Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of by
Speaker 1: heart Radiobu. Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our talk about
Speaker 1: nails Fingernails Toenails. In the last episode, we talked about
Speaker 1: how fast nails grow, what influences how fast they grow,
Speaker 1: some strange decades long self experimentation projects on the measurement
Speaker 1: of nails. And this time we're going to get out
Speaker 1: of some of that scientific minutia and jump into the
Speaker 1: weirder world of nails and the role that nails and
Speaker 1: hair play in a lot of very very surprising and
Speaker 1: interesting magical and religious beliefs. Yeah, and it it makes
Speaker 1: sense that we would since the nails that we look
Speaker 1: down at every day, that we you know, find ourselves
Speaker 1: absent mindedly feeling, uh that that in fact enhance our
Speaker 1: ability to engage physically with the world. They are strange
Speaker 1: to behold. Like we said before, they're both alive and
Speaker 1: dead at the same time, at least as you know,
Speaker 1: in the way that we we think of them. You know,
Speaker 1: they they're obviously a part of our body, uh, and
Speaker 1: yet they feel slightly external. You know that they are
Speaker 1: these things that are like clause but not clause. So
Speaker 1: it makes sense that we would have some kind of
Speaker 1: complicated magical ideas at times about what they are and
Speaker 1: what they do. Yeah, and I think some of the
Speaker 1: magical and religious ideas are going to connect with something
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the last episode, which was
Speaker 1: this the strange thing I was observing about how our
Speaker 1: hard body parts, the hard external parts like teeth and nails,
Speaker 1: though you would expect them to be sort of like
Speaker 1: the most uh, I don't know what you would call
Speaker 1: like the most brutally disposable parts of our bodies, because
Speaker 1: they're hard. You know, they're like what you put out
Speaker 1: front in defense or attack. But in fact we've got
Speaker 1: these kind of vulnerability trauma obsessions with these parts of
Speaker 1: our bodies. Like if you just start worrying about what
Speaker 1: could go wrong with your body, how you could be injured,
Speaker 1: how it could be damaged, a lot of the natural
Speaker 1: places that people go to go to worry about these
Speaker 1: things our teeth and nails, absolutely, and that's that's why
Speaker 1: towards the end of the at the last episode, we
Speaker 1: started talking a little bit about Glenn Danzig's fingernails and
Speaker 1: about how, at least in some music videos or posters
Speaker 1: that I kind of have remember um from my my
Speaker 1: teenage years, I recall that he had sharpened fingernails, and
Speaker 1: I would wonder to myself, well, what purpose did those have?
Speaker 1: And indeed, you know, would sharpen fingernails age you in
Speaker 1: in fights or something? Because I also remember, like Stephen
Speaker 1: King novels and short stories that I also was reading
Speaker 1: at the time, you'd occasionally have a character show up
Speaker 1: that is sharpened their teeth down to to file points
Speaker 1: um or or perhaps even has some sort of like
Speaker 1: sharpened ginger nails, I guess, and uh, and it brings
Speaker 1: them to wonder like would there be any kind of
Speaker 1: actual combat or defensive advantage to that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: And we we mostly decided that there would not really be. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can scratch your way out of a out of
Speaker 1: a scrape here and there, but there's also a big
Speaker 1: possibility to damage your your fingernails if you're trying to
Speaker 1: use like sharpened fingernails to attack somebody. More than likely,
Speaker 1: if you encounter somebody with really gnarly looking fingernails, that
Speaker 1: have been sharpened to a point or or indeed, um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just look seemingly intentionally creepy. They probably are
Speaker 1: trying to look at least a little bit like nos Ferato, right,
Speaker 1: And so this vampire association with long nails. In fact,
Speaker 1: we were just talking about this with Seth the other day,
Speaker 1: Uh and and uh Seth. Seth was sharing with us
Speaker 1: the idea that, you know, it's possible that the association
Speaker 1: between long fingernails and vampires could come from the idea
Speaker 1: that often in the old days, you might and up
Speaker 1: if you've you've exhumed a body from the graveyard and
Speaker 1: you notice that their nails look a little bit long,
Speaker 1: and so you think, wait a minute, are they still
Speaker 1: alive in some way or they're getting up and roaming
Speaker 1: around and still growing body tissues. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: this has come up on the show in the past before,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly it goes beyond the world of mere vampires.
Speaker 1: We talked about it a bit in the episode where
Speaker 1: we talked about the Kappa, the Japanese water demon um
Speaker 1: where you have varying monstrous conceptions in the human imagination
Speaker 1: that are based upon an analysis of a physical death
Speaker 1: to see what happens to the body after it dies
Speaker 1: and the seeming changes that take place in the body.
Speaker 1: And in the case of the vampire, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the bloated form. Uh. The impression at least that the
Speaker 1: hair is still growing, the impression that the nails are
Speaker 1: still growing. So if you ask the question is that true,
Speaker 1: the answer is no, It is not true that hair
Speaker 1: and fingernails continue to grow after death. Uh, at least
Speaker 1: not to any significant degree. Now, if the nails in
Speaker 1: the hair don't keep growing after death, that that does
Speaker 1: leave the question of why so many people thought that
Speaker 1: that was the case. Why Why would you look at
Speaker 1: a corpse and think that its nails appear long? And
Speaker 1: the most common explanation for this tends to be based
Speaker 1: on the dehydration of the corps. That as the body
Speaker 1: begins to decompose, it loses a lot of moisture, which
Speaker 1: causes the retraction of the skin tissues around the finger
Speaker 1: nails and around the nail plate, which makes the nail
Speaker 1: plates look longer because there's there's just less skin around them. Now,
Speaker 1: this helps inform more than just our idea of vampires
Speaker 1: for starters, it also has factored into the buried alive
Speaker 1: panics that have existed at different times. I believe we
Speaker 1: we discussed this a bit in an episode of Invention
Speaker 1: on various casket innovations. So the idea is, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: end up digging up this corpse later, and maybe you
Speaker 1: don't assume that they were some sort of undead fiend,
Speaker 1: but you might think, oh, my goodness, they were still
Speaker 1: alive for some time after we buried them. They must
Speaker 1: have been buried alive. And this led to a fashionable
Speaker 1: demand in the nineteenth century for caskets with escape hatches
Speaker 1: and ways of getting out if you happen to have
Speaker 1: been buried alive. Yes, So if you want to catch
Speaker 1: up on that, do check out that episode of Invention.
Speaker 1: It may still be in the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind feed from when we put a bunch of those
Speaker 1: out earlier in the year. But if not, you can
Speaker 1: find the dedicated fee to Invention. Even though we're not
Speaker 1: putting out new episodes of that show in that feed,
Speaker 1: you'll still find all of those episodes there for your listening.
Speaker 1: I think it was a three part last October. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. Now. In addition to this you'll
Speaker 1: also find various myths and legends just concerned just general
Speaker 1: monstrosity in the world. And oftentimes you'll have a monster
Speaker 1: that has long fingernails. And this is roughly, you know,
Speaker 1: associated with the idea that, okay, long fingernails imply a
Speaker 1: wildness to kind of beastial nature of the the entity
Speaker 1: or the being in question. Right, what has claws wild animals? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And though the long or fingernails become, the more like
Speaker 1: the claws of an animal they become. Now, there are
Speaker 1: exceptions to this. Long finger nails are sometimes considered fashionable
Speaker 1: for females we see we see a lot of that
Speaker 1: in um in modern culture, but then also you sometimes
Speaker 1: see it as a fashion for males as well. Long nails,
Speaker 1: for example, were important symbols of social status at various
Speaker 1: points in Chinese history, and they were sometimes painted for
Speaker 1: visual effect, but also sometimes the painting or sometimes the
Speaker 1: lacquering of the nail was as much about strengthening the
Speaker 1: nail as it was about making it look fancy, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting point. And apparently this we see echoes
Speaker 1: of this and other cultures as well. I think the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians um are are are thought to have engaged
Speaker 1: in this sort of thing as well, strengthening the nail
Speaker 1: in order to maintain its elongated uh uh structure. Now,
Speaker 1: later on in Chinese history, ornate finger nail guards were
Speaker 1: used to protect outer nails. So this might be like
Speaker 1: on the pinky finger, for example, and the ring finger
Speaker 1: uh and uh. And we're we're talking some pretty ornate
Speaker 1: finger coverings here. For instance, the six inch long golden
Speaker 1: mail protectors that were worn by the Imperious Dowager Sushi,
Speaker 1: who ruled China for forty three years from eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: one until her death in nineteen o eight. If you
Speaker 1: look her up, you can find actual photographs of her
Speaker 1: decked out with these things. Now, Robert, can you describe
Speaker 1: Is this more of like a thimble type covering that
Speaker 1: would go over the end of the finger and extend
Speaker 1: out from there, or is it more like that finger
Speaker 1: armor stuff that has joints and goes over the whole finger. Um,
Speaker 1: not really joints per se, it is one gets the
Speaker 1: impression of like long tapering golden fingertip covers um. I
Speaker 1: think this this sort of thing has also been utilized
Speaker 1: in dance in various Asian cultures. Um, yeah, so the
Speaker 1: really neat look now in terms of just longer finger
Speaker 1: nails in general, the style has also been popular with
Speaker 1: males at different times in Chinese history, with longer manicured
Speaker 1: nails still having a residual cultural association with higher classes
Speaker 1: in society. Uh. One also sees the retention of a long,
Speaker 1: pinky finger nail as a signifier of social status. But
Speaker 1: then there are also varying levels of when you get
Speaker 1: into the actual reasons uh that individuals um, you know,
Speaker 1: self identify uh and uh and certainly uh uh explain
Speaker 1: that their their pinky nail. They might be what it's
Speaker 1: for good luck or you know, it might be there
Speaker 1: might be some idea of divinational aspects uh of finger morphology.
Speaker 1: They're various sort of cultural ideas that seemed to be
Speaker 1: floating around, um explaining, you know, why one would have
Speaker 1: a longer nail if there's a class association that nails are,
Speaker 1: you know, for higher social status. I wonder if it
Speaker 1: has anything to do with demonstrate the lack of need
Speaker 1: to engage in physical or manual labor. Yes, sort of
Speaker 1: along the same lines as you know, there are some
Speaker 1: cultures I think it was once common in uh in
Speaker 1: European culture, for and it was fashionable from men to
Speaker 1: where like long pointy shoes. And one explanation given for
Speaker 1: this is well, a long pointy shoe makes you look
Speaker 1: rich because it's a kind of shoe that you can't
Speaker 1: do any physical work in. Yeah. Yeah, The best explanations
Speaker 1: seemed to tie it to this like a long standing
Speaker 1: idea that it informs social status. However, I should note
Speaker 1: that I've I've looked into this a couple of times
Speaker 1: over the years, and I've never found like a I
Speaker 1: have not found not to say it doesn't exist, but
Speaker 1: I have never found like a really good paper on
Speaker 1: this that really dives in with a lot of the
Speaker 1: information out there about this is more informal in nature.
Speaker 1: But um, traditional Chinese cultural hierarchies do seem to retain
Speaker 1: their power though according to one paper I was looking
Speaker 1: at Saving Face in China, Modernization, parental usher and plastic
Speaker 1: Surgery by Andrew Lyndridge and Choufeng Wang, published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Consumer Affairs in two thousand and eight. Um,
Speaker 1: So you know, basically underlying the idea that you can
Speaker 1: you can have these ideas that are still floating around
Speaker 1: in society, and perhaps you know, perhaps the rationale for
Speaker 1: them isn't you know, uh in an individual's forethought, But
Speaker 1: it's just something that survives and is still done and
Speaker 1: perhaps on some level still does inform UH that notion
Speaker 1: that I have this longer nail, which means I am
Speaker 1: of a higher social status and maybe don't have to
Speaker 1: engage in as much physical labor. For an historical example
Speaker 1: of this getting outside of modern culture, UM, there's a
Speaker 1: book that I've I've been fond of for for for
Speaker 1: many years titled Tales from a Chinese Studio, and it's
Speaker 1: a collection from seventeen forty of these various weird tales
Speaker 1: that were compiled by the author uh Pooh song Ling
Speaker 1: and uh and it's these are wonderful stories, I reckon
Speaker 1: and anyone who's even halfway interested in in strange Chinese
Speaker 1: ghost stories, you should pick up a copy of this
Speaker 1: because some of them are funny, some of them are
Speaker 1: just really weird. Um. There's also a certain poetry to them,
Speaker 1: and I understand that if if one is actually reading
Speaker 1: these stories uh in Mandarin, uh, they're also there are
Speaker 1: also a lot of various illusions that are going to
Speaker 1: be lost on the English language translation reader. But they're
Speaker 1: still they're still tremendous as translated pieces. I think you've
Speaker 1: quoted from it before. I have positive associations with this title. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great book, and I think Penguin
Speaker 1: has an edition of it. Um. So I was looking
Speaker 1: back through that because I'm thinking, Okay, if there's a
Speaker 1: good example of a monster with long fingernails, perhaps i'll
Speaker 1: find it entails from a Chinese studio. I did not
Speaker 1: find it, but I did find this little note um
Speaker 1: about a particular line and one of his writings that
Speaker 1: I had skipped over before I didn't remember from before. Basically,
Speaker 1: uh uh poohsong Ling mentions the Bard of the Long Nails,
Speaker 1: which the translators and editors of this Penguin edition identify
Speaker 1: as Lee He who lives seven sixty through eight sixteen.
Speaker 1: And so he was a late tongue scholar often characterized
Speaker 1: as a sort of quote doomed poet with a vision
Speaker 1: so intense the world will destroy him if he does
Speaker 1: not destroy himself. Whoa. And so the the editors here
Speaker 1: they could they compared him to John Keats. That's interesting
Speaker 1: because Keats definitely died young, But I don't really think
Speaker 1: of him as doom driven in that way. Uh. When
Speaker 1: I think of doom driven English poets, I guess I
Speaker 1: would think more like Byron or Percy Shelley. Yeah, Lord
Speaker 1: Byron definitely comes to mind, right, especially with when it
Speaker 1: comes to like a dark bad boy status walking around
Speaker 1: a skull goblet and a pet bear on a chain exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and interestingly enough, if you look up some of
Speaker 1: uh Lee He's translated work, he's sometimes described as this
Speaker 1: is from the Amazon description to a nice collection of
Speaker 1: his work. Uh, the bad boy poet of the late
Speaker 1: Tang dynasty. Well that I got to hear more from
Speaker 1: this bad so it was it was he a bet.
Speaker 1: Was the fact that he was a bad boy at
Speaker 1: all related to the perception of him having long nails? Um? Well, yes,
Speaker 1: and no, I think, uh when I think this will
Speaker 1: maybe become a little more clear, Like, for instance, I
Speaker 1: don't think the fact that that he had long nails
Speaker 1: was like the signifying bad boy aspect about him. I
Speaker 1: take that to be probably more in common with with
Speaker 1: professional scholars of the day, like you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're a you're a scholar, you're a man of of words. Uh,
Speaker 1: you certainly don't need short nails in order to engage
Speaker 1: in a bunch of physical labor, like you're a man
Speaker 1: of letters. I see that. Being said, he has a
Speaker 1: very gothic quality to him. The New Tang History of
Speaker 1: ten sixty described him as quote frail and thin, with
Speaker 1: eyebrows that met together and long fingernails. He was also
Speaker 1: known as the Demon Talent due to his love of
Speaker 1: weird and exotic subjects in his writings, and the New
Speaker 1: Tang History also said that he quote felt himself already
Speaker 1: halfway across the boundary between the living and the dead.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, apparently he also wrote about mundane
Speaker 1: topics as well, like you know, earth like food and
Speaker 1: so forth. So it wasn't just all ghoulish content. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe a spooky food yeah, Oh no, I think he generally,
Speaker 1: you know, wrote about food and acceptable you know, non
Speaker 1: what we would think of in Western terms is of
Speaker 1: you know, a non Gothic sense. But anyway, if you
Speaker 1: if you look at his work, it is really quite beautiful. Um.
Speaker 1: He is probably apparently most famous for this poem Song
Speaker 1: of Magic Strings that the editors and translators of the
Speaker 1: pous song ling text include uh. The poem itself was
Speaker 1: in selated by John Fordsham in ninety three's Goddesses, Ghosts
Speaker 1: and Demons that Collected Poems of lee he He He, which
Speaker 1: you can you can buy in like an e book
Speaker 1: or physical form. I'm thinking of picking up a copy.
Speaker 1: But but here's here's just a little bit from that poem.
Speaker 1: Quote blue raccoons are weeping blood as shivering foxes die
Speaker 1: on the ancient wall. A painted dragon tail inlaid with gold.
Speaker 1: The rain God is writing it away to an autumn tarn.
Speaker 1: Owls that have lived a hundred years turned forest demons
Speaker 1: laugh wildly as an emerald fire leaps from their nests. Wow.
Speaker 1: That that is electrifying. Man, I've got goose bumps. Yeah. Ye,
Speaker 1: Like I say, I think I'm gonna pick up a
Speaker 1: copy for this Halloween season. Um, but there was there
Speaker 1: was another line. When I was looking at the preview
Speaker 1: of that actual text of Fordsham wrote quote, lee he
Speaker 1: was temperamentally unable to write a conventional social poem. In consequently,
Speaker 1: he is very rarely dull. Uh So apparently to to
Speaker 1: be like a professional man of words, to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, a writer of the day, you had to
Speaker 1: engage in a lot of sort of boring, sort of
Speaker 1: courtly writing. Uh. The example that he gave was it
Speaker 1: was apparently common to sort of to to write to
Speaker 1: patrons and compliment them on, say, the birth of a child.
Speaker 1: And there's an example of this short poetic poetic piece
Speaker 1: that he wrote to such a patron, and he makes
Speaker 1: it sound like fortune compares it to the child from
Speaker 1: the omen Um about just how he describes this child
Speaker 1: as like being able to like see through people, to
Speaker 1: their to their soul or something to that effect. It's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. So I like the idea of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this Bard of the Long Nails, who when he tries
Speaker 1: to fit in and be like just a boring poet,
Speaker 1: he can't quite do it. He's just a little too weird.
Speaker 1: But I should drive home that I don't think the
Speaker 1: Long Nails were the um were the weird thing about him, know,
Speaker 1: it was that he would write you a note saying,
Speaker 1: congratulations on the birth of your child, who will one
Speaker 1: day flay my soul in the underworld. Yeah, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. So, anyway, I encourage everyone to check
Speaker 1: out both of those authors. But but anyway, back back
Speaker 1: to nails. In general, long nails have have apparently sometimes
Speaker 1: been seen as a luxury for those of upper classes
Speaker 1: in various cultures who don't have to truly labor with
Speaker 1: their hands. And I've had a couple of studies at
Speaker 1: least that backed this up, such as excessively long fingernails
Speaker 1: as a risk factor for upper extremity soft tissue injury
Speaker 1: published in two thousand and eight in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and another paper, Effects of fingernail
Speaker 1: linked on finger and hand performance, published in the Journal
Speaker 1: hand Therapy back in two thousand and This the second
Speaker 1: paper here, recommends keeping fingernails shortened to at least point
Speaker 1: five centimeters to quote achieve optimal functional outcomes. Well, I guess,
Speaker 1: to be fair, I laughed because I was imagining optimal
Speaker 1: functional outcomes of ends just in regular life. But I
Speaker 1: guess this is talking about therapy, so that phrasing makes sense. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: this this paper does seem to be narrowing its focus somewhat. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also worth noting that, you know,
Speaker 1: I have, for my own part, I've encountered people with
Speaker 1: with very long you know, well, maintained nails. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes very fancy looking nails. This seemed quite capable of
Speaker 1: manipulating their environment and say an office setting. Uh, though
Speaker 1: perhaps that's not that different from the sort of physical
Speaker 1: demands of of of of a scholar in um, you know,
Speaker 1: in in in in China of old. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're still not having to like actually physically dig
Speaker 1: in the earth or something to that effect. So so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure i'd be interesting to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: out there who does, who has had long nails in
Speaker 1: the past or keeps them, maintains long nails today, Like
Speaker 1: are there things that you find that they get in
Speaker 1: the way of or are they just generally not in
Speaker 1: the way? Do you sort of adapt I mean obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, we we we can adapt our body schema
Speaker 1: to accommodate for any number of of extra things. It
Speaker 1: seems like just longer nails. I mean, that's even more
Speaker 1: a part of our body than any tool or costume
Speaker 1: that we might acquire. All right, it's time to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. But when we come back, we can
Speaker 1: talk about a demon warship made out of nails. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. All right, We're back, and I'm excited for
Speaker 1: this job because you were you were about to embark
Speaker 1: on a journey and you're you're going to uh tell
Speaker 1: us about what maybe the the magical fingernail story par excellence.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of great magical figure
Speaker 1: nail stories that I'm about to get into, but this
Speaker 1: might be the most most thoroughly mythological one, the one
Speaker 1: that's like the most the most like a device in
Speaker 1: a story where the nails are sort of the mcguffin.
Speaker 1: Though there's also a very good Persian one that we'll
Speaker 1: get into. But anyway, so I want to go to
Speaker 1: the pros at A. This is a work that tells
Speaker 1: us a lot of what we know about ancient Norse
Speaker 1: mythology that was written or edited the medieval Icelandic author
Speaker 1: Snorri Sturlason. In the prose Edda, there are these collected
Speaker 1: literary works that tell many of the stories of Norse mythology,
Speaker 1: including the story of Ragnarok, the final Confrontation, the destruction
Speaker 1: of the gods at the end of that era and there.
Speaker 1: But early on, there's a passage in the prose edit
Speaker 1: that's just talking about ships, just mentioning what kinds of
Speaker 1: mythological ships there are, and it mentions one ship in passing,
Speaker 1: calling it the Nagle Far. And it only says a
Speaker 1: couple of things about the Nagle Far. It says that
Speaker 1: it is in mu spell. Mu Spell is a realm
Speaker 1: of fire, the home of the fire giants who you
Speaker 1: don't want to mess with. And the passage also mentions
Speaker 1: that Naglfar is the largest, meaning the largest of all ships.
Speaker 1: So what is this nagle Far the largest of all ships? Well?
Speaker 1: Later the author here tells us that the Nagle Far
Speaker 1: will appear over the horizon during the calamity of ragnar Hawk,
Speaker 1: when the gods will be destroyed. And the author also
Speaker 1: tells us something about its construction. And here I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote directly from the work quote the stars shall
Speaker 1: be hurled from heaven. Then it shall come to pass
Speaker 1: that the earth and the mountains will shake so violently
Speaker 1: that trees will be torn up by the roots, and
Speaker 1: the mountains will topple down, and all bonds and fetters
Speaker 1: will be broken and snapped. The fin ris Wolf gets loose,
Speaker 1: the sea rushes over the earth. For the midguard serpent
Speaker 1: writhes in giant rage and seeks to gain the land.
Speaker 1: The ship that is called nagle Far also becomes loose.
Speaker 1: It is made of the nails of dead men. Wherefore
Speaker 1: it is worth warning that when a man dies with
Speaker 1: unpaired nails, he supplies a large amount of materials for
Speaker 1: the building of this ship, which both gods and men
Speaker 1: wish maybe finished as late as possible. But in this
Speaker 1: flood nagle Far gets a float. The giant crime is
Speaker 1: it's steersman, or there might be hrim h r y m.
Speaker 1: But okay, yeah, so it's got it's got giants on it,
Speaker 1: it's got the giant crime or hrim as it's steersman,
Speaker 1: and it's made out of the fingernails and toe nails
Speaker 1: of dead men who did not care appropriately for their
Speaker 1: nails at the time of death. That is that is
Speaker 1: gnarly um. I by the way, I I'm not surprised
Speaker 1: at all to learn as well that there is a
Speaker 1: a longstanding Swedish black metal band that has naggle far
Speaker 1: as It's as its name. They've been active since then
Speaker 1: the early nineties. Apparently. Oh wow, I've never heard of him,
Speaker 1: But of course, yeah, I mean, in anything, this gnarly
Speaker 1: is going to end up as a metal band name.
Speaker 1: But I should also mention that in telling the same story,
Speaker 1: the story of Ragnarok, you know, sort of the destruction
Speaker 1: of the gods at the end of at the end
Speaker 1: of time, or maybe not of time, at least at
Speaker 1: the end of the era, the age of the gods.
Speaker 1: Um it is the same. A scene is described in
Speaker 1: the Voluspa, which is an old Norse poem describing a
Speaker 1: lot of mythological events that we've mentioned on the show
Speaker 1: pretty recently. Actually, I think, wait, which episode did it
Speaker 1: come up in? I cannot recall the context at the moment,
Speaker 1: but there's also a quatrain in the Valoospa that mentions it.
Speaker 1: It says, from the east comes crime with shield held
Speaker 1: high in giant wrath. Does the serpent writhe or the
Speaker 1: waves he twists? And the tawny eagle naws corpses screaming
Speaker 1: naggle far is loose. I love I love the idea
Speaker 1: that it's I know this is just me reading into
Speaker 1: it perhaps, but if it feels like it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not just the bones that are making It's not bones
Speaker 1: that are making up the ship. It is the toe
Speaker 1: nails and the fingernails that seem more like the detritus
Speaker 1: of of the the dead body, you know. It seems
Speaker 1: like this is like a ship that has been collecting
Speaker 1: and assembling, like at the bottom of the universe, throughout
Speaker 1: all of human conflict, you know. And so that that's
Speaker 1: why it is only it is only completely finished towards
Speaker 1: the very end of human existence. So there's a paper
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, Robert, if you're ready, called
Speaker 1: the Treatment of Hair and Fingernails among the Indo Europeans. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I am ready for this because I've I've read about
Speaker 1: certainly nothing on the ship level, the ship building level,
Speaker 1: but I've I've read about some of these of these
Speaker 1: folk beliefs before. Yeah. So this is a paper by
Speaker 1: Bruce Lincoln, who is a scholar of religious studies at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago. He was published in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: and that's worth noting this is an older paper. I'm
Speaker 1: citing it because it's still really interesting, but I just
Speaker 1: want to flag that it's older because it's possible that
Speaker 1: in the intervening years some of Lincoln's factual assumptions might
Speaker 1: have been superseded by more recent anthropological or historical research.
Speaker 1: But I think the general thrust of the question he
Speaker 1: poses remains and uh, and some of the hypotheses he
Speaker 1: discusses in this article remain extremely interesting. Okay, So he
Speaker 1: starts like this quote. One of the important lessons that
Speaker 1: has learned from the study of history of religions is
Speaker 1: that there is no act so small or insignificant that
Speaker 1: it cannot take on symbolic importance. In certain cultures, it
Speaker 1: is not always an easy task to recognize such symbolically
Speaker 1: invested action, although the existence of elaborate rules for behavior
Speaker 1: in a given situation may serve as a valuable clue.
Speaker 1: And if the identification of such action is sometimes difficult,
Speaker 1: the interpretation of a given motion, gesture, or ritual is
Speaker 1: even more delicate. And the example that he gives that
Speaker 1: he's going to talk about in this paper is the
Speaker 1: extremely careful, meticulous rules governing the treatment of clippings from
Speaker 1: the hair and nails in many cultures and religions throughout
Speaker 1: the world, especially in many cultures that are descended from
Speaker 1: in some way the ancient speakers of Proto Indo European,
Speaker 1: which I'll get into more later. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: start by just listing a number of examples that Lincoln
Speaker 1: brings up, and then we can go back talk about
Speaker 1: possible explanations for where these beliefs and religious practices come from.
Speaker 1: So the first one mentioned by Lincoln concerns the hair specifically,
Speaker 1: and is it's the right of the child's first haircut
Speaker 1: or first tonture, practiced historically by some people of India,
Speaker 1: and it's described in the Sankayana Gria Sutra, and the
Speaker 1: Gria Sutras are a number of manuals describing the steps
Speaker 1: of various domestic religious ceremonies. So I think specifically the
Speaker 1: kind of religious ceremonies that you might perform around the house.
Speaker 1: So this is performed for different children at different ages,
Speaker 1: I think also traditionally depending on cast. But the process
Speaker 1: goes like this in Lincoln's summary quote, the child's hair
Speaker 1: is untangled and anointed and a young cusa shoot is
Speaker 1: placed in it, Kusa being the sacred grass of ceremonial.
Speaker 1: His hair is then shaved with a copper razor and
Speaker 1: placed on a mound of bull dung mixed with kusa
Speaker 1: grass that has been prepared to receive the hair. Finally,
Speaker 1: and here he quotes directly from translation of the Sankayana
Speaker 1: Gria Sutra quote to the northeast in a place covered
Speaker 1: with herbs, or in the neighborhood of water, they bury
Speaker 1: the hairs in the earth. So that's interesting to begin with.
Speaker 1: You you have this ritual of at a certain age,
Speaker 1: the child's hair is shaved or cut, and then it is,
Speaker 1: in a kind of symbolic ritual way planted within dung
Speaker 1: or within the earth. And there's this association with vegetation
Speaker 1: or herbs. Interesting. Now, this may have absolutely no connection
Speaker 1: with it. But a while back, I guess, oh man,
Speaker 1: probably more than probably about a year ago, uh, my
Speaker 1: son and I had our hair cut at our house
Speaker 1: on our our front porch, and afterwards, um uh, the
Speaker 1: individual cut our hair encouraged us to take the clippings
Speaker 1: and put at least some of them in our garden
Speaker 1: um in order to help deter creatures from eating our vegetables.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that actually works. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: i've I mean, I've heard also similar advice concerning a
Speaker 1: little like hair from your pet, like to keep rodent
Speaker 1: side of your garden, to put some hair from your cat,
Speaker 1: for for for instance, in there which which I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it could work. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I've I've seen any thing to actually back that up,
Speaker 1: except I haven't noticed any any mice or rats out there.
Speaker 1: But then again, um, just because you don't notice them
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're not there. That's interesting. We'll definitely keep
Speaker 1: that in mind as we go through a few more
Speaker 1: of these examples. So the next one that Lincoln sites
Speaker 1: comes from ancient Roman religion. Uh. And this is the
Speaker 1: example of the flamand Alice, or the high priest of Jupiter,
Speaker 1: the chief god of the Roman pantheon, and the flamand
Speaker 1: Alice had numerous ceremonial requirements and restrictions guiding his daily activities.
Speaker 1: There were rules about where he had to sleep, there
Speaker 1: were rules about what he was supposed to wear, about
Speaker 1: what kinds of things he could touch or couldn't touch.
Speaker 1: And one of these restrict chins, as reported by the
Speaker 1: second century Roman author Aulus Gellius in a text called
Speaker 1: Attic Nights, goes like this, and this is with some abridgments. Quote.
Speaker 1: The ceremonies placed upon the flamen dialis are many, and
Speaker 1: the forbearances are numerous. No one should cut the hair
Speaker 1: of the dealis except a free man. The cuttings of
Speaker 1: the nails and hair of the dealis are buried in
Speaker 1: the earth under a fruitful tree. There are almost the
Speaker 1: same ceremonies for the Flamenica de Allie, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the wife of the high priest of Jupiter. And
Speaker 1: they say that other different ones are to be observed,
Speaker 1: for instance, that she is covered with a dyed gown,
Speaker 1: and that in her veil she has the shoot of
Speaker 1: a fruitful tree. And there are other similar practices elsewhere
Speaker 1: in ancient Roman religion. For example, in the Natural History
Speaker 1: Plenty the elder recounts how the vestal virgins are expected
Speaker 1: to observe special ceremonies in the disposal of the trimmings
Speaker 1: from their hair uh plenty rights quote Truly, there is
Speaker 1: a lotus tree in Rome, in the area of Lucina.
Speaker 1: Now this tree is about five hundred years old or older.
Speaker 1: Its age is uncertain, and it is called the hairy
Speaker 1: one because the hair of the vestal virgins is brought
Speaker 1: to it. So note again the kind of rough similarities
Speaker 1: with the Indian practice here, the association with vegetation, especially well,
Speaker 1: hair is a is a thing that grows out of us,
Speaker 1: not unlike a plant, right, or some sort of vine.
Speaker 1: And then I guess a lot of this tube just
Speaker 1: has to do with the fact that hair and fingernails
Speaker 1: and toenails as well, are these things that are paradoxically
Speaker 1: a part of us and yet not a part of us.
Speaker 1: And then when we trim them away or cut them away,
Speaker 1: they are no longer part of our bodies that they
Speaker 1: came from our bodies. And therefore you could you could
Speaker 1: see where you could easily lean into this idea that
Speaker 1: something appropriate must be done with these parts of ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into more about that in the in
Speaker 1: the part where we talk about the possible explanations for
Speaker 1: these but I want to talk about the next example
Speaker 1: Lincoln sites, which is German folkloric practices. He writes that
Speaker 1: there are a number of archaic rituals among German people
Speaker 1: speaking Germanic languages for dealing with the disposal of clippings
Speaker 1: from the hair and nails. Quote. Thus, in Oldenburg, hair
Speaker 1: and nails are wrapped in a cloth and fastened under
Speaker 1: a tree three days before the new moon to cure infertility. Similarly,
Speaker 1: in Brandenburg, Dooseldorf, Swabia and elsewhere. Hair and nails are
Speaker 1: placed in a hole board in a tree, or are
Speaker 1: placed on a branch. This is often done when one
Speaker 1: suffers from some sort of pain, and the pain is
Speaker 1: said to go with these moving to anyone who comes
Speaker 1: close to them. Now, there are some differences here from
Speaker 1: the other examples we already talked about, because, you know,
Speaker 1: Lincoln points out, it's important to note that these practices
Speaker 1: he just mentioned are targeted towards specific magical outcomes, like
Speaker 1: the curing of infertility or the healing of pain, rather
Speaker 1: than a sort of free floating ritual without a specific
Speaker 1: outcome object. But he notes again the similarity in the
Speaker 1: association between hair and nails with plant life. Again, hair
Speaker 1: and nails, and then trees and grass and branches. And
Speaker 1: then finally one more example, and this one is probably
Speaker 1: my favorite one. He draws attention to what is described
Speaker 1: in an ancient text in the Avestan language, which is
Speaker 1: associated with the ancient Iranian culture and is a foundational
Speaker 1: religious text of Zoroastrianism. So this text is known as
Speaker 1: the Vindidad or the vidv Dot, and in this writing,
Speaker 1: the character of Zoroaster also known as Zarathustra, and I
Speaker 1: think Zarathustra is probably the earlier pronunciation. Zarathustra is speaking
Speaker 1: to the wise Lord Ahura Mazda, and Zarathustra asks the
Speaker 1: wise lord why it is that the demon named Ayosha,
Speaker 1: whose name literally means burning or destruction, Why Aosha harms
Speaker 1: and punishes humans? And Ahura Mazda explains as follows, quote truly,
Speaker 1: that righteous Zarathustra, when one arranges and cuts his hair
Speaker 1: and clips his nails and then lets them fall into
Speaker 1: holes in the earth or into furrows, for by these improprieties,
Speaker 1: demons come forth, and from these improprieties monsters come forth
Speaker 1: from the earth, which mortals call lice, and which devour
Speaker 1: the grain in the fields and the clothes and the closets. Now,
Speaker 1: when you must arrange and cut your hair and clip
Speaker 1: your nails in the world, Zarathustra. Hereafter you should bear
Speaker 1: it ten steps from righteous men, twenty steps from fire,
Speaker 1: thirty steps from water, and fifty steps from the barisman,
Speaker 1: which is a bundle of sacred twigs. When it is
Speaker 1: laid out, then you should dig a pit here, a
Speaker 1: disty deep in hard soil, and a vitasti deep in
Speaker 1: soft soil to that pit. You should bear the cuttings.
Speaker 1: Then you should pronounce these words victorious Zarathustra. Now for me,
Speaker 1: may Mazda make the plants grow by means of asha,
Speaker 1: and Asha means right. Uh. You should plow three or
Speaker 1: six or nine furrows for Zassura vira, meaning good dominion,
Speaker 1: and you should recite the Ajuna Vira prayer three or
Speaker 1: six or nine times. So here you're in in this
Speaker 1: ancient Zoroastrian text. You're getting this elaborate ritual described for
Speaker 1: what you should do with the trimmings from your hair
Speaker 1: and nails, and that there are actual, like real demonic
Speaker 1: consequences if you do not follow these rituals uh. And
Speaker 1: Lincoln points out several things he finds really interesting about
Speaker 1: the explanation from the Wise Lord to Zarathustra. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, there's the need carry these clippings from hair
Speaker 1: and nails away from sources of purification. Remember the mentions
Speaker 1: if you've got to carry them this far away from
Speaker 1: righteous men, this far away from fire, from water, and
Speaker 1: from the sacred bundle of twigs, because these are all
Speaker 1: potentially sources of religious purity. And it seems like there's
Speaker 1: a desire to avoid cross contamination of all that purifying
Speaker 1: matter with impure matter that you've just trimmed off of
Speaker 1: your body. But then there's also Lincoln points out the
Speaker 1: use of troughs to demarcate a sacred space, and then
Speaker 1: also the spontaneous production of monsters from the hair and
Speaker 1: nail trimmings that are disposed of incorrectly. And if that
Speaker 1: sounds familiar based on stuff we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: isn't that kind of similar to the supposed origin of
Speaker 1: the noggle far the nail ship. So in the Ragnarok myth,
Speaker 1: again from Norse religion, this ship is built out of
Speaker 1: the nails of dead men as a result of their
Speaker 1: nails not being trimmed and disposed of proper really according
Speaker 1: to the correct rituals. So if you do the wrong
Speaker 1: thing with your nails, you make an accidental donation to
Speaker 1: the construction of the demons galleon. Oh wow, So this
Speaker 1: is this is fascinating cause on one hand, you can
Speaker 1: compare a lot of this with just kind of a
Speaker 1: basic understanding that this is bio waste, and there's there
Speaker 1: there's an appropriate and an inappropriate way to dispose of
Speaker 1: bio waste. But then of course we have this this
Speaker 1: whole magical domain as well of monsters and monsters ships
Speaker 1: rising up from sort of the accretion of these materials. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's interesting. Lincoln doesn't really get into this
Speaker 1: at all, but it's interesting to wonder about what role
Speaker 1: um I don't know, like practical biological facts could play
Speaker 1: into the origins of these practices. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there is, for example, any kind of real disease risk
Speaker 1: that you would get from from encountering the trimmings of
Speaker 1: hair and nails from other people. Perhaps there's some, but
Speaker 1: it seems like there would be less of that than
Speaker 1: there would be from sake contact with blood or feces,
Speaker 1: though I'm not sure. I mean, it's interesting that there's
Speaker 1: a mention of lice, and and one of the things
Speaker 1: talking about being disposed of here is hair. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we might think, well, the hair is the
Speaker 1: place where the lice live. Therefore, you know, less inclined
Speaker 1: to pick up odd pieces of hair that we find
Speaker 1: just out on the road. I mean, certainly, I think
Speaker 1: we can all attest to, you know, being on a
Speaker 1: walk or something, or and encountering a piece of someone's
Speaker 1: hair or you know, hair clippings, or perhaps even a
Speaker 1: fingernail or a toenail, and your first instinct is not
Speaker 1: to pick that material up and look closer. Yeah, put
Speaker 1: it in your mouth. Yeah yeah, that doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a natural thing to do. Alright, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. But we've been talking about all
Speaker 1: these examples from all of you know, different parts of
Speaker 1: the world of religious or magical significance that is granted
Speaker 1: to trimmings from the hair and nails. And this list
Speaker 1: is far from exhaustive. There are tons of examples in
Speaker 1: practices all all over the place. But I think just
Speaker 1: the examples we've talked about do help paint a picture
Speaker 1: of the wide range of myths, beliefs, and practices about
Speaker 1: hair and nails and the many similarities between them. But
Speaker 1: the question is why why do so many different cultures
Speaker 1: place this important ritual or religious significance on the correct
Speaker 1: procedures for trimming and disposing of hair and nails? Now,
Speaker 1: Lincoln in his paper goes over several possible answers to
Speaker 1: this question that had been advanced by the time he
Speaker 1: was writing in the seventies, and I would say this
Speaker 1: list of possible explanations is also not going to be exhaustive,
Speaker 1: but just to discuss a few possibilities. One is a
Speaker 1: very influential theory that's best known for its articulation by
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Scottish anthropologist J. G. Fraser,
Speaker 1: in the Golden Bow. The Golden Bow has come up
Speaker 1: on the show before. Uh. Fraser, of course is a
Speaker 1: very you know, enormously influential, but also heavily criticized. We
Speaker 1: can talk about that in a minute, um. But Fraser
Speaker 1: argues that many of these practices have their roots in
Speaker 1: a widespread ancient belief in what he would have called
Speaker 1: the contagious branch of sympathetic magic. So the basic idea
Speaker 1: here is that if something was once touching your body,
Speaker 1: or especially if it was part of your body, that matter,
Speaker 1: that object maintains a magical connection to your body even
Speaker 1: after being physically separated from it, and thus it could
Speaker 1: be used by a witch or a sorcerer to work
Speaker 1: curses on you or magically control you in some way.
Speaker 1: So if Jimmy the sorcerer gets hold of your hair
Speaker 1: or nail trimmings, you are in for a very bad time.
Speaker 1: And so in order to protect yourself from this kind
Speaker 1: of sympathetic magic, you either had to destroy your hair
Speaker 1: and nail trimmings or hide them very well, or maybe
Speaker 1: also perform some kind of purging ritual to rid this
Speaker 1: matter of its contagious magical power. And I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting we still see evidence of this kind of magical
Speaker 1: thinking even today. I mean, there there is magical thinking
Speaker 1: that persists into the modern modern era whereby you can
Speaker 1: have some kind of power over a person by by
Speaker 1: possessing a personal artifact of theirs or an object that
Speaker 1: touched their body. You know, think about like doing magic
Speaker 1: on someone by by possessing their hair brush. Right, There's
Speaker 1: also some interesting stuff about just how we think about
Speaker 1: the contamination of of objects. Uh, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's this study back in the nineteen nineties by social
Speaker 1: psychologist Paul Rosen and um. This was actually recently mentioned
Speaker 1: on an episode of the excellent radio show Hidden Brain.
Speaker 1: They pointed out that they asked in this particular study,
Speaker 1: they asked people if they would consider wearing Hitler sweater
Speaker 1: and uh, and they almost always said no. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they said no even if they've been assured that it
Speaker 1: had been washed, then it had that it had been torn,
Speaker 1: you know, that it had been punished for being Hitler's sweater,
Speaker 1: or that it had been symbolically cleansed by being worn
Speaker 1: by say mother Teresa before being passed on. And it
Speaker 1: was the you know, this this idea that that this
Speaker 1: this object, this sweater is is contaminated in a way
Speaker 1: that cannot be uh punished away, cannot be cleansed away.
Speaker 1: It just remains impure in a completely irrational manner. That
Speaker 1: is really funny. I mean, I can just say for myself,
Speaker 1: like I I rationally do not believe in any kind
Speaker 1: of sympathetic contagious magic, So I don't think like Hitler's
Speaker 1: evil would be contained in the physical sweater in any way.
Speaker 1: But still I wouldn't want to put it on. Well,
Speaker 1: I I have a lot of nitpicky questions about that
Speaker 1: that scenario, like is it a good sweater, Like is
Speaker 1: there anything notable notable about the sweater other than it
Speaker 1: was Hitler's sweater? Because obviously I'm not going to just
Speaker 1: wear a sweater because Hitler wore it. But what if
Speaker 1: I like, was it a store and there was like
Speaker 1: vintage stuff and there was like this really nice sweater
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, this is nice. And then I
Speaker 1: asked why is it so cheap and they tell me, oh,
Speaker 1: because this was Hitler's sweater. Then Okay, that might be
Speaker 1: different because I have some pre existing interest in it.
Speaker 1: There's something about that sweater that's really neat. I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily get that from this this limited scenario. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of implied that the notable thing about
Speaker 1: the sweater is that it was Hitler's. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I actually can think of a reason I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to wear that sweater or own it, even if even
Speaker 1: though I don't believe in any magical associations, which is
Speaker 1: that I mean, I guess if you were to wear
Speaker 1: a sweater that you knew had been warned by Hitler,
Speaker 1: you'd probably end up thinking about Hitler all the time.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like every time you put it on,
Speaker 1: you have to be like, oh, yeah, Hitler, and you
Speaker 1: just don't want Hitler in your brain that much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, to a certain extent, one encounters this with
Speaker 1: the you know, the strug well to separate say, an
Speaker 1: artist from the art. Uh That can sort of be
Speaker 1: the Hitler's sweater scenario in some cases, where you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with the sweater, but I can't wear
Speaker 1: it without thinking about Hitler. So I just don't think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wear this anymore. So it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: Fraser's work on the origins of religions, again, as I
Speaker 1: said earlier, was both enormously influential and has come under
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism. I you know, I'm not deep
Speaker 1: on this, but I think one common criticism is that
Speaker 1: Fraser would sometimes I think, kind of fudge or cherry
Speaker 1: pick the ethnographic evidence he cited in order to make
Speaker 1: things fit more cleanly into his broader theories. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is something I think that a lot of writers
Speaker 1: who have grand theories about human culture and society end
Speaker 1: up being guilty of. Uh So, while The Golden Bow
Speaker 1: remains a fascinating read, I would advocate that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: rely on Fraser alone as your soul source for anything.
Speaker 1: And in Lincoln's analysis of Fraser's thoughts on on the
Speaker 1: origins of these uh, these rituals for dealing with hair
Speaker 1: and nails in in sympathetic contagious magic. Lincoln thinks that, well,
Speaker 1: probably a lot of practices do have some kind of
Speaker 1: roots like that, but he's not convinced that contagious sympathetic
Speaker 1: magic lies at the root of all of these practices,
Speaker 1: and certainly not the practices in the cultures that that
Speaker 1: have some origins in the speakers of Proto Indo European,
Speaker 1: because he has a different theory about that that we
Speaker 1: can get into in just a minute. Lincoln also mentions
Speaker 1: the work of an anthropologist named Mary Douglas, who is
Speaker 1: a very influential twentieth century anthropologist. She proposed that that
Speaker 1: within human religious thinking, quote that the body is a
Speaker 1: powerful model or image which can which can represent any
Speaker 1: bounded system, and which most often represents society itself. The
Speaker 1: limits of the body then represent the limits of society,
Speaker 1: the points at which it encounters opposition and danger, and
Speaker 1: must thus be treated with appropriate care. So she's arguing
Speaker 1: basically that we symbolically make an an equivalence between our
Speaker 1: bodies and the society at large, and that margins in
Speaker 1: general are dangerous and ambiguous places and Thus the things
Speaker 1: that come off of our body represent ambiguity at the
Speaker 1: margins in the larger context of symbolic thinking about the society.
Speaker 1: So you have to carefully regulate this marginal body matter.
Speaker 1: And uh Lincoln in this paper, he he similarly thinks
Speaker 1: this idea is interesting, that it might explain some things,
Speaker 1: but he's got a different theory that is based in
Speaker 1: the Proto Indo European creation myth. So, the Proto Indo
Speaker 1: Europeans are a hypothesized prehistoric culture that we know about
Speaker 1: primarily through reconstruction of their language, which is a direct
Speaker 1: ancestor to a huge number of historical and existing languages
Speaker 1: throughout Asia and Europe. Just for example, English has a
Speaker 1: number of roots in different languages, in fluding but not
Speaker 1: limited to Germanic languages and Romance languages. But both Germanic
Speaker 1: and Romance languages themselves have roots in Proto Indo European language.
Speaker 1: So you know, there was a root language that influenced
Speaker 1: these derivative languages that developed in you know, different ways,
Speaker 1: and then those derivative languages came back and in a
Speaker 1: way combined to influence other languages like English. The Proto
Speaker 1: Indo European people left no written records, but linguists have
Speaker 1: been able to reconstruct a lot of their language by
Speaker 1: tracing back similar word roots in a widespread catalog of
Speaker 1: languages uh. Similarly, scholars have tried to reconstruct other things
Speaker 1: about them. We don't know a lot of things for sure,
Speaker 1: but they probably lived somewhere around southern Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan,
Speaker 1: sort of between and to the north of the Black
Speaker 1: Sea and the Caspian Sea, probably a few thousand years
Speaker 1: b c. We don't have any direct records of their
Speaker 1: religious beliefs, their myths, and the Proud Actices, but scholars,
Speaker 1: including Bruce Lincoln, have used clues from other descendent religions
Speaker 1: to try as best as possible to reconstruct elements such
Speaker 1: as their creation myth. And Lincoln explains his hypothetical reconstruction
Speaker 1: of this creation myth as follows. Quote. This myth, as
Speaker 1: I have established elsewhere, told how the world and all
Speaker 1: the creatures in it were established by the first act
Speaker 1: of sacrifice. In the Primordial offering, the first priest Manu
Speaker 1: meaning man, dismembered the first king Yemo meaning twin, and
Speaker 1: from his body built up the material world. Now, certain
Speaker 1: steps in the process of creation were described in this myth,
Speaker 1: steps whereby the body of the primordial victim became the world.
Speaker 1: Thus his skull became the heavens, his eyes the sun
Speaker 1: and moon, his blood the seas, and what is most
Speaker 1: important for the issue at hand, his hair became the
Speaker 1: plants and trees, and so Lincoln quotes. He goes on
Speaker 1: to quote a bunch of related ancient religious texts that
Speaker 1: serve as evidence for his reconstruction of the myth in
Speaker 1: this way. Um. And of course we don't know that
Speaker 1: this is actually what their creation myth was like, but
Speaker 1: it seems like a reasonable approximation of what their creation
Speaker 1: myth might have been like, given what we know from
Speaker 1: a lot of other religions that seem related to it.
Speaker 1: And this is of course, I mean, you can immediately
Speaker 1: think of other examples of creation myths in which the
Speaker 1: parts of the world are made out of the body
Speaker 1: of a slain primordial foe. Think about the ways that
Speaker 1: in say the Enema a leash, that the body of Tiamat,
Speaker 1: the dragon, you know, the sea monster gets turned into
Speaker 1: the you know, the mountains and the sky and the
Speaker 1: seas and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is something you do see in a number of different
Speaker 1: mythologies like that, if nothing else you could even summarize
Speaker 1: just to say that the body, the primordial body of
Speaker 1: being such as this are are important in the way
Speaker 1: that they are then taken apart and then redistributed in
Speaker 1: those parts become important aspects of the world that follows. Right,
Speaker 1: And so Lincoln says that, you know, if his reconstruction
Speaker 1: of the Proto Indo European creation myth is is basically
Speaker 1: correct or is on the right track, that a lot
Speaker 1: of religious practices of round disposal of hair and nails
Speaker 1: in cultures that are in part descended from the Proto
Speaker 1: Indo Europeans could be rooted in a recapitulation of this
Speaker 1: creation myth. And this draws on a strain of thinking
Speaker 1: that I think in some way is associated with the Eliade.
Speaker 1: For example, that a lot of religious rituals are in
Speaker 1: a way supposed to be a re enactment of a
Speaker 1: foundational myth. Yeah. Yeah, the idea that that that that
Speaker 1: everything we do is only important in the archaic sense
Speaker 1: if we are recreating something from our founding myths. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's ultimately Lincoln's theory here what what he thinks
Speaker 1: best explains the widespread nature of these these practices about
Speaker 1: the disposal of hair and nails. That he thinks, when
Speaker 1: you dispose of hair and nail clippings in the correct way,
Speaker 1: you are furthering the life of the world's vegetation in
Speaker 1: keeping with the creation story. The sacrifice here is your
Speaker 1: own body, and the sacrifice of hair. Originally, he thinks,
Speaker 1: hair and the nails were sort of added onto the hair.
Speaker 1: Sacrifice feeds the trees and the grasses the same way
Speaker 1: that this primordially slain foe originally created all that vegetation.
Speaker 1: And uh. And then Lincoln says, the other half of
Speaker 1: the coin is quote. When such care is not taken,
Speaker 1: when disposal is not a ritual and does not repeat
Speaker 1: the acts of a mythic model, the reverse can be
Speaker 1: the effect. For if proper disposal serves to create the cosmos,
Speaker 1: then improper disposal can de create it, or to put it,
Speaker 1: negatively conserved to create chaos out of cosmos. And think
Speaker 1: of the examples again we discussed here the destruction of
Speaker 1: crops by vice demons from the Avestan text. You know,
Speaker 1: the ancient Zoroastrian text, or the creation of the noggle far,
Speaker 1: the ship that brings monsters to deliver the violent into
Speaker 1: the world, and the destruction of the gods that's made
Speaker 1: out of the nails of dead men improperly cared for.
Speaker 1: So obviously, I mean, I would say in my final thoughts,
Speaker 1: obviously Lincoln's idea here about the origins of these practices
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but at the very least it provides
Speaker 1: some really interesting scaffolding for understanding ways in which complex
Speaker 1: symbolic religious thinking might enter into what we would consider
Speaker 1: an extremely mundane grooming practice. How uh, it's it's possible
Speaker 1: that just clipping your nails and cutting your hair too
Speaker 1: many people might have cosmic significance because of the myths
Speaker 1: that informed their worldview. Yeah, this is this is all
Speaker 1: very fascinating. You know. It gets to the sort of
Speaker 1: the ambiguity of what our nails and our as well
Speaker 1: as our hair, like, well, what what they really are?
Speaker 1: And and then yeah, what are we supposed to do
Speaker 1: with them once we once they leave our body? And
Speaker 1: then what sort of ideas do we end up building
Speaker 1: up about uh, those things and our identity and our
Speaker 1: place in the cosmos? Yeah, totally so. Maybe, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: if if you're somebody who has a say a partner
Speaker 1: or roommate or a family member who gets mad when
Speaker 1: you just like clip your toe nails in a willy
Speaker 1: nilly fashion, they shoot all over the room and you
Speaker 1: do not collect them in a clean and tidy way
Speaker 1: for proper disposal. Think about this interpretation of the proto
Speaker 1: Indo European creation myth. What if what if you are
Speaker 1: somehow creating chaos out of order by doing so, and
Speaker 1: you are summoning demons up from the earth. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: I think they're there. There's probably like a wide variety
Speaker 1: of different takes on this as well. Like I think
Speaker 1: I've run across the examples of a Chinese superstition um
Speaker 1: that at least exists in some places where you are
Speaker 1: not supposed to trim your toe nails at night while
Speaker 1: it's dark outside, um, or not to trim them outside
Speaker 1: at night. For my own part, I mean, I prefer
Speaker 1: to to trim my my nails outside if I can.
Speaker 1: I feel like they just simplifies the whole scenario. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about finding them if they
Speaker 1: go flying or anything like that. Now. One thing that
Speaker 1: comes to my mind is, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: the parts of our bodies that we leave behind on
Speaker 1: regular basis, I mean, humans have it fairly simple, you know.
Speaker 1: Well it's just the most mostly just the nails and
Speaker 1: the hair, and but and yet we still managed to
Speaker 1: build up all these fabulous ideas to construct demonships of
Speaker 1: the mind. Um. Imagine what it would be like if
Speaker 1: we if we like molted um and left behind an
Speaker 1: ex a skeleton that resembled ourselves, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: like the cicada shell that is left behind. Or imagine
Speaker 1: that we make something along the lines of squid that
Speaker 1: leave behind a pseudomorph, you know, a cloud of of
Speaker 1: ink that is in the shape of their body to
Speaker 1: fool predators, that sort of thing. Imagine what sort of
Speaker 1: like strange ideas about self and former self, uh, such
Speaker 1: beings intelligent beings might have. Yeah, can you imagine the
Speaker 1: religion and the religious practices of intelligent arthropods that had
Speaker 1: to molten have a whole body shell that was left behind.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that that would be good. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: something good for your sci fi novel there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean what shape would it take would it be, would
Speaker 1: there be like a would you have like spiritual burial
Speaker 1: grounds where all of your your various um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: exoskeletons go once you've morphed out of them. Um. Do
Speaker 1: do famous uh crab people did do their exoskeleton moldings
Speaker 1: wind up in a museum somewhere? I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: so many questions to ask, as always, Uh, if you've
Speaker 1: run across any examples in science fiction or fantasy that
Speaker 1: deal with these sort of issues, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. We always love your to hear advice from
Speaker 1: listeners on old works of science fiction and fantasy or
Speaker 1: new works as well. UM. Likewise, we touched on a
Speaker 1: lot of different traditions and cultures in this episode, especially,
Speaker 1: so I would love to hear from absolutely anybody who
Speaker 1: has insight on this. Uh, particularly with with with long nails,
Speaker 1: for example, Uh, do you keep your nails long? Have
Speaker 1: you ever kept your nails long? Um? You know? Right
Speaker 1: in I'd like to to know how that has impacted
Speaker 1: your life or not impacted your life. Likewise, if there's
Speaker 1: a particular tradition in your culture or your culture of origin,
Speaker 1: I would like to hear about that as well, and certainly,
Speaker 1: as Joe mentioned, if there are any particular practices that
Speaker 1: you engage in, either culturally or just sort of as
Speaker 1: a as a as a quirk of your own individual
Speaker 1: nature regarding your your your nail and hair trimmings. Uh,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear what they are totally. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to listen to other
Speaker 1: episodes so of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can
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