Speaker 2: has been measured out for us here with this series.
Speaker 3: I guess we'll just have to find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, before we close out. Just reminder to
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have short form episode on Wednesdays
Speaker 2: and on Fridays. That's when we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: Would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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