Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode today. It's part two of
Speaker 1: our series on fingernails. This episode originally aired on September three.
Speaker 1: I think it'll be a scream. Let's dig right in.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio album. Hey 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 nails,
Speaker 1: Fingernails Toenails. In the last episode, we talked about how
Speaker 1: fast nails grow, what influences how fast they grow, some
Speaker 1: strange decades long self experimentation projects on the measurement of nails,
Speaker 1: And this time we're going to get out of some
Speaker 1: of that scientific minutia and jump in to the weirder
Speaker 1: world of nails and the role that nails and hair
Speaker 1: play in a lot of very very surprising and interesting,
Speaker 1: magical and religious beliefs. Yeah, and it it makes sense
Speaker 1: that we would since the nails that we look down
Speaker 1: at every day, that we you know, find ourselves absent
Speaker 1: mindedly feeling uh that that in fact enhance our ability
Speaker 1: to engage physically with the world. They are strange to behold.
Speaker 1: Like we said before, they're both alive and dead at
Speaker 1: the same time, at least as you know, in the
Speaker 1: way that we we think of them. You know, they
Speaker 1: they're obviously a part of our body, uh, and yet
Speaker 1: they feel slightly external. You know that there are these
Speaker 1: things that are like clause but not clause. So it
Speaker 1: makes sense that we would have some kind of complicated
Speaker 1: magical ideas at times about what they are and what
Speaker 1: they do. Yeah, and I think some of the magical
Speaker 1: and religious ideas are going to connect with something that
Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode, which was this
Speaker 1: the strange thing I was observing about how our hard
Speaker 1: 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 Danzi's fingernails and
Speaker 1: about how, at least in some music videos or posters
Speaker 1: that I kind of half 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 sharpened 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's sharpened their teeth down to the to file points
Speaker 1: um or or perhaps even has some sort of like
Speaker 1: sharpened fingernails, I guess, and uh, and it brings them
Speaker 1: to wonder like would there be any kind of actual
Speaker 1: combat or defensive advantage to that sort of thing, And
Speaker 1: 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 the still a little bit like
Speaker 1: nos Feratu, right, And so this vampire association with long nails.
Speaker 1: In fact, we were just talking about this with Seth
Speaker 1: the other day, uh and and uh Seth. Seth was
Speaker 1: sharing with us the idea that, you know, it's possible
Speaker 1: that the association between long fingernails and vampires could come
Speaker 1: from the idea that often in the old days, you
Speaker 1: might open up if you've you've exhumed a body from
Speaker 1: the graveyard and you notice that their nails look a
Speaker 1: little bit long, and so you think, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: are they still alive in some way or they're getting
Speaker 1: up and roaming around and still growing body tissues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this has coming up on the show
Speaker 1: in the past before and it's certainly it goes beyond
Speaker 1: the world of mere vampires. We talked about it a
Speaker 1: bit in the episode where we talked about the Kappa,
Speaker 1: the Japanese water demon um where you have varying monstrous
Speaker 1: conceptions in the human imagination that are based upon an
Speaker 1: analysis of a physical death to see what happens to
Speaker 1: the body after it dies and the seeming changes that
Speaker 1: take place in the body. And in the case of
Speaker 1: the vampire, yeah, it's like the bloated form. Uh, the
Speaker 1: impression at least that the hair is still growing, the
Speaker 1: impression that the nails are still growing. So if you
Speaker 1: ask the question is that true, the answer is no,
Speaker 1: It is not true that hair and fingernails continue to
Speaker 1: grow after death, at least not to any significant degree. Now,
Speaker 1: if the nails and the hair don't keep growing after death,
Speaker 1: that that does leave the question of why so many
Speaker 1: people thought that that was the case. Why Why would
Speaker 1: you look at a corpse and think that its nails
Speaker 1: appear long? And the most common explanation for this tends
Speaker 1: to be based on the dehydration of the corps, that
Speaker 1: as the body begins to decompose, it loses a lot
Speaker 1: of moisture, which causes the retraction of the skin tissues
Speaker 1: around the finger nails and around the nail plate, which
Speaker 1: makes the nail plates look longer because there's there's just
Speaker 1: less skin around them. Now, this helps inform more than
Speaker 1: just our idea of vampires for starters. It also has
Speaker 1: factored into the bare aid a live panics that have
Speaker 1: existed at different times. I believe we we discussed this
Speaker 1: a bit in an episode of Invention on various casket innovations.
Speaker 1: So the idea is, oh, you know, you end up
Speaker 1: digging up this corpse later. Maybe you don't assume that
Speaker 1: they were some sort of undead fiend, but you might think, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, they were still alive for some time after
Speaker 1: we buried them. They must have been buried alive. And
Speaker 1: this led to a fashionable demand in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: for caskets with escape hatches and ways of getting out.
Speaker 1: If you happen to have been buried alive. Yes, so
Speaker 1: if you want to catch up on that, do check
Speaker 1: out that episode of Invention. It may still be in
Speaker 1: the stuff to boil your mind feed from when we
Speaker 1: put a bunch of those out earlier. In the year.
Speaker 1: But if not, you can find the dedicated fee to invention.
Speaker 1: Even though we're not putting out new episodes of that
Speaker 1: show in that feed, you'll still find all of those
Speaker 1: episodes there for your listening. I think it was a
Speaker 1: three part last October. Yeah, that's what it was. Now.
Speaker 1: In addition to this, you'll also find various myths and
Speaker 1: legends just concerned just general monstrosity in the world. And
Speaker 1: oftentimes you'll have a monster that has long finger nails.
Speaker 1: And this is roughly, you know, associated with the idea that, okay,
Speaker 1: long finger nails imply a wildness, to kind of beastial
Speaker 1: nature of the the entity or the being in question, right,
Speaker 1: what has claws wild animals? Yeah, and though the longer
Speaker 1: finger nails become, the more like the claws of an
Speaker 1: animal they become. Now, there are exceptions to this. Long
Speaker 1: finger nails are sometimes considered fashionable for females. We see
Speaker 1: we see a lot of that in um in modern culture,
Speaker 1: and then also you sometimes see it as a fashion
Speaker 1: for males as well. Long nails, for example, were important
Speaker 1: symbols of social status at various points in Chinese history,
Speaker 1: and they were sometimes painted for visual effect. But also
Speaker 1: sometimes the painting or sometimes the lacquering of the nail
Speaker 1: was as much about strengthening the nail as it was
Speaker 1: about making it fancy, which is an interesting point. And
Speaker 1: apparently this we see echoes of this and other cultures
Speaker 1: as well. I think the ancient Egyptians um are Are
Speaker 1: are thought to have engaged in this sort of thing
Speaker 1: as well, strengthening the nail in order to maintain it's
Speaker 1: elongated uh uh structure. Now, later on in Chinese history,
Speaker 1: ornate finger nail guards were used to protect outer nails.
Speaker 1: So this might be like on the pinky finger, for example,
Speaker 1: and the ring finger uh and uh. And we're we're
Speaker 1: talking some pretty ornate finger coverings here. For instance, the
Speaker 1: six inch long golden nail protectors that were worn by
Speaker 1: the emperorus Dowager Sushi, who ruled China for forty three
Speaker 1: years from eighteen sixty one until her death in nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight. If you look her up, you can find
Speaker 1: actual photographs of her decked out with these things. Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: can you describe Is this more of like a thimble
Speaker 1: type covering that would go over the end of the
Speaker 1: finger and extend out from there, or is it more
Speaker 1: like that finger armor stuff that has joints and goes
Speaker 1: over the whole finger. Um, not really joints per se.
Speaker 1: It is one gets the impression of like long tapering
Speaker 1: golden fingertip covers Um. I think this this sort of
Speaker 1: thing has also been utilized in dance in various Asian cultures. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're really neat looking now in terms of just
Speaker 1: longer finger nails in general, the style has also been
Speaker 1: popular with males at different times in Chinese history, with
Speaker 1: longer manicured nails still having a residual cultural association with
Speaker 1: higher classes in society. Uh. One also sees the retention
Speaker 1: of a long, pinky finger nail as a signifier of
Speaker 1: social status. Uh. But then there are also varying levels
Speaker 1: of when you get into the actual reasons uh that
Speaker 1: the individuals um, you know, self identify uh and uh
Speaker 1: and certainly uh uh explain that their their pinky nail.
Speaker 1: They might be it's for good luck or you know,
Speaker 1: it might be there might be some idea of divinational
Speaker 1: aspects uh a finger morphology. They're various sort of cultural
Speaker 1: ideas that seemed to be floating around. Um explaining you
Speaker 1: know why one would have a longer nail. If there's
Speaker 1: a class association that nails are, you know, for higher
Speaker 1: social status. I wonder if it has anything to do
Speaker 1: with demonstrating the lack of need to engage in physical
Speaker 1: or manual labor. Yes, sort of along the same lines
Speaker 1: as you know. There are some cultures. I think it
Speaker 1: was once common in uh in European culture, for and
Speaker 1: it was fashionable from me to where like long pointy shoes.
Speaker 1: And one explanation given for this is, well, a long
Speaker 1: pointy shoe makes you look rich because it's a kind
Speaker 1: of shoe that you can't do any physical work in. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The best explanations seemed to tie it to this like
Speaker 1: a long standing idea that it informs social status. However,
Speaker 1: I should note that I've I've looked into this a
Speaker 1: couple of times over the years, and I've never found
Speaker 1: like a I have not found not to say it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, but I have never found like a really
Speaker 1: good paper on this that really dives in with a
Speaker 1: lot of the information out there about this is more
Speaker 1: informal in nature. But um traditional Chinese cultural hierarchies do
Speaker 1: seem to retain their power though according to one paper
Speaker 1: I was looking at Saving Face in China, Modernization, parental
Speaker 1: pressure and plastic Surgery by Andrew Lyndridge and Choufeng Wang,
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. UM, so you know, basically underlying the idea
Speaker 1: that you can you can have these ideas that are
Speaker 1: still floating around in society, and perhaps you know, perhaps
Speaker 1: the rationale for them isn't you know one uh in
Speaker 1: an individual's forethought. But it's just something that survives and
Speaker 1: is still done and perhaps on some level still does
Speaker 1: inform UH that notion that I have this longer nail,
Speaker 1: which means I am of a higher social status and
Speaker 1: maybe don't have to engage in as much physical labor.
Speaker 1: For in his storical example of this getting outside of
Speaker 1: modern culture. UM, there's a book that I've I've been
Speaker 1: fond of for for for many years titled Tales from
Speaker 1: a Chinese Studio, and it's a collection from seventeen forty
Speaker 1: of these various weird tales that were compiled by the
Speaker 1: author Uh Pooh song Ling and Uh and it's these
Speaker 1: are wonderful stories. I recommend anyone who's even halfway interested
Speaker 1: in in strange Chinese ghost stories. You should pick up
Speaker 1: a copy of this because some of them are funny,
Speaker 1: some of them are just really weird. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: a certain poetry to them, and I understand that if
Speaker 1: if one is actually reading these stories uh in Mandarin uh,
Speaker 1: they're also there are also a lot of various illusions
Speaker 1: that are going to be lost on the English language
Speaker 1: translation reader. But they're still they're still tremendous as translated pieces.
Speaker 1: I think you've quoted from it before. I have positive
Speaker 1: associations with this title. Yeah, it's a it's a great book,
Speaker 1: and I think Penguin has an edition of it. Um.
Speaker 1: So I was looking back through that because I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: if there's a good example of a monster with long fingernails,
Speaker 1: perhaps i'll find it entails from a Chinese studio. I
Speaker 1: did not find it, but I did find this little
Speaker 1: note um about a particular line in one of his
Speaker 1: writings that I had skipped over before I didn't remember
Speaker 1: from before. Basically, uh uh poohsong Ling mentions the bard
Speaker 1: of the long nails, which the translators and editors of
Speaker 1: this Penguin edition identify as Lee He who lived seven
Speaker 1: sixty through eight sixteen. So he was a late Tongue scholar,
Speaker 1: often characterized as a sort of quote doomed poet with
Speaker 1: a vision so intense the world will destroy him if
Speaker 1: he does not destroy himself. Whoa, and and so the
Speaker 1: the editors here they could they compared him to John Keats.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because Keiths definitely he died young. But I
Speaker 1: don't really think of him as doom driven in that way. Uh.
Speaker 1: When I think of doom driven English poets, I guess
Speaker 1: I would think more like Byron or Percy Shelley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lord Byron definitely comes to mind, right, especially with when
Speaker 1: it comes to like a dark bad boy status walking
Speaker 1: around a skull goblet and a pet bear on a
Speaker 1: chain exactly. Uh. And and interestingly enough, uh, if you
Speaker 1: look up some of uh Lee He's translated work, he's
Speaker 1: sometimes described as this is from the Amazon description to
Speaker 1: a nice collection of his work. Uh, the bad boy
Speaker 1: poet of the late Tang dynasty. Well that I got
Speaker 1: to hear more from this bad so it was it
Speaker 1: was he a bet. Was the fact that he was
Speaker 1: a bad boy at all related to the perception of
Speaker 1: him having long nails? Um? Well, yes, and no, I
Speaker 1: think when I think this will maybe become a little
Speaker 1: more clear, Like, for instance, I don't think the fact
Speaker 1: that that he had long nails was like the signifying
Speaker 1: bad boy aspect about him. I take that to be
Speaker 1: probably we're in common with with professional scholars of the day,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you're you're you're a you're a scholar,
Speaker 1: you're a man of of words. Uh, you certainly don't
Speaker 1: need short nails in order to engage in a bunch
Speaker 1: of physical labor, like you're a man of letters. I
Speaker 1: see that being said, he has a very gothic quality
Speaker 1: to him. The New Tang History of ten sixty described
Speaker 1: him as quote frail and thin, with eyebrows that met
Speaker 1: together and long fingernails. He was also known as the
Speaker 1: Demon Talent due to his love of weird and exotic
Speaker 1: subjects in his writings, and the New Tang History also
Speaker 1: said that he quote felt himself already halfway across the
Speaker 1: boundary between the living and the dead. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: apparently he also wrote about mundane topics as well, like
Speaker 1: you know, earth like food and so forth. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't just all ghoulish content. Um, maybe a spooky food.
Speaker 1: Oh No, I think he generally, you know, wrote about
Speaker 1: food and acceptable non what we would think of in
Speaker 1: Western terms is of you know, a non Gothic sense.
Speaker 1: But anyway, if you if you look at his work,
Speaker 1: it is really quite beautiful. Um. He is probably apparently
Speaker 1: most famous for this poem song of Magic Strings that
Speaker 1: the editors and translators of the pous song Ling text include. Uh.
Speaker 1: The poem itself was translated by john Fordsham in ninety
Speaker 1: three's Goddesses, Ghosts and Demons that Collected Poems of lee
Speaker 1: he He He, which you can you can buy in like
Speaker 1: e book or physical form. I'm thinking of picking up
Speaker 1: a copy. But but here's here's just a little bit
Speaker 1: from that poem. Quote. Blue raccoons are weeping blood as
Speaker 1: shivering foxes die on the ancient wall. A painted dragon
Speaker 1: tail inlaid with gold. The rain god is writing it
Speaker 1: away to an autumn tarn. Owls that have lived a
Speaker 1: hundred years turned forest demons laugh wildly as an emerald
Speaker 1: fire leaps from their net. Wow. That that is electrifying. Man,
Speaker 1: I've got goose bumps. Yeah. Like I say, I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick up a copy for this Halloween season. Um,
Speaker 1: but there was there was another line when I was
Speaker 1: looking at the preview of that actual text, Fordsham wrote, quotely,
Speaker 1: he was temperamentally unable to write a conventional social poem,
Speaker 1: and consequently he is very rarely dull. Uh So, apparently
Speaker 1: to to be like a professional man of words, to
Speaker 1: be like, you know, a writer of the day, you
Speaker 1: had to engage in a lot of sort of boring,
Speaker 1: sort of courtly writing. Uh. The example that he gave
Speaker 1: was it was apparently common to sort of to to
Speaker 1: write to patrons and compliment them on, say, the birth
Speaker 1: of a child. And there's an example of this short
Speaker 1: poetic poetic piece that he wrote to such a patron,
Speaker 1: and he makes it sound like Fortshune compares it to
Speaker 1: uh the child from the omen um about just how
Speaker 1: he describes this child as like being able to like
Speaker 1: see through people to their to their soul, or something
Speaker 1: to that effect. It's pretty interesting. So I like the
Speaker 1: idea of this, uh, this Bard of the Long Nails,
Speaker 1: who when he tries to fit in and be like
Speaker 1: just a boring poet, he can't quite do it. He's
Speaker 1: just a little too weird. But I should drive home
Speaker 1: that I don't think the Long nails were the were
Speaker 1: the weird thing about him. No, it was that he
Speaker 1: would write you a note saying, congratulations on the birth
Speaker 1: of your child who will one day flay my soul
Speaker 1: in the underworld. Yeah, that sort of thing. Um. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: I encourage everyone to check out both of those authors.
Speaker 1: But but anyway, back back to nails in general. Long
Speaker 1: nails have have apparently sometimes been seen as a luxury
Speaker 1: for those of upper classes in various cultures who don't
Speaker 1: have to truly labor with their hands. And I've had
Speaker 1: a couple of studies at least that backed this up,
Speaker 1: such as excessively long fingernails as a risk factor for
Speaker 1: upper extremity soft tissue injury published in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and another
Speaker 1: pay or Effects of fingernail linked on finger and hand performance,
Speaker 1: published in the Journal hand Therapy back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and This the second paper here recommends keeping fingernails shortened
Speaker 1: to at least point five centimeters to quote achieve optimal
Speaker 1: functional outcomes. Well, I guess, to be fair, I laughed
Speaker 1: because I was imagining optimal functional outcomes of hands just
Speaker 1: in regular life. But I guess this is talking about therapy,
Speaker 1: so that phrasing makes sense. Yes, yes, this this paper
Speaker 1: does seem to be narrowing its focus somewhat. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth noting that, you know, I
Speaker 1: have for my own part, I've encountered people with with
Speaker 1: 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 in
Speaker 1: the earth or something to that effect. So so I'm
Speaker 1: not sure i'd be interesting to hear from anyone out
Speaker 1: there who does, who has had long nails in the
Speaker 1: past or keeps them maintains long nails today, Like are
Speaker 1: there things that you find that they get in the
Speaker 1: way of or are they just generally not in the way?
Speaker 1: Do you sort of adapt I mean, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: we we we can adapt our body schema to a
Speaker 1: accommodate for any number of of extra things. It seems
Speaker 1: like just longer nails. I mean, that's even more a
Speaker 1: part of our body than any tool or costume that
Speaker 1: we might acquire. All Right, it's time to take a
Speaker 1: quick break. But when we come back, we can talk
Speaker 1: about a demon warship made out of nails than all right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and I'm excited for this, Joe, because you
Speaker 1: were you were about to embark on a journey and
Speaker 1: you're you're going to uh tell us about what maybe
Speaker 1: the the magical fingernail story par excellence. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of great magical figure nail stories that
Speaker 1: that I'm to get into, but this might be the
Speaker 1: most most thoroughly mythological one, the one that's like the
Speaker 1: most the most like a device in a story where
Speaker 1: the nails are sort of the mcguffin. Though there's also
Speaker 1: a very good Persian one that we'll get into. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so I want to go to the prose Edda. This
Speaker 1: is a work that tells us a lot of what
Speaker 1: we know about ancient Norse mythology that was written or
Speaker 1: edited by the medieval Icelandic author Snorri Sturlason. In the
Speaker 1: prose Edda, there are these collected literary works that tell
Speaker 1: many of the stories of Norse mythology, including the story
Speaker 1: of Ragnarok, the final confrontation, the destruction of the gods
Speaker 1: at the end of that era and there but early on,
Speaker 1: there's a passage in the prose edit that's just talking
Speaker 1: about ships, just mentioning what kinds of mythological ships there are,
Speaker 1: And it mentions one ship in passing, calling it the
Speaker 1: Nagle Far. And it only says a couple of things
Speaker 1: about the Nagle Far. It says that it is in
Speaker 1: mu spell. Mu Spell is a realm of fire, home
Speaker 1: of the fire giants who you don't want to mess with.
Speaker 1: And the passage also mentions that Nagle Far is the largest,
Speaker 1: meaning the largest of all ships. So what is this
Speaker 1: Nagle Far the largest of all ships? Well, later the
Speaker 1: author here tells us that the Nagle Far will appear
Speaker 1: over the horizon during the calamity of Ragnarok, when the
Speaker 1: gods will be destroyed. And the author also tells us
Speaker 1: something about its construction. And here I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: directly from the work quote the stars shall be hurled
Speaker 1: from heaven. Then it shall come to pass that the
Speaker 1: earth and the mountains will shake so violently that trees
Speaker 1: will be torn up by the roots, and the mountains
Speaker 1: will topple down, and all bonds and fetters will be
Speaker 1: broken and snapped. The fin ris wolf gets loose, the
Speaker 1: sea rushes over the earth for the mid guard serpent
Speaker 1: writhes in giant rage and seeks to gain the land.
Speaker 1: The ship that is called nagle Are 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 Naggle far gets afloat. The giant crime is its steersman,
Speaker 1: or there might be him h r y M. But okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's got it's got giants on it. It's got
Speaker 1: the giant crime or h rim as it's steersman, and
Speaker 1: it's made out of the fingernails and toenails of dead
Speaker 1: men who did not care appropriately for their nails at
Speaker 1: the time of death. That is that is gnarly um.
Speaker 1: I by the way, I I'm not surprised at all
Speaker 1: to learn as well that there is a a longstanding
Speaker 1: Swedish black metal band that has naggle far as It's
Speaker 1: as its name. They've been active since then the early
Speaker 1: nineties apparently. Oh wow, I've never heard of him, but
Speaker 1: of course yeah, I mean, in anything, this gnarly is
Speaker 1: going to end up as a metal band name. But
Speaker 1: 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 scene is described in the Voluspa,
Speaker 1: which is an old Norse poem describing a lot of
Speaker 1: mythological events that we've mentioned on the show pretty recently. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think, wait, which episode did it come up in?
Speaker 1: I cannot recall the context at the moment, but there's
Speaker 1: also a quatrain in the Voluspa that mentions it. It says,
Speaker 1: from the east comes crime with shield held high in
Speaker 1: giant wrath, does the serpent writhe or the waves he twists,
Speaker 1: and the tawny eagle naws corpses screaming. Naggle Far is loose.
Speaker 1: I love, I love the idea that it's you know,
Speaker 1: this is just me reading into it, perhaps, but it
Speaker 1: it feels like it's not. It's not just the bones
Speaker 1: that are making it's not bones that are making up
Speaker 1: the ship. It is the toenails and the fingernails that
Speaker 1: seem more like the detritus of of the the dead body.
Speaker 1: You know. It seems like this is like a ship
Speaker 1: that has been collecting and assembling, like at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the universe, throughout all of human conflict, you know,
Speaker 1: And so that that's why it is only it is
Speaker 1: only completely finished towards the very end of human existence.
Speaker 1: So there's a paper I want to talk about, Robert,
Speaker 1: if you're ready, called the Treatment of Hair and Fingernails
Speaker 1: among the Indo Europeans. Oh, yes, I am ready for
Speaker 1: this because I've I've read about certainly nothing on the
Speaker 1: ship level, the ship building level, but I've I've read
Speaker 1: about some of these of these folk beliefs before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is a paper by Bruce Lincoln, who is
Speaker 1: a scholar of religious studies at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 1: It was published in nineteen seventy seven, and that's worth noting.
Speaker 1: This is an older paper. I'm citing it because it's
Speaker 1: still really interesting, but I just want to flag that
Speaker 1: it's older, because it's possible that in the intervening years
Speaker 1: some of Lincoln's factual assumptions might have been superseded by
Speaker 1: more recent anthropological or historical research. But I think the
Speaker 1: general thrust of the question he poses remains and uh,
Speaker 1: and some of the hypotheses he discusses in this article
Speaker 1: remain extremely interesting. Okay, so he starts like this quote.
Speaker 1: One of the important lessons that has learned from the
Speaker 1: study of history of religions is that there is no
Speaker 1: act so small or insignificant that it cannot take on
Speaker 1: symbolic importance. In certain cultures, it is not always an
Speaker 1: easy task to recognize such symbolically invested action, although the
Speaker 1: existence of elaborate rules for behavior in a given situation
Speaker 1: may serve as a valuable clue. And if the identification
Speaker 1: of such action is sometimes difficult, the interpretation of a
Speaker 1: given motion, gesture, or ritual is even more delicate. And
Speaker 1: the example that he gives that he's going to talk
Speaker 1: about in this paper is the extremely careful, meticulous rules
Speaker 1: governing the treatment of clippings from the hair and nails
Speaker 1: in many cultures and religions throughout the world, especially in
Speaker 1: many cultures that are descended from in some way the
Speaker 1: ancient speakers of Proto Indo European, which I'll get into
Speaker 1: more later. So I'm going to start by just listing
Speaker 1: a number of examples that Lincoln brings up, and then
Speaker 1: we can go back and talk about possible explanations for
Speaker 1: where these beliefs and religious practices come from. So the
Speaker 1: first one mentioned by Lincoln concerns the hair specifically, and
Speaker 1: is it's the right of the child's first haircut or
Speaker 1: first tonture, practiced historically by some people of India, and
Speaker 1: it's described in the Sankayana Gria Sutra, and the Gria
Speaker 1: Sutras are a number of manuals describing the steps of
Speaker 1: various domestic religious ceremonies. So I think specifically the kind
Speaker 1: of religious ceremonies that you you might perform around the house.
Speaker 1: So this is performed for different children at front 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
Speaker 1: is in a kind of symbolic ritual way planted within
Speaker 1: dung or within the earth. And there's this association with
Speaker 1: vegetation or herbs. Interesting. Now, this may have absolutely no
Speaker 1: connection with it. But uh, a while back, I guess,
Speaker 1: oh man, probably more than probably about a year ago. Uh,
Speaker 1: my son and I had our hair cut at our
Speaker 1: house on our our front porch. And afterwards, um uh,
Speaker 1: the individual cut our hair encouraged us to take the
Speaker 1: clippings and put at least some of them in our
Speaker 1: garden um in order to help deter creatures from eating
Speaker 1: our vegetables. I wonder if that actually works. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I've I mean, I've heard also similar advice concerning
Speaker 1: a little like hair from your pet, like to to
Speaker 1: keep the road inside of your garden, to put some
Speaker 1: hair from your cat for for for instance, in there,
Speaker 1: which which I mean it sounds like it could work.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've I've seen any thing to
Speaker 1: actually back that up, except I haven't noticed any any
Speaker 1: mice or rats out there. But then again, um, just
Speaker 1: because you don't notice them doesn't mean they're not there.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. We'll definitely keep that in mind as we
Speaker 1: go through a few more of these examples. So the
Speaker 1: next one that Lincoln sites comes from ancient Roman religion. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is the example of the flamand Alice, or
Speaker 1: the high priest of Jupiter, the chief god of the
Speaker 1: Roman pantheon, and the flamand Alice had numerous ceremonial requirements
Speaker 1: and restrictions guiding his daily activities. There were rules about
Speaker 1: where he had to sleep, there were rules about what
Speaker 1: he was supposed to wear, about what kinds of things
Speaker 1: he could touch or couldn't touch. And one of these restrictions,
Speaker 1: as reported by the second century Roman author Aulus Gellius,
Speaker 1: in a text called Attic Nights, goes like this, and
Speaker 1: this is with some abridgments. Quote the ceremonies placed upon
Speaker 1: the flamand allies are many, and the forbearances are numerous.
Speaker 1: No one should cut the hair of the de Aalie
Speaker 1: except a free man. The cuttings of the nails and
Speaker 1: hair of the deals are buried in the earth under
Speaker 1: a fruitful tree. There were almost the same ceremonies for
Speaker 1: the Flamenica de Alice, and I think that's the wife
Speaker 1: of the high priest of Jupiter. And they say that
Speaker 1: other different ones are to be observed, for instance, that
Speaker 1: she is covered with a dyed gown, and that in
Speaker 1: her veil she has the shoot of a fruitful tree.
Speaker 1: And there are other similar practices elsewhere in ancient Roman religion.
Speaker 1: For example, in the Natural History, Plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: recounts how the vestal virgins are expected to observe special
Speaker 1: ceremonies in the disposal of the trimmings from their hair.
Speaker 1: Plenty rights quote, truly, there is a lotus tree in Rome,
Speaker 1: in the area of Lucina. Now this tree is about
Speaker 1: five hundred years old or older. Its age is uncertain,
Speaker 1: and it is called the hairy one because the hair
Speaker 1: of the vestal virgins is brought to it. So note
Speaker 1: again the kind of rough similarities with the Indian practice here,
Speaker 1: the association with vegetation, especially well, hair is a is
Speaker 1: a thing that grows out of us, not unlike a plant,
Speaker 1: right or some sort of vine. And then I guess
Speaker 1: a lot of this tube just has to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that hair and fingernails and toenails as well
Speaker 1: are the things that are paradoxically a part of us
Speaker 1: and yet not a part of us. And then when
Speaker 1: we trim them away or cut them away, they are
Speaker 1: no longer part of our bodies that they came from
Speaker 1: our bodies. And therefore you could you could see where
Speaker 1: you could easily lean into this idea that's something appropriate
Speaker 1: must be done with these parts of ourselves. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into more about that in the in the
Speaker 1: part where we talk about the possible explanations for these
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about the next example Lincoln sites,
Speaker 1: which is German folkloric practices. He writes that there are
Speaker 1: a number of archaic rituals among German people speaking Germanic
Speaker 1: languages for dealing with the disposal of clippings from the
Speaker 1: hair and nails quote. Thus, in Oldenburg hair and nails
Speaker 1: are wrapped in a cloth and fastened under a tree
Speaker 1: 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 our
Speaker 1: place to on a branch. This is often done when
Speaker 1: one suffers from some sort of pain, and the pain
Speaker 1: is said to go with these moving to anyone who
Speaker 1: comes close to them. Now, there are some differences here
Speaker 1: from 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 z or asterie and text. You're getting this elaborate
Speaker 1: ritual described for what you should do with the trimmings
Speaker 1: from your hair and nails, and that there are actual,
Speaker 1: like real demonic consequences if you do not follow these rituals. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Lincoln points out several things he finds really interesting
Speaker 1: about the explanation from the Wise Lord to Zarathustra. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, there's the need to carry these clippings
Speaker 1: from hair and nails away from sources of purification. Remember
Speaker 1: the mentions, if you've got to carry him this far
Speaker 1: away from righteous men, this far away from fire, from water,
Speaker 1: and from the sacred bundle of twigs, because these are
Speaker 1: all potentially sources of religious purity, and it seems like
Speaker 1: there's a desire to avoid cross contamination of all that
Speaker 1: purifying matter with impure matter that you've just trimmed off
Speaker 1: of your body. But then there's also Lincoln points out
Speaker 1: the use of troughs to demarcate a sacred space, and
Speaker 1: then also the spontaneous production of monsters from the air
Speaker 1: and nail trimmings that are disposed of incorrectly. And if
Speaker 1: that 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 properly according to
Speaker 1: the correct rituals. So if you do the wrong thing
Speaker 1: with your nails, you make an accidental donation to the
Speaker 1: construction of the demons galleon. Oh wow, So this is
Speaker 1: this is fascinating cause that 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 monstrous 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 say, 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 um, your first instinct is
Speaker 1: not to pick that material up and look closer up
Speaker 1: put it in your mouth. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like a natural thing to do. All right, On that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Alright, we're back. But we've been talking about
Speaker 1: all these examples from all of you know, different parts
Speaker 1: of the world of religious or magical significance that is
Speaker 1: granted to trimmings from the hair and nails. And this
Speaker 1: list is far from exhaustive. There are tons of examples
Speaker 1: in practices all all over the place. But I think
Speaker 1: just the examples we've talked about do help paint a
Speaker 1: picture of the wide range of myths, beliefs, and practices
Speaker 1: about hair and nails and the many similarities between them.
Speaker 1: But the question is why why do so many different
Speaker 1: cultures place this important ritual or religious significance on the
Speaker 1: correct 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 the
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.
Speaker 1: Fraser in the Golden Bow. The Golden Bow has come
Speaker 1: up on the show before. Uh. Fraser, of course is
Speaker 1: very uh, you know, enormously influential, but also heavily criticized.
Speaker 1: We can talk about that in a minute, um. But
Speaker 1: Fraser argues that many of these practices have their roots
Speaker 1: in a widespread ancient belief in what he would have
Speaker 1: called the contagious branch of sympathetic magic. So the basic
Speaker 1: idea 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 there's 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 interesting stuff about just how we think about the
Speaker 1: contamination of of objects. Uh, there's a there's a there's
Speaker 1: this study back in the nineteen nineties by social psychologist
Speaker 1: Paul Rosen and um. This was actually recently mentioned on
Speaker 1: an episode of the excellent radio show Hidden Brain. Uh.
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 the impure in a completely irrational manner.
Speaker 1: That is really funny. I mean, I can just say
Speaker 1: for myself, like I I rationally do not believe in
Speaker 1: any kind of sympathetic, contagious magic. So I don't think
Speaker 1: like Hitler's evil would be contained in the physical sweater
Speaker 1: in any way but still I wouldn't want to put
Speaker 1: it on. Well, I have a lot of nitpicky questions
Speaker 1: about that that scenario, like is it a good sweater?
Speaker 1: Like is there anything notable notable about the sweater other
Speaker 1: than it was Hitler's sweater? Because obviously I'm not going
Speaker 1: to just wear a sweater because Hitler wore it? But
Speaker 1: what ither I like? Was it a store and there
Speaker 1: was like vintage stuff and there was like this really
Speaker 1: nice sweater and I'm like, oh, this is nice. And
Speaker 1: then I asked why is it so cheap? And they
Speaker 1: tell me, oh, because this was Hitler's sweater. Then okay,
Speaker 1: that might be different because I have some pre existing
Speaker 1: interest in it. There's something about that sweater that's really neat.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily get that from this this limited scenario.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, it's it's kind of implied that the
Speaker 1: notable thing about the sweater is that it was Hitler's. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually can think of a reason I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to wear that sweater or own it, even
Speaker 1: if even though I don't believe in any magical associations,
Speaker 1: which is that I mean, I guess if you were
Speaker 1: to wear a sweater that you knew had been warned
Speaker 1: by Hitler, you'd probably end up thinking about Hitler all
Speaker 1: the time. And you know, it's like, every time you
Speaker 1: put it on, you have to be like, oh, yeah, Hitler,
Speaker 1: and you 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 struggle to separate say an artist
Speaker 1: from the art. Uh. That can sort of be the
Speaker 1: 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 is 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 uh
Speaker 1: that within human religious thinking quote that the body is
Speaker 1: a powerful model or image which can which can represent
Speaker 1: any bounded system, and which most often represents society itself.
Speaker 1: The 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, including but not limited
Speaker 1: to Germanic languages and Romance languages, but both Germanic and
Speaker 1: 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 languages. Uh. Similarly,
Speaker 1: scholars have tried to reconstruct other things about them. We
Speaker 1: don't know a lot of things for sure, but they
Speaker 1: probably lived somewhere around southern Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, sort
Speaker 1: of between and to the north of the Black Sea
Speaker 1: and the Caspian Sea, probably a few thousand years b c.
Speaker 1: We don't have any direct records of their religious beliefs,
Speaker 1: their myths, and their practices, but scholars, including Bruce Lincoln,
Speaker 1: have used clues from other descendent religions to try as
Speaker 1: best as possible to reconstruct elements such as their creation myth,
Speaker 1: and Lincoln explains his hypothetical reconstruction of this creation myth
Speaker 1: as follows, quote, this myth, as I have established elsewhere,
Speaker 1: told how the world and all the creatures in it
Speaker 1: were established by the first act of sacrifice, in the
Speaker 1: primordial offering, the first priest Manu meaning man, dismembered the
Speaker 1: first king Yemo meaning twin, and from his body built
Speaker 1: up the material world. Now, certain steps in the process
Speaker 1: of creation were described in this myth, steps whereby the
Speaker 1: body of the primordial victim became the world. Thus his
Speaker 1: skull became the heavens, his eyes the sun and moon,
Speaker 1: his blood the seas, and what is most important for
Speaker 1: the issue at hand, his hair became the plants and trees,
Speaker 1: and so Lincoln quotes. He goes on to quote a
Speaker 1: bunch of related ancient religious texts that serve as evidence
Speaker 1: for his reconstruction of the myth in this way. Um,
Speaker 1: And of course we don't know that this is actually
Speaker 1: what their creation myth was like, but it seems like
Speaker 1: a reasonable approximation of what their creation myth might have
Speaker 1: been like, given what we know from a lot of
Speaker 1: other religions that seem related to it. And this is,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, you can immediately think of other
Speaker 1: samples of creation myths in which the parts of the
Speaker 1: world are made out of the body of a slain
Speaker 1: primordial foe. Think about the ways that in say the
Speaker 1: Enema a leash, that the body of tiamat the dragon,
Speaker 1: you know, the sea monster gets turned into the you know,
Speaker 1: the mountains and the sky and the seas and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, this is something you
Speaker 1: do see in a number of different mythologies like that,
Speaker 1: if nothing else you could even summarize just to say
Speaker 1: that the body, the primordial body of being such as
Speaker 1: this are important in the way that they are then
Speaker 1: taken apart and then redistributed in those parts become important
Speaker 1: aspects of the world that follows right. And so Lincoln
Speaker 1: says that, you know, if his reconstruction of the Proto
Speaker 1: Indo European creation myth is is basically correct or is
Speaker 1: on the right track, that a lot of religious practices
Speaker 1: of round disposal of hair and nails in cultures that
Speaker 1: are in part descended from the Proto Indo Europeans could
Speaker 1: be rooted in a recapitulation of this creation myth. And
Speaker 1: this draws on a strain of thinking that I think
Speaker 1: in some way is associated with the Eliade. For example,
Speaker 1: that a lot of religious rituals are in a way
Speaker 1: supposed to be a re enactment of a foundational myth.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, the idea that that that that everything we
Speaker 1: do is only important in the archaic sense if we
Speaker 1: are recreating something from our founding myths. Right, So that's
Speaker 1: ultimately Lincoln's theory here what what he thinks best explains
Speaker 1: the widespread nature of these these practices about the disposal
Speaker 1: of hair and nails. That he thinks, when you dispose
Speaker 1: of hair and nail clippings in the correct way, you
Speaker 1: are furthering the life of the world's vegetation in keeping
Speaker 1: with the creation story. The sacrifice here is your own body,
Speaker 1: and the sacrifice of hair. Originally, he thinks hair and
Speaker 1: the nails were sort of added onto the hair. Sacrifice
Speaker 1: feeds the trees and the grasses the same way that
Speaker 1: this primordially slain foe originally created all that vegetation. And uh.
Speaker 1: And then Lincoln says, the other half of the coin
Speaker 1: is quote. When such care is not taken, when disposal
Speaker 1: is not a ritual and does not repeat the acts
Speaker 1: of a mythic model, the reverse can be the effect.
Speaker 1: For if proper disposal serves to create the cosmos, then
Speaker 1: improper disposal can de create it, or to put it negatively,
Speaker 1: conserved to create chaos out of cosmos. And think of
Speaker 1: the examples again we discussed here the destruction of crops
Speaker 1: by vice demons from the Avestan text, you know, the
Speaker 1: 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, obviously,
Speaker 1: Lincoln idea here about the origins of these practices could
Speaker 1: be wrong, but at the very least it provides some
Speaker 1: really interesting scaffolding for understanding ways in which complex symbolic
Speaker 1: religious thinking might enter into what we would consider an
Speaker 1: extremely mundane grooming practice. How uh, it's it's possible that
Speaker 1: just clipping your nails and cutting your hair too many
Speaker 1: people might have cosmic significance because of the myths that
Speaker 1: informed their worldview. Yeah, this is this is all very fascinating.
Speaker 1: You know. It gets to the sort of the ambiguity
Speaker 1: of what our nails and our as well as our hair, Like, well,
Speaker 1: what what they really are? And and then yeah, what
Speaker 1: are we supposed to do with them once we once
Speaker 1: they leave our body? And then what sort of ideas
Speaker 1: do we end up building up about uh those things
Speaker 1: and our identity and our place in the cosmos? Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally so maybe uh maybe if if you're somebody who
Speaker 1: has a say a partner or roommate or family member
Speaker 1: who gets mad when you just like clip your toe
Speaker 1: nails in a willy lily fashion, they shoot all over
Speaker 1: the room and you do not collect them in a
Speaker 1: clean and tidy way for proper disposal, think about this
Speaker 1: interpretation of the proto Indo European creation myth. What if
Speaker 1: what if you are somehow creating chaos out of order
Speaker 1: by doing so, and you are summoning demons up from
Speaker 1: the earth. Yeah, yeah, indeed, I think they're there. There's
Speaker 1: probably like a wide variety of different takes on this
Speaker 1: as well. Like I think I've run across the examples
Speaker 1: of a Chinese superstition um that at least exists in
Speaker 1: some places where you are not supposed to trim your
Speaker 1: toe nails at night while it's dark outside um or
Speaker 1: not to trim them outside at night for my own part,
Speaker 1: I mean, I prefer to to trim my my nails
Speaker 1: outside if I can. I feel like they just simplifies
Speaker 1: the whole scenario, you know, Um, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about finding them if they go flying or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Now, one thing that comes to my mind is,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of the the parts of our
Speaker 1: bodies that we leave behind on regular basis, I mean,
Speaker 1: humans have it fairly simple, you know. Well it's just
Speaker 1: the most mostly just the nails and the hair, and
Speaker 1: but and yet we still managed to build up all
Speaker 1: these fabulous ideas to construct demonships of the mind. Um,
Speaker 1: Imagine what it would be like if we if we
Speaker 1: like molted um and left behind an exoskeleton that resembled ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like the cicada shell that is
Speaker 1: left behind. Or imagine that we make something along the
Speaker 1: lines of squid that leave behind us a pseudomorph, you know,
Speaker 1: a cloud of of ink that is in the shape
Speaker 1: of their body to fool predators, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Imagine what sort of like strange ideas about self and
Speaker 1: former self. Uh, such beings, intelligent beings might have. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the religion and the religious practices of
Speaker 1: intelligent arthropods that had to molten have a whole body
Speaker 1: shell that was left behind? Oh? Man, that that would
Speaker 1: be good. That's that's that's something good for your sci
Speaker 1: fi novel there, Yeah, I mean what shape would it take?
Speaker 1: Would it be? Would there be like a would you
Speaker 1: have like special burial grounds where all of your your
Speaker 1: various um uh, you know exoskeletons go once you've morphed
Speaker 1: out of them. Um do do famous uh crab people
Speaker 1: did do their exoskeleton moldings wind up in a museum somewhere?
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's so many questions to ask. As always, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you've run across any examples in science fiction or
Speaker 1: fantasy to deal with these sort of issues, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. We we always love your to
Speaker 1: hear advice from listeners on old works of science fiction
Speaker 1: and fantasy or new works as well. Um. Likewise, we
Speaker 1: touched on a lot of different traditions and cultures in
Speaker 1: this episode especially, so I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: absolutely anybody who has insight on this. Uh, particularly with
Speaker 1: with with long nails for example. Uh, do you keep
Speaker 1: your nails long? Have you ever kept your nails long? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, right in. I'd like to to know how
Speaker 1: that has impacted your life or not impacted your life. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if there's a particular tradition in your culture or your
Speaker 1: culture of origin, I would like to hear about that
Speaker 1: as well. And certainly, as Joe mentioned, if there are
Speaker 1: any particular practices that you engage in, either culturally or
Speaker 1: just sort of as a as a as a quirk
Speaker 1: of your own individual nature regarding your your your nail
Speaker 1: and hair trimmings. Uh, we would love to hear what
Speaker 1: they are totally. In the meantime, if you would like
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you find your podcasts and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us to answer any of the questions
Speaker 1: Robert just listed, or if you'd like to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future. You've got any other feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode, you can email us at contact that's Stuff
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