WEBVTT - Wicker Men, Mock Kings and Ritualized Regicide 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:07.000 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stepwork docomog. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.599 The nation of all the Gauls is extremely devoted to 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.200 superstitious rights, and on that account, they who are troubled 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:25.479 with unusually severe diseases, and they who are engaged in 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:30.240 battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vowed 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.879 that they will sacrifice them, and employed the druids as 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.879 the performers of those sacrifices. Because they think that unless 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.320 the life of a man be offered for the life 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.440 of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.560 be rendered propitious, and they have sacrifices of that kind 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:52.680 ordained for national purposes. Others have figures of vast size, 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.800 the limbs of which are woven out of twigs. They 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.200 fill with living men, which, being set on fire, the 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.960 men pair enveloped in the flames. They consider that the 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.399 oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:10.039 in robbery or any other offense is more acceptable to 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.040 the immortal gods. But when a supply of that class 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:17.199 is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:21.280 the innocent. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:23.720 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:28.039 that is from The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar, Book six, 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:32.199 chapter sixteen, translated by W. A. Mcdevite and W. S. Bone, 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:36.960 though with a couple of substitutions of my own for clarity. Yeah, 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.759 and so what are we talking about there? That that 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.640 that is the ritual that has come to be known 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.839 as the wicker Man, though you might know it better 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.080 from the movie than from the works of Julius Caesar, 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.760 or perhaps from the new Radiohead music video for Burn 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:55.720 the Witch which just came out, which actually came out 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.160 after we had already decided on this episode. Some wonderful 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.200 synchronous going on there. Um. But but the music video 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.000 to basically depict some of the key moments in the 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:12.720 classic film The Wickerman, in which this little um pagan 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:15.000 community out in the middle of nowhere I think on 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:17.120 an island, correct. Yeah, it's an island off the western 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.880 coast of Scotland, and it's a little it's a pagan 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:26.960 community run by a jolly gentleman pagan played by Christopher Lee. 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.160 He's singing, he's dancing around. You don't see it, You 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.680 don't see enough of that from his themography. So yeah, 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.079 if you haven't seen The Wickerman nineteen seventy three, it's 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.880 a horror cult classic, you should check it out. It's 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:42.120 very weird and very good and and very uh should 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:44.760 we say, yeah, very good, but also kind of silly 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:47.720 in a wonderful way. Yeah. I mean there's also there's 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:49.520 a hand of glory in it. We don't have another 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:54.359 hand of glory. Is such a bizarre item of folklore mythology. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.280 This this dead man, this dead criminals hand with like 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:00.960 candled fingers, that that causes every one to just become 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.800 in you know, immobile, and it's used by by thieves 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.040 and robbers in their in their mischief. Like that's such 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:11.440 a wonderfully absurd and hideous idea. I'm surprised we don't 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.680 see it more often. Yeah, and so it also of 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.960 course has animal masks and human sacrifice. So so we 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.919 are going to be talking about human sacrifice today and 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:24.880 actually a very specific kind of human sacrifice. But one 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.760 thing I was wondering when I was reading Julius Caesar's 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.240 account of the Wickerman, you know, putting all these people 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.560 and basically a human figure woven like a basket out 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.720 of out of willow twigs and then burning them alive. 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.720 Did the Gallic Celts really do this? This would be 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.480 he would be talking about the Celtic people's occupying the 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.720 regions sort of now known as France Um and they 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:48.560 of course were Caesar's enemies. It's kind of hard to 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.240 say whether or not we can trust Caesar's word on this. Obviously, 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.240 Julius Caesar is describing the culture of his enemies and 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.440 the victims of his conquest, so he's obviously not the 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:03.080 most simpaththetic or unbiased anthropologist in this sense. Right, He's 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.040 coming from the standpoint of a of of of an 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:10.040 aggressor from a different culture that sees itself as as superior, 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.120 and just about every form, yeah, he did. It was 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.240 definitely uh not not just that he saw a Roman 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.400 culture as superior, but a lot of this was written 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:22.279 specifically to show how superior Roman culture was. Like. The 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:27.000 Romans were interested in portraying their enemies as barbaric and uncivilized, 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.200 and one of the huge primary signifiers of barbarity for 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:34.320 them was the practice of human sacrifice. Also, in addition, 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.680 I couldn't find any independent evidence of of anything like 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.880 the Wickerman ritual taking place. So who knows if anything 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.080 like this actually happened. It could be just a bunch 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.320 of slander from the Romans point of view, spoken like 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.119 a man who is foreshadowing his own death, a giant, 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:54.000 flaming Wickerman. Right, I'm in denial, that's exactly what it is. 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:56.320 I just it can't be true. No, he made it 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.640 all up. But then again, it's not like it's out 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:03.280 of the question, because when you wade into the shadows 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.760 of ancient history, and especially prehistory, I think pretty much 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.120 no matter what corner of earth you're looking at, you're 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.440 likely to find traces of human sacrifice. Like you could 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.240 be like Julius Caesar the Romans and say, oh, that's 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.919 what those other people over there do. But if you 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.600 go back far enough, it looks like we find traces 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.440 of human sacrifice all over the place. It's not what 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.560 those other people over there do, it's what we did. 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:32.960 It's what everybody seemed to do. Yeah, And it's one 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.480 of the you look back and just about any culture 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:40.640 you do find some evidence of this. And on one hand, 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.040 we look back at these ancient people and you think, well, 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.640 they were different than us. They were, uh, they were 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:48.800 you know, they were a primitive people. They lived with 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:53.680 a more cyclical mindset, and like the individuality just wasn't 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.520 quite the same. But then on the other hand, like 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.000 we can't distance ourselves too much from them, Like the 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:01.600 human experience in many ways, it's still gonna be the same, 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:06.000 and death is still the same. Um, no matter how 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:08.600 you know, mythic it's wrappings. Yeah, I mean, you can't 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:13.719 just let your sort of urban ethnocentrism take over and 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.200 imagine how oh how different we are than those uncivilized 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.840 savages out there, especially for example, coming back to Julius Caesar, 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.440 the fact that the Romans probably practiced human sacrifice. In fact, 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:27.360 we know that they did not that long before Caesar, 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:30.159 maybe just a couple of centuries before, especially if you 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.760 count the gladiatorial games, which I mean, come on, you know, 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.159 fighting ledge themselves to a god and then fight to 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.560 the death. That sounds kind of like human sacrifice to me. Yeah, 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:40.840 and as well discussed in this episode several different top 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.279 points here. There there's there's human sacrifice, and then there's 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.840 human sacrifice, and then there are things that that that 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:52.520 fill the role of human sacrifice in lethal forms, non 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:57.040 lethal forms, symbolic forms, and uh, in surrogate forms. Yeah, 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.760 that's that's absolutely true. And and in a lot of 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:01.719 case says, I think in our culture we can find 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:06.240 relics and ritual traces and residue of human sacrifice even 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.280 when that sacrifice is no longer performed. One good example 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.480 I think would be looking too ancient Rome. You know 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.240 about this festival of the r Gay. I hope I'm 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.160 pronouncing that right. It's a r g e I. I 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:21.679 was not familiar with this. No, I wasn't either until 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.480 we were doing the reading before this episode. I thought 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.120 this was really interesting. So in this festival, you have 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:30.200 twice a year in the springtime in Rome, a bunch 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:32.280 of big procession to go through the city and they'd 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.080 stop at all these stations would be festivals almost like 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:37.200 you know, Stations of the Cross or something like a 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.280 like a processional where you go to different places and 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.000 you pick up things at these places. And what they 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.960 were picking up were these human shaped effigies bound together 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.280 out of rushes, you know, bull rushes, like cattails. They 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:55.040 were rush dummies, uh. And they'd carry the rush dummies 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.080 to a bridge in Rome over the Tiber River and 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:01.040 then they dump them into the river. And the Roman 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.640 historians and all the people at the time, they couldn't 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:07.200 remember why anybody did this. They couldn't They didn't know 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.440 where the ritual came from, They didn't know what it meant, 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.880 what it was supposed to be about. But many people 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.760 ancient and modern have kind of speculated, Wow, I wonder 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:20.920 if those Rush dummies weren't dummies originally, Like, what is this? 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.800 Is this a converted ritual of human sacrifice that has 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:30.120 been tamed and domesticated by substituting effigies for real people. Yeah, 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:34.679 this example did remind me of something from my childhood. Um, 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:36.160 I spent I spent a couple of years of my 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.320 childhood in Newfoundland, Canada, and there they had a tradition 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.160 known as as Bonfire Night, where you everyone would get 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.040 together and you just have a big bonfire. Sounds great, yeah, 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:48.160 but but it apparently my understanding is that this was 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.920 essentially Guy Fox Day, where you know, across the ocean, 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.320 you were burning effigies of Guy Fox. The of course, 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.840 the the Trader, the Gunpowder plot. What year was that 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.320 he tried to blow up Parliament? There's a rhyme, isn't 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.720 there I'm supposed to remember a rhyme. I don't remember. 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.559 Remember remember the fifth of November. Oh that doesn't tell 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:09.440 you the year, tell me the year. Well, anyway, so 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:11.720 guy Fox tried to blow up parliament, right right, So 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.160 he's burned in effigy for his crime, which will discuss. 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.000 I mean, there's certainly a symbolic human sacrifice him play there. 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.880 But as the tradition crosses the ocean, it like the 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.840 geographical distance, the as well as the as the temporal distance, 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.719 just completely changes the practice until it's just this, Hey, 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:33.800 let's get together and have this big bonfire. Yeah, you 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:35.840 can't even remember why you're supposed to do it. Yeah, 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:45.280 we're celebrating the burning of the would the festival of chemistry? Yeah, 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.319 but does make me wonder if that Roman tradition is 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.920 a similar situation. Yeah, dude, were these once live people 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.520 thrown over the bridge, and then after that were they 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:58.720 symbolic individuals that represented enemies? You know, it could just 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.160 be that it remained and after it no longer had significance. Right, 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:04.679 you know, people like just enjoy having a bonfire, They 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.319 just enjoy making some rush dummies and throwing them into 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.720 the water, and he excused to sit around in craft, 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.640 right exactly. Okay, so we are going to be focusing 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:16.120 on a specific kind of human sacrifice today, and we 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:17.720 that we wanted to get into the one of the 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:21.640 weirdest examples of it, which is ritual regicide, that the 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:27.040 symbolic or ritual slaughter of a king or divine leader. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.080 But before we get to that, I think we should 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.839 just go go over some of the basics of what 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.480 the profile of human sacrifice is on planet Earth, Like 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.720 how common and how widespread was the practice of human 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:43.959 sacrifice in prehistory in the ancient world. Yeah, well, pretty widespread, 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.079 and you're basically you can you can pretty much expect 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:49.240 to find a supernatural element in any of these. Obviously 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:53.400 it's tied into into into old beliefs involving deities and 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.840 appeasing the deities. Yeah, or I think for the purpose 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:58.679 of this episode, let me know if you disagree, but 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.160 I think we should go with the the broad definition 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.480 offered sort of by the uh the Roman interpretation of 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.640 human sacrifice, which is any homicide for magical purposes. Yes, 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:11.440 and yeah, I think that's a very good definition to 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.840 move forward with. So there are different modes of human 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.160 sacrifice underneath that. The tent now one of the oldest 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:20.800 you're gonna find. And this is like more or less 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.200 literal sacrifice, is the mass sacrifice of the dead leader's 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:29.920 um uh cordiers followers to accompany them into the afterlife, 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.320 like the Pharaoh's right exactly. Yeah, this is the old 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.839 trope of like, oh, the king's dead, you were his 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.960 best friend, you were a slever as mistresses, queen, his 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.720 cat whatever. Don't want him to be lonely in the 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:42.640 next day. I wanted to be lonely. Do the right thing, 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.240 go with him, and so in that that's something that's 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:49.400 worth noting too, is that depending on the account or 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:51.960 the lack of an account, in many cases you have 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.120 to ask what extent is this a self sacrifice or 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.480 you know, a homicide. But you know it dates back 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.920 at least five thousand years in agricultural societies in Europe. 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.800 We see evidence of this with the Royal Tombs of 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:10.040 ancient Mesopotamia from you know, thirty five BC, the tombs 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:13.440 of the First Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs from around UT 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.680 one hundred to nine b C. The royal tombs of 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:21.320 the Shang dynasty in China from sixteen hundred BC e 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.720 to ten, as well as the tomb of Quinshai Hung, 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.800 who died into twenty b C, the first Emperor of China, 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.520 and we also see elements of this inviking funeral customs 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:39.280 from around uh The ancient civilizations of the America's were 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:42.120 also quite well known for the human sacrifices. The Incas, 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:45.120 the Aztecs, I mean the Aztecs engaged in the mass 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:49.240 sacrifice of defeated enemy warriors, sometimes through the use of 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:55.600 flower wars, which were themselves ritualized warfare and engagements. And 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.360 of course the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Maya all 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:02.199 seem to engage in child sacer defice as well on occasion. Now, 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:04.880 one thing you'll notice from a lot of these examples 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:09.920 we mentioned is what types of people were usually sacrificed to. 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.640 So we have we see practices of human sacrifice going 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.120 on all around the ancient world, all over the place. 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.640 Who was usually the victim of this sacrifice? I would 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:20.720 argue that in most cases, like you just talked about 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:24.760 defeated enemies, children, it's the powerless, it's people who don't 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:27.520 have a lot of power and say so about what 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.680 happens in society. So you get, you know, the follower, 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.280 the followers of the king who has failed and who 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:36.720 has died, the person who the people who have come 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.120 out of favor and out of power, but then also 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:45.640 defeated enemies, children, teenagers, criminals, people convicted of crimes, and 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:50.679 enemies of the state, people people generally without power. Yes, 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:53.040 I think that's a fair assessment. And so even like 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:55.600 Caesar Julius, Caesar tells us in his story of the 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.800 wicker Man, whether truthfully or not, again, the goals preferred 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.520 to load up their wicker man with thieves and other criminals. 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.000 But hey, if you're out of thieves, you know, some 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.840 innocent people will just have to do. You gotta feel 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.000 that Wickerman. So generally, you're you're gonna want to assume 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:14.600 that the victims of human sacrifice most often are going 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.520 to be chosen from among the most disadvantaged stations of society. 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:24.760 So the poor, slaves, women, press, ethnic minorities, defeated enemies, criminals, 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.640 or perceived criminals. And and this is for fairly obvious reasons. 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.440 The people making the rules in a society don't usually 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.400 make rules that involve putting themselves at risk of being burned, 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.800 alive or beheaded. But today we want to look at 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:44.520 a fascinating historical principle that runs counter to that, the 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:51.320 concept of ritual regicide, the ritual sacrifice or or murder 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.080 for magical purposes of a king or a monarch, the 0:14:55.200 --> 0:15:00.440 sacred slaughter of the most powerful person in a society. Yeah, 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.720 it definitely turns most of our preconceptions of human sacrifice 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.120 completely on their head. But as we discuss it, it 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:09.760 makes it makes a lot of sense, and you can 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:12.920 see it even in the even in the fabric of 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:15.760 our current systems of rule. Yeah, we'll definitely get into 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.560 that more later. But this idea is is not something 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.120 we've just recently discovered. This is actually an idea that 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.520 has a lot of precedent and uh in comparative religions 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.120 and anthropology. In one place you can find a historical 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.520 precedent for talking about ritual regicide is in the work 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:34.560 of James G. Fraser. Uh, Fraser and the Golden Bow. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.280 So James Fraser, we should say right at the beginning, 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.560 he was a great writer, and he was somebody who 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.840 who did were. He was a Scottish anthropologist and The 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.760 Golden Bow was his magnum opus. It was this huge 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:52.520 work on religious anthropology and a comparative study and religions. 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:54.840 So it was various volumes of The Golden Bow that 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.120 we're published, starting in eighteen ninety and then continuing over 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.440 the next few decades. And what he was trying to 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.920 do is find the common roots of myths and religious 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:07.520 rituals around the world. And the killing of the Divine 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:11.040 King is a ritual that plays centrally in his theory 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.960 about where all these myths and rituals come from. So 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:20.080 Fraser's work is what it's just chock full of, I 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:23.920 don't know, nineteenth century isms and what people would today 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:28.200 would probably just recognize as speculation. Very interesting speculation, and 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:32.560 Fraser was a very smart and creative and thoughtful guy. 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.320 But it's full of him making connections in his mind 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.920 and uh, and things that would not be considered the 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:44.600 most rigorous or or neutral, unbiased science by our standards 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:48.440 of social science today. But it's still a fascinating and 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:52.240 highly influential work of let's say English literature. Yeah, yeah, 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.240 it's highly readable and uh, you know, it's just researching 0:16:56.080 --> 0:17:00.680 um anthropolic anthropological views on myth for an episode that 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.080 has at this point already come out for stuff to 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:05.639 blow your mind, and that of course deals with all 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.120 the different ways you can try and interpret interpret myth 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.359 and folklore and legend and uh and and and of 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:13.560 course Fraser's work came up in a number of the 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:15.800 things I was reading most most of them. You know, 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.240 even that even if they had severe bones to pick 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.719 with him on certain issues that they would tend to say, well, 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.040 you can't just discount Frasier, like, oh, it's such an 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:28.560 important work of of of anthropology that you know, everybody's 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:30.320 kind of working in a shad out to a certain extent. 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:32.840 Oh yeah, I mean, it's it's so good to read too. 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.480 He was just such a great writer. It's one of 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.320 those great works of in the history of what you 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.200 might call social science or the or the predecessors to 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:43.960 modern social science. While it might not have a whole 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.200 lot of scientific merit today, it's still just a really 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.680 great book to read. As a book. It's great fun reading, 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:54.679 it's imaginative, it's fascinating, and it was hugely influential at 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:56.119 the time, so it's a great thing to read if 0:17:56.160 --> 0:18:00.359 you want to understand the literature of the early twenty century, 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:02.880 because it influenced all kinds of people. The Waste Land 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.600 by T. S. Eliott is highly influenced modernist literature in general. 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:09.080 A lot of these writers were reading James Fraser and 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.320 his ideas about myths and rituals. But so Fraser gets 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.080 into the killing of the divine king in chapter twenty 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:18.000 four of The Golden Bow, and and this has a 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:20.399 few sections. So first of all, he he establishes this 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:24.240 principle that he calls the mortality of the gods, which 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.240 is where he says that in many traditional pagan religions, 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:33.120 the gods are understood to be mortal. They're not timeless, perfect, abstract, 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:36.040 eternal beings. They're they're not the ground of all being, 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.520 they're not the origin of all but they're there beings, 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.359 their flesh and blood, beings that can walk around, that 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:48.240 they experienced travails, passions, struggles, and eventually they die. And 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:50.879 of course, if you are linking the idea of kingship 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.040 with the idea of godship, if the gods at some 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.240 point die, then the king at some point must die. Yeah, 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.399 one is then as an extension of the other. Yeah, 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.240 And so Fraser goes on to talk about the concept 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:08.600 of kings killed when their strength fails. So many societies, 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.879 he says, have a belief in this divine king concept, 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.520 where the king is in some sense a species of God. Right, 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.399 the king is is somewhere between a mortal and a 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.720 full on divine God, or might in some sense be 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.159 a full on divine God, that is just you know, 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:28.439 living among your society as a king. And also in 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.440 some sense the king and the kingdom are one there 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.760 they are linked by sympathetic magic, and their fates are 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:39.200 inextricably linked. So the health of the king relates directly 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.159 to the health of the kingdom. His body is the 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.439 body of the people, of the body of the nation, 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:47.959 and and is in a sense that the manifestation of 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.639 the God as well. Exactly so, the failure of a 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.120 king is the failure of the kingdom, and the king 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:56.920 becomes this magical metaem for the society itself. And what 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.800 Fraser does here is he goes on to give all 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:04.359 the anthropological examples of societies that he claims societies and 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.919 religions and tribal groups that he claims have this idea 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:12.240 of divine kingship where the king is killed when his 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:17.600 when his failing strength or failing health, or failing virility, 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.280 or or something like that seems to indicate a a 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.959 by by link of sympathetic magic, a bad omen for 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.440 the kingdom. So if the king begins to become weak, 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.560 you've got to kill the king to save the kingdom 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:33.840 from becoming weak as well. Yeah, I don't go out 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.640 on a good note right exactly while he's still young 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.840 and healthy. And I want to read a quote from Fraser. 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.600 He says, quote, for they believe, as we have seen, 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:46.000 that the king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:48.960 up with the prosperity of the whole country that if 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.439 he fell ill or grew senile, the cattle would sicken 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:56.320 and cease to multiply, the crops would rot in the fields, 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.400 and men would perish of widespread disease. Hence, in their opinion, 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:03.359 the only way of averting these calamities is to put 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.439 the king to death while he is still hail and hearty, 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.680 in order that the divine spirit which he has inherited 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.400 from his predecessors may be transmitted in turn, by him 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:16.680 to his successor while it is still in full vigor 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.359 and has not yet been impaired by the weakness of 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.920 disease and old age. So there are all these stories 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.480 he he gives where you know, there's an account of 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:28.000 a tribe where the tribe has a king, and then 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:30.000 as soon as the try, as soon as the king 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.920 maybe begins to show gray hair or begin or has 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.240 a missing tooth, or has any other or cannot produce 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.440 children anymore, or has any kind of sign that their 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:43.440 strength and youth and vigor is failing, there's a ritualized 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:46.280 process by which the king is put to death so 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:49.639 that a new healthy king can be installed, saving the 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:53.280 country from being punished by this link with weakness through 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:57.480 sympathetic magic. And then sometimes he also recounts that there 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.879 are there are societies and groups that don't want to 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:04.040 wait until the king shows signs of illness or failing strength, 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:06.040 so they just have a fixed term. It's sort of 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:08.800 like a term limit on the king. But you don't 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:10.639 want to come to the end of that term because 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:12.840 you don't just leave office, you get put to death. 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:16.199 So this is Fraser's idea. And as I said, you know, 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:19.680 his work is really fascinating, it's fun to read, but 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:24.120 it's not necessarily the most rigorous work of modern anthropology. 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:27.160 So the question is this whole process Fraser is talking 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:30.840 about the the ritual sacrifice of the divine king. Do 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:34.520 we really see the ritual sacrifice of kings in the 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.520 real world? Is this something that really gets enacted in 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:40.000 one form or another, and what role does it play 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:44.120