WEBVTT - From the Vault: Oh Goat, You Devil - Part 3 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:07.840 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:08.720 name is Robert. 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:11.920 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we're 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:14.520 heading on down into the vault to bring you part 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:18.720 three of our series on the Goat and its Devilish implications. 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:23.400 This was originally published on October twenty fifth, twenty twenty two. 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:36.040 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.559 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:41.320 is Robert. 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.199 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back with 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.720 Part three of our series on the Goat and the Devil, 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.920 where we are exploring reasons for the some would say 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:58.120 unfair association in especially Christian cultures, between the ordinary domestic goat, 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:03.200 a wonderful animal, and the monic realm of sin and flames. Now, 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:06.920 in previous episodes, we've talked about the basic biology of 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:10.680 the goat as a browsing bovid that was once adapted 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:15.320 to harsher environments like mountains and forests, but sometime many 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.680 thousands of years ago was domesticated by the humans who 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.679 used to hunt it. We talked about mythical inspirations for 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.520 later goat man devils, possibly lying in the figure of 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:30.240 the Greek god Pan and in the satyrs and fawns 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.920 that bore his image. We talked about goat reproduction and 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.800 goat voices, how it's possible that goats could be interpreted 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:41.800 as sinful by judgmental human eyes because of the he 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:46.160 goat's reputation for being very enthusiastic about mating, and the 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.240 idea that it's possible people have seen goats as uncanny 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:52.840 because sometimes some goats, when they kind of moan and scream, 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:57.120 they sound freakishly human. In the second episode, we talked 0:01:57.120 --> 0:01:59.760 about the role of goats in the Hebrew Bible, where 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.840 they could be associated with demonic forces because of the 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.200 ritual of the Day of Atonement, where it is said 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:08.440 that one goat is sent off into the wilderness to 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.160 carry the sins of the people off for Azazel, and 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:16.040 that name is sometimes interpreted as some kind of demonic power. 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.760 We also talked about goats in the Christian New Testament, 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:23.040 where Jesus is said to have given apocalyptic preaching that 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.120 when the Son of Man comes to bring the end 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.560 of the age, he will separate the righteous from the 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.560 unrighteous and what's the image used there. It's as the 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.560 shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The goats are 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:37.079 the bad ones. And finally, we also talked about goat 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.640 lore from around the world to point out that the 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.720 association between goats and evil is by no means universal. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.200 There are some very interesting counter examples in Chinese mythology, 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.720 in Basque mythology with this figure of the black billy 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.520 goat deity who protects livestock and so forth. So it's 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.120 been a wild ride so far, a wild goat ride. 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.000 But to kick things off today, I wanted to come 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:06.959 back to our discussion about the particular features of goat 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:12.480 biology that people of centuries past might possibly have interpreted 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.520 as devilish or sinful in one way in one way 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:19.120 or another, And the example I wanted to look at 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:23.120 here is goat eyes. One might argue that you haven't 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.040 really been stared at until you've been stared at by 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:27.960 a goat, and part of the reason for that is 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.040 when you're being stared at by a goat, you're not 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.080 quite sure if you're being stared at by a goat. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:36.480 That's right. It comes down to the inhuman shape of 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:37.400 the goat pupils. 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:40.480 Yeah, yeah, And before I get there, I want to 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:42.720 say that the goat stare does not have to be 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.840 imbued with any kind of menace. I came across a 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.120 very sweet, whimsical little poem I wanted to read a 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.560 bit from. This is by the British Canadian poet Robert Servis, 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.119 who wrote a poem called The Goat and I, And 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.920 it goes each sunny day upon my way a goat iPad. 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:01.160 He has a. 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:04.240 Beard of silver gray and a bell of brass, And 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.520 all the while I am in sight, he seems to 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.000 muse and stares at me with all his might, and choose, 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.880 and choose upon the hill so timy, sweet with joy 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.440 of spring, he hails me with a tiny bleat of welcoming, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.000 though half the globe is drenched with blood, and cities 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.960 flare contentedly, he chews the cud and does not care. 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:28.479 Oh gentle friend, I know not what your age may be, 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.599 but of my years I'd give the lot yet left 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.800 to me to chew a thistle and not choke, but 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.200 bright of eye gaze at the old world, weary bloke 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:39.200 who hobbles by. 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.440 This is great. I love how this drives some like 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:48.280 an overall interpretation of goat physiology that I think we 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:50.360 can often fall into, and that is of the goat 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:53.800 as the old goat, Like there's even if a goat 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:56.359 need to see some goats that look very virile and 0:04:56.440 --> 0:05:00.920 young in a goatish fashion, but oftentimes encounter goats who 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.920 do kind of hobble about. They have all these likenesses 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:09.320 that we attribute to elderly human individuals. You know, you'll 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.800 have the beard and so forth. But yeah, this is 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:18.120 a neat little poem summing up the independent and relatable 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:19.000 spirit of the goat. 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:21.719 Oh I also I left off a final stanza where 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.039 essentially the last stanza is just like, why am I 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:30.560 writing a poem about a goat? It's not great so 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.280 but yeah, anyway, the gaze of the goat has often 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.200 been observed to have a strange character in one way 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:42.080 or another. Sometimes it's more like what service is saying here? 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:47.599 Almost narcotically placid and unmoved. And yet other times people 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:49.880 notice that the gaze of the goat is kind of 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:54.080 thrillingly alien, because, unlike with a dog or a cat, 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.599 it can be hard to tell if a goat is 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.440 actually looking at you, or at least for me, it can. 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:02.719 Despite the efforts of Robert Service, the eye of the 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.480 goat has often been characterized as creepy, and I think 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:07.960 there could be a couple of reasons for that. It 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.159 might be because it's a bit harder to tell where 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.800 the goat is focusing than it is with some other 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.839 kind of animals, like our predatory companion animals. Or maybe 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:21.120 it's just because the eye of a goat sort of 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.760 looks weird. It looks unusual if you're not used to it, 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.080 because instead of a round pupil, as you alluded to earlier, 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.680 rob the goat has a horizontal pupil, sometimes described as 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.680 rectangular in shape I think sometimes kind of described as 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:40.159 like elongated capsule shape, so it's like a rectangle with 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.680 kind of rounded edges. I've also found some photos where 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:46.719 it looks like a horizontal capital eye with a hint 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.800 of those cross beams or slight bulges at the ends 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.840 of the rectangle. And the question is why do goat 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:56.360 pupils look that way? Well, funny enough, we actually did 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:59.200 an episode just a while back which contained a segment 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:03.120 about the evolution tionary reasoning behind different pupil shapes. In 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.000 The Animal Kingdom, the episode was The Three Pupil Die, 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.680 and I think the study we talked about in that 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:11.800 show is still a good one to inform us on 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.280 the question I've just raised. So to bring up the 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:18.240 same paper again. This was by Martin S. Banks at All, 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.200 published in the journal Science Advances in twenty fifteen, and 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.720 it's called why do Animal eyes have pupils of different shapes? 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:30.240 Basic conclusion is that an animal's pupil shape is usually 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:33.880 determined by what its ecological niche is, what its role 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:38.000 in the food chain is. So animals like humans, tigers, 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:42.000 and wolves have round pupils. Round pupils appear to be 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:46.400 common a common shape for active hunters who chase down 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:50.880 their prey. Meanwhile, predators that are lower to the ground 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:53.720 or hunt by way of ambush, So a predator that 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.960 might lie in wait and then pounce suddenly on a 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:01.640 prey animal, these tend to have vertical pupils vertically oriented 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:06.080 slit pupils, and the vertical slits seem to be adaptive 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.720 for low down ambush predators because they're helpful in using 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:14.720 tricks called stereopsis and defocus blur to very precisely judge 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:20.840 the distance needed for a single exact medium range pounds. 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:26.440 But herbivores prey animals are more likely to have horizontal 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.760 pupils like the goat. To quote from the study, horizontally 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:36.920 elongated pupils create sharp images of horizontal contours ahead and behind, 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:43.120 creating a horizontally panoramic view that facilitates detection of predators 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:48.600 from various directions and forward locomotion across uneven terrain. So 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:52.120 these horizontal pupils are good for scanning the whole panorama 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.520 of the environment, seeing at all angles all the time 0:08:56.000 --> 0:09:00.720 to watch out for any approaching predators, which might be 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:03.160 one of the reasons you can get that creepy feeling 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:05.480 where you can't tell if the goat is actually looking 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:09.120 at you. The goat is sort of designed by nature 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:12.840 to be looking everywhere rather than to be looking at you. 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.000 But I also thought it's an interesting note about the 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:21.920 forward locomotion across uneven terrain given the evolutionary history of 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:27.800 goats occupying mountains and craggy landscapes. Though again, less craggy 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:33.200 creatures like horses also have horizontal pupils, So that made 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.600 me wonder about the question why do we tend to 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:40.600 notice the horizontal orientation of goat pupils more than we 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:44.240 notice it in horses and other herbivores. I think this 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:46.640 must be a common thing. It's at least true for me, 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:49.760 and so I was looking into this and I want 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.320 to make two non expert observations just by looking at 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:55.880 a lot of photos on Google. One is that the 0:09:55.960 --> 0:10:01.440 horse pupil seems less noticeably elongate in the horizontal dimension 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.760 than the goat pupil. So they're both horizontal, but the 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:06.480 horse pupil seems a little bit shorter usually, or the 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:10.760 goat went often looks visibly stretched out. Second, and I 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.400 think this might be even more important, there seems to be, 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.640 on average, a stronger color contrast within the goat's eye. 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:20.040 If you just look at a bunch of pictures of 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:22.440 the eyes of horses and the eyes of goats, it 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:26.640 seems goats on average have lighter colored irises, which really 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.520 makes the pupil pop. That makes the pupil stand out, 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.360 which makes it look more noticeably alien, at least to 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:34.640 me interesting. 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:36.560 I remember in that episode on The Three People Die, 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.520 we talked about pupil changes in the shape of the 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:45.720 pupil with predators tended to vary as well depending on height. 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.920 Yeah, yeah, that's right, But I don't remember. 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:51.520 Any such distinction being made in the materials we were 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:56.679 looking at then regarding herbivores, like a goat versus cow, 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:57.600 versus horse, etc. 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.440 Yeah, I don't recall any distinction like that either. But 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:04.680 definitely there was a change in height in predators, because again, 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.360 the taller predators have round pupils and the shorter predators 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.680 have vertical slip pupils, and so part of that has 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:15.080 to do with a difference in hunting strategy like chasing 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:17.959 versus ambushing, but part of it has to do also 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.520 with just I think, managing the angles at which you 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:21.760 would be observing your prey. 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:24.679 Now, this instantly makes me think of something that I 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:26.000 guess we got into a little bit in the Three 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:28.800 People to Die, is what sort of eyes do we 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:33.640 expect knowing all of this of divine beings and divine emissaries, 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.520 certainly in the Irish and some Chinese traditions that we 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.840 discussed in that episode. We talked about the idea of 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:45.400 someone with three pupils or three irises being in some 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:50.080 way enlightened and having superior vision and perhaps wisdom as well. 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.559 But taking all that we've discussed here into the scenario, 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.320 it's like, Okay, if we have some sort of god 0:11:56.440 --> 0:12:00.199 or god like being or anti god taking on the 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:02.880 head and eyes of a goat, well, in a way 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.480 it seems more fitting. It's like, this is a being 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.199 that can look in many directions at once and doesn't 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.679 need to focus its attention and maybe doesn't focus its 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:14.960 attention all that much, and hey, being a god, maybe 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.040 you don't want its attention focused too heavily. 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:20.400 Well. Also, though, thinking about the predator prey distinction, I mean, 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.840 shouldn't the horizontal pupils make it less dangerous? Like wouldn't 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.360 round pupils really be the most dangerous? 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:28.480 Yeah? But then I guess it comes down to the 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.080 human scenario, right. We want to we want to connect 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:36.720 with the human in the superhuman, and therefore we want 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.440 them to have pupils. Though I guess we see, especially 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.080 in modern depictions, you know, we love to black out 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.960 the eyes of inhuman beings, you know, often with those 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:51.080 really cool contact lenses. So we'll have various there's so 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.040 many treatments of this where various fallen angels and so 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.840 forth will have all black eyes or maybe all white eyes, 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.920 and that tends to note some sort of strangeness of 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:02.760 vision as well. 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.480 Yeah, I think you're right about that. Like sometimes otherworldly 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.040 beings are just depicted as having eyes like that, Sometimes 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:11.840 their eyes change into all white or all black or 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:15.959 something when they are exercising a type of second sight. 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.079 When it sometimes works quite well, though sometimes you're kind 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.280 of I think you're kind of inconveniencing your actors by 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.680 taking away their eyes or taking one of their tools. 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.240 Well, maybe we should look at a little bit more, 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.160 goat mythology and goat symbolism and history. I think if 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:34.960 we're trying to figure out why, especially a lot of 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:40.440 say Continental European Christian cultures made an association between the 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:44.080 devil and goats, I think we must talk about the 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:45.960 figure known as Baphomet. 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:50.320 Yeah. And this is a fascinating but also kind of 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:58.120 convoluted situation because it involves multiple different cultures either appropriating 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:03.600 or interpreting, or miss interpreting or outright right slandering something 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:08.319 that other culture, the previous cultures or different cultures believed 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.400 in or believe in. And the end result is this 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.800 strange satanic goat creature that you're more likely to encounter 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:19.760 now in a TV show or on a heavy metal 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:23.840 T shirt, that sort of thing. So I covered some 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:26.040 of this in a Monster Fact episode about the Goat 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:31.080 of Mendis that came about shortly after we recorded a 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.880 weird House cinema episode on the film The Devil Rides Out, 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.720 which prominently features this satanic goat man appearing at a 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.680 black mass. And so this entity of Baphame or the 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:47.600 Goat of Mendes is essentially a Western occultist distortion of 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:52.640 a Greek interpretation of the god of Egypt, the Egyptian 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:57.240 god known as beneb Jujet that was worshiped in Mendays, 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.520 which is the Greek name for an ancient Egyptian city 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:06.440 named Jadet, also known today as Tel el Ruba. Fifth 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.760 century Greek historian Herodotus wrote of this god and his 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:14.920 practices and made veiled references to sexual aspects of the worship, 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:19.760 and also compared the entity to Pan, of course from 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:24.000 Western traditions. So already I know this sounds like some 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.360 sort of a You can imagine like the different pins 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.440 on a board with the different bits of string colored string, 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.880 showing you where all this is going across a map 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:37.640 of Europe and North Africa. So here's a quote from 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:43.680 Herotodus via S. Birch's translation. Quote. Now, the reason why 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.200 those of the Egyptians whom I have mentioned do not 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:51.640 sacrifice goats, female or male, is this The Mendicians count 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.600 Pan to be one of the eight gods. Now, these 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.880 eight gods, they say, came into being before the twelve gods, 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.360 and the painters and image makers represent in painting and 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.720 in sculpture the figure of Pan, just as the Hellenese 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:08.840 do with goat's face and legs, not supposing him to 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.600 be really like this, but to resemble the other gods. 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.080 The cause, however, why they represent him in this form, 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:20.480 I prefer not to say. The Mendisians then reverence all goats, 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.239 and the males more than the females. And the goatherds 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.880 too have greater honor than other herdsmen. But the goats, 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.640 one especially is reverenced, and when he dies there is 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:34.480 great mourning in all the Mendisian district. And both the 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:38.280 goat and Pan are called in the Egyptian tongue Mendis. 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.280 Okay, So not knowing exactly what's going on here. I 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:47.400 would wonder if Herodotus is seriously misinterpreting reports he has 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:51.160 heard about Egyptian worship in light of Greek religion. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.520 Yeah. Yeah, there's clearly a lot going on, like using 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:59.560 Greek religion to try and understand what individuals in this 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:02.960 region and are worshiping going. You know, there's so many 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.359 ways that the information here can become skewed. We have 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:11.120 this veiled reference to I believe other critics have pointed 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:15.400 out that he's referencing a supposed beast reality in worship 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:20.240 and so forth. So already we're engaging in various levels 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.720 of mis interpretation and perhaps slander. Now. As Geraldine Pinch 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.560 explains in her excellent book Egyptian Mythology, the word for 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:33.200 ram bah and the word for soul or manifestation sound 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.800 much the same in Egyptian to the ancient Egyptians, so 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:41.480 they were often regarded as manifestations of other deities such 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.399 as Osiris, and Pinch writes quote, the sexual aspect of 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:50.400 occult admindis made it particularly disliked by early Christians. Benetjedet's 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:54.160 form as a ram or goat headed man was reinterpreted 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.399 as a devil figure who entered Western tradition as the 0:17:57.480 --> 0:17:59.280 Horned King of the Witches. 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:04.119 A classic example of literal demonization, taking a god in 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.720 another mythology, in this case one having the head of 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.760 a sheep or a goat, and saying that, well, actually, 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.159 this is just a demon in our mythology, right right. 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:16.840 But of course it gets more complicated than that. There 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.520 are all these other additional threads going on here. Because 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.199 as for the actual name Goat of Mendes, this is 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:27.639 the name given by French writer Elfius Levi in the 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:33.399 nineteenth century, most likely referencing the writings of Erotodus. The 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:37.000 most well known image of this particular monstrous humanoid is 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:41.840 in the eighteen fifty sixth edition of Levi's book Dogma 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.720 and Ritual of High Magic. And as with any many 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:49.680 examples of divine and occult imagery, the image of Baphame 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:52.800 here Is, or the Goat of Mendes, is highly symbolic, 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.639 and it's been incorporated into various occult traditions, subcultures, new 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.880 religious movements, and so forth. I think everyone's probably seen 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:05.520 this is a goat being with the upper body of 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:09.040 sometimes a female but sometimes like half the chest is female, 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:14.200 halfs male. They're like black angelic wings, the goat head, 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.520 the pentagram on the forehead, a middle horn that is 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:24.720 like a torch, various other symbols going on in the image. 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:26.160 Is loaded with stuff to look at. 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.119 Yeah, yeah, so, I mean as far as images of 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.640 the divine or the demonic, it's a pretty great one. 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.080 There's lots to focus on, lots to try and figure out. 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:36.879 And at the very least, you know, as we've discussed 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.280 many times before, the basic symbolism involved here of combining 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.480 beast with man or beast with woman, et cetera. Like, 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:47.000 it instantly starts forming patterns in the mind. You can't 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.600 look at it and not have some sort of reaction. Oh. 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:51.520 I don't know if I've noticed this before, but at 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:55.840 least in Levi's depiction, it incorporates a symbol that is 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.760 like the Cadusius or like the rod of Esclepias. It 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.080 has the rod and the snakes intertwined around it. Yeah. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:13.040 Yeah. Now, as for the name of Baphomet here, this 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.600 gets us into something that we've we've touched on a 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.680 few times on the show before, never devoted like full 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:22.080 episode to it, but it involves the Templars, the poor 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.639 Knights of Christ, and the Temple of Solomon. So just 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:29.280 to get the basics out here again, this was a 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:32.840 religious military order of the Catholic Church during the Crusades, 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.600 which ran about roughly ten ninety five through twelve ninety one. 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:43.560 See they were This organization was intended to serve as 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.760 a way to protect pilgrims on their way to the 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:49.920 Holy Lands, but a sort of power creep occurred. They 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.760 were given free rein to move across borders, They were 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:56.520 made exempt from taxes and ended up playing key military 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.840 roles in various battles of the Crusades, and even the 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:04.320 warriors became important, managing the movement of funds across vast 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.040 distances that were involved in the Crusades and setting up 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.280 a kind of proto banking system. They became powerful, and 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.200 so they made powerful enemies. And as the Crusades failed, 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.360 the Templars were blamed, and finally Philip the Fourth of France, 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:22.040 with the aid of Pope Clement the Fifth, who was 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:26.920 then based in France, they suppressed the order and falsely 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:31.320 accused them, or generally every I think most sources and 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.600 historians agree that these are false or trumped up charges 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.320 of blasphemy and heresy, saying that, among other things, they 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:42.480 worshiped a severed head called Bahamet and there's a whole 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:45.240 litany of charges against them. Some of them were burned 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:48.000 at the stake, I think fifty six in total, and 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:52.159 that included Grand Master Jacques de Malay and others. Other 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.679 members of the order were absorbed into different militaries and 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.879 so forth. Now the name Bahame here is generally understood 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:04.760 be a French corruption of the name Muhammad. The monstrous 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:09.679 templar god Baphomet is therefore a product of trumped up 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:14.040 charges that the templars had converted to the Islamic faith 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.760 of their enemies, and the French and papal accusers invoked 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:23.760 this fanciful and grotesque degradation of Islam to make their case, because, 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:27.320 to be clear, nowhere in Islamic traditions do you find 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:28.320 a creature like this. 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:31.320 So it's essentially the monster at the heart of a 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:38.119 xenophobic conspiracy theory created to slander one's political enemies. In 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:38.880 the Middle Ages. 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:43.680 Yes, pretty much. And there's a lot more to all 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:45.720 of this as well, and certainly when you get into 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:50.840 writings about the templars, there are added theories, some perhaps 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:54.000 worth talking about, some worth skipping over unless you're engaging 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.800 in just like pure entertainment, I suppose. But yeah, this 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:00.960 seems to be the most straightforward explanation. And it is 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.359 kind of interesting how in this you have something that 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.159 is put together as a corruption, as a slander, and 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:11.560 over time it kind of takes on life of its own. 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:16.080 It becomes used as a symbol of liberation, it becomes 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:20.080 used as a symbol of a rebellion against organized religion, 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:23.680 it becomes used as a part of new religious movements. 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:28.959 Even so, it's always fascinating the life of symbols and 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:30.560 the life of ideas like this. 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:36.320 Well, speaking of rebellion, there is one more biological feature 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:39.879 of goats that I wanted to talk about. If you're ready, Robert, 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:42.760 or are you ready to get into goat intelligence, let's 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:45.440 do it. I think this one is interesting because while 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:49.840 I don't think this is a primary reason that goats 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:52.720 would be identified with devils or with the legions of Hell, 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:56.199 I do think there is some interesting resonances here, and 0:23:56.240 --> 0:23:58.879 we can come back to that. But basically I was 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:02.720 just thinking, what is more identified with evil than intelligence? Right, 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:07.840 because intelligence is often associated with a tendency toward rebellion 0:24:07.960 --> 0:24:10.760 or a tendency maybe to think a little too critically 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:14.040 about what somebody is telling you to do. And while 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:17.919 goats are not generally a species known for how smart 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:21.280 they are, there's some evidence that at least in some ways, 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:23.920 they might be more clever than we give them credit for, 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:27.560 but that it's also a kind of intelligence that is 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:32.400