Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and hey, Rob and I
Speaker 2: are out this week for Fall Break, so we're bringing
Speaker 2: you a few episodes from the vault. This is part
Speaker 2: one of our series on necromancy, originally published September twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: All right, let's jump right in. My heart is made
Speaker 1: a necromancer's glass, where homeless forms and exile phantoms team,
Speaker 1: Where faces of forgotten sorrows gleam and dead despairs, archaic
Speaker 1: peer and pass gray longings of some weary heart that
Speaker 1: was possessed me, and the multiple supreme, unwildered hope and
Speaker 1: star in blazoned dream of questing armies, ancient queen and
Speaker 1: lass risen vampire like from out the wormy mold, deep
Speaker 1: in the magic mirror of my heart, behold their parish beauty,
Speaker 1: and depart and now from black Ophelia and far and cold,
Speaker 1: swimming in deathly light on charnal Sky's the enormous ghosts
Speaker 1: of bygone worlds arise.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And to continue a
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind tradition, we are disregarding the
Speaker 2: traditional Gregorian calendar and we have decided that October begins
Speaker 2: in late September. It often does for us, if you
Speaker 2: don't know, we do spooky content all October, and today
Speaker 2: is the first day of that month long festival.
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean, yeah, Halloween has already begun. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. I'm going to haunt it house
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. So it's begun. It has begun. And so
Speaker 1: we kicked off this episode. This is going to be
Speaker 1: the first of I believe two episodes. We'll see how
Speaker 1: it goes. Regarding necromancy, that was a reading from the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century poem Necromancy by the weird fiction, horror
Speaker 1: and fantasy rider Clark Ashton Smith.
Speaker 2: Now, I actually suggested this topic because I became interested
Speaker 2: in it when we were doing an episode a while back.
Speaker 2: I think it was our series on oil and Water.
Speaker 2: We were mainly focusing there on legends about how if
Speaker 2: you pour oil and water it will settle the waves,
Speaker 2: and how to some extent that is actually scientifically true.
Speaker 2: So if you haven't heard that series, go back and
Speaker 2: listen to it. It'll be a treat. But in that
Speaker 2: series I did end up going on a large digression
Speaker 2: about necromancy in the Hebrew Bible, and it got me
Speaker 2: thinking about the idea that necromancy. When people use that
Speaker 2: word today, they're almost always talking about a sort of
Speaker 2: Dungeon and Dragons sorcerer that raises the dead and commands
Speaker 2: them as a sort of shambling thrall of some sort,
Speaker 2: whereas in the traditional understanding, necromancy means something different, and
Speaker 2: it's usually a reference to the practice of divination with
Speaker 2: the help of the dead, consulting the dead for information.
Speaker 2: And that sort of gap in meanings between the popular
Speaker 2: understanding and the original understanding I thought was very interesting
Speaker 2: and maybe worth plowing into the history a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you're familiar with Dungeons and Dragons necromancers,
Speaker 1: you know that within Dungeons and Dragons, this is a
Speaker 1: magic practitioner who specializes in spells of the necromancy spell class,
Speaker 1: So things like animate Dead, finger of Death, chill Touch,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. You know, lots of undead ish
Speaker 1: magical spells and abilities, and the presentation of necromancers in
Speaker 1: D and D has of course influenced tons of fantasy
Speaker 1: and sci fi properties over the years. So there's this
Speaker 1: strong pop culture echo of the dead raising necromancer.
Speaker 2: Now, I think, aligning with the traditional understanding of necromancy,
Speaker 2: you do have a spell in Dungeons and Dragons which
Speaker 2: is speak with Dead, which is almost always used for
Speaker 2: necromancy purposes. It's like, you need to get some information
Speaker 2: out of this corpse. And despite the evil connotations of
Speaker 2: necromancy in general, I think anybody can use this spell.
Speaker 2: Like in Balder's Gate, I have my very lawful, good
Speaker 2: wizard speaking with dead most of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one of the interesting things to keep
Speaker 1: in mind about necromancy we'll probably get into this some more,
Speaker 1: is that this idea of like speaking with the dead.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like the medieval Christian experience and prohibition
Speaker 1: against this sort of thing. I kind of cast a
Speaker 1: long shadow where you know, this idea that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: attempt to speak with the dead. You don't know what
Speaker 1: we'll speak back, because speaking with the dead is not
Speaker 1: possible by the rules of laws of God, as they
Speaker 1: understood it to be, and therefore you know, it was
Speaker 1: just dangerous to even think about such a thing. So
Speaker 1: that'll be worth keeping in mind here. But the Dungis
Speaker 1: and Dragon's idea of the necromancer, of course, you're all
Speaker 1: on various traditions as well, including the discussion of necromancers
Speaker 1: in necromancy and pre existing fantasy and weird fiction, including
Speaker 1: that of Clark Ashton Smith, whose poem started off this episode.
Speaker 1: For instance, he had a story titled The Empire of
Speaker 1: the Necromancers from nineteen thirty two that involved a pair
Speaker 1: of kind of like rogue necromancers who get exiled from
Speaker 1: one kingdom, and so they go into this kingdom of
Speaker 1: this deceased kingdom of tombs and start raising up people
Speaker 1: to serve as their servants, and of course they end
Speaker 1: up rising against them. That sort of.
Speaker 2: Thing is kind of a buddy comedy.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's it's no, you're not. You don't really
Speaker 1: sympathize with these necromancers. They're awful and you're rooting for
Speaker 1: the dead to overcome them the whole time, and so
Speaker 1: it's satisfying when they do. It's also worth noting that j. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkens the Hobbit features whispers of the mysterious necromancer in Mirkwood.
Speaker 1: I think little is made out of this in the text,
Speaker 1: but I think we're to understand that this is an
Speaker 1: incarnation of the dark Lord Saarn prior to his return
Speaker 1: to Mordor, and his final incarnation is the all Seeing Eye.
Speaker 1: As to what sort of literal necromancy he might be
Speaker 1: up to in Mirkwood, I don't know that we have
Speaker 1: a clear answer on that.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I don't know if Sauron would
Speaker 2: be raising the dead to obtain information or for divinatory purposes.
Speaker 2: I think he mainly does go more in the D
Speaker 2: and D direction of like he raises what are they called,
Speaker 2: you know, the ring rays. I guess those are those
Speaker 2: are undead wraiths or revenants of some sort. They are
Speaker 2: dead kings who are brought back to do his bidding.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so that's that's necromancy and the raising the
Speaker 1: dead sense. But in terms of the speaking with the dead,
Speaker 1: I don't know that he has much to talk about.
Speaker 2: With him except like, yeah, do as I command, you
Speaker 2: kneel before Zod.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're going to be talking about several different
Speaker 1: angles regarding necromancy here. But one article that I found
Speaker 1: pretty insightful in places was this paper by the Czech
Speaker 1: academic andre J Kapcar titled the Origins of Necromancy or
Speaker 1: how we Learned to Speak to the Dead, and I
Speaker 1: thought this was pretty insightful. He points out that the
Speaker 1: ultimate roots of necromancy can be found in the socioeconomic
Speaker 1: impact of human death on individuals and communities, especially small communities.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things that I think
Speaker 1: can seem like an outrageous overstatement of the obvious at first,
Speaker 1: but as social animals, a great deal depends on the
Speaker 1: social bonds created and nurtured by individuals within a group,
Speaker 1: and when an individual dies, it potentially throws all of
Speaker 1: that into disarray unless the bonds they established in life
Speaker 1: can be carried on after their death by one or
Speaker 1: the other. So it becomes important to retain bonds of
Speaker 1: some sort with one's ancestors, which is not necessarily necromancy obviously,
Speaker 1: and even you know, to seek their guidance, which is
Speaker 1: more directly what we might think of as necromancy, but
Speaker 1: again not necessarily necromancy, which is is going to be
Speaker 1: a distinction. We'll come back to again and again.
Speaker 2: This is interesting. It gets into something I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about more in Part two than in
Speaker 2: this part, but about how some ancient descriptions of alleged
Speaker 2: necromancy practices might actually be sort of external misunderstandings of
Speaker 2: essentially ancestor cult practices, that what is actually sort of
Speaker 2: the care of one's dead ancestors as a sort of
Speaker 2: god of sorts is misinterpreted by people who don't practice
Speaker 2: the same thing with regard to their own ancestors as
Speaker 2: an attempt to get information or power from the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of that going on.
Speaker 1: We'll get into some Chinese sources here in a bit,
Speaker 1: And like, the word necromancer pops up a lot in
Speaker 1: translations of Chinese sources, and sometimes, really it seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of the time necromancer is used sort of
Speaker 1: interchangeably and elegant variation for just wizard, you know, and
Speaker 1: which can make searching for information a little bit tricky
Speaker 1: at times, because you'll see the word necromancer, but they're
Speaker 1: not really talking about anything regarding necromancy specifically. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, to your point, you end up asking questions like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a spirit medium and a necromancer.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between veneration of ancestors and necromancy. You
Speaker 1: could say it's just a personal branding issue, or it
Speaker 1: depends on which side you're standing on. If you are
Speaker 1: on the outside of that culture, particularly with a European
Speaker 1: Western European background, again kind of descended from this culture
Speaker 1: in which the idea of speaking to the dead, you know,
Speaker 1: was evil or dark in some fashion, then it's easy
Speaker 1: to level the word necromancer, which you know drips a
Speaker 1: certain amount of dread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think another important thing to understand is that
Speaker 2: especially in the Christian context, but really I think any
Speaker 2: religious context that enforces a kind of priesthood based orthodoxy,
Speaker 2: there is usually going to be more restrictions on individual
Speaker 2: practice of magic, and necromancy would be one form of that.
Speaker 2: And you know, there are other cultural contexts where it's
Speaker 2: more of a kind of magical ritual free for all,
Speaker 2: and people engage in all different kinds of practices to
Speaker 2: gain information or blessing and it's not condemned by the
Speaker 2: religious institutions.
Speaker 1: Right right, Well, anyway, to go back to CapCar here,
Speaker 1: according to him in broad strokes, necromancy covers anything that
Speaker 1: involves divination practices that involve the spirits of the dead.
Speaker 1: And I should also stress that I think he's using
Speaker 1: the term divination here as well as its textbook definition
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean knowledge about the future, but can also
Speaker 1: refer to the access of hidden knowledge, you know, the
Speaker 1: interpretation of omens and so forth. So anytime you're trying
Speaker 1: to find something out by speaking with a spirit of
Speaker 1: a dead person, then that is broadly speaking, necromancy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my understanding too, especially how it's used in
Speaker 2: the academic literature as opposed to the popular fantasy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, of course, necromancy is just a word, and
Speaker 1: he also breaks down the origins of the word as follows.
Speaker 1: So it's a seventeenth century English derivation of the Italian
Speaker 1: word necromancia, which means black magic, which comes from the
Speaker 1: Latin word necro mantia, meaning the same thing. The Latin
Speaker 1: here borrows from the pre classical Greek word necromantia, and
Speaker 1: so we have necros meaning dead or corpse, and mantia
Speaker 1: meaning divination. So we're talking about corpse divination or divination
Speaker 1: of the dead.
Speaker 2: And that's why you can see the same suffix mancy
Speaker 2: used in other forms of divination like silinomancy, you know,
Speaker 2: divination by looking at the moon and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he cites the first use of the word
Speaker 1: necromancy in this context to Oregon of Alexandria from third
Speaker 1: century CE. He is saying the following, attributing it to
Speaker 1: Simon the Magus quote, by means of ineffable a duration,
Speaker 1: I called up the soul of an immaculate boy who
Speaker 1: had been put to a violent death, and caused it
Speaker 1: to stand by me. And by its means, whatever I
Speaker 1: commanded is affected, and the soul, freed from the body,
Speaker 1: possesses the faculty of fore knowledge. Whence it is called
Speaker 1: forth for necromancy. This particular quote, it's from the Recognitions
Speaker 1: of Clement, and it looks like it's from this is
Speaker 1: mentioned in a book that he cites from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: five by Robertson Donaldson. Okay, but I guess it's important
Speaker 1: to drive home, like it's kind of like three different
Speaker 1: levels of talking about necromancy. It's like earliest if you're
Speaker 1: looking for like the roots of it, Like how far
Speaker 1: back can you go and find something that is described
Speaker 1: with the word necromancy or necromancer. How far back can
Speaker 1: you go to something that is being described that matches
Speaker 1: these prerequisites for necromancy. And then ultimately, and we'll maybe
Speaker 1: get into this later, like, what are some things in
Speaker 1: the archaeological record that you can point to and say, well,
Speaker 1: that might be something like necromancy, that might be an
Speaker 1: example of some sort of practice that involved seeking guidance
Speaker 1: or wisdom from the dead. Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, because there are a lot of artifacts that without
Speaker 2: literary sources to really explain what was done with them,
Speaker 2: you can't be sure, but they're suggestive of possible practices
Speaker 2: having to do with consulting the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, in this series, we're going to talk about examples
Speaker 2: of necromancy or alleged necromancy in different times and places
Speaker 2: throughout history. Let's see, I had some stuff today about
Speaker 2: necromancy and ancient Mesopotamia, and Rob, I know you had
Speaker 2: some stuff about in China. Do you want to do
Speaker 2: China first?
Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah, I mean it is Auto Moon festival and everything,
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll start with a Chinese example. So I
Speaker 1: guess the first thing to point out is that we
Speaker 1: should remind ourselves of the importance of ancestor veneration and
Speaker 1: Chinese traditions. And this is by no means unique to
Speaker 1: just Chinese traditions, but it is incredibly important, And I
Speaker 1: suppose we should also remind ourselves that modern and ancient
Speaker 1: people alike are capable of having multiple, even conflicting ideas
Speaker 1: concerning the dead and the possibility of an afterlife. So
Speaker 1: this may be important later on because again, in the
Speaker 1: same way that you can have someone who doesn't logically
Speaker 1: believe in ghest it doesn't logically believe you can contact
Speaker 1: the spirit world, but that same individual, you know, given
Speaker 1: certain emotional stresses, may seek out a medium and try
Speaker 1: and find some solace there that sort of thing, Or
Speaker 1: we can just sort of casually have multiple ideas about
Speaker 1: the afterlife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, while you're emphasizing the multiple ideas that
Speaker 2: can exist within a single person, of course, it's even
Speaker 2: more true of a populace across time. Like you know,
Speaker 2: asking like what did ancient Chinese people or what did
Speaker 2: ancient Mesopotamian people think about what happens after death? Is
Speaker 2: kind of like asking what do Americans think about what
Speaker 2: happens after death? I mean, you could represent you can
Speaker 2: explain views that are commonly found, that some views are
Speaker 2: going to be much more frequently believed than others. But
Speaker 2: there's no single answer to that. There are a range
Speaker 2: of beliefs, and so if you talk in generalities, you
Speaker 2: can only talk based on the sources you have, and
Speaker 2: even then that's probably only going to be talking at
Speaker 2: best about like majorities of people or some commonly held ideas,
Speaker 2: not about what everyone believed all the time.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, we're dealing with a great deal of geography, culture,
Speaker 1: and time when talking about like Chinese, even ancient Chinese
Speaker 1: concepts regarding the dead. But I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say a certain amount of guidance by and communication with
Speaker 1: is baked into the whole concept. Though the degree to
Speaker 1: which this is this angle is emphasized is going to vary.
Speaker 1: So veneration of ancestors does not equal necromancy. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean there aren't some comparisons you could make, and
Speaker 1: more to the point, it doesn't mean that there are
Speaker 1: not examples of wizards in Chinese mythology and tradition who
Speaker 1: are more expressly described as experts specialists with an ability
Speaker 1: to communicate with or facilitate communication with the dead. And
Speaker 1: by that you could classify them as quote unquote necromancers.
Speaker 1: So again, that doesn't stop so many texts from described
Speaker 1: wizards as necromancers, even though they're not necessarily doing anything
Speaker 1: that is necromantic.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and to people who listen to us often,
Speaker 2: this should be obvious. But maybe it's worth saying that
Speaker 2: when we use the term necromancer, we are not applying
Speaker 2: any more attaching any moral ideas to that. It just
Speaker 2: means literally somebody who's getting information from the dead, not
Speaker 2: that that's good or bad. Whatever older sources might be
Speaker 2: likely to I don't know, has some kind of stink
Speaker 2: on the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now I want to stress that, as always,
Speaker 1: my grasp with Mandarin is very limited and depends on
Speaker 1: various references and tools, But it's my understanding that there
Speaker 1: is no one word in Mandarin that expressly denotes necromancy
Speaker 1: in the same way that our word necromancy does. But
Speaker 1: in Chinese tradition, the specialist you would seek out for
Speaker 1: any of your strong necromantic needs would be a fang shi,
Speaker 1: which essentially translates to method master. You'll also see this
Speaker 1: translated as alchemist, wizard, or basically any specialist magic user
Speaker 1: terminology you can think of, including but not limited to necromancer. Again,
Speaker 1: this is the elegant variation in play here. Though again
Speaker 1: there are some cases where you have one of these
Speaker 1: method masters, one of these things she who is doing
Speaker 1: something that is very necromatic in nature, and so I'd
Speaker 1: like to discuss one in particular. Okay, all right, this
Speaker 1: is going to take us through the Han dynasty, so
Speaker 1: second century BCE, this would have been the rule of
Speaker 1: Emperor Wu of Han. More than one wizard and immortalists
Speaker 1: served this guy. He, especially later in life, had a
Speaker 1: fondness for surrounding himself with various magicians and magic users,
Speaker 1: seeking things from them like immortality, and I have also
Speaker 1: read that late in life he also became increasingly paranoid
Speaker 1: about plots against him, and I think some of these
Speaker 1: were inspired by dreams and so at the same time
Speaker 1: that he was leaning into the talents of magicians to
Speaker 1: help protect him, he also was very much supporting witchcraft
Speaker 1: persecution of the day and harsh penalties against alleged magic users.
Speaker 1: But for instance, one of the fun she's that worked
Speaker 1: for him was Lee shao Yun, who claimed to be
Speaker 1: a seventy year old immortal and preached immortality via diet
Speaker 1: and commitment to the Kitchen God. Though he did die,
Speaker 1: so maybe there were some holes in the plan. But
Speaker 1: then there was another individual, a funk she known as
Speaker 1: Shao Wing, and this apparently can be translated as young geezer.
Speaker 1: It basically means like young old person.
Speaker 2: Wait, does that mean he was like an old person
Speaker 2: who was young at heart or a young person who
Speaker 2: was old at heart.
Speaker 1: That's a good question, because the other guy, Lee shau Jun,
Speaker 1: like the whole thing is like he was young, but
Speaker 1: he claimed to be seventy. He was like, look at me,
Speaker 1: Look how young I look. This is because I have
Speaker 1: secrets I can I can teach you. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if young geezer here was old at heart or
Speaker 1: old in body. Maybe he's young at heart and old
Speaker 1: in body, you know. But where it gets interesting with
Speaker 1: this particular practitioner, with Shao Wing is that there are
Speaker 1: there are a lot of sources that discuss his alleged
Speaker 1: use of some sort of necromancy and potentially shadow puppetry.
Speaker 2: Oh you mean not separately but together together.
Speaker 1: Yes, So shadow puppetry has a very long history in
Speaker 1: China and likely originated there and or in India in
Speaker 1: the first millennium BCE. I know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of articles out there and sources about
Speaker 1: like where shadow puppetry came from. And you have some
Speaker 1: very rich traditions of shadow puppetry and various cultures throughout
Speaker 1: Asia in the Middle East, so you know, no matter
Speaker 1: where it began, like, it has very distinct forms all
Speaker 1: over the place. But one popular but academically controversial story
Speaker 1: holds that its roots are shamanistic and key to our
Speaker 1: discussion here necromantic.
Speaker 2: Okay, give me that controversial story, all right.
Speaker 1: So the story here that is often ruminated on is
Speaker 1: that Emperor Wu had a favorite consort or concubine by
Speaker 1: the name of Lady Lee. She was his absolute favorite,
Speaker 1: and she began to grow rather ill and eventually died.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of her life, she began to prohibit
Speaker 1: him from seeing her face and then ultimately from hearing
Speaker 1: her voice, and then she dies and Shao Wing offers
Speaker 1: the emperor a chance to speak with her again, to
Speaker 1: be in her presence again. The story is that he
Speaker 1: brings the Emperor into this kind of chamber and there's
Speaker 1: this fabulous silk screen offerings or placed for the spirits.
Speaker 1: There's incense burning, you know, there's a you know, manipulation
Speaker 1: of light and shadow, and he is able to summon
Speaker 1: her spirit on the other side of the screen, and
Speaker 1: there is something shade like or shadow like in her appearance.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's interesting because I wonder if that kind of
Speaker 2: thing should meet our definition of necromancy or not. Is
Speaker 2: just wanting to see and interact with someone again because
Speaker 2: you miss them? A form of necromancy is that getting
Speaker 2: information from them, not in the way I would normally
Speaker 2: think of.
Speaker 1: Well, in some of these tales, apparently like first of all,
Speaker 1: he's completely won over by this. He's he's like, oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, it is her, and like he's so just
Speaker 1: overcome by the sensation that she is there again on
Speaker 1: the other side of the screen, that he composes a poem.
Speaker 1: And I believe there are other accounts that say that,
Speaker 1: like he would sit there for hours talking to her,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So in those cases, you could,
Speaker 1: I guess you could make an argument, well, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the necromancer here is allowing for some sort of
Speaker 1: communication with the dead. But not everybody is crazy about
Speaker 1: this story. And there are a lot of different interpretations
Speaker 1: and misinterpretations of this, especially apparently when you get into
Speaker 1: some like Western analysis of it, where you know, things
Speaker 1: get crisscrossed and translation and so forth. I was looking
Speaker 1: at a book called Chinese Shadow Theater, History, Popular Religion,
Speaker 1: and Women Warriors by Fan Pin Lee Chin, and the
Speaker 1: author here points out that many critic critics find it
Speaker 1: ridiculous to believe that this court magician first of all,
Speaker 1: invented shadow puppetry and then used it to fool the
Speaker 1: emperor into thinking that this is the ghost of his
Speaker 1: favorite comic cubine Like that, that just seems like quite
Speaker 1: a stunt to pull off, even if you're a particular
Speaker 1: daring and charismatic wizard.
Speaker 2: I mean, on one hand, yes, but then I don't
Speaker 2: know by modern analogy. I mean, I think that there
Speaker 2: are people who claim to have spirit medium powers and
Speaker 2: stuff who perform tricks like this on people in the
Speaker 2: modern world all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think that's an important thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. So, yeah, first of all, we should
Speaker 1: not think it impossible that even a very powerful and
Speaker 1: a very intelligent individual could not be convinced that there's
Speaker 1: something going on here, and Chin also points out some
Speaker 1: other facts that I think helped sort of circle the
Speaker 1: idea here. So there's the idea that, first of all,
Speaker 1: that Wu eventually finds out about the deception and has
Speaker 1: this would be necromancer quietly executed, kind of out of embarrassment,
Speaker 1: like he doesn't want to make a big deal out
Speaker 1: of it because he feels like he has been duped,
Speaker 1: but he definitely is going to have that wizard killed.
Speaker 1: There's also this tidbit that Shall Wing had convincingly summoned
Speaker 1: another consort spirit through the use of shadows, and that shadows, screens,
Speaker 1: and incense were to some extent associated with this sort
Speaker 1: of work. So there's maybe some sort of pre existing
Speaker 1: formula or script for this, so it's not just coming
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. There's also Lang Dynasty author that apparently
Speaker 1: submitted that Shao Wing used something other than traditional three
Speaker 1: dimensional puppets or two dimensional shadow puppets, and that quote
Speaker 1: the necromancer had a statue carved out of magic stone
Speaker 1: in the likeness of the consort. Now I'm not arguing
Speaker 1: in favor of magic stone per se, but that makes
Speaker 1: you think of something perhaps a little bit different, maybe
Speaker 1: you know, higher production values or out of the ordinary
Speaker 1: compared with what you know, they might have been used
Speaker 1: to some sort of like pre existing shadow play shadow
Speaker 1: puppetry performance. While the author is doubtful that any of
Speaker 1: this suggests a shamanistic or for shadow puppetry, so any
Speaker 1: idea that like shadow puppetry originates as kind of a
Speaker 1: you know, shamanistic or religious ride of some sort. Authors
Speaker 1: The author sites the importance of Han period belief that
Speaker 1: certain fung shehi could summon the souls or shadows of
Speaker 1: the deceased through special rights, which again, you know, a
Speaker 1: pre existing script, a pre existing idea that this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that certain magicians can do. And
Speaker 1: the story also seems to have been somewhat corrupted in
Speaker 1: Western retellings forging a link between seance and shadow puppetry,
Speaker 1: when if I'm understanding Chen correctly on this, it's more
Speaker 1: proper to think of this as a tale of a
Speaker 1: would be necromancer using shadow effects to dupe the emperor
Speaker 1: into thinking he has been visited by the spirits of
Speaker 1: the dead. You know, this is kind of a familiar
Speaker 1: trope throughout the world, the idea of like the dangerous
Speaker 1: position held by a king's magical advisors. You know, you
Speaker 1: have to walk that fine line because if you were,
Speaker 1: if they see true what you're doing, you're obviously not
Speaker 1: going to stick around court very long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know, thinking more about the idea
Speaker 2: that could could a clever magician really trick a king
Speaker 2: like this, I think maybe that also assumes that the
Speaker 2: king would be more likely suspicious or skeptical than a
Speaker 2: person might naturally be if they do desperately want to
Speaker 2: see someone again. I mean, if you if someone you
Speaker 2: love has died and you want to see them again,
Speaker 2: you might not be very you know, looking for holes
Speaker 2: to pick in the experience of seeing them once again.
Speaker 2: You might be quite ready to believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's important to keep in mind,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's also interesting to contemplate this account,
Speaker 1: especially given that, you know, first of all, it's occurrence
Speaker 1: in a culture that is traditionally more aligned with the
Speaker 1: idea of communication with spirits of the deceased, again, as
Speaker 1: opposed to Christian European culture, in which the idea of
Speaker 1: speaking with the dead is seen as impossible and dangerous.
Speaker 1: You know, you're just going to get a demon on
Speaker 1: the other line anyway, so don't even attempt it. And
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps it also speaks to a sort of
Speaker 1: communion with the dead that goes beyond anything achievable via
Speaker 1: veneration rights and even medium traditions. You know, the idea
Speaker 1: that it's not just about like honoring her and knowing
Speaker 1: that she's out there somewhere, but it's like here, she
Speaker 1: is almost, if not quite physically here, just on the
Speaker 1: other side. And I think that also kind of matches
Speaker 1: up with this idea that you see in other accounts
Speaker 1: of her kind of fading away from his life towards
Speaker 1: the end, like he can't see her anymore, now he
Speaker 1: can't speak with her anymore, and now she's dead. And
Speaker 1: maybe there's some of that sprinkled in there as well.
Speaker 1: And I also kind of like this whole this idea
Speaker 1: of the screen, this kind of like thin veil that
Speaker 1: is separating him from this possibly you know, resurrected spirit.
Speaker 1: It's such a slight barrier, right as slight as the
Speaker 1: barrier between life and death may seem at times. And
Speaker 1: there's also something fitting in that ending the tellings of
Speaker 1: the story in which he like finally can't have he
Speaker 1: can't have it. He's like, I have to pull this
Speaker 1: out of the way and see her for real. And
Speaker 1: then when he looks behind the screen.
Speaker 2: What does he see.
Speaker 1: He sees his court magician doing, you know, something with
Speaker 1: shadow puppetry or statues. And now the illusion is completely destroyed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but before the illusion is destroyed, just the idea
Speaker 2: that she is existing as a shadow on a silk screen.
Speaker 2: It suggests something very delicate and fragile in a kind
Speaker 2: of emotionally charged way about the memory of her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I feel like, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on in this example, and perhaps
Speaker 1: it brings up some ideas about necromancy and what necromancy
Speaker 1: could be and what it's not that we can take
Speaker 1: with us into other examples here.
Speaker 2: All right, Rob, are you ready to talk to some
Speaker 2: ghosts in ancient Mesopotamia?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, So we're going to look at evidence for necromancy
Speaker 2: in the ancient land between the rivers. This would be
Speaker 2: Mesopotamia refers to the civilizations based on the river system
Speaker 2: of the Tigris and Euphrates, so mostly centered in what
Speaker 2: is modern day Iraq, and these civilizations would include, but
Speaker 2: not be limited to, the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians.
Speaker 2: Now the main source I was looking at here is
Speaker 2: an article from nineteen eighty three by Irving L. Finkel,
Speaker 2: called Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia, published in a journal called
Speaker 2: Arkiev fur orient Forschung. And this author, Irving Finkel, is
Speaker 2: a British seriologist and language scholar affiliated with the British Museum.
Speaker 2: It seems like he specializes in Cuneiform inscriptions, but he
Speaker 2: also seems to have a range of interests, including everything
Speaker 2: from Mesopotamian ghosts and magic to ancient board games like
Speaker 2: the Royal Game of Or, which I think we I
Speaker 2: think we discussed his work in particular in our Invention
Speaker 2: series on board games.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I remember that episode.
Speaker 2: So I was looking for some general information about Finkel
Speaker 2: in his background, and I found an absolutely delightful video
Speaker 2: interview with Finkel from about five years ago that seems
Speaker 2: to be part of a series the British Museum does
Speaker 2: called Curator's Corner and this video is called Mesopotamian Ghost
Speaker 2: Busting with Irving Finkel. It's on topic and I found
Speaker 2: it very interesting, so I thought I'd go ahead and
Speaker 2: summarize this before getting back into the paper. In this interview,
Speaker 2: Finkel talks about some of his best guesses as to
Speaker 2: what ancient Mesopotamians broadly believed about ghosts, the dead, and
Speaker 2: the undead, based on literary and archaeological evidence available to us. So,
Speaker 2: to be clear, I think this involves some speculation, but
Speaker 2: it is well informed speculation, and also our same caveat
Speaker 2: from earlier. You know, not everybody believed the same thing
Speaker 2: in certain times and places in history, so you can
Speaker 2: only talk about what seems to be common based on
Speaker 2: the sources we have. So Finkel says, in ancient Mesopotamia
Speaker 2: there was widespread belief that when someone died, it was
Speaker 2: very important that they were given a proper burial in
Speaker 2: the earth with specified rituals to seal the grave. In
Speaker 2: Finkl's words quote, so they were jolly well locked in
Speaker 2: and couldn't come back to cause trouble. So people who
Speaker 2: for whatever reason do not receive a proper burial and
Speaker 2: do not receive the correct rituals observed at their burial
Speaker 2: would be expected to come back from beyond the grave
Speaker 2: and haunt the living. And some examples given here would
Speaker 2: be people who die on the battlefield, or people who
Speaker 2: die out in the wilderness alone, people who just vanish
Speaker 2: and are assumed dead. And he also mentions people who
Speaker 2: die in childbirth, which I thought was an interesting example
Speaker 2: because I'm not sure in this case what would prevent
Speaker 2: someone who dies in childbirth from receiving a proper burial,
Speaker 2: But I thought that was interesting. And this comes back
Speaker 2: to something that we've discussed a little bit on the
Speaker 2: show before. But I am frequently struck by the belief
Speaker 2: in what seems like many ancient cultures that it is
Speaker 2: extremely important to receive a proper burial, or at least
Speaker 2: proper funeral rights according to your local customs. And I
Speaker 2: don't know that it's always because of the kind of
Speaker 2: ghost security concerns that Finkel is going to raise with
Speaker 2: respect to ancient Mesopotamia, but it really does seem like
Speaker 2: lots of ancient peoples that we read about seem truly
Speaker 2: horrified by the idea of dying without receiving the appropriate
Speaker 2: funerary customs, or not without having their body dealt with
Speaker 2: in the way that their culture deems is proper. It's
Speaker 2: not that I think people today just don't care at
Speaker 2: all what happens to their bodies after death. We care somewhat,
Speaker 2: but I sense way less sensitivity to this on average
Speaker 2: in American culture today than is implied in many ancient
Speaker 2: sources from different cultures around the world. And I don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what to make of that, but it seems
Speaker 2: significant to me. I feel like I would like to
Speaker 2: understand more about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, we've distanced ourselves from death and
Speaker 1: physical death so much, and you know, we have an
Speaker 1: entire industry obviously built up around it, so on one level,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like we can just leave it to
Speaker 1: the professionals. We can choose from like the menu items
Speaker 1: of what we can and can't do with or have
Speaker 1: done with our remains. And yeah, I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of us too, like the actual form that takes
Speaker 1: is less connected to our ideas of like what happens
Speaker 1: to us or all of us beyond our body after
Speaker 1: death be the answer, you know, nothing, or a whole lot.
Speaker 1: It's I think, oftentimes thought to be rather disconnected from
Speaker 1: the physical.
Speaker 2: There's an interesting other example of a connection between the
Speaker 2: belief in what happens to your sort of soul or
Speaker 2: spirit in the afterlife and what happens to your physical
Speaker 2: body in a text that I'm going to get into
Speaker 2: in a bit, But to come back to what Finkel
Speaker 2: talks about in this interview, he says, you know, as
Speaker 2: best we can tell from our sources, everybody we know
Speaker 2: of in ancient Mesopotamia believed in ghosts. There is no
Speaker 2: evidence of anyone saying that ghosts don't exist or you
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about them. Seems like it was
Speaker 2: just taken for granted that ghosts existed and were part
Speaker 2: of life. However, and I thought this point was really interesting.
Speaker 2: Finkel says that it is not universal that people regarded
Speaker 2: ghosts with fear or terror. People were not always necessarily
Speaker 2: frightened of them. Instead, he says, the more common attitude
Speaker 2: seems to be one of sympathy for ghosts, kind of like,
Speaker 2: if there is a ghost haunting you, that is a problem,
Speaker 2: but it's not something that is terrifying, at least not necessarily.
Speaker 2: It could be in some circumstances. So a ghost is somebody,
Speaker 2: usually a family member of yours, who is like now
Speaker 2: having a hard time after death. It's almost like somebody
Speaker 2: in your family has a disease or something and because
Speaker 2: of their condition, they are unable to find rest in
Speaker 2: the underworld, that they can't settle down in another world,
Speaker 2: and they need the help of the living. So while
Speaker 2: they may not be frightening, they are in trouble and
Speaker 2: they often cause trouble, all right.
Speaker 1: So that second part is very familiar with than it
Speaker 1: to anyone who's ever seen a TV show that has
Speaker 1: an episode about a ghost. Why do you deal with
Speaker 1: that ghost? You got to like do that thing. It
Speaker 1: makes them go away, that makes them content and lets
Speaker 1: them move on. But the first part about it, like
Speaker 1: it not being a frightful scenario but more of a
Speaker 1: sympathetic scenario. You know, it kind of makes me think again.
Speaker 1: It's like what happens when there is no room for
Speaker 1: a particular type of supernatural belief or paranormal experience within
Speaker 1: a given like rule system or worldview. For instance, if
Speaker 1: your say religious worldview is like, hey, there are no
Speaker 1: such thing as ghosts, those don't exist. Well, then when
Speaker 1: something makes you think about ghosts or or or or
Speaker 1: raises the specter of ghosts, or you have some sort
Speaker 1: of a hallucination experience that is interpreted as ghosts, well
Speaker 1: then that power structure cannot help you because they're like,
Speaker 1: well out of our hands, because we already told you
Speaker 1: that stuff's not real. And then likewise, I think if
Speaker 1: with a certain you know, certain scientific positions, you could
Speaker 1: take on everything you know, it's like you don't believe
Speaker 1: in the supernatural. And if then if something like this
Speaker 1: were to present itself, then suddenly it seems may it
Speaker 1: may seem like science can't help you. I think we
Speaker 1: would argue something different. We discussed that before. There are
Speaker 1: various thoroughly logical, rational, scientific explanations for various supernatural experiences.
Speaker 1: But I can imagine the attitude of being like, well,
Speaker 1: something has now occurred, and it is outside the framework
Speaker 1: that is supporting me. Therefore I am afraid.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is very interesting, and I think
Speaker 2: that might be a good explanation for this difference, for
Speaker 2: why our primary emotional reaction to ghosts in the modern
Speaker 2: world or even in I don't know, say like medieval
Speaker 2: Christian Europe would be fear, just like it doesn't fit
Speaker 2: as a reality within your orthodoxy. Yeah, and so anyway,
Speaker 2: in the context of ancient Mesopotamia, Finkle says, there were
Speaker 2: people we know of who specialized in magic and rituals
Speaker 2: designed to appease wandering ghosts and send them back to
Speaker 2: their rightful place among the dead, send them back to
Speaker 2: the nether world where they belong. And I think normally
Speaker 2: in the literature, these would be referred to as exorcists,
Speaker 2: which again can be confusing because of like the Christian
Speaker 2: Catholic context of an exorcist being somebody who who casts
Speaker 2: out demons from a person who is demon possessed. In
Speaker 2: the case it's used in these academic works, it would
Speaker 2: just be referred to it's somebody whose job it is
Speaker 2: to get the ghost out of the place it's not
Speaker 2: supposed to be and help it you back to where
Speaker 2: it is supposed to be. Yeah, And he describes one
Speaker 2: particular example based on a tablet in the British Museum's collection,
Speaker 2: and this is pretty interesting. He says. This tablet depicts
Speaker 2: a portly woman walking in profile holding a male figure
Speaker 2: by a lead which I think attaches around the male
Speaker 2: figure's neck. And Finkel says he believes that the woman
Speaker 2: shown in this illustration is a ghost, probably the ghost
Speaker 2: of someone's great aunt, who for some reason is wandering
Speaker 2: the world of the living and causing trouble, and the exorcist,
Speaker 2: called to deal with this problem decides that what this
Speaker 2: ghost needs is a lover. So the exorcist makes one
Speaker 2: clay model of the ghost woman another clay model that
Speaker 2: is a sexy man, a young, muscular, handsome man with
Speaker 2: a large beard, and these two clay effigies are buried
Speaker 2: together in a pit with an assortment of grave goods,
Speaker 2: and then the idea is that this burial would allow
Speaker 2: the ghosts to settle down into the underworld and stop
Speaker 2: causing distress for the living.
Speaker 1: Hmm. That's that's interesting. It reminds me a little bit
Speaker 1: of the topic of ghost marriage and Chinese tradition that
Speaker 1: we I think Christian and I did an episode on
Speaker 1: years and years back, but you know, basically involves sort
Speaker 1: of a similar principle, like something is out of whack.
Speaker 1: There's a structural incompleteness that is involved with the family unit,
Speaker 1: and it needs to be supernaturally and or symbolically fixed
Speaker 1: in order for these you know, now ancestors to completely
Speaker 1: pass on and sort of be properly organized in you know,
Speaker 1: the afterlife or what have you.
Speaker 2: Right, I think that's a good comparison. But to come
Speaker 2: back to the illustration on the tablet, he says, it
Speaker 2: seems to show this ghost woman holding on to I
Speaker 2: guess her new lover by this like lead. So there's
Speaker 2: like no chance he gets away there together forever. Now,
Speaker 2: coming back to this idea from a minute ago, that
Speaker 2: the ghosts were not necessarily thought of as frightening in
Speaker 2: ancient Mesopotamia, Finkle says that there were some ghosts who
Speaker 2: were who actually were frightening and dangerous, and he offers
Speaker 2: his opinion that these were probably understood to be the
Speaker 2: ghosts of people who were themselves frightening and dangerous when
Speaker 2: they were alive. So, you know, regular person with a
Speaker 2: proper without proper burial means a you know, a sort
Speaker 2: of sympathetic but troublesome ghost. Somebody is a problem you
Speaker 2: need to deal with, or a ghost you need to help,
Speaker 2: not necessarily scary, whereas a wicked person without a proper
Speaker 2: burial that could be a scary ghost.
Speaker 1: Okay, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: And he says these malevolent ghosts were thought to slip
Speaker 2: in through a person's ear while the victim was asleep,
Speaker 2: and if the ghost gets in through your ear canal,
Speaker 2: it could bring on extreme headaches like migraines, or it
Speaker 2: could even cause madness. And Finkel describes a couple of
Speaker 2: other types of effigies that would be crafted by ancient
Speaker 2: Mesopotamian exorcists in order to drive away malevolent ghosts. First,
Speaker 2: there's a kind of king figure who would be placed
Speaker 2: near a bed to project authority and general warding magic.
Speaker 2: And then second would be a model of a vizier
Speaker 2: figure that would be placed on top of a pole
Speaker 2: in a way that it could rotate around the pole
Speaker 2: like a kind of spin around it like a propeller,
Speaker 2: and this would, he suggests, sort of fan the air
Speaker 2: around and drive spirits away. Okay, And finally he makes
Speaker 2: the point that these elaborate rituals with like paid exorcists
Speaker 2: were these almost certainly would have been the things that
Speaker 2: were available to the elite, to the richest people in society,
Speaker 2: and we have way less insight, maybe no insight really
Speaker 2: into how regular people dealt with ghosts if they did
Speaker 2: it all. And then he sort of humorously suggests that
Speaker 2: regular people might not have had time to see ghosts,
Speaker 2: or if they did, perhaps they just sort of like
Speaker 2: waived at them and went about their business. But we
Speaker 2: don't really know, but I do think that's kind of
Speaker 2: funny to imagine that, Like, I don't know if this
Speaker 2: is true, but I mean I wonder if like ghosts
Speaker 2: are more likely to be a problem that you're dealing
Speaker 2: with if you have excess like time and leisure and
Speaker 2: riches and stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could see that argument. But yeah, it also
Speaker 1: seems kind of to his point as well, equally as
Speaker 1: possible that the people regular people had their own traditions
Speaker 1: and their own experts, but we just have no surviving
Speaker 1: mention of them.
Speaker 2: Now, to come back to Finkle's nineteen eighty three paper
Speaker 2: on necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia, all of that I was
Speaker 2: just talking about was ghostbusting or exorcism. Back to necromancy specifically,
Speaker 2: I want to note quickly that this article I'm talking about,
Speaker 2: I think it was very interesting, so I do want
Speaker 2: to talk about it, but it was not written for
Speaker 2: a popular audience. This is for Mesopotamian specialists, and several
Speaker 2: parts kind of assume familiarity with ancient languages, which I
Speaker 2: certainly do not have. I think I was able to
Speaker 2: make sense of all the main points by doing some
Speaker 2: secondary research, but please just know I'm doing my best here,
Speaker 2: I am outside my area of expertise. So he starts
Speaker 2: off this paper by saying, you know, our sources from
Speaker 2: ancient Mesopotamia don't contain a lot of references to necromancy,
Speaker 2: but there is some evidence of its practice. And here
Speaker 2: he defines necromancy as quote, the delicate art of summoning
Speaker 2: the spirits of dead in order to learn the future
Speaker 2: from them. So this is the definition you'll find more
Speaker 2: often in academic works, not about you know, summoning skeleton
Speaker 2: soldiers or something, but again for divination purposes. He specifically
Speaker 2: says to learn the future. But I think some of
Speaker 2: the examples he mentions are not really so much about
Speaker 2: the future. They're just more generally the getting information thing.
Speaker 2: And so Finkle writes that some of the clearest evidence
Speaker 2: of necromancy is actually lexical, meaning related to vocabulary. There
Speaker 2: are these ancient cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia known as lexical lists,
Speaker 2: and they go way back. There are tons of these
Speaker 2: tablets you can find in the archaeological record, you know,
Speaker 2: lots of them to translate and interpret, and they are
Speaker 2: essentially ancient glossaries that just list collections of words often
Speaker 2: with translations of the terms between different languages, and these
Speaker 2: could include lists of names, or lists of gods, or
Speaker 2: lists of different categories of natural objects like lists of
Speaker 2: plants or lists of birds, or simply lists of nouns
Speaker 2: or words. And one of the most famous Cuneiform lexical
Speaker 2: text traditions is the professions list known as lou And
Speaker 2: so in this list it names a bunch of jobs
Speaker 2: jobs people can have there. And so there are words
Speaker 2: for professions in this list that we can tell refer
Speaker 2: to necromancers because of the way the words are constructed.
Speaker 2: And this is one of those sections where, because this
Speaker 2: is for specialists, I wasn't able to tell exactly what
Speaker 2: the terms here cash out to in English. But I
Speaker 2: think what this means is there are sort of listed
Speaker 2: professions that are called something like dead spirit, raiser or something.
Speaker 2: And Finkel says there are male and female versions of
Speaker 2: these professional names, but unfortunately we don't have connected literary
Speaker 2: texts that show how all these terms were used. However,
Speaker 2: Finkel says there are several passages in Mesopotamian texts that
Speaker 2: were already widely known at the time this paper was published,
Speaker 2: which do describe forms of necromancy in practice, and one
Speaker 2: of the most interesting ones is found in the Sumerian
Speaker 2: narrative known as Gilgamesh in key Do and the Nether World.
Speaker 1: Good old Gilgamesh.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now, this is a story of the two characters
Speaker 2: Gilgamesh and in key Do, who are the heroes of
Speaker 2: the famous Gilgamesh epic. You know they they have that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a buddy cop story for you. You know.
Speaker 2: They they go slay the demon Humbaba together in the
Speaker 2: Cedar forest, and they get up to all kinds of mischief,
Speaker 2: but then tragically in key Do dies, and then that
Speaker 2: sends Gilgamesh on his quest for immortality. I think that
Speaker 2: Gilgamesh in key Do in the Nether World is, from
Speaker 2: what I understand, best thought of as a separate story
Speaker 2: that is out of continuity with the rest of the
Speaker 2: Gilgamesh epic, even though it is sometimes tacked on at
Speaker 2: the end of the larger epic as a kind of
Speaker 2: discontinuous chapter, because like in key Do dies earlier in
Speaker 2: the story, and then here he is suddenly alive again
Speaker 2: at the beginning of this story. But here are the
Speaker 2: broad strokes of Gilgamesh in key Dou and the nether world.
Speaker 2: So Gilgamesh's stuff keeps falling into the underworld, like he
Speaker 2: has this stuff called I don't know exactly what these
Speaker 2: possessions of Gilgamesh's are supposed to be. There's one thing
Speaker 2: called an lag written in English e llag that like, oh,
Speaker 2: it fell into the underworld, you know. So his his
Speaker 2: stuff is like tumbling out of this world into the
Speaker 2: infamous house of dust where the dead go to dwell.
Speaker 2: And so Gilgamesh's friend and or servant in Key Dou
Speaker 2: offers to go into the underworld to get his stuff
Speaker 2: back for him. Unfortunately, once he goes down there, he
Speaker 2: breaks all the rules and is thus not allowed to
Speaker 2: return to the world of the living now he is dead.
Speaker 2: And in the version that Finkel sites, there is a
Speaker 2: scene in which a demon named Nrgal conjures up the
Speaker 2: ghost of Inky do at Gilgamesh is bidding, and the
Speaker 2: ghost of Inky Doo is said to rise up through
Speaker 2: a hole or a crack in the ground like the wind.
Speaker 2: In order to have a conversation with Gilgamesh about what
Speaker 2: the underworld is like now, I went looking for a
Speaker 2: full translation of the story so I could zero in
Speaker 2: on a few sections the One version of this text
Speaker 2: that I found online, which I should note has a
Speaker 2: few small differences from exactly what Finkel describes, was on
Speaker 2: an Oxford hosted website called the Electronic Text Corpus of
Speaker 2: Sumerian Literature. So I want to look at a few
Speaker 2: different things. First of all, the list of things that
Speaker 2: Gilgamesh tells Inkey do not to do in order to
Speaker 2: survive his trip to the nether World. There's like a oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, like the you know, the rules in
Speaker 2: how to survive a slasher movie, and keydu gets one
Speaker 2: of those for the nether World. So he says, you're
Speaker 2: definitely not supposed to wear clean garments because if you
Speaker 2: wear clean garments, they're gonna know you're not dead, you're
Speaker 2: not one of them. That they'll they'll get really mad.
Speaker 2: You should not anoint yourself with fine oil from a
Speaker 2: bowl because then they will surround you because they will
Speaker 2: smell that you smell nice, and you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: smell nice down there. Very sensible, exactly, Yes, he says,
Speaker 2: don't start hurling throw sticks in another world. Those struck
Speaker 2: down by the throw sticks are going to get mad
Speaker 2: at you and surround.
Speaker 1: You okay, also sensible, he says.
Speaker 2: Don't hold a Cornell wood stick in your hand. He
Speaker 2: says that the spirits will feel insulted by this for
Speaker 2: some reason. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: But good advice. You wouldn't think of it, and therefore
Speaker 1: is even more important that you'd be willing exactly.
Speaker 2: He says, you shouldn't put sandals on your feet, you
Speaker 2: should not shout in another world. I guess maybe in
Speaker 2: Keydu's wife had he says you should neither kiss nor
Speaker 2: hit your wife. And then in key Dou's child had died,
Speaker 2: and you said you should neither kiss nor hit your child.
Speaker 1: Okay, So basically, like you're supposed to be like these
Speaker 1: shades of the dead. You're not showing any emotion. You're
Speaker 1: not you're not either good or bad, like you're doing
Speaker 1: nothing but just being there, hanging out like a shade. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I guess getting the lag and the other stuff
Speaker 2: back to bring that back. But in key Do fails.
Speaker 2: He does literally everything Gilgamesh warns him not to do
Speaker 2: in the underworld, every single one of the things, and
Speaker 2: he is seized and trapped there forever.
Speaker 1: Oh that went south.
Speaker 2: So in this version, I was reading Gilgamesh gets somebody.
Speaker 2: It's not the demon Naerkal in this version, he gets
Speaker 2: somebody named Utu to open a hole in the underworld
Speaker 2: to allow in key Dou to come up and share
Speaker 2: information with him. And so I want to describe this
Speaker 2: scene where in Keydu's ghost is called up. It reads
Speaker 2: this fall. They hugged and kissed, They wearied each other
Speaker 2: with questions, did you see the order of the nether world?
Speaker 2: If only you would tell me, my friend, if only
Speaker 2: you would tell me? And then in key Do responds,
Speaker 2: if I tell you the order of the nether world,
Speaker 2: sit down and weep, and in key Dou tells him
Speaker 2: that the nether world is like a garment infested with worms,
Speaker 2: and it is like a crevice filled with dust. And
Speaker 2: then they end up talking at length about the fates
Speaker 2: of the dead. So there are all these different things
Speaker 2: that sort of reflect, I guess, ancient Mesopotamian views about
Speaker 2: what the good life is like. It seems that in
Speaker 2: key Doo thinks the dead who have a lot of
Speaker 2: airrors are pretty happy, and the ones that have fewer
Speaker 2: airrors are unhappy. But then a bunch of other different
Speaker 2: kinds of fates people can have are described. They say,
Speaker 2: for example, did you see the spirit of him who
Speaker 2: has no funerary offerings? In Key? Who says I saw him?
Speaker 2: Gilgamesh says, how does he fare? In Key? Who says
Speaker 2: he eats the scrap and the crumbs tossed out in
Speaker 2: the street, And again, bad things when funeral rites are
Speaker 2: not observed. But I wondered about that. Does he mean
Speaker 2: the scraps and crumbs tossed out in the street in
Speaker 2: the nether world or on Earth in the cities of
Speaker 2: the living. I took it maybe more to be the second.
Speaker 1: Mm, yeah, I mean I could see it going either way.
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, you did not symbolically offer food to them,
Speaker 1: and so they have no sustenance in the afterlife.
Speaker 2: But then there's one thing here that has some interesting
Speaker 2: metaphysical information. Gilgamesh says, did you see him who was
Speaker 2: set on fire? And in Kidu says, I did not
Speaker 2: see him. His spirit is not about. His smoke went
Speaker 2: up to the sky. So the person who is burned
Speaker 2: is not in the nether world at all. They go
Speaker 2: wherever their smoke goes up in the sky. What happens
Speaker 2: to them there?
Speaker 1: It kind of sounds like they end up in the
Speaker 1: wrong place. It's like, yeah, it seems to be the message,
Speaker 1: Like you, I don't go cremating the dead, because then
Speaker 1: how are they going to get to this wonderful it's
Speaker 1: wonderful afterlife that is being presented here.
Speaker 2: I mean to be clear, it seems okay for people
Speaker 2: who had a bunch of errors. He says, they are
Speaker 2: like gods. They sit in judgment of everyone else. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I thought this was interesting because this is depicting an
Speaker 2: example of necromancy. I think that does meet the strict definition.
Speaker 2: Like Gilgamesh is trying to get hidden information, but it's
Speaker 2: not so much like personal future fortune telling type stuff. Instead,
Speaker 2: he is using this consultation with the dead to get
Speaker 2: information about what happens to different people after they die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also sort of reconnect with an old friend, like, so, hey,
Speaker 1: where you live.
Speaker 2: In these days? Yeah?
Speaker 1: After life? Well what's it? What's it like? Well, it's hashy,
Speaker 1: It's like dustin a crevis, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what you should say next time you reconnect
Speaker 2: with an old friend. Well, you know, garment, garment eaten
Speaker 2: by worms, credits full of dust. But anyway, coming back
Speaker 2: to Finkle's paper, so he mentioned a couple of other
Speaker 2: sources pre existing at the time of this paper that
Speaker 2: mentioned necromancy, or at least potentially mention it in a
Speaker 2: more prosaic context. One is an old Assyrian letter from
Speaker 2: Cultepe which contains the lines quote here we asked the
Speaker 2: female oracle givers, the female diviners, and the spirits colon
Speaker 2: Assur repeatedly upbraids you, and so I interpret this to
Speaker 2: be a reference to a person who consults the spirits
Speaker 2: of the dead to get information. Possibly the information they're
Speaker 2: getting is about the fact that the god a seer
Speaker 2: who is like a god of Assyria, is angry with someone.
Speaker 1: Okay, they have inside information.
Speaker 2: Another is also a letter, this one Neo Assyrian, which
Speaker 2: exists in damaged form and has been interpreted and translated
Speaker 2: different ways. One of those interpretations implies that necromancers have
Speaker 2: asked the spirits to predict whether a certain person will
Speaker 2: become a king, but this interpretation of the letter is
Speaker 2: not certain, but anyway. After these examples, Finkel goes on
Speaker 2: to describe two previously unpublished Babylonian tablets from the first
Speaker 2: millennium BCE held by the British Museum that he says,
Speaker 2: deal in totally unambiguous terms with necromancy, and boy, these
Speaker 2: are a trip. Are you ready?
Speaker 1: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: The first one is called b M three six seven
Speaker 2: O three. It is a late Babylonian text and it
Speaker 2: includes instructions for a necromantic ritual. It says you call
Speaker 2: upon the ghost and he will answer you, and then
Speaker 2: there's an incantation where the necromancer says who are you?
Speaker 2: Who are you? It then lists the names of known
Speaker 2: malevolent spirits and demons that we know are supposed to
Speaker 2: be evil spirits and demons because they appear in other
Speaker 2: texts about exorcism, and Finkel says that this part of
Speaker 2: the ritual seems to be a kind of safety precaution,
Speaker 2: trying to protect against the possibility that in summoning the
Speaker 2: dead for divination you accidentally summon a vicious, evil monster instead.
Speaker 2: It's like a security step to prevent you dialing the
Speaker 2: wrong number and accidentally calling Freddy Krueger or whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Yeah, And we'll eventually see reverberations of this
Speaker 1: on up into like medieval Christian traditions, you know again,
Speaker 1: where it's more like you will always get a wrong
Speaker 1: number because this number cannot possibly connect to who you
Speaker 1: want to reach.
Speaker 2: Right, But that's not the context here. They think you
Speaker 2: can dial the right number. You just got to be careful.
Speaker 2: You got to do the right incantations and warding magic.
Speaker 2: Now next in this tablet, there's a part that is damaged,
Speaker 2: but it appears, based on context, to be steps for
Speaker 2: what to do if the ritual doesn't work. I do
Speaker 2: wish we could know what it's said here. Then it
Speaker 2: goes on to the ritual itself. Here I'm gonna read
Speaker 2: from Finkel, and the context is that this is an
Speaker 2: Akkadian incantation that is addressed to the god Shamash, and
Speaker 2: it is asking for the help of the god Shamash
Speaker 2: to summon a ghost literally of the darkness. And so
Speaker 2: then reading from Finkel, now quote, this ghost, once brought
Speaker 2: up from its place of rest, is then supposed to
Speaker 2: enter into a skull placed there for that purpose. The
Speaker 2: reciter of the incantation says, quote, I call upon you,
Speaker 2: o skull of skulls. May he who is within the
Speaker 2: skull answer me. Then there follows in line seven to ten,
Speaker 2: a magical ritual that involves an oily preparation of animal
Speaker 2: parts being mixed up and left to stand overnight. Do
Speaker 2: you want to know what is in this necromancer cocktail route? Oh,
Speaker 2: I suppose we should know, Okay. So it says you
Speaker 2: crush up a male and female partridge, dust from a crossroads,
Speaker 2: dust of a jumping cricket, of the step, and an
Speaker 2: upturned potch from a crossroads in puru oil. Then you
Speaker 2: mix all that together, you leave it to stand overnight,
Speaker 2: and in the morning you will Then there are a
Speaker 2: number of things you can actually do. So Finkle goes
Speaker 2: on to explain that you either use this mixture to
Speaker 2: anoint the skull itself or the ghost. And I'm not
Speaker 2: sure exactly how you anoint the ghost with it, and
Speaker 2: then or the And then it's a word here that's
Speaker 2: represented as N A M, and I think the meaning
Speaker 2: of that is ambiguous. Finkle says it might refer to
Speaker 2: it might be referring to someone called the man, but
Speaker 2: it's unclear in the context of the tablet who this
Speaker 2: would refer to, unless maybe he says it means like
Speaker 2: a figurine of the dead person who you're trying to summon,
Speaker 2: like like we saw with the other ritual that would
Speaker 2: make sense. And then to pick up again, reading from
Speaker 2: Finkle's description of the ritual, quote, at this point you
Speaker 2: call upon him and he will answer you. In the context,
Speaker 2: the word elemou, no doubt, refers to a representation of
Speaker 2: the ghost, and the ritual would have the same effect
Speaker 2: whether applied to this representation, to the nam or to
Speaker 2: the skull itself. It's not quite certain whether all three
Speaker 2: elements were necessary. The idea, however, is quite clear. It
Speaker 2: is quite appropriately Shamash who has the power and authority
Speaker 2: to bring up a ghost from the underworld, and the
Speaker 2: whole operation is put under his auspices. Somehow the ghost
Speaker 2: will enter into the skull and answer the questions put
Speaker 2: to him.
Speaker 1: I love that those skull of skulls indeed.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's the first tablet. There's a second tablet,
Speaker 2: another previously unknown text being published, I guess at the
Speaker 2: time of this article that is known as K two
Speaker 2: seven seventy nine, which is a neo Babylonian tablet, which
Speaker 2: contains some of the same material as the previous text,
Speaker 2: but also some original stuff. And this text, interestingly also
Speaker 2: contains what appeared to be security precautions. For example, there
Speaker 2: is a ritual and incantation that is to quote, avert
Speaker 2: the evil in the crying of the ghost or the
Speaker 2: crying of a ghost. Sorry, and Finkel notes from the
Speaker 2: contemporary texts that it was believed that personal contact with
Speaker 2: a ghost usually led to really bad consequences for a
Speaker 2: living person, often death. So if you are a necromancer,
Speaker 2: you could be doing something really dangerous. You are attempting
Speaker 2: personal contact with a ghost in order to get privileged information,
Speaker 2: but this contact comes with a high likelihood of a
Speaker 2: death curse, so you have to employ protective magic to
Speaker 2: counteract that danger. Now, I was kind of wondering how
Speaker 2: to square this with Finkel's own characterization that was from
Speaker 2: an interview decades later of ghosts not for the most
Speaker 2: part incurring a reaction of fear in the ancient Mesopotamians,
Speaker 2: but other of kind of like sympathy. I don't know
Speaker 2: exactly how to square that, but it makes me wonder
Speaker 2: if maybe most of the ghost encounters people thought they
Speaker 2: were having weren't actually like personal face to face contact
Speaker 2: or talking to a ghost or hearing the cry of
Speaker 2: a ghost, but more like indirect indications that a spirit
Speaker 2: is restless and wandering or seeing what appears to be
Speaker 2: evidence of a dead family member from Afar. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of it reminds me of some of these
Speaker 1: traditions involving.
Speaker 2: Like the evil Eye.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that it is out there, it
Speaker 1: is aware, but it's not necessarily honing in on you
Speaker 1: unless you give it reason to. And so you know, similarly,
Speaker 1: you could you could live in a world of ghosts,
Speaker 1: but have you done anything personally to attract the ghost
Speaker 1: or to encourage the coast, Well, then you're probably fine.
Speaker 2: Finkel also says it's notable that K two seven seventy
Speaker 2: nine is a is a type of text called anmberbie,
Speaker 2: the primary purpose of which is describing ways to avert
Speaker 2: evil and unexplained phenomena. So it's kind of surprising that
Speaker 2: rituals for intentionally summoning up a ghost and prying information
Speaker 2: out of it under the auspices of Shamash or whoever
Speaker 2: would be included, because the rest of the text is
Speaker 2: basically like a ghostbusting manual. It is how to keep ghosts, demons,
Speaker 2: and any other weirdness away from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it raises all sorts of questions about like what
Speaker 1: is sort of what is the day to day activity
Speaker 1: in the ghostbusting and necromancer professional world of this time period.
Speaker 2: Okay, but I think I promised you there was another
Speaker 2: necromancer cocktail coming. This one is from Let's see well,
Speaker 2: I think this actually is derived from both both texts,
Speaker 2: and this is a concoction you would put together that
Speaker 2: is part of an incantation to enable a man to
Speaker 2: see a ghost. So the text says, you crush moldy wood,
Speaker 2: fresh leaves of euphrates poplar, in water, oil, beer, and wine.
Speaker 2: You dry, crush and sieve snake, tallow, lion, tallow crab,
Speaker 2: tallow white honey, a frog that lives among the pebbles,
Speaker 2: hair of a dog, hair of a cat, hair of
Speaker 2: a fox, bristle of a chameleon, and bristle of a
Speaker 2: red lizard, claws of a frog, end of intestines of
Speaker 2: a frog, the left wing of a grasshopper, and marrow
Speaker 2: from the long bone of a goose.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: You mix all this in wine, water and milk with
Speaker 2: amhara plant, and then you recite the incantation three times,
Speaker 2: and you anoint your eyes with it, and you will
Speaker 2: see the ghost and he will speak with you. You
Speaker 2: can look at the ghost, he will talk with you.
Speaker 2: And yes, I said that twice because the text says
Speaker 2: it twice. So any mixologists out there who want to
Speaker 2: take these as an inspiration for a Halloween themed drink,
Speaker 2: I don't know how exactly you make a a safe
Speaker 2: version of that, but take it. Take it as an inspiration.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a challenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't actually do that, but yes, I do love
Speaker 1: instructions like this for magic potions or homunculi or whatever
Speaker 1: you happen to be concocting in olden times. Though the
Speaker 1: moldy wood gave me pause, like it makes me. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of other examples I believe from Chinese traditions,
Speaker 1: where the idea that you had, like a rotten broom handle,
Speaker 1: it might have some sort of ghostly possession about it,
Speaker 1: and there might be some even something going on with
Speaker 1: illuminated micro organisms in the soft wood, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, it might make it kind of glow
Speaker 2: in the dark. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean as for like the hair of the
Speaker 1: cat and the dog and so forth, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, imagine that you're just getting into symbolic territory
Speaker 1: at that point.
Speaker 2: Once you've used your end of intestines of a frog
Speaker 2: in this though, what do you do with the start
Speaker 2: of intestines of the frog you've got left over?
Speaker 1: Well, you got to say that for later. That's another recipe, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: this has been fascinating snapshots into worlds where necromancy. Worlds
Speaker 1: in places, in particular places where necromancy is more common
Speaker 1: necromancy of one form of the other, and in some
Speaker 1: cases there are there are rules, there are laws in
Speaker 1: place spelling out exactly how one one professional is supposed
Speaker 1: to carry all this out.
Speaker 2: Again, I do think it's interesting and significant that both
Speaker 2: of these instruction manuals for necromancers have have these safety precautions,
Speaker 2: like you've got to go through you've got to like
Speaker 2: put on the safety goggles and stuff in a magical
Speaker 2: metaphorical sense. And I wonder if that's always true about
Speaker 2: necromancy everywhere, or is there anywhere where it's just kind
Speaker 2: of more like loosely regulated, fly by the seat of
Speaker 2: your pants, nothing to worry about kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. There are different ways to slice it, right,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, if you're looking at it like
Speaker 1: completely skeptically, you can say, well, well, of course a
Speaker 1: professional necromancer is going to outline the extreme risks that
Speaker 1: they are taking when they carry out their nechromatic acts.
Speaker 1: You don't want. It's not necromancy for the masses, it's
Speaker 1: necromancy for me, and you're going to pay me to
Speaker 1: do it. Therefore, there need to be certain skills involved
Speaker 1: that the ordinary people are not going to attempt to do.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Yeah, I wonder if this is
Speaker 2: in some way justifying of economic incentives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But then on the other hand, I mean, just
Speaker 1: use magic systems in general, other models of the afterlife
Speaker 1: in general, you see in various cultures like it is
Speaker 1: often a realm in which there are various dangers and
Speaker 1: there are rules that need to be followed to the
Speaker 1: letter if you were to survive like the journey, or
Speaker 1: survive you know, the dipping into this world a little
Speaker 1: bit to gain knowledge and so forth.
Speaker 2: You want to talk about necromancy some more on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think we have a lot more we
Speaker 1: can we can chat about. So join us on Tuesday
Speaker 1: as we come back for our second helping of nec manci.
Speaker 1: Not I think we'll get into Greek necromancy a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what else we'll get into, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure it will be a good seasonal time and we'll
Speaker 1: be we'll definitely be in October at that point. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna remind you once more that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, but you know,
Speaker 1: we do get into other topics like this one, especially
Speaker 1: during the month of October. Obviously we get into some
Speaker 1: some Halloween content for sure, So stay with us this
Speaker 1: entire month of October as we explore other topics of
Speaker 1: the spooky nature. Also join us for our Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema episodes on Fridays. Weird House Cinema is our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film. And you know, we're gonna be watching
Speaker 1: some horror movies this month, so you can watch along
Speaker 1: with us, or you can just tune in and listen
Speaker 1: to our discussions of these films if you're a little
Speaker 1: too creeped out to view them for yourself. And then
Speaker 1: on Mondays we do listener mail and on Wednesdays we
Speaker 1: do a short form monster fact or artifact.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our excellent your producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 2: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 2: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.