Speaker 1: But Macmore and Sodosmo were necromancers who came from the
Speaker 1: dark Isle of nat to practice their baleful arts in
Speaker 1: Tinniath beyond the shrunken seas. But they did not prosper
Speaker 1: in tinniaf for death was deemed a holy thing by
Speaker 1: the people of that gray country, and the nothingness of
Speaker 1: the tomb was not lightly to be desecrated, and the
Speaker 1: raising up of the dead by necromancy was held in abomination.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is.
Speaker 3: Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back
Speaker 3: with part three in our series on necromancy, the ancient
Speaker 3: practice of consulting the dead or the spirits of the
Speaker 3: dead for the purpose of divination of accessing hidden knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yes, despite the fact that a lot of our modern
Speaker 1: pop cultury uses of necromancy tend to involve raising of
Speaker 1: the dead. And actually that quote that I read at
Speaker 1: the top of this episode is from the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two short story The Empire of the Necromancers by Clark
Speaker 1: Ashton Smith, and it is full of raising the dead
Speaker 1: via the necromantic arts. But as we've discussed in these
Speaker 1: episodes so far, necromancy, as we loosely categorize it, is
Speaker 1: more situated in the realm of divination.
Speaker 3: Now. In the previous episodes in the series, which if
Speaker 3: you haven't listened to yet, you should probably go check
Speaker 3: those out first. But in these previous episodes, we talked
Speaker 3: about accounts of necromancy or pseudo necromantic legends from ancient China.
Speaker 3: We talked about accounts of how necromancy was practiced or
Speaker 3: may have been practiced in ancient Mesopotamia, including consulting these
Speaker 3: tablets that have descriptions of the incantations use and the
Speaker 3: potions to prepare if you want to speak to the
Speaker 3: dead through a prepared skull in a special ritual. In
Speaker 3: part two, we talked about a lot of accounts of
Speaker 3: necromancy as practiced or at least as used as a
Speaker 3: plot device in stories from ancient Greece and Rome, and
Speaker 3: today we wanted to come back and finish out the
Speaker 3: discussion by talking about necromancy a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We're going to jump around a little bit here.
Speaker 1: Later on in the episode, I think we're going to
Speaker 1: get into some medieval Christian ideas about necromancy, what it was,
Speaker 1: and whether you should do it or not. A spoiler,
Speaker 1: they tended to say no, don't do it. But with
Speaker 1: some caveats I'll get into.
Speaker 3: I also want to interrogate the boundaries of necromancy a
Speaker 3: little bit and maybe pick apart the concept somewhat. But
Speaker 3: before we do that, there's a question that's been coming
Speaker 3: up because we've been looking at examples from the ancient
Speaker 3: world of how this may have been practiced, or at
Speaker 3: least was thought by some to be practiced in the
Speaker 3: ancient world. My question would be, well, how far back
Speaker 3: does it go? What's the earliest evidence we have of
Speaker 3: people trying to communicate or consult with the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's get into that a little bit again,
Speaker 1: with the huge caveat that the term necromancy can be
Speaker 1: applied very broadly or very specifically, and is ultimately just
Speaker 1: a word. So with that in mind, I will refer
Speaker 1: back briefly to the paper The Origins of necromancyho or
Speaker 1: How We Learn to Speak to the Dead by Czech
Speaker 1: academic Andreis Kavkar. He argues for a connection potentially between
Speaker 1: ancient shamanistic practices and what we might think of as necromancy,
Speaker 1: with individual human beings often serving as psychopomps for example,
Speaker 1: you know, guardians, guie, there to guide one spirit from
Speaker 1: this world into the next. Other functions that would put
Speaker 1: a living mortal shaman in some form of communication with
Speaker 1: the deceased or also imaginable. This in addition to just
Speaker 1: general ancestor veneration, ancestor cults, and ancestor worshiped. So it's
Speaker 1: not it's not inconceivable to consider all of this potential
Speaker 1: hallmark of human spiritual and religious thought going back to
Speaker 1: very early human culture, as a coping method for the
Speaker 1: emotionally and socially devastating reality of death.
Speaker 3: Right, we don't know, but it seems perfectly plausible that
Speaker 3: it could be something like first, people you know, just
Speaker 3: merely emotionally missed their dead loved ones and wanted to
Speaker 3: you know, continue thinking about them and talking about them
Speaker 3: and so forth, and maybe from this arose some kind
Speaker 3: of culture of keeping their memory alive, out of which
Speaker 3: arose some kind of idea that well, maybe there are
Speaker 3: ways to still talk to them somehow, and maybe they
Speaker 3: have something to say to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, we undeniably have a desire to
Speaker 1: speak to them. I mean, that's proven out in so
Speaker 1: many countless examples, including our own individual experiences. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have visited the grave
Speaker 1: of a deceased loved one and spoken to them, you know,
Speaker 1: varying degrees of understanding or expectation of them hearing us,
Speaker 1: and certainly of them speaking back to us. But to
Speaker 1: speak to the dead, I think is not necessarily this
Speaker 1: you know, this alien, supernatural thing. I think it comes
Speaker 1: from a very natural place in the human psyche, and
Speaker 1: I mean probably gets back into this idea that, yeah,
Speaker 1: when someone dies, it is emotionally and socially devastating and
Speaker 1: we have to find ways to deal with it.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, while you can imagine that historical
Speaker 3: or prehistoric development, and it certainly seems plausible, it's hard
Speaker 3: to have decisive evidence for things like that, or to
Speaker 3: have decisive evidence of practices of communicating with and getting
Speaker 3: knowledge from the dead from before times of say literary
Speaker 3: writings about such right.
Speaker 1: Right, because the literature gives us more insight into what
Speaker 1: was done, why it was done, and what the expectation was.
Speaker 1: In many instances, sometimes you know, there are still questions, certainly,
Speaker 1: but otherwise what are you left with. You're left with
Speaker 1: human remains, and you can sort of look at like
Speaker 1: two broad categories situations where human remains have not been
Speaker 1: manipulated by human beings and situations where they have been
Speaker 1: manipulated by human beings and added caveat. As we've discussed
Speaker 1: in the show before, and we've recently had a guest
Speaker 1: in the show to discuss this, like sometimes that's up
Speaker 1: for dispute too, with one side saying I don't think
Speaker 1: these bodies were manipulated by human beings. I think they
Speaker 1: were manipulated by predatory animals, and then the other side saying, no,
Speaker 1: this is evidence of humans manipulating their dead, and intentional
Speaker 1: manipulation of the dead has been going on for a
Speaker 1: very long time, at least since the time of the Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: We move bodies, and we've moved bodies for various purposes,
Speaker 1: and a rich global heritage of funerary practices have grown
Speaker 1: out of these two nitions. But with the oldest burials,
Speaker 1: you look at them and yeah, we just have very
Speaker 1: little to go on when we're trying to decide try
Speaker 1: and figure out like what was the intent behind this practice?
Speaker 1: Was it a practice, and what was the intent?
Speaker 3: Right? So, given those extreme caveats, what are some of
Speaker 3: these pieces of ambiguous evidence people might point to to think,
Speaker 3: I wonder if this was used for romantic purposes, for necromancy.
Speaker 1: Well, Kapcar highlights ancient archaeological sites linked to ancestor Coults
Speaker 1: as being some of the main candidates for some form
Speaker 1: of ancient necromancy in the Middle East. And I should
Speaker 1: add that he's not arguing, like one hundred percent this
Speaker 1: is necromancy. He's just saying, like, Okay, beyond what we
Speaker 1: can be certain about, what evidence could we make an
Speaker 1: argument about. A specific mention is made of the plaster
Speaker 1: covered heads of cuttle Hook dating back to seventy five
Speaker 1: hundred to fifty seven hundred BCE. We've mentioned this place
Speaker 1: on the show before, specifically in our Invention episodes on
Speaker 1: the coffin, the Toilet, and the Mirror, as well as
Speaker 1: our stuff to Blow your Mind episodes on brain and
Speaker 1: head theft. Because there does seem to be some sort
Speaker 1: of ritual removal of the head here.
Speaker 3: Well, let's zero in on the example of plastered human
Speaker 3: skulls from the ancient fertile Crescent to see what we
Speaker 3: can figure out from them. A rob I've attached a
Speaker 3: picture for you to look at here. This is a
Speaker 3: famous plastered skull from I think dates given are sometimes
Speaker 3: nine thousand or nine thousand, five hundred years ago. This
Speaker 3: is sometimes known as the Jericho skull. It is one
Speaker 3: of the skulls recovered from the tell or the mound
Speaker 3: of the ancient settlement of Jericho. And this is from
Speaker 3: the Neolithic period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is quite intriguing to look at because again
Speaker 1: you have a human skull, but it has been covered
Speaker 1: in plaster in a way to sort of it seems like,
Speaker 1: to recreate the flesh of the dead. And then we
Speaker 1: have what I believe these are shells that have been
Speaker 1: placed in where the eyes would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So there are multiple artifacts of this type
Speaker 3: from the ancient Levant and some from Turkey, from again
Speaker 3: the site of Chattelhuyuk. And essentially what these are real
Speaker 3: human skulls, sometimes without the mandible, so without the lower jaw,
Speaker 3: filled in with earth or plaster, and then covered on
Speaker 3: the outside in plaster at least on the front, and
Speaker 3: decorated with individual facial features. So as you said, Rob,
Speaker 3: seashells for eyes, they might be clam shells or cowie shells,
Speaker 3: some kind of shells, marine shells to simulate eyeballs, and
Speaker 3: then plaster facial structure, so maybe even like eyelids, overlapping
Speaker 3: the seashells in a way, and of course painting on
Speaker 3: the outside, so hair and eyebrows and mustaches and so
Speaker 3: forth would be painted on the plaster. I was actually
Speaker 3: watching an interview with a curator at the British Museum.
Speaker 3: Coincident only another in the series Curator's Corner, which I
Speaker 3: mentioned in Part one of this series for unrelated reasons.
Speaker 3: That was just an interview with an author named Irving Finkel,
Speaker 3: who we were reading a paper from that was about
Speaker 3: ancient Mesopotamian exorcism practices. This is an interview with a
Speaker 3: curator from the British Museum named Alexandra Fletcher about the
Speaker 3: Jericho skull, and she opines that the Jericho skull, the
Speaker 3: one you're looking at here, Rob is probably the oldest
Speaker 3: example of portraiture in the British Museum's collection because of
Speaker 3: the assumption that it was made to resemble a specific person,
Speaker 3: though we don't know that we don't know for sure,
Speaker 3: but these skulls are usually assumed to have been made
Speaker 3: to resemble the person the skull belonged to in life.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense, right. I mean, if you're gonna do
Speaker 1: a plasters sculpture of someone and you have their skull
Speaker 1: on hand, like there you go, that's the perfect foundation
Speaker 1: upon which to create your art.
Speaker 3: And there's an interesting scientific and technological parallel to this
Speaker 3: that comes up in a second. So Fletcher goes into
Speaker 3: describing some work analysis work that has been done on
Speaker 3: the Jericho skull. She says, as background, he was part
Speaker 3: of a group of seven people who were buried together
Speaker 3: uncovered in the nineteen fifties, and she talks about research
Speaker 3: to try to analyze the human skull underneath without damaging
Speaker 3: the plaster surrounding it, at least surrounding the front of
Speaker 3: the skull. The back is more exposed, and she says
Speaker 3: that the researchers used CT scanning to create an image
Speaker 3: of the bone underneath without hurting the plaster, and that
Speaker 3: revealed some interesting stuff. For example, this man's nose was
Speaker 3: broken sometime in life, and it shows how it had
Speaker 3: been broken and healed, and as a child, this man
Speaker 3: had had his head bound to possibly to shape the
Speaker 3: skull as the man grew up, so there was a
Speaker 3: sense in which the skull was sort of pinched, and
Speaker 3: you can see a ridge in the the skull where
Speaker 3: it was pinched that way. And this as he developed,
Speaker 3: he had slightly elongated skull for this reason.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, not an uncommon practice in certain parts
Speaker 1: of the ancient world.
Speaker 3: After death, the inside of the skull was stuffed with
Speaker 3: soil and clay, and there's a hole in the back
Speaker 3: of the skull where Fletcher says, you can still see
Speaker 3: the indentations of the fingers of the person who packed
Speaker 3: the clay into the brain cavity.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: But the interesting parallel to the ancient plaster surrounding the
Speaker 3: skull is that by analyzing the bone structure, modern scientists
Speaker 3: were able to with a good degree of accuracy, they think,
Speaker 3: reconstruct this man's face. The process is considered not exact,
Speaker 3: but pretty accurate, to the extent that Fletcher claims that
Speaker 3: if people who knew this man in life walked into
Speaker 3: the room and saw the reconstruction, she says she thinks
Speaker 3: they would instantly recognize him. So in a way, we
Speaker 3: have used modern technology to reconstructed this man's face around
Speaker 3: around the basis of the skull, much like ancient people
Speaker 3: used I guess probably memory of what this man looked
Speaker 3: like to reconstruct his face in plaster around the skull.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating though again we we we can't
Speaker 1: know one hundred percent you know why they did this,
Speaker 1: and certainly you can you can make arguments for the
Speaker 1: lifelike qualities being bestowed upon the skull in order to
Speaker 1: communicate with it. I mean, that's that's certainly the hard
Speaker 1: nechromatic angle to take on it, and and others have
Speaker 1: found this interesting as well. These skulls are brought up
Speaker 1: by Julian James in his book The Origin of Consciousness
Speaker 1: and the Breakdown of the Biicameral Mind as being you know,
Speaker 1: one of the many different bits of evidence or alleged
Speaker 1: evidence from the ancient world that he uses to back
Speaker 1: up this this hypothesis of the bicameral mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he probably is leaning heavily on the interpretation that
Speaker 3: people talked to these skulls, which again I want to
Speaker 3: really emphasize, like we don't know that all we have
Speaker 3: are the artifacts. There are not there's not literature describing
Speaker 3: how these skulls were used in the ancient world, so
Speaker 3: we just don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know if they spoke to the skulls.
Speaker 1: For the most I mean, we don't know if the
Speaker 1: skull We assume the skulls did not answer, though Jane's
Speaker 1: would argue that they possibly did. And yes, if Julian
Speaker 1: Jane's hypothesis was correct, that would impact everything we've been
Speaker 1: discussing about in terms of necromancy, because it would mean that, yes,
Speaker 1: there here is a neurological way that the dead not
Speaker 1: only could speak to human beings but spoke to them
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. Go back and listen to our
Speaker 1: old episodes on his hypothesis if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about that. But yeah, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: did they just simply recreate these faces in order to
Speaker 1: honor them, to remember them, and if they were speaking
Speaker 1: to them, like we can sort of imagine like a
Speaker 1: broad scale a spectrum of possible necromancy, you know, and
Speaker 1: there's you know, there are certainly versions of this interpretation
Speaker 1: in which they might have been speaking to these skulls,
Speaker 1: but we're not actually seeking knowledge from the dead that's right.
Speaker 3: So I want to get deeper into that in a minute.
Speaker 3: But in a way, this connects to what I thought
Speaker 3: was an interesting little side comment that this British Museum
Speaker 3: researcher Alexander Fletcher makes in this interview where she just
Speaker 3: kind of says that, you know, the longer you work
Speaker 3: with work with these skulls, do research on them, especially
Speaker 3: maybe from the you know, the reconstruction of the face,
Speaker 3: the more you come to see the skulls not just
Speaker 3: as an artifact but as a person. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 3: maybe I am over interpreting, but that seems perhaps revealing
Speaker 3: about the effect they might have had on the people
Speaker 3: who originally made them as well. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 3: come back to the idea of adding some sort of
Speaker 3: complications to the idea of necromancy or divination through the
Speaker 3: dead as a coherent and discreet practice. So I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this, and I was thinking about how in
Speaker 3: a lot of these early settlements where these plaster skulls
Speaker 3: are found, you know, the settlements with permanent structures like
Speaker 3: Chattlehoo Yuck, which you mentioned in Jericho, there are other
Speaker 3: interesting features about how the dead were dealt with as well.
Speaker 3: Not just the creation of plaster skulls, but in these settlements,
Speaker 3: it seems sometimes the bodies of the dead were buried
Speaker 3: inside people's houses. So maybe your grandparents' bones might not
Speaker 3: be often a cemetery somewhere else that you go and
Speaker 3: visit from time to time, but right in the house
Speaker 3: with you, maybe buried under the floor or under your bed. Again,
Speaker 3: we don't know for sure why they did this. All
Speaker 3: kinds of specs abounds. In some cases, it looks like
Speaker 3: the bodies might have been removed elsewhere for the flesh
Speaker 3: to rot off the bones or be picked off the bones.
Speaker 3: Maybe the bones were defleshed somewhere else and then maybe
Speaker 3: brought back inside the house and then they would live
Speaker 3: under the floor, under your bed or something. But these
Speaker 3: are also places where we encounter plastered skulls. So it
Speaker 3: just seems it seems possible to me that if the
Speaker 3: skull had some kind of significance as as a conduit
Speaker 3: for communication with the dead, I wonder if it wasn't
Speaker 3: a special, discrete, transactional event ritual like we've been talking
Speaker 3: about in some of these Greek stories. You know where
Speaker 3: you go to the oracle and you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: like it being a special event. I wonder if it's
Speaker 3: more like just a kind of continuous belief that, yes,
Speaker 3: Grandma is still here with us, she's in the house,
Speaker 3: she lives with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can easily imagine that that being
Speaker 1: the case. Again, it's not too far away from sort
Speaker 1: of the mild background supernatural ideas that many of us
Speaker 1: may may dabble in, you know, like to think about
Speaker 1: a deceased love one being nearby, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it is something that a lot of us probably due
Speaker 1: to some degree without even being on the level of
Speaker 1: like I believe in ghosts, you know.
Speaker 3: And so if the situation were something more like that,
Speaker 3: to the extent that you would seek advice from your
Speaker 3: grandparent in this context, I wonder if it would give
Speaker 3: kind of the wrong impression to call that necromancy, because again,
Speaker 3: of the all the stories we have in which the
Speaker 3: necromancy is usually more a like I was saying, a discrete,
Speaker 3: transactional kind of event, ritual versus something that is just
Speaker 3: intimate and continuous in part of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so many of these stories, ancient and modern. To
Speaker 1: pick necromancy as kind of an extreme thing, you do
Speaker 1: you know, when when other attempts to remedy a situation
Speaker 1: have not worked, that's when you seek out the necromantic solution.
Speaker 3: But then again, just to emphasize how little we know
Speaker 3: for sure, there could be totally different explanations as well.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe burying the bones in the house and
Speaker 3: putting a plaster face over your ancestor skull, maybe that
Speaker 3: was just merely a form of honoring and remembering people,
Speaker 3: just like you might I don't know, have a photo
Speaker 3: of a dead relative on the wall today or something
Speaker 3: buried with them. You know, we miss our ancestor who
Speaker 3: has passed on, So maybe we keep the bones or
Speaker 3: plaster the skull in a way under the house or
Speaker 3: in the house in a way of remembering them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so certainly these are not neutral skulls. These
Speaker 1: are skulls that are conceivably connected to loved ones. But still,
Speaker 1: like even like human understanding and appreciation of skulls is
Speaker 1: kind of complex because they take on all these symbolic meanings,
Speaker 1: but then they're also there's also this sort of like
Speaker 1: coolness to the skull that has the same to exist
Speaker 1: for a long time. And you know, we get into
Speaker 1: this with other skull based on traditions and artifacts as well,
Speaker 1: is discussed in their recent either recently rerun or about
Speaker 1: to be rerun episode where I interviewed Brian Hoggart about
Speaker 1: anti witchcraft precautions, some of which involved putting skulls, particularly
Speaker 1: horse skulls, in the foundation of a building. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of it's just kind of like, well, horse skulls
Speaker 1: are really interesting looking. They don't look like horses, but
Speaker 1: yet they are horses, and horses have this important place
Speaker 1: in human lives. So yeah, there are number of different
Speaker 1: ways you can go in and try and figure out
Speaker 1: like why was this important?
Speaker 3: Right, So there's just so much like we don't know
Speaker 3: anybody who has too confident or too certain a theory
Speaker 3: about what these what these remains meant, and how they
Speaker 3: were used. I think you should be highly skeptical of that.
Speaker 3: But I do think one interesting piece of information that
Speaker 3: we can use is not from the ancient world itself,
Speaker 3: but just from looking at practices of veneration today by analogy,
Speaker 3: which is a totally common practice all over the world.
Speaker 1: That's right, we discussed We've discussed some of these already,
Speaker 1: at least in passing, particularly the importance of ancestor veneration
Speaker 1: in Chinese culture.
Speaker 3: Right, And so I was looking for some documentation of
Speaker 3: people today with religious practices that could be considered to
Speaker 3: include strong elements of ancestor veneration and also something that
Speaker 3: could be considered divination via deceased ancestors. And I think
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, this combination of beliefs is
Speaker 3: not especially unique or unusual. Lots of people around the
Speaker 3: world practice forms of ancestor veneration that might include some
Speaker 3: way of establishing contact with the dead or getting information
Speaker 3: or messages from them. But I wanted to find one
Speaker 3: clear example with documentation of specifics so we're not just
Speaker 3: dealing with generalities. And I came across an interesting paper
Speaker 3: looking at the Bapetti people. So this was by maur
Speaker 3: kang E k Lebaka, who is a scholar at the
Speaker 3: University of South Africa specializing in African musical arts and ethnomusicology.
Speaker 3: The paper was called the Art of Establishing and Maintaining
Speaker 3: Contact with Ancestors, a Study of Bapeti Tradition, published in
Speaker 3: the journal HTS Theological Studies in the year twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: So the Bupeti people mostly live within northern South Africa,
Speaker 3: and Lebaca, synthesizing the work of some previous ethnographers, describes
Speaker 3: a common view of ancestors among the Bupeti people. Again,
Speaker 3: same caveat with all of the examples we've talked about,
Speaker 3: beliefs are not usually universal within a culture. All you
Speaker 3: can do is describe commonly found beliefs. He says, first
Speaker 3: of all, in the words of a scholar named Mibiti,
Speaker 3: there is a widespread belief in many African traditional religions
Speaker 3: that quote, death does not annihilate life, and the departed
Speaker 3: continue to exist in the hereafter, So the dead or
Speaker 3: not gone, they remain spiritually alive in some sense. Also,
Speaker 3: Lebaca says that the character of ancestors is believed to
Speaker 3: remain fundamentally unchanged since they were alive. Dead ancestors go
Speaker 3: on existing. They remain themselves in good and bad ways,
Speaker 3: so they can protect and advise their descendants. But they
Speaker 3: are also not like perfect, perfected, ethereal beings. They're like us,
Speaker 3: and they are like they were in life, so also
Speaker 3: prone to jealousy and motivations of that sort. He says,
Speaker 3: the spirits of ancestors have the power to affect the
Speaker 3: fates of the living, and this can be for good
Speaker 3: or for ill. Their behavior toward the living depends largely
Speaker 3: on if they are properly honored and venerated, and Lebaca
Speaker 3: argues that veneration is different from worship. Veneration is more
Speaker 3: like the respect that the young are expected to give
Speaker 3: to their elders, except extended beyond the boundary of death,
Speaker 3: and does have special rituals involved. He says ancestral spirits
Speaker 3: guard and enforce morality within the family and prevent feuds
Speaker 3: and conflicts between living members of the family. This is
Speaker 3: mentioned later in the article, but it's worth noting that
Speaker 3: ancestors are believed to be powerful and can cause supernatural
Speaker 3: outcomes to affect people, but they're not omnipotent. They can't
Speaker 3: do anything. Lebacca says that sometimes but petty ancestors need
Speaker 3: to be contacted, need to be communicated with, and he
Speaker 3: says there are a couple of main ways to establish contact.
Speaker 3: There are these communal music and dance ceremonies known as
Speaker 3: the malopo ritual, and that appeases the ancestral spirits, but
Speaker 3: there is also a way of seeking help of traditional healers,
Speaker 3: especially with the use of divination bones. Now, I want
Speaker 3: to note that, as far as I could tell, these
Speaker 3: are not the bones of ancestors. The paper doesn't address
Speaker 3: this question directly. It seemed to me, based on a
Speaker 3: photo included in the paper and the fact that it
Speaker 3: was not specified otherwise, that these would probably be normal
Speaker 3: kind of bones that would be used in practices of osteomancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in other instances of bones being used
Speaker 1: as essentially, you know, dies of some sort, that they've
Speaker 1: always been animal bones. I don't remember off hand an
Speaker 1: example of them being human bones, but it may exist elsewhere.
Speaker 3: I only specify that because we were just talking about
Speaker 3: examples of bones being kept like within the houses of
Speaker 3: the living, So I think we're not talking about ancestors
Speaker 3: bones here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you're right. The would assurely specified if
Speaker 1: that was the case.
Speaker 3: So Lebaca in this paper includes a number of interviews
Speaker 3: with traditional healers, one of whom describes that direct communication
Speaker 3: between healers and their own ancestors happens through music and
Speaker 3: through dreams, and that the purpose of the use of
Speaker 3: music and groups singing in ritual contact with ancestors is
Speaker 3: quote to create harmony between the living and the ancestors.
Speaker 3: And I thought that was interesting because it reminds me
Speaker 3: of the way that, of course singing can be used
Speaker 3: to create a sense of togetherness among the living alone,
Speaker 3: you know, just like a a group of people singing together.
Speaker 3: I think almost everybody will know what I'm talking about
Speaker 3: when I say the way that creates this weird sense
Speaker 3: of emergent harmony and sort of group identity. And so
Speaker 3: maybe by inviting the dead to be a part of
Speaker 3: that as well, you're sort of bringing them to the
Speaker 3: table in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: But this paper used a naturalistic approach of observing malopo
Speaker 3: rituals and interviewing traditional healers about the function of ancestor
Speaker 3: veneration in ba Petti society. And there's one story recounted
Speaker 3: in the paper, told by a healer that that goes
Speaker 3: basically as follows. I'll do a shorter summary the healer
Speaker 3: before she was a traditional healer, she had been sick
Speaker 3: and had experienced trouble sleeping, and then she had a
Speaker 3: theme of a man who gave her a plastic bag
Speaker 3: full of divination bones, and so she went to her
Speaker 3: Christian church to find out what to do, and they
Speaker 3: gave her some instructions of things she could do, but
Speaker 3: she did not follow the instructions and started having encounters
Speaker 3: with snakes, like there was a snake in her pillowcase
Speaker 3: one night, and then the encounters got worse. She and
Speaker 3: her husband encountered a much bigger snake. So she and
Speaker 3: her husband went to visit a traditional healer and he
Speaker 3: used divination bones to discover that her grandfather had been
Speaker 3: a traditional healer himself, and he wanted her to become
Speaker 3: a healer as well, and the illness, the insomnia, and
Speaker 3: the snakes were signs to push her onto this path.
Speaker 3: So in her story, she accepted the call became a healer,
Speaker 3: and after her training she came home and was welcomed
Speaker 3: back with a malopo ritual and the snakes and the
Speaker 3: pain and the insomnia were gone. There are also other
Speaker 3: stories included here of health and frightening. Experience is brought
Speaker 3: on by ancestors to sort of pressure the living descendants
Speaker 3: to follow their advice and Lebaca this is not a
Speaker 3: point Lebacca raises in the paper, but I just happen
Speaker 3: to note that in the cases documented in this study,
Speaker 3: the communication with dead ancestors sought with the help of
Speaker 3: healers does not provide information about like objective future outcomes
Speaker 3: such as you know what will happen in the future,
Speaker 3: who's going to ascend to the throne, who's going to
Speaker 3: win the war, like we talked about in some of
Speaker 3: these ancient examples. Rather, it seems to be providing the
Speaker 3: ancestor's personal perspective. So in this case of divination, it's
Speaker 3: it has less of a prophetic quality than in some
Speaker 3: of the like, especially the fictional accounts, and seems more
Speaker 3: to me like it's focused on seeking the ancestors advice,
Speaker 3: like it allows the person to understand the ways that
Speaker 3: the ancestor is influencing their life for good or for ill,
Speaker 3: and kind of the same way a chat with a
Speaker 3: living elder might provide both personal advice of things that
Speaker 3: they think you should do with your life, but also
Speaker 3: explanations of why and how the elder is treating you
Speaker 3: the way they.
Speaker 1: Are, yeah, and sort of serving to bring the current
Speaker 1: generation in line with past generations and the will and
Speaker 1: the expectations of ancestors. This reminds me of how in
Speaker 1: certain analysis I've read of traditional Chinese ancestor generation that
Speaker 1: you could think of it as a kind of structural completeness,
Speaker 1: that the family unit is not just a thing that exists,
Speaker 1: you know, with borders and a certain headcount in the present,
Speaker 1: but it is a thing that exists in the present
Speaker 1: and stretching back through the past, and therefore like being
Speaker 1: in line with the will of ancestors is about like
Speaker 1: keeping the structure sound and making sure that everything is
Speaker 1: lined up and has this structural completeness, which I think
Speaker 1: can be a slightly alien concept to many of us,
Speaker 1: especially if you tend to sort of view like the
Speaker 1: family is a thing that exists solely in the present.
Speaker 1: Maybe it sinks back a little bit in time, but
Speaker 1: is not deeply rooted in the past.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it seems to me to highlight how culturally
Speaker 3: variable the idea of the family is, like what constitutes
Speaker 3: the family and as especially as like a functional unit
Speaker 3: still having an effect on all members within.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But so, anyway, to look at a few assessments from
Speaker 3: this paper, Lebacca says that there's a common belief among
Speaker 3: people of the Bipetti society that the main thing ancestors
Speaker 3: want is to be remembered and respected by their descendants.
Speaker 3: And if the living faithfully remember and venerate their ancestors,
Speaker 3: they're going to be blessed with good health, healthy livestock
Speaker 3: and crops, good weather, and so forth. And sometimes for
Speaker 3: a healing to take place, a healer will have to
Speaker 3: consult the spirits of ancestors directly to find out what
Speaker 3: to do. Another interesting thing he notes is that he
Speaker 3: says bepetti often feel that it is inappropriate to approach
Speaker 3: their supreme deity or God directly, and instead would use
Speaker 3: their ancestral spirits as sort of intermediaries or emissaries between
Speaker 3: themselves and God. So I thought this was an interesting
Speaker 3: layer of perspective that gives us, I think, a more
Speaker 3: nuanced view of what it means to be in contact
Speaker 3: and communication with the dead. Because here's one case where
Speaker 3: people today certainly do use rituals such as communal music
Speaker 3: and dance and consultation with healers using divination bones to
Speaker 3: get in contact with the dead. But it does not
Speaker 3: seem to me, at least not in the cases documented
Speaker 3: in this study, to usually be for the purpose of
Speaker 3: like knowing the future in advance, but rather for the
Speaker 3: purpose of gaining perspective on the present and the past.
Speaker 3: You establish communication with the dead in order to receive
Speaker 3: wisdom and to receive advice, and to find out what
Speaker 3: your ancestors want you to do or expect you to do,
Speaker 3: and to find out how the ancestor's advice and desires
Speaker 3: are connected to the trials and other things you are
Speaker 3: experiencing in your daily life. And this really got me
Speaker 3: thinking because it made me think that actually, even in
Speaker 3: a lot of the cases we've already been looking at
Speaker 3: from you know, accounts from the ancient world and so forth,
Speaker 3: a lot of the cases of divination through spirits of
Speaker 3: the dead that we looked at did not consist of
Speaker 3: a person seeking to know the future in the kind
Speaker 3: of you know, the fictional sorcerer sense we think about,
Speaker 3: where like somebody wants ultimate power and so they want
Speaker 3: to know what happens ahead of time to exploit that.
Speaker 3: In Instead, it very often seemed to involve a much
Speaker 3: more personal, intimate, interactive kind of knowledge, like knowledge useful
Speaker 3: for the exorcism of an unwanted ghost, or knowledge useful
Speaker 3: to get advice or you know, wisdom from an ancestor
Speaker 3: or other knowledge of that kind of personal sort. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean in a way, it almost puts
Speaker 1: things more in line with this idea that what we
Speaker 1: think of as necromancy is maybe more in line with
Speaker 1: various shamanistic practices going stretching back through various human cultures,
Speaker 1: very far back in human existence. But yeah, not the
Speaker 1: but a lot of like smaller practices aimed at sort
Speaker 1: of realigning your life, things that almost could be thought
Speaker 1: of as having a therapeutic property to them. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like something feels out of line in my life.
Speaker 1: I need to get right with the ancestors. I need
Speaker 1: to touch base with the ancestors in one form or another.
Speaker 3: But that makes me feel like maybe we should come
Speaker 3: back and further explore the other side of the scale
Speaker 3: as well. If that's a view of divination seeking communication
Speaker 3: with the dead as a kind of intimate, wholesome, integrated
Speaker 3: thing within people's lives and culture that helps provide the
Speaker 3: perspective of ancestors and wisdom. There are also culturally very
Speaker 3: different views that would place it back in the category
Speaker 3: of like a special extreme transactional kind of event ritual.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in this we're gonna we've been talking about
Speaker 1: sort of bottom up necromancy, necromancy or things like necromancy
Speaker 1: that are that have emerged as part of traditional practices.
Speaker 1: Now let's turn back to medieval Christian Europe and think
Speaker 1: about sort of like the top down view of a
Speaker 1: Christian hierarchy looking to stamp out necromatic practices and necromantic texts, because,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned several times already, there is this general
Speaker 1: attitude in medieval Christian Europe, again very top down, not
Speaker 1: talking about like traditional pre Christian beliefs that are still
Speaker 1: resonating among the various peoples of Europe and various peoples
Speaker 1: under the control of Christian forces, but rather this top
Speaker 1: down view that first of all, the dead cannot be
Speaker 1: communicated with, and they should not be communicated with. If
Speaker 1: you attempt necromancy, you may well speak with something, but
Speaker 1: it will be a demon rather than a ghost, and
Speaker 1: so only ill can come of it. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: necromancy and necromatic texts certainly existed and were circulated. At times,
Speaker 1: they were greatly feared by the Church, as pointed out
Speaker 1: by Richard Kikeffer in nineteen ninety sevens Forbidden Rights when
Speaker 1: Franciscan Friar Bernard de Lussius was accused by the Holy
Speaker 1: Inquisition of using necromancy against the Pope in thirteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: he was cleared of the charge, but he was still
Speaker 1: sent to prison for merely possessing a book of alleged necromancy.
Speaker 3: Simon and I'd rather see you dead.
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean that the movie you're referencing does does
Speaker 1: present this various top down view of forbidden knowledge and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: We're talking about The Devil Rides Out by the Way,
Speaker 3: where Christopher Lee's character like, Oh, it's okay for him
Speaker 3: to know about all of the forbidden magical rituals, but
Speaker 3: it's not okay for his friend Simon to know about them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean within one of these these cultural situations,
Speaker 1: it's always okay for someone to know about them, to
Speaker 1: know about these things, and those are the ones who
Speaker 1: get to tell everyone else that they're not allowed to
Speaker 1: know about them. The witch hunters get all the cool texts. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Fears and accusations of clergy possessing and or using necromatic
Speaker 1: writings continued afterwards. However, Kei Keffer discusses these books as
Speaker 1: concerning quote explicitly demonic magic as well, and this seems
Speaker 1: to have been the case during the Middle Ages as well,
Speaker 1: where sometimes something described necromancy did involve divination via the dead,
Speaker 1: but other times it was used interchangeably with demonic magic
Speaker 1: by most theological definitions. However, communication with demons and demonic
Speaker 1: divination would not be the same as merely speaking with
Speaker 1: the dead, unless you're getting into this again this very
Speaker 1: specific Christian caveat about the distinction or the lack of
Speaker 1: a distinction between the two. Ki Keffer writes, quote One
Speaker 1: possible reason for the conflation of these terms and concepts
Speaker 1: was the widespread assumption that when one engaged in necromancy
Speaker 1: in the original sense conjuring the spirits of the deceased,
Speaker 1: the spirits which in fact appeared were demons in the
Speaker 1: forms of the dead. And the biblical example here that
Speaker 1: is often summoned up to support this is the shade
Speaker 1: of Samuel being conjured by the Witch of Indore, and
Speaker 1: it is said that this is not really the spirit
Speaker 1: of Samuel, this is a demon in the guise of
Speaker 1: his spirit.
Speaker 3: I don't think the Bible says that. I think in
Speaker 3: the Bible it is pretty much understood to be Samuel.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but again you get into like what are
Speaker 1: the official interpretations of a given religious text? Right, Yeah, Still,
Speaker 1: there was discussion of pure necromancy in various texts. A
Speaker 1: couple of examples are brought up here. There's the Rowlinson
Speaker 1: Necromatic Manuscript, as it's popularly known. This is a Latin
Speaker 1: and Middle English collection of texts on magic and divination,
Speaker 1: including the invocation of angels as well as the dead.
Speaker 1: Its name for Richard Rawlinson, an eighteenth century clergy member
Speaker 1: and collector of rare books and manuscripts. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: contains instructions for necromantic magic, as does the so called
Speaker 1: Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, a fifteenth century Godick Grimour.
Speaker 1: Instructions from the Munich Manual via Keith Keffer involve the
Speaker 1: creation of multiple magic circles, a sword in a ring.
Speaker 1: And you can use these rights to speak to the dead, certainly,
Speaker 1: but also you can make a living person appear dead.
Speaker 1: You can also make a living person fall in love
Speaker 1: with you, and many other things. M Now, in one section,
Speaker 1: kik Effer adds some interesting ideas about the idea of
Speaker 1: necromancy and nonsense. We often assume that everyone considering necromancy
Speaker 1: in medieval times was either an eager believer or a
Speaker 1: fearful inquisitor when it came to this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So he writes the following quote. One might add to
Speaker 1: this that it is not altogether anachronistic to see the
Speaker 1: notion of necromancy as nonsense. As it's at its most playful,
Speaker 1: it was a deliberate violation of sense, a fantasy of illusion,
Speaker 1: perhaps intended more for imaginative entertainment than for actual use.
Speaker 1: Yet the bound between sense and nonsense are rarely quite stable,
Speaker 1: and themes that seem to an outsider absolutely nonsensical could
Speaker 1: be taken in deadly earnest by some observers within the culture.
Speaker 1: And the deadly deadly earnest observers in this particular case
Speaker 1: he would be referring to, would be like the witch
Speaker 1: hunters and so forth, the demonology of theorists that brought
Speaker 1: about so much actual, real misery in the world.
Speaker 3: Ah, So he's exploring the possibility that it was the
Speaker 3: inquisitors and so forth who were taking the concept more
Speaker 3: literally than the people who practiced it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think maybe suggesting that there is again
Speaker 1: kind of a it's not just necromancy and non necromancy.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a broad spectrum of various beliefs, practices, rights,
Speaker 1: but also stories, legends, myths that make concerns speaking with
Speaker 1: the dead, that are understood to varying degree within a
Speaker 1: given group to not be reality, you know, to in
Speaker 1: the same way that myth is somewhere between reality and fiction.
Speaker 1: You know that some of these traditions hold that place.
Speaker 1: But then you have someone come in with an agenda,
Speaker 1: with a violent agenda, and they're here to stamp out
Speaker 1: practices that are a threat to the church, to stamp
Speaker 1: out individuals that are a threat to the church. Well,
Speaker 1: then they can take any of these things and use
Speaker 1: them to support their case. Now for a little more
Speaker 1: detail on where the church stood on necromancy. And again
Speaker 1: you're dealing with we're dealing with with centuries here, we're
Speaker 1: dealing with with with all sorts of individuals coming in
Speaker 1: with different ideas. So this is not presented to be
Speaker 1: like the word on necromancy. But I thought it would
Speaker 1: be interesting to turn to the famous writings of Thomas Aquinas,
Speaker 1: who lived twelve twenty five through twelve seventy four. This
Speaker 1: is from the Suma Theologica, or the Summer of Theology.
Speaker 1: The book covers a great deal of ground, but it
Speaker 1: does mention necromancy in a few places and gets to
Speaker 1: the meat of what it was thought to be at
Speaker 1: the time in terms of divination. So this is from
Speaker 1: a translation of the Simo theological quote. All divinations seek
Speaker 1: to acquire fore knowledge of future events by means of
Speaker 1: some council and help of a demon who is either
Speaker 1: expressly called upon to give his help or else thrust
Speaker 1: himself in secretly in order to tell certain future things
Speaker 1: unknown to men but known to him the demon in
Speaker 1: such manners as to have been explained in Isaiah fifty
Speaker 1: seven to three.
Speaker 3: The statement almost seems like a direct argument against what
Speaker 3: we were just talking about with respect to the subtlety
Speaker 3: and complex range of different kinds of communication with the
Speaker 3: dead that might take place, especially in a culture that
Speaker 3: practices common forms of ancestor veneration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like, clearly we're dealing with a situation
Speaker 1: where it is not thought that there is any room
Speaker 1: for this sort of thing within within the Christian world
Speaker 1: and anything outside of the Christian world, that even looks
Speaker 1: like this is probably against the rules.
Speaker 3: It's always to know the future, and it's always a demon.
Speaker 1: Yes, So Aquinas continues to in states when demons are
Speaker 1: expressly invoked, they are wont to foretell the future in
Speaker 1: many ways. Sometimes they offer themselves to human sight and
Speaker 1: hearing by mock apparitions in order to foretell the future,
Speaker 1: and this species is called prusta digitation because man's eyes
Speaker 1: are blindfolded. Sometimes they make use of dreams, and this
Speaker 1: is called divination by dreams. Sometimes they employ apparitions or
Speaker 1: utterances of the dead, and this species is called necromancy.
Speaker 1: For as Isidore observes, in Greek, necron means dead and
Speaker 1: mantilla divination, because after certain incantations and the sprinkling of blood,
Speaker 1: the dead seem to come to life, to divine and
Speaker 1: to answer questions. So he goes on to discuss other
Speaker 1: forms of divination. Divination, he says, which is practiced without
Speaker 1: express invocation of demons, occurs in two forms, one by
Speaker 1: observing things in nature, and the other by observing things
Speaker 1: due to human action, like rolling dice or flipping through
Speaker 1: a book. He writes again in translation, accordingly, it is
Speaker 1: clear that there are three kinds of divination. The first
Speaker 1: is when the demons are invoked openly. This comes under
Speaker 1: the head of necromancy. The second is merely an observation
Speaker 1: of the disposition or movement of some other being, and
Speaker 1: this belongs to augury, while the third consists in doing
Speaker 1: something in order to discover the occult, and this belongs
Speaker 1: to Sordolach. Under each of these, many others are contained
Speaker 1: as explained above. And he says, in all the afore said,
Speaker 1: there is the same general, but not the same special
Speaker 1: character of sin. For it is much more grievous to
Speaker 1: invoke the demons than to do things that deserve the
Speaker 1: demons enter fear. And so he's saying, look, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to do let's say you're trying to speak to
Speaker 1: the spirit of the dead, and a demon intercepts the call,
Speaker 1: as they always will, and then manipulates you through that communication,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. Like, that's bad, you've messed up, But
Speaker 1: you haven't messed up as badly if you had gone
Speaker 1: out and done a demonic ritual and said, hey, demons,
Speaker 1: I need you to come here because we have things
Speaker 1: to talk about. Now. I did find it interesting that
Speaker 1: Aquinas stresses that merely speaking to a demon or inquiring
Speaker 1: of the truth from a demon is not unlawful, in
Speaker 1: part because Christ spoke to the demon legion. He spoke
Speaker 1: to the demons that were in the swine or were
Speaker 1: driven into the swine. However, it is unlawful to invoke
Speaker 1: a demon. So by this classification, I would think, if
Speaker 1: a demon comes up to you and is like, hey, so,
Speaker 1: you have every right to go suck back, but it
Speaker 1: is unlawful to summon the demon and then go suck right.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, if you encounter a demon, you can talk
Speaker 3: to you, probably you can argue with it or whatever,
Speaker 3: but you can't say like, hey, demons, if any demon
Speaker 3: is out there, come debate me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you're Martin Luther and the demons
Speaker 1: show up, you can cuss at them, throw things at them,
Speaker 1: and drive them away, right, that's not demonic witchcraft or
Speaker 1: what have you. But if you summon them, I guess
Speaker 1: even if you summon them to cuss at them, like,
Speaker 1: that's bad.
Speaker 3: I would assume so. But especially if you summon them
Speaker 3: in order to gain power from them, that's bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Aquina says, quote, Now, it is one thing
Speaker 1: to question a demon who comes to us of his
Speaker 1: own accord, and it is lawful to do so at
Speaker 1: times for the good of others, especially when he can
Speaker 1: be compelled by the power of God to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: and another to invoke a demon in order to gain
Speaker 1: from him knowledge of things hidden from us. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems to me like that opens up
Speaker 1: a great area. Are like, are you just could you
Speaker 1: put yourself in a position where you're just in the
Speaker 1: right place to encounter demons, so you're not quite summoning them,
Speaker 1: but you're like, you're not baiting the demon, but you
Speaker 1: are hanging out in a place or a position where
Speaker 1: they might show up.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like, I'm gonna just keep moving my
Speaker 3: arms this way, and if they happen to touch a
Speaker 3: Wiji board, that's its problem, not mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm or Yeah, I'm going to hang out in
Speaker 1: this this this haunted crypt and we'll just see what happens. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also mentions that divination by the stars is fine
Speaker 1: so long as you're not invoking a demon. So again,
Speaker 1: this is just a snapshot at some of the top
Speaker 1: down ideas about speaking to the dead and why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do it, and ultimately a little bit of demonology
Speaker 1: splashed in there as well. But but you know, there's
Speaker 1: so much that would have been going on in different
Speaker 1: cultures throughout the centuries covered by the Middle Ages here.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are all sorts of traditions involving, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking to the dead, conjuring the dead at crossroads and
Speaker 1: so forth. And then there's so many on top of that,
Speaker 1: there's so many different traditions, legends, ghost stories, etc. That
Speaker 1: deal with this sort of thing that again may not
Speaker 1: have a like literal role within the culture saying this
Speaker 1: is how you speak to the dead, but like here
Speaker 1: is an idea of speaking to the dead, and it
Speaker 1: can still have a great deal of importance within a
Speaker 1: given culture.
Speaker 3: Now, seeing these different views of communicating with the dead
Speaker 3: side by side, it really highlights how one, I think
Speaker 3: could easily be mistaken for the other by an unsympathetic observer,
Speaker 3: like somebody who's got a particular theological point of view
Speaker 3: and who looks into a culture one of the many
Speaker 3: cultures that practice's forms of ancestor veneration that may involve
Speaker 3: some type of ritual of consulting with the dead, with
Speaker 3: the ancestors seeking their wisdom or getting information about how
Speaker 3: they're continue to affect your life like that, an unsympathetic
Speaker 3: observer looks in on a culture and sees that and
Speaker 3: they say, oh, they're doing witchcraft in order to get
Speaker 3: power from the dead so that they can like no
Speaker 3: events in advance and you know, and manipulate people. It
Speaker 3: seems very clear how that kind of mistaken impression could
Speaker 3: be formed, And I wonder if that gives rise to
Speaker 3: some legends of necromantic practices that probably weren't ever actually practiced,
Speaker 3: that were just like unsympathetic observer looking in on ancestor
Speaker 3: veneration of some form in another culture and saying like, ah,
Speaker 3: they're they're consulting the dead in order to do something malicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. And then at the same time, I mean
Speaker 1: you have things like the veneration of saints with then
Speaker 1: you know Catholic Christian traditions that you know, you could
Speaker 1: make an argument for sort of you know, scratching the
Speaker 1: same itch. So you know, a lot of this falls
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this depends on who's judging,
Speaker 1: who's laying out the laws, and who's saying what is
Speaker 1: acceptable and what is not acceptable when we consider individuals
Speaker 1: and generations that came before us.
Speaker 3: Do you think Aquinas was saying it's okay to talk
Speaker 3: to a demon if you didn't summon it, because like
Speaker 3: he did that one time, Like he's like, actually, that's
Speaker 3: not a problem.
Speaker 1: Well, there are so many you know, I enjoy reading
Speaker 1: about this occasionally, like getting into exactly what was thought
Speaker 1: of as correct concerning demons at various points in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, like what could they do and what could
Speaker 1: they not do in accordance with divine will? And there's
Speaker 1: some of that in Aquinas's writing, for sure, and you
Speaker 1: see that in the writings of other key individuals as well,
Speaker 1: like can they like one classic example of this we've
Speaker 1: just we've discussed multiple times is can an incubus or
Speaker 1: succubist take on a complete disguise as a beautiful human
Speaker 1: to seduce humans? And there's the ideal, No, that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be fair to the faithful. So there'll always be some
Speaker 1: sort of a tell, like duck feet or some sort
Speaker 1: of goat feed or something just so that you'll have
Speaker 1: so the faithful will have an out that you know,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of stuff like that. Can
Speaker 1: demons do miracles? And so forth?
Speaker 3: Though, I think as we discussed with the idea of
Speaker 3: the duck feed, I wonder if the idea was was
Speaker 3: really about the faithful having out or more about saying like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 3: if you did succumb to an incubus or a succubus,
Speaker 3: it's your fault because there was something there you should
Speaker 3: have noticed.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's about saying, like, you know, it wasn't unfair to you,
Speaker 3: you should have been more on the lookout.
Speaker 1: Right, And also like what would a just god allow
Speaker 1: under his domain? You know? And you know, there's of
Speaker 1: course the more pressing side of that, like why did
Speaker 1: bad things happen to good people? Why is there suffering
Speaker 1: in the world, and so forth? And that's I guess
Speaker 1: the larger concern. But then when you get into demonology,
Speaker 1: like that's a whole other area, like okay, well these
Speaker 1: demons get to run around and just do whatever. That
Speaker 1: doesn't seem right. They're like, well, no, no, no, they can
Speaker 1: do certain things. And I believe Aquinas writes that, like
Speaker 1: they are allowed to do certain things because by allowing
Speaker 1: the demons a certain amount of freedom, it actually has
Speaker 1: a positive impact on the faithful, you know, because like
Speaker 1: in having to deal with all of this demonic stuff,
Speaker 1: like it's going to end up bolstering your faith to
Speaker 1: some extent. But it's complicate. It's complicated. That's why. That's
Speaker 1: why people like Aquinas committed so many words to it.
Speaker 3: Okay, should we wrap up necromancy there?
Speaker 1: I believe we will, But you know, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there if there's an example of
Speaker 1: outright and necromancy and fiction legend and lore, or various
Speaker 1: examples of communication with spirits or ancestor veneration that you
Speaker 1: think are notable and you'd like to bring up well
Speaker 1: right in We would love to hear from you and
Speaker 1: keep discussing this topic on future editions of Listener Mail.
Speaker 1: Listener Mail publishes on Mondays and the Stuff to Blow
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Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we generally have a short form monster fact
Speaker 1: or artifact episode, and then on Fridays we set aside
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Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.
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