Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stepwork docomog.
Speaker 1: The nation of all the Gauls is extremely devoted to
Speaker 1: superstitious rights, and on that account, they who are troubled
Speaker 1: with unusually severe diseases, and they who are engaged in
Speaker 1: battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vowed
Speaker 1: that they will sacrifice them, and employed the druids as
Speaker 1: the performers of those sacrifices. Because they think that unless
Speaker 1: the life of a man be offered for the life
Speaker 1: of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot
Speaker 1: be rendered propitious, and they have sacrifices of that kind
Speaker 1: ordained for national purposes. Others have figures of vast size,
Speaker 1: the limbs of which are woven out of twigs. They
Speaker 1: fill with living men, which, being set on fire, the
Speaker 1: men pair enveloped in the flames. They consider that the
Speaker 1: oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or
Speaker 1: in robbery or any other offense is more acceptable to
Speaker 1: the immortal gods. But when a supply of that class
Speaker 1: is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even
Speaker 1: the innocent. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: that is from The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar, Book six,
Speaker 1: chapter sixteen, translated by W. A. Mcdevite and W. S. Bone,
Speaker 1: though with a couple of substitutions of my own for clarity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what are we talking about there? That that
Speaker 1: that is the ritual that has come to be known
Speaker 1: as the wicker Man, though you might know it better
Speaker 1: from the movie than from the works of Julius Caesar,
Speaker 1: or perhaps from the new Radiohead music video for Burn
Speaker 1: the Witch which just came out, which actually came out
Speaker 1: after we had already decided on this episode. Some wonderful
Speaker 1: synchronous going on there. Um. But but the music video
Speaker 1: to basically depict some of the key moments in the
Speaker 1: classic film The Wickerman, in which this little um pagan
Speaker 1: community out in the middle of nowhere I think on
Speaker 1: an island, correct. Yeah, it's an island off the western
Speaker 1: coast of Scotland, and it's a little it's a pagan
Speaker 1: community run by a jolly gentleman pagan played by Christopher Lee.
Speaker 1: He's singing, he's dancing around. You don't see it, You
Speaker 1: don't see enough of that from his themography. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen The Wickerman nineteen seventy three, it's
Speaker 1: a horror cult classic, you should check it out. It's
Speaker 1: very weird and very good and and very uh should
Speaker 1: we say, yeah, very good, but also kind of silly
Speaker 1: in a wonderful way. Yeah. I mean there's also there's
Speaker 1: a hand of glory in it. We don't have another
Speaker 1: hand of glory. Is such a bizarre item of folklore mythology.
Speaker 1: This this dead man, this dead criminals hand with like
Speaker 1: candled fingers, that that causes every one to just become
Speaker 1: in you know, immobile, and it's used by by thieves
Speaker 1: and robbers in their in their mischief. Like that's such
Speaker 1: a wonderfully absurd and hideous idea. I'm surprised we don't
Speaker 1: see it more often. Yeah, and so it also of
Speaker 1: course has animal masks and human sacrifice. So so we
Speaker 1: are going to be talking about human sacrifice today and
Speaker 1: actually a very specific kind of human sacrifice. But one
Speaker 1: thing I was wondering when I was reading Julius Caesar's
Speaker 1: account of the Wickerman, you know, putting all these people
Speaker 1: and basically a human figure woven like a basket out
Speaker 1: of out of willow twigs and then burning them alive.
Speaker 1: Did the Gallic Celts really do this? This would be
Speaker 1: he would be talking about the Celtic people's occupying the
Speaker 1: regions sort of now known as France Um and they
Speaker 1: of course were Caesar's enemies. It's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: say whether or not we can trust Caesar's word on this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Julius Caesar is describing the culture of his enemies and
Speaker 1: the victims of his conquest, so he's obviously not the
Speaker 1: most simpaththetic or unbiased anthropologist in this sense. Right, He's
Speaker 1: coming from the standpoint of a of of of an
Speaker 1: aggressor from a different culture that sees itself as as superior,
Speaker 1: and just about every form, yeah, he did. It was
Speaker 1: definitely uh not not just that he saw a Roman
Speaker 1: culture as superior, but a lot of this was written
Speaker 1: specifically to show how superior Roman culture was. Like. The
Speaker 1: Romans were interested in portraying their enemies as barbaric and uncivilized,
Speaker 1: and one of the huge primary signifiers of barbarity for
Speaker 1: them was the practice of human sacrifice. Also, in addition,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any independent evidence of of anything like
Speaker 1: the Wickerman ritual taking place. So who knows if anything
Speaker 1: like this actually happened. It could be just a bunch
Speaker 1: of slander from the Romans point of view, spoken like
Speaker 1: a man who is foreshadowing his own death, a giant,
Speaker 1: flaming Wickerman. Right, I'm in denial, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: I just it can't be true. No, he made it
Speaker 1: all up. But then again, it's not like it's out
Speaker 1: of the question, because when you wade into the shadows
Speaker 1: of ancient history, and especially prehistory, I think pretty much
Speaker 1: no matter what corner of earth you're looking at, you're
Speaker 1: likely to find traces of human sacrifice. Like you could
Speaker 1: be like Julius Caesar the Romans and say, oh, that's
Speaker 1: what those other people over there do. But if you
Speaker 1: go back far enough, it looks like we find traces
Speaker 1: of human sacrifice all over the place. It's not what
Speaker 1: those other people over there do, it's what we did.
Speaker 1: It's what everybody seemed to do. Yeah, And it's one
Speaker 1: of the you look back and just about any culture
Speaker 1: you do find some evidence of this. And on one hand,
Speaker 1: we look back at these ancient people and you think, well,
Speaker 1: they were different than us. They were, uh, they were
Speaker 1: you know, they were a primitive people. They lived with
Speaker 1: a more cyclical mindset, and like the individuality just wasn't
Speaker 1: quite the same. But then on the other hand, like
Speaker 1: we can't distance ourselves too much from them, Like the
Speaker 1: human experience in many ways, it's still gonna be the same,
Speaker 1: and death is still the same. Um, no matter how
Speaker 1: you know, mythic it's wrappings. Yeah, I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: just let your sort of urban ethnocentrism take over and
Speaker 1: imagine how oh how different we are than those uncivilized
Speaker 1: savages out there, especially for example, coming back to Julius Caesar,
Speaker 1: the fact that the Romans probably practiced human sacrifice. In fact,
Speaker 1: we know that they did not that long before Caesar,
Speaker 1: maybe just a couple of centuries before, especially if you
Speaker 1: count the gladiatorial games, which I mean, come on, you know,
Speaker 1: fighting ledge themselves to a god and then fight to
Speaker 1: the death. That sounds kind of like human sacrifice to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as well discussed in this episode several different top
Speaker 1: points here. There there's there's human sacrifice, and then there's
Speaker 1: human sacrifice, and then there are things that that that
Speaker 1: fill the role of human sacrifice in lethal forms, non
Speaker 1: lethal forms, symbolic forms, and uh, in surrogate forms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's absolutely true. And and in a lot of
Speaker 1: case says, I think in our culture we can find
Speaker 1: relics and ritual traces and residue of human sacrifice even
Speaker 1: when that sacrifice is no longer performed. One good example
Speaker 1: I think would be looking too ancient Rome. You know
Speaker 1: about this festival of the r Gay. I hope I'm
Speaker 1: pronouncing that right. It's a r g e I. I
Speaker 1: was not familiar with this. No, I wasn't either until
Speaker 1: we were doing the reading before this episode. I thought
Speaker 1: this was really interesting. So in this festival, you have
Speaker 1: twice a year in the springtime in Rome, a bunch
Speaker 1: of big procession to go through the city and they'd
Speaker 1: stop at all these stations would be festivals almost like
Speaker 1: you know, Stations of the Cross or something like a
Speaker 1: like a processional where you go to different places and
Speaker 1: you pick up things at these places. And what they
Speaker 1: were picking up were these human shaped effigies bound together
Speaker 1: out of rushes, you know, bull rushes, like cattails. They
Speaker 1: were rush dummies, uh. And they'd carry the rush dummies
Speaker 1: to a bridge in Rome over the Tiber River and
Speaker 1: then they dump them into the river. And the Roman
Speaker 1: historians and all the people at the time, they couldn't
Speaker 1: remember why anybody did this. They couldn't They didn't know
Speaker 1: where the ritual came from, They didn't know what it meant,
Speaker 1: what it was supposed to be about. But many people
Speaker 1: ancient and modern have kind of speculated, Wow, I wonder
Speaker 1: if those Rush dummies weren't dummies originally, Like, what is this?
Speaker 1: Is this a converted ritual of human sacrifice that has
Speaker 1: been tamed and domesticated by substituting effigies for real people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this example did remind me of something from my childhood. Um,
Speaker 1: I spent I spent a couple of years of my
Speaker 1: childhood in Newfoundland, Canada, and there they had a tradition
Speaker 1: known as as Bonfire Night, where you everyone would get
Speaker 1: together and you just have a big bonfire. Sounds great, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it apparently my understanding is that this was
Speaker 1: essentially Guy Fox Day, where you know, across the ocean,
Speaker 1: you were burning effigies of Guy Fox. The of course,
Speaker 1: the the Trader, the Gunpowder plot. What year was that
Speaker 1: he tried to blow up Parliament? There's a rhyme, isn't
Speaker 1: there I'm supposed to remember a rhyme. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Remember remember the fifth of November. Oh that doesn't tell
Speaker 1: you the year, tell me the year. Well, anyway, so
Speaker 1: guy Fox tried to blow up parliament, right right, So
Speaker 1: he's burned in effigy for his crime, which will discuss.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's certainly a symbolic human sacrifice him play there.
Speaker 1: But as the tradition crosses the ocean, it like the
Speaker 1: geographical distance, the as well as the as the temporal distance,
Speaker 1: just completely changes the practice until it's just this, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's get together and have this big bonfire. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't even remember why you're supposed to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're celebrating the burning of the would the festival of chemistry? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but does make me wonder if that Roman tradition is
Speaker 1: a similar situation. Yeah, dude, were these once live people
Speaker 1: thrown over the bridge, and then after that were they
Speaker 1: symbolic individuals that represented enemies? You know, it could just
Speaker 1: be that it remained and after it no longer had significance. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, people like just enjoy having a bonfire, They
Speaker 1: just enjoy making some rush dummies and throwing them into
Speaker 1: the water, and he excused to sit around in craft,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Okay, so we are going to be focusing
Speaker 1: on a specific kind of human sacrifice today, and we
Speaker 1: that we wanted to get into the one of the
Speaker 1: weirdest examples of it, which is ritual regicide, that the
Speaker 1: symbolic or ritual slaughter of a king or divine leader.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, I think we should
Speaker 1: just go go over some of the basics of what
Speaker 1: the profile of human sacrifice is on planet Earth, Like
Speaker 1: how common and how widespread was the practice of human
Speaker 1: sacrifice in prehistory in the ancient world. Yeah, well, pretty widespread,
Speaker 1: and you're basically you can you can pretty much expect
Speaker 1: to find a supernatural element in any of these. Obviously
Speaker 1: it's tied into into into old beliefs involving deities and
Speaker 1: appeasing the deities. Yeah, or I think for the purpose
Speaker 1: of this episode, let me know if you disagree, but
Speaker 1: I think we should go with the the broad definition
Speaker 1: offered sort of by the uh the Roman interpretation of
Speaker 1: human sacrifice, which is any homicide for magical purposes. Yes,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think that's a very good definition to
Speaker 1: move forward with. So there are different modes of human
Speaker 1: sacrifice underneath that. The tent now one of the oldest
Speaker 1: you're gonna find. And this is like more or less
Speaker 1: literal sacrifice, is the mass sacrifice of the dead leader's
Speaker 1: um uh cordiers followers to accompany them into the afterlife,
Speaker 1: like the Pharaoh's right exactly. Yeah, this is the old
Speaker 1: trope of like, oh, the king's dead, you were his
Speaker 1: best friend, you were a slever as mistresses, queen, his
Speaker 1: cat whatever. Don't want him to be lonely in the
Speaker 1: next day. I wanted to be lonely. Do the right thing,
Speaker 1: go with him, and so in that that's something that's
Speaker 1: worth noting too, is that depending on the account or
Speaker 1: the lack of an account, in many cases you have
Speaker 1: to ask what extent is this a self sacrifice or
Speaker 1: you know, a homicide. But you know it dates back
Speaker 1: at least five thousand years in agricultural societies in Europe.
Speaker 1: We see evidence of this with the Royal Tombs of
Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamia from you know, thirty five BC, the tombs
Speaker 1: of the First Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs from around UT
Speaker 1: one hundred to nine b C. The royal tombs of
Speaker 1: the Shang dynasty in China from sixteen hundred BC e
Speaker 1: to ten, as well as the tomb of Quinshai Hung,
Speaker 1: who died into twenty b C, the first Emperor of China,
Speaker 1: and we also see elements of this inviking funeral customs
Speaker 1: from around uh The ancient civilizations of the America's were
Speaker 1: also quite well known for the human sacrifices. The Incas,
Speaker 1: the Aztecs, I mean the Aztecs engaged in the mass
Speaker 1: sacrifice of defeated enemy warriors, sometimes through the use of
Speaker 1: flower wars, which were themselves ritualized warfare and engagements. And
Speaker 1: of course the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Maya all
Speaker 1: seem to engage in child sacer defice as well on occasion. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing you'll notice from a lot of these examples
Speaker 1: we mentioned is what types of people were usually sacrificed to.
Speaker 1: So we have we see practices of human sacrifice going
Speaker 1: on all around the ancient world, all over the place.
Speaker 1: Who was usually the victim of this sacrifice? I would
Speaker 1: argue that in most cases, like you just talked about
Speaker 1: defeated enemies, children, it's the powerless, it's people who don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of power and say so about what
Speaker 1: happens in society. So you get, you know, the follower,
Speaker 1: the followers of the king who has failed and who
Speaker 1: has died, the person who the people who have come
Speaker 1: out of favor and out of power, but then also
Speaker 1: defeated enemies, children, teenagers, criminals, people convicted of crimes, and
Speaker 1: enemies of the state, people people generally without power. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair assessment. And so even like
Speaker 1: Caesar Julius, Caesar tells us in his story of the
Speaker 1: wicker Man, whether truthfully or not, again, the goals preferred
Speaker 1: to load up their wicker man with thieves and other criminals.
Speaker 1: But hey, if you're out of thieves, you know, some
Speaker 1: innocent people will just have to do. You gotta feel
Speaker 1: that Wickerman. So generally, you're you're gonna want to assume
Speaker 1: that the victims of human sacrifice most often are going
Speaker 1: to be chosen from among the most disadvantaged stations of society.
Speaker 1: So the poor, slaves, women, press, ethnic minorities, defeated enemies, criminals,
Speaker 1: or perceived criminals. And and this is for fairly obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: The people making the rules in a society don't usually
Speaker 1: make rules that involve putting themselves at risk of being burned,
Speaker 1: alive or beheaded. But today we want to look at
Speaker 1: a fascinating historical principle that runs counter to that, the
Speaker 1: concept of ritual regicide, the ritual sacrifice or or murder
Speaker 1: for magical purposes of a king or a monarch, the
Speaker 1: sacred slaughter of the most powerful person in a society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely turns most of our preconceptions of human sacrifice
Speaker 1: completely on their head. But as we discuss it, it
Speaker 1: makes it makes a lot of sense, and you can
Speaker 1: see it even in the even in the fabric of
Speaker 1: our current systems of rule. Yeah, we'll definitely get into
Speaker 1: that more later. But this idea is is not something
Speaker 1: we've just recently discovered. This is actually an idea that
Speaker 1: has a lot of precedent and uh in comparative religions
Speaker 1: and anthropology. In one place you can find a historical
Speaker 1: precedent for talking about ritual regicide is in the work
Speaker 1: of James G. Fraser. Uh, Fraser and the Golden Bow.
Speaker 1: So James Fraser, we should say right at the beginning,
Speaker 1: he was a great writer, and he was somebody who
Speaker 1: who did were. He was a Scottish anthropologist and The
Speaker 1: Golden Bow was his magnum opus. It was this huge
Speaker 1: work on religious anthropology and a comparative study and religions.
Speaker 1: So it was various volumes of The Golden Bow that
Speaker 1: we're published, starting in eighteen ninety and then continuing over
Speaker 1: the next few decades. And what he was trying to
Speaker 1: do is find the common roots of myths and religious
Speaker 1: rituals around the world. And the killing of the Divine
Speaker 1: King is a ritual that plays centrally in his theory
Speaker 1: about where all these myths and rituals come from. So
Speaker 1: Fraser's work is what it's just chock full of, I
Speaker 1: don't know, nineteenth century isms and what people would today
Speaker 1: would probably just recognize as speculation. Very interesting speculation, and
Speaker 1: Fraser was a very smart and creative and thoughtful guy.
Speaker 1: But it's full of him making connections in his mind
Speaker 1: and uh, and things that would not be considered the
Speaker 1: most rigorous or or neutral, unbiased science by our standards
Speaker 1: of social science today. But it's still a fascinating and
Speaker 1: highly influential work of let's say English literature. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's highly readable and uh, you know, it's just researching
Speaker 1: um anthropolic anthropological views on myth for an episode that
Speaker 1: has at this point already come out for stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind, and that of course deals with all
Speaker 1: the different ways you can try and interpret interpret myth
Speaker 1: and folklore and legend and uh and and and of
Speaker 1: course Fraser's work came up in a number of the
Speaker 1: things I was reading most most of them. You know,
Speaker 1: even that even if they had severe bones to pick
Speaker 1: with him on certain issues that they would tend to say, well,
Speaker 1: you can't just discount Frasier, like, oh, it's such an
Speaker 1: important work of of of anthropology that you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: kind of working in a shad out to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, it's it's so good to read too.
Speaker 1: He was just such a great writer. It's one of
Speaker 1: those great works of in the history of what you
Speaker 1: might call social science or the or the predecessors to
Speaker 1: modern social science. While it might not have a whole
Speaker 1: lot of scientific merit today, it's still just a really
Speaker 1: great book to read. As a book. It's great fun reading,
Speaker 1: it's imaginative, it's fascinating, and it was hugely influential at
Speaker 1: the time, so it's a great thing to read if
Speaker 1: you want to understand the literature of the early twenty century,
Speaker 1: because it influenced all kinds of people. The Waste Land
Speaker 1: by T. S. Eliott is highly influenced modernist literature in general.
Speaker 1: A lot of these writers were reading James Fraser and
Speaker 1: his ideas about myths and rituals. But so Fraser gets
Speaker 1: into the killing of the divine king in chapter twenty
Speaker 1: four of The Golden Bow, and and this has a
Speaker 1: few sections. So first of all, he he establishes this
Speaker 1: principle that he calls the mortality of the gods, which
Speaker 1: is where he says that in many traditional pagan religions,
Speaker 1: the gods are understood to be mortal. They're not timeless, perfect, abstract,
Speaker 1: eternal beings. They're they're not the ground of all being,
Speaker 1: they're not the origin of all but they're there beings,
Speaker 1: their flesh and blood, beings that can walk around, that
Speaker 1: they experienced travails, passions, struggles, and eventually they die. And
Speaker 1: of course, if you are linking the idea of kingship
Speaker 1: with the idea of godship, if the gods at some
Speaker 1: point die, then the king at some point must die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one is then as an extension of the other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so Fraser goes on to talk about the concept
Speaker 1: of kings killed when their strength fails. So many societies,
Speaker 1: he says, have a belief in this divine king concept,
Speaker 1: where the king is in some sense a species of God. Right,
Speaker 1: the king is is somewhere between a mortal and a
Speaker 1: full on divine God, or might in some sense be
Speaker 1: a full on divine God, that is just you know,
Speaker 1: living among your society as a king. And also in
Speaker 1: some sense the king and the kingdom are one there
Speaker 1: they are linked by sympathetic magic, and their fates are
Speaker 1: inextricably linked. So the health of the king relates directly
Speaker 1: to the health of the kingdom. His body is the
Speaker 1: body of the people, of the body of the nation,
Speaker 1: and and is in a sense that the manifestation of
Speaker 1: the God as well. Exactly so, the failure of a
Speaker 1: king is the failure of the kingdom, and the king
Speaker 1: becomes this magical metaem for the society itself. And what
Speaker 1: Fraser does here is he goes on to give all
Speaker 1: the anthropological examples of societies that he claims societies and
Speaker 1: religions and tribal groups that he claims have this idea
Speaker 1: of divine kingship where the king is killed when his
Speaker 1: when his failing strength or failing health, or failing virility,
Speaker 1: or or something like that seems to indicate a a
Speaker 1: by by link of sympathetic magic, a bad omen for
Speaker 1: the kingdom. So if the king begins to become weak,
Speaker 1: you've got to kill the king to save the kingdom
Speaker 1: from becoming weak as well. Yeah, I don't go out
Speaker 1: on a good note right exactly while he's still young
Speaker 1: and healthy. And I want to read a quote from Fraser.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, for they believe, as we have seen,
Speaker 1: that the king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound
Speaker 1: up with the prosperity of the whole country that if
Speaker 1: he fell ill or grew senile, the cattle would sicken
Speaker 1: and cease to multiply, the crops would rot in the fields,
Speaker 1: and men would perish of widespread disease. Hence, in their opinion,
Speaker 1: the only way of averting these calamities is to put
Speaker 1: the king to death while he is still hail and hearty,
Speaker 1: in order that the divine spirit which he has inherited
Speaker 1: from his predecessors may be transmitted in turn, by him
Speaker 1: to his successor while it is still in full vigor
Speaker 1: and has not yet been impaired by the weakness of
Speaker 1: disease and old age. So there are all these stories
Speaker 1: he he gives where you know, there's an account of
Speaker 1: a tribe where the tribe has a king, and then
Speaker 1: as soon as the try, as soon as the king
Speaker 1: maybe begins to show gray hair or begin or has
Speaker 1: a missing tooth, or has any other or cannot produce
Speaker 1: children anymore, or has any kind of sign that their
Speaker 1: strength and youth and vigor is failing, there's a ritualized
Speaker 1: process by which the king is put to death so
Speaker 1: that a new healthy king can be installed, saving the
Speaker 1: country from being punished by this link with weakness through
Speaker 1: sympathetic magic. And then sometimes he also recounts that there
Speaker 1: are there are societies and groups that don't want to
Speaker 1: wait until the king shows signs of illness or failing strength,
Speaker 1: so they just have a fixed term. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like a term limit on the king. But you don't
Speaker 1: want to come to the end of that term because
Speaker 1: you don't just leave office, you get put to death.
Speaker 1: So this is Fraser's idea. And as I said, you know,
Speaker 1: his work is really fascinating, it's fun to read, but
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily the most rigorous work of modern anthropology.
Speaker 1: So the question is this whole process Fraser is talking
Speaker 1: about the the ritual sacrifice of the divine king. Do
Speaker 1: we really see the ritual sacrifice of kings in the
Speaker 1: real world? Is this something that really gets enacted in
Speaker 1: one form or another, and what role does it play
Speaker 1: in the society's that do the do practice things like this? Well,
Speaker 1: to answer that question, Joe, I think we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to go to the bog. Yeah, I think it's time
Speaker 1: to consult some bog bodies. What do you think the
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put you in a scenario, Okay, put me
Speaker 1: in it. Imagine you are digging down into a peat ball. Now,
Speaker 1: bogs are places where there's vertical accumulation of dead plant
Speaker 1: matter over time, such as layers of dead moss or
Speaker 1: something like that. That this is dead old plant matter,
Speaker 1: and it's known as pete and it makes a very
Speaker 1: useful fuel if you want to heat your house or
Speaker 1: boil some porridge for dinner. Uh. So you go out
Speaker 1: and you dig in the peat and you're shoveling through
Speaker 1: the peat getting some nice fuel for the fire, and
Speaker 1: your shovel strikes something that looks like a hunk of
Speaker 1: old leather. But then you notice this hunk of old leather.
Speaker 1: You know, it almost looks like in the shape of
Speaker 1: a foot, like an old leathery fruit by the foot
Speaker 1: or fruit roll up. That's us dark and withered. But
Speaker 1: it's it's foot shaped, and it has toes, and the
Speaker 1: toes have toenails, and it's attached to a leg, and
Speaker 1: you keep going up the leg and the legs attached
Speaker 1: to a body. Oh, it seems you have discovered a
Speaker 1: bog body. So Pete bogs, these bogs we talked about,
Speaker 1: have been known to naturally preserve bodies that are laid
Speaker 1: to rest into them, essentially because of the soil chemistry,
Speaker 1: the chemistry of the bog environment. When you sink under
Speaker 1: the peat, you are in this cold, an aerobic environment
Speaker 1: with a low pH that's a non oxygenated environment with
Speaker 1: with acidity, which staves off rot and provides a sort
Speaker 1: of natural mummification to a body that's that's preserved this way.
Speaker 1: And these human remains can be very pristine in some way,
Speaker 1: so they'll they'll often be sort of darkened and shriveled
Speaker 1: and hardened, but they'll keep all the tissues intact, like
Speaker 1: a lot of momification. You would notice if one of
Speaker 1: these was walking down the street, and you would say,
Speaker 1: that does not right, that should not be alive, right,
Speaker 1: we should rise up with fire against it. But in
Speaker 1: terms of finding a body from the from the past,
Speaker 1: it's very well preserved. Yeah, there's far less decay than
Speaker 1: there would be from a burial and normal soil. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we can often see signs from these bog
Speaker 1: bodies because of how pristinely they're preserved that the person
Speaker 1: interred in the bog died by homicide. That's interesting. So
Speaker 1: we see these all over. Were mainly focusing here on
Speaker 1: the ones that are in like a northern and western Europe.
Speaker 1: So in northern Europe you have pete bog bodies that
Speaker 1: often look like they didn't just fall into a bog
Speaker 1: and die. These people were put to death. They might
Speaker 1: be bound, have their hands or feet bound, they might
Speaker 1: be partially or fully naked. In some of these cases,
Speaker 1: it might be the simple execution of criminals, but there
Speaker 1: have been many that have been interpreted as likely sacrificial
Speaker 1: in nature. There's human sacrifice going on in northern Europe,
Speaker 1: and these bodies are ending up in bogs. So there's
Speaker 1: there's perhaps even a sacred idea about what the bog
Speaker 1: is and why they are taken to the bog, like
Speaker 1: perhaps it's a it's a no man's land, or a
Speaker 1: crossroads or a or a a sacred or or damned place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them might have been sacred locations. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about one now that could have been.
Speaker 1: So let's meet a couple of bog bodies. Both of
Speaker 1: these were discovered in Troll, Ireland in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: just about forty kilometers apart, and it was in the
Speaker 1: one was in the town of clony Can, County Meath,
Speaker 1: and the other was near krogan Hill, County Offaly. And
Speaker 1: so the krogan Hill one is known as Old krogan Man.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great name for an Irish whiskey,
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, Old Krogan Man. Yeah, what's your
Speaker 1: what's your brand? Oh? I only drink Old krogan Man.
Speaker 1: Give me four fingers an Old Krogan Man, four pruney
Speaker 1: black fingers from Oh it's great, So Old Krogan Man
Speaker 1: probably lived due to radio carbon dating, probably lived between
Speaker 1: three sixty two b C E and one b C.
Speaker 1: And he is missing his head and legs, but based
Speaker 1: on what remains, his height can be calculated to be
Speaker 1: six ft and six inches or a hundred and nine
Speaker 1: centimeters tall. That is dang tall for the ancient world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tall today. Back then people were short. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this is like pro wrestler height right here. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a specially tall for the time. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: another interesting thing about him is finally manicured nails and
Speaker 1: delicate hands preserved, indicating that he was an aristocratic person
Speaker 1: who didn't have to do manual labor. His last meal
Speaker 1: was determined to be buttermilk and cereals, but based on
Speaker 1: his body we can determine that his diet was rich
Speaker 1: in meat. This is interesting because when you think back
Speaker 1: on ancient people's and especially if you're thinking about the
Speaker 1: type of culture of where people are taken out to
Speaker 1: the bog and hacked pieces, you might think I was
Speaker 1: just a bunch of sort of primal barbarian types. But no,
Speaker 1: here we see evidence that there's there's there's definitely a
Speaker 1: social hierarchy and perhaps even kind of kind of a
Speaker 1: subspecies of individual that is, uh, that that that doesn't
Speaker 1: have to engage in physical labor, that gets to eat
Speaker 1: a better diet, and in a way maybe they're kind
Speaker 1: of they're pampered. They're like a pampered, uh, sacrificial subspecies
Speaker 1: of the of the of of the people. Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: what people do make of this, what whether or not
Speaker 1: he was prepared for sacrifice in any way knowingly or not.
Speaker 1: What people do make of that is that he was
Speaker 1: definitely some kind of aristocrat. He was of some upper class,
Speaker 1: leading you to think he maybe if there was anything
Speaker 1: like a kingly class in this ancient Irish setting there,
Speaker 1: this guy would have been among it. So he was
Speaker 1: able to have plenty of access to meet which means
Speaker 1: he was rich. You know, had good diet, he didn't
Speaker 1: have to work with his hands. He had these nicely
Speaker 1: manicured hands, and he had the good nutrition that would
Speaker 1: allow you to achieve a height like six six has
Speaker 1: nothing to complain about, right, But well, no, he might
Speaker 1: have something to complain one thing to complain about at
Speaker 1: the end. But don't we all, Yeah, so we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a moment. So then there's this other guy,
Speaker 1: this Clony Cavanman, different bog body, likely lived around the
Speaker 1: same time three N two b C E two two
Speaker 1: hundred and one BC. This guy, how tall was he
Speaker 1: five ft and two inches or a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: seven centimeters that's I wonder if that would have been
Speaker 1: short even for the time. Yeah, maybe so, But then again,
Speaker 1: he probably made up for it in personality. You know,
Speaker 1: he made up for it by spiking his hair. And
Speaker 1: this is Clony cavan Man wore ancient hair gel. He
Speaker 1: spiked his hair up into how would you describe this?
Speaker 1: It was like a cross between a fox hawk and
Speaker 1: a pompadoor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like yes, sort of a mohawk,
Speaker 1: sort of a pompadoor, all sort of gel together with this, uh,
Speaker 1: this ancient palm ay. Yeah. So he actually had ancient
Speaker 1: hair gel that they did a chemical analysis and found
Speaker 1: it was made from vegetable oil and pine resin. And
Speaker 1: the pine resin was sourced from trees not local to
Speaker 1: this region of Ireland. It was from Spain and France,
Speaker 1: which was determined by the archaeologist Stephen Buckley, And so
Speaker 1: that indicates that this person had resources to spare. You know,
Speaker 1: money to spend on personal grooming products that were imported
Speaker 1: from elsewhere. Oh mine, my hair jel is from southern Europe.
Speaker 1: He's not using fop. He's a dapper dan man, but
Speaker 1: that's for sure. He's a effort dan man indeed. But okay,
Speaker 1: so what's the deal with these guys? Both of them,
Speaker 1: both of them and had some troubles before they ended
Speaker 1: up in the bog. Something happened to them. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't just wind up in the boy running into trouble.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to old crogan man. He had
Speaker 1: some nice jewelry too, nicely at the time he around
Speaker 1: one bicep. He had this leather arm band with like
Speaker 1: a bronze amulet on it that had these uh, these
Speaker 1: copper alloy elements. So that makes you think again he
Speaker 1: had some money to spend on, just some some nice
Speaker 1: looking stuff, and perhaps that there was something very official
Speaker 1: and sacred in his death because he's still wearing that.
Speaker 1: I mean, oh yeah, because it's we're about to discuss. Uh,
Speaker 1: something was done to him and those that did it,
Speaker 1: uh didn't make off with an arm band. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: according to a National Geographic article I was reading about
Speaker 1: this I want to read a quote Old crogan Man.
Speaker 1: He was stabbed, his nipples were sliced, and he had
Speaker 1: holes cut in his upper arms through which a rope
Speaker 1: was threaded in order to restrain him. And he was
Speaker 1: also cut in half across the torso. So I mean
Speaker 1: somebody was this was going down. I mean, this was
Speaker 1: not not good for Old krogan Man. He was getting
Speaker 1: his arms threat I mean that's gross. Yeah, that's something
Speaker 1: that I've seen come up occasionally in historical documents. Specifically
Speaker 1: in one of the Viking sagas, there's a scene where
Speaker 1: I believe it's one faction in one family. They they
Speaker 1: get into trouble, they fall out of favor, and there's
Speaker 1: a scene where they're all strung up on a rope
Speaker 1: with the rope going through their behind their achilles tendon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there is something symbolic, I guess, in the idea
Speaker 1: that you're not only tying someone up, but you're you're
Speaker 1: tying them like through their body, so there their body
Speaker 1: becomes a part of the bind. It's it's weird. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I'm not sure there's quite
Speaker 1: an accurate description for it or name for it. At
Speaker 1: least in any English, like what do you what do
Speaker 1: you call that? It's it's more severe than just restraining someone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then of course they also cut him in half. True,
Speaker 1: they went for the complete fatality on this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then of course there were some serious wounds in
Speaker 1: Clony cavan Man as well. So Clony cavan Man was
Speaker 1: cut in half by the pete cutting machine that discovered
Speaker 1: him when he was discovered. But that was not the
Speaker 1: only injury to this bog body. Before he died, or
Speaker 1: maybe not before he died, before he was deposited in
Speaker 1: the bog, he had three axe wounds to the head,
Speaker 1: one axe wound to the chest, and he was disemboweled.
Speaker 1: So that's the guy with the with the faux hawk pompadour.
Speaker 1: He had all those axe wounds and disemboweled. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so what's going on with these two men, Well, both
Speaker 1: of them were young. They showed a few signs of
Speaker 1: physical labor during their lives, They were healthy at the
Speaker 1: time of their deaths, they looked like they were rich.
Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of different ways when
Speaker 1: you find bodies like this that you could interpret what
Speaker 1: happened to them. Because we don't know. You know, this
Speaker 1: isn't the this isn't the cloudy mists of history. The
Speaker 1: cloudy mists. What a wonderful, uh little tautology that is
Speaker 1: in the the boggy mists of history. So we don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, but there have been people who have
Speaker 1: offered some interpretations, and there's one I'm going to get
Speaker 1: to in a minute that was pretty interesting. But what
Speaker 1: is the information we have to work with? Well, these
Speaker 1: guys were rich, they were they were well cared for
Speaker 1: in one way or another physically before their deaths, and
Speaker 1: they met a violin in So what do you make
Speaker 1: of that? And I was reading an article in Archaeology
Speaker 1: magazine about these two bog bodies that had a really
Speaker 1: interesting interpretive theory coming from Amon P. Kelly, who is
Speaker 1: the keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland.
Speaker 1: And his interpretation is that these two guys were in
Speaker 1: some sense failed kings. Now whether this means they were
Speaker 1: vying for kingship and they failed and were punished, or
Speaker 1: whether they were kings who were the their you know,
Speaker 1: their rule had faltered in the in the Fraser kind
Speaker 1: of sense, like their their strength had failed or uh,
Speaker 1: something bad had happened and they were held accountable for
Speaker 1: it for sort of magical sympathetic reasons. We don't know,
Speaker 1: but Kelly says this, I believe these men were failed
Speaker 1: kings or failed candidates for kingship who were killed and
Speaker 1: placed in bogs that formed important tribal boundaries. Both Clony
Speaker 1: Cavan and Old Krogan men's nipples were pinched and cut
Speaker 1: and and Kelly says that sucking a king's nipples was
Speaker 1: a gesture of submission in ancient Ireland. Cutting them would
Speaker 1: have made him incapable of kingship. Okay, wow, I was
Speaker 1: not I was not familiar with this association of the
Speaker 1: king's nipples at all. I'd never heard of this before.
Speaker 1: But but according to this, uh to Kelly here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you want to show that you you are sent
Speaker 1: to the rule of the king in ancient Ireland, you
Speaker 1: suck on his nipples and if you thus damage a
Speaker 1: man's nipples very decisively, he is incapable of being a king. Huh.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting to think about this in terms of
Speaker 1: ancient societies and the tug of war between between feminine
Speaker 1: and masculine powers. But could here because here we see
Speaker 1: the appropriation of feminine power qualities in the male kings,
Speaker 1: that there is a nurturing aspect to their nipples. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting that slices away to their point, and you
Speaker 1: have taken away a part of their rule, like you've
Speaker 1: bodily taken away part of the ruin, in the same
Speaker 1: way that by cutting a six six ft six man
Speaker 1: and half you were taking away his stature, in the
Speaker 1: same way that by threading rope through his limbs you
Speaker 1: are binding him not only you know, not only binding
Speaker 1: his limbs, but you were Let's see, there's not really
Speaker 1: an accurate word for this, right, It's like you're that
Speaker 1: the limbs themselves are becoming part of the binding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clear that with all this violence, it's not just
Speaker 1: for the purpose of killing and causing pain. All of
Speaker 1: it seems to have a very symbolic kind of quality
Speaker 1: to it. All of it gets some kind of magical significance.
Speaker 1: Crammed through. One last thing from that archaeology magazine from
Speaker 1: where the they interview Aim and Kelly, I'll just quote
Speaker 1: from it. Quote the body served as offerings to the
Speaker 1: Goddess of the land, to whom the king was wed
Speaker 1: in his inauguration ceremony. That's interesting. According to Kelly, both
Speaker 1: men's multiple injuries may reflect the belief that the goddess
Speaker 1: was not only one of the land and fertility, but
Speaker 1: also of sovereignty, war and death by uh and then
Speaker 1: this is a quote directly from Kelly. By using a
Speaker 1: range of methods to kill the victim, the ancient Irish
Speaker 1: sacrifice to the goddess in all her forms. That also
Speaker 1: makes the nipple things interesting to think of it as
Speaker 1: a matriarchal pantheon. Yeah. And then but but then you
Speaker 1: have you have male rulers exactly, who then have symbolic
Speaker 1: power of their nurturing nipples. Yeah, and so if Kelly's
Speaker 1: interpretation is correct, like we say that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no way to know actually what happened here. But Kelly's
Speaker 1: interpretation is these guys are in some sense of the
Speaker 1: kingly class. They may have been failed kings or attempted kings,
Speaker 1: and this is a magical symbolic ritual putting them down
Speaker 1: in some way, decisively rejecting their kingship at the same
Speaker 1: time reinforcing their religious ideals, you know, saying this is
Speaker 1: for the goddess. You will not wed the goddess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you're already having wed the goddess is now dissolved.
Speaker 1: But there's another way you can approach the idea of
Speaker 1: ritual regicide, which is sort of something we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: which is simulating it right. Yeah, and there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: example of this, uh from Timor. We have to travel
Speaker 1: all the way to team Or. And the main article
Speaker 1: here that we're drawing from is uh an worth of
Speaker 1: anthropology from David Hicks, making the King Divine a case
Speaker 1: study in in ritual regicide from team Or and this
Speaker 1: is from published in the Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna he's going to explain this, uh, this
Speaker 1: very interesting and very complex and detailed ritual that takes
Speaker 1: place between a couple of tribes on the island of
Speaker 1: team Or. Yes, and I will I'll spare you some
Speaker 1: of the details because it honestly gets a little tedious
Speaker 1: at times, but but overall it's it's extremely fascinating. So
Speaker 1: Teamore is an island of the Melee Archipelago, currently divided
Speaker 1: between the sovereign states of East team Or in Indonesia.
Speaker 1: All right, So here for for our purposes, as though,
Speaker 1: we want to focus in on two ethnic groups in
Speaker 1: central team or Uh, the Tatum and the Emma, each
Speaker 1: with their own distinct languages but with a lot of
Speaker 1: cultural crossover, and they share a belief in a dualistic
Speaker 1: universe and a cyclical nature of human existence, etcetera. Along
Speaker 1: the north coast of team Or so imagine, if you
Speaker 1: don't have a map in front of you, you you can
Speaker 1: just imagine this island right. The island kind of runs
Speaker 1: east west. Yeah, it looks, you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: rectangle looks you know, it's kind of it looks like
Speaker 1: kind of like Tennessee, except as an island. And along
Speaker 1: the north coast there's a there's a lagoon known as
Speaker 1: Bemali and it's rich and fish and crabs, crocodiles or shrimp,
Speaker 1: very important um for the people who live near it.
Speaker 1: And there are two villages that border it. One is
Speaker 1: a Teetam village and one is an Ema village. And
Speaker 1: they share a myth myth rich history of bloody conflict
Speaker 1: over the lagoons riches, and over time this violent history
Speaker 1: has transformed into a regular shared ritual called abbey climaxing
Speaker 1: in the symbolic killing and restoration of a surrogate who
Speaker 1: is standing in for one of the villages kings. So
Speaker 1: all this serves as a means to commemorate the myth
Speaker 1: of the creation of the lagoon itself, to recreate that myth,
Speaker 1: and to ensure that the fish supply remains abundant, you know,
Speaker 1: via supernatural ritual. Yeah. Now, in in this article, Hicks
Speaker 1: seems to be working with some sort of theoretical framework
Speaker 1: based on Durkheim and some other anthropologists and social critics.
Speaker 1: I think where where the idea is that rituals sort
Speaker 1: of reinforced categories of understanding in the society. And so
Speaker 1: he's looking at this he has an interpretive framework, and
Speaker 1: he's looking at this ritual as something that helps people
Speaker 1: understand the relationship between social groups and the relationship to
Speaker 1: a geographical location and natural resources. Right. So Ve and
Speaker 1: Auld nineteen fifties, they carried this out every year around August.
Speaker 1: That's where the dry season transitions into the wet season
Speaker 1: from masculine to feminine. Uh. And you know what would
Speaker 1: happen is dead fish and shrimp in the water would
Speaker 1: ritually tip locals off to the necessity of the right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they mentioned this. When you start seeing dead fish floating
Speaker 1: in the lagoon, now it's time to have the ritual right.
Speaker 1: And so at that point the king's of masculine surrogate
Speaker 1: is selected. Uh. And then he's joined at the altar
Speaker 1: by two female animals and a ritual bridge is built. Um.
Speaker 1: Really a lot of tedious things go down at this point,
Speaker 1: but eventually the surrogate king retires to a special hut
Speaker 1: where he fasts. He doesn't talk, and the next warning
Speaker 1: priests take the surrogate to the water and they pretend
Speaker 1: to strike a lethal blow to his head, and then
Speaker 1: he pretends to die. And there's a great quote from
Speaker 1: from Hicks piece. He says, quote as a god, the
Speaker 1: king is at this moment the spirit of a culture
Speaker 1: hero who figures in a myth. So it's important to
Speaker 1: keep in mind here. At this point a pig has
Speaker 1: brought out, and this serves as kind of a surrogate
Speaker 1: currocate king because they kill it for real, and then
Speaker 1: the blood drains in the lagoon, and then it's time
Speaker 1: to go fishing, and then there's another ritual sacrifice and
Speaker 1: of the surrogate king, and after this, utilizing a buffalo sacrifice, uh,
Speaker 1: he rejoins humanity after casting the sacrifice to buffalo's uh
Speaker 1: entrails into the lagoon. So essentially, the defined the divine
Speaker 1: king offers up his life to ensure economic future, while
Speaker 1: also uh uniting these two groups as one, these two
Speaker 1: groups that have different languages but shared cultural elements and
Speaker 1: depend on the same lagoon. Yeah, and I want to
Speaker 1: read one quote from Hicks. He says, quote, by sacrificing
Speaker 1: their king, the people of Bimalai not only bring land,
Speaker 1: control over fertility, life, divinity, and kingship into a synthetic unity,
Speaker 1: but make it possible for them to sacrifice themselves as
Speaker 1: a collectivity by transforming king and society into a god who,
Speaker 1: revitalized by the sacrifice, reasserts his power to restore life.
Speaker 1: So there's so much like associative magic going on. The
Speaker 1: society is magically embodied by the king, the king is
Speaker 1: magically embodied by the surrogate. The king magically embodies the myth.
Speaker 1: And there's there's sort of this uh everything that touches
Speaker 1: something becomes the symbolic equivalent of that thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Hicks continues in performing this the ultimate act of self abnegation,
Speaker 1: because the society becomes the king. The king is surrogately
Speaker 1: killed in simulation uh bye, by this ultimate active self abnegation,
Speaker 1: and the collectivity impresses upon its members it's power to
Speaker 1: recreate itself as a divinity and hence restore itself to life.
Speaker 1: In this sense, the king is no more divine than
Speaker 1: the society he represents, but no less divine than the
Speaker 1: god he becomes. That's fascinating, and uh, if we were
Speaker 1: just discussing prior to recording this, you look at this
Speaker 1: ritual and they seemed to be so many layers of
Speaker 1: sanitation going on here. You're pretending to kill a surrogate
Speaker 1: for the king. You're spilling the blood of animals in
Speaker 1: the place that even the surrogates blood. You can easily
Speaker 1: imagine a scenario where, uh, where there's an older version
Speaker 1: of this in which a king is actually sacrificed and
Speaker 1: one day the king says, hey, how about we just
Speaker 1: use a surrogate instead, and maybe he can die and
Speaker 1: I can just kind of do my thing and continue
Speaker 1: to live, and they go, oh, yeah, we'll do that,
Speaker 1: and then later on the surrogate is saying like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I want to take this gig. Is
Speaker 1: it possible that I just you just pretend to hit
Speaker 1: me with the with that death hammer, and I pretend
Speaker 1: to die, and maybe if you really need some blood
Speaker 1: and entrails in there, you can just like maybe kill
Speaker 1: a couple of sacred animals. I don't know, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: in cases like this, as we've said, we we don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, but it's quite easy to see if
Speaker 1: we're gonna allow ourselves to speculate how something like that
Speaker 1: could progress, uh, you know, ritual sacrifice, if the person
Speaker 1: being sacrificed has any power to say no, at some point,
Speaker 1: somebody's probably gonna start trying to say no. Yeah. Or
Speaker 1: it's possible that like an interpretation like this, I'm not
Speaker 1: giving them enough credit, and that ultimately the the the
Speaker 1: brutal murder of the king is based in a mythological form,
Speaker 1: and for me to interpret it as having been a
Speaker 1: literal re regicide at any point is not giving their
Speaker 1: mythological rooting enough credit. That's highly possible too. I guess
Speaker 1: we don't know. All right, We're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back we'll dive right back
Speaker 1: into the topic speaking of surrogates. There's a topic I
Speaker 1: think we should come back to that we've actually talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before. In the very first episode
Speaker 1: I ever did, of stuff toble your mind. You remember that, Robert,
Speaker 1: I was that the first one. I definitely remember the episode.
Speaker 1: The very first one we ever did was the one
Speaker 1: on eclipses, and that one was fun. But and that
Speaker 1: we talked very briefly, just touched on the idea of
Speaker 1: the ancient Mesopotamian eclipse kings. And I think this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting variation on the theme of ritual regicide
Speaker 1: because it uh it involves this surrogate kind of quality
Speaker 1: and also involves the king looking out for his own life.
Speaker 1: So I think we should definitely look at the eclipse
Speaker 1: kings of ancient Mesopotamia in more detail. Are you game, Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: let's do it, okay. So, in ancient Mesopotamian the first
Speaker 1: millennium BC, royal culture was really concerned with fate and
Speaker 1: the meaning of omens, including astrological omens, so all kinds
Speaker 1: of events could serve as symbolic predictions of the fate
Speaker 1: of the king or the fate of the nation. And
Speaker 1: one example was lunar eclipses now Robert, which is the
Speaker 1: near eclipse. The lunar eclipse is the one involving the moon. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: good call there. No, it's the one with where you
Speaker 1: see the Earth's shadow falling across the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 1: And you can tell if for for people who didn't
Speaker 1: understand the astronomy involved lunar eclipses, actually any kind of
Speaker 1: eclipse could be quite terrifying. Yeah, and when we explored
Speaker 1: some other modes of this in that episode about eclipse,
Speaker 1: is because you're you're seeing like the moon is eaten
Speaker 1: by this demonic four so some other, some other mythological
Speaker 1: outcome is in play exactly. And so when the lunar eclipse,
Speaker 1: the Earth passes between the Sun and the moon, you
Speaker 1: see the moon starts to turn red. The moon the
Speaker 1: shadow can pass over sort of different quadrants of the moon,
Speaker 1: but essentially the moon is going to glow red and
Speaker 1: and it naturally invites sinister interpretations, and it's certainly less
Speaker 1: apocalyptic compared to the solar eclipse with the Moon passing
Speaker 1: in front of the sign. It's it's it's perhaps and
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing. It's more something's not right here,
Speaker 1: something is is off as opposed to whole we crap
Speaker 1: the light of day is leaving us exactly. But it
Speaker 1: still was enough to signal an ill omen. So the
Speaker 1: astrologers of ancient Mesopotamian empires they could predict lunar eclipses
Speaker 1: with some rough degree of accuracy. They weren't always uh
Speaker 1: fully accurate yet, but they sort of had what what
Speaker 1: some of the scholars I read called rules of thumb.
Speaker 1: You can sort of make a good guess about when
Speaker 1: a lunar eclipse is coming, and in many cases, possibly
Speaker 1: depending on which part of the moon earth shadow falls over.
Speaker 1: The experts concluded that a lunar eclipse brought a very
Speaker 1: bad omen for the king, up to and including the
Speaker 1: king's death. But if you're the king, what are you
Speaker 1: going to do about it? Well, you've got all these
Speaker 1: swords and archers and chariots, and there's absolutely nothing you
Speaker 1: can do to stop the orbital path of the moon. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, in many cases, if you're a king or
Speaker 1: even a modern tyrant, modern deathpot in some situation, you
Speaker 1: could have some lookalikes right that just to wander around
Speaker 1: out there. Maybe they'll catching us Dassen's bullet instead of you.
Speaker 1: But this isn't a human assassin, this this is this
Speaker 1: is an eclipse. Yeah, how do you dodge that bullet? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe by exactly the same method. Uh so. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's plenty of evidence that the ancient Mesopotamian leaders took
Speaker 1: a sort of direct action plan of avoiding fate. And
Speaker 1: I think this is really interesting because it seems to
Speaker 1: say something about what they thought fate was. I'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. Here's one variation. So there's
Speaker 1: an ancient Mesopotamian scholar and nergal A Tear, and he
Speaker 1: predicts the coming of a lunar eclipse in January six
Speaker 1: seventy three b c E. And he gives a suggestion
Speaker 1: to the Assyrian king eser Hatton. He says, quote, in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the year, a flood will come and
Speaker 1: break the dikes. When the moon has made the eclipse,
Speaker 1: the king, my lord should write to me as a
Speaker 1: substitute for the king, I will cut through a dike
Speaker 1: here in Babylonia in the middle of the night. No
Speaker 1: one will hear about it. Oh nergal A Tier plans
Speaker 1: to avert the faded flood by secretly causing a small
Speaker 1: scale flood himself. So you have fate predicted, and then
Speaker 1: you can step in. And if you sort of like
Speaker 1: make the thing happen yourself and hurry it along, you
Speaker 1: can avoid having it happen naturally, perhaps on a much
Speaker 1: larger scale, sort of predisaster yourself, but a disaster that
Speaker 1: you get to micromanage yourself. Yeah, and here's where the
Speaker 1: dictator's body doubles come in. One solution to an eclipse
Speaker 1: pretending the death of a king is to set up
Speaker 1: a decoy. The crown could install a substitute king known
Speaker 1: as a sarpui and substitute queen to take the royal
Speaker 1: mantle during the period that the eclipse was predicted. So
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of sources here that I used
Speaker 1: for this. One is Ullah susann Coke Mesopotamian astro astrology
Speaker 1: and introduction to Babylonian and to Syrian celestial divination, and
Speaker 1: the other is Jack Newton laws in the concept of
Speaker 1: fate in ancient Mesopotamia of the first millennium towards the
Speaker 1: understanding of shem too. So you're the king, you want
Speaker 1: to pick a substitute to absorb your bad omen for
Speaker 1: you so you don't have to die. Who's the substitute?
Speaker 1: Generally they say it's going to be somebody like we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier without power, right, a prisoner of war,
Speaker 1: criminal who has been condemned to death, or a an
Speaker 1: enemy of the king's some kind of political rival. Or
Speaker 1: they also say, or a gardener or a simpleton. Man
Speaker 1: that is not fair. Well, it sucks to be that
Speaker 1: gardener or that quote simpleton. Yeah, that sucks. Dressing the
Speaker 1: simple enough as the king and then sacrifice me. I
Speaker 1: think we can all a grade at that. That's and
Speaker 1: and and in doing so, the king is essentially weaseling
Speaker 1: out of his responsibility to die. Like if you if
Speaker 1: you look back at some of these mythic models of
Speaker 1: of divine rule, it's like, yeah, you get, you get
Speaker 1: to rule, but your job is to die at the end.
Speaker 1: But then inevitably, these powerful individuals figure ways to weasel
Speaker 1: out of that responsibility, right exactly. Uh so, so what
Speaker 1: does the process look like, Well, Lawson writes, quote, the
Speaker 1: man was taken to the royal palace, treated with wine, washed,
Speaker 1: and anointed. I think that would mean like anointed with oil,
Speaker 1: dressed in the king's finery, furnished with the royal insignia,
Speaker 1: and then in throne. So it sounds like he's got
Speaker 1: all the you know, it's not just kind of like
Speaker 1: a quick mock ceremony. They're doing the whole nine yards. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he writes quote, a young woman or virgin
Speaker 1: was also seated with him as his queen. Oh no
Speaker 1: again that's the yeah yeah uh. And so at this
Speaker 1: point the real king and the substitute king sort of
Speaker 1: formally exchanged roles. So the substitute king is referred to
Speaker 1: as king, and then thereafter the real king he hangs
Speaker 1: out in the palace, but he is therefore addressed by
Speaker 1: his exorcists, scholars, and servants as peasant or farmer. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine that the king's walking around, You have a
Speaker 1: fake king. Everybody is calling king, and when you address
Speaker 1: the real king, who has power of life and death
Speaker 1: over you, you must call him peasant. Then, of course,
Speaker 1: this is a motif that occurs throughout history. And you know,
Speaker 1: the prince and the put in the paper, the the
Speaker 1: man in the iron mask, any of these situations trading
Speaker 1: trading places, right, Yeah, Any situation where the most royal
Speaker 1: individual and the lowliest individual in the culture have to
Speaker 1: swap places. Yeah, and then what happens next, Well, then
Speaker 1: the new king gets the bad news. So the bad
Speaker 1: omens that had previously applied to the real king all
Speaker 1: get written down on a tablet and then read out
Speaker 1: loud to the substitute king and queen, essentially like reading
Speaker 1: the charges against them. You know, these are the magical
Speaker 1: omens you've been condemned to. And the substitute king then
Speaker 1: has to go in front of Shamash, the divine judge,
Speaker 1: the god and recite all of the bad omens that
Speaker 1: have now been transferred to him, and this sort of
Speaker 1: officially magically transfers the omens over to the substitute king.
Speaker 1: Just to make sure the transferral takes place, the document
Speaker 1: listing the bad omens was literally attached to the substitute
Speaker 1: King's clothes, so he's walking around with like a tablet
Speaker 1: saying you're gonna die, You're gonna you know, all this
Speaker 1: bad stuff is gonna happen to you. Am I alone
Speaker 1: in wondering why this wasn't made into like a poly
Speaker 1: shore time travel vehicle in the nineties. You know where
Speaker 1: he travels back to Mesopotamia. Uh, and he becomes this Uh,
Speaker 1: he becomes like the the the he becomes the surrogate
Speaker 1: king for the eclipse and didn't realize it to the
Speaker 1: last minute. I think maybe that was the original script
Speaker 1: of A Night's Tales for youth Ledger and then they
Speaker 1: changed a bunch of stuff around over time. Or are
Speaker 1: you thinking of First Night with Martin Lawrence? I think
Speaker 1: I think maybe I'm thinking of Forever Night. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking of any of that. I'm sorry people. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, they seemed to go out of their
Speaker 1: way to create the illusion that this this king is
Speaker 1: a real king, this fake king. No, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is really the real king now. So they say he
Speaker 1: had a royal entourage about ten percent the size of
Speaker 1: the real king's court. Considering how big the real king's
Speaker 1: entourage is, that's probably pretty big, including uh, laws and rites, musicians, concubines, cooks, confectioners.
Speaker 1: He gets confectioners, yeah, but more to your point, he
Speaker 1: gets the concubines. He's a royal concubines exactly, and and
Speaker 1: and cupcakes presumably. Coke also mentions that he receives a
Speaker 1: large bodyguard, which is intensely ironic. Well, have installed this
Speaker 1: guy to absorb the king's death omen and they give
Speaker 1: him a huge bodyguard, like he's got jaws from James
Speaker 1: Bond standing beside him. Well, that does make me wonder
Speaker 1: what if there was a death threat, What if there
Speaker 1: was a plot against the life of the surrogate king, Like,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? I the surrogate king, the Eclipse
Speaker 1: King is assassinated before he can to fill his duty.
Speaker 1: Maybe that puts the the the the real king in jeopardy.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know that that's a
Speaker 1: good question. But then then okay, so the Eclipse King
Speaker 1: is also treated to banquets known as naptunu. Just think
Speaker 1: how expensive all this must have been. How long did
Speaker 1: the Eclipse King rain? Well? Coke says that he sat
Speaker 1: on the throne for up to a hundred days, often shorter,
Speaker 1: even though the period affected by a lunar eclipse theoretically
Speaker 1: was determined by the watch in which it occurred, measuring
Speaker 1: one hundred, two hundred and three hundred days. So Coke
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, really the omen period is longer,
Speaker 1: but I guess that they didn't usually go longer than
Speaker 1: a hundred days. Maybe they were impatient. This is a
Speaker 1: lengthy charade that they're carrying out here, and it's in
Speaker 1: involving like not only the ritual ultimate ritual sacrifice of
Speaker 1: the individual, but all the rituals of of kingship that
Speaker 1: come along with just occupying that station. Exactly. Eventually, according
Speaker 1: to the historical records, the the a of the eclipse,
Speaker 1: king and the queen would come to an end, and
Speaker 1: according to records, they would die. Uh. The term used
Speaker 1: in the records, I found this really interesting. The term
Speaker 1: used in the records in contemporary correspondence is anna simti
Speaker 1: a la coup, which, according to Lawson, is a metaphor
Speaker 1: otherwise used to denote a death by natural causes. Right, So,
Speaker 1: according to the official documentation, they died naturally, so there's
Speaker 1: not a like ritual beheading or anything of that nature. Right.
Speaker 1: But that can't be the case, right, because the king
Speaker 1: and queen needed to die on command just in time
Speaker 1: for the peasant to come back and become the real
Speaker 1: king again. So how could they have died of natural causes?
Speaker 1: It's obvious they were put to death, but we don't
Speaker 1: know how some scholars have speculated, based on context clues,
Speaker 1: that they were poisoned at the end of their reign
Speaker 1: with food or drink containing an overdose of soporific and
Speaker 1: confections or maybe poison concubines. Yeah, who knows. But but
Speaker 1: in any case they would die and then they would
Speaker 1: take the bad omens with them all the way to
Speaker 1: the grave. And Lawson actually explains how in in his
Speaker 1: reading the the idea of the natural death made of
Speaker 1: metaphor kind of makes sense in context. Since the substitute
Speaker 1: king and queen were absorbing the omen of fate, their
Speaker 1: death was in some sense fated or in some sense natural,
Speaker 1: no matter by what means they died. So even if
Speaker 1: you killed them, the fact that they had absorbed a
Speaker 1: death omen that's supposed to be a you know, a
Speaker 1: consequence of fate, means that, yeah, yeah, the the universe
Speaker 1: killed them, right, The universe was going to launch a
Speaker 1: bullet at the king. This guy gotten in front of it,
Speaker 1: and so now everything's good. We can continue on with
Speaker 1: the reign of the real king, right, And so after
Speaker 1: the burial of the false king, the real king returns
Speaker 1: has to undergo ritual cleansing. And then there's there's also
Speaker 1: this elaborate funeral ritual for the substitute king and queen.
Speaker 1: They killed the queen too, is but keeping up the
Speaker 1: appearance of true kingship even after the evil prophecy has
Speaker 1: been fulfilled. And so anyway, I mentioned that I was
Speaker 1: going to say something about how what this says about
Speaker 1: how they believe fate works. I can't imagine a person
Speaker 1: of any major religion today thinking that you could so
Speaker 1: easily trick God or the gods or magical forces at
Speaker 1: work in nature and to avoid their will, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yeah, And I think and now we
Speaker 1: have to go. We have to try and put ourselves
Speaker 1: in that mindset in a in a in a culture
Speaker 1: where like just the the mythic importance of the individual
Speaker 1: is so essential, and the cyclical nature of everything in
Speaker 1: our lives. So it's kind of like we're all we're
Speaker 1: all cogs in this this in this machine of mythological cycle.
Speaker 1: And so it's not so much that you're trying to
Speaker 1: fool the gods or even fool the people, but you're trying.
Speaker 1: You know that certain mechanisms have to take place, certain
Speaker 1: movements have to take place in the mythological framework, and
Speaker 1: they're just tweaking it so that that that gear still shifts,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't doesn't it crush the king and self? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's kind of like finding a legal
Speaker 1: legal loophole today. Yeah. Yeah. I think some scholars have
Speaker 1: actually looked at this and said that it indicates that, um,
Speaker 1: for many of these these ancient Mesopotamian religious leaders and scholars,
Speaker 1: they looked at the magical aspects of the universe, you know,
Speaker 1: divine will and fates and the things having magical influence
Speaker 1: over our lives as a kind of natural law in
Speaker 1: a way, not so much as like the you know,
Speaker 1: the the explicit will of an agent, but just sort
Speaker 1: of like forces that could be understood and manipulated. All right. So,
Speaker 1: having discussed these specific examples of early ritual regicide, both
Speaker 1: both symbolic and you know, symbolic and figurative and also
Speaker 1: very literal in some cases, UM, it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to then bring it back to the president and think
Speaker 1: about um, human sacrifice as a whole, and not only
Speaker 1: like lit real human sacrifice, but all of the various
Speaker 1: symbolic forms of it that have continued even past the
Speaker 1: point where individual cultures would would never dream of saying
Speaker 1: that they practiced human sacrifice, right. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: look at it from the point of view that human
Speaker 1: sacrifice is sort of scratching some kind of itch that
Speaker 1: people in general tend to have. Even if we're no
Speaker 1: longer doing it for explicitly religious or magical ritual reasons,
Speaker 1: there's probably still a way people are finding to scratch
Speaker 1: this itch, right, Like we already mentioned that, like the
Speaker 1: violent downfall of rulers. You know, that's not an inherent
Speaker 1: part of a system, and maybe it is something that
Speaker 1: systems do because because the people end up taking the
Speaker 1: reins of that. Yeah, Well, in the in the James
Speaker 1: Fraser kind of sense, where when the strength of the
Speaker 1: king fails, you see the the people step in to
Speaker 1: kill the king to you know, sort of protect themselves
Speaker 1: from the symbolic magic of the king's virility failing them
Speaker 1: and their society. I think you can maybe see that
Speaker 1: in the ends met by any strongman dictators in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, Like uh, you see the violent punishment and
Speaker 1: and just sort of public mockery and treatment of the dictators.
Speaker 1: You'd think of like Hitler and uh and Mussolini and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, whether they ended up you know, hung on
Speaker 1: public display or as Eddie Iszard would say, I think
Speaker 1: it's covered in petrol on fire. Uh. You could look
Speaker 1: at that as well as just you know, their enemies
Speaker 1: destroying them and getting revenge on them. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is a major part of it. But I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's also part of it where someone who
Speaker 1: at some point may have been at you know, a
Speaker 1: supporter of one of these strong men, has seen the
Speaker 1: strongman fail, and now that they see his strength has
Speaker 1: left him, they want nothing to do with it. They
Speaker 1: want to ritually purge that failing bad magic. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean and not only like the bodily desecration of
Speaker 1: the individual, but also like the continued desecration of the
Speaker 1: individual through even uh the fiction and media, like in
Speaker 1: speaking about Hitler, like we don't have a Guy Fox
Speaker 1: Day for Hitler, but maybe we should, because we seem
Speaker 1: that we can't stop re killing Hitler in fictional form,
Speaker 1: be it you know, Wolfenstein video game or the the
Speaker 1: the assassination of Hitler in uh, Quentin Tarantinos and glorious bastards,
Speaker 1: like we keep recreating it or creating it in a
Speaker 1: in a new way. We the time travel scenario. Everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: would you go back in time and kill Hitler? Like?
Speaker 1: Why why does that keep coming up? We can't stop
Speaker 1: fantasizing about about his death. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that just is there a simpler explanation. Isn't just
Speaker 1: that we well, we recognize him as a bad person
Speaker 1: and a very obvious enemy, and you want to destroy
Speaker 1: an enemy? Or is there something more symbolic and magical
Speaker 1: to it as well? Yeah? And then also various assassinations
Speaker 1: of of not only the loved leaders, but also you know,
Speaker 1: hated ones, reviled leaders. You see those as being subjects
Speaker 1: that we just continue to fascinate about. I mean just
Speaker 1: JFK for example. Oh yeah, I mean I feel like
Speaker 1: this is a perfect example of if you wanted to
Speaker 1: come up with a modern idea of the the the
Speaker 1: king who's killed before his strength begins to fail. Like
Speaker 1: what we never saw the post presidency JFK. We never
Speaker 1: saw JFK have to fight for reelection. We never saw
Speaker 1: JFK in in his post presidency years growing old. We
Speaker 1: only have this image of the strong, young powerful, healthy JFK.
Speaker 1: I mean, despite however, I think he was taking a
Speaker 1: lot of painkillers and stuff like that, But despite how
Speaker 1: how however unhealthy he actually was, he looked it seemed powerful, strong, healthy, young, virile,
Speaker 1: and he died that way. So it kind of again
Speaker 1: embodies that that Fraser kind of mentality about how keeping
Speaker 1: the kingship infused with that magical strength. Yeah, and again
Speaker 1: it's a story we can't stop retelling, both just historical
Speaker 1: versions of it, fictionalized versions of it, and conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: surrounding it exact. Now, I do feel like I need
Speaker 1: to make a note here about public execution and mob violence,
Speaker 1: because let's not forget that there's there, there's overt human sacrifice,
Speaker 1: and then there are acts of public murder that certainly
Speaker 1: fit all the requirements of human sacrifice. For instance, take
Speaker 1: public execution as a practice. It continues to this day
Speaker 1: in certain parts of the world, and at the heart
Speaker 1: of public execution throughout history, you have a clear element
Speaker 1: of ritual and symbolic power. So the executors are not
Speaker 1: merely removing the offending individual or even punishing them. They're
Speaker 1: making a statement, perhaps even a mythic statement, intended for
Speaker 1: consumption by the attending community. The ritual itself might be
Speaker 1: situated in a religious right, or elements of military or state,
Speaker 1: but in the but the in the killing act maybe instantaneous,
Speaker 1: it might be prolonged, but in more brutal measures, the
Speaker 1: victim is unmade. He or she is reduced in the
Speaker 1: eyes of the onlookers, perhaps his masculinity or beauty that
Speaker 1: robbed of the strength voice. It goes right back to
Speaker 1: those those pete that peep bog example of the bog
Speaker 1: people who are the body of the king is dismantled.
Speaker 1: The power of the king is bodily dismantled. Yeah, yeah, there.
Speaker 1: I think it is very hard to look at most
Speaker 1: of the regalia of public execution and not conclude that
Speaker 1: there is for people, uh, if not an explicitly magical significance,
Speaker 1: a very strongly symbolic significance. Right. Another area, you can
Speaker 1: make a very strong case for Southern lynchings in the
Speaker 1: United States as being acts of human sacrifice. These are,
Speaker 1: of course, we're acts of racial violence perpetrated by by
Speaker 1: individuals in the South against against black individuals. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's easy to in my experience growing up It's easy
Speaker 1: to have a very sanitized version of what this consisted of,
Speaker 1: but the actual incidents where anything. But we're talking about
Speaker 1: very violent and tortuous deaths of individuals, removal of body parts, burning,
Speaker 1: the keeping of body parts, the commemorating of the event
Speaker 1: through a photography in some cases, and uh in various stories,
Speaker 1: including Donald G. Matthews, He's written about this a lot
Speaker 1: has pointed out that all the elements of ritual human
Speaker 1: sacrifice are there, the religious even ritualized unmaking of an
Speaker 1: individual because of their perceived threat perhaps to do racial purity. Totally,
Speaker 1: I can see that. I mean, all the elements are there.
Speaker 1: It's ritualized, it's symbologized, it's uh, it's motivated by strong
Speaker 1: emotional impulses and feelings of uh social cohesion. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh and beyond that, I think there you can see
Speaker 1: strong indicators in certain modes of gang or organized crime
Speaker 1: violence uh throughout history that they fall into the category
Speaker 1: of human sacrifice. Oh yeah, I mean speaking of ritual regicide.
Speaker 1: I mean think about um, I think if you just
Speaker 1: I don't know how real gang mob violence goes down
Speaker 1: in reality, but I can certainly say if you just
Speaker 1: think about the Sopranos or something. They have a very
Speaker 1: almost magical feeling about the role of leaders in the gang,
Speaker 1: where they they almost accomplish a magical act by killing
Speaker 1: a leader of a gang. You know, they say like, oh,
Speaker 1: we gotta kill Tony Soprano, We gotta decapitate and deal
Speaker 1: with what's left. Why, I mean, what why? Why is
Speaker 1: what is the magical power and killing this one guy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And if the gang is the gang is made of hundreds, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we end up investing so much in the ruler of
Speaker 1: this group because ultimately, a divine king, king of a nation,
Speaker 1: the king of a small cultural group, a cult leader,
Speaker 1: an organized crime leader, they're all kind of serving the
Speaker 1: same mode, even though the head of a corporation is
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, cast from that same mold. You know.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of examples of things that
Speaker 1: go on today in our modern world that you can
Speaker 1: think of as being not just like human sacrifice, but
Speaker 1: like ritual regicide, you know, the killing of the king
Speaker 1: for magical purposes. And I couldn't think of anything that
Speaker 1: seemed like a perfect fit. But I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: things out there, and there are things that seem like
Speaker 1: a kind of sort of fit. One that came to
Speaker 1: my mind as a celebrity roast which granted it's not
Speaker 1: a king, but it is a celebrity which has a
Speaker 1: kind of a divine power in our own civilization. And
Speaker 1: how do those typically typically go. Generally, Um, a celebrity
Speaker 1: kind of passed their prime or maybe you know, on
Speaker 1: the on the you know, on the back end of
Speaker 1: their fame, unless it's peper. Yeah, they're they're brought before
Speaker 1: a crowd, they're attended to by by their friends and peers,
Speaker 1: and then they systematically insult and just take them down,
Speaker 1: uh you know, not violating their body, but but just
Speaker 1: systematically tearing their character apart. They die on the stage,
Speaker 1: uh symbolically. But then at the end, what do they
Speaker 1: get to do? They generally get to uh then throw
Speaker 1: out some zingers at the individuals who roasted them, and
Speaker 1: in a way they get to uh to come back,
Speaker 1: to rise back, just like our our king of the lagoons.
Speaker 1: And then of course you have maka regicides that continue
Speaker 1: in some cultures through the practice of carnival, uh, either
Speaker 1: through the temporary elevation of a carnival king or a
Speaker 1: fool king uh or even actual you know, acts of
Speaker 1: mock regicide of this carnival king. So there's the the
Speaker 1: Patras Carnival in Greece and it actually culminates in the
Speaker 1: burning of the carnival king. Not the individual, but like
Speaker 1: an effigy of the carnival carnival king is burned. I wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, this sounds kind of dangerous, so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: really recommend people do this, but I wonder if political
Speaker 1: tensions could be eased if people just did uh, effigy
Speaker 1: burnings and stuff. You know, people no matter which parties
Speaker 1: in office, you know, people hate the president of the
Speaker 1: opposing party. They're just, oh, he's everything. That's terrible, is it?
Speaker 1: I don't know if if they were to burn effigies
Speaker 1: of that president. Would that that sounds very inflammatory and offensive?
Speaker 1: But would that make things worse with that stoke angers?
Speaker 1: Would that encourage violence or would it alleviate it? Would
Speaker 1: it sort of scratch this itch without people actually having
Speaker 1: to hurt anybody. I think it could scratch the h
Speaker 1: because the thing is like the idea of it of
Speaker 1: burning an effigy of say a sitting US president in
Speaker 1: the streets it's inflammatory, you know, literally, I mean it
Speaker 1: certainly conjures to mind the fear that like, is this
Speaker 1: a prelude to real violence? Which you would not want
Speaker 1: it to be. But but the key here is we
Speaker 1: do not have a cultural space for it to take place. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have a safe spot. We don't
Speaker 1: have a holiday where it is allowed. Yeah, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it is. You need. You need a ritual environment
Speaker 1: in which it is sanctioned. And in that case, it
Speaker 1: could be done without people having to wonder like, is
Speaker 1: this a prelude to real violence? No, it's just part
Speaker 1: of the ritual. We do it every year. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it would be kind of like the U. S.
Speaker 1: President said, you know, ap peering on TV and saying, Hey, normally,
Speaker 1: if you talk about this kind of thing, we're going
Speaker 1: to come to your house and the Secret Service is
Speaker 1: gonna have a chat with you. But this one day
Speaker 1: of the year, you can burn me in effigy whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be on vacation, you know, heavily protected.
Speaker 1: So I'm good. Yeah, I'll be playing golf or working
Speaker 1: at the ranch. What have you hanging out with my
Speaker 1: confectioners confectioners and concubines. All right, So there you have it. Um,
Speaker 1: we we've covered a lot of territory here today, but
Speaker 1: it really I think it serves to take a real
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind approach to the topic of
Speaker 1: human sacrifice. You know what it means at all levels
Speaker 1: of society, what it meant in ancient societies, and how
Speaker 1: the energy of those acts carry on today. Right. And
Speaker 1: of course today we focus primarily on this ritual regicide example,
Speaker 1: but there are lots of other aspects of human sacrifice
Speaker 1: that could probably do with episodes of their own in
Speaker 1: the future that we don't want to turn this into
Speaker 1: the human sacrifice show, right, but but certainly if there's
Speaker 1: an area here where you you think to yourself, I
Speaker 1: would I would like to hear a podcast episode in
Speaker 1: the future that dives more into this. Let us know
Speaker 1: what that is and we'll see what we can do
Speaker 1: in the meantime. If you want to check out more
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over
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