Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is.
Speaker 3: Robert Mayam and I am Joe McCormick, and we are
Speaker 3: back with our fourth episode in the series on dust.
Speaker 3: So we've covered a lot of ground already. If you
Speaker 3: have not heard the earlier episodes, you should probably go
Speaker 3: back and check those out first, but for a brief review.
Speaker 3: In part one of the series, we talked about how
Speaker 3: to define and classify dust according to particle size, and
Speaker 3: how easily it is borne aloft in the air, and
Speaker 3: so forth. We also talked about our domestic companions, the wonderful, beautiful,
Speaker 3: horrible pyroglyphid dust mites. We also talked about some of
Speaker 3: the complicated interactions between atmospheric dust and climate and weather.
Speaker 3: In Part two, we talked about dust bunnies both inside
Speaker 3: the home and potent in outer space, as well as
Speaker 3: some historical attitudes about dust and how those attitudes relate
Speaker 3: to things like interior design and horror literature. And then
Speaker 3: in part three, we talked about the role of dust
Speaker 3: in urban Victorian London and in nineteenth century literature again
Speaker 3: and also got into dust as an illustration of the
Speaker 3: philosophical puzzle known as the Sororiety's paradox or the paradox
Speaker 3: of the heap. And now we're back today to talk
Speaker 3: more about dust. I think we're going to focus today
Speaker 3: primarily on dust, the role of dust in religion and mythology.
Speaker 2: That's right. So at this point, I think we've cleanly
Speaker 2: established the ubiquitous nature of dust. You know, it precedes us,
Speaker 2: it follows us, and it steadily covers all the details
Speaker 2: of our lives. So on one level, dust is mundane
Speaker 2: and perhaps not all that worthy of careful consideration or
Speaker 2: dreaming or myth making. But as we've also established, dust
Speaker 2: can also be quite beautiful. It can haunt us with it.
Speaker 2: It's minuscule scale, it's almost invisible accumulation, and it takes
Speaker 2: on additional meanings in the light then of both mythological
Speaker 2: and scientific explanation. So it's something that, yeah, it's everywhere,
Speaker 2: it's every day, but it also works in such a
Speaker 2: subtle way and can be quite beautiful that it does
Speaker 2: seem to attract this kind of dream making attention.
Speaker 3: You know. One thing I brought up in the first
Speaker 3: episode of the series was about a mismatch in the
Speaker 3: different ways we think about dust, because on one hand,
Speaker 3: dust as a symbol is most often used to symbolize
Speaker 3: kind of nothingness or worthlessness. You know, dust just means
Speaker 3: like it's it's sort of the opposite of meaningful, useful matter.
Speaker 3: It's just something that's everywhere and is worth nothing. At
Speaker 3: the same time, I sort of like what you're talking about,
Speaker 3: rob with dust being both mundane and all around us,
Speaker 3: but also seemingly sort of magical. Sometimes. I think it's
Speaker 3: an interesting that dust has, even in its use as
Speaker 3: a symbol of meaninglessness or worthlessness, a real potency like
Speaker 3: it is, so it is considered so worthless that it
Speaker 3: is really captivating image and it matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And also we'll get into this a little
Speaker 2: bit too. There can also be I think, a disconnect
Speaker 2: between the way we think about dust and related substances
Speaker 2: such as dirt and mud versus the way that people
Speaker 2: would have thought about it in the past, but more
Speaker 2: centrally in times and places where people are more connected
Speaker 2: with the earth. So at any rate, we're going to
Speaker 2: get into some various examples here, but we do need
Speaker 2: to stress that we cannot possibly cover every invocation of
Speaker 2: dust and mythic, legendary, folkloric, and religious traditions here. So
Speaker 2: we're going to try and cover some cantilagizing examples, but
Speaker 2: will inevitably leave some things off, in which case, you know,
Speaker 2: that's an opportunity for folks to write into us and
Speaker 2: share other examples of dust from mythology, folklore, and so
Speaker 2: forth that we might find interesting and we can discuss
Speaker 2: on future listener mail episodes.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Please send us your favorite dust myths that we
Speaker 3: do not cover. But I wanted to kick things off
Speaker 3: today by looking at the role of dust in Mesopotamian
Speaker 3: myths because I just recalled off the top of my
Speaker 3: head a lot of striking imagery of dust in ancient
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian literature and also references in some of the religious
Speaker 3: rituals that we've talked about, Like I know, we talked
Speaker 3: about some of these last year in one of our
Speaker 3: Halloween episodes. But anyway, so I was going to look
Speaker 3: up some of the most interesting references to dust in
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian literature, and so I ended up searching for references
Speaker 3: to dust in the myths from Mesopotamia, Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh,
Speaker 3: and others from Oxford University Press, nineteen ninety eight, edited
Speaker 3: by Stephanie Dally, And the most interesting one that I
Speaker 3: came across is one you might know, the sort of
Speaker 3: famous house of Dust passage in the Gilgamesh epic. This
Speaker 3: is in tablet seven of the Gilgamesh story and this
Speaker 3: imagery comes in when Gilgamesh's friend, the wild Man in
Speaker 3: key Dou, is cursed and dying. Basically, he is being
Speaker 3: punished by the gods. The gods are getting revenged because
Speaker 3: the two of them, both Gilgamesh and in key Dou,
Speaker 3: for some reason, only in key Dou gets punished here.
Speaker 3: They both attacked the demon Humbaba in the Cedar forest,
Speaker 3: and they attacked another god to They've been doing a
Speaker 3: lot of damage. They're they're a wild pair. So in
Speaker 3: key Dou is cursed by the gods. He's on his
Speaker 3: deathbed here and he has a terrifying dream, a truly
Speaker 3: revolting and disturbing vision of the underworld, the land of
Speaker 3: the dead. And I'm not going to quote the whole
Speaker 3: thing here, I'm gonna skip around a bit and pull
Speaker 3: out some passages from his description of the dream. And
Speaker 3: again this is the translation in that Myths and Misopotamia
Speaker 3: I described then in Kidu wept, for he was sick
Speaker 3: at heart. He lay down alone. He spoke what was
Speaker 3: in his mind to his friend. Listen again, my friend,
Speaker 3: I had a dream in the night. The sky called out,
Speaker 3: the earth replied. I was standing between them. There was
Speaker 3: a young man whose face was obscured. His face was
Speaker 3: like that of an Anzu bird. He had the paws
Speaker 3: of a lion. He had the claws of an eagle.
Speaker 3: He seized me by my locks, using great force against me,
Speaker 3: like a wild bull. He trampled on me. He squeezed
Speaker 3: my whole body. I cried out, save me, my friend,
Speaker 3: don't desert me. But you were afraid and did not
Speaker 3: help me. He seized me, drove me down to the
Speaker 3: dark house dwelling of Rkala's god, to the house where
Speaker 3: those who stay are deprived of light, where dust is
Speaker 3: their food and clay their bread. They are clothed like
Speaker 3: birds with feathers, and they no light, and they dwell
Speaker 3: in darkness. Over the door and the bolt dust has settled.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, so some of this does depend on the
Speaker 3: English translation. Some of the you know the hauntingness like
Speaker 3: you can read different translations of this passage that kind
Speaker 3: of hit in slightly different ways. And I will say
Speaker 3: that sometimes the word dust here is in some cases
Speaker 3: translated as dirt, but most often I've seen it as dust,
Speaker 3: and it really makes sense as dust. When you think
Speaker 3: about the idea that, like, to this house of dust,
Speaker 3: to this land of darkness over the door and the
Speaker 3: bolt the dust has settled, it's a really striking, powerful,
Speaker 3: creepy image that you know, it's like there's no coming
Speaker 3: and going anyway. And Kido goes on to describe how
Speaker 3: great kings of the world have their crowns piled up
Speaker 3: in heaps in the underworld, though I did wonder how
Speaker 3: many crowns makes a heap?
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, yeah, I love this detail about is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like the steady accumulation of crowns in my much like
Speaker 2: the steady accumulation of.
Speaker 3: Dust, And much like the dust. The crowns are now
Speaker 3: worthless in the underworld because the kings cannot wear them
Speaker 3: and they are not honored. The kings in the underworld
Speaker 3: are made to be servants, cooking meats and baking desserts
Speaker 3: and pouring cool water for the gods, but they cannot
Speaker 3: share in these delights themselves. For the dead, dust is
Speaker 3: their food and clay is their bread. So finally, in
Speaker 3: this passage, in key Do does die from the god curse,
Speaker 3: and this vision of death is so awful that it
Speaker 3: drives Gilgamesh to go on his epic quest to discover
Speaker 3: the secret of immortality. And so he ends up, you know,
Speaker 3: searching for like a plant at the bottom of the
Speaker 3: ocean that he thinks can save him from death, because
Speaker 3: he cannot end up like in key Do in the
Speaker 3: house of dust. So it's literature like this that makes
Speaker 3: me think. In some cases, the imagery of dust is used,
Speaker 3: of course, to signal something about worthlessness, like dust is
Speaker 3: not good as food, so it is not worthwhile as food.
Speaker 3: You do not want to be forced to eat it
Speaker 3: because it does not serve the function food should serve.
Speaker 3: But there is also a deeper meaning here. It's like
Speaker 3: there's a worthlessness deeper than mere trash or unwanted physical substance.
Speaker 3: There is a cosmic horror to this dust that the
Speaker 3: eating of the dust it seems to me to symbolize
Speaker 3: a fear so deep that it can't even be articulated.
Speaker 3: It's the fear of that, which is the opposite of vitality,
Speaker 3: the opposite of life, and the opposite of all meaning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it brings me back once again to that
Speaker 2: line from T. S. Eliot. I will show you fear
Speaker 2: and a handful of dust.
Speaker 3: So it clearly can have something of this kind of significance.
Speaker 3: The house of dust is a horrible place that Gilgamesh
Speaker 3: does not want to go. You know, it's the end
Speaker 3: of everything good. But on the other hand, clearly dust
Speaker 3: doesn't always have this kind of significance in even in
Speaker 3: people's magical and religious thinking.
Speaker 2: That's right, so I thought we might. We'll come back
Speaker 2: to some more fearful examples of dust. But first off,
Speaker 2: here's a pretty i think fun one, in a mostly
Speaker 2: positive one. This is the idea of the Sandman's dust.
Speaker 2: So a lot of you are familiar with the nursery
Speaker 2: spirit known as the sandman who visits you each night
Speaker 2: to sprinkle sand into your eyes to cause you to sleep.
Speaker 2: And if you're like me, you've sort of long half
Speaker 2: heard this tale and or seen it in old Disney cartoons.
Speaker 2: I think there's one where Pluto the dog is visited
Speaker 2: by a canine sandman, and you get to see all
Speaker 2: this play out in animated form. But if you're like me,
Speaker 2: you probably didn't. Were rarely paused to consider how weird
Speaker 2: this is, right, because.
Speaker 3: Like it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Sand in your eyes.
Speaker 3: Seems like it would make it hard to sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like sand in your eyes is a bad thing.
Speaker 2: But so I think for the first time in my life,
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, well, what's what is So
Speaker 2: one of the first places I went was a Brewer's
Speaker 2: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which is always kind of
Speaker 2: a nice sort of first stop with some of these
Speaker 2: antiquated English sayings. And the idea here, apparently is that
Speaker 2: one becomes sleepy, especially children. And what do you do?
Speaker 2: You rub your eyes as if you have sand or
Speaker 2: dust in them, And I think this is key too.
Speaker 2: Sandman maybe sounds more abrasive dust man, And the idea
Speaker 2: of dust in your eyes is ultimately, I think more
Speaker 2: where this is based. And indeed the sand man is
Speaker 2: also known as the dust man, and Brewers includes examples
Speaker 2: of sayings that would have invoked the dust man. So
Speaker 2: you might have a situation where I suppose you might
Speaker 2: be becoming sleepy, or more likely there are children becoming sleepy,
Speaker 2: and you might say something like, oh, the dust man
Speaker 2: has arrived.
Speaker 3: That's so creepy. What child wants to hear that?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know, I don't It doesn't strike me
Speaker 2: as is too nefarious. Here. Carol Rose has an entry
Speaker 2: on the entity in her book Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns and Goblins,
Speaker 2: which is an excellent encyclopedia of fairies and fair folks,
Speaker 2: sorts of creatures, and she describes the dust in question
Speaker 2: as magic dust and it ensures not only sleep, but
Speaker 2: ultimately pleasant dreams. She mentions that the dust man in
Speaker 2: Danish and Swedish lore is known as only luke oui,
Speaker 2: which means, and I'm probably mispronouncing that, only close your eyes.
Speaker 2: And in this tradition he is a tiny elf or
Speaker 2: fairy in a silk jacket that changes color with the light.
Speaker 2: Which I like that detail because to me, it makes
Speaker 2: me think of what we've been discussing about, you know,
Speaker 2: motes of dust being caught in a ray of light
Speaker 2: and having this ethereal quality. And so what does he do?
Speaker 2: He comes up and he blows magic dust into a
Speaker 2: child's eyes and onto their neck. This makes your eyelids
Speaker 2: heavy and makes your head heavy. You can't hold your
Speaker 2: head up straight anymore. So it's time to go to bed.
Speaker 2: And then once you're in bed, once you're safely a snooze,
Speaker 2: he'll come to your bed and open up a magical
Speaker 2: umbrella over you, and there will be all these wonderful
Speaker 2: pictures on the underside of the umbrella that will fill
Speaker 2: your dreams with wonderful stories. Now, isn't that delightful? Now
Speaker 2: this is not true for naughty kids, however, but it's
Speaker 2: not too bad. You know, naughty kids can get it,
Speaker 2: can have a pretty hard time in these sorts of tales.
Speaker 2: But according to Rose, naughty kids just get a standard umbrella.
Speaker 2: So it's not the umbrella we've met with beautiful stories
Speaker 2: on the underside of it. It's just an umbrella, So
Speaker 2: no special dreams for you. But also you're not like
Speaker 2: chased around by you know, some strange demons or anything.
Speaker 2: And of course there are other varieties of this sort
Speaker 2: of spirit in European tradition, but they don't all use dust,
Speaker 2: and they don't certainly don't all use umbrellas.
Speaker 3: I had no idea Sandman with this deep I did
Speaker 3: not think there was associated.
Speaker 2: Lore yeah, it runs pretty deep. Now for the next
Speaker 2: few examples are going to get more into this connection
Speaker 2: between some sort of magical dust and the dust of
Speaker 2: the dead, which does seem to be a common motif
Speaker 2: that you find in traditions all over the world. And
Speaker 2: it makes sense, you know, it gets down to this basic,
Speaker 2: you know, ashes to ashes sort of observation about the
Speaker 2: nature of matter in our world. The first one is
Speaker 2: something that's generally referred to as goopher or goopher dust.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's spelled g o O f e r and
Speaker 2: other times it's spelled g o O p h e R.
Speaker 2: And I was reading a about this in an article
Speaker 2: on the low Country Digital History Initiative website. This is
Speaker 2: affiliated with South Carolina's College of Charleston, titled Spiritual Practices
Speaker 2: in the low Country discussing African American religious practices in
Speaker 2: the Antebellum and post Bellum periods. These are particular traditions
Speaker 2: that are sometimes referred to broadly as who do and
Speaker 2: the article here discusses conjuring magic of West and West
Speaker 2: Central African origin that enslaved people's practiced outside of or
Speaker 2: alongside Christian religious traditions. It notes individuals given the title
Speaker 2: of goopher doctor. The term seemingly related to the Congo
Speaker 2: word kufwa, meaning to die, And I was reading elsewhere
Speaker 2: in folk Belief and Custom in the Blues by Mimi
Speaker 2: Klarr published in Western Folklore back in nineteen sixty that
Speaker 2: describes this goopher dust as a powder to be burned
Speaker 2: in a kind of long disay since conjuring of the illness,
Speaker 2: and mentions that the powder is generally associated with graves.
Speaker 2: And by long distance, I mean, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily need to be cross country, but just like the
Speaker 2: target is not maybe physically present at the conjuring. Now,
Speaker 2: the next one I want to touch on is a
Speaker 2: concept involving a kind of corpse dust in Navajo traditions.
Speaker 2: So a while back I was researching a topic related
Speaker 2: to rituals and folk beliefs of the Navajo people in
Speaker 2: various sources I reached out to pointed me in the
Speaker 2: direction of a work by an anthropologist by the name
Speaker 2: of Clyde Klockhon who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: particularly his book Navajo Witchcraft from nineteen forty four. The
Speaker 2: version I have as a publication from nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: and I think there were some editions made. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if those editions were made in the eighties or
Speaker 2: if they had been made previously in the nineteen sixties. However,
Speaker 2: so Klokhoon's anthropology work was very well regarded. But I
Speaker 2: do want to against stress that the timeframe of the
Speaker 2: working question here. So he worked among the Navajo people
Speaker 2: during the nineteen thirties and the late nineteen twenties, that's
Speaker 2: when his field work took place. But you know, he
Speaker 2: was an outsider working within those communities, and that this
Speaker 2: is not like modern anthropological work, but it's still fascinating.
Speaker 2: And he uses Western terms such as witchcraft in discussing
Speaker 2: these magical concepts, though he himself wrote that this term
Speaker 2: was not completely accurate, as you know, it's more of
Speaker 2: a dependence on a broadly comparable Western concept to understand
Speaker 2: or discuss what is occurring in Navajo culture, and he
Speaker 2: suggested that a more precise description would be quote Navajo
Speaker 2: idea and action patterns concerned with the influencing of events
Speaker 2: by supernatural techniques that are socially disapproved. So what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here, it's not something you would want to
Speaker 2: confuse with other examples of Navajo rituals and beliefs. This
Speaker 2: would be like a subset of those in which the
Speaker 2: techniques were generally disapproved of, or I would say even
Speaker 2: broadly disapproved of.
Speaker 3: But also with that caveat, you would want to be
Speaker 3: careful not to apply all of the connotations that you
Speaker 3: might apply to witchcraft and say the you know, Renaissance
Speaker 3: European context or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In general, the term witch and witchcraft can become
Speaker 2: complicated when you start like applying it to actual practices
Speaker 2: instead of fantastic practices. You know, imagine fictional practices and
Speaker 2: practices that were dreamed up by men in the persecution
Speaker 2: of women and also of indigenous religions and so forth. Anyway,
Speaker 2: klok on here concerning witchcraft, he reports on beliefs and
Speaker 2: traditions concerning concerning adente. These would be men and women
Speaker 2: that were thought to pursue a sort of morally descendant
Speaker 2: path to magical power, the path of the Adante, the
Speaker 2: witchery way, as the author describes it here, is a
Speaker 2: path of death, desecration, poison, and beast forms. It also
Speaker 2: sometimes involves a special preparation of dust. He describes the
Speaker 2: alleged use of a preparation often translated as a poison
Speaker 2: ground from corpses and said to look like pollen. Quote.
Speaker 2: It may be dropped into a hogan from the smoke hole,
Speaker 2: placed in the nose or mouth of a sleeping victim,
Speaker 2: or blown from furrowed sticks into the face of someone
Speaker 2: in a large crowd. Now, depending on the telling of
Speaker 2: the story, there may be immediate symptoms, such as the
Speaker 2: blackening of the tongue or lockjaw, but in other other
Speaker 2: tellings there's nothing so obvious. But generally the way it's
Speaker 2: supposed to go is that the victim begins to waste
Speaker 2: away and ultimately dies the witchery way. He writes pursuit
Speaker 2: for various reasons, inclu vengeance the pursuit of riches, and
Speaker 2: the riches would primarily be obtained via grave robbing or
Speaker 2: something he discusses as fee splitting, in which an audane
Speaker 2: would partner with a healer and then split the healer's fee.
Speaker 2: So basically something like an illness scam with a healer
Speaker 2: where you're like, I'll cause the illness and you treat
Speaker 2: the illness, and you just give me half of what
Speaker 2: they pay you. To treat it, but other audente seemingly
Speaker 2: pursued a more chaotic evil path, just doing harm for
Speaker 2: the sake of doing harm. Now, I want to note
Speaker 2: here that the clock on himself in the book and
Speaker 2: made no claim that witchcraft and sorcery as cited in
Speaker 2: these examples were indeed actually practiced. You know, it's ultimately
Speaker 2: a lot of mystery here. But rather what we can
Speaker 2: focus on are that these were stories and traditions. These
Speaker 2: were stories told, These were ideas that were discussed, you know,
Speaker 2: concerning unexplained illness, superstition, suspicion of other individuals. And he
Speaker 2: writes a link than the book about the various reasons
Speaker 2: for so called witchcraft traditions in a given culture, including
Speaker 2: various social functions, the management of anxiety, and more. So,
Speaker 2: you know, his treatment ultimately is not saying like, here's this,
Speaker 2: here's this weird story. Look how weird it is. It's
Speaker 2: also not here's this thing that is said people definitely
Speaker 2: did this. It's it's more complicated than that. But I
Speaker 2: mainly wanted to focus on the idea that here is
Speaker 2: another culture where we see some idea of a corpse
Speaker 2: derived dust being used in magical rituals of one sort
Speaker 2: or another that are socially disapproved of within the culture
Speaker 2: in which these stories originate. Right in this case, in
Speaker 2: this particular case with the adante, this would be someone
Speaker 2: who is doing you know, bad, socially reprehensible magic, and
Speaker 2: therefore the idea that they're using some sort of a
Speaker 2: corpse powder see seems based in that. But there are
Speaker 2: other examples we find around the world where the corpse
Speaker 2: does takes on a different hear And so, continuing this
Speaker 2: theme of magical dust connected to the bodies of the dead,
Speaker 2: let's turn to some European traditions that get into this.
Speaker 2: I was looking at a paper titled Dynamic Dirt Medieval
Speaker 2: Holy Dust ritual Erosion and Pilgrimage Eco Poetics. This is
Speaker 2: by Susan Signy Morrison, published in special collection Waste, Disposability,
Speaker 2: Decay and Depletion from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, are we about to get into some crumbly saints.
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, so this is a really really good write up.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed this. The author stresses first of all
Speaker 2: that the dust and dirt are pretty key to religious pilgrimage,
Speaker 2: in this case focusing on medieval European traditions. Pilgrimage, by
Speaker 2: his very nature, just ends up altering geography. You have
Speaker 2: a bunch of people, you know, trooping along towards some
Speaker 2: holy site, you know, trampling the earth. What's going to happen.
Speaker 2: They're going to stir up dust, They're gonna spread dust
Speaker 2: to carry away mud, They're going to erode things. That's
Speaker 2: just how it goes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And in fact, I don't know how far
Speaker 3: back this tradition goes, but I mean you certainly can
Speaker 3: see the idea of like earth from a holy site
Speaker 3: being removed and jarred and taken abroad to I don't know,
Speaker 3: it carries some of that holiness with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And she gets into some of that, and
Speaker 2: to call back to Dracula again, the idea that Dracula
Speaker 2: in Bromstucker's novel must travel with dirt from his homeland.
Speaker 2: You know, there is kind of like the inversion of
Speaker 2: the holy dirt here, the holy dust.
Speaker 3: He's got to take his unholy dust in a coffin
Speaker 3: with him.
Speaker 2: So she gets into this idea that I found really compelling,
Speaker 2: that I hadn't really thought about as much. And that's
Speaker 2: that a people's attitude toward dust, dirt, and related substances
Speaker 2: may be substantially different if the people in question live
Speaker 2: in close confines with the natural world, you know, be
Speaker 2: it you know, be it agriculture, or some other mode
Speaker 2: of the natural world that makes them aware of how
Speaker 2: dirt and manure are bound to the production of food.
Speaker 2: So she points out that while manure might be seen
Speaker 2: more as a pure waste product by modern and urban standards,
Speaker 2: medieval Europeans would have had a more unquote redemptive view
Speaker 2: of manure. So it's not an end product, but a transition,
Speaker 2: a beginning even in some ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to feel differently about a substance if
Speaker 3: you have a use for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then when you know, aspects of the sacred
Speaker 2: and the holy are applied, it's perhaps a little easier
Speaker 2: for dirt and dust to take on the air of healing,
Speaker 2: and it certainly does in some of these tails and
Speaker 2: some of these traditions. Now. She also points out here
Speaker 2: that one thing to keep in mind too, is that
Speaker 2: within a culture, you might have different classifications for soil.
Speaker 2: So it's not like you just have dirt, you just
Speaker 2: have soil. You may have different types of soil, and
Speaker 2: perhaps that also opens up room for some soils to
Speaker 2: have healing qualities and be rather different in character compared
Speaker 2: to other soils. Anyway, she ultimately discusses two sorts of
Speaker 2: dust and dirt that I think are note here for us.
Speaker 2: The first is dirt that has come into contact with
Speaker 2: the bodies, the blood, or other substances of holy individuals.
Speaker 2: So in the same way that the finger of a
Speaker 2: deceased saint may be deemed holy, the dirt that soaked
Speaker 2: up their blood also becomes holy. And she cites two
Speaker 2: different descriptions here from the English monk the Venerable Bead,
Speaker 2: who lives six seventy two or six seventy three through
Speaker 2: seven thirty five. We've talked about Bead briefly on the
Speaker 2: show before. I believe yes, so here's the first one.
Speaker 2: And when he had reverently deposited these relics, Germanus took
Speaker 2: away with him a portion of the earth from the
Speaker 2: place where the blessed martyr's blood had been shed. The
Speaker 2: martyr here is one alban By the way, the earth
Speaker 2: was seen to have retained the marcher's blood, which had
Speaker 2: reddened the shrine where his persecutor had grown pale with fear.
Speaker 2: And this next one is really good too. Okay, at
Speaker 2: the place where he and he is King Oswald here
Speaker 2: was killed fighting for his country against the heathen. Sick
Speaker 2: men and beasts are healed to this day. Many people
Speaker 2: took away the very dust from the place where his
Speaker 2: body fell and put it in water, from which sick
Speaker 2: folk who drank it received great benefit. This practice became
Speaker 2: so popular that, as the earth was gradually removed, a
Speaker 2: pit was left in which a man could stand. Many
Speaker 2: miracles are reported as having occurred at this spot or
Speaker 2: by means of the earth taken from it.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is the kind of belief that
Speaker 3: you can't think too concretely about because if it's like
Speaker 3: literally the blood had to touch the particle of dust
Speaker 3: you're taking, by the time you got a pit a
Speaker 3: man can stand in, that earth is not there anymore.
Speaker 3: So like what's I don't know, but I guess there's
Speaker 3: enough that like by magical association, just any earth from
Speaker 3: the place is good enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's kind of like just our magical associations with
Speaker 2: geographical locations in general. You know, like if you go
Speaker 2: to the place where, say, a famous person died, say,
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, the place where John Lennon died,
Speaker 2: or something to that effect. You know, in many cases
Speaker 2: these places, even assuming that it's one hundred percent geographically correct,
Speaker 2: even if it's exactly where this person died or something happened,
Speaker 2: you know, in many cases, the environment has been changed.
Speaker 2: You know, there is now a plaque there, Maybe the
Speaker 2: concrete has been changed since people were going there. You
Speaker 2: have to do things to keep from eroding everything. So
Speaker 2: it's you know, we but we lean into the magic
Speaker 2: of it. I am here where this thing happened, and
Speaker 2: therefore I am closer to sort of the the idea
Speaker 2: of the event, the spirit of the event, and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: now I guess I shouldn't feel shocking. I imagine within
Speaker 2: a faith that includes the doctrine of trends of substantiation,
Speaker 2: you know, the idea that the matter of communion is
Speaker 2: or becomes the flesh and blood of Christ and the body.
Speaker 2: But also again it plays into this understanding of ashes
Speaker 2: to ashes that we see in other traditions, and it
Speaker 2: gets into this idea of the transitional nature of dirt
Speaker 2: and soil. So it's not purely tied to theoretical matters,
Speaker 2: but it also may be tied to sort of ecological realities,
Speaker 2: you know, things that would have been sort of observable
Speaker 2: about dirt and soil in the cycle of life in
Speaker 2: the world around you. Now another area she gets into, though,
Speaker 2: is that there's also just dust that gathers on certain
Speaker 2: holy relics, and this dust in and of itself, in
Speaker 2: some context is thought to be holy, so it's often
Speaker 2: called tomb dust, and it will settle on reliquaries of
Speaker 2: saints and also within actual tombs. And I found this
Speaker 2: quite fascinating because it kind of it seems to line
Speaker 2: up with some of these ideas we've talked about concerning
Speaker 2: the natural accumulation of dust and a house or other
Speaker 2: human space, you know, the times invisible aspect of this accumulation,
Speaker 2: as well as the ethereal nature of glimpsing those motes
Speaker 2: of dust floating in a ray of sunlight, which I
Speaker 2: was thinking too. It was like, oh, this is is
Speaker 2: kind of like the golden rain of Zeus, which is
Speaker 2: sometimes described as golden dust. I think it's more oftentimes
Speaker 2: described as as a rain or a shower of gold,
Speaker 2: but sometimes as golden dust. This being the form that
Speaker 2: Zeus takes to impregnate the mortal princess Dana.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the mother of Perseus and the Perseus myth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so her his father is is immortal because Zeus comes.
Speaker 3: It is off the version of the myth. I knew
Speaker 3: it was said to be like a shower of gold
Speaker 3: from the sky, I think, pouring into the window of
Speaker 3: the room where she was imprisoned by her father.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes it's described as dust. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I was looking around to see if there was a
Speaker 2: source that really went all in on this and discussed
Speaker 2: the you know, comparisons to dust in one's environment. But
Speaker 2: I couldn't find anything offhand. It maybe out there, and
Speaker 2: I just I didn't find it.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. Yeah, dust floating in a ray of sunlight.
Speaker 3: That seems like that's a shower of gold.
Speaker 2: Sure, all right, let's see what other examples here do
Speaker 2: I have to share. I did run run across a
Speaker 2: few in Chinese traditions. So I was looking at the
Speaker 2: Handbook of Chinese Mythology by Yang and An, and they
Speaker 2: mentioned that there is this is only mentioned in passing,
Speaker 2: but there is Slash was a popular tradition among the
Speaker 2: weaker people of Central and East Asia that holds that
Speaker 2: a goddess inhaled the dust and air of the universe
Speaker 2: and then exhaled or spat out the Sun, the Moon,
Speaker 2: the Earth, the stars, and like all humans. Elsewhere in
Speaker 2: this book they mentioned various Han Chinese myths that allude
Speaker 2: to the need to regularly wash the sun and moon,
Speaker 2: as even the sun and moon acquired dust over time,
Speaker 2: and this is also echoed and I think in some
Speaker 2: other traditions in various other Chinese ethnic groups. Now, I
Speaker 2: was reminded of something that this is actually something I
Speaker 2: discussed on the podcast years and years ago, an episode
Speaker 2: on poisons that I did with Christian But I went
Speaker 2: back and looked at the source again. It was titled
Speaker 2: The Mail and Poison Interactions on China's Southwest Frontier by
Speaker 2: Norma Diamond. This was published in a nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: edition of Ethnology, and this one gets it basically deals
Speaker 2: with various ideas of poison in this border country. And
Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily going to get into all of this again.
Speaker 2: I think the episode was titled The Six Deadly Poisons,
Speaker 2: where were talked about different poisons but she discusses this
Speaker 2: idea of Goo folklore from the Tang dynasty. So this
Speaker 2: one in six eighteens ce onward, and in particular, you
Speaker 2: have this idea of the five poisonous creatures. So in
Speaker 2: this idea goo, this special poison was kind of a
Speaker 2: quasi magical poison created by a kind of by this
Speaker 2: process that I think aligns with some of these kind
Speaker 2: of like Western alchemical processes that we've talked about, you know,
Speaker 2: where clearly what we're describing here is impossible, but it
Speaker 2: has kind of like the trappings of chemical ritual and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: M Well, yeah, about some types of alchemy we've noticed
Speaker 3: how it's interesting that it's a kind of not efficacious
Speaker 3: magical belief that in some forms is grasping toward actual chemistry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, in this particular instance, the idea was, what
Speaker 2: you do is you seal the five poisonous creatures to
Speaker 2: gather inside a jar. So you throw in your snake,
Speaker 2: your centipede, your toad, your scorpion, and your lizard, and
Speaker 2: I'm assuming we're dealing with specific venomous or poisonous examples
Speaker 2: of these creatures, and then you keep this jar in
Speaker 2: a dark place for a year. During this time, the
Speaker 2: creatures are going to eat each other until there's only
Speaker 2: one survivor. They're going to become a tra duncan of
Speaker 2: poisonous creatures trae duncan. Yeah, like the what is it?
Speaker 3: Turducan?
Speaker 2: Tur duncan tur duncan. Sorry, I've never had one, so
Speaker 2: I owe me neither. It's not really the menu for
Speaker 2: me anymore.
Speaker 3: But why that's a it's a ridiculous food tru duncan?
Speaker 2: Is it trud duncan? I think it's turnd dunk because it.
Speaker 3: Ts turn in there. That's great, Yeah, turd duck in okay,
Speaker 3: because it's a chicken, a duck, and a turkey.
Speaker 2: Well, this is like that, except poisonous creatures, and so
Speaker 2: they all eat each other. Then there's one left, but
Speaker 2: it's in a dark jar for a year, so that
Speaker 2: creature dies and then when you open it up, Uh,
Speaker 2: I guess you have this like one little mummified creature
Speaker 2: with like magically potent poison inside of it. So you
Speaker 2: ground that up into a powder, and this is the
Speaker 2: good poison that causes sickness and depth.
Speaker 3: So it's like the most poisonous dust in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it basically it ties into various ideas, superstitions,
Speaker 2: and I think accusations of indigenous peoples on the border
Speaker 2: using poisons to make people sick, using the and using
Speaker 2: them in a place and a time where the border
Speaker 2: country would you know, have a lot of strife, There
Speaker 2: would be conflict, There would be also a you know,
Speaker 2: a collision of cultures, and uh, you know a certain
Speaker 2: amount of xenophobia and accusations of witchcraft. But but that's
Speaker 2: and then also as Diamond gets into in this article,
Speaker 2: there also are theories about, well, if this was an
Speaker 2: actually there was an actual poison, what could it have been?
Speaker 2: Not something made by forcing poisonous creatures to eat each
Speaker 2: other and then grounding up the victor, but rather something
Speaker 2: maybe based in the use of arsenic or various other substances.
Speaker 3: Would this be trying to infer what it might possibly
Speaker 3: have been if it was real, from like literary sources.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, looking at literary sources, and then looking at
Speaker 2: what is known about, say, actual plants that were available
Speaker 2: at that time, some of which we would have been
Speaker 2: used in in like traditional medicine. And of course we
Speaker 2: know that a lot of things used in traditional medicine
Speaker 2: as than you know, any kind of medical practice, Like
Speaker 2: the quantity is key, and something that could otherwise be
Speaker 2: a poison can also be a treatment, and so forth.
Speaker 3: As they said, yeah, the dose makes the poison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so ultimately though, the idea is you could
Speaker 2: have some sort of a poisonous powder that then could
Speaker 2: be like snuck into someone's food or their tint, or
Speaker 2: forced on them one their asleep. That sort of thing
Speaker 2: lining up, you know, with the idea of the Navajo
Speaker 2: corpse powder that we discussed earlier, and I think more
Speaker 2: broadly kind of getting into this realization that sometimes there
Speaker 2: are particles in the air that might not be good
Speaker 2: for us, you know, and without a germ theory, without
Speaker 2: you know, real scientific knowledge to go on, you just
Speaker 2: kind of had to sort of guess. Like it was
Speaker 2: a you know, certainly had this idea. You see them
Speaker 2: in various parts of the world of bad air, harmful air,
Speaker 2: or I was reading a Navajo traditions, you have this
Speaker 2: idea sometimes of of there being like a various types
Speaker 2: of wind. I was looking at a book titled Holy
Speaker 2: Wind and Navajo Philosophy by James kle McNelly, and like
Speaker 2: sometimes a wind would have like a like a bad
Speaker 2: smell to it that might be associated with dead animals
Speaker 2: or said to emerge from the mouths of animals. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, it's like, I think there's a certain amount
Speaker 2: of trying to make sense of how the air or
Speaker 2: things in the air can influence human health and or behavior.
Speaker 2: And in some cases it might be connected to nefarious
Speaker 2: individuals within your group or just outside of your group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but as we've talked about on the show before
Speaker 3: that like, in a way, various kinds of beliefs about
Speaker 3: bad wind or bad air or bad smells being related
Speaker 3: to sickness are getting halfway there. Like they're picking up
Speaker 3: on something like you can inhale things that make you sick.
Speaker 3: People inhale droplets and airborne you know, germs and get sick.
Speaker 3: That there can be like if you fear the swamp air,
Speaker 3: maybe it's not the swamp air that's gonna hurt you,
Speaker 3: but there might be mosquitos in there that could give
Speaker 3: you malaria or some other disease. And so even though
Speaker 3: these beliefs didn't get the full way there, it does
Speaker 3: seem like they may have been based on picking up
Speaker 3: some kind of correlation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you you didn't catch cholera because of the
Speaker 2: because the open latrin smell.
Speaker 3: Bad as soon as you were drinking the water, right right, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, A lot of times these things seem to
Speaker 2: get half way to the truth and sometimes enough to
Speaker 2: where like you're getting results by implementing them. All. Right,
Speaker 2: On that note, I think we're going to go go
Speaker 2: ahead and close up this episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind. Again. We couldn't possibly get into all of
Speaker 2: the mythologies, legends, folkloric ideas and so forth concerning dust.
Speaker 2: So if you have additional ones you want to bring up,
Speaker 2: or if you have an added insight on anything we've
Speaker 2: discussed here, certainly write in We'd love to discuss it
Speaker 2: on a future episode of Listener Mail or episodes published
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Speaker 2: Our core episodes of science and Culture are on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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