Speaker 1: My Heart is made a necromancer's glass, where homeless forms
Speaker 1: and exile Phantom's team, where faces of forgotten sorrows gleam
Speaker 1: and dead despairs, archaic peer and pass gray longings of
Speaker 1: some weary heart that was possessed me, and the multiple supreme,
Speaker 1: unwildered hope and star emblazoned dream of questing armies, ancient
Speaker 1: queen and lass risen vampire alike. From out the wormy mold,
Speaker 1: deep in the magic mirror of my Heart, behold their
Speaker 1: parish beauty and depart And now from black Ophelia, far
Speaker 1: and cold, swimming in deathly light on Charnal skies, the
Speaker 1: enormous ghosts of bygone worlds arise.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And to continue a
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind tradition, we are disregarding the
Speaker 3: traditional Gregorian calendar, and we have decided that October begins
Speaker 3: in late September. It often does for us. If you
Speaker 3: don't know, we do spooky content all October, and today
Speaker 3: 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 a haunted 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 writer Clark Ashton Smith.
Speaker 3: Now, I actually suggested this topic because I became interested
Speaker 3: in it when we were doing an episode a while back.
Speaker 3: I think it was our series on oil and Water.
Speaker 3: We were mainly focusing there on legends about how if
Speaker 3: you pour oil and water it will settle the waves,
Speaker 3: and how to some extent that is actually scientifically true.
Speaker 3: So if you haven't heard that series, go back and
Speaker 3: listen to it. It'll be a treat. But in that series,
Speaker 3: I did end up going on a large digression about
Speaker 3: necromancy in the Hebrew Bible, and it got me thinking
Speaker 3: about the idea that necromancy, when people use that word today,
Speaker 3: they're almost always talking about a sort of dungeons and
Speaker 3: Dragons sorcerer that raises the dead and commands them as
Speaker 3: a sort of shambling thrall of some sort, whereas in
Speaker 3: the traditional understanding, necromancy means something different and is usually
Speaker 3: a reference to the practice of divination with the help
Speaker 3: of the dead, consulting the dead for information. And that
Speaker 3: sort of gap in meanings between the popular understanding and
Speaker 3: the original understanding I thought was very interesting and maybe
Speaker 3: worth plowing into the history a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. 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 deav 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 3: Now, I think, aligning with the traditional understanding of necromancy,
Speaker 3: you do have a spell in Dungeons and Dragons which
Speaker 3: is Speak with Dead, which is almost always used for
Speaker 3: necromancy purposes. It's like, you need to get some information
Speaker 3: out of this corpse. And despite the evil connotations of
Speaker 3: necromancy in general, I think anybody can use this spell.
Speaker 3: Like in Balder's Gate, I have my very lawful, good
Speaker 3: 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 that 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 as
Speaker 1: as they understood it to be, and and therefore you know,
Speaker 1: it was just dangerous to even think about such a thing.
Speaker 1: So that'll be worth keeping in mind here. But the
Speaker 1: Dungis and Dragon's idea of the necromancer, of course, you're
Speaker 1: all on various traditions as well, including the discussion of
Speaker 1: necromancers in necromancy and pre existing fantasy and weird fiction,
Speaker 1: including that of Clark Ashton Smith, whose poem started off
Speaker 1: this episode. For instance, he had a story titled The
Speaker 1: Empire of the Necromancers from nineteen thirty two that involved
Speaker 1: a pair of kind of like rogue necromancers who get
Speaker 1: exiled from one kingdom, and so they go into this
Speaker 1: kingdom of this deceased kingdom of tombs and start raising
Speaker 1: up people to serve as their servants, and of course
Speaker 1: they end up rising against them. That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Is it kind of a buddy comedy?
Speaker 1: No, No, it's no, you're not. You don't really sympathize
Speaker 1: with these necromancers. They're awful, and you're rooting for the
Speaker 1: dead to overcome them the whole time, and so it's
Speaker 1: satisfying when they do. It's also worth noting that JR.
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
Speaker 1: Eye as to what sort of literal necromancy he might
Speaker 1: be up to. In Mirkwood. I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: that we have a clear answer on that.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I don't know if Sauron would
Speaker 3: be raising the dead to obtain information or for divinatory purposes.
Speaker 3: I think he mainly does go more in the D
Speaker 3: and D direction of like he raises what are they called,
Speaker 3: you know, the ring rates. I guess those are undead
Speaker 3: wraiths or revenants of some sort of. They are dead
Speaker 3: 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 3: With him except like, yeah, do as I command, you,
Speaker 3: 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 root necromancy can be found in the socioeconomic impact
Speaker 1: 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 method
Speaker 1: or the other. So it becomes important to retain bonds
Speaker 1: of some sort with one's ancestors, which is not necessarily
Speaker 1: necromancy obviously, and even you know, to seek their guidance,
Speaker 1: which is more directly what we might think of as necromancy,
Speaker 1: but again not necessarily necromancy, which is is going to
Speaker 1: be a distinction we'll come back to again and again.
Speaker 3: This is interesting. It gets into something I think I'm
Speaker 3: going to talk about more in Part two than in
Speaker 3: this part, but about how some ancient descriptions of alleged
Speaker 3: necromancy practices might actually be sort of external misunderstandings of
Speaker 3: essentially ancestor cult practices that what is actually sort of
Speaker 3: the care of one's dead ancestors as a sort of
Speaker 3: god of sorts is misinterpreted by people who don't practice
Speaker 3: the same thing with regard to their own ancestors as
Speaker 3: 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 bed,
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: times because you'll see the word necromancer, but they're not
Speaker 1: really talking about anything regarding necromancy specifically. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: 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 was
Speaker 1: evil or dark in some fashion, then it's easy to
Speaker 1: level the word necromancer, which you know drips a certain
Speaker 1: amount of dread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think another important thing to understand is that
Speaker 3: especially in the Christian context, but really I think any
Speaker 3: religious context that enforces a kind of priesthood based orthodoxy,
Speaker 3: there is usually going to be more restrictions on individual
Speaker 3: practice of magic, and necromancy would be one form of that.
Speaker 3: And you know, there are other cultural contexts where it's
Speaker 3: more of a kind of magical ritual free for all,
Speaker 3: and people engage in all different kinds of practices to
Speaker 3: gain information or blessing, and it's not condemned by the
Speaker 3: 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 broadly here as well as its textbook
Speaker 1: definition doesn't necessarily mean knowledge about the future, but can
Speaker 1: also refer to the access of hidden knowledge, you know,
Speaker 1: the interpretation of omens and so forth. So anytime you're
Speaker 1: trying to find something out by speaking with a spirit
Speaker 1: of a dead person. Than that is, broadly speaking, necromancy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my understanding too, especially how it's used in
Speaker 3: the academic literature as opposed to the 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 necro mancia, which means black magic, which comes from
Speaker 1: the Latin word necro mantia, meaning the same thing. The
Speaker 1: Latin here borrows from the pre classical Greek word necromantia,
Speaker 1: And so we have necros meaning dead or corpse, and
Speaker 1: mantia meaning divination. So we're talking about corpse divination or
Speaker 1: divination of the dead.
Speaker 3: And that's why you can see the same suffix mancy
Speaker 3: used in other forms of divination like silenomancy, you know,
Speaker 3: 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 by means of ineffable a duration. I
Speaker 1: called up the soul of an immaculate boy who had
Speaker 1: been put to a violent death, and caused it to
Speaker 1: stand by me. And by its means, whatever I commanded
Speaker 1: is affected, and the soul, freed from the body, possesses
Speaker 1: the faculty of for knowledge. Whence it is called forth
Speaker 1: for necromancy. This particular quote, it's from the Recognitions of Clement,
Speaker 1: and it looks like it's from this is mentioned in
Speaker 1: a book that he cites from nineteen ninety five by
Speaker 1: Robertson Donaldson. Okay, but I guess what it's important to
Speaker 1: drive home, Like it's kind of like three different levels
Speaker 1: of talking about necromancy. It's like earliest, if you're looking
Speaker 1: for like the roots of it, Like how far back
Speaker 1: can you go and find something that is described with
Speaker 1: the word necromancy or necromancer? How far back can you
Speaker 1: go to something that is being described that matches these
Speaker 1: prerequisites for necromancy? And then ultimately, and we'll maybe get
Speaker 1: into this lag or 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 3: Yes, because there are a lot of artifacts that without
Speaker 3: literary sources to really explain what was done with them,
Speaker 3: you can't be sure, but they're suggestive of possible practices
Speaker 3: having to do with consulting the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, in this series, we're going to talk about examples
Speaker 3: of necromancy or alleged necromancy in different times and places
Speaker 3: throughout history. Let's see, I had some stuff today about
Speaker 3: necromancy and ancient Mesopotamia, and Rob, I know you had
Speaker 3: some stuff about in China. Do you want to do
Speaker 3: 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 goes 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 3: Yeah, well, while you're emphasizing the multiple ideas that can
Speaker 3: exist within a single person, of course, it's even more
Speaker 3: true of a populace across time. Like you know, asking
Speaker 3: like what did ancient Chinese people or what did ancient
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian people think about what happens after death? Is kind
Speaker 3: of like asking what do Americans think about what happens
Speaker 3: after death? I mean, you could represent, you can explain
Speaker 3: views that are commonly found, that some views are going
Speaker 3: to be much more frequently believed than others, But there's
Speaker 3: no single answer to that. There are a range of beliefs,
Speaker 3: and so if you talk in generalities, you can only
Speaker 3: talk based on the sources you have, and even then
Speaker 3: that's probably only going to be talking at best about
Speaker 3: like majorities of people or some commonly held ideas, not
Speaker 3: 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 describing
Speaker 1: wizards as necromancers, even though they're not necessarily doing anything
Speaker 1: that is necromantic.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and to people who listen to us often
Speaker 3: this should be obvious. But maybe it's worth saying that
Speaker 3: when we use the term necromancer, we are not applying
Speaker 3: any more attaching any moral ideas to that. It just
Speaker 3: means literally somebody who's getting information from the dead, not
Speaker 3: that that's good or bad. Whatever older sources might be
Speaker 3: likely to I don't know, has some kind of stink
Speaker 3: on the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now I want to stress that, as always,
Speaker 1: my grasp of 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 fung she,
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 fungs 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 Handai. So second
Speaker 1: century BCE, this would have been the rule of Emperor
Speaker 1: Wu of Han. More than one wizard and immortalists served
Speaker 1: this guy. He 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, you know, leaning into the talents of
Speaker 1: magicians to help protect him, he also was very much
Speaker 1: supporting witchcraft, persecution of the day and harsh penalties against
Speaker 1: alleged magic users. But for instance, one of the fun
Speaker 1: she's that worked for him was leschau Yun, who claimed
Speaker 1: to be a seventy year old immortal and preached in
Speaker 1: more mertality via diet and commitment to the Kitchen God.
Speaker 1: Though he did die, so maybe there were some holes
Speaker 1: in the plan. But then there was another individual, a
Speaker 1: funk she known as Chao Wing, and this apparently can
Speaker 1: be translated as young geezer. It basically means like young
Speaker 1: old person.
Speaker 3: Wait does that mean he was like an old person
Speaker 3: who was young at heart or a young person who
Speaker 3: is old at heart.
Speaker 1: That's a good question because the other guy, Le Shao
Speaker 1: yun like, the whole thing is like he was young,
Speaker 1: but he claimed to be seventy. He was like, look
Speaker 1: at me, Look how young I look. This is because
Speaker 1: I have secrets 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 Chao Wing is that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of sources that discuss his alleged use of
Speaker 1: some sort of necromancy and potentially shadow puppetry.
Speaker 3: 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 in 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 3: Okay, give me that controversial story.
Speaker 1: All right. So the story here that is often ruminated
Speaker 1: on is that Emperor Wu had had a favorite consort
Speaker 1: or concubine by the name of Lady Lee. She was
Speaker 1: his absolute favorite, and she she began to grow rather
Speaker 1: ill and eventually died. Towards the ends of her life,
Speaker 1: she began to prohibit him from seeing her face and
Speaker 1: then ultimately from hearing her voice, and then she dies,
Speaker 1: and Schao Wing offers the Emperor a chance to speak
Speaker 1: with her again, to be in her presence again. The
Speaker 1: story is that he brings the Emperor into this kind
Speaker 1: of chamber and there's this fabulous silk screen offerings or
Speaker 1: place for the spirits. There's incense burning, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a you know, manipulation of light and shadow, and he
Speaker 1: is able to summon her spirit on the other side
Speaker 1: of the screen. And there is something shade like or
Speaker 1: shadow like in her appearance.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's interesting because I wonder if that kind of
Speaker 3: thing should meet our death. A mission of necromancy or
Speaker 3: not is just wanting to see and interact with someone
Speaker 3: again because you miss them. A form of necromancy is
Speaker 3: that getting information from them, not in the way I
Speaker 3: would normally think of.
Speaker 1: Well, in some of these tales, apparently like first of all,
Speaker 1: he's completely worn 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 in translation and so forth. I was looking
Speaker 1: at a book called Shiny Shadow Theater, History, Popular Religion,
Speaker 1: and Women Warriors by Fan Pinlee Chin, and the author
Speaker 1: here points out that many critic critics find it ridiculous
Speaker 1: to believe that this court magician first of all invented
Speaker 1: shadow puppetry and then used it to fool the emperor
Speaker 1: into thinking that this is the ghost of his favorite
Speaker 1: concubine like that, that just seems like quite a stunt
Speaker 1: to pull off, even if you're a particular daring and
Speaker 1: charismatic wizard.
Speaker 3: I mean, on one hand, yes, but then I don't
Speaker 3: know by modern analogy. I mean, I think that there
Speaker 3: are people who claim to have spirit medium powers and
Speaker 3: stuff who perform tricks like this on people in the
Speaker 3: 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 Chen also points out some
Speaker 1: other facts that I think helped us sort of circle
Speaker 1: the 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 Chiao 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 a Lang Dynasty author that
Speaker 1: apparently submitted that Chao Wing used something other than traditional
Speaker 1: three dimensional puppets or two dimensional shadow puppets, and that
Speaker 1: quote the necromancer had a statue carved out of magic
Speaker 1: stone in the likeness of the consort. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: arguing in favor of magic stone per se, but that
Speaker 1: makes you think of something perhaps a little bit different,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, higher production values or out of the
Speaker 1: ordinary compared with what you know. They might have been
Speaker 1: used to some sort of like pre existing shadow play
Speaker 1: shadow puppetry performance. While the author is doubtful that any
Speaker 1: of this suggests a shamanistic origin for shadow puppetry, so
Speaker 1: any idea that like shadow puppetry originates as kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, shamanistic or religious rite of some sort.
Speaker 1: Authors the author sites the importance of hun period belief
Speaker 1: that certain fung shei could summon the souls or shadows
Speaker 1: of the deceased through special rights, which again, you know,
Speaker 1: a pre existing script, a pre existing idea that this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that certain magicians can do.
Speaker 1: And the story also seems to have been somewhat corrupted
Speaker 1: in 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 through what you're doing, you're obviously not
Speaker 1: going to stick around court very long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't know, thinking more about the idea
Speaker 3: that could a clever magician really trick a king like this,
Speaker 3: I think maybe that also assumes that the king would
Speaker 3: be more likely suspicious or skeptical than a person might
Speaker 3: naturally be if they do desperately want to see someone again.
Speaker 3: I mean, if someone you love has died and you
Speaker 3: want to see them again, you might not be, you know,
Speaker 3: looking for holes to pick in the experience of seeing
Speaker 3: them once again. 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 life towards the end,
Speaker 1: like he can't see her anymore, now he can't speak
Speaker 1: with her anymore, and now she's dead. And maybe there's
Speaker 1: there's some of that sprinkled in there as well. And
Speaker 1: I also kind of like this whole this idea of
Speaker 1: the screen, this kind of like thin veil that is
Speaker 1: separating him from this possibly you know, resurrected spirit. It's
Speaker 1: such a slight barrier, right, as slight as the barrier
Speaker 1: between life and death may seem at times. And there's
Speaker 1: also something fitting and that ending to tellings of the
Speaker 1: story in which he like finally can't have he can't
Speaker 1: have it. He's like, I have to pull this out
Speaker 1: of the way and see her for real. And then
Speaker 1: when he looks behind the screen, what does he see.
Speaker 1: He sees his court magician doing, you know, something with
Speaker 1: the shadow puppetry or statues, and now the illusion is
Speaker 1: completely destroyed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but before the illusion is destroyed, just the idea
Speaker 3: that she is existing as a shadow on a silk screen.
Speaker 3: It suggests something very delicate and fragile in a kind
Speaker 3: 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 3: All right, Rob, are you ready to talk to some
Speaker 3: ghosts in ancient Mesopotamia?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, So we're going to look at evidence for necromancy
Speaker 3: in the ancient land between the rivers. This would be
Speaker 3: Mesopotamia refers to the civilizations based on the river system
Speaker 3: of the Tigris and Euphrates, so mostly centered in what
Speaker 3: is modern day Iraq. And these civilizations would include, but
Speaker 3: not be limited to, the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians. Now,
Speaker 3: the main source I was looking at here is an
Speaker 3: article from nineteen eighty three by Irving L. Finkel called
Speaker 3: Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia, published in a journal called Arkiev
Speaker 3: fur Orientforschung. And this author, Irving Finkel, is a British
Speaker 3: seriologist and language scholar affiliated with the British Museum. It
Speaker 3: seems like he specializes in cuneiform inscriptions, but he also
Speaker 3: seems to have a range of interests, including everything from
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian ghosts and magic to ancient board games like the
Speaker 3: Royal Game of Or, which I think we I think
Speaker 3: we discussed his work in particular in our Invention series
Speaker 3: on board games.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I remember that episode.
Speaker 3: So I was looking for some general information about Finkel
Speaker 3: in his background, and I found an absolutely delightful video
Speaker 3: interview with Finkel from about five years ago that seems
Speaker 3: to be part of a series the British Museum does
Speaker 3: called Curator's Corner, and this video is called a Mesopotamian
Speaker 3: Ghost Busting with Irving Finkel. It's on topic and I
Speaker 3: found it very interesting, so I thought i'd go ahead
Speaker 3: and summarize this before getting back into the paper. In
Speaker 3: this interview, Finkel talks about some of his best guesses
Speaker 3: as to what ancient Mesopotamians broadly believed about ghosts, the dead,
Speaker 3: and the undead, based on literary and archaeological evidence available
Speaker 3: to us. So to be clear, I think this involves
Speaker 3: some speculation, but it is well informed speculation, and also
Speaker 3: our same caveat from earlier. You know, not everybody believed
Speaker 3: the same thing in certain times and places in history,
Speaker 3: so you can only talk about what seems to be
Speaker 3: common based on the sources we have. So Finkel says
Speaker 3: in ancient Mesopotamia, there was widespread belief that when someone died,
Speaker 3: it was very important that they were given a proper
Speaker 3: burial in the earth, with specified rituals to seal the grave.
Speaker 3: In Finkel's words quote, so they were jolly well locked
Speaker 3: in and couldn't come back to cause trouble. So people
Speaker 3: who for whatever reason do not receive a proper burial
Speaker 3: and do not receive the correct rituals observed at their
Speaker 3: burial would be expected to come back from beyond the
Speaker 3: grave and haunt the living. And some examples given here
Speaker 3: would be people who die on the battlefield, or people
Speaker 3: who die out in the wilderness alone, people who just
Speaker 3: vanish and are assumed dead. And he also mentions people
Speaker 3: who die in childbirth, which I thought was an interesting
Speaker 3: example because I'm not sure in this case what would
Speaker 3: prevent someone who dies in childbirth from receiving a proper burial,
Speaker 3: But I thought that was interesting, and this comes back
Speaker 3: to something that we've discussed a little bit on the
Speaker 3: show before. But I am frequently struck by the belief
Speaker 3: in what seems like many ancient cultures that it is
Speaker 3: extremely important to receive a proper burial or at least
Speaker 3: proper funeral rights according to your local customs. And I
Speaker 3: don't know that it's always because of the kind of
Speaker 3: ghost security concerns that Finkel is going to raise with
Speaker 3: respect to ancient Mesopotamia, but it really does seem like
Speaker 3: lots of ancient peoples that we read about seem truly
Speaker 3: horrified by the idea of dying without receiving the appropriate
Speaker 3: funerary customs or not, or without having their body dealt
Speaker 3: with in the way that their culture deems is proper.
Speaker 3: And it's not that I think people today just don't
Speaker 3: care at all what happens to their bodies after death.
Speaker 3: We care somewhat, but I sense way less sensitivity to
Speaker 3: this on average in American culture today than is implied
Speaker 3: in many ancient sources from different cultures around the world.
Speaker 3: And I don't know exactly what to make of that,
Speaker 3: but it seems significant to me. I feel like I
Speaker 3: would like to 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 it's I think, oftentimes thought to be rather disconnected
Speaker 1: from the physical.
Speaker 3: There's an interesting other example of a connection between the
Speaker 3: belief in what happens to your sort of soular spirit
Speaker 3: in the afterlife and what happens to your physical body
Speaker 3: in a text that I'm going to get into in
Speaker 3: a bit. But to come back to what Finkel talks
Speaker 3: about in this interview, he says, you know, as best
Speaker 3: we can tell from our sources, everybody we know of
Speaker 3: in ancient Mesopotamia believed in ghosts. There is no evidence
Speaker 3: of anyone saying that ghosts don't exist or you don't
Speaker 3: have to worry about them. Seems like it was just
Speaker 3: taken for granted that ghosts existed and were part of life. However,
Speaker 3: and I thought this point was really interesting. Finkel says
Speaker 3: that it is not universal that people regarded ghosts with
Speaker 3: fear or terror. People were not always necessarily frightened of them. Instead,
Speaker 3: he says, the more common attitude seems to be one
Speaker 3: of sympathy for ghosts. Kind like, if there is a
Speaker 3: ghost haunting you, that is a problem, but it's not
Speaker 3: something that is terrifying, at least not necessarily. It could
Speaker 3: be in some circumstances. So a ghost is somebody, usually
Speaker 3: a family member of yours, who is like now having
Speaker 3: a hard time after death. It's almost like somebody in
Speaker 3: your family has a disease or something and because of
Speaker 3: their condition, they are unable to find rest in the underworld,
Speaker 3: that they can't settle down in another world, and they
Speaker 3: need the help of the living. So while they may
Speaker 3: not be frightening, they are in trouble, and they often
Speaker 3: cause trouble, all right.
Speaker 1: So that second part is very familiar than it to
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever seen a TV show that has an
Speaker 1: episode about a ghost? Why did you deal with that ghost?
Speaker 1: You got to like do that thing that makes them
Speaker 1: go away, that makes them content and lets them move on.
Speaker 1: But the first part about it, like it not being
Speaker 1: a frightful scenario but more of a sympathetic scenario. You know,
Speaker 1: it kind of makes me think again. It's like what
Speaker 1: happens when there is not room for a particular type
Speaker 1: of supernatural belief or paranormal experience within a given like
Speaker 1: rule system or worldview. For instance, if your say religious
Speaker 1: worldview is like, hey, there are no such thing as ghosts,
Speaker 1: those don't exist, Well, then when something makes you think
Speaker 1: about ghosts or or raises the specter of ghosts, or
Speaker 1: you have some sort of a hallucination experience that is
Speaker 1: interpreted as ghosts, well then that power structure cannot help
Speaker 1: you because they're like, well out of our hands because
Speaker 1: we already told you that stuff's not real. And then likewise,
Speaker 1: I think if with a certain you know, certain scientific positions,
Speaker 1: you could take on everything you know it's like you
Speaker 1: don't believe in the supernatural. And if then if something
Speaker 1: like this were to present itself, then suddenly it seems
Speaker 1: it may seem like science can't help you. I think
Speaker 1: we would argue something different. We discussed that before. There
Speaker 1: are 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 3: Yes, I think that is very interesting, and I think
Speaker 3: that might be a good explanation for this difference, for
Speaker 3: why our primary emotional reaction to ghosts in the modern
Speaker 3: world or even in I don't know, say like medieval
Speaker 3: Christian Europe would be fear, just like it doesn't fit
Speaker 3: as a reality within your orthodoxy. Yeah, and so anyway,
Speaker 3: in the context of ancient Mesopotamia, Finkle says, there were
Speaker 3: people we know of who specialized in magic and rituals
Speaker 3: designed to appease wandering ghosts and send them back to
Speaker 3: their rightful place among the dead, send them back to
Speaker 3: the nether world where they belong. And I think normally
Speaker 3: in the in the literature, these would be referred to
Speaker 3: as exorcists, which again can be confusing because of like
Speaker 3: the Christian Catholic context of an exorcist being somebody who
Speaker 3: like casts out demons from a person who is demon possessed.
Speaker 3: And in the case it's used in these academic works,
Speaker 3: it would just be referred to it's somebody whose job
Speaker 3: it is to like get the ghost out of the
Speaker 3: place it's not supposed to be and help it you
Speaker 3: back to where it is supposed to be. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: he describes one particular example based on a tablet in
Speaker 3: the British Museum's collection, and this is pretty interesting, he says.
Speaker 3: This tablet depicts a porto walking in profile holding a
Speaker 3: male figure by a lead which I think attaches around
Speaker 3: the male figure's neck. And Finkel says he believes that
Speaker 3: the woman shown in this illustration is a ghost, probably
Speaker 3: the ghost of someone's great aunt, who for some reason
Speaker 3: is wandering the world of the living and causing trouble.
Speaker 3: And the exorcist, called to deal with this problem, decides
Speaker 3: that what this ghost needs is a lover. So the
Speaker 3: exorcist makes one clay model of the ghost woman and
Speaker 3: another clay model that is a sexy man, a young, muscular,
Speaker 3: handsome man with a large beard, and these two clay
Speaker 3: effigies are buried together in a pit with an assortment
Speaker 3: of grave goods, and then the idea is that this
Speaker 3: burial would allow the ghost to settle down into the
Speaker 3: underworld and stop causing distress for the living.
Speaker 1: Hmm. That's interesting. It reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 1: the topic of ghost marriage and Chinese tradition that I
Speaker 1: think Christian and I did an episode on years and
Speaker 1: years back, but you know, basically involves sort of a
Speaker 1: similar principle, like something is out of whack. There's a
Speaker 1: structural incompleteness that is involved with the family unit, and
Speaker 1: it needs to be supernaturally and or symbolically fixed in
Speaker 1: order for these you know, now ancestors to completely pass
Speaker 1: on and sort of be properly organized in the afterlife
Speaker 1: or what have you.
Speaker 3: Right, I think that's a good comparison. But to come
Speaker 3: back to the illustration on the tablet, he says, it
Speaker 3: seems to show this ghost woman holding on to I
Speaker 3: guess her new lover by this like lead. So there's
Speaker 3: like no chance he gets away there together forever. Now,
Speaker 3: coming back to this idea from a minute ago, that
Speaker 3: the ghosts were not necessarily thought of as frightening in
Speaker 3: ancient Mesopotamia, Finkle says that there were some ghosts who
Speaker 3: were who actually were frightening and danger and he offers
Speaker 3: his opinion that these were probably understood to be the
Speaker 3: ghosts of people who were themselves frightening and dangerous when
Speaker 3: they were alive. So, you know, regular person with a
Speaker 3: proper without proper burial means a you know, a sort
Speaker 3: of sympathetic but troublesome ghost. Somebody is a problem you
Speaker 3: need to deal with, or a ghost you need to help,
Speaker 3: not necessarily scary, whereas a wicked person without a proper
Speaker 3: burial that could be a scary ghost.
Speaker 1: Okay, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: And he says these malevolent ghosts were thought to slip
Speaker 3: in through a person's ear while the victim was asleep,
Speaker 3: and if the ghost gets in through your ear canal,
Speaker 3: it could bring on extreme headaches like migraines, or it
Speaker 3: could even cause madness. And Finkel describes a couple of
Speaker 3: other types of effigies that would be crafted by ancient
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian exorcists in order to drive away malevolent ghosts. First,
Speaker 3: there's a kind of king figure who would be placed
Speaker 3: near a bed to project authority and general warding magic.
Speaker 3: And then second would be a model of a Vizier
Speaker 3: figure that would be placed on top of a pole
Speaker 3: in a way that it could rotate around the pole
Speaker 3: like a kind of spin around it like a propeller,
Speaker 3: and this would, he suggests, sort of fan the air
Speaker 3: around and drive spirits away. Okay, And finally he makes
Speaker 3: the point that these elaborate rituals with like paid exorcists
Speaker 3: were these almost certainly would have been the things that
Speaker 3: were available to the elite, to the richest people in society,
Speaker 3: and we have way less insight, maybe no insight really
Speaker 3: into how regular people dealt with ghosts if they did
Speaker 3: it all. And then he sort of humorously suggests that
Speaker 3: regular people might not have had time to see ghosts,
Speaker 3: or if they did, perhaps they just sort of like
Speaker 3: waved at them and went about their business. But we
Speaker 3: don't really know. But I do think that's kind of
Speaker 3: funny to imagine that, Like, I don't know if this
Speaker 3: is true, but I mean, I wonder if like ghosts
Speaker 3: are more likely to be a problem that you're dealing
Speaker 3: with if you have excess like time and leisure and
Speaker 3: 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 it.
Speaker 3: Now, to come back to Finkle's nineteen eighty three paper
Speaker 3: on necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia, all of that I was
Speaker 3: just talking about was ghostbusting or exorcism. Back to necromancy specifically,
Speaker 3: I want to note quickly that this article I'm talking about,
Speaker 3: I think it was very interesting, so I do want
Speaker 3: to talk about it, but it was not written for
Speaker 3: a popular audience. This is for Mesopotamian specialists, and several
Speaker 3: parts kind of assume familiarity with ancient languages, which I
Speaker 3: certainly do not have. I think I was able to
Speaker 3: make sense of all the main points by doing some
Speaker 3: secondary research, but please just know I'm doing my best here.
Speaker 3: I'm outside my area of expertise. So he starts off
Speaker 3: this paper by saying, you know, our sources from ancient
Speaker 3: Mesopotamia don't contain a lot of references to necromancy, but
Speaker 3: there is some evidence of its practice. And here he
Speaker 3: defines necromancy as quote, the delicate art of summoning the
Speaker 3: spirits of the dead, in order to learn the future
Speaker 3: from them. So this is the definition you'll find more
Speaker 3: often in academic works, not about you know, summoning skeleton
Speaker 3: soldiers or something, but again for divination purposes. He specifically
Speaker 3: says to learn the future. But I think some of
Speaker 3: the examples he mentions are not really so much about
Speaker 3: the future. They're just more generally the getting information thing.
Speaker 3: And so Finkel writes that some of the clearest evidence
Speaker 3: of necromancy is actually lexical, meaning really related to vocabulary.
Speaker 3: There are these ancient cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia known as
Speaker 3: lexical lists, and they go way back. There are tons
Speaker 3: of these tablets you can find in the archaeological record.
Speaker 3: There are lots of them to to translate and interpret,
Speaker 3: and they are essentially ancient glossaries that just list collections
Speaker 3: of words, often with translations of the terms between different languages.
Speaker 3: And these could include lists of names or lists of gods,
Speaker 3: or lists of different categories of natural objects like lists
Speaker 3: of plants or lists of birds, or simply lists of
Speaker 3: nouns or words. And one of the most famous Cuneiform
Speaker 3: lexical text traditions is the professions list known as lou
Speaker 3: and so in this list, it names a bunch of
Speaker 3: jobs jobs people can have there, and so there are
Speaker 3: words for professions in this list that we can tell
Speaker 3: refer to necromancers because of the way the words are constructed.
Speaker 3: And this is one of those sections where, because this
Speaker 3: is for specialists, I wasn't able to tell exactly what
Speaker 3: the terms here cash out to in English. But I
Speaker 3: think what this means is there are sort of listed
Speaker 3: professions that are called something like dead spirit, razor or something.
Speaker 3: And Finkel says there are male and female versions of
Speaker 3: these professional names, but unfortunately we don't have connected literary
Speaker 3: texts that show how these terms were used. However, Finkel
Speaker 3: says there are several passages in Mesopotamian texts that were
Speaker 3: already widely known at the time this paper was published
Speaker 3: which do describe forms of necromancy in practice, and one
Speaker 3: of the most interesting ones is found in the Sumerian
Speaker 3: narrative known as Gilgamesh in key Do and the nether World.
Speaker 1: Good Old Gilgamesh.
Speaker 3: Yes, now, this is a story of the two characters
Speaker 3: Gilgamesh and in key Do, who are the heroes of
Speaker 3: the famous Gilgamesh epic. You know they they have that
Speaker 3: I mean that's a buddy cop story for you. You know.
Speaker 3: They they go slay the demon Humbaba together in the
Speaker 3: Cedar forest, and they get up to all kinds of mischief,
Speaker 3: but then tragically in key Do dies, and then that
Speaker 3: that sends Gilgamesh on his quest for immortality. I think
Speaker 3: that Gilgamesh in key Do in the Nether World is,
Speaker 3: from what I understand best thought of as a separate
Speaker 3: story that is out of continuity with the rest of
Speaker 3: the Gilgamesh epic, even though it is sometimes tacked on
Speaker 3: at the end of the larger epic as a kind
Speaker 3: of discontinuous chapter, because like in key Do dies earlier
Speaker 3: in the story, and then here he is suddenly alive
Speaker 3: again at the beginning of this story. But here are
Speaker 3: the broad strokes of Gilgamesh in key Do and the
Speaker 3: Nether World. So Gilgamesh's stuff keeps falling into the underworld world,
Speaker 3: like he has this stuff called I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what these possessions of Gilgamesh's are supposed to be. There's
Speaker 3: one thing called an LaGG written in English elag that like, oh,
Speaker 3: it fell into the underworld, you know, So his stuff
Speaker 3: is like tumbling out of this world into the infamous
Speaker 3: House of Dust, where the dead go to dwell, and
Speaker 3: so Gilgamesh's friend and or servant in key Do offers
Speaker 3: to go into the underworld to get his stuff back
Speaker 3: for him. Unfortunately, once he goes down there, he breaks
Speaker 3: all the rules and is thus not allowed to return
Speaker 3: to the world of the living now he is dead.
Speaker 3: And in the version that Finkel sites, there is a
Speaker 3: scene in which a demon named Nrgal conjures up the
Speaker 3: ghost of bing ky Do at Gilgamesh's bidding, and the
Speaker 3: ghost of inky Do is said to rise up through
Speaker 3: a hole or a crack in the ground like the wind,
Speaker 3: in order to have a conversation with Gilgamesh about what
Speaker 3: the underworld is like.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I went looking for a full translation of this story
Speaker 3: so I could zero in on a few sections. The
Speaker 3: one version of this text that I found online, which
Speaker 3: I should note has a few small differences from exactly
Speaker 3: what Finkel describes, was on an Oxford hosted website called
Speaker 3: the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. So I want
Speaker 3: to look at a few different things. First of all,
Speaker 3: the list of things that Gilgamesh tells in key Do
Speaker 3: not to do in order to survive his trip to
Speaker 3: the nether World, there's like a oh, I don't know,
Speaker 3: like the you know, the rules in how to survive
Speaker 3: a slasher movie in Key Do gets one of those
Speaker 3: for the nether World. So he says, you're definitely not
Speaker 3: supposed to wear clean garments, because if you wear clean garments,
Speaker 3: they're going to know you're not dead, you're not one
Speaker 3: of them, that they'll get really mad. You should not
Speaker 3: anoint yourself with fine oil from a bowl because then
Speaker 3: they will surround you because they will smell that you
Speaker 3: smell nice, and you're not supposed to smell nice down there.
Speaker 3: Very sensible, exactly, Yes, he says, don't start hurling throw
Speaker 3: sticks in another world. Those struck down by the throw
Speaker 3: sticks are going to get mad at you and surround you.
Speaker 1: Okay. Also sensible, he.
Speaker 3: Says, don't hold a cornell wood stick in your hand.
Speaker 3: He says that the spirits will feel insulted by this
Speaker 3: for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, but good advice. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't think of it, and therefore is even more important
Speaker 1: that you'd be warned.
Speaker 3: Exactly. He says, you shouldn't put sandals on your feet.
Speaker 3: You should not shout in another world. I guess maybe
Speaker 3: in key Dou's wife had died, he says you should
Speaker 3: neither kiss nor hit your wife. And then in key
Speaker 3: Dou's child had died, and you said you should neither
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess getting the lag in the other
Speaker 3: stuff back to bring that back. But in key Do fails.
Speaker 3: He does literally everything Gilgamesh warns him not to do
Speaker 3: in the underworld, every single one of the things, and
Speaker 3: he is seized and trapped there forever.
Speaker 1: Oh that went south.
Speaker 3: So in this version I was reading, Gilgamesh gets somebody.
Speaker 3: It's not the demon Nergal. In this version he gets
Speaker 3: somebody named Utu to open a hole in the underworld
Speaker 3: to allow in Kedu to come up and share information
Speaker 3: with him. And so I want to describe this scene
Speaker 3: where in Kydu's ghost is called up. It reads as follows.
Speaker 3: They hugged and kissed, they wearied each other with questions,
Speaker 3: did you see the order of the nether world? If
Speaker 3: only you would tell me, my friend, if only you
Speaker 3: would tell me? And then in Key Dou responds, if
Speaker 3: I tell you the order of the nether world, sit
Speaker 3: down and weep, And in Key Dou tells him that
Speaker 3: the nether world is like a garment infested with worms,
Speaker 3: and it is like a crevice filled with dust. And
Speaker 3: then they end up talking at link about the fates
Speaker 3: of the dead. So there are all these different things
Speaker 3: that sort of reflect I guess, ancient Mesopotamian views about
Speaker 3: what the good life is like. It seems that in
Speaker 3: Key Doo thinks the dead who have a lot of
Speaker 3: airs are pretty happy, and the ones that have fewer
Speaker 3: airrors are unhappy. But then a bunch of other different
Speaker 3: kinds of fates people can have are described. They say,
Speaker 3: for example, did you see the spirit of him who
Speaker 3: has no funerary offerings? In Key who says I saw him?
Speaker 3: Gilgemesh says, how does he fare? In Key who says
Speaker 3: he eats the scraps and the crumbs tossed out in
Speaker 3: the street. And again, bad things when funeral rites are
Speaker 3: not observed. But I wondered about that. Does he mean
Speaker 3: the scraps and crumbs tossed out in the street in
Speaker 3: the nether world or on Earth in the cities of
Speaker 3: the living. I took it maybe more to be the second.
Speaker 1: Hmm, 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 3: But then there's one thing here that has some interesting
Speaker 3: metaphysical information. Gilgamesh says, did you see him who was
Speaker 3: set on fire? And in Kidu says, I did not
Speaker 3: see him. His spirit is not about His smoke went
Speaker 3: up to the sky. So the person who is burned
Speaker 3: is not in the nether world at all. They go
Speaker 3: wherever their smoke goes up in the sky. What happens
Speaker 3: 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 don't go cremating the dead, because then how
Speaker 1: are they going to get to this wonderful it's wonderful
Speaker 1: afterlife that is being presented here.
Speaker 3: I mean, to be clear, it seems okay for people
Speaker 3: who had a bunch of errors. He says they are
Speaker 3: like gods, they sit in judgment of everyone else. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I thought this was interesting because this is depicting an
Speaker 3: example of necromancy. I think that does meet the strict definition.
Speaker 3: Like Gilgamesh is trying to get hidden in from but
Speaker 3: it's not so much like personal future fortune telling type stuff. Instead,
Speaker 3: he is using this consultation with the dead to get
Speaker 3: 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 in these days?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: After life? Well what's it? What's it like?
Speaker 3: Well, it's hashy, it's it's like dust and a crevis,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, that's what you should say next time
Speaker 3: you reconnect with an old friend. Well, you know, garment,
Speaker 3: garment eaten by worms, crabs full of dust. But anyway,
Speaker 3: coming back to Finkle's paper, so he mentioned a couple
Speaker 3: of other sources pre existing at the time of this
Speaker 3: paper that mentioned necromancy, or at least potentially mention it
Speaker 3: in a more prosaic context. One is an old Assyrian
Speaker 3: letter from Cultepe which contains the lines quote here, we
Speaker 3: asked the female oracle givers, the female diviners and the
Speaker 3: spirits colon assure repeated upbraids you, and so I interpret
Speaker 3: this to be a reference to a person who consults
Speaker 3: the spirits of the dead to get information. Possibly the
Speaker 3: information they're getting is about the fact that the god
Speaker 3: a sewer, who is like a god of Assyria, is
Speaker 3: angry with someone.
Speaker 1: Okay, they have inside information.
Speaker 3: Another is also a letter, this one Neo Assyrian, which
Speaker 3: exists in damaged form and has been interpreted and translated
Speaker 3: different ways. One of those interpretations implies that necromancers have
Speaker 3: asked the spirits to predict whether a certain person will
Speaker 3: become a king, but this interpretation of the letter is
Speaker 3: not certain, but anyway. After these examples, Finkel goes on
Speaker 3: to describe two previously unpublished Babylonian tablets from the first
Speaker 3: millennium BCE, held by the British Museum that he says,
Speaker 3: deal in totally unambiguous terms with necromancy, and boy, these
Speaker 3: are a trip. Are you ready?
Speaker 1: I'm ready?
Speaker 3: The first one is called b M three six seven
Speaker 3: O three. It is a late Babylonian text and it
Speaker 3: includes instructions for a necromantic ritual. It says, you call
Speaker 3: upon the ghost and he will answer you, And then
Speaker 3: there's an incantation where the necromancer says who are you?
Speaker 3: Who are you? It then lists the names of known
Speaker 3: malevolent spirits and demons that we know are supposed to
Speaker 3: be evil spirits and demons because they appear in other
Speaker 3: texts about exorcism, and Finkel says that this part of
Speaker 3: the ritual seems to be a kind of safety precaution,
Speaker 3: trying to protect against the possibility that in summoning the
Speaker 3: dead for divination you accidentally summon a vicious, evil monster. Instead,
Speaker 3: it's like a security step to prevent you dialing the
Speaker 3: 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 posssibly connect to who you
Speaker 1: want to reach.
Speaker 3: Right, But that's not the context here. They think you
Speaker 3: can dial the right number. You just got to be careful,
Speaker 3: You got to do the right incantations and warding magic. Now,
Speaker 3: next in this tablet, there's a part that is damaged,
Speaker 3: but it appears based on context to be steps for
Speaker 3: what to do if the ritual doesn't work. I do
Speaker 3: wish we could know what it's said here. Then it
Speaker 3: goes on to the ritual itself. Here I'm gonna read
Speaker 3: from Finkel, and the context is that this is an
Speaker 3: Akkadian incantation that is addressed to the god Shamash, and
Speaker 3: it is asking for the help of the god Shamash
Speaker 3: to summon a ghost literally of the darkness. And so
Speaker 3: then reading from Finkel, now quote, this ghost, once brought
Speaker 3: up from its place of rest, is then supposed to
Speaker 3: enter into a skull a placed there for that purpose.
Speaker 3: The reciter of the incantation says, quote, I call upon you,
Speaker 3: o skull of skulls. May he who is within the
Speaker 3: skull answer me. Then there follows in line seven to ten,
Speaker 3: a magical ritual that involves an oily preparation of animal
Speaker 3: parts being mixed up and left to stand overnight. Do
Speaker 3: you want to know what is in this necromancer cocktail route?
Speaker 1: Oh? I suppose we should know.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it says you crush up a male and
Speaker 3: female partridge, dust from a crossroads, dust of a jumping cricket,
Speaker 3: of the step, and an upturned potshard from a crossroads
Speaker 3: in puru oil. Then you mix all that together, you
Speaker 3: leave it to stand overnight, and in the morning you
Speaker 3: will Then there are a number of things you can
Speaker 3: actually do. So A Finkle goes on to explain that
Speaker 3: you either use this mixture to anoint the skull itself
Speaker 3: or the ghost. And I'm not sure exactly how you
Speaker 3: anoint the ghost with it, and then or the And
Speaker 3: then it's a word that's represented as na m and
Speaker 3: I think the meaning of that is ambiguous. Finkal says
Speaker 3: it might refer to it might be referring to someone
Speaker 3: called the man, but it's unclear in the context of
Speaker 3: the tablet who this would refer to, unless maybe he
Speaker 3: says it means like a figurine of the dead person
Speaker 3: who you're trying to summon, like we saw with the
Speaker 3: other ritual, that would make sense. And then to pick
Speaker 3: up again, reading from Finkle's description of the ritual, quote
Speaker 3: at this point you call upon him and he will
Speaker 3: answer you. In the context, the word elemou, no doubt
Speaker 3: refers to a representation of the ghost, and the ritual
Speaker 3: would have the same effect whether applied to this representation
Speaker 3: to the nam or to the skull itself. It's not
Speaker 3: quite certain whether all three elements were necessary. The idea, however,
Speaker 3: is quite clear. It is quite appropriately Shamash who has
Speaker 3: the power and authority to bring up a ghost from
Speaker 3: the underworld, and the whole operation is put under his auspices.
Speaker 3: Somehow the ghost will enter into the skull and answer
Speaker 3: the questions put to him.
Speaker 1: I love that no skull of skulls indeed.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that's the first tablet. There's a second tablet,
Speaker 3: another previously unknown text being published, I guess at the
Speaker 3: time of this article that is known as K two
Speaker 3: seven seventy nine, which is a neo Babylonian tablet which
Speaker 3: contains some of the same material as the previous text,
Speaker 3: but also some original stuff. And this text, interestingly also
Speaker 3: contains what appear to be security precautions. For example, there
Speaker 3: is a ritual and incantation that is to quote, avert
Speaker 3: the evil in the crying of the ghost or the
Speaker 3: crying of a ghost. Sorry and Finkel notes from the
Speaker 3: contemporary texts that it was believed that personal contact with
Speaker 3: a ghost usually led to really bad consequences for a
Speaker 3: living person, often death. So if you are an necromancer.
Speaker 3: You could be doing something really dangerous. You are attempting
Speaker 3: personal contact with a ghost in order to get privileged information,
Speaker 3: but this contact comes with a high likelihood of a
Speaker 3: death curse, so you have to employ protective magic to
Speaker 3: counteract that danger. Now, I was kind of wondering how
Speaker 3: to square this with Finkel's own characterization that that was
Speaker 3: from an interview decades later of ghosts not for the
Speaker 3: most part incurring a reaction of fear in the ancient Mesopotamians,
Speaker 3: but rather of kind of like sympathy. I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly how to square that, but it makes me wonder
Speaker 3: if maybe most of the ghost encounters people thought they
Speaker 3: were having weren't actually like personal face to face contact
Speaker 3: or talking to a ghost or hearing the cry of
Speaker 3: a ghost, but more like indirect indications that a spirit
Speaker 3: is restless and wandering, or seeing what appears to be
Speaker 3: evidence of a dead family member from Afar. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind it reminds me of some of these traditions
Speaker 1: involving like.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Finkel also says it's notable that K two seven seventy
Speaker 3: nine is a is a type of text called a nimburbie,
Speaker 3: the primary purpose of which is describing ways to avert
Speaker 3: evil and unexplained phenomena. So it's kind of surprising that
Speaker 3: rituals for intentionally summoning up a ghost and prying information
Speaker 3: out of it under the auspices of Shamash or whoever
Speaker 3: would be included, because the rest of the text is
Speaker 3: basically like a ghostbusting manual. It is how to keep ghosts, demons,
Speaker 3: and any other weirdness away from you.
Speaker 1: M yeah. It raises all sorts of questions about like
Speaker 1: what is sort of what is the day to day
Speaker 1: activity in the ghost busting and necromancer professional world of
Speaker 1: this time period.
Speaker 3: Okay, but I think I promised you there was another
Speaker 3: necromancer cocktail coming. This one is from let's see, Well,
Speaker 3: I think this actually is derived from both both texts,
Speaker 3: and this is a concoction you would put together that
Speaker 3: is part of an incantation to enable a man to
Speaker 3: see a ghost. So the text says, you crush moldy wood,
Speaker 3: fresh leaves of euphrates, poplar, in water, oil, beer, and wine.
Speaker 3: You dry, crush and sieve snake, tallow, lion, tallow, crab, tallow,
Speaker 3: white honey, a frog that lives among the pebbles, hair
Speaker 3: of a dog, hair of a cat, hair of a fox,
Speaker 3: bristle of a chameleon, and bristle of a red lizard,
Speaker 3: claws of a frog, end of intestines of a frog,
Speaker 3: the left wing of a grasshopper, and marrow from the
Speaker 3: long bone of a goose.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: You mix all this in wine, water and milk with
Speaker 3: amhara plant, and then you recite the incantation three times,
Speaker 3: and you anoint your eyes with it, and you will
Speaker 3: see the ghost and he will speak with you. You can
Speaker 3: look at the ghost, he will talk with you. And yes,
Speaker 3: I said that twice because the text says it twice.
Speaker 3: So any mixologists out there who want to take these
Speaker 3: as an inspiration for a Halloween themed drink, I don't
Speaker 3: know how exactly you make a safe version of that,
Speaker 3: but take it. Take it as an inspiration. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a challenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't actually do that, but but yeah, I do
Speaker 1: love instructions like this for magic potions or homunculi or
Speaker 1: whatever you happen to be concocting in olden times. Though,
Speaker 1: the moldy wood gave me pause, Like it makes me.
Speaker 1: It 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 3: Oh yes, yeah, it might make it kind of glow
Speaker 3: in the dark.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I mean as for like the hair of
Speaker 1: the cat and the dog and so forth, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, imagine that you're just getting into symbolic
Speaker 1: territory at that point.
Speaker 3: Once you've used your end of intestines of a frog
Speaker 3: in this though, what do you do with the start
Speaker 3: 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 or the other, and in some
Speaker 1: cases there are rules, there are laws in place spelling
Speaker 1: out exactly how one professional is supposed to carry all
Speaker 1: this out.
Speaker 3: Again, I do think it's interesting and significant that both
Speaker 3: of these instruction manuals for necromancers have these safety precautions,
Speaker 3: like you've got to go through, you've got to like
Speaker 3: put on the safety goggles and stuff in a magical
Speaker 3: metaphorical sense. And I wonder if that's always true about
Speaker 3: necromancy everywhere, or is there anywhere where it's just kind
Speaker 3: of more like loosely regulated, fly by the seat of
Speaker 3: 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, of course a professional
Speaker 1: necromancer is going to outline the extreme risks that they
Speaker 1: are taking when they carry out their nechromatic acts. You
Speaker 1: don't want. It's not necromancy for the masses, it's necromancy
Speaker 1: for me, and you're going to pay me to do it. Therefore,
Speaker 1: there need to be certain skills involved that the ordinary
Speaker 1: people are not going to attempt to do.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yeah, I wonder if this is
Speaker 3: in some way justifying of economic incentives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But then on the other hand, I mean just
Speaker 1: magic systems in general, other models of the afterlife in general.
Speaker 1: You see in various cultures, like it is often a
Speaker 1: realm in which there are various dangers and there are
Speaker 1: rules that need to be followed to the letter if
Speaker 1: you were to survive, like the journey, or survive you know,
Speaker 1: the dipping into this world a little bit to gain
Speaker 1: knowledge and so forth.
Speaker 3: 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 necromancy.
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 the
Speaker 1: entire month of October as we explore other topics of
Speaker 1: a 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 going to be
Speaker 1: watching some horror movies this month, so you can watch
Speaker 1: along with us, or you can just tune in and
Speaker 1: listen to our discussions of these films if you're a
Speaker 1: little too creeped out to view them for yourself. And
Speaker 1: then on Mondays we do listener mail and on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: we do a short form monster fact.
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