Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: it's Cauldron's Part four. This is really the last Cauldron's episode, right, yes,
Speaker 1: for now, um, but no, no, this is the last one.
Speaker 1: Even my son when he asked what I was doing today,
Speaker 1: I said, we're going to record a fourth Cauldron's episode.
Speaker 1: He's like, really, I was still you are still doing
Speaker 1: those Cauldron episodes? Like, yeah, yeah, this is some more
Speaker 1: exciting stuff. And you know, there's so much we're not
Speaker 1: even gonna be able to cover in these episodes, but
Speaker 1: this is an exciting one because we're gonna roll through
Speaker 1: a few more myths. We have some more content about
Speaker 1: just how Cauldron's factor into our our history and our beliefs.
Speaker 1: Uh and you know we'll get into uh the Inferno
Speaker 1: a bit as well. Rob, I am ready to be boiled.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's the basically we've we've alluded to this.
Speaker 1: We've all along we've mentioned that you have some strong
Speaker 1: Celtic traditions that involve the Cauldron and they end up
Speaker 1: having an influence over European traditions of the cauldron in general.
Speaker 1: Uh So let's roll through just a few of these
Speaker 1: different myths. I'm not going to go into super detail
Speaker 1: on these, though a number of these are the subject
Speaker 1: of of epics and longer tales and of course treatments
Speaker 1: and retreatments over the years. So let's start with the
Speaker 1: Dogda's cauldron. So Dogdo or the Dogdo was the most
Speaker 1: powerful of all the too often to dine and you
Speaker 1: know these are the magical folk, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: ancestors of Ireland and so forth. Uh, Dogto was a
Speaker 1: master of the battle club, the magic harp, and the cauldron.
Speaker 1: He was sometimes called the good God because he was
Speaker 1: simply good at everything. Today you'd call him a Mary Sue.
Speaker 1: As Patricia Monagan explains in the Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology
Speaker 1: and Folklore, he was kind of a god of not
Speaker 1: only fertility, but also kind of exaggerated male desire. So
Speaker 1: he's round, you know, kind of a rotund individual. His
Speaker 1: tunic is a bit too short to cover his genitals
Speaker 1: in some depictions. Anyway, he wields a mallet that's so
Speaker 1: huge that he has to drag it behind him in
Speaker 1: a cart So he's he's kind of this exaggerated cartoon
Speaker 1: character in many respects. I like them already. He also
Speaker 1: has a pair of self replenishing pigs that you can
Speaker 1: just keep eating. Um, I'm I'm not sure how the
Speaker 1: details of that work. I'm assuming it's like you cook
Speaker 1: them up or you're I don't know if you're slicing
Speaker 1: pieces off of them. I'm not sure. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: don't know that the pigs really mind. They're magical after all,
Speaker 1: but even more magical than the pigs. He also has
Speaker 1: a magic cauldron that can never be emptied. It it
Speaker 1: overfloweth with goodness. Uh. So he has many romantic adventure years.
Speaker 1: He has many children. He's eventually slain in battle by
Speaker 1: the seth Leon, wife of the Great fa Marii and
Speaker 1: King Baler, and then he goes on to party forever
Speaker 1: in the other world, sustained by his his bottomless cauldron
Speaker 1: that he gets to bring with him into the afterlife.
Speaker 1: Oh that's lucky. Yeah. Now. Bonnigan, who also wrote The
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, wrote that that the Irish
Speaker 1: cauldron is of course not only a mundane item for
Speaker 1: cooking and stewing, but also quote a place where new
Speaker 1: life was brewed and stewed. Uh. It was a symbol
Speaker 1: of great power for the Celts. The Roman writers. Strabo
Speaker 1: describes a great cauldron sent to Caesar by Simbri and
Speaker 1: claims that the Celts ritually sliced open the throats of
Speaker 1: prisoners over such a cauldron. And these traditions, to whatever
Speaker 1: extent they are accurately reported here, may connect to the
Speaker 1: Gunstrip cauldron that we talked about in the last episode
Speaker 1: that was unearthed in Denmark but burying Celtic symbols, etcetera. Um.
Speaker 1: Other cauldron's Monican rights have been found in bogs and
Speaker 1: lakes and are suspected to have been offerings to the
Speaker 1: other world. Yeah, that'll actually connect to an archaeology paper
Speaker 1: I want to talk about in a minute. In general, though,
Speaker 1: she she contends that the Irish cauldron means fullness and abundance,
Speaker 1: and Doctor's cauldron is just a great example of this,
Speaker 1: a never ending supply of good eats. Um. The Welsh
Speaker 1: goddess sur Win also uses a cauldron to make a
Speaker 1: broth that abuse one with great wisdom. Uh So it's
Speaker 1: interesting how you know, we're getting into talking about just
Speaker 1: sustaining the self, sustaining the body via the contents of
Speaker 1: the cauldron, but then we kind of take that into
Speaker 1: another dimension as well, sustaining the mind. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: This will have ramifications on on other storytelling and mythic traditions.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll come back to some of these ideas,
Speaker 1: but let's let's move on of the next myth here.
Speaker 1: This is another one from Celtic traditions, but it takes
Speaker 1: the idea of the cauldron as lifebringer and kind of
Speaker 1: puts a different spin on it. This is the story
Speaker 1: of the pair do deny the cauldron of Rebirth? Now
Speaker 1: there there are already some some accounts that indicate that
Speaker 1: the Dogda's cauldron, in addition to overflowing with great and
Speaker 1: miraculously healing foods, in some cases, could also raise the
Speaker 1: dead if they were lowered into the cauldron. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that leads us into what is perhaps the most noteworthy
Speaker 1: necromantic cauldron. Um. This is the cauldron of Rebirth from
Speaker 1: Welsh mythology and literature. Along with the Cauldron of Dogda.
Speaker 1: It's a key mythic cauldron. To understand the artifacts place
Speaker 1: in European traditions. It's also the primary inspiration for the
Speaker 1: black cauldron that shows up in the novels of Lloyd Alexander.
Speaker 1: It factors into a few different tales, including um Brandwyn,
Speaker 1: daughter of Lear, a legendary tale from medieval Welsh literature,
Speaker 1: and the second of four branches of the mob in
Speaker 1: Ogeon collection of Tales. So this is a this is
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting one, and again I'm just giving you
Speaker 1: the broad strokes here. Again, this one has received much
Speaker 1: more expansive treatment and works of literature, but it concerns
Speaker 1: the mythic conflict between the Welsh and the Irish, and
Speaker 1: involves the exploits of Ifnissian, the half brother of Bron
Speaker 1: the Blessed, who has been described as an easily offended
Speaker 1: troublemaker or even as a psychotic anti hero. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is a guy who does things like mutil aid
Speaker 1: horses inside wars, burn people alive. So he's not presented
Speaker 1: as a good guy. He's not. It doesn't even seem
Speaker 1: like it's one of these cases where you can say, well,
Speaker 1: today we wouldn't like him, but we have to put him.
Speaker 1: Look at him within the context of the time. Now
Speaker 1: it seems like everyone seems to think that he's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a crazy dangerous fellow. He's not Snake plis Skin.
Speaker 1: He's Darth Vader. Yeah yeah, But like Darth Vader, he
Speaker 1: has a redemption arc of sorts, ends up engaging in
Speaker 1: a little bit of self sacrifice to bring balance to things.
Speaker 1: So it comes to light that the Irish are using
Speaker 1: the magical Cauldron of Rebirth to resurrect their dead warriors
Speaker 1: so that they can keep on fighting. And so you
Speaker 1: know that the Welsh forces are concerned about this. This
Speaker 1: is an unfair advantage, right if you're bringing your own
Speaker 1: dead back to life onto the battlefield. So what does
Speaker 1: Ethnician do. Well, he hides himself among the enemy Irish dead,
Speaker 1: and then the Irish hall all those dead bodies back.
Speaker 1: They take them to the Cauldron of Rebirth and one
Speaker 1: by one they throw them in the cauldron, and then
Speaker 1: one by one each warrior emerges once more to fight.
Speaker 1: Eventually they come to Ethnician, who again is pretending to
Speaker 1: be a dead irishman. They throw him into the cauldron alive,
Speaker 1: and this seems to sort of short circuit everything. You know,
Speaker 1: the the cauldron is not designed or made, It does
Speaker 1: not exist to resurrect the living. It totally just screws
Speaker 1: up everything. And and somehow if Nisinin is then able
Speaker 1: to destroy the cauldron from within, but in doing so,
Speaker 1: not only does he shatter the cauldron, but he dies
Speaker 1: in the process. And there's some wonderful illustrations of this.
Speaker 1: I want more detail here. Did like, did he know
Speaker 1: that was going to happen to him? Or what did
Speaker 1: he expect was gonna like? Did it not? Just did
Speaker 1: it not cross his mind that like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't be resurrected because I'm not dead yet. I think
Speaker 1: he knew, I mean, otherwise it's not that I mean,
Speaker 1: the self sacrifice is diminished if he doesn't know that
Speaker 1: that this is probably going to destroy him. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I think the general vibe is the he knows that
Speaker 1: this will be the end, but it's the only way
Speaker 1: to stop the cauldron of rebirth. Okay, he's not just
Speaker 1: being like, dude, I'd love to be resurrected from the dead. No, no, no, alright,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna run through a few other cauldrons. Of note,
Speaker 1: there's the Cauldron of drin which the giant In medieval
Speaker 1: Welsh tradition, there are thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain,
Speaker 1: in tailing various horns and chariots, knives, rings, and more.
Speaker 1: But there's also a cauldron owned by the giant Drin
Speaker 1: which which can tell brave men from cowards because it
Speaker 1: will not boil meat for a coward, but we'll quickly
Speaker 1: boil meat for a brave man. Now I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if there was a vegetarian option, but basically it's it's
Speaker 1: said to just be massive enough to cook an entire
Speaker 1: wedding feast within Uh. It eventually falls into the possession
Speaker 1: of King Arthur and some tellings. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it's like if if you're not sure if somebody is
Speaker 1: is brave or cowardly, you just have them bring forth
Speaker 1: their chicken Cutlets throw them into the cauldron here and
Speaker 1: see what happens. Here's another one where I wonder about
Speaker 1: the mechanics of exactly what that means. So you put
Speaker 1: the meat in. Does it mean if you're a coward
Speaker 1: the water won't come to a boil, or does it
Speaker 1: mean even if it boils, the meat won't get under
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I'm just imagining it like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you put the meat in and maybe the water looks
Speaker 1: like it's boiling, but the meat is not cooking. You
Speaker 1: just got some some raw chicken cutlets in there, just
Speaker 1: bobbing around. Well, it reminds me of those stories of
Speaker 1: um people up on mountaintops trying to cook food, like
Speaker 1: boiling potatoes in a pot on Mount Everest, where your
Speaker 1: potatoes don't get cooked because when you go higher and
Speaker 1: higher into the into the atmosphere, the boiling point of
Speaker 1: water goes down. So you can be there boiling a
Speaker 1: pot on the stove and it is actually boiling, like
Speaker 1: it's bubbling and turning into steam, but the boiling point
Speaker 1: is so low that the water is actually not hot
Speaker 1: enough to cook your food. So you can boil potatoes
Speaker 1: at the top of a mountain for a long time,
Speaker 1: take them out, and they're basically still raw. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't have an answer for that, but it does make
Speaker 1: me wonder to what extent like to experiences with different
Speaker 1: altitudes and uh and and attempts to boil stuff in
Speaker 1: the cauldron, how that might affect this because they would
Speaker 1: clearly notice you would know that well here it seems
Speaker 1: to take longer to to cook our food. Uh why
Speaker 1: might that be? I haven't done the math. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there are peaks in Britain high enough for
Speaker 1: that to happen. I'm not sure. Maybe so perhaps word
Speaker 1: of of this had traveled, who knows. Let's see, here's
Speaker 1: another cauldron. This one comes from Norse mythology. Heimer is
Speaker 1: a giant and the father of two ace or gods,
Speaker 1: according to Carol Rose, who was said to live on
Speaker 1: the eastern edge of the universe and had a brewing
Speaker 1: pot or a cauldron so large that the heavens could
Speaker 1: fit inside it. So we we mentally alluded to this
Speaker 1: something like this earlier, and one of the other episodes
Speaker 1: about the cauldron becomes kind of like a model, a
Speaker 1: technological model for the cosmos itself. And here we have
Speaker 1: a cauldron so vast that the universe itself fits inside it.
Speaker 1: Whereas the cauldron while you're thinking too hard about this
Speaker 1: myth or maybe you're not, I mean, maybe that's ultimately
Speaker 1: kind of the goal of one of these stories is
Speaker 1: to sort of give you a real head spinner about
Speaker 1: about the nature of the universe. So that's the cauldron itself,
Speaker 1: but there's there are some stories attached to it. So
Speaker 1: at one point the gods decide they're gonna have a
Speaker 1: great feast, but they need some sort of vessel to
Speaker 1: put all the meat that they're going to drink. And
Speaker 1: they're the gods, they can drink a lot of meat.
Speaker 1: So they send Thor to borrow uh Heimer's brewing cauldron.
Speaker 1: So Thor shows up and Heimer says, no, you can't
Speaker 1: borrow this. But they start discussing and they agree, well,
Speaker 1: well let's settle this. We'll have a fishing contest. And
Speaker 1: there are apparently many different versions of what follows next um.
Speaker 1: In one version of Heimer uses two bowls too as
Speaker 1: bait and then catches two whales, but then Thor, not
Speaker 1: to be outdone, catches the mid guard storm itself the
Speaker 1: world serpent um. In some versions, the results are inconclusive
Speaker 1: or they're disputed, so they move on to a drinking
Speaker 1: contest after of the fishing contest, and in some tales,
Speaker 1: Door wins and takes the vessel with him, or finally
Speaker 1: just steals it, and Heimer chases after him with an
Speaker 1: army of giants, and Thor has to smite all of
Speaker 1: them with his hammer. Um. But at any rate, thor
Speaker 1: it usually ends up with the cauldron. And the cauldron's
Speaker 1: power again is that it's just super big. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank so. Maybe this is a good place in the
Speaker 1: discussion to talk about interesting paper. I was reading an
Speaker 1: archaeology paper. So this was published by uh the Proceedings
Speaker 1: of the Prehistoric Society, Cambridge University Press in and it's
Speaker 1: called fire Burn and Cauldron, Bubble, Iron Age and Early
Speaker 1: Roman Cauldrons of Britain and Ireland by Jody Joy. The
Speaker 1: author of this paper, Jodie Joy, is a senior curator
Speaker 1: at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University
Speaker 1: of Cambridge. And the paper begins with the quote I
Speaker 1: really like it's as uh. It's an old Kazakh saying
Speaker 1: that a man can live to fifty, but a cauldron
Speaker 1: will live to a hundred. I think you compare yourself
Speaker 1: to a cauldron now. But anyway, so Joy begins with
Speaker 1: some sections examining the archaeological record of cauldrons in Britain
Speaker 1: and Ireland from the Iron Age and the Early Roman period,
Speaker 1: and the early parts of this paper going to a
Speaker 1: sort of catalog of all these different cauldron artifacts and
Speaker 1: a discussion of their manufacture and physical characteristics. One of
Speaker 1: the main things about the section is that cauldrons of
Speaker 1: the time took a lot of skill to produce. But
Speaker 1: the part of this paper that really got my attention
Speaker 1: was his section on the use and significance of cauldrons
Speaker 1: from this period. Now, it's obvious from the prominent role
Speaker 1: of cauldron's in myths and legends like the ones we've
Speaker 1: just been talking about, uh and as magical items in
Speaker 1: early medieval literature from Ireland and Wales, that these objects
Speaker 1: were charged with mythical significance, particularly associated with resurrection and sacrifice.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, why would just a
Speaker 1: big metal pot have any particular symbolic or mythic significance? Now,
Speaker 1: rob we we've already talked about some ideas we've had
Speaker 1: on that that maybe uh it has something to do
Speaker 1: with the way that cauldron's transform foods when you cook them,
Speaker 1: though of course that's straw of smaller pots as well.
Speaker 1: You know, cooking transforms, and thus uh it may be
Speaker 1: is symbolic of transformation in some way, But there are
Speaker 1: other ways that they could acquire magical significance, as well,
Speaker 1: and Joy argues that some of the significance might be
Speaker 1: related to how these objects were actually used in their
Speaker 1: role in the culture of iron Age Britain in Ireland.
Speaker 1: So how were they used? Uh, This is a good
Speaker 1: question because there are several lines of evidence pointing to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that these huge pots were primarily used to
Speaker 1: cook food, particular pularly soups and stews containing meat. Now
Speaker 1: we we've already sort of been assuming the soup and
Speaker 1: stew connection, but technically, you know, just a big metal
Speaker 1: pot could have been used for all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So it is good to examine what the actual evidence is.
Speaker 1: And we know of examples where large metal vessels were
Speaker 1: used for other things that might have been just decorative,
Speaker 1: or they might have been used to make burnt offerings
Speaker 1: to the gods or something like that. But no. In
Speaker 1: the case of these cauldrons from from iron Age and
Speaker 1: and early Roman Britain and Ireland, first of all, it
Speaker 1: seems they were clearly designed to hold liquid, and we
Speaker 1: can tell because almost all of the cauldrons from this
Speaker 1: period in this place show signs of having been through repairs,
Speaker 1: which in itself is interesting because it indicates a long
Speaker 1: social life for each individual cauldron. You know, they're being
Speaker 1: used long enough that people have to like go in
Speaker 1: and fix them up after they get damaged. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of takes us back to that quote. Right, you
Speaker 1: may live to be fifty, but you're auldron will live
Speaker 1: to be a hundred. Right. Nowadays humans may live to
Speaker 1: be a hundred, but like these cauldrons, you'll probably have
Speaker 1: to have some holes patched here. And that's true. Uh
Speaker 1: and and so why do we think that these cauldrons
Speaker 1: were designed to hold liquid? It's because when you look
Speaker 1: at the repairs that were done to them, we see
Speaker 1: that they're essentially repairs that would function to keep the
Speaker 1: cauldron's water tight. And if these were just decorative or
Speaker 1: if they were used for say like making a burnt
Speaker 1: offering to the gods or something, they wouldn't need to
Speaker 1: patch tiny holes and keep the vessel water tight. It's
Speaker 1: obvious that they wanted to prevent leaks. Second line of evidence,
Speaker 1: they were clearly designed to be suspended over fires. So uh,
Speaker 1: this can be seen from the presence of uh, sort
Speaker 1: of supplemental materials like chains, handles, and frames that would
Speaker 1: all serve to hang or suspend the cauldron over a hearth. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also many cauldrons have layers of soot caked onto
Speaker 1: the outside surface, knowing that a fire was applied to
Speaker 1: them from the outside. Third, you've got organic residues. Few
Speaker 1: artifacts from this period, for example, a group known as
Speaker 1: the Chiselden cauldrons have been sampled for organic residues on
Speaker 1: the inner surfaces, and chemical analyses indicate the presence of
Speaker 1: animal fats, which points to soup source stews containing meat. However,
Speaker 1: some cauldrons from Northwest Europe also showed traces of honey,
Speaker 1: probably indicating their use in serving honey based meads, which
Speaker 1: would be an alcoholic beverage. Yeah, which brings us back
Speaker 1: to the myth of the giants brewing cauldron. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So these cauldrons were almost definitely used mostly for cooking food,
Speaker 1: usually meat based soups and stews, but sometimes alcoholic beverages
Speaker 1: as well. But can we infer anything else about how
Speaker 1: they were used? Well, Joy argues yes we can, and
Speaker 1: points as specifically to the fact that these were big. Boy,
Speaker 1: these cauldrons are huge. Quote. The cauldron from Hochdorff could
Speaker 1: hold five hundred leaders. The cauldrons examined here had more
Speaker 1: modest capacities, ranging from thirty to eighty leaders. Even taking
Speaker 1: into account the fact that they are unlikely to have
Speaker 1: been filled to the brim and probably only ever two
Speaker 1: thirds full, even the smallest cauldrons still probably contained twenty leaders.
Speaker 1: This is a substantial quantity of food and drink. And
Speaker 1: I agree. I don't think I could eat twenty leaders
Speaker 1: of soup in a single sitting, but that alone. You
Speaker 1: can easily imagine this becoming extrapolated into myths of cauldrons
Speaker 1: that are just so full of goodness that you cannot
Speaker 1: empty it. You cannot possibly eat all of this food.
Speaker 1: Now combine the bigness of these boys with the another factor,
Speaker 1: which is that cauldrons are relatively scarce in the archaeological
Speaker 1: record compared to other types of household items, even those
Speaker 1: made of similar materials. And from these facts, Joy infers
Speaker 1: that cauldrons were not used for everyday cooking, but instead
Speaker 1: they were used for the community based practice of feasting.
Speaker 1: And I believe the argument is that this is sort
Speaker 1: of what gives cauldrons their special power, what makes them
Speaker 1: uh fit for use as a recurring magical item in myths.
Speaker 1: And legends and literature. Uh Joy rights as follows. At
Speaker 1: their heart, feasts involved the creation and maintenance of social
Speaker 1: relationships and can be used to redistribute wealth, mobilized labor,
Speaker 1: create alliances between or exclude different groups, celebrate marriages, commemorate deaths,
Speaker 1: and compensate for transgressions. As objects used during feasts, cauldrons
Speaker 1: helped facilitate these activities and that is where much of
Speaker 1: their significance and value derives. So Joy is arguing that
Speaker 1: feasting was this incredibly important tradition in the cultures of
Speaker 1: Iron Age Europe, and it had this complex suite of
Speaker 1: social utilities. And the paper invokes the work of a
Speaker 1: different scholar named Michael Dietler, who has created three different
Speaker 1: categories of sort of the social roles of feasting, which
Speaker 1: are empowering, the patron role, and the diacritical. So empowering
Speaker 1: feasts quote allow people or groups to acquire prestige without
Speaker 1: necessarily requiring the existence of fixed social hierarchies. By hosting
Speaker 1: a feast, debts or obligations are passed on to guests,
Speaker 1: thus making feasts arenas for negotiations of social influence. But
Speaker 1: empowering feasts can also be viewed as celebrations of community identity.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot that's going on here in this
Speaker 1: first category. Like you you could host a feast and
Speaker 1: serve people out of a cauldron, and this is this
Speaker 1: is a powerful community activity. In one sense, it maybe
Speaker 1: makes everybody who's at the feast feel more united. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, um, it cements this idea of community identity,
Speaker 1: but it also sort of puts guests in your debt.
Speaker 1: It is, you know, empowering to the host in terms
Speaker 1: of enhancing their perceived social prestige, maybe even making them
Speaker 1: feel temporarily like some kind of king or something. And
Speaker 1: then there are a couple of other types of feasts.
Speaker 1: One of the patron role feasts where they're um is
Speaker 1: sort of an it's sort of like without the strings attached.
Speaker 1: It's an expectation that the social elite must host, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily the the obligation for reciprocation by the guests.
Speaker 1: And then finally there's what is called a diacritical feast,
Speaker 1: and this is where subgroups of a culture consume different
Speaker 1: types of food or drink to emphasize their difference from
Speaker 1: other people. Interesting, I mean, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is a useful exercise. But I can't help but try
Speaker 1: and take these categories and apply them to modern communal
Speaker 1: feasting situations, like I do feel like the patron role
Speaker 1: feast does sound a lot like the office Christmas party
Speaker 1: you know, where uh, you know, it's kind of expected
Speaker 1: that the that the boss powers will provide you with
Speaker 1: some sort of a food or you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of wine from plastic cups at least, but there's no
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that we need to host the next
Speaker 1: feast for our processes. It doesn't put you any more
Speaker 1: in the boss's debt or service than you were already. Right,
Speaker 1: But then if they don't know the first category, the
Speaker 1: empowering feast, if your CEO was too suddenly out of
Speaker 1: the blue say hey, why don't you and your family
Speaker 1: come over over to my house for a little get
Speaker 1: together We're going to have. Yeah, you wonder what they're
Speaker 1: gonna hit you up for? Yeah, yeah, that might be
Speaker 1: some sort of situation where their strings attached. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly how best to apply the diacritical one because
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly like to what extent that would
Speaker 1: apply to religious rituals, like say, like Christian communion or
Speaker 1: things like that. Um, I mean that's where my brain went.
Speaker 1: But maybe that doesn't really apply. I'm not sure. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make me wonder, like I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, they're like egg no people and and non
Speaker 1: eggnog people, and I wonder if that's going nowhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the only thing that comes to mind is pot luck
Speaker 1: for some reason, like I'm imagining different people bringing their
Speaker 1: different dishes and uh yeah, maybe missing the mark on this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that really serves to emphasize difference.
Speaker 1: This may just be a sort of a category that
Speaker 1: doesn't really show up in American culture today. Maybe it will.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the food court at the mall, celebration of differences.
Speaker 1: Everybody can get what they want. You don't have to
Speaker 1: like the other person's food. It's just about whatever you eat.
Speaker 1: Maybe not. Maybe does that emphasize your difference? I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: is there anything more divisive than the mall food court?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have vivid memories of of walking
Speaker 1: through my mall food court when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: because there was a there was a Japanese place where
Speaker 1: they would have somebody out with a tray handing out
Speaker 1: little bites of chicken teriaki, and it was so delicious
Speaker 1: they would oh man, sometimes I would walk by multiple times.
Speaker 1: Oh but anyway, So to come back to the idea
Speaker 1: of like the magic power infusing the cauldron as a
Speaker 1: symbol being in some way related to the role of
Speaker 1: cauldrons in feasting traditions, it strikes me that in many
Speaker 1: ways the cauldron could be seen as a symbol kind
Speaker 1: of like a crown with with this view, because it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's symbolic of power, of power over the
Speaker 1: social order, of like possessing the kind of the wealth
Speaker 1: and abundance that you can freely give out to others
Speaker 1: by hosting a feast um, but also being symbolic of
Speaker 1: the ties that bind a community. Another thing that this
Speaker 1: paper highlights is the way that cauldrons are often apparently
Speaker 1: deposited intact in some deliberate, perhaps ritual manner in the
Speaker 1: in the ground or in the water. They're sort of buried,
Speaker 1: seemingly given as offerings to gods or to ancestors. This
Speaker 1: would be though it's it's sort of confusing because there
Speaker 1: were some people saying it's not a cauldron, but This
Speaker 1: was the case with the Good District cauldron, right that
Speaker 1: it was apparently deliberately deposited in the bog um. This
Speaker 1: also appears to be something that happens with things that
Speaker 1: are definitely actually cauldrons used for cooking, and Joy makes
Speaker 1: a connection between this kind of ritual use and the
Speaker 1: use of the cauldron in feasting, saying quote, the use
Speaker 1: of cauldrons as receptacles for symbolic food stuffs is drawn
Speaker 1: upon in deposition, and they are instead used as containers
Speaker 1: for another kind of offering, this time to deities or
Speaker 1: ancestors rather than attendees at feasts. So the End of
Speaker 1: Joy summarizes and says, yeah, probably a major reason why
Speaker 1: cauldrons are such a such a respected and fearsome magical
Speaker 1: object in all these stories is that they are socially
Speaker 1: powerful objects. They they represent social power, and they're used
Speaker 1: in powerful social customs, mainly feasting, because feasting is something
Speaker 1: that establishes hierarchies, that is used as as expressions of
Speaker 1: individual power or used to strengthen the identity of a community.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting how how this this seems to apply
Speaker 1: rather broadly like this, this could have been a quotation
Speaker 1: from any of the papers we're looking at concerning UH
Speaker 1: cauldrons and Eastern traditions as well. Uh, the idea that,
Speaker 1: like the cauldron is a thing that produces, can produce
Speaker 1: a massive quantity of food. It can be made to
Speaker 1: used to make a sacrifice. It as a symbol of
Speaker 1: power those who possess the cauldron. Uh, it means something,
Speaker 1: it stands for something. I mean, I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: how this compares to uh, modern things like what's a
Speaker 1: type of serving vessel or some type of food related
Speaker 1: thing that you wouldn't really use just for you in
Speaker 1: your own household. You only break out to certain like
Speaker 1: when you're hosting a party. I guess maybe a punch
Speaker 1: bowl or or maybe a fonduce set or something like that,
Speaker 1: these other things that would serve a similar function there,
Speaker 1: like an object that symbolizes your your power to host. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you could also get into the whole realm
Speaker 1: of like the fine china, the good silverware, and so forth,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the the cauldronization of your entire
Speaker 1: dining room. I guess. I mean sometimes that is part
Speaker 1: of it. It's like it's not only it's the special
Speaker 1: dining room, not the place where we we don't normally
Speaker 1: eat dinner, but this is a special event. So at
Speaker 1: this point we're gonna finally come around to something that
Speaker 1: a number of you may have been thinking about, and
Speaker 1: that is the Holy Grail. So you've given all of
Speaker 1: these associations with cauldrons and rebirth. It's notable that connections
Speaker 1: have have certainly been made between pre Christian traditions of
Speaker 1: sacred cauldrons and the the medieval legacy of the literary
Speaker 1: concept of the Holy Grail. The Grail, after all, is
Speaker 1: not a product of Biblical texts, but rather emerges during
Speaker 1: the medieval period it with our earliest mention of it
Speaker 1: coming from a work by Kretianti, a twelfth century French poet.
Speaker 1: It's thought that the concept of the Holy Grail, the
Speaker 1: goblet which collects the blood of Christ, is a combination
Speaker 1: of pre existing cauldron traditions and the right of the Eucharist,
Speaker 1: who I'm generally depicted as a cup something, especially in
Speaker 1: more modern renditions. You know, this is the thing you're
Speaker 1: going to see Indiana Jones holding this is the what
Speaker 1: you're gonna see in the clouds in Monty Python and
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail. Uh. Still other other times it seems
Speaker 1: to connect with the idea. Certainly when you get into
Speaker 1: the etymology of the word, it connects with this idea
Speaker 1: of a bowl or some other kind of serving vessel
Speaker 1: of varying materials, so it doesn't necessarily need to be
Speaker 1: made of solid gold or whatnot. So very loosely speaking,
Speaker 1: there seems to be a connection between Celtic legends involving
Speaker 1: cauldron's thirteenth century romances and uh that end up involving
Speaker 1: the Grail, and then centuries worth of tales to follow.
Speaker 1: I also think it's interesting that that while the right
Speaker 1: of immersion baptism and Christian traditions has its roots in
Speaker 1: the use of rivers and streams, modern churches often use
Speaker 1: artificial baptism tanks that wind up feeling more in line
Speaker 1: with some of these ideas of immersion within a cauldron.
Speaker 1: What did you think about any of that as we
Speaker 1: were rolling through this stuff. No, I did not really
Speaker 1: make that connection, though, yeah, obviously there it is a
Speaker 1: broader theme, the idea of immersion and some kind of
Speaker 1: liquid being a transformative process and the process of baptism, which,
Speaker 1: of course baptism actually you know, predates Christianity. Even in
Speaker 1: the Bible, John the Baptist was baptizing people in the
Speaker 1: River Jordan's before before Christianity was invented. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is an idea that goes way back and is
Speaker 1: applied in many different contexts. Yet and so we see it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we see it again in the imagery on the Gun
Speaker 1: District cauldron. There is something going on there where there's
Speaker 1: some kind of baptism like event where a god is
Speaker 1: like dunking uh slain warriors headfirst into a cauldron, and
Speaker 1: this is somehow transforming them into some other state. Alright,
Speaker 1: speaking of other states, it's uh, it's time to go
Speaker 1: to Hell once more. So we you know, we mentioned
Speaker 1: in one of the previous Cauldron's episodes that Western connections
Speaker 1: to divine cauldrons may have prevented their use in some
Speaker 1: depictions of Hell in later Christian traditions, and despite the
Speaker 1: fact that certainly many of those myths involved people being
Speaker 1: immersed in said cauldrons, and the fact that death by
Speaker 1: cauldron was very much a thing in parts of Europe
Speaker 1: as well. Um this in talking about European ideas and
Speaker 1: medieval ideas of Hell, of course, there's there's one place
Speaker 1: we end up having to go to, and that, of
Speaker 1: course is Dante's Inferno in the Divine Comedy. A lot
Speaker 1: of modern ideas about about the Christian Hell are from Dante. There.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't find him anywhere in the Bible
Speaker 1: right right, and and beyond hell, I mean you get
Speaker 1: into the idea of purgatory, etcetera. Dante's work was incredibly influential.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you start looking around though for examples
Speaker 1: of death by cauldron or cauldron immersion or you know,
Speaker 1: cauldron torture in in Dante's Inferno, you do find a
Speaker 1: few interesting things. So in Canto twenty three, in which
Speaker 1: it depicts the torment of hypocrites who wear cloaks with hoods,
Speaker 1: bright colors and lead linings, Uh, yeah, we see a
Speaker 1: reference to death by cauldron. Uh. This is in the
Speaker 1: sixth trench of the Malibolga. I'm gonna read from a
Speaker 1: translation here. Outside these cloaks were gilded and they dazzled,
Speaker 1: but inside they were all of lead, so heavy that
Speaker 1: Frederick's capes were straw compared to them, a tiring mantle
Speaker 1: for eternity. We turned again, as always to the left
Speaker 1: along with them, intent on their sad weeping. But with
Speaker 1: their weights the wary people pay so slowly that we
Speaker 1: found ourselves among new company each time we took a step.
Speaker 1: And then the Dante comes back to this, and one
Speaker 1: of them replied, the yellow cloaks are of a lead,
Speaker 1: so thick their heaviness makes us the balances beneath them creak. Now,
Speaker 1: the illusion here apparently is to death by cauldron um
Speaker 1: and uh. I was looking into this in the notes
Speaker 1: to the Durling and Martinez edition of Dante's Inferno that
Speaker 1: I have. There was apparently a Guelf propaganda campaign against
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Second, who lived eleven
Speaker 1: ninety four through twelve fifty, that charged him with him
Speaker 1: having punished traitors by encasing them in lead and then
Speaker 1: roasting them. At least in some tellings, this was achieved
Speaker 1: by placing the lead cloaked individual inside of a cauldron. Now,
Speaker 1: the Guelfs were a political faction who supported the papacy
Speaker 1: against the Holy Roman Emperor, and they were opposed by
Speaker 1: the Ghibillins, who basically had the opposite values. On top
Speaker 1: of this, there are boilings in the Inferno there boilings
Speaker 1: are plenty. Uh. Most notably there is the river of Flagathon,
Speaker 1: which is literally a river of boiling blood in which
Speaker 1: the souls of the damned drive. Here, those who perpetrated
Speaker 1: violence against other humans are tormented. You have centaurs patrolling
Speaker 1: the banks of the river, uh, pelting anyone with arrows
Speaker 1: if they try to rise above their station in the river.
Speaker 1: I seem to recall Virgil and Dante end up talking
Speaker 1: to these centaurs a good bit. I I've forgotten the
Speaker 1: conversation with the centers, but they have so many wonderful conversations. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now elsewhere, at the mount back of the Mala Bolga,
Speaker 1: the evil ditches of torment. The fifth Trench consists of
Speaker 1: a river of burning pitch, And here the demons of
Speaker 1: the Mala Braca use cruel skewers to make sure the
Speaker 1: grafters punished her stay immersed and don't escape. And Durling
Speaker 1: and Martinez translate this is fall. Part of this is
Speaker 1: follows quote. Not otherwise do cooks have their servants push
Speaker 1: down with hooks the meat cooking in a broth so
Speaker 1: that it may float. So here, once more we have
Speaker 1: cooking imagery, and the authors discussed this at length. They
Speaker 1: have a little uh bit in the back where they
Speaker 1: break this down a bit more so. Dante was essentially
Speaker 1: building upon various well established metaphors here, especially for frauds, counterfeits,
Speaker 1: and other false individuals who are tormented in this particular
Speaker 1: portion of the Inferno. Various of the parts of the
Speaker 1: Malabolga feature quote sharply focused parodies of cooking and digestion.
Speaker 1: So this part of the Inferno is kind of like
Speaker 1: they say, a great spider web, but also it is
Speaker 1: kind of like the belly or the winding and testines
Speaker 1: of hell. Uh, there's a lot here about the consumer
Speaker 1: being consumed. Uh. Cooking metaphors were often wound up in
Speaker 1: discussing the fraudulent, and we see that today as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, cooking the books, um uh, they're also
Speaker 1: the scheme is cooked up. If we're if we're tricked
Speaker 1: into following it, you know, we're we're eating it up
Speaker 1: or we're being fed a lie or fedicon that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah. So Dante is always is painting with
Speaker 1: a number of palets here, but but touches on various
Speaker 1: elements that we've discussed already in this series. Cooking is digestion,
Speaker 1: cooking as transformation, cooking as torment. There are also various
Speaker 1: depictions of Hell outside of Dante's work of Hell as
Speaker 1: a Cauldron, though, of course Dante's layout for the Inferno
Speaker 1: is far more complex than that, you know, not geared
Speaker 1: around a single technological metaphor, but a larger mix of
Speaker 1: influences and illusions. You can't, you can't tie Dante down
Speaker 1: and just ask him to compare all of Hell to
Speaker 1: just one thing. That's that's not the game he's playing. So,
Speaker 1: of course Christian Hell and and Dante's version of it
Speaker 1: in Inferno. Uh, we have to remind ourselves this is
Speaker 1: not a transformative realm like we see in Eastern traditions
Speaker 1: of hell, uh, where it's about the soul being transformed
Speaker 1: into something else. No, Uh, it doesn't even these versions
Speaker 1: of Hell don't even accomplish transformation via annihilation. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: certainly within the Divine Comedy you get into purgatory, and
Speaker 1: that is about transformation. Uh. And certainly that concept, the
Speaker 1: concept of purgatory that we see within the Divine Comedy
Speaker 1: has more in common with Eastern traditions of the afterlife. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they're still On top of this, there are certainly visual
Speaker 1: and literary depictions of hell cauldrons in Christian and European traditions.
Speaker 1: I don't imagine you could keep them out of hell
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, even if you have you know,
Speaker 1: say again like a Celtic tradition in the background, in
Speaker 1: which the cauldron seems a little too holy and a
Speaker 1: little too special to be a part of some sort
Speaker 1: of delirious hell painting. Somebody is going to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: but but what if you were cooked in a soup?
Speaker 1: Or how about that guy that we boiled last week
Speaker 1: for for making f valent coins? Uh? Like, the idea
Speaker 1: is going to worm its way in there. There's no
Speaker 1: way you're going to keep that image out of your
Speaker 1: imagined afterlife. None of this hell imagery really seems to
Speaker 1: have anything to do with with hosting or feasting, does it?
Speaker 1: Uh No? But but I mean it does have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with with eating and digestion. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's everything seated at the same table one
Speaker 1: way or another. Here, I'm still thinking about modern analogies
Speaker 1: for the cauldron as a symbol of hosting power. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I said the punch bowl earlier, maybe the Fundu said
Speaker 1: if it was the I don't know, the seventies or
Speaker 1: eighties whenever that was. But the one that just came
Speaker 1: to me is like the really nice smoker, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're the green ones and so forth. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna host a barbecue and look all the Look
Speaker 1: at all the meat I can make. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Big grills in general, yeah, I think totally. The really
Speaker 1: nice charcoal grill or gas grill is very much in
Speaker 1: keeping with the tradition of the cauldron and uh, I
Speaker 1: mean the idea of a low country boil or it's variations,
Speaker 1: uh of the low country boil, in which you know,
Speaker 1: you're essentially essentially you have a cauldron and you're gonna
Speaker 1: cook cook up a whole bunch of shrimp and a
Speaker 1: few veggies and so forth. You know, that's very much
Speaker 1: in the tradition. Spill it all out on the table
Speaker 1: and let's all have a feast. I don't know that
Speaker 1: that would really be a special pot, but I mean
Speaker 1: just sometimes when we're talking about special, we could be
Speaker 1: talking about uh, an ornate vessel. But sometimes it's just
Speaker 1: the fact that it is large. I have a pot
Speaker 1: large enough to to to create a low country boil
Speaker 1: that that's in and of itself is impressed. You've got
Speaker 1: family in Louisiana, right, or do you uh down in
Speaker 1: that area? Yes, south of Mississippi? Yeah, okay, you do
Speaker 1: crawfish boils? Or have you done? Oh? Yeah? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: basically a big, big metal cauldron in the front yard,
Speaker 1: gas flame underneath it, coming up a bunch of shump,
Speaker 1: some older man telling like scolding you for not sucking
Speaker 1: the heads on you. You gotta heads, that's what they say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the with the crawl, dad's the mud bugs. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think maybe we're done. Yeah, but I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there about very
Speaker 1: certainly this question, like the special thing in your household
Speaker 1: or a household you grew up in, or or just
Speaker 1: a cultural tradition surrounding you, Like what is what is
Speaker 1: your version of of the sacred cauldron, the sacred festival
Speaker 1: for feasts? Uh? What is the or or what is
Speaker 1: the dish that is central to your experiences that that
Speaker 1: matches up with all of this? Uh, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on that, about anything that we've discussed
Speaker 1: in these four episodes on the Cauldron, so we'll be
Speaker 1: back next time with with with something new, something non
Speaker 1: Cauldron related, so we hope you'll join us. Core episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind air on Tuesdays and
Speaker 1: Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: On Monday's we usually do a listener mail episode. On
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we usually do a short form artifact or monster
Speaker 1: fact episode, and on Friday's we do Weird Cinema. That's
Speaker 1: our time to set aside most serious concerns and just
Speaker 1: talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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