Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is a show that I didn't just introduce badly and then make Ian our audio engineer cut out the entire last two minutes of I have a guest. It's Jamie Jamie Loftus.
Hi Jamie, Hi, Margaret, how are you.
I'm doing pretty good.
I liked your first intro, but but I kind of liked that. Now it's just sort of just between us.
It's the secret one. It's just us and Sophie, who's the producer. Hi, Sophie, I and that's how you were doing.
But I felt as noted.
I fell on my face right before we started to record, because I was trying not to be like because I'm a.
Hero, yeah, but my own but my own villain. I decided long ago that I would never become injured for a podcast. It only has to happen once.
It really realize for the podcast, it cannot happen. It was for you, two lovely ladies who all thanks.
Yeah, so I bleed for you.
You're welcome.
Did you bleed totally?
Oh?
You look so you don't look like someone who just was bleeding. And I mean that is the highest.
Bar there are, Like on Zoom, they do have features that make you look better looking than you actually are.
That's while what if you were absolutely gushing blood from your head and we just couldn't tell.
You'll never know.
Yeah, there's like a threshold where it brings up a little bar like warning, please call emergency services. And until then.
I went bird watching the other day, brag you. Yeah, you know, I was kind of taking in nature, appreciating the world for once. But I was with my friend who's a big bird watcher, and he had this bird watching app that basically runs audio. Wow, it's really cool and then you could like hear the birds around you. The exchange there, though, is that you that it sends the audio to the autobund society, including whatever conversation you're
having with your friend while you're on a walk. And so my friend do is like, I know, like I want to catch up, but like, don't talk shit because this is going to the autobun society. I was like, this is the most bizarre surveillance technology. And then I went horror movie brain and I was like, what if you killed me right now? And the only evidence the autobund society had and they didn't even know because they're like, oh, look yet another Canadian goose. You know, not a lot of this one.
Explain why you listeners can't see this, But Jamie is actually translucent. I can see the wall behind her right now. That actually makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I mean, I was trying to be festive, but.
Yes, well, oh wait, I'm not supposed to tell. First I have to finish the rest of the introduction, which is our audio engineer is Ian Hien Hi Ianan. Our theme music was written for us by un woman, and you all will be shocked to know that this week, of all weeks, we're going to talk about a really obscure hipster holiday that no one's talking about called Halloween. You ever heard Halloween?
Oh? Boy? Have I? I was really hoping this would be this would be what we're talking about. Yes, I've heard of it. But I'm sure there's things I don't know.
I think there'll be things that you don't know, and then ironically, there'll be things that we think we know that actually we don't know. But I can't say are actually wrong, but I can say are less certain than everyone says. Because if there's one thing I have learned. It's that everyone who confidently says they know the history of Halloween is lying.
I love that, and I'm sure that I've done that at some point.
It's so fun to find.
Seemingly innocuous topics that everyone needs to feel like they have a grip on, but they can't tell you why they need to feel as if they have a grip on it. Well, what, kid, when did you learn the truth? Contrasted with what did you think that? Were you far off from what the truth is now that you know?
Okay? So I came into it being like, all right, I'm going to do a Halloween episode, and I'm going to talk about Halloween. I'm gonna talk about Sowin, right, the Celtic holiday that, by most popular imagination and with some truth, is the precursor of Halloween. Right, But it's like not as much, and it's complicated because everything that has to do with like, like most of the shit that I research, the problem is that there's like not enough, like there's not enough information about it.
Okay.
The problem with fucking Halloween is that there's too much information about it, and it's all stated confidently by experts, and it all disagrees with itself and God, we're just going to get into it. We're gonna okay, yeah, I'm curious, where are you coming at with it?
The closest I got, I mean, I think I have the general like under I understood it more to be. I knew that it had had Celtic roots, like I've obviously heard it, but that was not something I got into. I had an uncle, have an uncle he's still with us, who is a witch. That's how he chooses to identify because he found the term warlock to be humiliating and gendered, and so he identifies as which he lives in the Carolinas. And my understanding being oh yeah, oh yeah, because he's
been on a podcast of mine, Uncle Dennis. Uncle, Oh shit, Uncle, he's there if you're gonna talk, So he's like a medium and if you're gonna, you know, commune with your dead, you better do it with my uncle Dennis, who has the thickest New England accent on the face of the planet, where he's like, you're in national in life, you're a national in death.
Whatever.
But his his whole thing was like this is uh, you know, this is a holiday that is important in the pagan like to me as a pagan, and it was taken from us and turned into corporate bullshit. And that was sort of the narrative that I was raised in that I'm sure is uh it was.
It seemed to be an emotionally driven thing for him.
But I appreciated his punk rock spirit uh in being angry at I forget, like there's a specific you know, corporate entity that he felt it really take, you know, spirit has really taken things from us. But I mean, I love I Unfortunately, I'll take Halloween in any of its forms, including the corny corporate sense struggle. I struggle with my anti capitalist views this time of year.
I actually think that pretty much all of them have a legitimate claim the Halloween. Like I think, Well, we'll get into it, and I will also say the one thing that will definitely come out of this is that your uncle Dennis is absolutely historically accurate to call himself a witch.
Yeah, okay, I'm sure he knows that, and I just like I just didn't.
I didn't until like when I wrote this script.
Shout out to my witch uncle.
Yeah, you ever heard of a holiday? Well, okay, so we're gonna talk about swin Okay, and we're gonna talk about Halloween, and we're gonna talk about Lemuria, and we're going to talk about all Hallows tied. We're going to talk about witch hunts. We're going to talk about folklore. We're going to talk about why evangelicals hate Halloween and are actually wrong in the way that they hate Halloween. Like, fuck them, they shouldn't get to have nice things.
But like sure, I mean, but I feel bad for evangelical kids that, like you're like this child deeply wants to be bluey and yet and yet I'm excited. Yeah, because it is. It is an amalgam of like five different holidays and concepts. Okay, cool, Yeah, And.
Of course we're going to tie it into the enclosure of the Commons. Don't worry. I know you were worried about whether or not I would tie the lead enclosure of the Commons.
I was losing it.
Yeah, But anything that happens in medieval England I can tie into that easy. So normally I go back like two thousand years to start off, and I go like as far back to context, But this time I'm actually going to start with a really quick overview of like where we are now because I only grew up with Halloween, right, I didn't grow up celebrating All Saints Day, All Souls Day. But it's a three day holiday in Christianity, especially Catholicism,
called All hallow Tide. Have you ever heard of All hollow Tide?
No?
No, I had neither.
Yeah, it was like and we both grew up I know Christian.
Yeah, no, yeah, I've heard of its component pieces, which is that October thirty first, we have All Hallows Eve, Halloween, November one, that's All Saints Day, November two is All Souls Day, and it's the Christian holiday for remembering and honoring the dead, especially family and ancestors. But the right wing evangelicals absolutely fucking hate it for being pagan and strange. And only forty nine percent of US Evangelical Christians celebrate
Halloween like quote unquote fully. The rest either don't celebrate it at all or they refuse to celebrate the pagan elements.
What is when they say fully, do they mean like they're not you know, like microdosing like that to me is a full Halloween, Like you can do the diet version of it, but you know, where's the fun in that.
Yeah, they're not watching song and like them.
Wait, they're not watching every Saw movie back to back, no pe breaks allowed. Is that I'm not doing it all the way.
I watch horror movies at the time of year, but I don't watch like gore porn ones, and so it's like very hard. I keep trying to find the ones that are like like and people then if they want to show me horror movies, they're like, oh, well, someone gets they're face peeled off in this one, And I'm like, look, one face peeled off is okay for me. It's a movie. If it's called like face Peeler seven, It's like.
Not for me, right, I used to. It's only been in the past five years that I've really gotten into it particularly. I mean I really love the Saw movies. I think once I once I really locked into the Jigsaw lore I tried to make. I was writing for a cartoon this year and I wrote a character called well, I didn't name the character, but it's called jug Saw, which is like big titty Jigsaw.
And I was thinking jug Head is now Saw.
No no, no, no, that you were thinking too hard?
Yeah, what if Jigsaw had big old Jugs was sort of as far as I thought. I do, I do like those movies, but I but I also think that, you know, the holiday. I'm wondering the holiday is like inherent conflation with extreme violence, if that actually comes from anywhere outside of its association with the concept of death.
I couldn't quite tell you the answer to that, but I can. But there will be a lot of really horrible shit happening, oh good from the state, Okay, the true horror of all history. Okay, at some point, but
not right now. I really want to get into like talking more about the the feminist implications of like gore porn movies and why so many women are obsessed with them and like obsessed with movies that focus around misog just violence and stuff like that, and how it can actually be a vehicle for like really interesting things and like like but that's another time, I guess.
But I mean we could just talk about that on the phone, yeah, because okay, great, Yeah, because it's a whole like I yeah, I feel like I've not I know so many people who have had a bizarre journey with that in the last like decade, myself included where I used to like this time ten years ago, there's no way I would. But then I don't know what it is about like aging, where you're like, no, I do want to see what Jigsaw is going to do to this woman's leg?
Why?
Why?
And why is that my politics have not changed, they've grown more intensive anything, But I am open to seeing what Jigsaw is gonna do with the leg.
Right, Okay, there's so much to it, but but yeah, okay, so okay. So one of the reasons is really funny that the page sorry, the evangelicals refuse to celebrate the pagan elements. There's a chance that none is pagan. There's a chance that it's like all chriss.
Okay, oh god, the what a bummer?
Oops?
All christian? Uh.
I would argue that if you're part of a theological tradition that worships a dead guy or pagan and strange anyway, it's fine, true, but like the weird delineation between like, well, I only believe in like one strange supernatural creature who's kind of three.
Yes categories to this ununderstandable being.
Yeah. So okay, that's the current holiday that evangelicals refuse to and some of it probably does come from paganism.
But it's like it's it's just all messy. Okay, all right, Now we go thousands of years in the past, instead of immediately tracing into Sowen, the Celtic holiday that looks like it should be pronounced sam hayne if people are wondering what word I'm saying, we're instead going to it gets the modern date from Swyen and some other stuff, and we'll talk about that, okay, But I'm gonna draw on a different lineage first, because Sowyen isn't the first
place that the Christian holiday drew from. It came from a holiday called Lemuria. You ever heard of Lemuria? The holiday?
No, it sounds if you if you asked me what is Lamuria, I would say, I don't know.
It sounds like a skin disease.
Yeah, but yeah, no, I don't know what it is.
The most famous Limuria isn't what I'm going to talk about today. The most famous Lamuria. And I'm ranking this by the one that gets a Wikipedia page, okay without one of them is Lamuria, and then one of them is Lemuria holiday or whatever you know. Okay, the most famous one is a fictional continent it's kind of an Atlantis of the Indian Ocean. Ooh, that was all the rage in nineteenth century occultism.
Nineteenth century occultism just a bottomless pit of weirdo shit. Okay, okay, not surprised to hear, Lo Maria. This is also the same time where people are like the Acashic Records, the Infinite Library, that's vaguely fascistic, and you're just like, sure, guys.
It exactly, and this thing still the continent still has weird cultural influences today. Incorrect people claim this continent is where humans come from, that the first humans were called Limurians, the continent, it's going to all tie together. The continent gets its name from lemurs, which are the cute little animals that look like squirrel monkeys.
Timon, No, that's no way, that's a mere cat. No, Timon's a mere cat.
Oh it's okay.
So I only understand things out of Gascar.
I couldn't tell you.
Oh, they're the little They're like the FBI of Madagascar. Okay, I understand the FBI. Okay.
I think I was gonna pretend like I just got it, but they don't.
As I said, I'm like that's maybe a dishonest. They're like, they're well, if you view the FBI as criminals, the lemurs they're always you know, pulling little operations. Oh okay, and they're generally considered to be you know, negative operations. So that's why I think of them as the FBI.
Okay, see this actually does tie into where they get their names. But okay, so lemurs. People were like, why are there lemur fossils in Madagascar and also the Indian subcontinent And they're not technically lemur fossils, but they're like close right and not in the land in between the two.
And so the answer the actual answers continental drift. Probably I lost a good chunk of my life skimming scholarly articles about this before realizing this is like a tangent of a tangent of a tangent of my point, uh huh. But the important thing is it's not there because of a mysterious continent that has disappeared.
Okay.
The Lemurs they get their name from the Latin lemorez, which is ghosts. It is the Latin for ghosts. Whoa Okay, Lemurs, like the FBI move at night and our spooky and are scary.
Yeah, they're scary to us personally.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, much like lemurs have fucked with my friends and so lemores, the Latin one, right, the Roman one. If you have them in your house, If you have ghosts in your house, what are you gonna do about it?
Call a lemur?
Basically, Yeah, you have to wait till early May for the feast days of Lamur. Yeah, which was May ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth. I don't know if it had to like only be odd days or if they were like we need a break between our feasts or what.
Okay, yeah, you sort of need a day to let it course through.
Yeah, I like that.
I liked maybe it was just pooh days, like all right, we're on one day and then we got to really just pooh the next day.
Yeah. But then, yeah, that's pretty much almost certainly what happened. There's only one guy whoever wrote about Le Maria. His name was Ovid, and he wrote about it a long ass time ago, so he actually knew a bit about what he was talking about. So we have one account of Lo Maurria.
Okay, are we talking like the ancient poet?
Yeah?
Yeah, oh okay, okay, Yeah.
So possibly even more apocor foolish. There was a holiday called Ramia, which was the celebration of Remus, the brother of Romulus, who yeah, like.
The way that Rome started titty sucker guys.
Yeah, yeah, since Rome's founding myth as two brothers got into a pointless fucking argument and one killed the other and now here we are, which makes sense for Rome and basically all of European civilization that's descended from it. Yeah, so there might have been a celebration called Ramuria, which was like after they're like, hey, like remember me, bro, you know, don't let people forget me. Like the ghost came back and was like, there must be a holiday for me.
I mean that kind of endears me to him, honestly, because you're like, I guess if you could, you would want to, right.
Yeah. I spent about three hours trying to figure out if there's symbolism between Romulus versus u Rimus in terms of like something that I could like tie it into some other shit. They both were probably just dicks who fucking killed each other.
Yeah, just brother things. You're like, this happens in litters of kittens all the time.
Yeah, exactly exactly. I was like, well, is it like a Cane and Abel thing? And then I found out that there's just a fuck ton of stories from the ye oldie times that.
Like so wild, Like sorry, can finish your that.
Oh, just there's so many fratricide stories in like every part of everything that we have written down from a long ast time ago.
There's just like so much of history that you're like that you it just boils down to like two then there were these two guys, and you're like, what, I hate that that has impact on my life right now that there once there was two guys. Honestly, I learned it. I saw this gigantic painting last weekend of the Crucifixion. Uh huh lungs. It was while I was bird watching. I came across this large paint just in the middle
of the field. Yeah. You know, it may have been a vision, You've had a christ like vision, but it was I was at this at Forest Lawn Cemetery birdwatching and they have this huge crucifixion painting for whatever reason, and I learned about the two guys that Jesus got crucified with.
Yeah, they're thieves right to God.
Just two guys.
I didn't know about these two guys.
I didn't pay attention in Sunday school.
But there are two guys. Yeah, the good thief and the unrepentant thief. And their name's Rhyme, which is hilarious, dismis and guestus. And you're like, and there's just a whole exhibit on these two other guys. Anyways, I oppose once.
There was two culture.
Yeah, it's a lot of history that people care about.
Anyways, Well, you know what else people care about. They care about buying objects instead of finding them in a field. Although if you work hard enough at it, I'm sure you could find any of the things that are about to be advertised to you in the loosest version of the word find, go steal a car. Here's ads. Okay, we're back.
We're back.
So there's Remula, or the holiday that may or may not have existed, but a Ramuria. I'm sorry, Muria, but we do know that there's Lamuria, which, okay, if they're like two holidays and so two guys, and they are three days since May set aside for driving out angry spirits. And of course, logically, the way that you get rid of angry spirits is chanting obviously and black beans clearly.
Oh this is this is a I'm not familiar with this second approach.
Oh interesting, Okay, well let me tell you how to do it.
Okay.
So the restless spirits lamura's. They also have an evil cousin, basically the larvae, which are like, there's a lot of uncertainty about exactly what this is, but they're like the like actually just kind of like fucked up evil spirits that aren't necessarily like dead people. Okay, but the lamuras anyone who died in a way that left them having like a hard time getting into the afterlife, like sudden death or young death or no funeral rights. They were a lemur.
Or are so wait if you like have some sort of unfinished business or something, as you you.
Are you are a lemur? Yeah, or reincarnate as that.
You?
Yes, as the animal definitely the definitely what I'm saying. I definitely took three years of lat and don't know how to pronounce any of it, so as did I.
Yes, waite so waite omnes.
A glass discipula pe sum as sums as aramarast arama serrata serrunt there.
I always like, I think we just sort of like got off on being like haha, fatuus puer, which for anyone that learned a useful language just means stupid boy, And I would find myself saying that often.
Excellent. Yeah, yeah, our our Latin teacher just let us cheat, so I didn't learn any Latin and then he got fired for sexually harassing students.
Oh what that was my art teacher, my Latin teacher was was a buff board. Did you read those books that were like about the family that got Stuck in the ditch for like an entire textbook.
I didn't really go to class by the end of the.
I forgot You're cool, Okay. I was obsessed with my homework, and so I was really invested in the Cornelia I and there are various excellent males. Excellent, okay, Okay. You continue its reincarnated as a leamur.
Definitely, and that's definitely what I mean. It's not that you're a ghost with the same similar word. Yeah, yeah, uh huh, I'm with you, Okay. So you can help out the lemurs as well as help navigate the larvae, the non ghost evil spirits. In a really creepily parallel way to some sowin shit later, which makes the lineage of everything like super murky. The way that you help out your dead pals is you wash your hands in
spring water. Then you make a fist where your thumb is under your fingers, like the way you shouldn't make a fist, you know.
Yep, the scary way.
Yeah, and then you were doing that. Yeah. You fill your mouth with black beans and then you spit them out behind you as you walk through your house barefoot at midnight. And the reason your barefoot, obviously is that knots can't be anywhere near the ceremony because they prevent the natural flow of energy, and so sandals have knots,
So no sandals barefoot makes sense. As for the fist thing, it's called mono fico or fig hand, and the connotation of the word fig means that actual translation of this would be pussy hand, because your finger is fucking the rest of your fingers, that is the connotation.
Is that necessary?
I've no idea want us to do it, ghosts, it.
Just feels like not relevant.
Nope, the black.
You have to have pussy hand to confront the ghosts.
Or to inter what is when you're doing this?
What are you?
What are you accomplishing?
Is my question.
Well, when you spit out the black beans, this attracts the lemurs and they're behind you, right you can't see them. Well, that's happening. And you chant, I send thee with these beans, I redeem me and mine And you chant that nine times uh huh, while everyone else in the house clangs bronze pots and says, ghosts of my fathers and ancestors be gone. Then you wash your hand and spring water three times m h and and then you can look
to see if it worked. And you know how they know it worked when you look at the end of the ritual. You can turn around and look and there's no leamurres behind you.
Oh so it does. I would guess that the success rate is extremely high.
Yeah, I'm William Betten. No one saw lamarill around behind them after doing all this work.
Well, that's great, that's great. I like that that. This is also like, it's necessary to have the support of everyone who lives with you in order to accomplish this. Everyone has to be a believer. That's Is there any generally, is there any point in this ceremony where someone would see the theoretical lamoureau where they stand, or is it conveniently like.
I don't know, interesting, you know, I mean obviously it's like ghosts and things are things that a lot of people have seen in this world, you know.
I mean I I don't even disbelieve it, but I just.
Interesting.
Interesting. I as a lover you know, black beans, that's an integral part of my Chipotle order, and I didn't realize that there was a kind of a cosmic use of that food.
Yeah, yeah, I wonder what happened if you use white beans like right opposite?
Does it do something else? Or you know, we should try it? It means they stay yeah.
Totally yeah, or if you put ones that are like slightly hallucinogenic in your mouth and you do see that. Limeris immediately after the Limeray holiday where the our Guy, which are more Roman pagan holidays, and these involved mock human sacrifices were like straw dummies were tossed into the river, which is possibly like the main suggestion people have around this is that basically, like every culture eventually was like what if we stop sacrificing people and they're like, well,
how would we do that? And you're like, well, what if we fake sacrifice people? And you have this like transitional period where they fake sacrifice people, okay, and which is kind of you know, they want to symbolically kill some dudes, which is a lot like majority voting. It's a symbolic war where you see which side with win would win without actually stabbing each other to death.
It's very true.
This whole sequence of events meant in May was at the unluckiest month to get married. So keep that in mind anyone who wants to adhere to Rouman pagan social norms, right, which you should absolutely Fortunately, very few people get married in May. It would be very.
Yeahluck No, I've certainly never been to a wedding in May, much less officiated one.
I've never been married in May. I've never rented that sentence a little bit earlier, but.
I only became amenable to getting married recently when I found a novelty halloween band played weddings, and now I'm like, maybe I should think about it.
I once hitchiked across the country with some crosspunk I met at a Rainbow g when we were twenty and we were decided we were going to get married in Vegas on the way, but then we couldn't hitchhike very well together because we were both scary looking and she had a very large dog. Mm hmm, so we didn't get married.
Well that's the breaks. I feel like we both just said sentences that are very true to who we are at our.
Core, and I silently laughed in the background.
Okay, so that's Lameriam okay. And then there's Sowen. Yes, Sowen is the Celtic holiday that shares all Saints' Day November one, and it starts the night before October thirty. First, what exactly Sowen is is argued about constantly. There is some stuff we do know. For example, we know that almost everything written about it was written by medieval.
Christians, famously trustworthy.
Yeah exactly. I was like when I was like learning about dramatic paganism like the Norse gods and stuff, and when I realized it was like all written by a Christian monk, I was like, is any of this any good? Does this work can get? And then it turns out everything's just complicated and whatever. Yeah. The main argument that people have is about how much it was a time of magic and death versus just a big social gathering.
I lean towards it actually was both, based on everything that I've been reading, but it absolutely was a big social gathering that was probably also time of magic and death. Okay, Celts, you could say that they are the hidden people, kell being the Indo European prefix for hidden. They are a very diverse collection of peoples, a ton of different tribes
that's spread out across Europe and the British Isles. They use an oral history by and large, so we don't have much about them beside what was written by their enemies who talk about human sacrifice and how their primitive people live in bogs or whatever the fuck you know. But certain histories and traditions only linger in the margins. So most of what's left of the traditions and lang, which is of the Celts, are found in Ireland, Scotland,
Wales and a few other places. Right, Sowyn is one of the big four Celtic pagan holidays that we know about, and it was on November first. I mean, I doubt they had the specific calendar, but let's just go with it, right. Sure, sometimes it gets called a harvest festival. But apparently that's not really true because November first isn't really a big deal for agriculturists. Neither is May first. It's not the time for planting or reaping because beltane and sown in
the Celtic tradition, they're important to pastoralists. Okay, it's when you take your herds to different pastures. So instead of having a harvest festival, they have a like we're taking the cows out of the high hills, out of the highlands, a.
Little cow party, and we're are the four main holidays? Are these separated generally by season?
Are there?
Or I can't remember the other two off the top of my head. I think they are the sole ses, but I could be wrong.
Makes sense to me.
I think one of them is low. Oh man, no, I'm anyone listening. Your nose is now mad at me, But so it goes. Don't message me about it on Insta know every single up myself. Yeah that is people get I know you know that was a podcaster before, very frustrated that just because you know one thing doesn't mean you know another thing.
I do feel sometimes that the feedback I mean, and often I get a lot of great, very helpful feedback, and every once in a while I get how dare you not have lived my exact life? And you're like, I, you know, can't, can't speak to it, don't know, don't know.
Yeah, until you kill them and then step into their.
Body precisely, precisely.
And there's a lot to be said about how the Gaels were seen as barbaric, specifically for preferring pastoralism to agriculture. Basically, people mean like, don't you want to like stay in one place and grow things? And they're like, I'm good, I have a cow. I need just hang out with the cow. Why would I? It gives me what I need?
What the fuck? If you ever want to get mad, you should read what Angles from Marks and Engles, famous comedy duo had to say about the Irish Really oh god, it wasn't nice stuff, no kidding, although he sure fetishized the Irish women of course anyway.
Really also a misogynist to the people that he had no respect for.
Wow wow wow.
Yeah. So November first is Swen. It's the celebration of the coming of winter. It's the time to take the cows of the high pasture. And slaughter them. It's the perfect time for sacrifice. You're like, I mean, you're killing the moo guys anyway, right, m h and thanks, thanks for laughing at that. I'm pretty proud of that show,
and so I was really thrilled. It's also when alcohol is most readily available, at least according to one source I read, which probably ties into all the like magic and mischief and shit that comes from Sowen.
Uh huh.
The thing that we know happened is that on and various tribes from different places and Ireland would gather and they would have huge bonfires, and various kings would make various pronouncements. Ireland has had no shortage of kings, but fortunately it wasn't very good at centralizing them, so usually it had multiple At any given time, there were contests and feasts and sacrifices. There was possibly human sacrifice and
then later some like representative of sacrifice stuff. There was divination, which we'll talk about in a bit, and there was a bunch of other ritual stuff, gotcha, that's what's certain.
Then there's the argued stuff. I tend to believe that all the magic and death stuff because that argument is really politicized because Christians want to be like, no, there's no paganism in Halloween, right, But then on the other hand, there's people who are like, no, everything is super cool and magic y and buy my books right, Like it's just fucking there's not trustworthy people in the like modern pagan versus Christian arguments.
Yeah, there, I mean, everyone's got a vested interest, and I feel like on the on the non Christian end there it is becoming increasingly muddled because it seems like there is such an opportunity to I don't want to say this without being like being disrespectful to people's beliefs, because I'm not saying that this is something I completely disbelieve in at all, But I do think that there's time points in history, very likely one we're living through
right now, where people would very much like to believe in magic, and that brings out a bunch of predatory types.
Totally and like, and one of the other things is like, like, I'm going to do some of the ritual stuff that I'm going to be talking about. I'm planning to do it. Oh that's amazing the day after you walk here to this, And because I don't know why the fuck not. And to me, the fact that a lot of it comes from syncretic traditions is fine. I have no problem with that,
you know. And so another thing that might have happened on SOO, and this is actually what I'm gonna do on Sowen this year, is that unsuccessful kings are ritually sacrificed. Oh you're gonna kill a guy, yeah, yeah, but only a king. I gotta find a monarch.
Yeah, okay, that is a slaughter, slaughter of flop.
I'm happy to do it.
Yeah, it's possible, like, no one's quite sure. But basically some of the bog bodies people are starting to be like, we think that's a sacrificed king. Oh wow, they might have had their nipples cut off and then stabbed and beheaded and thrown into bogs.
I've been to a bog buddy, bog body, bug body, a bog body exhibit or too in my day, and that would be said, that would be huge for the bog body community if that is if true, I know, And it's like it's a little bit of a stretch as a story, and who's making this claim and it's based on a lot of the stuff where like a lot of the bog body people were like fed better and like like it seems to be that they seem to be like upper class in some way or whatever, right right, and.
Like more than one of them had like weird stuff around their nipples going on.
Interesting, Like all we know is that they ate well and they had weird nipples.
Yeah. So yeah, lots of kings might have gotten dead on Sowen, which is cool. And I wonder how much of old human sacrifice was just well, like this guy said he'd be a good leader, but he wasn't. So I guess we should just give him to the gods now, because there's a lot of like that stuff gets into later whatever, But what doesn't come later, what comes now is advertisement.
Wow that was so good. Wow, you really did get me with that one.
Yeah, my one actual top that I'm good at cynically transitioning to ads like these what great prices.
Like these great products you're about to find out about.
And we're back.
So we have potentially some dead kings.
Yeah, we have potentially some dead kings. It's also probably the Festival of the Dead. That is the like the big argued thing that makes sense to me. Too to go under the assumption that it was, which I that is actually what I think. But the Celts, like a lot of people, believed in a lot of different realms, right, there's most notably there's Earth or the realm war stuck in. Yeah, then there's the other world with a big capital O.
It's got a bunch of different names. Most famous is probably Tyrannog, which is either a name for the whole place or just a part of it. And this is like the land of the Fairies, the Promised Land, the land of everlasting youth.
I learned about that from watching Titanic when I was nine.
Well, they talk about nearing an Noog in it.
They do. There's a mother with children on the Titanic. They're about to, you know, drown on the Titanic, and she's saying that that's where they're headed. They're headed to the land of Tyrannanog, the land of eternal youth and beauty. The kids are crying because they of course are about to drown on the Titanic. But that's where I learned about it.
That makes sense, And honestly, faith is a really good counterpoint to anxiety. So yeah, I like totally get that, Like, I want to believe in Tyrannanog while the fucking ship is going down, Like what are my other options being? Like no, only this is real and I'm about to not ever have anything ever again, like deep but you know, Yeah, So Tyrannanog is one of the mystical is where the mystical precursors of the Irish people live, the fairies or the gods, the too hot Todnin and twice a year
on Beltane and Sowen. The veil is thin between our world and other world. So Sowyn is a liminal festival at the end of summer. It's the start of winter, and it's a time when everything is possible and nothing is the same. And that's I love that shit. And that's still part of fucking Halloween. I think it's also when the Four Mourians, which was another ancient Irish race, the race of evil Giants, they demanded a yearly tax of two thirds of the corn, milk and children from.
Folks top three products.
Yeah, they were driven out, and they were driven out specifically by the goddess Morgan and the hero agnes Og, and they drove the monsters out from Ireland on sown, Okay, which makes sense because that's when they show up, but you know, still wild shit. Yeah. Irish mythology, at least as it was written by a Christian eleventh century Christian guy, is a series of different people replacing one another in the area. There were six groups. The first four had
been killed or driven out entirely. The fifth were the pagan gods who disappeared into the other world but are still around. Some folks argue that this is people talking about the picts, and then there's the sixth, the modern humans, the Gaels. This book, the history of Ireland from the eleventh century, is called the Book of Invasions, which is what a fucking name for a country's history.
Truly, I'm like harsh but fair.
I know, they kind of set themselves up with that.
Yeah, seems kind of antagonistic, but I see where the reality is.
Yeah, And this book was I think intentionally written to Christianized people. So so many of the European pagan books are from Christian monks, as I've complained about already. Sometimes people say the dead went to the other world, like in that movie The Titanic, which I definitely didn't just add to the script. I totally had it in.
There, absolutely, and it is called The Titanic, and I think that that's something that people need to remember about the movie The Titanic, which we love.
Yeah, I actually really did like them. I never watched it again, I think because I was, like, I cried so much.
It's unfortunately one of the bet.
It's a really good movie. I'm not so good anti.
It's like it's everything a movie can be.
Yeah, I saw it multiple times in theaters.
Really. Oh that gives me, especially because that happened during a period of culture that you.
Find otherwise distasteful. That's true. I might have to take all that back. I just really don't like all rock from the late nineties. I'm sorry, totally fair, totally.
I mean, you will not find a dissenting opinion here. But yeah, every tongue that rises up against Titanic nineteen ninety seven shell fall.
Yeah, that's like The Titanic did.
Much, including and not limited to the Titanic.
Yeah, they're on Hue risk brought them down both groups.
Mm hmmm.
So some people say that the dead go to the other world. Other people say that they went to a place that was more of a hell or a purgatory. Other people were like, no, first you go to the purgatory, then you go to the other world. That last one, curiously and possibly coincidentally, maps to the Catholic experience of theater.
Right.
It was like, that is a that's also a Christian concept.
Okay, yeah, and.
You know, some shit is just universal. Some shit is given to cultures by Christians. I don't know. Two things happen on Sowen because of the thinning of the veil. First, the spirits of the dead, especially the recently dead. They come out and hang out for the night, which is cool. Second, so do the fairies, especially mischievous if not downright malevolent ones who like rejoice in human suffering and all that stuff. It's also the time when babies can be replaced with
change links. So you got to like watch your kids.
Okay, Okay, that's that's eventful.
That is a that is a full side show's worth of activities.
Yeah.
Absolutely, it's a good thing that it's also commonly associated with getting drunk on the night where your baby.
Could be switched out with a change Like it's.
Good to have your senses really truly dulled when those are the stakes.
Yeah, sharpened up, you know, a little bit more in touch with your emotions instead of what's happening around you. Yeah, it's possible that people would open the burial mounts themselves on Sowen, but because of their portals the other world, I don't think that that's I've read that, but I don't. It doesn't track with the rest of mythology because most of the rituals are around how to deal with how
scary it is that the veil is thin. It's less like the way that I would say modern like how I see it where I'm like, fuck, yeah, the veil's thin, time to talk to dead people, And instead it's more of a like oh God, oh God, like veil too thin?
Yeah, okay, So it was intended to be because I feel like that is an interesting thing to hear from culture to culture of like how the concept of the thinning of the veil is received, because they feel like sometimes it's joyously other times it seems like intentionally to stoke fear, which it seems like in this case is that, I.
Think so, But it's also kind of both because they do a lot of like really easy joyous stuff. Yeah, No, totally. I mean, and I guess it's just like the same as like people be Like in twenty first century United States, people hated Halloween because like, some people hate Halloween and then we're over here being like this fucking rules. I'm sure that Free Christian Ireland or Syncretic Christian Ireland was
the same way. They were like some people are really fuck yeah, bring on the fairies, and other people are like, they stole my baby, and you're like, eh, h, maybe she's happier now.
You know, there's always gonna be someone that thinks their baby's been switched out with a changeling, and sometimes it just turns out they don't like their baby. Yeah, totally and are searching for a justification as to why.
Yeah.
Portals also open at the base of the of Hawthorn trees, So if you live on Hawthorn Street in Portland, you should be careful this week. It's all I'm saying. And the dead coming back is totally chill with people. As long as you were good to people, they'll be good to you back right now. If you're shitty to people, if you're a dick to someone and then they died, good fucking luck on that one.
Ooh they is it like purge rules?
Can they get your ass?
Okay, it's funny. We're going to talk about some weird purge rules shit and cool later.
But okay, Jamie's the perfect guess for this episode.
I know, I know. Although yeah, but but yeah, so you know, if you're good to the dead, that part's fine. There's a ton of different rituals around it. The the ones most of these are like the ones that I'm aware of, I think are a little bit more modern. They're not necessarily from the day of like the tribe gathering for a week to feast and discuss laws, and are more from the medieval era onward. But they like
also might be continuations or developments of different traditions. Okay, the one I'm gonna do on sow and if my friends, if I can talk them into it, there's a lot of different variations. And it's called a dumb supper, as in a supper without talking. Oh, and there's a bunch of different ways to do it. Go ahead.
I was just about to make a bad joke about how there's there's a lot of Christian families that have dumb suppers every night.
It's just kind of how we eat food.
Yeah, you open all the doors in the windows in your house, and you set the table for everyone plus a setting for the dead, like at an empty chair, and then you either eat in silence or in the version. I kind of think it's more fun you talk as if the dead are in the room and not like, Sayancy, you're not like what happened? I've never been to a seans and you have, but that's how I'm imagining it.
It's honestly, I wish you were further off. Yeah, a lot a lot of loud talking, a lot of questions, no, no gentle introductions really that I've found.
Yeah, this is a one way conversation where you catch the dead up on everything that they've missed over the year, where you just include them back in your life as if they just have been away for a while.
That's wonderful.
Yeah, Like I genuinely think that like magic or afterlives or religion aside, I think that this seems like a like useful way for people to connect with loss and grief and stuff, you know.
But I do think that there's like an uh, it's interesting hearing people talk to their dead because in the times that I've been at rituals are like I mean, I've mostly been to them as they relate to spiritualism
and like table turning and stuff like that. And it is interesting because I feel like the closest thing that I could identify it with outside it's like a combination of the way you speak in like like prayer by your if that's something you've done, and then also like and this not with all due respect to the dead, how like children talk to their dolls, Like there is an element of like, I am having lunch with my American girl doll, and I want her to be involved
in the conversation, and like it feels like everyone has some sort of base level of Oh, that's so lovely. I really like that.
Is that what you're gonna Is that your plan?
Yeah, that's my plan.
Yeah that's great.
And one of the reasons I think it immediately hit me is that, like I didn't grow up in a particularly religious family. My Irish grandmother talked to the dead like they were in the room. Like she lost one of her sons before she died, and she would just like talk to him as if he was there. And and I just like thought that was cool. You know,
that's so lovely. Oh, there's that's great. There's other versions where you leave food out at night for the dead, like you put bread and water and set them out at midnight, which reminds me of the milk and cookies from for Santa. And there's a lot of like Halloween sow and Christmas weird and eMule and shit, they all like blur into each other sometimes, you know.
It's all very a lot of Q four shit going on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get everything crammed in end of the year. Nice, but evil spirits come into the world too, Fairies and werewolves and shit just fucking pouring into the world. For that, you need protection. For that, you need a
bonfire in some traditions called a need fire. And my favorite version of this that I've read is that the whole town puts out their hearth fires and then goes to the bonfire and then re lights their own fire from the bonfire, which is meant to not only is it ward off spirits, but also just like brings everyone together and like reminds everyone that their hearth comes from the same place, you know, like karth is a very that's totally pricessful.
Yeah, that's yeah, that's the and then I feel like it ties in completely with the feeling of continuity, like that's that's really nice.
Yeah totally. And then to protect your new mothers could also be stolen away as well as babies. I wonder how much is people just like running away when.
Anyway that's there's a there's a runaway movie waiting to happen to be like, oh, it's the perfect crime.
Yeah, totally.
These fools believe in magic.
I'm kidding the fuck out of here.
And then if I write it, like they get halfway down the road and the ferries are like, yeah, you said you're coming with us, Like, oh fuck, that is.
The mar Greek Kilty original waiting to.
And so the fairy world represents I mean, sometimes it's just like stolen away for evil, but sometimes it represents like sort of like wildness and like non sieve and stuff and like witches high end all of this once you get into the syncretic in the Christian side of things, So new mothers could be given a spoonful of oatmeal as soon as the baby was born protect them from being stolen away a lump of unsalted butter could be put into the newborn's mouth, or you can rub salt
and oatmeal into the crown of a child's head.
I'm really amenable to any like ritual that involves a little treat. That sounds very nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's time for the little treat ritual, like a ritual nap that I take in the afternoon.
You know.
There you go, right, I'm like, yeah, I guess I did just give raw birth. Give me a little give me a little treat.
Yeah, totally. Otherwise I'm gonna fucking run away, I mean, get stolen.
Yeah.
I may go with the fairies if I don't get my little treat.
Yeah.
And it's possible that all of the stories they like. The argument for the argument against Sowyn being traditionally a time of death and ritual was that a lot of the like fairy stories for on Sowen was just that Sowen was the big gathering of all the kings and shit. So if you wanted to set a story and have like important people there and important stuff happen, you just did it on Sowen. And so that's how it became
associated with the dead and the supernatural. I don't, okay, buy that argument, but that is an argument that people make interesting, okay. And then there's the divination and most okay. So there's like one piece of the divination that's like actually spooky, which is around the bonfire, people would put like a everyone like put like a rock and be like, that's my rock, and then if it's gone by the next day, then you're not going to survive.
Also colonialism totally.
They learn it from the English.
My rock actually this my rock now?
Sorry?
Yeah, so if your rock disappears, then you're gonna die. And this this, this is the like maybe replaced human sacrifice ritual that I read about m but the rest of the divination rituals for sowen you heard of any of these?
No?
No, did you ever play mash as a kid that like figure out who you're gonna marry.
And where you're going to live? And shit, well I'm married Josh Hotcherson and if so, will we for some reason live in an apartment?
Yeah?
Oh yeah, that's what it stood for, right the mansion it is it is a very like I've thought about this a lot.
The more I get interested in housing where it's like a children's game that is named after housing options mansion, apartment.
Shack house, shack.
I was like ship, Like, oh see, that's no, you have to have what is viewed as a negative outcome. And then the funny thing is like Josh Hodgerson's career must have really fallen out from under him due to the fact that I married him and we live in a shack but we drive an Audi, you know.
Yeah, and so this is this is the style of divination of South Okay, it's like who you are going to marry, and where you're going to live, and what job you're going to have and shit like this. They were playing Mash based Sowen on the other hand. Every now and then it would be like am I going to get married this year? Am I going to become bake?
Like?
Am I gonna get this job? Am I gonna die this year? That's like thrown in as one of the options.
Oh, that's not a part of Mash to.
Be fair, This is like medieval Europe where oh right, really present chance if you're going to die any given year. Yeah, you're like, I'm getting up there.
I just turned nineteen, yeah, yeah.
And so most of this stuff, most of this divination seems that we have the records of or that I've seen it seems to come from the sort of syncretic part of it. But it's still cool. So one traditional dish for Soowin is coal cannon, which is Irish mashed potatoes a lot of greens in it, and you take the first two portions of it and you set them out either by the gate for hungry passerby, or you set it at the foot of the nearest fairy thorn, hawthorn or white thorn on Halloween or and or Allsoul's.
Night kind of.
So this is like the Santa Santa potatoes kind of, yeah, but also a little bit of mutual aid if so, if anyone just needs potatoes.
Well yeah, and that actually, I mean in trick or treating kind of comes from a lot of this kind of stuff too. Oh and we'll talk about more about that stuff later too.
And wow, you're blowing my fucking mind.
Okay, this is great.
Okay, another weird Christmas parallel m The first and last spoonfuls of the Halloween coal cannon can be put into an eligible girl's stocking and then well, now while she's wearing it, and then you hang it from a nail in the door, and her future husband will be the first man to enter the house.
So if you put potatoes in a sog yeah some real Okay, Okay, well they didn't have a lot of money.
Okay, this is not a rich culture. It's a rich culture. It's not a culture with money, and it's a rich.
Culture not with money necessarily. But look at that lower potato in a sock. Got it?
I look, I'm this is this is my culture. I should know this.
Yeah, okay, this is this is my favorite one. Like actually, barm brack is a fruit loaf. That's basically you make this fruit loaf and then you hide small tokens in it, like like a ring or a button or a thimble, and if you get the ring, you're gonna get married. If you get the button, you're either going to be an old or the button or thimble you're gonna be an old bachelor or an old maid.
Wait what is this call to I want to do this?
Yeah? No, it's actually I can. I can send you a recipe. My friend sent me a barm brack b r M. There's a bunch of different ways of spell it, like anything from Irish that gets anglicized, but b r M space br A c k okay, my friend makes it. So these days when people make it, they usually either like really well wrap the thing so that it's not a choking hazard, or they like minimize the number of choking hazards they put into the food. And then my friend who makes it just puts an uncooked P in it.
I think maybe it's a lential. I think it was a P really, so it isn't like choking hazard game, you know, I do.
I mean I I really do kind of appreciate when someone goes hogwild with the choking hazards in the food. I do feel it's it's part of why I find heterosexual proposals to be so fascinating, where it's like what if I what if I potentially killed someone I theoretically want to spend the rest of my life with by shoving an ugly little ring I've purchased into like an expensive meat love and and you have to be thrilled if you almost swallow a ring and you're like oh, and.
You get to find out if you're a future spouse nos time like maneuver one hundred times yes, Yeah, Well you can also if you want to find out who
your future husband or wife will be. And there's different ways of doing this, and one of them the like witchiest ways that like three unmarried women get together or girls get together and do this and then do this like separately from the rest of everyone, and you make something called a dumb cake, which is just a a very plain piece of bread, and everyone makes them and then you like sleep with them under your pillow, or you sleep with a sprig of yarrow under your pillow,
and then you'll dream of your lover.
So wait, this one is sleep with bread under your pillow. And you can also potatoes in the sock, bread under the pillow. Yeah, eternal love is yours.
Yeah. And the reason I kind of like this, I think that this is a recipe for sleep paralysis because if you're sleeping, if you go to bed thinking about what am I going to Like, if you go to bed and you think about I'm going to dream of the following, you're more likely to dream of that, right, and so you're able to kind of influence your dreams
in that way. But also if you sleep with something under your pillow, you might sleep on your back, which gives you more more likely sleep paralysis and more intense dreaming in general, and like you might sleep kind of lightly as a result of it. So I think people have like mostly horrifying nightmares, but sometimes they might.
Yeah, but I think.
Anyway, So, okay, other way you can find out who you're gonna marry is you can peel an apple in a single strip and then throw the peel over your shoulder and see what letter it forms, and that's the first letter of the person who marry or whatever.
I've heard of that, Okay, Okay, yeah, I've heard of that. I've never done it because that's actually really hard to do.
Yeah, No, that seems really hard.
Yeah, and I would imagine if you did it, you'd be like, oh the letter, oh.
Yeah, or like everything looks like okay or whatever the most convoluted letters are, you know, right, Okay. There's another way you can do this, and this is actually my favorite because it Okay, you can cut nine stalks of yarrow with a black handled knife and then stay in silence for the rest of the evening. Once everyone is asleep, you peel the yarrow. I have no idea what yarro looks like. Where you peel it. I'm not a supper witch. You peel the yarrow, and you say good night, good yarrow,
thrice good night to thee. Pray. Tell me who my true love will be. If his clothes I'm to wear, if his children I'm to rear blithe and mary, may he be with his face turned to me. If his clothes I'm not to wear, if his children not to rear sour and groma, may he be with his back turned to me, and groma being an Irish word for like morose. Oh okay, So you recite this and then
the first suitable man you see is scrutinized. And I like this one because it's like, oh, if I meet a man and he's like nice and smiles, and he like doesn't as soon as I turn away, like look evil and shitty and mean, you know, because they're like, Okay, well, at least there's a filtering process here.
I guess.
So I guess I would. I would conversely argue that this is a great historical example of the bar never being particularly high. Well, if he doesn't turn into the literal devil when I avert my eyes, he's probably he'll be.
He can he's serviceable. We can make it work.
I mean, you know, if we put the bar there about I probably shouldn't say missing just stuff on the show. So okay. The other way you can do it is you can eat an apple standing in front of a mirror at midnight while combing your hair. I don't know how I eat an apple and whatever.
That's two like hygienically healthy things to be doing at midnight, I don't think.
Yeah, it would have to be intentional.
As the clock hits midnight, you can see the face of your future husband over your right shoulder.
Oh yeah, this sounds like something that's been paid by the apple lobby.
There's a lot of apple stuff. Apples are pretty, yeah, symbolically useful for different.
Yeah, I mean that was the da Vinci code.
I haven't seen the da Vinci code.
I regret to inform you spoiler alert. Do you know what the da Vinci code is? The word apple. I remember it being twelve years old, reading that book when it was like super popular, like reading it in the bath, wanting to be wanting to be a part of something bigger than myself. Getting to the point like nine thousand pages in where the Davini code is Apple, And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? I'm twelve and
I'm underwhelmed by this. The da Vinci cope was Apple. Yeah, okay, I no, that makes sense, you know, not that anyone's reading it now, but like if you ever were, like, I'm going to get around to that, don't bother. The DaVinci code was literally Apple.
Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.
So anyways, Christian parallels.
Yeah, yeah, so that's sourin the big gathering of the tribes that was probably but not necessarily super spooky. It got all jumbled up in kind of fun ways. As for All Saints Day, all hollows tied, Devil's Night, witch hunts, We'll talk about those on Wednesday, which is Saints Day. Oh this is All Souls Day. Crap, I don't remember which one.
God damn it.
I don't have a calendar in front of me. There's no way of knowing. It's just on one of them.
Impossible to say a good yes.
But what else is This isn't an ad transition, it's a plug transition. What else is spooky is your plugs? What?
It's All Saintsday?
Okay, I even got it. Write in the script. I'm so smart.
I guess I guess. Well, you can find me on mainly Instagram. Jamie christ Superstar is still technically on Twitter. I guess Jamie laughed his help. But and you can get my book which is called Raw Dog and that's about hot dogs. However, for the purposes of what we're talking about today, I think you should listen to my podcast Ghost Church, which is about the history of spiritualism and what modern spiritualism looks like in Central Florida. So if you produce it, Ian edited it. My uncle Dennis
is in it. Uncle Dennis rules. Yeah, long live Uncle Dennis. He fucking rocks. And yeah, so that that you should listen to that.
Okay, I will wait, I already have, but you did the listeners listen to it. Yeah, Sophie, what do you got?
I think I plu.
I think I've plugged this last a couple times, but listen to it. Could happen here. It's more important than ever.
Yeah, absolutely, all right, see everyone on Wednesday.
Ah, thank you.
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