Speaker 1: Ah necromancy Sweet, Ah Wizard air udep teach me the
Speaker 1: skill that I instill, the pain surgeons assuage in vain,
Speaker 1: nor herb of all the plane can heal.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 3: is Robert.
Speaker 1: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And that poem I
Speaker 1: just read was from Emily Dickinson. And some of the
Speaker 1: numbering systems, that's her poem, number one seventy seven. I
Speaker 1: would say, not one of her greatest efforts. But you know,
Speaker 1: some of those poems in her collections seem like something
Speaker 1: she just jotted on the back of a notepad real quick.
Speaker 1: I think that's more one of those. But I still
Speaker 1: like the forced rhyme of sweet with erudite, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, wizard feels more right than wizard.
Speaker 3: I like reading yes and yeah. This was not a
Speaker 3: poem of Emily Dickinson's that I was familiar with. Sometimes
Speaker 3: just it's given the title ah necromancy Sweet, it is
Speaker 3: a note that like, basically I was gonna just bust
Speaker 3: out another Clark Ashton Smith poem for this episode, but
Speaker 3: then I was like, who else has some poems about
Speaker 3: necromancy and necromancers? And lo and behold, Emily Dickinson has
Speaker 3: not one, but two, which may surprise some of you,
Speaker 3: may not surprise some of you who are more familiar
Speaker 3: with her work.
Speaker 1: I would say I'm an Emily Dickinson fan, though I
Speaker 1: would not have been able to tell you that she
Speaker 1: had poems that use the word necromancy, though I know
Speaker 1: a number of her poems are concerned with death.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she saw the skull beneath the skin, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Oh skull of skulls. Well, anyway, we are back with
Speaker 1: part two in our series on necromancy. Now, if you've
Speaker 1: been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably
Speaker 1: know that every year, for the whole month of October,
Speaker 1: we focus our tension on topics of the beastly, ghostly,
Speaker 1: devilish or uncanny sort. And also, as we often do,
Speaker 1: we got started a little bit early this year, So
Speaker 1: we got started last week, even though it was still
Speaker 1: technically September, with the first part in a series on necromancy,
Speaker 1: the practice of communicating with the dead, usually for the
Speaker 1: purpose of divination, of gaining access to hidden information, or truth.
Speaker 1: And in that episode we talked about accounts of necromancy
Speaker 1: or pseudo necromantic legends from ancient China, as well as
Speaker 1: methods of both speaking to and exercising ghosts in the
Speaker 1: first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. And today we are going
Speaker 1: to continue our journey into the nether world talking about
Speaker 1: necromancy practices and legends from ancient Greece and Rome.
Speaker 3: That's right, We're going to be talking about Greek accounts
Speaker 3: of necromancy or things like necromancy to some extent in
Speaker 3: this episode, and who knows where we'll end up in
Speaker 3: a third episode on necromancy. So one of the sources
Speaker 3: that I mentioned in the last episode is a paper
Speaker 3: by Czech academic Andres CapCar titled the Origins of Necromancy
Speaker 3: or how we Learn to Speak to the Dead great title,
Speaker 3: and according to CapCar, the earliest mentions of necromancy they
Speaker 3: don't require a lot of inference and interpretation, can be
Speaker 3: found in ancient Greece. In this we're dealing with nekia,
Speaker 3: which is the practice of calling forth ghosts and asking
Speaker 3: them about the future or as we'll get into things
Speaker 3: that are maybe not the future, But are that are
Speaker 3: concerned with knowledge beyond what an individual has at their disposal.
Speaker 3: You know, the dead by virtue of being dead, they
Speaker 3: can tell you things. They can tell you things from
Speaker 3: their life, from their place of origin, and so forth.
Speaker 3: The primary example that he deals with, and indeed of
Speaker 3: primary example you've seen a lot of discussions of what
Speaker 3: is or isn't acromancy in ancient Greek traditions takes us
Speaker 3: all the way back to book eleven of the Odyssey,
Speaker 3: in which Odysseus receives instructions about how to question the
Speaker 3: dead and then does so. Now, Joe correct me if
Speaker 3: I'm wrong, But I think we've recounted this story before
Speaker 3: on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Possibly, but it's been a while, so I think it's
Speaker 1: worth refreshing on the story.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I'll give everyone the basics here concerning
Speaker 3: this episode. So basically, you know the deal with Odysseus.
Speaker 3: He's trying to get home, right, He's been off to war,
Speaker 3: he's seen the Trojan wars, and so forth. Wants to
Speaker 3: get home, wants to be reunited with his wife. A
Speaker 3: lot of misadventures occur on the way, So might say
Speaker 3: he takes the scenic route does he takes the scenic route,
Speaker 3: and one of the more scenic routes ends up taking.
Speaker 3: He and his crew wind up on the island of
Speaker 3: Circe in the care you might say, or under the
Speaker 3: dominion of the enchantress Circe, and there's you know, there's
Speaker 3: some misunderstanding, there's some transfiguration involved, there's a good bit
Speaker 3: of seduction, and they end up staying there for like
Speaker 3: a year, So they're hanging out on this island for
Speaker 3: a fair amount of time.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how all of this gets explained
Speaker 1: Penelope later.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we there's a possible answer to that
Speaker 3: here coming up. But essentially, you know, he has time
Speaker 3: to seek some guidance, get some some advice from Circe,
Speaker 3: and basically he wants to seek the advice of the
Speaker 3: prophet Tyrisius, the blind Seer of Thebes, who in one
Speaker 3: Greek myth is is changing to a woman for several
Speaker 3: years and then back into a man. But in this story,
Speaker 3: this seer is dead and that's a problem, and that's
Speaker 3: why Circe sends Odysseus to the very gates of the
Speaker 3: land of the Dead in order to seek his advice.
Speaker 3: So that's what the crew does. That's what the guys do.
Speaker 3: They go to the very limits of the mortal realm,
Speaker 3: right up to the border with the Land of the Dead,
Speaker 3: and per Circe's instructions, they dig a trench, they offer libations,
Speaker 3: they sacrifice you and a ram. These are the practices
Speaker 3: of Nekia. So the blood of the sacrifice calls forth ghosts,
Speaker 3: but it calls forth ghosts by the thousands, so it's
Speaker 3: just just calls them all out. They all come swarming.
Speaker 3: Key individuals that Odysseus knew in life they come forward
Speaker 3: as well. One of them is Odysseus's own mother, and
Speaker 3: initially he does not let her of her spirit approach
Speaker 3: the blood, but finally here comes Tyrisius. He drinks the
Speaker 3: blood and then speaks and tells Odysseus how their journey
Speaker 3: home is likely to go, and basically he breaks it
Speaker 3: to him. Look, you you know that stuff with the
Speaker 3: Cyclops while you offended Poseidon and he's a p pretty
Speaker 3: powerful guy. You're gonna have to make amends for that.
Speaker 3: There he outlines some of the other hurdles that are
Speaker 3: in their path, and then Odysseus asked well, how can
Speaker 3: I speak to the ghost of my mother who I
Speaker 3: just ran into And he is told that he must
Speaker 3: let the spirit drink the blood. If the spirit doesn't
Speaker 3: drink the blood, then they cannot speak to the living,
Speaker 3: and so he allows his mother's spirit to do that.
Speaker 3: He doesn't stand in her way, and he's able to
Speaker 3: speak with his mother and learn about events at home.
Speaker 3: There are more details. I may touch on some more
Speaker 3: here in a minute, but that's the basics here. Odysseus
Speaker 3: engages in a specific right to attract the spirits of
Speaker 3: the deceased, appeases them, and gives them the power of
Speaker 3: speech and their for prophecy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I know this passage is of interest to
Speaker 1: people trying to understand the culture and the ritual practices
Speaker 1: of ancient Greece because it's often interpreted not just as
Speaker 1: an isolated story in a fictional narrative, but a reflection
Speaker 1: of generally how the rituals of necromancy were thought to work,
Speaker 1: at least to some.
Speaker 3: Extent, that's right. Yeah, So yeah, we're doing with what
Speaker 3: an eighth century BCE text that many argue as our
Speaker 3: earliest clear look at the idea of what would come
Speaker 3: to be known as necromancy. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I do have to highlight that I was looking around
Speaker 3: not everyone is convinced that it's truly what we'd call necromancy.
Speaker 3: We kind of get into the semantics game again. I've
Speaker 3: seen arguments that what takes place here is essentially a
Speaker 3: standard sacrifice to the spirits of the dead, only observed
Speaker 3: on the physical threshold of death's own country. So I
Speaker 3: don't you know again, like perhaps the location is the
Speaker 3: key thing here, and the right itself is not necromancy itself,
Speaker 3: but takes on necromantic powers due to proximity to the
Speaker 3: land of the dead.
Speaker 1: That'll come back in some stuff I want to get
Speaker 1: into in a little bit.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, plenty of commentators do equate
Speaker 3: nekia with necromancy. Some things to keep in mind about
Speaker 3: what we see here in this primary example.
Speaker 4: So, first of.
Speaker 3: All, as we were discussing in the first episode, this
Speaker 3: is one of those ancient accounts that involves speaking to
Speaker 3: the dead. It does not involved controlling the dead. I mean,
Speaker 3: aside from just giving them the power of speech by
Speaker 3: offering them the blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. We talked about in the last episode.
Speaker 1: How if you hear the word necromancer today, especially if
Speaker 1: you play Dungeons and Dragons or you're familiar with general
Speaker 1: fantasy horror literature, you're probably thinking of someone who like
Speaker 1: commands armies of skeletons to do their bidding. And that's
Speaker 1: not usually what's being discussed with ancient necromancy. It's specifically
Speaker 1: a divination practice. It's about communicating with the dead, usually
Speaker 1: to get information.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, the other interesting thing about this, and something I
Speaker 3: rather like about this example, is that Odysseus doesn't summon
Speaker 3: one dead individual from the realm of the dead. He
Speaker 3: summons all of them at once, like just a mass
Speaker 3: of them. Like it's kind of like he replied all
Speaker 3: or you know how in different organizations, there'll be that
Speaker 3: one email address where you can you can contact everybody
Speaker 3: in the organization. It's like, you know, all dead at
Speaker 3: underworld dot com or something to that effect. That's what
Speaker 3: Odysseus does here, And they're like, whoa, everybody's in the
Speaker 3: chat now.
Speaker 1: And then everybody starts replying and that's the day you
Speaker 1: get five hundred emails on the same thread and yeah.
Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah, and then he has to try and figure
Speaker 3: out who he specifically wants to talk to. Now, aspects
Speaker 3: of this that that are reflected in later traditions of necromancy.
Speaker 3: It does entail blood. There is blood and blood sacrifice
Speaker 3: involved here. It entail it does entail the ability to
Speaker 3: speak with the dead and.
Speaker 4: Learn from them.
Speaker 3: And again this may work mostly due to proximity to
Speaker 3: the Kingdom of the Dead. And you could also classify
Speaker 3: this as an example of katabasis or a descent into
Speaker 3: the underworld. I mean, even if Odysseus is only going
Speaker 3: to the gates of Hell here, I mean he's essentially
Speaker 3: he's essentially in the underworld, right, I mean, where do
Speaker 3: you draw the line between actually going there and just
Speaker 3: going to the edge of it?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, so you could have an example like Orpheus that
Speaker 1: I think is more a more complete kind of bassis.
Speaker 1: But this is he's at least going part of the way.
Speaker 1: And I think it is portrayed from what I recall
Speaker 1: in the narrative as a as a harrowing journey into
Speaker 1: a place that, you know, where mortals do not normally
Speaker 1: tread exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course this is a major theme in literature.
Speaker 3: We see it in Virgil Zania. We see it in
Speaker 3: Dante's Divine Comedy, and so many other examples, you know,
Speaker 3: pop culture and otherwise. When people travel into the realm
Speaker 3: of the dead to get something, to find someone, to
Speaker 3: get secret knowledge, et cetera, there are often complications. There's
Speaker 3: often a fair amount of traunta.
Speaker 1: Now, you know. Another thing I recall from the narrative
Speaker 1: in the Odyssey is that it presents a vision of
Speaker 1: the underworld and of the afterlife in which being dead sucks.
Speaker 1: It is really bad, and it's just it's not something
Speaker 1: you want, and it's not like heaven where everybody's a
Speaker 1: nice angel and things are great.
Speaker 4: Now, you know.
Speaker 1: It just it depicts the afterlife is a kind of
Speaker 1: miserable only half kind of pseudo existence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it's interesting to think about that. I mean,
Speaker 3: we could have a larger discussion about various versions of
Speaker 3: the afterlife, but certainly, very generally, there are plenty of
Speaker 3: other examples where the afterlife is considered like the destination.
Speaker 3: It is the thing, and suffering here in the mortal
Speaker 3: realm is worth it for those treasures in the next realm.
Speaker 3: And you know, at least on the surface, you seem
Speaker 3: to see a reversal here in these traditions where like
Speaker 3: this is the life, this is the the prime existence.
Speaker 3: What happens next is just kind of a shadow.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: CapCar also singles out one of the other details of
Speaker 3: this encounter, and that's and that concerns one of the
Speaker 3: other dead individuals, the spirits of the dead that approach
Speaker 3: Odysseus here from the underworld, and that's Elpinor. This was
Speaker 3: the youngest member of Odysseus's crew who remember that year
Speaker 3: that they spent on the island of Sirce. Well, during
Speaker 3: that year, Elpinor becomes drunk and decides, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go sleep on that roof.
Speaker 3: So he grips and gets himself a ladder and he
Speaker 3: starts climbing up that ladder to get on the roof
Speaker 3: so he can sleep. But he falls off the ladder.
Speaker 3: He breaks his neck.
Speaker 4: He dies.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's sad, but even sadder it turns
Speaker 3: out the boys forgot to give him a proper burial
Speaker 3: and to grieve for him. So it's kind of embarrassing
Speaker 3: for Odysseus. He shows up here in the underworld and
Speaker 3: here comes Elpinor, and he says, hey, you remember me.
Speaker 3: I was the youngest member of your crew and I
Speaker 3: got drunk, I fell off that ladder, I broke my neck. Well,
Speaker 3: you guys didn't bury me or grieve for me. Could
Speaker 3: you do that? That would be really swell, And so
Speaker 3: Odysseus says, yes, we'll totally do that. Are bad, we
Speaker 3: will bury you and grief for you. And so, I
Speaker 3: don't know, I'm looking at it with a slightly humorous lens.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was really intended in the
Speaker 3: original work, but it is in principle. Another example of
Speaker 3: the restless Dead, which we referred to in the last episode,
Speaker 3: the idea that you know, there are different types of ghosts.
Speaker 3: There are different types of spirits of the dead that
Speaker 3: might speak to you. They're the ones who were properly
Speaker 3: buried and are remembered and everything is sort of like
Speaker 3: squared away with them. And there are those that have
Speaker 3: some kind of a grudge something, you know, keeping them
Speaker 3: here in our world, or specifically they were not properly
Speaker 3: buried and therefore cannot pass on. Now. Necromancy occurs elsewhere
Speaker 3: in ancient Greece. We'll get into some examples of this
Speaker 3: as we proceed here, often involving temples devoted to an
Speaker 3: oracle of the dead. So this is the place where
Speaker 3: one could specifically go to seek to call up a
Speaker 3: spirit of the deceased. Various authors wrote about such places,
Speaker 3: including Plutarch and Herodotus. You'll find details of these oracles
Speaker 3: in their writings.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about some examples of those places
Speaker 1: in a minute. But I really got to wondering, why
Speaker 1: do people think that ghosts know anything special, you know,
Speaker 1: other than answering questions like what's going on in the
Speaker 1: nether world. I mean that came up in the ancient
Speaker 1: Mesopotamian poem of Gilgamesh in key Do in the nether world,
Speaker 1: where remember Gilgamesh, he keeps like his stuff keeps falling
Speaker 1: into the underworld, into the house of dust, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I need my stuff back, and then in key Do
Speaker 1: goes down in there to get it for him. But
Speaker 1: in key Do screws up. He doesn't follow the rules.
Speaker 1: He throws throwing sticks at the dead and all that,
Speaker 1: and then he gets stuck down there, and so he's
Speaker 1: dead now. And then he comes back up through a
Speaker 1: Necromantic summoning, and Gilgamesh is like, hey, tell me what
Speaker 1: the nether world is, like, you know, what are the
Speaker 1: fates of the dead down there and so forth?
Speaker 3: That makes sense, yeah, yeah, but otherwise, I mean there
Speaker 3: are certain situations. So take Odysseus speaking with his mother.
Speaker 3: If memory serves, the whole situation is like his mother
Speaker 3: was alive when he last saw her, and so this
Speaker 3: is he's learning things about home that details about home
Speaker 3: that he's not privy too, but she experienced before her passing.
Speaker 3: I think I'm remembering that ride I could be misremembering
Speaker 3: part of that.
Speaker 1: That's right, that there are some classes of information that
Speaker 1: makes sense in a practical way like that, and I'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a minute. But also like how
Speaker 1: would a ghost have privileged information, so information about the future.
Speaker 1: Well I found an interesting article that gets into that
Speaker 1: somewhat with respect to ancient Greek and Roman necromancy, but
Speaker 1: also has a lot of other interesting general information about
Speaker 1: Greco Roman practices of communicating with the dead. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about this art. It is called lay
Speaker 1: that Ghost. Necromancy in Ancient Greece and Rome by Daniel Ogden,
Speaker 1: was originally published in Archaeology Odyssey back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. I found a republication of it on the
Speaker 1: magazine of a Biblical archaeology website. But Daniel Ogden is
Speaker 1: a professor of ancient history at the University of Exeter
Speaker 1: in England.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a great question because it instantly reminds
Speaker 3: me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats
Speaker 3: the pepper and has the.
Speaker 4: Psychedelic dream journey Johnny Cash.
Speaker 3: He talks to the space coyote voiced by Johnny Cash
Speaker 3: and he's asking some advice of it, and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm just an hallucination. I don't have any new information.
Speaker 1: But so sometimes it didn't have to be new information.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was like you were saying personal, practically accessible
Speaker 1: information for the ghost. One common example of this is
Speaker 1: stories of necromancy from ancient Greece, where the ghost tells
Speaker 1: you what you need to do to fix your relationship
Speaker 1: with the ghost with themselves. So if somebody died an
Speaker 1: untimely death and it was your fault, you could perform
Speaker 1: necromancy to find out what was needed in order to
Speaker 1: make amends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can almost think of this as some
Speaker 3: sort of I mean, hopefully you didn't just murder the
Speaker 3: person in cold blood. But even still, I guess it's
Speaker 3: like it's almost like some form of therapy, like this
Speaker 3: is weighing heavily on your conscious Let's summon up the
Speaker 3: spirit of the dead and see what they want in
Speaker 3: order for things to move on.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was just straight up murder. I'll mention a
Speaker 1: couple of different examples. So the article here opens with
Speaker 1: a retelling piece together from Plutarch, Thucydides and a few
Speaker 1: other sources, of this story of the fifth century BCE
Speaker 1: Spartan general Pausanius. Now, just to note this, this story
Speaker 1: is pieced together from a bunch of different accounts, and
Speaker 1: it is not necessarily all thought to be all historically true.
Speaker 1: This is like the story of this guy's life. But
Speaker 1: Pausanias was a Spartan regent and general who famously defended Greece.
Speaker 1: He defended the Hellenic League against the Persians at the
Speaker 1: Battle of Platia. So his original fame is as a
Speaker 1: defender of Greece against Persian invasion. But then later in
Speaker 1: life he was caught trying to betray Greece and make
Speaker 1: a secret pact with the Persian kings or Exees the Great.
Speaker 1: And in the middle of all this, there is a
Speaker 1: tragic story that Pausanias accidentally killed an innocent young woman
Speaker 1: named Kleonesi in his bedchambers when he was startled awake
Speaker 1: in the night. I guess he thought there were assassins
Speaker 1: coming for him. He reaches for his sword and he
Speaker 1: accidentally kills this woman, this young woman, and after this
Speaker 1: he is haunted by the woman's ghost. So he sought
Speaker 1: the help of a necromancer, or I guess maybe it's
Speaker 1: debatable whether this should be called a necromancer. But he
Speaker 1: sought the help of a sort of spirit guide at
Speaker 1: an oracle of the dead on the southern shore of
Speaker 1: the Black Sea. So this is a place where you
Speaker 1: would go to conjure up a ghost. And so he
Speaker 1: conjures the ghost of Kleonesy so he could learn how
Speaker 1: to make it right, and according to the legend, the
Speaker 1: ghost told him all he needed to do to make
Speaker 1: amends and to stop the haunting would be to return
Speaker 1: home to Sparta. But this is one of those cruel
Speaker 1: tricks that ghosts sometimes play, because when he went home
Speaker 1: to Sparta, his betrayal to the Persians was exposed, so
Speaker 1: the Spartans found out about him. They tried to seize him,
Speaker 1: and then he tried to seek sanctuary in the Temple
Speaker 1: of Athena, where he thought his pursuers would be unable
Speaker 1: to capture and execute him for fear of impiety. You know,
Speaker 1: he's taking sanctuary in a temple. But the story goes
Speaker 1: that they found a way around this. The Spartans bricked
Speaker 1: up the entrance and sealed him inside until he starved
Speaker 1: to death.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: After this, however, there was a there was an all
Speaker 1: new problem. Now the ghost of Pausanius was haunting the
Speaker 1: Temple of Athena. So the Spartans had to ask the
Speaker 1: oracle of Delphi what to do, and then the oracle
Speaker 1: advised them that they needed to bring in some exorcists.
Speaker 1: These professional Ogden calls them evocators. He says, the Greek
Speaker 1: term is sucha go gooy, which means soul conductors. And
Speaker 1: they came in and they checked the situation out and
Speaker 1: told them how to get rid of the ghost of Pausanius,
Speaker 1: and they succeeded. They exercised him effectively. Busted right, bustin
Speaker 1: must make them feel good. Because they came all the
Speaker 1: way from Italy to Sparta to do this. And this
Speaker 1: story illustrates what Ogden claims is probably the most common
Speaker 1: piece of information sought from the dead in Greek and
Speaker 1: Roman necromancy, and that is what does the ghost need?
Speaker 1: What will make the ghost go away or stop plunting me,
Speaker 1: or allow the ghost to achieve rest? And I thought
Speaker 1: this was interesting in that it combines two different traditions
Speaker 1: that we talked about separately in the last part in
Speaker 1: this series. So one is necromancy seeking information from the dead,
Speaker 1: and the other is exorcism, which is the removal of
Speaker 1: a ghost or a spirit from an unwonted place or context.
Speaker 1: So if Ogden is correct here, the most common aim
Speaker 1: of the former is actually the achievement of the latter.
Speaker 1: The most common reason ancient Greek and Roman people would
Speaker 1: go to a necromancer was to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get a ghost to stop bothering them.
Speaker 3: You know, these series of steps there were, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's some they're echoed throughout our supernatural fiction today, but
Speaker 3: one example that instantly comes to mind is the accounts
Speaker 3: of at least some versions of the Ring. I guess
Speaker 3: I'm mainly thinking about the first American remake of it.
Speaker 3: But in that film alone, you see sort of the
Speaker 3: three step approach where they're like, okay, there's some sort
Speaker 3: of sort of the realization that there's a ghost involved,
Speaker 3: some sort of a spirit. Okay, what does the ghost want?
Speaker 3: They try and answer that question, They try even to
Speaker 3: get in on the whole, like let's, uh, let's make
Speaker 3: things right with the ghosts remains. But then the big reveal,
Speaker 3: of course, is that the ghost isn't going to be
Speaker 3: satisfied with any of those things. This is one of
Speaker 3: that second classification of ghosts, that all it wants is vengeance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe less a ghost and more a demon.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The only thing that we'll make it right is to
Speaker 3: just move on from VHS to some other format. And
Speaker 3: I think that's the only way that that's issue was
Speaker 3: ever defeated.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of classifications of ghosts, another interesting point that
Speaker 1: Ogden raises in this article is the claim that in
Speaker 1: most Greek and Roman sources there were sort of two
Speaker 1: different modes in which ghosts could appear. And he does
Speaker 1: not use the terms. I just made these up to
Speaker 1: kind of help us sort through what he's saying. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call these categories the wild ghost and the dial
Speaker 1: a ghost. So a wild ghost is off leash. It
Speaker 1: is a dangerous, terrifying, and uncontrollable entity that cannot be
Speaker 1: reasoned with. This is the ghost that haunts someone by
Speaker 1: coming into their life or by haunting a place unbidden
Speaker 1: and attacking a person repeatedly. This is a ghost you
Speaker 1: cannot talk to and you can't like bargain with in
Speaker 1: this state.
Speaker 3: All right, So this is very much like the wrathful
Speaker 3: ghost Samara or Sadako from the Rain or from various
Speaker 3: other treatments.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but I think this is also just any
Speaker 1: loose ghost. It's a ghost that's haunting a person and
Speaker 1: you have not initiated contact with through an necromantic ritual.
Speaker 3: All right, So Swimer also fits this classification.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's the wild ghost. Meanwhile, what I would
Speaker 1: call the dial a ghost is a ghost call up
Speaker 1: through the rituals of necromancy. And so this might be
Speaker 1: somebody who's just otherwise resting comfortably in the underworld. You
Speaker 1: call them up through necromancy to get some information from them,
Speaker 1: or it could be one and the same as the
Speaker 1: wild ghost, but when you contact them through necromancy. Apparently
Speaker 1: the interaction is of a different sort. An entity called
Speaker 1: up through necromantic rituals is open to conversation and exchange.
Speaker 1: And I thought that it's interesting that these ghosts that
Speaker 1: there can be overlaps, So the same exact ghost, depending
Speaker 1: on circumstances, might be a wild, uncontrollable force that visits
Speaker 1: you in the night in your nightmares, or you know,
Speaker 1: haunts your home or haunts a place and terrifies people
Speaker 1: and just keeps attacking and there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1: But you talk to the exact same ghost, same soul
Speaker 1: through an oracle of the dead, or by going to
Speaker 1: a tomb and raising them up or whatever, then you
Speaker 1: can talk to the ghost to figure out what's going
Speaker 1: on and figure out what can be done to to
Speaker 1: make it go away.
Speaker 3: Interesting. So now this makes me wonder if if if
Speaker 3: the ring tape, uh, the VHS tape is actually could
Speaker 3: if you could actually think of it as sort of
Speaker 3: automated and automated necromatic, right, it is a necromatic artifact
Speaker 3: that does all of the ritual but in a way
Speaker 3: that requires less effort on the part of the person
Speaker 3: using it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm trying to get there with you is can
Speaker 1: the can the girl in the ring ever be reasoned
Speaker 1: with or bargained with?
Speaker 3: Et? No, I don't think so, not in any version I've seen.
Speaker 3: You can try. And in terms of what kind of
Speaker 3: information she has to relay, I don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 3: is relayed through the tape. You know, these these visions.
Speaker 3: Just because a ghost is going to tell you stuff
Speaker 3: doesn't mean it has to make sense, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: they may speak cryptically, and then of course you get
Speaker 3: that phone call which just says that you're going to
Speaker 3: die in seven days, which isn't very helpful, but is
Speaker 3: a communication, okay.
Speaker 1: So often gives an example in this article of the
Speaker 1: Roman emperor Nero's mother Agrippina. So, according to this story,
Speaker 1: he murders his own mother. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: stories of her murder are very elaborate and conflicting and
Speaker 1: all that. So who knows what really happened in history there?
Speaker 1: But this is again, this is how the story is
Speaker 1: understood by like Roman historians writing the lives of the emperors.
Speaker 1: So the ghost repeatedly starts attacking Nero in the night,
Speaker 1: terrifying him with these visions and nightmares. So Nero sought
Speaker 1: the help of a Persian magas to call up her
Speaker 1: spirit so that he could make peace with it.
Speaker 3: Quick note on on magi and magas is of of
Speaker 3: of of Persia. I was reading a little bit about this.
Speaker 3: There's an episode from the Sasanian Empire where the first
Speaker 3: Sasanian emperor we've discussed him before, Adashir the first, upon
Speaker 3: ascending the throne, called on all the respected magi of
Speaker 3: the empire to gather and the total was said to
Speaker 3: be something like eighty thousand. So I was reading more
Speaker 3: about this, and when we talk about the magi, we're
Speaker 3: talking about the mas Dan magi, who were a priestly
Speaker 3: order of Zoroastrianism, so they were not expressly necromancers. They
Speaker 3: were into all sorts of things, you know, looking to
Speaker 3: the stars and so forth. But apparently some of their
Speaker 3: writings covered communication with the untethered spirits.
Speaker 4: Of the dead m okay.
Speaker 1: But to come back to this idea of like ghosts
Speaker 1: that haunt people and sort of can't be reasoned with
Speaker 1: when they appear for hauntings, But then you can reason
Speaker 1: with them if you do a ritual with like a
Speaker 1: megas or some other type of or an oracle of
Speaker 1: the dead, some kind of necromantic ritual, then you can
Speaker 1: figure out what they want. It strikes me that this
Speaker 1: duality does still appear in some of the ghost stories
Speaker 1: of today. Like you were talking about Rob, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think more generally about you know, a story where
Speaker 1: the ghost is just a purely bad vibe during the hauntings,
Speaker 1: it just appears to scare people, But in the context
Speaker 1: of a seance, the same ghost can be intelligibly conversed with.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, in a way, it's almost like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this individual ghost or mortal is causing problems. Let's let's
Speaker 3: get serious about this. Let's have some legal proceedings, you know,
Speaker 3: the seance, the ritual of necromancy, whatever the details are.
Speaker 3: It is like, okay, let's bust out some rule based
Speaker 3: discussion of what's going on here and get to a solution.
Speaker 4: I think that's a good way of thinking about it.
Speaker 1: In a way, this might, you know, these rituals might
Speaker 1: be kind of like instituting a court proceeding in which
Speaker 1: the ghost must appear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or it's it's like an intervention in some respects
Speaker 3: as well, Like the ghost shows up and is like
Speaker 3: all right, time to like terrify some people, and then
Speaker 3: then the ghost really, oh my goodness, this is one
Speaker 3: of those again. They're going to try and reason with me,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, all that falls into this category of information
Speaker 1: about what could be done to appease or send away
Speaker 1: the ghost, a very common aim of Greek and Roman necromancy. Sometimes, though,
Speaker 1: necromancy would just as you alluded to earlier, rob would
Speaker 1: be used to extract information from a ghost that the
Speaker 1: spirit of a person could practically be expected to know
Speaker 1: if consciousness continues after death. For example, somebody hide some
Speaker 1: money then dies without telling you where they hit it,
Speaker 1: you might need to call up a necromancer to get
Speaker 1: that information. And there are stories exactly like this. Though
Speaker 1: this one kind of puzzled me because I was thinking
Speaker 1: with specific practical information, like the location of a stash
Speaker 1: of silver or something. I wonder how the necromancer dealt
Speaker 1: with what I would assume was their general inability to
Speaker 1: provide useful, correct answers, you know, like maybe that have
Speaker 1: to be very vague or to be fair when we
Speaker 1: get to discussing what the actual rituals were in a minute,
Speaker 1: maybe it actually wasn't on the necromancer to give the information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they would have to have some sort of an
Speaker 3: out like that, right, because again assuming that the next
Speaker 3: going with the assumption here that the necromancer cannot actually
Speaker 3: speak to the dead, and that in some of these
Speaker 3: other cases is essentially providing a like a therapeutic service.
Speaker 3: You know that they are, you know, guiding the recipient
Speaker 3: through some sort of a you know, essentially a religious
Speaker 3: ritual to put them at ease to you know, to
Speaker 3: help them honor the deceased, or whatever the specifics might be.
Speaker 3: But in this case, yeah, if there's an expectation of
Speaker 3: hidden treasure at the end of it, you know, the
Speaker 3: necromancer would be a fool to put themselves on the
Speaker 3: line like that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: They won't say it's under the third bush in the garden,
Speaker 1: because then you go dig it up and then be like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not there. Why'd you tell me that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd have to put a spin out, Like the
Speaker 3: true hidden treasure was your friendship in life with this person,
Speaker 3: and that's what they value, and therefore they don't want
Speaker 3: to tell you where the money is.
Speaker 1: But again, we'll get to something in a minute that
Speaker 1: I think might actually shed some light on this and
Speaker 1: show how the person who is sort of the guide
Speaker 1: for this process would be off the hook. So but again,
Speaker 1: what would you be looking for from speaking to a ghost?
Speaker 1: You would get this practical information the dead person took
Speaker 1: with them to the grave, like you know, where did
Speaker 1: you hide something or anything like that. Also, if the
Speaker 1: person was a murder victim, they might you might consult
Speaker 1: them to find out who killed you.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is a classic one, and this puts a
Speaker 3: different kind of pressure on the role of the necromancer here,
Speaker 3: or the alleged necromancer, because of course what they say could,
Speaker 3: depending on the society and the legal system, be presented
Speaker 3: as proof of an individual's guilt in a murder.
Speaker 1: But apart from all this stuff, where again, if you
Speaker 1: assume that consciousness actually continues after death, you could assume
Speaker 1: the person would know all these things. What about this
Speaker 1: other stuff like why ghosts would know the future. We've
Speaker 1: looked at multiple examples of necromancy being used to consult
Speaker 1: spirits on what's going to happen in the future. It
Speaker 1: turns out Greek Roman necromancers also consulted ghosts for info
Speaker 1: about the future, for example, to predict the outcome of
Speaker 1: wars or power struggles a common thing people want to know.
Speaker 1: Why would the dead have the ability to predict the future. Well,
Speaker 1: Ogden actually does answer this question. He says, we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure, but there are a couple of big possibilities.
Speaker 1: Ogden writes, quote, One possibility is that some ancients believed
Speaker 1: the future was prepared in the realm of the dead.
Speaker 1: When Aeneas descends into the underworld in Virgil's Aeneid, he
Speaker 1: witnesses the marshaling of the souls of Rome's future heroes,
Speaker 1: even though they had not yet been born. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's one. Ogden goes on quote Another possibility, many ancients,
Speaker 1: Plato among them, believed that a pure soul, one separated
Speaker 1: from the dull matter of the body, had great powers
Speaker 1: of perception and could understand the hidden processes of the universe. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that sort of helps answer my question if Ogden's
Speaker 1: correct about these two explanations. Here, the dead know the
Speaker 1: future because one of two things. Either the future is
Speaker 1: written in advance, so we are faded for certain things
Speaker 1: to happen to us, And the writing of the future
Speaker 1: takes place in the nether world, so dead people in
Speaker 1: hades are essentially hanging out in the writer's room for
Speaker 1: the upcoming season of the show. Or the second explanation is,
Speaker 1: if you subscribe to something like platonism, soul's rule and
Speaker 1: body's drool, and your current knowledge of the future is
Speaker 1: limited by the extent to which your body drools. Liberated souls,
Speaker 1: no longer attached to flesh, are sort of like gods
Speaker 1: in a way. They have extra powers of knowledge and perception,
Speaker 1: and we would all have these powers if we were
Speaker 1: liberated from the confines of our bodies.
Speaker 3: That one's in a really interesting because it also brings
Speaker 3: up some of the other examples of ancestor veneration and
Speaker 3: ancestor worship, you know, where it's like this was a
Speaker 3: real person in a given society or a given family,
Speaker 3: what have you. They have died and now they are
Speaker 3: still real, but in a different way and perhaps held
Speaker 3: to a like a put on a pedestal. You know,
Speaker 3: they're they're they they're they're they're given over to certain
Speaker 3: divine characteristics, even if they are not thought of expressly
Speaker 3: as a guy.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's Ogden's opinion about why ghosts would
Speaker 1: be expected to know the future and be able to
Speaker 1: answer your questions about it. But another interesting thing brought
Speaker 1: up in this article is he talks about location where
Speaker 1: would Greco Roman necromancy take place? And it seems there
Speaker 1: are two main answers for this. One is at at
Speaker 1: the Tomb of the East. And now that one makes
Speaker 1: sense if you're trying to call up a ghost of
Speaker 1: a dead person, where better to go than to their
Speaker 1: grave and do some.
Speaker 4: Kind of ritual there makes sense.
Speaker 1: But the second, and I got really interested in this,
Speaker 1: was that there were essentially some geographically identified special places
Speaker 1: where you could communicate with the dead. These were known
Speaker 1: as oracles of the dead. Now where would those be? Well,
Speaker 1: Ogden says, ancient sources tell us about four of them.
Speaker 1: There are two in modern day Greece, one in Italy
Speaker 1: and one in Turkey. And I did some additional digging
Speaker 1: for background information about a couple of these. So the
Speaker 1: first one he mentions is in northwest Greece, and this
Speaker 1: is what's known as the Acharusian Lake. So this is
Speaker 1: a lake, or perhaps I've seen in some sources mentioned
Speaker 1: as a swamp, a lake or a series of light
Speaker 1: lakes or swamp connected to the river Akron, which that
Speaker 1: river itself is very important in Greek visions of the afterlife.
Speaker 1: So there's a motif present in Greek and Roman mythology
Speaker 1: that the dead have to be carried across a river
Speaker 1: by a ghastly ferryman in order to reach Haiti's or
Speaker 1: the underworld. And in some sources this river is named
Speaker 1: as Styx, but in others it is the Akron.
Speaker 3: If memory serves both names, as separate rivers are used
Speaker 3: in Dante's Inferno.
Speaker 1: Oh that may be right, I don't recall, but interestingly
Speaker 1: I wanted to note this, so Akron. The Akron is
Speaker 1: at least one definite real river in northwest Greece, so
Speaker 1: there's just the Akron. You can go to that river now,
Speaker 1: whereas the Styx at core seems to be a mythological
Speaker 1: river in the underworld, but at some point it was
Speaker 1: also associated I think, with various real waterways as well,
Speaker 1: such as like a stream in Arcadia, but the Akron
Speaker 1: seems more concretely geographically located on this world. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the story goes. So at one of these lakes or
Speaker 1: swamps connected to the Akron, known as Acarusia, there was
Speaker 1: a lakeside district in which you could call up the
Speaker 1: spirits of the dead, and this was possible because of
Speaker 1: the way that the river and the lake were somehow
Speaker 1: physically connected to Hades and Rob. I've attached a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures I found online of the Akron River for
Speaker 1: you to look at here. You know, it's weird. I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's just an example of psychological priming, because
Speaker 1: I was expecting these to be associated with the underworld,
Speaker 1: but they do look kind of spooky to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, same. I'm not sure how much of this
Speaker 3: is just me going into it with the expectation here,
Speaker 3: but yeah, in the first shot, there's this impression of narrowing,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, I'm kind of reminded of, you know,
Speaker 3: the classic painting The Island of the Dead there a
Speaker 3: little bit, but I could be reading too much into it.
Speaker 3: I mean, a river at the at the very least
Speaker 3: a river. This is a moving thing that goes somewhere else,
Speaker 3: so it's easy to approach it and think think of
Speaker 3: it as this thing that connects to some distant land,
Speaker 3: because it literally does.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Okay, So second place for the
Speaker 1: Oracle of the Dead, this is way over on the
Speaker 1: western coast of the Italian Peninsula. This is Lake Avernus
Speaker 1: in Campagna. So once again this is a body of
Speaker 1: water associated with the entrance to the underworld. In this case,
Speaker 1: I thought it was geologically interesting because Avernus is the
Speaker 1: flooded crater of an extinct volcano, so this is in
Speaker 1: a region somewhat close to Naples. Allegedly, Lake of Vernas
Speaker 1: emitted fumes of sulfur sometimes, which could be why it
Speaker 1: was thought of as the entrance to the realm of
Speaker 1: the dead. And contrary to what you might expect. You know,
Speaker 1: you might think, Okay, so this lake is associated with
Speaker 1: the underworld, then maybe it's just this creepy abandoned place
Speaker 1: with nothing going on. But no, no, no, The area around
Speaker 1: Avernus was developed. It had temples and bathhouses and all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. In fact, in his article, Ogden tell
Speaker 1: what I thought was a very funny story about a
Speaker 1: British archaeologist who thought he had identified the ruins of
Speaker 1: the Avernus Oracle of the Dead in a Roman era
Speaker 1: tunnel near the lake. Came up with this whole scenario
Speaker 1: about how the oracle worked. Ogden Wright's quote, he speculated
Speaker 1: that visitors to the oracle were led through dark tunnels
Speaker 1: and across a hot, sulfurous spring that doubled as the
Speaker 1: river sticks Priestly assistants, he suggested, used lamps and wooden
Speaker 1: shadow puppets to project ghostly figures onto a wall in
Speaker 1: a kind of ancient vision of a Disneyland haunted house. So, okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds very interesting, but it turns out no, this
Speaker 1: tunnel was actually a service tunnel for a Roman bathhouse.
Speaker 1: And then there are a couple of other sites of
Speaker 1: oracles of the dead that were less well known. One
Speaker 1: is heracle A Pontica. That's the one on the south
Speaker 1: coast of the Black Sea, up on the north of
Speaker 1: what is today Turkey, or at the time would have
Speaker 1: been Anatolia. This is the place that Pausanias went to
Speaker 1: in that legend. And then the other one, the fourth
Speaker 1: one is Cape Tynern, which is down at the southern
Speaker 1: tip of the Peloponnesis. And I'm not sure about the
Speaker 1: Black Sea location, but I was looking up Cape Tynern
Speaker 1: and this one was also, according to some ancient sources,
Speaker 1: a gateway to the underworld. So it seems what a
Speaker 1: lot of these oracle of the dead. Locations have in
Speaker 1: common is they are thought to be in some sense
Speaker 1: of physical entryway into the underworld.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's not just a matter of having the
Speaker 3: rituals or the expertise. It's like, are you in close
Speaker 3: enough proximity to the underworld for that signal to reach them?
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked about those ancient Mesopotamian
Speaker 1: tablets that shared specifics of their necromancy rituals, which involved incantations,
Speaker 1: so you had special words to say and appeals to
Speaker 1: specific gods who would sort of oversee the proceedings. Like
Speaker 1: one of the tablets specified that you know, this ritual
Speaker 1: is taking place under the auspices of the god Shamash.
Speaker 1: And then they also had recipes for potions and concoctions
Speaker 1: to make out of all kinds of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: dust from across roads, the end of a frog's intestines,
Speaker 1: crab tallow, hair of a dog, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff. And in one case, I guess my favorite
Speaker 1: thing was the ritual that involved a skull that you
Speaker 1: would address as oh skull of skulls, and the implication
Speaker 1: is that the ghost would come into the skull and
Speaker 1: speak out of it somehow. In this case, I wonder
Speaker 1: what literally happened during these rituals, by the way, like
Speaker 1: did I think we don't really know, but I have
Speaker 1: to wonder, like did the skull somehow quote speak? If so,
Speaker 1: how was that accomplished?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because on one hand, you could have a scenario
Speaker 3: where some manner of puppetry was even but I guess
Speaker 3: perhaps more believable, at least by modern standards, would be
Speaker 3: just sort of a physical focus of what's happening. So
Speaker 3: perhaps the necromancer is listening to the skull, and you
Speaker 3: know that becomes the object of focus during the proceedings.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: So a question is do we have physical descriptions of
Speaker 1: what would happen during these rituals, during the ghost interactions
Speaker 1: for Greco Roman necromancy, And the answer is yes, we
Speaker 1: do have some descriptions. One example Ogden gives that I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting is the Greek playwright Escalus, in a
Speaker 1: fragment of an otherwise lost work, describes a scene at
Speaker 1: a lakeside oracle of the dead where blood from a
Speaker 1: black sheep is poured into the water, and the implication
Speaker 1: is that the ghosts would come up from the underworld
Speaker 1: through the waters of the lake and drink the sheep's blood.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting in that it connects to that
Speaker 1: scene in Homer where it's implied that or not even implied,
Speaker 1: it's explicitly stated that giving a ghost sheep's blood or
Speaker 1: ram's blood to drink would make it sort of temporarily
Speaker 1: beefed up enough to party, Like now it can talk.
Speaker 1: And I think this is really interesting, this idea that
Speaker 1: you had to feed blood to a ghost so that
Speaker 1: it could, i don't know, become substantial or empowered enough
Speaker 1: to interact with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's the dead or lacking blood, and
Speaker 3: give them blood and they can they can do living
Speaker 3: things again, at least for a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: But finally coming back to that issue of like what
Speaker 1: form does the delivery of information from the dead take
Speaker 1: in these Greco Roman rituals, like how does the necromancer
Speaker 1: have to deliver the information? And in that case, how
Speaker 1: do they deal with like the information when you know,
Speaker 1: not being specific or accurate. Well, Ogden says that the
Speaker 1: contact with the ghost at an oracle of the Dead
Speaker 1: was done through dream incubation. Oh, this makes sense of things, right,
Speaker 1: So this is similar to what was done at multiple
Speaker 1: kinds of temples and shrines in the ancient world. One
Speaker 1: example we've talked about in the show before was the
Speaker 1: shrines of the healing god Asclepias, where you would want
Speaker 1: to get healed from a disease or something troubling your body,
Speaker 1: and you would to seek a cure. You might go
Speaker 1: to a shrine of Asclepias and you would do some
Speaker 1: kind of ritual, probably make a sacrifice or pay a
Speaker 1: fee or something, and then you would go to sleep,
Speaker 1: and then you would have a dream there where Asclepias
Speaker 1: would deliver to you information in the dream about what
Speaker 1: you could.
Speaker 4: Do to cure your disease. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: In the case of the necromancer oracles, you would do
Speaker 1: the prescribed rituals. You probably make some kind of sacrifice.
Speaker 1: It seems very likely it might involve like a spilling
Speaker 1: of some kind of animal blood to feed to the ghost,
Speaker 1: and then you would go to sleep in the designated area,
Speaker 1: and then the ghost would come to you in a
Speaker 1: dream and tell you what you needed to know. And
Speaker 1: this is interesting in multiple ways. Number One, it highlights
Speaker 1: this thing in ancient Greek thinking, where sleep was sort
Speaker 1: of a state thought of as in some ways analogous
Speaker 1: to or halfway to death. So you're sort of going
Speaker 1: out of the land of the living into this half
Speaker 1: dead state of sleep in order to meet the ghost,
Speaker 1: you know, as it comes out to deliver you information.
Speaker 1: But then also in a practical sense, I could see
Speaker 1: how this would mean that the priest or whatever the
Speaker 1: professional working at the Oracle of the Dead is doing
Speaker 1: like they're not personally on the hook for like giving
Speaker 1: you the information you need. And it might be in
Speaker 1: some cases they did provide information, but it seems like
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases they use dream incubation where
Speaker 1: it's all internal to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like they're just helping to facilitate the conversation
Speaker 3: and then the conversation is left to you and your
Speaker 3: dream state. And I guess in a more like you know,
Speaker 3: skeptical approach here, Yeah, they're simply priming your brain for
Speaker 3: some sort of a dream that could be either in
Speaker 3: and of itself seemingly meaningful, or could be picked apart
Speaker 3: in made meaningful due to the priming. So it's interesting
Speaker 3: how we kind of end up at the end of
Speaker 3: this episode in similar territory to our previous look at
Speaker 3: different cultures and times in which the dream world was
Speaker 3: given special significance. You know, I mean, I'm not sure
Speaker 3: you could necessarily make the case here, because again this
Speaker 3: could be maybe thought of as an important right, but
Speaker 3: not like a prime motivator in the trajectory of a
Speaker 3: given culture. But still, you see, like the importance of
Speaker 3: the dream space to individuals and trying to figure out
Speaker 3: their problems.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it makes me see another parallel between
Speaker 1: sleep and death here is that it seems like they're
Speaker 1: both states in which people's capacities are to some extent diminished,
Speaker 1: but in other ways magnified. You know that, like like
Speaker 1: during sleep you are closer to death, and so of
Speaker 1: course you know your your your consciousness is diminished in
Speaker 1: a way your of course, your your physical potency, like
Speaker 1: you're not moving around while you're asleep, you're prone and
Speaker 1: all that, So you are diminished or reduced in one extent.
Speaker 1: But also it is the place where you have access
Speaker 1: to wisdom beyond what's available to your mortal mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now, of course I can't help but be
Speaker 3: reminded of Freddy Krueger and all this. It's easy to
Speaker 3: think of Freddy Krueger as a monster, but and you know,
Speaker 3: he's a monster in the general sense of the word,
Speaker 3: but he is a ghosts. He has a vngul ghost
Speaker 3: that then appears in your dreams. And I guess by
Speaker 3: virtue of having access to dreams, he has privileged information
Speaker 3: about individuals. I don't know that anyone ever really ask
Speaker 3: him for advice on anything, though, I.
Speaker 4: Mean it would be funny if you did.
Speaker 1: I don't know what kind of advice he would give.
Speaker 3: I mean, that could be a whole sequel right there
Speaker 3: where somebody or some group or like, look, we need
Speaker 3: we need the help of someone with access to dreams.
Speaker 3: I guess specifically teenager dreams. I guess maybe this would
Speaker 3: make sense for if you were designing a product to
Speaker 3: appeal to teenagers, they're like, who knows teenagers?
Speaker 4: Freddy Krueger, you know what's cool? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, to get advice on sweaters, it'd be like,
Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger, is this sweater cool? Is this what's going
Speaker 1: to be hip this season? And he's always just like
Speaker 1: green and red, that's what's going to be in.
Speaker 3: He knows it's a classic look and it'll eventually, you know,
Speaker 3: eventually the trends will come back around to it.
Speaker 1: Okay, but in a cap part two right there.
Speaker 4: I believe.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we'll be back for at least a third
Speaker 3: episode on necromancy, and in the meantime reach out to us.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear your thoughts on these various and
Speaker 3: ancient accounts of necromancy or things that could described as
Speaker 3: a necromantic and scope also if you have thoughts in
Speaker 3: some of the more pop culture things that we've mentioned here,
Speaker 3: if you have thoughts on Freddy Krueger, Slimer or The Ring,
Speaker 3: certainly write in. I mean, there's ultimately a lot you
Speaker 3: could dissect in the original Ghostbusters, where you have ghosts
Speaker 3: that resemble the people as they were in life, and
Speaker 3: then ghosts that no longer look like human beings. You
Speaker 3: also have what ancient Mesopotamian gods entering into the picture
Speaker 3: with their beast like servants. So there's a lot to
Speaker 3: unwrap there.
Speaker 1: Many knew what it was to roast in the belly
Speaker 1: of a slore that day.
Speaker 3: Indeed, all right, a reminder that's stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 3: Is primarily a science podcast, though of course we get
Speaker 3: into into culture and history as well as especially obvious
Speaker 3: in these episodes. We do listener mail episodes. On Mondays,
Speaker 3: we do a short form Monster Factor or Artifact episode
Speaker 3: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 3: concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema. Oh and one more thing. If you use
Speaker 3: any of the various social media accounts and you follow us,
Speaker 3: you may notice that there's a little more life than those. Recently,
Speaker 3: we have some people managing those for us once again.
Speaker 3: And you also might notice some updated photos of me
Speaker 3: and Joe. Well, that's because we visited the Museum of
Speaker 3: Illusions in Atlanta. We were there what Thursday, September twenty first,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. We have some great new photos and
Speaker 3: I recommend that place to anyone who is in Atlanta
Speaker 3: looking to engage with some illusions. It's a very fun place.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.