Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: And my name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: We have a fun journey to take you on in
Speaker 2: the next couple of episodes, probably going to be a
Speaker 2: two parter, but who knows. We never know. We don't
Speaker 2: know what the future is going to bring. But this
Speaker 2: is one that on the surface of things, you might think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: oil and water, how interesting could that get? But it
Speaker 2: gets pretty interesting because you know, we're going to get
Speaker 2: into divination, We're going to get into the idea of
Speaker 2: pouring storm oil into the sea to calm turbulent waters.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to talk about here, but at the
Speaker 2: very base level, oil and water two things that famously
Speaker 2: don't mix. You've probably observed varying levels of the interaction before.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you've just seen like a film of oil on
Speaker 2: the surface of a puddle, or you've observed the separation
Speaker 2: of cooking oil combined with another liquid in a mixing bowl.
Speaker 2: It instantly catches the eye. I'm not going to say
Speaker 2: it necessarily always captures the human imagination, but there is
Speaker 2: something about it that you can't help.
Speaker 3: But notice, did you ever have one of those toys
Speaker 3: when you were a kid? Where there is I actually
Speaker 3: don't know what liquids they use in these, but presumably
Speaker 3: it's water and then some kind of lipid based colored liquid,
Speaker 3: maybe like red or blue, that bubbles through the water
Speaker 3: and maybe spins a little pin wheel or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. I
Speaker 2: do remember these. They're really fun for a brief period
Speaker 2: of time, and then they go into the junk drawer.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe I'm just easily amused. I remember turning mine
Speaker 3: over and over a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's memorable. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 2: forgotten that it certainly ends up in the toy chest.
Speaker 3: I bet that one's really fun when it breaks. That'd
Speaker 3: be a great origin story for like a long dormant
Speaker 3: virus or something, the dangerous microorganism. In case, within the
Speaker 3: item of power.
Speaker 2: What strange oil did they end up using. Yeah, well
Speaker 2: it's not just children, it's not just the inner child
Speaker 2: as well. Humans have found interactions of oil and water
Speaker 2: intriguing since ancient times. And yeah, indeed it does trace
Speaker 2: back into the realm of ancient magic. And divination, you know,
Speaker 2: various tales and we'll touch on some of these, of
Speaker 2: like ancient kings and so forth, seeking out the word
Speaker 2: and the wisdom of diviners who use various methods to
Speaker 2: sort of reach into the murky future and make sense
Speaker 2: of the strange shapes there. Now. Divination is, of course
Speaker 2: the attempt to seek guidance concerning the future and decisions
Speaker 2: that impact future events. As we've discussed in the show before.
Speaker 2: You can certainly think of it as a as the
Speaker 2: right of supernatural guidance, which it is, but especially in
Speaker 2: the ancient context too, we might think of it as
Speaker 2: well as a means of sort of generating a randomized
Speaker 2: direction that is weighted by belief or superstition. You know,
Speaker 2: if presented with two choices, all things being equal, you know,
Speaker 2: flip a coin, but not a trivial coin, not a
Speaker 2: completely trivial coin, because this coin is weighted by supernatural belief.
Speaker 2: But then also you keep it from being just you know,
Speaker 2: completely random, because it also entails an art of interpretation.
Speaker 2: It's not just a coin anyone can flip and anyone
Speaker 2: can read. You need a specialist who's going to read
Speaker 2: the coin read whatever it is you're reading and perhaps
Speaker 2: too you know, read the client, read the patron, and
Speaker 2: or the you know, the larger events going on and
Speaker 2: so so, Yeah, there's a there's an art to divination
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: So it's often interesting when you think about a lot
Speaker 3: of the stories of what the interpreter does. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are some cases where they get real secific about things,
Speaker 3: but most of the time it seems like they are
Speaker 3: adding in ambiguity that makes it harder to falsify the prediction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of the you know, there's obviously an art
Speaker 2: to the cold read, and you know there's a level
Speaker 2: of manipulation to carrying it out as well. And also
Speaker 2: there's a lot of self preservation, especially when you're dealing
Speaker 2: with you know, dark and gloomy kings and ancient times.
Speaker 2: If you want to be a diviner that lives a
Speaker 2: long life, or even a reasonably long life, you do
Speaker 2: have to read the room and figure out exactly what
Speaker 2: kind of message you're going to relay to the ruler.
Speaker 3: Look, I always said there would be a decisive victory.
Speaker 3: I didn't say which side would get it.
Speaker 2: So there are various methods of divination that have been
Speaker 2: used over the years. We talked about about many on
Speaker 2: the show before in the past, and we're going to
Speaker 2: touch on several different ones here, but specifically concerning oil
Speaker 2: and water divination. This is what the ancient Greeks would
Speaker 2: come to call lacanamancy, the use of oil poured into
Speaker 2: a basin of water to tell the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the name lacanomancy comes from the Greek lacane,
Speaker 3: meaning bowl. So this is lacanomancy meaning bowl divination. And
Speaker 3: in the literature, yeah, it seems most often to refer
Speaker 3: to omens in mixtures of oil or water, either in
Speaker 3: a bowl or in a cup, and could apparently be
Speaker 3: done either way, maybe by I think more often by
Speaker 3: pouring oil into water, but maybe also by pouring water
Speaker 3: into oil. Though there are some other definitions for this
Speaker 3: word that seem to overlap with the concept of hydromancy,
Speaker 3: meaning divination through water. And since the name only means bowl,
Speaker 3: like the name doesn't mean oil, I guess it could
Speaker 3: also involve these other things like you have a bowl
Speaker 3: of water and you drop gems in it and see
Speaker 3: what they do to get your omen, or you drop
Speaker 3: gold or silver coins in, or you like move, you know,
Speaker 3: move the water around and see which way the ripples go.
Speaker 3: There are a number of ways of doing this, but
Speaker 3: the oil in water one seems to have been prominent
Speaker 3: in the ancient Near East.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this lines up with what I was reading
Speaker 2: as well. I was looking at a book from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one titled Oracles and Divination, and in particular, there's
Speaker 2: a section in it by O. R. Gurney that says, yes,
Speaker 2: these these practices, they tended to involve a bowl or
Speaker 2: a basin of some sort. And yes, one would either
Speaker 2: pour oil into water or water into oil, and the
Speaker 2: oil would cause various shapes on the surface of the water,
Speaker 2: and these would be used through the diviner's ar or
Speaker 2: the barrus art. I believe barrow is the term in
Speaker 2: like ancient Babylon to predict the future. There is also
Speaker 2: a variation called al romance, which used flour instead of oil.
Speaker 2: So you know, take heart, if you're out of oil
Speaker 2: and you have some flour on hand, you can also
Speaker 2: go with that.
Speaker 3: Method make you the loosest of dose.
Speaker 2: Now. Gurney also mentions that there now are slash were
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this is like the current count.
Speaker 2: This is againotext from eighty one the six known surviving
Speaker 2: tablets from ancient Mesopotamia dealing with oil omens, and the
Speaker 2: author includes a couple of examples here that I wanted
Speaker 2: to read. So these would be different nuggets of wisdom
Speaker 2: to help you the diviner interpret what's happening in the bowl. Quote.
Speaker 2: If from the middle of the oil two drops come out,
Speaker 2: one big, the other small, the man's wife will bear
Speaker 2: a sun for a sick man. He will recover. And
Speaker 2: then the next one here concerns the use of flower
Speaker 2: instead of oil. If the flower in the east takes
Speaker 2: the shape of a lion's face, the man is in
Speaker 2: the grip of a ghost of one who lies in
Speaker 2: the open country. The sun will consign it, the ghost
Speaker 2: to the wind, and he will get well.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's creepy. So wait, flower forms a lion's face,
Speaker 3: What does that mean? The ghost of one who lies
Speaker 3: in the open country? Does that mean a ghost of
Speaker 3: someone who didn't receive a proper burial? Would that be?
Speaker 2: That was what it made me think of. I'm not certain,
Speaker 2: and the author doesn't go into detail on this, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it made me think of other superstitions we've discussed from
Speaker 2: other traditions involving the unburied or the improperly buried dead.
Speaker 3: This was a subject often of great concern in the
Speaker 3: literature and folklore of the ancient world. That like people
Speaker 3: like not getting a proper burial was really something you
Speaker 3: didn't want.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, another form of divination that he mentions is lebanomancy,
Speaker 2: which is divination by smoke from throwing cedar shavings on
Speaker 2: an incense burner. And this would be kind of similar,
Speaker 2: like you throw the wood shavings on their smoke billows up,
Speaker 2: and however the smoke is moving, what shapes it seems
Speaker 2: to be forming that is the basis of your vision
Speaker 2: of the future. Now, he writes that the use of
Speaker 2: entrails and a sacrificed animal would become more popular, but oil,
Speaker 2: flower and smoke based divination would remain a cheaper option,
Speaker 2: but also still one that would be invoked and used
Speaker 2: by various important individuals, including kings, such as when Cassite
Speaker 2: King Agam the Second, he says prayed to the god
Speaker 2: Shamish by oil before setting out on a quest to
Speaker 2: reclaim stolen statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that you mentioned lacanamancy as a cheaper alternative
Speaker 3: to reading omens in the entrails of sacrificed animals. I
Speaker 3: came across that exact same claim in some other sources.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're citing from a common source
Speaker 3: that says that, but yeah, that is interesting obviously. So
Speaker 3: I guess the benefit of reading the entrails of a
Speaker 3: sacrificed animal is you're almost like, you know, you're paying
Speaker 3: for the really high price ticket your message from the gods,
Speaker 3: Like you're taking a good animal getting it sacrificed. I
Speaker 3: suppose at the altar of the god you're asking for
Speaker 3: the answer from and then it's entrails will tell you
Speaker 3: something and the budget option, yeah, is just a little
Speaker 3: bit of olive oil and some water or some flour
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm just guessing here, but I mean, maybe
Speaker 2: that's not always available. Maybe sometimes the old ways are
Speaker 2: thought the best, or maybe sometimes you have a situation
Speaker 2: where even a king is getting a second or third
Speaker 2: opinion on a matter and it's like, well, okay, what
Speaker 2: do the laconda mancers have to say about this? Maybe
Speaker 2: they'll give me the answer that I want to hear.
Speaker 2: Now the author here Gurney goes on and mentions that
Speaker 2: there's also a form of lacando mency that was used
Speaker 2: by the Hittites that involved a basin or a tub
Speaker 2: filled with water. Certainly, but instead of adding oil or flour,
Speaker 2: you would add what might be a snake or possibly
Speaker 2: an eel, and its movements in the enclosed space of
Speaker 2: the tank would foretell the future. And it does not
Speaker 2: in this case sound like the animal was sacrificed. It's
Speaker 2: just about you put the animal in there, watch it
Speaker 2: swim around. How does it behave its movements are going
Speaker 2: to reveal what the future holds for us? Now, another
Speaker 2: source I was looking at concerning this topic appears in
Speaker 2: the Influence of surface films on interfacial flow Dynamics from
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven by Sean Patrick McKenna, and this author
Speaker 2: writes that lakana manci is, of course one of the
Speaker 2: forms of divination practice during the eighteenth century BCE in
Speaker 2: the Hamarabi ruled Old Babylonian Empire, and points out, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's several tablets of the time period unearthed in the
Speaker 2: nineteenth and twentieth centuries that list examples of the kind
Speaker 2: of mancy and guides for interpreting what's going on in
Speaker 2: the water. This author also shares some examples translated from
Speaker 2: these tablets. A few of these include the following. If
Speaker 2: the oil sinks, then rises and spreads around the water
Speaker 2: for the campaign, unfavorable consequences for the sick divine punishment.
Speaker 2: If the oil splits in two for the campaign. Both
Speaker 2: camps should march together for the sick death. If a
Speaker 2: drop emerges in the east and remain stationary for the campaign,
Speaker 2: booty for the sick recovery. If two drops emerge, one large,
Speaker 2: one small, a male child will be born for the
Speaker 2: sick recovery. If the oil fills the bowl for the
Speaker 2: sick death for the campaign, defeat for the leader.
Speaker 3: This last one actually raises questions for me, because the
Speaker 3: question is if the oil fills the bowl. Knowing what
Speaker 3: we know about the physics of oil and water today,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think what will pretty much always happen
Speaker 3: is that over time, any oil in the water will
Speaker 3: spread out as far as it can, and so it
Speaker 3: will pretty much always spread to fill the surface of water.
Speaker 3: Are in a bowl, so it takes time for it
Speaker 3: to do that. So maybe you've got to put a
Speaker 3: time limit on it. Otherwise it's always going to be
Speaker 3: death or defeat for the leader, I would think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there has to be an immediacy to this.
Speaker 2: And obviously, if you especially if you don't have a
Speaker 2: steady hand, all of your divinations can't be you know,
Speaker 2: death for the sick and defeat for the leader of
Speaker 2: an army. That's going to be bad for business, I think.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting to see the pairings of the different
Speaker 3: interpretations with like the two different kinds of battles, the
Speaker 3: battle for health within the body in the battle you know,
Speaker 3: for the in the military campaign going on for the king.
Speaker 3: So some of these pairings make sense to me, Like
Speaker 3: unfavorable consequences for the military campaign with divine punishment for
Speaker 3: the sick death and defeat death and defeat booty and recovery.
Speaker 3: That pairing makes sense. The one I was confused about
Speaker 3: is if the oil splits in two, that means for
Speaker 3: the sick death for the campaign, both camps should march together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what to make of that either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, I like that because that's not just stating
Speaker 3: an outcome, that's giving advice Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, obviously another issue that all this raises is you know,
Speaker 2: what what kinds of oil are you using? What kinds
Speaker 2: of water? You know, there could conceivably be differences in
Speaker 2: the reaction that takes place. Well, one source I looked
Speaker 2: at this is from D. Tabor. This is from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty Babylonian Lacanomancy, an ancient text on the spreading of
Speaker 2: oil on water, and in that the author suggests that
Speaker 2: the water here is likely rain water and the oil
Speaker 2: is some manner of vegetable oil. I found that interesting,
Speaker 2: like the rain water, especially because on one hand, okay,
Speaker 2: I guess this is going to be how you're going
Speaker 2: to obtain the purest water that is also free of
Speaker 2: any oils that might you know, otherwise contaminated. And then
Speaker 2: on the other hand, there is something kind of supernatural
Speaker 2: to it as well, like this is the water that
Speaker 2: came from the sky, from the realm of the gods,
Speaker 2: and therefore I can imagine that playing a role in
Speaker 2: all of this as well. Now, another interesting thing that
Speaker 2: came up in one of these sources is they pointed
Speaker 2: this out Joe that apparently in the Old Testament, in
Speaker 2: Genesis forty four or five, there is a reference to lacanamancy.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a bit that goes, is not this
Speaker 2: it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth,
Speaker 2: he have done evil in so doing so?
Speaker 3: This is a very interesting case. I think this is
Speaker 3: not necessarily a reference to lacanomancy, though that is a
Speaker 3: good candidate for what it is referring to. It is
Speaker 3: definitely refer to a form of divination, which means I
Speaker 3: think maybe this is a good time for a digression
Speaker 3: on references to divination in the Bible. And here I
Speaker 3: have to apologize because I got seriously over zealous in
Speaker 3: pursuing this digression, which is only lightly related to the
Speaker 3: topic to begin with, So please bear with me. But
Speaker 3: I think it's an interesting subject. So there are actually
Speaker 3: a lot of references to divination in the Bible. The
Speaker 3: Hebrew Bible, or what Christians would call the Old Testament,
Speaker 3: contains references to a bunch of different methods of divination.
Speaker 3: First of all, there is actually a divination method officially
Speaker 3: sanctioned by the Torah and by the priest class in
Speaker 3: the Bible, which is known as the Urim and Thummim,
Speaker 3: which seems to have been some other kind of object.
Speaker 3: It's like a pair of objects worn on the ceremonial
Speaker 3: breastplate of the high priest. And while the exact form
Speaker 3: of these objects and the procedure for using is not certain,
Speaker 3: it seems they would essentially be used for casting lots
Speaker 3: of some kind by the high priest in order to
Speaker 3: receive answers from God, possibly answers to yes or no
Speaker 3: questions about what would happen in the future, will we
Speaker 3: be successful in battle and so forth, or answers to
Speaker 3: questions about the guilt or innocence of an alleged sinner.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they're represented as like gems that flash with a
Speaker 3: divine light in order to project messages. I think there
Speaker 3: were some interpretations in the later rabbinical literature like this,
Speaker 3: but I think that's all sort of like later writers
Speaker 3: speculating on what these original passages in the scriptures meant.
Speaker 2: Now the urim and thummim here, if I'm correct on this,
Speaker 2: this is this kind of often depict that is kind
Speaker 2: of a multi code. Like you said, crystal plate that
Speaker 2: is worn from the neck, And I remember as a child,
Speaker 2: I would experience a certain amount of excitement and maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit of fusion, because at the time I
Speaker 2: would have my Star Wars books on one hand, and
Speaker 2: then I would have, you know, some of these illustrated
Speaker 2: like Old Testament stories books on the other, and these
Speaker 2: looked like kind of these made me think of the
Speaker 2: chest plate of Darth Vader.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, well the chess plate of Darth Vader.
Speaker 3: Like it's got all the little tic TACs and stuff on it.
Speaker 2: Red lights and all, and oftentimes these illustrations you see
Speaker 2: some sort of like red gems in there as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think what it does. What is clear
Speaker 3: is that these objects are linked to the breastplate of
Speaker 3: the high priest in some way, like it said that
Speaker 3: maybe they are put in or put on the breastplate,
Speaker 3: but it's not exactly clear what they are. But what
Speaker 3: is clear is that they are somehow used in an
Speaker 3: officially in bounds divination process. This is what the followers
Speaker 3: of the God of Israel were supposed to use for
Speaker 3: divination purposes if they needed to. But the Hebrew Bible
Speaker 3: also contains numerous references to other forms of divination, such
Speaker 3: as necromancy. This is apparently a big concern in the
Speaker 3: era of the Mosaic Law, and despite its modern interpretation
Speaker 3: as a kind of evil sorcery used for like calling
Speaker 3: up armies of undead skeleton soldiers and zombie swarms to go,
Speaker 3: you know, get your paladins, Originally necromancy meant communication with
Speaker 3: the dead for the purpose of divination, not raising zombie soldiers.
Speaker 2: Now, to be clear, even in like the modern Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragons ecusage of necromancy, yes, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: calling up the dead and using all sorts of you know,
Speaker 2: weird spectral hands and so forth. There is still a
Speaker 2: little bit of talking to the dead, though they keep
Speaker 2: it real a little bit there, and we see a
Speaker 2: bit of that in the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie.
Speaker 2: There's a whole scene of speaking with the dead and
Speaker 2: trying to gain wisdom from them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's played mostly for comedy, I recall. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like they have a fixed number of questions they can
Speaker 3: ask and so forth. Yeah, so that's what necromancy means
Speaker 3: in this though it's not. Yeah, it's not the zombie soldiers.
Speaker 3: It's the talking to the dead for the purposes of
Speaker 3: gaining hidden information or knowing the past or knowing the future. Anyway,
Speaker 3: in the Mosaic law there are general prohibitions against divination
Speaker 3: and wizardry and magic of all forms, but one of
Speaker 3: the forms of divination that is specifically called out in
Speaker 3: these verses is necromancy. Also, there is a very famous
Speaker 3: story in the Bible about a consultation with a dead prophet.
Speaker 3: This is in First Samuel chapter twenty eight, where Saul,
Speaker 3: the King of Israel, famously he goes to a village
Speaker 3: called Indoor to meet with a wise woman or a
Speaker 3: witch who can speak to the dead. And this is
Speaker 3: significant in the story because Saul has condemned witchcraft and
Speaker 3: has previously banished all the wizards and fortune tellers from Israel.
Speaker 3: But then he's facing a military conflict with another nation,
Speaker 3: with the Philistines, and he wants to know what he
Speaker 3: should do, and apparently he tries to get an answer
Speaker 3: from the sanctioned methods of information. He tries to consult
Speaker 3: the Urim and Thummim, He tries to have a dream
Speaker 3: from God or get some kind of direct revelation, and
Speaker 3: nothing ends up with no guidance and has no idea
Speaker 3: what to do from any of the official channels, so
Speaker 3: he goes rogue he violates his own edict. He puts
Speaker 3: on a disguise and seeks out a necromancer to speak
Speaker 3: to the dead prophet Samuel. He wants to get Samuel's
Speaker 3: advice on what he should do, and this does not
Speaker 3: go well, so he does go to the woman in disguise.
Speaker 3: She figures out it's Saul by the way. She's like, oh,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, you said we're not allowed to do this,
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh no, don't worry about it. I
Speaker 3: need you to talk to Samuel. So she raises Samuel
Speaker 3: from the grave. I think she can see him, but
Speaker 3: Saul can't, and he's trying to talk with him, and
Speaker 3: Samuel just does not help. He seems to be kind
Speaker 3: of irritated for being woken up from the sleep of death,
Speaker 3: and then he condemn for his treachery, and then Samuel
Speaker 3: tells him that his army is going to be defeated
Speaker 3: and he will lose his kingship, and Samuel is right.
Speaker 3: The army is defeated and Saul falls on his own
Speaker 3: sword and dies. And this story seems to, at least
Speaker 3: in part, emphasize how you really shouldn't go off trail
Speaker 3: on divination methods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stick to the legal methods. Don't go into a
Speaker 2: legal divination.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you've never seen it, everyone should
Speaker 3: look up William Blake's painting of Saul and the Spirit
Speaker 3: of Samuel and the Witch of Indoor.
Speaker 2: Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, I mean all of Blake's illustrations. Those
Speaker 2: hand colored illustrations are always so great. This one's no exception.
Speaker 2: By the way. The Witch of Indoor would also come
Speaker 2: to play a part in the nineteen eighty five film
Speaker 2: The Battle for Indoor. Weird how cinema listeners may remember
Speaker 2: no real connection to the Biblical account other than the
Speaker 2: other that we're dealing with a moon of indoor and
Speaker 2: there is a witch on it.
Speaker 3: You are also not supposed to divine the future with
Speaker 3: the help of Wilfrid Brimley. But anyway, So that's a
Speaker 3: story from the Bible from after the delivery of the
Speaker 3: Mosaic Law, which contains all of these prohibitions against divination
Speaker 3: in general, presumably with the exception of the urim and
Speaker 3: thumim and the prohibitions against necromancy in particular. But there
Speaker 3: are also interesting references to divination from before the law,
Speaker 3: when it seems to have different connotations. So one of
Speaker 3: these that occurs here is the example you raised earlier.
Speaker 3: This is where we're coming back to La Canamancy. This
Speaker 3: is the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 3: which is a long and complicated story, so I'll try
Speaker 3: to do the very condensed and simplified version. Joseph is
Speaker 3: one of the twelve sons of the biblical patriarch Jacob,
Speaker 3: and Jacob in the story shows favoritism toward him over
Speaker 3: his other brothers, even buying him a splendid coat of
Speaker 3: many colors. They made a musical about.
Speaker 2: It, yes, classic story.
Speaker 3: But his brothers, who are less favored by their father,
Speaker 3: become very jealous, so one day they conspire. They beat
Speaker 3: him up, they trap him in a well, and they
Speaker 3: sell him into slavery, where he ends up being transported
Speaker 3: to Egypt. But they take Joseph's coat to their father,
Speaker 3: covered in the blood of a goat, and convince him
Speaker 3: that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.
Speaker 2: Again classic children's story. I remember reading it alongside My
Speaker 2: Star Wars as a child.
Speaker 3: But in Egypt, Joseph does pretty well. He manages to
Speaker 3: rise from lowly servitude and at one point he's imprisoned,
Speaker 3: he manages to rise out of that to the rank
Speaker 3: of the pharaoh's most senior lieutenant. He's like the number
Speaker 3: two in Egypt. And the way he does this is
Speaker 3: by showing a talent for divination. He is able to
Speaker 3: interpret the omens of the future in dreams, and by
Speaker 3: correctly analyzing Pharaoh's dreams, he brings great prosperity to Egypt
Speaker 3: at a time of famine for all the surrounding nations. Actually,
Speaker 3: since it matters to my interpretation of this story in
Speaker 3: a minute, the specific way this works is that the
Speaker 3: Pharaoh dreams of seven fat cows that are eaten. They're
Speaker 3: like swallowed up by seven lean cows, and seven rotten
Speaker 3: stalks of grain. That consumes seven good stalks of grain,
Speaker 3: and Joseph realizes that this means there are going to
Speaker 3: be seven years of good crops followed by seven years
Speaker 3: of famine, and so to anticipate the famine, the Egyptians
Speaker 3: must ration their good crops and store up extra grain
Speaker 3: during the years of abundance. Joseph's prediction, or his interpretation
Speaker 3: of the dream comes true, and so later suffering from
Speaker 3: famine like all of the surrounding nations are. Joseph's brothers
Speaker 3: come to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, whom they
Speaker 3: do not recognize. They don't know it's him, and then
Speaker 3: they have several interactions actually, but in the last one
Speaker 3: in secret, Joseph hides his silver cup in the grain bag,
Speaker 3: married by his youngest brother, Benjamin. He then arranges to
Speaker 3: have his youngest brother caught quote stealing the cup again
Speaker 3: he actually actually planted it on him, and then demands
Speaker 3: Benjamin be given to him as a slave as punishment.
Speaker 3: And instead, their older brother Judah, asks that he be
Speaker 3: made a slave in Benjamin's place, and this causes Joseph
Speaker 3: to break down in tears. He reveals his identity, he
Speaker 3: forgives his brothers, and the family is reunited and allowed
Speaker 3: to relocate to a fertile part of Egypt. But it
Speaker 3: is the part of the story about the silver cup
Speaker 3: that relates to divination. So when Joseph's steward finds the
Speaker 3: silver cup hidden in Benjamin's sack, he says, just as
Speaker 3: Joseph commands him to, He says, why have you repaid
Speaker 3: evil for good? Is not this the one from which
Speaker 3: my lord drinks? And with which he indeed practices divination.
Speaker 3: You have done evil in so doing. Now, of course,
Speaker 3: it doesn't say exactly what kind of divination he does
Speaker 3: in the cup, So it could be a form of hydromancy,
Speaker 3: where you would, you know, put water in the cup
Speaker 3: or some liquid and drop coins or gems or other
Speaker 3: objects into the water and see what they do. It
Speaker 3: could be maybe used for a form of scrying, since
Speaker 3: it's silver. Scrying is reading the future in reflections and
Speaker 3: a shiny surface such as a silver cup. Often a
Speaker 3: crystal ball is used for scrying. But based on a
Speaker 3: lot of the commentaries, I found a good candidate for
Speaker 3: what is being described here is lacnomancy, where he would be,
Speaker 3: you know, dropping oil into water, or doing one of
Speaker 3: the other things we've been talking about. But in any case,
Speaker 3: I think this passage is interesting because I think the
Speaker 3: staging of the theft of the silver cup used for
Speaker 3: divination is supposed to be interpreted as more profound than
Speaker 3: like mere burglary of an expensive cup. This is the
Speaker 3: cup in which Joseph receives owns about the future, and
Speaker 3: if you remember the earlier part of the story, correctly
Speaker 3: interpreting omens about the future is how Joseph rose to
Speaker 3: his position of prominence in the first place. It was
Speaker 3: the dream interpretations, you know, the Fadoline cows and so forth.
Speaker 3: And it's also how Egypt is currently in a good
Speaker 3: position with this grain surplus during years of famine. So
Speaker 3: in a way, I think with that gloss, it makes
Speaker 3: sense to wonder if stealing Joseph's divination cup in the
Speaker 3: story is kind of an espionage caper. It would be
Speaker 3: like stealing the codes to the nuclear arsenal in a
Speaker 3: modern spy thriller. This is a piece of supernatural technology
Speaker 3: that helps give Egypt its strategic advantage over other nations.
Speaker 2: Hmm. That's fascinating. So I'm a little out of practice
Speaker 2: with this particular Bible story. But Joseph frames one of
Speaker 2: his brothers for stealing it, but then he undoes it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he does it when another for his youngest brother. Yeah,
Speaker 2: his youngest brother is then fingered for the crime, and
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, I didn't want to enslave him. He
Speaker 2: wanted to enslave them both.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, he didn't want to enslave any
Speaker 3: of them. I think I think he wanted to test them.
Speaker 3: So it's one of those kind of stories. I think.
Speaker 3: So he plants that, yeah, he frames his youngest brother
Speaker 3: who he loves, for the crime. Then he says, I'm
Speaker 3: going to make him a slave. And then because the
Speaker 3: older brother is like no, no, no, take me instead.
Speaker 3: Then I think that that softens his heart and he
Speaker 3: forgives his brother is for what they did to him.
Speaker 2: Replicated family dynamic anyway you cut it, Yes, but to
Speaker 2: your point, yeah, this is not just any cup or
Speaker 2: any silver cup. This isn't is this isn't an artifact
Speaker 2: of the art of divination that Joseph practices. So this is,
Speaker 2: this is vital, this is this has strategic importance for
Speaker 2: the Egyptians.
Speaker 3: Yes, and in this specific story, it is div nation
Speaker 3: in particular that has made Egypt prosperous. And so anyway,
Speaker 3: thinking about the idea of dropping oil and water in
Speaker 3: a copper a basin to receive messages from the heavens
Speaker 3: or from the gods. You know, while even mundane objects
Speaker 3: were often used for divination in the ancient world, it
Speaker 3: seems clear to me why the behavior of oil on
Speaker 3: water could inspire a kind of oracular fascination. Like there's
Speaker 3: that sense of strangeness and wonder about it that actually
Speaker 3: I found to be captured quite well in a passage
Speaker 3: in a letter written by Benjamin Franklin in the year
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy three. We're going to get more into Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 3: I think in the next part in this series. But
Speaker 3: I wanted to read this passage because it articulates the
Speaker 3: kind of amazing weirdness here when you really pay attention
Speaker 3: to it. So Franklin's writing to somebody named William Brownrigg
Speaker 3: in November seventeen seventy three, and he says, in these experiments,
Speaker 3: one circumstance struck me with particular surprise. There was the sudden, wide,
Speaker 3: and forcible spreading of a drop of oil on the
Speaker 3: face of the water, which I do not know that
Speaker 3: anybody has hitherto considered. If a drop of oil is
Speaker 3: put on a polished marble table or on a looking
Speaker 3: glass that lies horizontally, the drop remains in place, spreading
Speaker 3: very little. But when put on water, it spreads instantly
Speaker 3: many feet around, becoming so thin as to produce the
Speaker 3: prismatic colors for a considerable space, and beyond them so
Speaker 3: much thinner as to be invisible except in its effect
Speaker 3: of smoothing the waves. Now, as I said, we'll come
Speaker 3: back to Benjamin Franklin in the next part of the series.
Speaker 3: But while I don't know if he was the first
Speaker 3: person to notice the way that oil spreads over the water,
Speaker 3: I actually somewhat doubt that he definitely was not the
Speaker 3: first person to notice these other strange properties, like the
Speaker 3: prismatic colors that tend to shine out from oil spreading
Speaker 3: over a pool of water, And he was certainly not
Speaker 3: the first person to notice the apparent ability of oil
Speaker 3: to somehow soothe the chop of threatening waters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the thing that drew us into
Speaker 2: this topic initially, because I know, for my part anyway,
Speaker 2: I don't think i'd come across this before, this idea
Speaker 2: of oil being used to calm storm waters, because I mean,
Speaker 2: it just sounds so completely magical, and it will continue
Speaker 2: to sound completely magical while also having a basis in
Speaker 2: fact in science to at least a limited degree. So
Speaker 2: the accounts that we have dealing with this idea, these
Speaker 2: come from far after the time of ancient Babylon, one
Speaker 2: of the earliest, if not the earliest. It seems to
Speaker 2: go back to the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle lived three
Speaker 2: eighty four through three twenty to BCE, and these a
Speaker 2: lot of his writings are generally just attributed to three
Speaker 2: point fifty BCE. So Aristotle brings this up in problems
Speaker 2: or Problemata physica, asking why is it that the sea,
Speaker 2: which is heavier than fresh water, is more transparent? Is
Speaker 2: it because of its fattier composition? Now, oil poured on
Speaker 2: the surface of water makes it more transparent, and the
Speaker 2: sea having fat in it is naturally more transparent. Uh huh, okay,
Speaker 2: several things. There's also a part in I was looking
Speaker 2: up oil in various of these ancient writings, and I
Speaker 2: noticed in meteorology Aristotle also points out that oil contains air.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of mixed information here.
Speaker 3: Purely speculating here that this could be totally wrong. But
Speaker 3: I wonder if he's tempted to think that because oil
Speaker 3: floats on the top of water, therefore like air rises
Speaker 3: like bubbles through the water.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, that sounds likely. All right. I think we're
Speaker 2: gonna come back to Aristotle, but we're gonna skip ahead
Speaker 2: now to another favorite source on the show, and that is,
Speaker 2: of course Roman historian Plenty of the Elder, who lived
Speaker 2: twenty three or twenty four CE through seventy nine CE.
Speaker 2: I have to say, Plenty talks a lot about oils
Speaker 2: in the natural history. Like if you just start searching
Speaker 2: for searching up the word oil, you're gonna find him
Speaker 2: mentioning all sorts of medicinal oils. Uh. There's also a
Speaker 2: section titled waters which serve as a substitute for oil,
Speaker 2: concerning waters that emit light and heal wounds. So a
Speaker 2: lot in there for oil fans to consume and to
Speaker 2: try to make sense of. He's in generally a big
Speaker 2: fan of oils, and he busts this out in book two,
Speaker 2: chapter one oh six. There's a whole info dump regarding
Speaker 2: wisdom concerning the water, and he says everything is soothed
Speaker 2: by oil, and that this is the reason why divers
Speaker 2: send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because
Speaker 2: it's smooth any part which is rough and transmits the
Speaker 2: light to them. M okay. So I think this is
Speaker 2: tying in with what we were talking about earlier with
Speaker 2: Aristotle as well. And I've seen this particular bit translated
Speaker 2: as sprinkled from the mouth as well. So I believe
Speaker 2: the scenario here is that Plenty is sharing something that
Speaker 2: he has heard or read regarding free divers carrying some
Speaker 2: small quantity of oil in their mouths during the dive
Speaker 2: and spitting it out to make the surrounding water more
Speaker 2: visible during the dive while they're you know, looking for
Speaker 2: something like a molluskh Now, this is the quote I
Speaker 2: read is from the Mayoff translation of Plenty, and he
Speaker 2: notes in the notes for this that while this would
Speaker 2: be proven to be correct, the effect is greatly exaggerated
Speaker 2: both here and elsewhere. So keep that in mind as
Speaker 2: we're going here. We're dealing with, you know, second and
Speaker 2: third hand accounts of these things that may have the
Speaker 2: definitely seemed to have a certain basis in fact, but
Speaker 2: also are greatly exaggerated in the retelling.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I imagine we'll return to the mechanics of this,
Speaker 3: if possible, in the next episode. But do you have
Speaker 3: any idea how exactly this would work that would make
Speaker 3: the water more visible?
Speaker 2: What's my understanding that what we're dealing with here is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: the idea is that oil will sort of smooth out
Speaker 2: the surface of troubled water, but that it will also
Speaker 2: smooth things out underneath the water, and if you are
Speaker 2: free diving looking for again, you know, fish or shells
Speaker 2: or what have you, that some small amount of oil
Speaker 2: released into that water would make it clearer and easier
Speaker 2: to see these things and or allow light to filter
Speaker 2: down more effectively. Again, we'll get into the actual science
Speaker 2: of this, probably in the next episode, and we have
Speaker 2: to keep in mind that again we're doing probably what
Speaker 2: the second or third hand information here. I'm guessing here
Speaker 2: this is something that Plenty had had heard regarding some
Speaker 2: free diving people. And even though he would have certainly
Speaker 2: been familiar with ships and all, I don't remember in
Speaker 2: reading anything that indicated that he himself would have any
Speaker 2: firsthand experience with diving underneath the water. Now, another author
Speaker 2: who gets into some of this is Plutarch, who lived
Speaker 2: forty six through one nineteen se He also references Aristotle
Speaker 2: in Causes of Natural Phenomena, and, according to Heinrich Hunifus
Speaker 2: in Oil Untroubled Waters a historical survey, this is likely
Speaker 2: referencing a lost portion of Aristotle's Problemata reads as follows,
Speaker 2: this is from Plutarch, what is the reason for the
Speaker 2: clearness and calm produced when the sea is sprinkled with oil.
Speaker 2: Is it, as Aristotle says, that the wind slipping over
Speaker 2: the smoothness so caused makes no impression and raises no swell,
Speaker 2: Or does this plausibly explain the external phenomena only they
Speaker 2: say that when divers take oil into their mouths and
Speaker 2: blow it out in the depths, they get illumination and
Speaker 2: can see through the water. Surely it is impossible to
Speaker 2: adduce slipping of the wind in the cause there. Consider then,
Speaker 2: whether the oil does not, by reason of its density,
Speaker 2: push and force aside the sea, which is earthy and irregular. Subsequently,
Speaker 2: when it flows back to its former position and draws together,
Speaker 2: intermediate passages are left in it, which offer transparency and
Speaker 2: clear visibility to the organs of sight.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. So again, I wonder if I'm understanding
Speaker 3: Plutarch right here, But it sounds like maybe he's saying that,
Speaker 3: like when oil is spit out under the water, it
Speaker 3: kind of clears channels in the water. I wonder if
Speaker 3: that would work by attracting particles in the water that
Speaker 3: would be making the water cloudy into the oil and
Speaker 3: then dragging them away with it. As the oil rises.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure. I couldn't find much information on
Speaker 2: this particular detail of the of the scenario. Maybe I'll
Speaker 2: find something for the next episode, but yeah, it's you'd
Speaker 2: have to put ourselves in the like in the position
Speaker 2: of an ancient free diver who's you know, I assume,
Speaker 2: not using any kind of covering for their eyes. I
Speaker 2: did run across some mentions of these practices where they
Speaker 2: talked more like they were putting the oil in their eyes,
Speaker 2: which again I don't know how that's factoring into the
Speaker 2: sort of telephone game of you know, second, third, and
Speaker 2: fourth hand reporting on this during ancient times, in addition
Speaker 2: to translation errors. All right, but in this we've touched
Speaker 2: on this other big area, something that we're going to
Speaker 2: have a lot more to discuss in the next episode
Speaker 2: as well, and that is, Hey, if you dump some
Speaker 2: quantity of oil, and the quantity seems to vary tremendously,
Speaker 2: if you dump that into a stormy sea, well that's
Speaker 2: just going to smooth everything out, smooth sailing thanks to
Speaker 2: the oil.
Speaker 3: Okay, what do we have any stories about how this works?
Speaker 2: We do. We have a pretty good story here, and
Speaker 2: it comes to us from the English monk Bead, who
Speaker 2: lived somewhere around six seventy two or six seventy three
Speaker 2: through seven thirty.
Speaker 3: Five, often known as the Venerable Bead. It's good if
Speaker 3: you can get venerable attached to your name.
Speaker 2: Yes. So the year here that he's talking about is
Speaker 2: six fifty one, and King Oswig sometimes it's spelled Oswig
Speaker 2: of Northumbria sends out a priest to bring his bride
Speaker 2: home from Kent, and one bishop Aiden blesses the priest
Speaker 2: and gives him some holy oil and tells him when
Speaker 2: you set sail, you're gonna encounter some really stormy weather.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be some high winds, so remember to pour
Speaker 2: this oil that I'm giving you into the sea, and
Speaker 2: that's gonna calm everything out. Huh. And this is later
Speaker 2: described as a flask. So I'm assuming we're talking about
Speaker 2: a magic potion quantity of oil here, rather than say
Speaker 2: a barrel of oil. So Bead claimed that everything happened
Speaker 2: as the bishop said it would. When the storms came,
Speaker 2: the priest poured the flask of holy oil into the sea,
Speaker 2: and the storm died down. And Bid insisted that the
Speaker 2: miracle was no mere fable that he had heard it
Speaker 2: from reliable sources close to the matter, so you know,
Speaker 2: he was like, this works. This is not a tall tale,
Speaker 2: this is reality. Also worth noting by the way that
Speaker 2: Osweg or Oswig was said. It was said that he
Speaker 2: and his queen had been gifted multiple holy relics, including
Speaker 2: a cross with a key to it made from the
Speaker 2: chains of the apostles Peter and Paul.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, as much as this does just sound like
Speaker 3: a standard magical item legend, I think whether or not
Speaker 3: the story is plausible actually maybe more a matter of
Speaker 3: degree rather than just like it could happen or it couldn't.
Speaker 3: I don't know about using oil to stop a storm,
Speaker 3: but in the next episode we're going to end up
Speaker 3: exploring some surprising grains of truth in this kind of legend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you might be surprised too. It just what
Speaker 2: kind of legs this idea had concerning the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 2: you might want to have some oil on hand in
Speaker 2: case the water gets choppy.
Speaker 3: So maybe we got to call it there for today,
Speaker 3: but we'll be back next time to talk about pouring
Speaker 3: oil on the seas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was more in depth than I expected,
Speaker 2: and you never expect it, but Ben Franklin often does
Speaker 2: show up. This is not the first episode where you
Speaker 2: don't expect Ben Franklin, but here he comes, sauntering up
Speaker 2: with his weird energy and strange ideas, becoming a part
Speaker 2: of the story of a particular invention or natural phenomena
Speaker 2: or what have you.
Speaker 3: So tune in next time.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, if you would like to listen to
Speaker 2: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, well you'll
Speaker 2: find them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those are the core
Speaker 2: episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Own podcast feed
Speaker 2: the listener mail on Monday. On Wednesday a short form
Speaker 2: artifact or monster effect. On on Fridays, we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent an audio producer, JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
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