Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And hey everybody, I got to apologize right here at the start for my voice and my brain. Possibly today I am wrastling a pretty nasty cold, but we're plowing right through. And today we're going to be talking about a topic. We're actually returning to a topic we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the subject of sacred trees.
In that previous episode, Rob you talked about the giant's Equoia of western North America, arguably the largest tree in the world depending on how you measure, and we talked about the history of how people regarded these massive plants with reverence, and I ended up talking about the Ohia, the Hua tree of Hawaii, and a lot of interesting, beautiful ways that interlocks with Hawaiian religion and traditional practices. In some cases it's the physical embodiment of a god.
In other cases it's like a tree beloved by the gods in storytelling and so forth. But when we were researching that episode, we thought, man, there are so many interesting angles on sacred trees that we could come back to. So that's what we're doing today. Here's a new installment. I'm sure this is something we'll probably return to again in the future.
Yeah, and it's a good month for it, since we're into December here, and a lot of December holiday traditions center around a sacred tree. I guess one of the things I think we both encountered it in the last episode, especially in this episode. It's the thing about sacred trees is that it's never just a case of like, oh, well, you know, there's this tree around and at one point there's a group of people that thought it was sacred
and then they stopped. You know, No, the trees have been around a long time, and human cultures enter into these areas where these trees grow, develop these ideas about them, and build upon those ideas, pass them down, and the trees remain. And so you start pulling the threads on some of these beliefs, and you know, those threads connect across different peoples, you know, into neighboring territories and oftentimes there as far flung as a particular you know, it's
the range of a tree species itself. So before long you realize, oh, well, this isn't necessarily just a look at one particular tree and or one particular folk belief or mythology, but you can easily touch upon like a dozen different folk beliefs and mythologies concerning the same tree.
Mm hmm.
Which is to say, we're not going to pull all We're not going to pull all those those threads today. We're going to pull some of those threads and we're going to find some, I think, some very tantalizing, very interesting things to say about a couple of different topics related to sacred trees.
That's right. So to kick things off today, I wanted to explore something interesting I came across in a book. The book is called European Pageaganism The Realities of cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, originally published in the year two thousand. I think the edition I was reading was from maybe twenty thirteen, but from Rutledge Press, by an author named Ken Dowden, who was a professor of
classics at the University of Birmingham in the UK. This is a book about the religious practices of European cultures before the introduction of Christianity, and then also those pagan religions interacting with Christianity once it was introduced, and these religious beliefs and practices were, of course not all the same, though there are some themes that kind of emerge repeatedly, so you can kind of make some rough generalizations about
pre Christian European paganism, but they don't apply in every case. And one is that a lot of pre Christian European religions saw sacred dimensions in the features of the physical land, like rocks, waters, and of course trees, but there are many different ways to understand the sacredness of trees. Now Down And actually begins this section of the book with an ancient passage describing something that's a little bit of field, but I thought it was so interesting I wanted to
throw it in here. It's describing one way of showing appreciation for trees that's kind of hard to classify. It doesn't seem exactly right to call it a religious practice, but it definitely goes beyond like, oh, look at the poplars, they're so nice. This is a translated passage from Plenty the Elder that reads as follows on a hill called corney in the suburban part of the land of Tusculum.
There is a grove in ancient Reverence dedicated by Latium to Diana, And that would be by the way Diana, goddess of the hunt of wild animals in the moon, sort of a wilderness goddess. The ranger of the party plenty goes on. The foliage of the beech forest is sheared, as though by topiary. In it an exceptional tree was loved in our times by Passienus crisp Us twice Console, the orator, later more famous thanks to his marriage with Agrippina, through which he became the stepfather of Nero. He was
in the habit of kissing and embracing it. Talking about the tree kissing and embracing it, not only of lying under it and pouring wine over it.
Literal tree hugging here.
Yes, So this tree is interesting in the example here because it is in one sense a literal sacred tree. In a religious sense, it's part of an ancient sacred grove.
And I guess one thing we could talk about is a distinction between sacred trees, as in, like a type of tree or a tree species has a religious significance within a particular culture versus an individual tree like this tree right here has religious significance of some kind, versus a collection of trees have some kind of religious significance, A sort of expanded version of this tree right here,
this forest right here has significance. And there are a lot of those in pre Christian European religions, sacred groves, sacred forests throughout the continent. But so in this case, it is a particular sacred grove, a forest of beech trees that are in honor of the goddess Diana. So these are the trees of Diana, the goddess of the hunt. But this Roman politician isn't necessarily worshiping Diana. I don't know. Maybe he is, but it's not discussed in the passage here.
He's not just honoring the sacred forest as a whole in its relation to the goddess Diana. It sounds like he is in erotic love with one particular, very special tree. Hard to think of a parallel to this. I just thought I thought it worth mentioning. But anyway, from here, Dowbtan goes on to a section where he sort of thinks about the implicit logic of our relationship to trees, especially in our desire to think of them as persons, as like a symbol of a person, or as containing
the essence of a divine person. And he notes an interesting parallel between trees and humans which has been observed by a number of scholars of religion. It's not unique to this book, and that parallel is in the form of posture. Humans are mostly unique in the animal world for our verticality. What appears to physically differentiate humans from other animals is that we are a column, a standing straight up, compared to most other animals, which tend to
position their bodies in a more horizontal fashion. You can think of a few little counter examples here and there, but for the most part this does really hold true. Humans appear to be different from all other animals in that we stand straight up. And what makes a tree different from a bush or a shrub or lots of other plants is that it is also a tall, vertical column. It's true of both trees and humans that we take
the form of a vertical column. We grow taller as we age, and when we die, we fall down.
That's a good point.
Yeah, So with this kind of knowledge just sort of operating in our minds all the time, it seems very natural to think of the tree as the sort of human analog within the alien kingdom of plant life, except, of course, trees grow much larger than humans, and are much tougher than humans, and often live for hundreds of years, so in a sense, you can think of them as
something that has always been here. So it's I think quite natural to start thinking of them as like super humans, super persons, they are gods.
Yeah, yeah, these are great points. Yeah, it stands tall like a human, it has the verticality, and then you know, lives before and after us and on this different time scale than we are.
So that's just sort of one theory as to why we're sort of primed to see godhood in the form of trees. But Doubtan also emphasizes that many trees are integrated into religion not simply by their nature, not by being trees, but in a specific sense by being connected directly to myth or to history, as in like this plane tree at Delphi was planted by Agamemnon and that's why it's special. Or when Io was transformed into a
cow by hera and tied to a tree. It was this olive tree right here, or this tree was the source of heracles first oak leaf crown, or this tree is where Helen of Troy was hanged after she fled to Rhodes. So in those cases you might say that these physical existing trees are sacralized by way of intersections with stories, and whether those are like sort of founding ethnic stories, like founding histories of a people or a nation,
or myths about the gods. On one hand, you have a physical object that is right here here, right now, this tree we're all looking at. And on the other hand, you have the story we all know. And so by connecting the to the tree, the physical object makes the story more real, and the story makes the physical object more meaningful.
Yeah. Yeah, Like eventually we'll come around to talking about the body tree in this series. The body tree, of course, in Buddhist traditions, is the tree under which the Buddhist sat when he attained enlightenment. You know, it is the place where it happened. Yeah. So yeah, we see versions of that in various different myths and religions.
But one example I really wanted to focus on for a minute because I thought it was so interesting. Was something Dowdin brings up in this chapter, that is the idea of a sacred tree struck by lightning. Dowtan writes that the ancient Romans had a practice of enclosing a tree after it was struck by lightning, so like after a tree was hit by lightning that it would be
subject to a type of sacrificial or religious immurement. The enclosure for a tree would sometimes be what this author identifies as a putel put e a l pleural would be puutealia, which usually refers to a well head. So this would be the raised stone structure around the opening of a water well. Now, in the case of a water well, usually you have a wellhead raised in part to prevent the well from simply being a hole in the ground that people can fall into. You know, it's
like a wall for safety. In ancient Rome, these well heads were often made of marble and decorated with carvings or with bas relief. I've got a picture from a well head in Venice for you to look at here, Rob, so you can see, you know, it's a there's a cap on it right now. I think it's a it's an iron cap. I don't know what the original material of the cap would have been, possibly iron, you know, hundreds of years ago or thousands years ago as well.
But in this case, you know, you could open it up and imagine looking down into the well, but then down on the wall around it, we've got I don't know, some kind of creepy dancing god babies who are thrown around some What do you think that is? Is that grape leaves or olives or something.
Yeah, some sort of like wreaths and leaves.
Yeah. But as Dowdan says in this chapter, sometimes a poutel would be built not around a water well, but around a tree or really any spot that had been touched by a bolt of lightning. So a lightning kissed location like this was called in Roman times a bidental. And I was reading about this in an older source from the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by William
Smith from the nineteenth century. This reference book goes into sources from ancient history describing what the bidental was and what its religious significance was. And so it says that the bidental was named after the fact that a you would sacrifice a sheep here after lightning struck it would be a two year old sheep called a biden, which means two tooth by DN like dental, and the sequence
would go like this. So lightning strikes somewhere and people witness it, and whatever was struck, be that a tree or a person or just the earth, whatever is there is buried, in some cases burned, in other cases not burned, but is buried by priests in the ground in that very spot. So if you get struck by lightning and killed in ancient rome where these bidental priests are operating, you are not Your body is not transported to a cemetery and is not cremated. You are buried in the
spot where you fell. And then the two year old sheep is sacrificed and added to the lot. And then that spot is in some sense sort of walled off from human contact. It is capped with an altar and then enclosed in some way by a fence or in some cases by a poutel a marble wellhead, and thereafter it is made taboo. No one may walk there, no one may touch it, no one may even look at it.
And if a person were to violate this taboo, like to remove the well head or the altar, or in some other way violate the prohibition against treading there they would be subject to swift, violent punishment by the gods, and this connects to the original action there. Lightning was often thought to be the weapon of the gods in ancient Rome, particularly of Jupiter, so a place struck by lightning was both terrifying and holy. It was a sacred point of connection with divine power and a conduit of
divine wrath. So as one example of a pouteal which may once have covered a tree made wholly by lightning, Doubtan mentions a fi tree attested in ancient sources in the area of the Committium of Rome. The Committeum is an ancient public meeting space in the city center, and this fig tree was known as the Picus romanaalis, which literally means the ficus of suckling, though experts apparently debate whether that's its original meaning or how it should be understood.
But there are actually a couple of sacred objects said to be in the vicinity here. One thing is this tree, the Ficus roominalis, but there is also a stone which was said to have been cut in half with a razor by the ancient Roman augur Attus Navius, and the story goes that he cut the stone in half in a display of his powers when he is in the middle of rebuking a legendary king of Rome who was
sort of arrogantly trying to expand his own glorification. ADUs Navius was rebuking him and saying, like, you go to far king, and in their conflict, He's like, I better show how strong my divinatory skills are and the kind of power I can command. So I'm going to cut a stone, cut a wetstone in half of the razor.
Oh wow, I guess it worked.
It did, according to the story. So you've got this split stone here, and then you've got the ficus tree. And here Doubdan again quotes a passage from Plenty the Elder describing the site of the tree and the sliced rock.
So Plenty in translation rites a fig tree growing in the actual Forum and Committium of Rome is revered sacred because of the lightning bolts buried there, and still more to commemorate the fig tree under which the nurse of Romulus and Remus first sheltered those founders of empire at
the Loopercol. It is called Ruminalys because it was beneath it that they found the she wolf offering her rumas that is what they used to call abreast to her babies, miracle commemorated nearby in bronze, as though the wolf had of her own accord, crossed the Committeum while adis Navius was acting in his role as auger. Nor is it without significance when it dries up and must, through the
efforts of the priests, be replaced. So I thought this was interesting in that the way Plenty tells the story, the way he understands it, at least this fig tree is in part sacred because of an intersection with legend. Like we mentioned earlier, you know, so you know, much like you might say this tree was planted by Agamemnon, in this case you would say this tree is the site where Romulus and Remus were nursed by wolf Mother.
And then also by proximity to the site where adas Navius split the stone, that's another connect intersection with legend. But then, according to Plenty, it's also sacred because lightning bolts are buried beneath it. And then here Doubtan also mentions a possible connection of the legend of the ficus from Analys to the interesting sort of botanical fact that the fig tree produces a sap like secretion, which I believe is part of an anti predator strategy that is
said to look like milk. So, like you, if you wound a fig tree, the ficus will will leak out this white milky substance that is said to be quite bitter and I think is supposed to deter things from munching on it.
Yeah, yeah, we used to have a fig tree, and yeah, I can attest to this.
And so Doubtan's saying, you know, so you have a place where, according to these ancient texts, you have a stone which is interesting because of its shape, it's like a split stone. And then you also have a tree which has interesting sort of biological features. This tree appears to leak milk and then can be kind of attached to myths, and so he writes, quote the tree is tended and when necessary renewed by the priests. If it
is surrounded by a poutel. Then originally this may have been understood as a place where lightning had struck and the wetstone, that's the stone that was apparently split in the story, the wetstone might have been considered a thunderstone.
Wow, this is this is all really fascinating and fascinating to me, especially when you think about the idea that like the world tree and myth is often situated as this thing that connects Earth to the heavens and lightning as well. Is this momentary connection between Earth and heaven that leaves like a physical sign, you know, we see it and then we can if we can find where
it hit. We have evidence of this contact between like lightning and the earth, between the storm clouds and the earth, but on another level, between the divine and the mundane world totally.
And you know, one thing I like is the kind of ambiguity of the is this good magic or bad magic? The way you know that you can have a place where a tree is struck by lightning and it becomes in some sense sacred, But it seems to me rather there's a kind of ambivalence like is this a place that is cursed and dangerous and will hurt you, or is this a place that is in some way blessed and is showing off the power of the gods or God's power in a way that can be celebrated and sacralized.
There's almost kind of a U curve, right, It's like this, the place is so sacred or it is so cursed that it essentially amounts to the same thing, and then that is no trespassing. Sorry, you can't visit, you can't touch it. Well, that is all really fascinating. And another cool thing is that it does lead directly into the tree that I'm going to talk about here, the Rowan tree.
I've looking at several different sources on this, one of which was I didn't spend a lot of time with this source, but there was an older article titled The Full Floor of Trees by Lizzie M. Hadley. This was published in the Internal of Education back in eighteen ninety four, and this very short, little kind wordy right up, touching
on various sacred ideas of trees. But the Rowan tree is mentioned in passing and just a few ideas connected to it or thrown out, including the idea in some European traditions that the tree grew from a place where lightning struck. That's like the origin of this tree.
That would be interesting in the So remember the phrasing plenty uses is that lightning bolts are buried there where the tree is, so it's like when lightning hits the ground, it's almost like a seeding of the ground, like it plants something when it hits. And so you could imagine, well, if what it's planting is some kind of seed, what grows it could be a type of tree, that's right.
So why did I pick the Rowan tree? Well, I recently had the opportunity, in the privilege, to go on a little tour of Whales with my family, and I was enraptured by the haunting beauty of its rolling hills, these dramatic valleys and in some cases hilltop ruins of which there are ghost stories about. So I thought, well, I should I should cover a tree that is sacred
within Welsh traditions. There's obviously going to be a lot of overlap with other sacred trees in the British Isles and and so forth, But yeah, I wanted to pick something that had significance in Wales. And I realized I was already talking a little bit about Welsh tradition and mythology and the monster fact. And I should go ahead and drive home if anyone's not familiar Whales as a
country in western Great Britain. It is part of the United Kingdom, but it boasts its own distinctive culture and language. We've touched on Welsh Welsh mythology before, which of course shares various ideas with other cultures of the British Isles. But I don't know if we'd really if we've ever really stopped to just talk about the idea of Wales in Welsh tradition and Welsh language in any degree of detail. Maybe, And I forgot about it, but I just wanted to
bring it up again. So again. It's the rowan tree or sorbus occuparia, also known as the mountain ash, though it is not closely related to either true ash trees or a particular tree. This is Eucalyptus regnuns. This is the plant that you find in Australia, so obviously a good ways away from Whales in Europe, but that one is sometimes called a mountain ash, but it is not related to the tree we're talking about here. No, the rowan tree is actually a tree or shrub of the rose family.
Oh I didn't know that. Yeah.
So according to the UK's Woodland Trust, which is a nice little overview about the species here, a rowan tree can reach heights of fifteen meters or nearly fifty feet in height. The trees bark is smooth and silvery gray and leaf the leaf buds are purple and hairy. I included a close up image here for you, Joe. But out there, if you do a search you can find like rowing tree buds. You'll see these. And yeah, it has this as is often sometimes the case with like
the little details, especially with budding of trees. You know, there's almost like a velvety appearance to it. It almost doesn't look like tree flesh, but more like, you know, it's like part of a deer growing out of the tree or something.
I was gonna say, like like a little fallen's ear. Yeah.
Now, when the leaves leaves develop, it's gonna have the serrated leaflets and groups of five to eight. It produces white flowers which, following pollination, develop into vibrantly scarlet berries. Sometimes I've seen various photographs and of course you know color, you know, details of color kind of bury depending on the exact photography in question. But yeah, sometimes they look more scarlett, sometimes they look a little more orange, but it's a vibrant color, and yeah, you can get into
a discussion about it. What is red, what is orange? Anyway, At any rate, it's bright. It catches the eye, and that's going to be important as we proceed. And how long do they live? Well, a rowan tree apparently can live for upwards of two centuries according to the Woodland Trust, though a source I'm going to side in a minute put it more at about one hundred and fifty years. But at any rate, you know, not the longest lived tree by any stretch, but still they tend to live
longer than humans. So they still have that kind of like you know, mythic connotation. They stand outside of our short time on.
This earth, always been here.
Yeah, So they're native to the cooler parts of the northern hemisphere, mostly western and northern UK. That's or at least that's one of the key areas where they grow, and that's where we're going to be talking about here. So you'll find them not only in Wales, you'll find them in the highlands of Scotland, and they're they're pretty far flung. Another source I was looking at was a
journal of ecology right up on the species. This was by all Olivier rasp at All titled just Sorbus Occuparia l And this article pointed out that one of the British isles, you know, are certainly a place where you can find them. They're present through most of Europe, from Iceland to northern Russia, though not into Arctic Russia, down into Spain, Portugal, Italy, Macedonia, and it seems limited by poor drought tolerance and a necessity for a short growing
season and a cold requirement for the bud burst. This source, also, this is the one that puts the age at more of like a one hundred and fifty year range, So I'm not sure if it's one fifty or two hundred. You know, it depends. I guess you know where you want to fall on that. But it's also been pointed out that the sorbus species here seems to have perhaps
originated in Southeast Asia and gradually spread. Now, another interesting thing to think about trees in terms of you know, having a sacred nature is that, of course we make use of trees. We do think with trees trees, you know, produce wood that we may use for various purposes depending on the quality of the wood. They produce leaves, they produce berries, they produce flowers, and so forth. So they are also this like font of materials that we might
make use of. And I guess you don't always know exactly how that's going to fall. Like, you know, there are plenty of examples of cultures where the things that make the mundane world possible are in and of themselves sacred, you know, be it a food product or whatever. Like, just because you interact with it every day, it doesn't mean that it can't be sacred. It may be very sacred within a tradition because it is part of your survival.
M m.
Yeah.
But then of course our lives are full of things that we don't really give sacred connotations to because they are just part of the mundane world. So what do whom humans use it for? Well, the wood of the rowan is usable. Apparently it's hard and tough, but not super durable. And my understanding of this is that basically it means you maybe wouldn't want to build a house out of it or use it for like really like high stress situations.
You wouldn't build a car out of it?
Well, yeah, I guess so. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's not like it's super fragile like, because because you can make furniture out of it, craft works and even tools, you know, So it's like, I guess it's you know, it's not so fragile that you couldn't make a tool out of it. But just again, I guess maybe not a house, though perhaps there are examples of such usage as well. But that's that's what the sources were saying.
And as far as the berries go, I think we were talking off Mikey earlier you asked me, well, can people eat the berries? Apparently, so now I want to add the caveat here. Anytime we're talking about eating berries, please do please do additional research before you eat berries.
But my understanding is that they are edible for humans, but they are quite tart, and that means that jam is one of the most common culinary uses of the berries, you know, So, you know, typical jam making scenario usually there's a lot of sugar added or some sort of sweetener added. There's a you know, a reduction taking place, so there are a lot of steps in place to take something that is otherwise quite tart and make it consumable and you know, and appealing to the human power.
So cooked rowan thumbs up, raw rowan question mark, right.
But on the other hand, the sources I was looking at, they did say that, you know what they've the rowan berries have long been a part of the human diet. There's evidence from like southern Sweden from around six thousand years ago that that gives us evidence that, yeah, like
people have been eating the rowan berries. So as to I didn't get into details about, you know, ancient preparations of rowan berries, if they were cooking them or if they were just eating them raw, But it seems like when you get into more modern uses, and not even just modern, but like you know, last several centuries, people we're generally talking about taking the rowan berries and doing some sort of culinary preparation to get them to a
place where we enjoy them. Yeah, And sadly, I did not know to look out for rowan jam while I was in Wales, so I don't know if it's something I could have purchased or tried if i'd been looking for it. I did a quick look around the internet, and I'm not even sure you can get it in the States, So I'm not sure. If you have tried Rowan jam and or you are familiar with all the things you can do with Rowan Berry's, do reach out
to us. Email us. We'll have that email at the end of this episode, and we will gladly share your Rowan Berry experience in a future edition of Listener Mail. Hey.
In fact, this connects to a project that's been on my mind lately. I have never made jam at home, but for some reason, I've got a hankering to make homemade raspberry jam. Not exactly sure why, but it's in my mind and it's not going to leave until I do it. Jam makers, right and let us know what are your tips? How do you make the best jam?
All right now? According to rasp in that paper I referenced earlier, if you if you look around in Poland, the fruits there are used to flavor vodka. Now, another source I was looking at does mention a Welsh spirit. This is in a book titled Rowan by Oliver Suffel three. This is a a erecton book. I think they have a number of books related to different species reference to at least one of these, a book on squid in
the past on the show. But there's apparently a traditional Welsh spirit called di od grioval and this was made by steeping crushed rowan berries in water. Though I have to add here nobody offered me did grioval while I was in Wales. They offered me beer, they offered me cider, but they did not offer me this. So if you have experience with this spirit, do reach out to us
on this matter as well. All right, So there's a ton of more botanical information we might get into with the tree, that is, you know, ultimately this is far flung and there are a lot of cultural interpretations of the plant that we're not going to get into because we're dealing with so many different cultures across a considerable
period of time here. But one of the really interesting things about them is about that the tree itself is that it is considered a sacred tree, and it's considered a sacred tree not only in Wales but throughout the British Isles and of course into Europe as well. Mainland Europe. The berries seem to be a key part of the tree's sacred appeal, that bright color, that red, that scarlet, sometimes looking more like a deep orange in some of the photos I'm looking at. At any rate, this is
a color that stands out. It catches the eye, and we know that it resonated with people in this part of the world going way back. In fact, this is something that Suthil brings up in his book. You know, if we look to the Red Lady archaeological coal find, we see the importance of the color red. This is something that actually came up during my tour. This is an Upper Paleolithic partial male skeleton that was found buried in Whales and the bones are dyed not with rowan
berries but with red ochre. But it does give it this red coloration. Is the remains I believe are dated to about thirty one thousand BCE. And Sethil here inciting this, says that it stands as quote indication of the early sacramental importance of the color red in northern Europe. So just a little taste of the importance of red in the region. Though I think we can all sort of speak to the experience of seeing red, you know, as if we see red in nature, it stands out to us.
It calls to us. It is communicating something to us, certainly about the natural world, but perhaps about the unseen world as well.
It's a high salience color in nature, as opposed to you know, your your browns and greens, which are more kind of background.
Yeah, and so in Wales and throughout the British Isles, one of the most widespread folk traditions concerning the rowan is its ability to keep evil away, particularly certainly in later interpretations getting into the Christian era, is the idea that it will keep away witches and it will stand as a deterrent to witchcraft. So it has a long standing role in protective magic amulets made out of rowan or somehow incorporating rowan wood or other elements of the tree.
These have been employed as charms against witchcraft, though ironically it Seltal points out this was itself considered witchcraft by the Church, you know, the so you get this weird, you see this of course, you know, all over where the Christian Church was also dealing with, you know, folkloric traditions and over pagan religion religious ideas is that they're warning them about the dangers of the devil. And then
they're like, well, this devil thing seems pretty serious. Of course, I'm going to use all the tools in my toolbox. And then the church is saying, no, not all the tools, only the tools.
You could hear this reminds me of In October, we did a couple of episodes about the demons of ancient Mesopotamia, and we were talking about the demon Pizzuzu, which features in the story The Exorcist, of course, written from a Catholic Christian Catholic perspective in which this demon is sort of the devil, one of the denizens of Hell, a servant of Lucifer. But in fact, looking into it, we found that Pazuzu was often used as a protective entity
against worst demons in ancient Mesopotamia. So yeah, yeah, one person's guardian angel is another person's devil, I guess.
So yeah, it's it's worth driving home there. Apotrobic magic is ancient. It has been a part of human culture since time. Out of mind and of the use of rowan based apotropaic magic also naturally predates Christianity in the British Isles, but it comes into sharp focus according to southhal during the Age of the Reformation, solidifying in this perceived modern struggle between the Christian faithful and which is
in league with the devil. And of course we've talked about like the witchcraft persecution before, and it is interesting how, you know, it's easy to think about witchcraft persecution. You think Monty Python, the Holy Grail, you think firm Middle Ages, and a lot of what we talk about when we talk about the persecution of quote unquote witches, and which often boiled down to the persecution of non Christian ideas, of people who didn't fit in, of women in general.
This was largely more of a of a Renaissance idea. You can really, you know, tease that apart in various ways. But you know, it is the it's not so much, you know, to use a popular description, it's not so much a part of the demon haunted world, but is the world is illuminating and there's a need to find those demons again, like it like no, there's less darkness, there's less place for me to imagine the demons, and I need to see them. You know. Anyway, we could go on and on about that.
Or you could see it as a kind of lashing out an attempt to get control during times of disruption and disorder, which you know is certainly going on in Europe during the Reformation. You know, there's so there's undermining of the traditional dominant institution. There are schisms and factions and wars that follow, and and you know, there's all the kind of chaos that comes with that, and people are trying to get control and they demonize somebody to make sense of everything.
Yeah, and and then on another level, it's worth noting that, Okay, so it comes into sharp focus here in and certainly there's a lot of writing for this time period that references it as people were using rowan then as an ambulant against the devil and or which is in the surface of the devil. But of course again it's an
old practice. People are pulling out old practices even as this you know, modern threat is explained to them, and in you know, in the pre in pre Christian times and even into Christian times of course, because you know, different belief systems can can and often do stand alongside each other. It's not always devils and witches you're trying to keep it bay. Sometimes, of course, it is the fairy folk. Uh, you know, the the original unseen threats.
And you know, we talked in our episodes from I think what the year before last, we talked about elfshot. We talked about the idea that the uh that these invisible folk are out there potentially targeting your cattle, your livestock with invisible missiles that will make the sick. And so there's this long standing tradition then of using rowan to ward off not only magical harm to your home or you know, your family and so forth, but to
prevent magical harm to your live stock. And not only live stock, but you're like your milk, animal products that might be corrupted by the invisible fairy folk, that they might harm like the crucial element in the milk and either make the milk bad, you know, or not nutritious, or make butter making impossible, all due to magical attack.
I recall passages about this in The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fawns and Fairies, which if you've never looked into that, that's a great cool historical book. It's from the late seventeenth century, sort of an anthropological study done by a Scottish priest named Robert Kirk. Is from the sixteen and he went out and like talked to people about what
they believed about, like elves and fairies and stuff. And I recall a concern of it being that elves were gonna We're gonna come make your cow's milk sour.
Yeah, yeah, And and that means, you know, not only might they make the milk taste bad, they might like destroy something very beneficial about it, and they might prevent you from using it in other products and so forth. So it's like it's, you know, seen as a sensitive time right after the milk has been collected, and yeah, you have to you have to apply these protections, and that might mean rowan wood, rowan berries, and so forth. By the way, reading about this was also pointed out.
This is in the Sulful book, but I've seen this else pointed out elsewhere as well. Is that if you take a rowan berry, you pluck it from the tree, and you look at where the stem was attached, you will see what is sometimes described I think, I think a very with a fair amount of flourish as a cross. It's not really cross. It looks more like a star. I've also seen it described as being pentagram like, again,
vaguely like a star. I think it's maybe a stretch to say it looks like a pentagram, but still I guess it does have a novel shape. I don't know. I think we see this in a lot of berries and fruits and so forth.
I've never looked at one myself, but you've got the pictures here, and I'm looking at a five pointed star. Yeah.
Yeah, Well when I look at it next to an image of a pentagram has presented here, I'm like, Okay, I guess I can see it. But all of this, you know, all of this energy around the row in these traditions of the rowan tree having some sort of sacred protective property to it, this continues again to hold sway during Christian times and in Rowan trees were then planted, for instance, in Welsh graveyards and church yards to ward
away evil. And this is another case where I wish I had known to look out for one of these trees, because I got to roam around in a way Elsh graveyard at one point and it was, you know, it was very it was, it was very neat. I was looking at frozen spiderwebs. That was pretty fascinating. But I didn't know to look for these treetes. So maybe there was one there doing all this protective work and I
just didn't know about it. The Woodland Trust website also points out that they're often situated in front of homes in Ireland, and then in various traditions where you want to protect that milk, you might have some sort of an implement made from rowan wood that is used to stir the milk, so like a direct interface between the sacred wood and the substance you were trying to protect from the fairy folks. Interesting, yeah, to prevent the milk
from curdling for example. Also the Woodland Trust website mentions the idea of also having a pocket charm made from rowan wood to protect against rheumatism. So you know, there are various uses for it, also using it to make divining rods, so you know, you can get into various
examples of where the wood is used. Maybe it's used in a tool to make a tool, and maybe that tool is you know, less a practical tool and more of a supernatural tool to you know, find things hidden in the earth, or to magically stir your milk to protect it. I guess one of the other things worth noting about the row and tree, though, we need to start talking about, like where it's planted and it's protective properties.
Is that again, it is a it's a widespread tree, and it is widely planted they point out as a street or garden tree. So there are gonna be plenty of examples where a rowan tree is just around and it doesn't mean that someone's you know, protecting the local coffee shop or gas station. There just happens to be a row and tree there. So I don't know. I guess one has to avoid getting two into the idea
of them being planted strategically to protect against evil. But on the other hand, it does seem like it was, at least in some instance definitely planted as a form of protective magic.
Oh, it couldn't hurt. I mean, you don't want to be at the gas station and have an elf shooting in and souring your gas exactly.
And I also want to throw this out just a quote provided direct quote about the consumption of rowan berries. The Woodland Trust does right quote. Rowan berries are edible to humans when cooked. They are sour but rich in vitamin C and can be used to make a tart jam. So I'd say, let's let's leave it at that. Then that sounds okay, that's that sounds it sounds good to me. Look up how to cook rowan berries before you eat them?
And then I should also point out, I mean, there are obviously we don't have time to go into all of this, but I was reading a little bit about how there also are medicinal properties to the berries often used as is like a laxative usages like that. So there are going to be various traditions in these different European cultures that also involve uses for rowan berries and so forth, they're going to help with some sort of ailment.
So again we get into the idea of that the sacred tree is this thing that may have you know, symbolic power, but then also it has these various you know, mundane uses that may also take on qualities that are sacred. It may have medicinal uses that could also take on qualities that are sacred as well.
Can't think about the word rowan without thinking about the name rowan. Can't think about the name Rowan without thinking of who am I going to say? Am I going to say? The mister bean guy. No, I'm thinking of the wicker Man. That's the name of the kid that the detective is looking for.
Oh well, that that I haven't looked into it, but that that can't be an accident, right, I mean that seems like that. That seems like a film that was very concerned with folkloric traditions and so forth.
So be a mighty coincidence. Yeah, the kid wasn't named like Bill.
We may have to come back to the Wickerman on Weird House Cinema at some point. That's that's a that's a big one.
That's a favorite at our house.
Yes, that's the full car Royalty right there.
There's a lot of great Christopher Lee out there, but that is peak Christopher Lee.
All right, Well, we're I'm gonna go ahead and close out this episode. Again, this is a series we'll likely come back to in the future. We already have some notes about some other Sacred Trees, so you'll be on the lookout, and if you have any suggestions for future Sacred Tree episodes right in let us know. Likewise, as we said, if you have experience with anything we discussed in this episode of or feedback on it, we'd love
to hear from you. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you are on Instagram and want to follow the show, find us at STBYM Podcast.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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