Oh Goat, You Devil - Part 2

pretty pretty gentle. Uh, nothing too weird about the goat for the most part, nothing to ferry us, certainly, but within the larger traditions of mythology and folklore, various other connotations take over and kind of spin out of control until you have ultimately demonic goats, uh, half goat, half human hybrids that may not have the best intentions at her. And then also even a few, you know, cinematic incarnations,

horror movie incarnations of the goat. We mentioned the Witch in the first episode, of course, and Joe and I were trying to off Mike. We're trying to think of other spooky goats in films, or even two spooky goat people in films, and there aren't maybe a ton of them, Like there are more way more killer cat movies and certainly killer dog movies than there are killer goat movies. Well, it depends on if you include goat headed demons. That

then that massively expands the range. And as we were discussing, there is one Italian horror movie that has a really glorious goat costume that you only see for a couple of seconds. But it's in the church yesday. That's film. It's been a while since I've seen it, but it was produced by Dario Argento and a few others and is it's quite an interesting film, kind of a lower budget occult film that was perhaps partially inspired by the

Name of the Road. Was like, what if the Name of the Rose um had one of the actors from the Name of the Rose but then also a demonic goatman roman about okay, yeah, And of course The Devil Rides Out, which we discussed on Weirdout Cinema earlier in the year, that has a great goat man in it as well, but they're not a wonderful big old goat boy at a party. Uh yeah, probably one of the better ones committed to the screen, but you don't see

them a lot. Um. I think I've mentioned before, I think the first cinematic vision of like goat obsessed Cultists was the movie adaptation of dragnet Um. This was that, I think a seven film. Dan Ackroyd heavily involved in that. I think Christopher Plummer is in it as well and plays one of the cultists, and so there's you know, they're scenes of some sort of Hollywood black mass thing going on, and people wearing goat leggings and goat heads and so forth. You're saying, that's the first one you

remember seeing. That's the first one I remember seeing as a kid, because you know, that was I think essentially supposed to be a family movie. You though, I remember there being plenty of elements in it there were maybe not so family friendly, but you know, it was the eighties. Oh and Seth just uh poked in to mention, of course Pans Labyrinth Gamel del Toro's film, which does have a fabulous uh pan incarnation as well as well as some other just fabulous creatures. Um. Definitely not a family

movie that one either. It's got some some brutal violence and some very real world themes. But also a fantastic mythological world. Yeah, everybody remembers the monster with the eyes in its hands in that movie, even though pans in the title. Yeah, it's it's not called Eyes and Palms

Labyrinth for many of you. Though, when you think cinematic goat men um imagined for an entire generation of people, there's one particular portrayal you're going to think of, and that's gonna be James McAvoy's two thousand and five portrayal of Mr tum Us in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I never saw that adaptation. Oh well, I have a feeling. Go get around to it. Uh it's uh, it's it's it's a good one. It rewatched it recently holds up pretty well. It's got some great creatures in it.

And of course, in addition to James bacavoy, we have a tremendous Tilda Swinton performance as the as the White Witch. So those two elements are alone alone or enough reason to check it out. Does the movie have Turkish delight in it? Oh? Of course you can't not have Turkish delight in it. So I was thinking about Mr Tumnus because we were talking about satyrs and fauns in the last episode, and I realized that this is an odd, pretty obvious modern fictional presentation of particularly a fawn. In

this situation. He's described as a fawn. Of course, Piers appears in C. S. Lewis's Narnia book The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and various adaptations of that work. And despite all of the various connotations of the satyr and the fawn and that Lewis was obviously quite aware of, Mr Tumnus is a rather compassionate figure and not at all a nasty old he goat. About The worst thing you can say about him is that he's technically working

for the White Witch. He's technically prepared to poison one of the children and then deliver her to the White Witch. But then he quickly betrays the White Witch to help the children of Earth. So while he's he's not really betrayed for the most part as a sexual being. Uh Still James mcgiboy's two thousand and five portrayal UH is perhaps that has it perhaps a little bit of unintended allure to it. I think it's one of those situations where even if you try and strip those elements away

from the visual satyr or faun. If you then recreate the faun, especially using an actual person, an actual actor, you cannot help but evoke some of its symbolic essence. Lewis, by the way, also wrote a poem titled The Satyr, which also seems to dwell on the creatures more sublime

quality's um. This is one that he wrote much earlier as an adolescent atheist, is pointed out by Joe R. Christopher in a two thousand sixteen paper title C. S. Lewis's Two Satyrs, referring to this poem and then to Mr Tumnus, I thought, I thought I might read just a little of this poem. You can find the whole

thing at all poetry dot com. But it begins like this, when the flowery hands of spring forth their woodland riches, fling through the meadows, through the valleys, goes the satyr caroling from the mountain, and the more forest green and ocean shore, all the fairy ken he rallies making music. Ever more. See the shaggy pelf doth grow on his twisted shanks below, and his dreadful feet are cloven, though his brow be white as snow, and it goes on from there. Uh. It's it's, it's it's a it's a

fun little little poem. Uh. Now, Christopher's ride up is uh, I think a pretty interesting analysis, as long as you're in for sort of at times a psycho sexual interpretation of a Narnia book, which I realized it's not everyone's cup of tea, but um. But still I think it's quite interesting. And he points out that while Mr Tumnus is largely desadiarized defontinized, if you will, there are still hints of the basic nature he is overcoming and being civilized,

and so forth. Mentions of times when quote and this is from the line the Witch and the Wardrobe quote, the woods were green and old selenas on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of water, and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification

for weeks on end jollification. Yeah. So, Christopher ultimately writes in this paper, quote, if one compares Lewis's two satyrs, one finds that both are about the split in the male human. Partly, he has led by reason, by wisdom and high thoughts, by family, Moore's and philia, and partially he is driven by sexual or bestial or devilish and or traitorous impulses. The satyr attracts fairy maidens by his unhappiness.

Perhaps he is unhappy because women flee from him, but more likely, has suggested before, he is unhappy because he has self divided himself about his relationship to women. The fon Mr Tumnus shows that a man can control his impulses, his animal or devilish side, and treat a woman well. Huh, Well, I don't know quite what to make that, because I haven't read this book since I was a kid. Yeah, I I listen to the audiobook version of it in recent years, so it's a little fresher on my mind

as well. But I'd love to hear it from everyone out there, because I know we have a lot of There are a lot of people out there who either grew up on these books or these movies, and and maybe I thought one way about them at one point in their life and thought another way much later. But Mr Tumnus is still there, standing essentially naked in the snow. I think he's wearing a scarf. In the movie version, it otherwise looks very naked, except you know, for the goat.

For okay, Well, in the previous episode, we were talking about the question of why the cultural association, especially stemming from Christian Continental Europe, between goats and devils or between goats and wickedness. Where does this association come from, especially given that it's not universal of course, not like every culture thinks goats are evil? So what are the origin points?

And I think we can possibly find some points of inspiration for this mental link link between goats and demons in the Biblical tradition itself, going all the way back to the Torah. One of the most prominent appearances of goats in the Hebrew Bible is the prescription for the day of Atonement or yam Kapoor. Yam Kapoor is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. It is a day dedicated to the ritual cleansing of sin, and the ritual is described in the Book of Leviticus, chapter sixteen.

As a prelude, the Lord is talking to Moses, and the Lord tells Moses that Aaron, the high priest uh he can't just come into the presence of the Ark of the Covenant at any time, or God may appear in a cloud upon the cover of the Ark and kill him. And this is coming after God has already struck out from the Ark and and killed people who did the wrong thing with it, who may be brought

strange fire before it. Instead, at an appointed time, the high priest will bathe his body and water, and will put on special holy vestments, and then he can enter into the presence of the Lord of the presence of the Ark to give offerings Uh. And then regarding the day of atonement, we're told the following. This is from the n rs V, beginning chapter sixteen, verse five. He shall take from the congregation of the Israelites two male goats for a purification offering, and one ram for a

burnt offering. Aaron shall offer the bull as a purification offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. He shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and offer it as

a purification offering. But the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. And in the tradition of the Second Temple, as described in the Mishnah, this ritual is understood to mean that one goat is sacrifice to the Lord for purification, and the other goat becomes

a scapegoat. That word scapegoat in the English language, I believe comes from the William Tindale translation of the Bible. William Tindale, by the way, executed for heresy, even though he gave us most of the English translation that would end up in the King James Bible. But so that that English word scapegoat, there is an attempt to translate the concept of the goat for Azazel from the day

of atonement. So this is a goat that is ritually designated as a vessel for the sins of the Jewish people, and then after being after the sins of the people are placed upon it, it is driven out into the wilderness perhaps to fall off a cliff and die. So what does it mean to say that the scapegoat was for Azazel. Well, rabbis and scholars have interpreted this phrase

in a number of different ways over the ages. So one interpretation is that Azazel is the name of the place to which the goat was sent, specifically maybe a rocky, desolate mountaintop or a land of impassable cliffs. Uh So, so there are different linguistic interpretations. But other commentaries have held that as Azel was a proper name, the name of a supernatural entity or power. And obviously this interpretation

is more relevant to what we're talking about today. In this reading, as a Zele is some kind of demon or fallen angel, a spirit of defilement and wickedness haunting the desert, and the goat on which the high priest places the sins of the people is sent out for him.

And so, despite the fact that in this ritual actually both the Lord and this demonic figure each get one goat, the scapegoat, the goat that carries the sins of the people away to meet a filthy devil in the waste land, I think might be the more salient image kind of in the same way that um, even in most early Christian literature that the into the idea of the afterlife, descriptions of hell tend to be more vivid than descriptions of heaven, just because of I don't know, certain features

of human psychology. Yes, as well, like I guess a lot of these traditions in which Hell is described to those descriptions, very descriptions of Hell are kind of the oftentimes one of the only available avenues into which into which you can pour your dark imagination. Um, if you want to, if you want to create paint devils and

demons and grotesque hybrids. Uh, there're certain approved areas of interest, generally religious or of certain later on in Western traditions, you know, the mythological realm uh In paint whatever you want, as long as you're you're depicting one of these stories. It's important to a given culture, right, Yeah, you could use the dark imagination for allegedly, at least the purpose

of discouraging sins, saying, look, what will happen to you? Uh. Though it's interesting you could argue that that's the same principle on which exploitation movies are made. It's like, well, we have important subject matter to talk about here. This is a film educating people about the dangers of of using marijuana. Uh, never mind that it's also just an excuse to show a bunch of debauchery and party scenes

and stuff. You know. The other thing about this scapegoat scenario, And I was thinking it kind of matches up with some stuff I was thinking about recently because I I started using a new meditation practice that that I was taught, UH called It's a bitch, rather simple, it's just called uh leaves them a stream where you take a particular thought and you sort of externalize yourself from that thought. You realize that you're thinking that thought, and you imagine

yourself at a stream. You imagine yourself taking that thought, placing it on the leaf, and letting it float down the stream away from you. And and that's all there is to it, you know. It's just it's a very simple exercise of removing yourself from a thought and then sending that thought away. Um, you know, not trying to avoid thinking that thought or avoid feeling that feeling, but acknowledging it and then letting it go. And I was and as I was after using it, and finding it

rather helpful. The last couple of weeks, I was thinking, well, I wonder how much of this is present in various religious practices throughout history. The idea, the simple concept of like acknowledging something and then sending it away. Uh, it seems like it in may line up in some ways with this sort of practice as well. Yeah, I can totally see that. Though. Again I think it's interesting the specifics of the imagery here, which is that the the goat is being sent away for as a zel for

this this demon in the desert. And you could obviously see how this standard tradition of yam Kapur could later give rise to a mental association between goats and the creatures of hell, because the goat is being sent out to meet this this devil. Yeah, what does he do with these goats? Does he? Did they just hang out with him? Did they morph into strange goat creatures? Does he eat them? Either way, it would make you maybe think twice about seeing a feral goat in the wild,

which is something to think about. I mean, even though these are domesticated species, you'll end up with feral goats out there, and I can imagine there might be something kind of haunting about a feral domestic species that you encounter. It's kind of like a ghost town or a haunted house. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I also want to be clear that the overall format of the scapegoat ritual is not

unique to Jewish tradition. The scapegoat rituals of various kinds are used in a number of ancient cultures, in many

instances not involving goats. For example, ancient Greece, I think, especially like like Athens and Ionia, would sometimes banish human scapegoats to appease the gods and avoid some kind of bad fates, such as in the festival of thar Galia, which was a festival of Apollo, where it said that often sort of a couple like a man and a woman who were despised in some way, or who were considered physically ugly or for some reason we're not wanted by the people, would be selected and then they would

be paraded around the town and they would be whipped with with branches, like branches of trees or pieces of vegetation that I think was supposed to symbolize a kind of transference of of guilt or or impurity of some kind from the people onto the couple, and then they would be banished outside of the city, exiled, presumably to die outside in the wilderness. Well, we're not we're not advising anyone try that out. What that that doesn't doesn't

just doesn't sound helpful to anybody. Uh No, I yeah, I think our gailea we can we can safely put to rest. Okay, I've got another biblical association between goats and sin or evil or impurity. This one comes from the New Testament. This comes from Christian traditions. Some people will probably be familiar with the story of the sheep

and the goats in the New Testament. One passage to zero in on here is in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, and for context, this is part of the so called olivet Discourse, which is a discourse in which Jesus is giving a bunch of teachings that are full of apocalyptic statements about what is going to happen when the Son of Man comes. And these appearing all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Luke, and Matthew. And they've

got different kinds of predictions. You know, there might be like earthquakes and disasters and uh and the destruction of the temple and so forth. But one of the things described happening when the Son of Man comes in glory, begins in Matthew chapter five, verse thirty one, And to quote from the in RSV, it reads, when the Son of Man comes in glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. I definitely remember growing up hearing this in church, and I mean on one level, it's like, okay, he's separating people like good from bad. But I never really understood like the sheep goat duality aspect of this. I'm I'm

kind of like, well, a sheep and a goat. I mean, I've been around both of them at petting zoos, and it's not like one is grosser than the other or anything, or that one sweeter than the other. They're both domesticated farm animals, and just one the goat has a lot more personality than the sheep. In my opinion, I remember being confused to It's actually one of a number of uh comparisons or parables or stories in the New Testament that kind of don't make sense if you're not familiar

with like an ancient agricultural context. Like tons of these stories are about agriculture, and like, I don't know what reaping and sewing are and stuff when I'm a little kid. I'm not a farmer, so I like, I don't know what to think about this stuff. But a lot of it ends up just being picked up anyway, and people are like, yeah, you want to be a sheep or goat? Of course you want to be a sheep. And you might go, yeah, of course I want to be a sheep. But then again you might ask, well, is there a

third option? Is there a farm animal I could be in this scenario? Well, as best I can tell, I think it is just a point of uh. The point is really about the separation. But to explain the rest of the story, So the sheep go on the right hand and the son of Man will bless them, uh, And they're gonna ask why are we being blessed? What did we do, and Jesus goes on for the to give these famous statements. He says, quote, for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and

you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me. And then they're gonna ask when did we do any of that? And then the Son of Man will say to them, truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. Uh. And then we get the same answer inverted for the goats at the left hand.

Why are they at his left because they didn't do any of that stuff for him? And they protest, well, they never denied him food or drink or comfort, and uh. Quote. Then he will answer them, truly, I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And then it says, and these will go away into

eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. So in this story, the sheep are representing the righteous who will inherit the Kingdom of God, and the goats are representing the unrighteous, who must depart into destruction to be annihilated when the Son of Man comes in power. And so I was thinking, why goats here? I didn't find an answer to this that I found super authoritatively convincing. I read one like evangelical theological blog post that had an

interesting idea. I don't know how valid this was, but at least it suggested that when you're maintaining mixed herds of goats and sheep, which I do think was actually common in the Levant at this time, goats reproduce faster than sheep, so herdsman would have to regularly call young male goats to maintain the correct balance of their flocks.

And if they didn't regularly call the young male goats, the goats would reproduce faster and they would take over there would be too many of them in the flock. M M okay, well that that that's that seems to match up with some of what we were talking about in the last episode about the sex life of the goat. But I would say the question of like, what is the underlying agricultural reasoning about the goats and the sheep. Here that may be true, but I don't know. I'm

still interested in this. I feel like there's got to be a good answer out there I just haven't found yet. Yeah, yeah, this is certainly if we have any people with with hurting experience or vaster hurting, acknowledge right in and let us know what that was a good reason to separate the goats from the sheep. Now, at this point, I thought we might get into some other examples of folklore of the goat and the he goat, and perhaps some

more religious traditions and mythological traditions of the goat. Uh. Some of these are going to match up and be more in line with some of the demonic goat ideas that we've discussed thus far. Some are going to go in an entirely different direction. We're gonna get a little bit into essentially divine goats at times. Uh. One example that came up in my research, this is from an eighteenth century folklore is by the name of John Brand.

Brand wrote, quote, there is a popular superstition relative to goats. They are supposed never to be seen for twenty four hours together, and that once in that space they pay a visit to the devil in order to have their beards combed. This is common both in England and Scotland. What I don't think I even understand what that's claiming? What? What is it? How did you understand the never seen

for twenty four hours together? This I took to to be about this sort of the nature of the goat, Like the goat is gonna get around, it's gonna explore, it's gonna climb a little bit, it's gonna poke around and see what's are available to eat. And therefore I'm imagining a herdsman might maybe have a little more of a time keeping track of the goats and it'd be like, well, I think one's missing, and then you find them and they're like, okay, now we have all the goats. I

wonder where that goat went. It's probably just the other side of the hill or was poking around under something. But what if it was visiting the devil? And what would a goat? I feel like there's kind of this. This is one of those folk beliefs that maybe as a little tongue in cheek, you know, like why would a goat actually go to the devil. What do they have that the devil can offer them? Well, their beards need combed every now and get that nice sheen. Uh. So,

I don't know. I found it. I kind of more amusing than illuminating. It's like when the dog just gets back from the groomers. It's it's the goat just comes back, but he's been with the devil. He looks luxurious. Yeah, I guess it's something about a domesticated species that it if it has a little bit of a it still has some of that adventurous spirit to it. You know, we often have uh, supernatural ideas about what it does and where it goes and what its intentions are, such

as with the cat. The cat is going to want to go off and do its own things. Where does the cat go? Uh? Well, what is it up to? Uh? That sort of thing? Now? An an interesting paper I was looking at is uh paper titled a Note on Goats Defoe on Crusoe's Devil from and this is by Aaron Santisso. Uh this of course is referring to Robinson Crussoe by Daniel Dafoe. Robinson Crusoe not a work that I think I've ever read um, but I've certainly I think seen various film or even cartoon at duptations of

it over the years. Maybe I read it in school, but it's been a very long time. I think when I was a kid, I had a children's abridged an adapted version of it, which is weird to think about. I think that may have been how I encountered it as well, But uh, this is still an interesting paper to to read. I didn't know they were I did not remember there being any goats in it, but but

that seems to be the case. The author here writes that by the eighteenth century, old goat and goat foot were popular euphemisms for Satan, and the devil was said to take the form of a goat, and the image of Satan was often depicted as that of a robed goat headed man. That kind of became the staple image.

But apparently yeah, to explain the title of the work, there is a bit in Robinson Crusoe where he encounters goats, and at the same time, Daniel Duffoe wrote an entire book on the perceived presence of Satan and global affairs. The political history of the devil from se Funny with that title, that could be either a really interesting book of historical scholarship or that could be a wild conspiracy tract. Yeah,

it's another work I've not I've not read. I only have just a a brief brief summaries understanding of it. But um, at any rate, I thought it was worth mentioning. Uh, real quick. A couple of goat man type creatures that seems related in some guise to the satyrs and the fonds that pop up in the encyclopedias of Carol Rose. There's the Bachman. This is a goatman of German folklore, used as a nursery bogey to keep kids away from the forest, so don't go near the forest and the

bachman might get you. And of course, in imagining a Germatic goatman, we of course can't help but think of the Crampus creatures as well. Oh yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna bring up cramp Us. But also as a brief refresher on on the idea of a nursery bogey, this was an idea we explored in our series on Jinny Green Teeth from a few October's back, which is a a famous nursery bogie. I think the concept of a nursery bogie is a monster that is specifically designed

to warn children away from some type of dangerous behavior. Yeah, and we actually mentioned nursery boggies in the last episode, uh, talking about Goya, Goya, You're talking about Goya and the one bit bit about the you know, watch out for the Boogeyman. It was both a It was a kind of a takedown of of parents engaging and supernatural ideas to scare obedience into their children and at the same time like preparing them for adulthood full of supernatural beliefs.

Another creature that Rose mentions is the Buka knock, which is described She describes as a quote a vast, menacing goat, and it's said to terrify travelers on lonely irish roads at night, which I think is interesting and makes me think of of the experience even today of encountering either a feral goat or a wandering goat on the roadside

and seeing it illuminated in your headlights. Obviously wouldn't be the same situation on lonely irish roads in in olden times, but still, perhaps if you had some sort of a lantern, and your your lantern light caught the eyes of the goat just right, might be a bit creepy. Now sticking to the British Isles for a minute, I came across an interesting goat related creature known as the Glystig or the Green Maiden, a malevolent fairy from Scottish Gaelic mythology.

According to the Oxford Reference Encyclopedia, this monster sometimes appears as a beautiful woman, but other times as a half woman, half goat, and she seduces a male victim, brings him, lures him to her hideaway near a secluded pool, and then when they are alone, she slashes his throat and drinks all his blood. And I thought this was interesting because it echoes the idea of goats as sort of a sexual danger in some way, except usually it's like the idea of a of a of a lusty higo

to that is that kind of mythological threat. Here, instead, it is a an evil fairywoman who seduces male victims. Interesting though it's also noted that in other variations, the glystick is not dangerous and is a helpful creature who protects children and the elderly. That's an interesting one. Yeah, I hadn't heard of that one. Now, in Norse tradition, we have a pair of giant goats that are rather famous.

They are tang Grishner and tan Groshner. There are two giant goats that pull the chariot of Thor across the skies in Norse mythology. I may have butchered their names a little bit, but they're Those are translated as tooth nasher and tooth grinder, and these are depicted in the latest Thor movie as well as screaming goats screaming like the goats from the internet video. Yeah, just screaming the whole time. It's pretty pretty music. There's some amusing stuff

in that film. Now, another creature I came across as the the Yale or syne Coore is the mythical beasts found in European mythology and ultimately European heraldry, described by plenty of the elder. Depictions vary from goat like to more of than more like an antelope, and the descriptions have been linked to varying creatures from distant lands. Uh So this is where we kind of get into we

We mentioned this in the last episode. When you're dealing with either mythological creatures, folkloric creatures, or accounts of actual creatures in distant lands, the translation of them may take on different forms that it might end up being a little more goat like, it might be more horse like. In there are examples where it might take on the

forms of other animals. Uh. You know. It reminds me too of of of Europeans going out into the world, uh, and discovering new fruits and thinking, oh, what kind of apple is this? Oh, we will call it the pineapple? Like, what kind of strange goat is this? We will interpret this idea of a new creature by using the goat as a base point. Now, another creature that I read about is the us lat a rog. This is a white,

golden horned goat in the traditions of Slovenia. And the basic idea here is that this is a fabulous I mean it's not only is it a big goat, almost like a ram like creature, it also has horns that are gold, presumably real gold. So of course hunters want it. Hunters go out, they chase it around. But this is a smart creature. This is a uh, this is a a savvy creature, and it may well lead you over

a ravine where you fall to your death. Um. The creature is also known as or as translated to just being called gold Horn, and it also seems to be the mascot of a Slovenian beer. So if if anyone out there is a fan of of international beers, or if you have any uh drinker of this particular beer, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. I looked it up on Beer Advocate. It has a score of seventy three there, which I guess that's okay. It says okay right here, okay, must be an okay beer. Rob,

I have had this beer? What well? I drank this when I was in Slovenia. Um. Yeah, so in Slovenia. I don't know if it's still this way, but when I was there, it seemed to me there were basically two types of beer. There was Union, which is spelled like the English word union, and there was Lashko and Uh. I recall thinking that it seemed like the bars were divided by which beer they sold. I don't know if

that's really true, but it seemed that way. To me, so you have like an Union bar and a Lashko bar, and it's like, do you want to go to the place that has Lashko or do you want to go to the other place? Uh? And for whatever reason, I ended up on the Lashco side, So I was drinking those. I think I only had a couple of Unions need never enough to fall into a ravine. That's the no. To be fair, I know I drank Loshko. I don't know if I if it was the slaughter rog Um variety.

I think it probably was because it looks like that's one of their their flagship beers, but I can't be positive it was. I mean, because it looks like there's also like just you know, Lashko light and stuff like that. But I think I had this one. I definitely had plenty of Lashko. Awesome. Well, I that's that's fabulous question answered. But then then, of course, if anyone out there has more experience with with this beer right in, let us know. Yeah,

I would appreciate it. Slovenian listeners. To clarify my memories, are there actually Lashko bars and Union bars or is that is that just all mixed up in my head? Another thing about drinking in Slovenia was I remember everywhere I went people would show up with wine in unlabeled jugs that just have these glass jugs of you because you had red wine and you had white wine. And it wasn't like, oh, yeah, it's this vineyard, this vintage is just to juggle wine. I don't know where it's from. Yeah.

And and travel. One of the many, the many things that's great about traveling is of course finding out what if there's a local drinking tradition, what is it? And if there is a local beer or a national beer, what is that. Not being a beer enthusiast, they all tend to kind of taste the same to me, but there's something that's kind of kind of fun about traveling to a place and then having the national beer of

that particular country. I also remember in Slovenia a very fruity type of liqueur called sleeve of its that I think the innkeeper where I stayed would would like give us in the morning. It's how you start your dead. Thank thank okay, I got another goat god type figure.

So in pre Christian Basque mythology of the Basque people, there was a deity known as Mari uh m a r i that was sort of a queen of the gods, a a supreme female deity uh in the in the Basque pantheon, and she would be depicted as like you know, flying around and through the air in a chariot, but

also sometimes as riding on a ram well. According to the Rutledge Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons by Manford Lurker, two thousand five, one of the representatives for the physical forms representing the power of the god or the goddess Mari is this figure called aker Belts, which means black billy goat. He he looks exactly how he sounds. He is a billy goat with a black coat. And this goat spirit is thought to be a protector

of people's flocks, of their livestock. Lurker writes quote people who want their animals to do well turned to him for help. In earlier times, a black billy goat was kept in the farm steading to protect the herd from plague and sickness. In the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, he was venerated as a god by witches and wizards sacrifices were made to him, and dance formed part of the

ritual in his honor. So Ocker Belts is cool. Acker Belts, we like it seems this is another example of a goat, a spiritual goat creature that is not a demonic at all from what I can tell, except maybe viewed you know, through like a hostile Christian lens on the Basque mythology. But within the Basque mythology, it seems like, yeah, this is just a this is a good thing that protects

your flocks. Yeah, I mean flock. The flocks are life. Yeah, this is this is something that it really has has also been a part of of all these episodes we've looked at, uh this Halloween season regarding domesticated animals. It's like these are the lifeblood of the people who raised them, and so threats to those at those animals, be they real threats or perceived threats or supernatural interpretations of threats. Uh, you know, it's it's it's serious business. Life and death

depends upon it. And this would be by no means the only mythological or spiritual goat form that is beneficent in nature, that is sacred or good or holy or considered so by the people who believe in it. Not all of the goat based mythical creatures are are malevolent

wild things that want to want to destroy you. Yeah, and this brings us to the sacred goats of China, and China we have in Chinese traditions we have at least one really special goat in the form of the z which you might think of as a kind of unicorn. I think this is word is often translated as unicorn um. Of course, if we've if we've discussed on the show previously in our episodes about unicorns. Even in Western traditions,

there's a lot of drift regarding the unicorn. So times the unicorn is more goat like, sometimes it's more horse like, and and it's often used in later in Christian traditions as um as as kind of an incarnation of Jesus. So so in these in many of these traditions, the unicorn is both goat like and christ like, which is in stark contrast to these demonic ideas concerning the goat.

So that's something that's worth keeping in mind as we go forward, is that you don't even have to remove yourself from Christian traditions in the West to find some examples of holy goats. Now with the z she here it it's essentially like a dark, shaggy goat or perhaps an ox. Again, we see this kind of a drift occur with any of these creatures, like is it does it have the body of a goat? Does it have

the body of an ox? I looked at various images of statues and depictions, and some of them I included a picture here of one for you, Joe, that I think looks very goat like, clearly has goat like legs, even its head is more fantastic. But then there's another one that looks very much kind of like a bulldog or like a cat. Uh So, it has a totally different morphology going on, at least to my non expert I.

But these are noble, divine creatures uh so. So Again, in that sense, they are more like the Western idea of the unicorn. I'm gonna say, at least for these two pictures you attach for me, these are good boys. These are good boys who deserves a good scratch. Now in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. Uh there is also the legend of the Five Goats, So This is a founding myth regarding the five immortals writing to the spot of the city's founding and bringing the knowledge of rice

cultivation there. And when the immortals leave, according to the myth, they left their goats behind, and these goats became the stones of the Dallas temple of the Five immortals there. And there is also in the in the city in Guangzhou, there's a splendid statue of the five goats atop a hill in this expansive garden in the city which which i've i have visited, and I actually marched to the top of this hill and got to see the statue of the goats. There included a picture here for you, Joe.

This is not my picture that you're looking at. There are a lot of images of this of the goat statues online, but it's quite quite splendid and again at the top of this hill in this enormous park beautiful. Now as a widely domesticated species, we of course find goats in Indian traditions as well. Um In Hinduism, a goat is the vehicle of both the fire god Agni

and sometimes the vehicle of the solar deity Pushan. The god Daksha has the head of a goat following his insult of Shiva and subsequent execution by the order of Shiva. But then Shiva shows mercy and allows Daksha to return to life with the head of the first living being he meets. Upon his return to life. That animal turns out to be a goat. So he didn't a generally have a goat head, he gets one. Okay, I see, yeah, yeah, he had a more I guess the human head, a

humanoid head. But then he lost that head because he earned himself beheading. But then the god shows mercy and says, all right, you can have your life back. You can have your head back, but it has to be the first head of the head of the first animal you see in the world. Is this is so he gets to go about with the goat head. Is this interpreted as a kind of curse or humiliation in the story

or or not so much? Um I'm not so sure about that, because you're getting into, I guess a deeper question of how the goat perceived in in in in in India and in Hindu culture. Um. I was reading about this particular tale in Nandita Krishna's Sacred Animals of India, and according to this author, the tale is often used to justify goat sacrifices, as Daksha was essentially the sacrifice of Shiva um, you know, albeit with a pre goat head,

and it's you know, execution and sacrifice. Trying to you know, draw parallels there. Goats are also a sacrifice to the mother Goddess, according to Krishna here and sometimes to Cali as well. Man, there is so much goat lore you could have an entire Wikipedia style goat database just for goat backstory, goat lore, goat mythology, Internet goat database. Yeah, yeah, I can see that working. I mean, there's just a lot of it. And I think it comes down to,

you know what we've been discussing here. It's just it has been such a part of human traditions for so long. We've spent plenty of time watching goats, comparing ourselves to goats, comparing our ways to the ways of goats, and then out of that all these various fanciful ideas emerge. Those ideas kind of uh then breed with each other, and uh we are left with all these interesting traditions of

of the divine, that the demonic UH, and everything in between. Okay, I think we have to call it for this episode, just for time, but we've got more goats stuff to talk about, that's right. We'll be coming back in the in the next episode with discussions of Egyptian traditions. UH. We'll get into occultism a little bit, goat intelligence, wars

on goats. There's a lot more to talk about, but certainly in the meantime, feel free to write into us, particularly if you have experience with any of the or or background in any of the traditions that we've discussed here and would like to share more about them. If you have personal experience with goats, if you have lived any part of your life among the goats, UH, you probably have insight to share and we would love to

hear from you. You can catch up on all our episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have our core episodes. On Wednesdays, we do a short form artifact or monster fact. On Monday's we do listener mail. On on on Fridays, we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film like The Devil Rides Out. So if you want some more discussion of goat people, I think that that may be

the only goat film we've watched. Perhaps your memories better than mine, and you can remember another goat that's popped up. That's the only one come to mind, But I don't know. Our back catalog is starting to get kind of long, so we're finally reaching the point where I am forgetting which movies we've covered. Yeah, I think this week's film will be the ninety film that we have looked at hum Weird House Cinema. It's been a wild ride so far, but we have miles to go before we sleep. A

wild goat ride in nowhere. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to shed some to to shed some light on goats, to share personal experience about goats, if you are a goat hurd yourself, or if you just want to get in touch and say hi, any of that's fair game. You can always write us at contact at

Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.