The Cauldron, Part 2

on sacred and supernatural characteristics in various traditions. Um. But for the most part, we we talked about soup technology, which in and of itself is pretty fascinating. Yeah. We pondered the foggy distant prehistory of salmon soups in Japan. Yeah. So a lot of this episode is going to look at the cauldron in Chinese traditions and in Chinese history and mythology. So in Chinese culture and history, the ancient cauldron is known as the ding a cooking cauldron with

two looped handles and three or four legs. The three legged ones tend to have a more of a circular pot, while the four legged ones tend to have a rectangular pot and appear more like what we might think of as a chest or something in Western traditions, it's maybe a little less recognizable as a cauldron if you're basing your expectations just on cauldrons in Western traditions. Yeah, it made me wonder, like, wait a minute, why are pots

always round? I mean, they don't have to be. So this is a pot that's that's got corners and it looks like something that link would pop open and pull a treasure out of. Oh it's the hook shot. Yeah. Well, I mean these are ultimately artifacts that have a number

of supernatural associations with them. But in terms of actual Chinese cauldrons or ding that have survived, uh, for instance, one example of that that that came up in my researches from the Warring States period around from around four thirty three b c e. Found in the Lego Doun tombs in central China. Upon its discovery, it still had ox bones inside it and soot on its base, meaning that it was apparently used for cooking, perhaps as part

of a funerary feast. It was made of bronze and also included lifting hooks and a ladle lifting hooks, Does that mean something you'd like put some some hooks in to move it out of the fire. Correct in this In this case, now, when we get into later discussions of of cauldrons, you also get into the idea of flesh hooks for your cauldron. They have to do with the obviously, for the manipulating of flesh. Uh, you know, some sort of meat that you're cooking inside of said cauldron.

But these I believe, Yeah, we're just to to move the cauldron around while it was heated. Okay, So a cauldron, we know, can be used for the chores that sustain everyday life, cooking food and washing and so forth. But in Chinese traditions, cauldrons have a much more culturally and religiously charged significance. Even though they could be used for those same mundane tasks, they might also decide the very

fate of your existence. That's right, and and uh and and I do want to stress that a lot of this will also end up lining up with traditions in the West as well, that we'll get into much later. But but yeah, this this thing that for all intents and purposes, is about heating water for soup or maybe for laundry or something like that ends up taking on greater significance. So in Chinese tradition, the ding became associated with power and landownership, and it was used not only

for food production and also for oridge. It was also used to make sacrifices to the gods. And the idea of gods here might also well include ancestral spirits, right They're sort of a blurring of the distinction there that, like appeasing one's ancestors, was believed to play a role

in determining your fortune. Right now. One of the sources I was looking to for for this episode is an article titled Visions of Hell in Asia from eighteen published in the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia by scholar Paul Morabel, and in it the author writes, quote, in ancient China, the cauldron was the alchemical recipient par excellence for the sacrifices animals and humans required in order to transmute them into immortal creatures when mixed with certain

minerals and metals. Now, I want to stress that he's he's talking very broadly here. This is not to imply that all of these various cauldrons, including the specific one I just mentioned, was used for any thing like human sacrifice. But of course human sacrifice is something that one encounters, uh in the ancient traditions of of every human culture.

Just about so. But yeah, this idea that we we touched on very briefly in the last episode, that what is a cauldron, what is a cooking pot, but other than something that transforms one thing into another state, Right, so, it might transform a say, a tough piece of game meat into a nutritious broth and a much more tender piece of meat. And it might transform various ingredients living and dead into a bunch of fumes, a pillar of smoke, or a burnt offering that would be seen as pleasing

to the gods or to one's ancestors. Correct. Now, when it comes to the sacred thing, there is like we mentioned earlier, it also has this this this prestige with it. It signifies power, and it can also signify divine right of rule. And in this there's no greater example than the nine cauldrons of You the Great. Now we've discussed You the Great before and stuff to blow your mind, as he as the legendary Um ruler of the Shia dynasty of the second and third millennium BC, born um

from the belly of his father's corpse. He said to have quelled the great floods and established dynastic rule in China. His control of the flood is attributed differently in different tales, but I think we can summarize it as entailing the defeat of monsters, the possible prometheum, theft of the sacred self, renewing soil from the gods, the help of various gods, and also the use of damn and irrigation technology. So

he's you know, he's a culture bearer. And oh, he's also said to have measured the earth, and in some accounts he stands eight feet tall. But the other feet attributed to you the great is that he also cast the nine cauldrons upon rising to power as young and in Turner discussed in the Handbook of Chinese Mythology quote, those cauldrons had the divine function to teach people to distinguish between faithfulness and treachery, and to keep evils and

demons from harming people. So they were treated as national treasures and I believe it's uh that this story is related to the idea that the cauldron itself is a sort of symbol of power, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, like that in the literal sense that you would have to be a rich and powerful person in ancient China to own one or more of these cauldrons, and also that the cauldron was kind of like a

symbol of someone's power or political dominance, right, right. And in this case, they're they're nine of them because they were nine cauldrons for the nine provinces, but then nine also had um cosmologically important connections as well. There's also this tradition of saying that the nine cauldrons uh sometimes are scattered and lost and uh, and it was said that whoever wished to claim imperial power and reign by the mandate of heaven would need to collect all these

nine cauldrons. Yeah. I think I recall reading somewhere that there's an expression means something like seeking after cauldrons or something that means like ambition for power. Yeah. Yeah, there There's really are a number of different sayings in in in Chinese tradition that allude to cauldrons and and make use of the smoke. TIF in the book Chinese Mythology and Introduction and Barrel ads that while you the great forge the vessels, they are said to have been cast

by feeling the Dragon, god of wind. The cauldrons could and would change weight and size, or even vanished completely or reappear at will, quote according to the virtue or decadence of the dynasty possessing them. Whoa, so yeah, this gets pretty interesting. Forens, if a dynasty is virtuous, then the cauldrons would become so massive that they would be

almost impossible to lift. It was said that when the child people overthrew the shang, the child's virtue was such that it took ninety men to lift a single cauldron. But then when the Chin overthrew the chow, one of the cauldrons just like immediately flew into the river. Oh so the inanimate objects have a will of their own. It's almost like the one ring, except the cauldrons are virtuous,

whereas the ring is wicked. Yeah. Yeah. It's also specifically noted that it is the weight that is important, not the size, So you you might have a dynasty that is corrupt. Uh, and the cauldrons might look enormous, but they weigh a little uh, thus signifying that you know that they're morally impoverished. But then the opposite is also true. You might have a noble dynasty and the cauldrons are very small, but it would take like ninety thousand men to lift a single one of them, because such is

the virtue of these rulers. Oh that that resonates in a very pleasing way, because you imagine and like an evil dynasty having these giant cauldrons that are easily blown over by the wind, the big surface area and very little mass. Yeah, yeah, I think it works on so many levels. Uh. They're said to have been cast in iron and also said to be illustrated with images of the gods and forged from metals offered up by the

nine regional stewards. There's also discussion of them being important to distinguish malign creatures, which are sometimes translated as goblins and trolls. So I'm not sure if that's meant to mean that the cauldrons also depicted these uh quote unquote adverse beings. But because it doesn't seem like it's explicitly stated, but um, at the very least they had images of

gods on them. Now, as for the use of cauldrons and sacrifice, and borough includes a wonderful passage from the ancient text the Book of Songs or the Classic of Poetry. The passaging question is celebrating the agricultural culture hero and god Huji a k lord millet. Here is part of it in translation, of course, describing the sacrifice, our sacrifice. What is it like some pound, some bail, some sift, some tread. We wash it soaking, soaking wet. We steam it, piping,

piping hot. Then we plan with thoughtful care, gathering southern wood, offering rich fat. We take a ram to make the wayside sacrifice, roasting and broiling to usher in the new year. The bronze pots filled the brim, the bronze pots and cauldrons. As soon as their aroma rises up, God on High enjoys it with pleasure. The rich fragrance is right and proper. For Hoji inaugurated the sacrifice with no fault or blemish.

His people have continued it to the present day. I like the line on here about has the aroma rises up, God on High enjoys it with pleasure because that that is not unique to this poem or two Chinese religious traditions. It's a it's a common feature of many religions mentioning God, enjoying God, or God's enjoying the smell of a burning sacrifice. Yeah. So yeah, there's a there's a lot of this that

is that is ultimately a universe universal Um. It's it's fascinating than now for the second episode in a row, I'm going to also cite a children's book. Uh, this is another children's book. This one is titled Two of Everything, and Chinese American author Lily toy Hong wrote this It's fun and she credits it as being based on a Chinese folk tale. Um and I'd love to read another telling of it, but I haven't been able to find

find what. I'm sure it's out there, but it does involve some sort of a magical pot or cauldron in this story, which is which has some some wonderful illustrations an elderly couple in in China. And this has a historical setting, by the way, so it's not I don't think it's supposed to be like modern China. But this elderly couple they happen to happen upon this pot or this cauldron, and they quickly find out that anything you drop or place inside the cauldron comes out duplicated. So

you can imagine how this story goes. You know, food, gold gets duplicated, and finally somebody's gonna fall in that cauldron. The old man falls in the cauldron, and now there are two old men. So the story ultimately ends on a happy note, with a couple deciding, Okay, we're gonna put the pot away. We're not gonna use it unless we absolutely have to. But by this point they're living side by side with their own doppelgangers who have a

replica of everything that they have. So I was looking around to try and find another version of this story and I was not able to. But in the process I found another story that includes cauldrons as a as a key plot point that I think will transition into something else we can talk about in a bit. It's

a a wonderful little story called the Wizard's Lesson. The story appeared in the book Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies, ed edited and translated by Moss Roberts, a professor of East Asian Studies at n y U H. The original title is to zoo Chun and it is included uh in the sus Swan Kuai Lu, an early ninth century CE collection compiled by Li Fu Yen Uh, though there seemed to be some disagreements on the exact date of when this this original text was was published or written.

This story is awesome. Yeah, um, I think at times perplexing. I've seen some some online like some sort of blog style discussions where people are like, what is this about? But um, but it but it has some some wonderful wizardry in it. So basically the story goes like this, we have this character to zoo Chun, and he's a scoundrel. Basically, he's spent all his money. He's burned all his friends and family members, you know, borrowing money and so forth.

So he finds himself on the street with nothing, and then up comes an old man and ask him, hey, look there, buddy, how much money would it take to set you right? Like how many how many strands of coins will it take? And Tuzuchon names a sum and the old man just kind of scoffs and he's like, you should probably go higher than that, and he gives him another sum, and the old man agrees, and he's he gives him enough cash on the spot for a night's rest somewhere and says, meet me tomorrow in the

market and I'll give you the full amount. So this goes exactly as promised, and the next day he receives his first millions from the old man like it's a it's a true fortune, enough for him to have a real, you know, proper start at rebuilding everything in his life, and then some but you can imagine what happens next. He immediately blows it all on a lavish lifestyle, and

before long he's back on the street again. Then here comes the old man approaches him again, and this basically the same thing happens one more, only this time he squanders an even greater fortune. The third time, however, the old man warns him that an even greater fortune won't do the trick this time. Then there's clearly no helping him. So finally Tuzo Chun has a change of heart. He finally realizes, okay, who this old man has been so kind and patient with me and just overly generous, and

I've done nothing for him. Uh. He has this change of heart and realizes that he shouldn't be spending this all on himself. He should try and do some good in the world. And he tells the old Man that he is going to do this. He's going to go help the widows and the orphans, he's going to make amends with family members and uh. And then at the end, he's going to meet up with the old Man once more and do right by him as well. Okay, so you might expect this to be the end of the story.

He's learned his lesson, but no, it keeps going. And I I you know, this might be a situation where you have sort of combined stories, you know, they become one at some point. But um, what happens next is the old man Uh. He you know, he goes out in the world, he does all the things he's gonna do, and he meets up with the old Man again. The old Man takes him up to the mountain to a splendid residence and inside here's an alchemist furnace, guarded by

a white tiger and a black dragon. Uh. It's written that jade, white fairy women stand by, and the old Man is no longer dressed like like the old man that he met in the market. Those uh, those of three times. No, now he's dressed in yellow and scarlet robes. He's dressed as a dallast wizard. Oh so immediately at this point, I'm like picturing him as played by Chining Lamb from the Mr. Vampire movies. Yeah, yeah, that that

would be a wonderful stern performance of this character. So at this point, he presents Touzun with a beaker of wine and three white pills. He tells him to take the pills, and no matter what happens, no matter what he sees and the visions that are about to hit him, he must not speak. Okay, I'm gonna read a quote

from the story here. Take care not to speak. The wizard cautioned, be it revered spirit, vicious ghost, demon of hell, wild beast, hell itself, or even your own closest relatives, bound and tormented in a thousand ways, nothing you see is truly real. It is essential that you neither speak nor make any movement. Remain calm and fearless, and you shall come to no harm. Never forget what I have said. With that, the wizard departed okay, so none of it's

going to be real. As long as you keep your mouth shut, you'll be all right, right, And then the visions begin to hit him, so it's it's just kind of like one wave of visions after the other. So first a swarming army rides up on him in a ten foot tall general and armor is just referred to as the General comes up on an armored horse and demands that he tell to identify himself. He remains quiet.

The general leaves in a rage. And then and then to Tuzochone is tormented by snakes and spiders and other beasts. There's a there's he's harassed by storms. This is the devil rides out. This is the Christopher. Lee is like, he's got him in the circle. Yeah yeah, instead, only this time it's the circle is silence. He cannot break that silence. Tuzu Chune, I'd rather see you dead than speak.

So after the storms, the general returns, and this time he has his men place a great cauldron in front of Tuzu Chun and uh and in the story it's written the general return this time leading an ox headed sergeant and his soldiers of hell together with other weird faced ghosts. They placed a huge cauldron of boiling water before tuzu Chun and closed in on him with spears, swords and pitchforks, and so at this point they threatened and they say, look, identify yourself or we're going to

boil you alive. He doesn't speak, So then they drag his wife before him and they start beating her, and he still refuses to speak, so they chop her up into a little pieces, and he still doesn't say anything. And finally the general denounces him as a quote master of the Black Arts and has his soldiers behead him. Well the scott gory, Yeah, it gets it gets gory, and hurry this story. Yeah, but but we've got to

remember what was said at the beginning. The Taoist wizard promised him none of this is going to be real. It's just visions. Just don't say anything, right, So then to zu chun soul passes on and he become and he comes before the King of the Dead, who identifies him. He says, hey, you're that heretic and orders him cast into the Hell's quote zu Chun tasted the torments of hell to the fullest molten bronze, the iron rod, pounding grinding, the fire pit, the boiling cauldron, the hill of knives,

the forest of swords. But he kept the wizard's words firmly in mind and bore the pain without letting a moan pass his lips. Then the tortures reported to the king that the punishments were completed. And at this point the King of the dead says, Okay, that's good. Uh, he can go on and be reincarnated. Now, let's have him reincarnated as a woman. And so he's born again

as a small female child. And now the female to Zoo Chun as an infant, still doesn't cry out, grows up a mute Mary's has a child herself at this point, and then her husband finally like has an episode and and and accused and accuses her of being improper by refusing to speak to him, and murders their child before her. So finally, after a life and it's yet, it's it's brutal, and after a life time of silence, now she finally

breaks her vow and unleashes a cry of anguish. And at this point the whole vision collapses, and once more, Here's to Zoo Chun himself again, still seated in the Wizard's pavilion, with an empty wine flask in his hand, and the wizards just cursing at him for failing. He tells him, if he'd only remain silent a little longer, you have been able to purify yourself of all your passions. You'd already purified yourself of all your passions except for love, and you blew it. And now you're not going to

be immortal. That is harsh, you know, he already he got killed, He had watched all his people get killed. He got killed, he got sent to hell, tortured in hell, then lived a whole other life. But but the Wizard is like, you just had to hold out a little bit longer. How was he supposed to know how long it would be? Yeah, he had no idea. He was just supposed to keep going. But supposedly he was close, like this was the last testing. It was not able

to overcome it. Remember how this started with this guy like blowing all his money on parties. Yeah, yeah, it is a it's a weird story. And when I may, I may have to look into more to see if I can, uh, you know, grasp the some of the the deeper meanings involved here, but on the surface level, like coming back to cauldrons, it does feature cauldrons twice,

and both of them in a very threatening manner. The idea that if you don't speak, I'm going to boil you alive, and then once you're in Hell you may be boiled as well. Well, this would not be the only vision of of hell or negative afterlife that involved boiling, and in fact, there are some famous boiling uh puddles, ponds and rivers in Dante's Inferno, though I don't recall there ever being a cauldron. Maybe there is. I think

they're just various boiling rivers and puddles. Well, Paul Morabelais mentions this the things just as a brief aside, because you know, I think for starters the papers mostly mostly dealing with Asian visions of hell, but mentions that there are certain saints who had visions of hell and they

might mention boiling, but they don't mention cauldrons. And part of that could be the legacy of sacred cauldrons in some of the European traditions, the pre Christian European traditions that will discuss in the future, like the idea being that if the cauldron is sacred, you would not find that in hell, and of course that might you might well ask, well, what are you guys talking about? You just you've already talked about sacred cauldrons in Chinese traditions,

and here they are popping up in Chinese Hell. What's going on there? Well, I we'll get back to that, and I think it will ultimately wind up making sense. But yeah, clearly, whatever it's particular religious significance, I think it's also got to be highlighted in this story just because it's like a horrific way to threaten somebody with

death right. And and you know, certainly when we start talking about weird forms of capital punishment and execution, I mean that the line between that and human sacrifice is often a bit blurred. You know, both spectacles are are doing something beyond simply uh, killing an individual or burning

a piece of meat, that sort of thing. Yeah, and sometimes in history they appear to have been sort of the same thing that, like some human sacrifice in history was clearly carried out on people who were leave to have committed some kind of crime, or people who were like prisoners of war right, and so death by boiling pops up many times in global tales and traditions, often as often as a meanance of state execution for all

sorts of things like sorcerers, bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners, and traders. Uh. Some accounts maybe legendary, but there are plenty of very believable historic cases of boiling executions, and it was practiced into the sixteenth century in France and Germany as a punishment for clipping coins. This is when you would scrape the edges off of coins and then melt those scrapings down to make new coins, a practice that was finally

defeated by milling the edges of coins. Yeah, several of the main examples I found of actual use of capital punishment by boiling took place in England and the sixteenth century, where it was apparently used as a as a punishment

for poisoning. There was famously a guy named Richard Rousse who made some horridge that they I think he was a cook, and he made some poison porridge that poisoned like a bishop, and then just a bunch of other people who happened to eat it, and at least a couple of people died and he was put to death through a public boiling. It was pretty curaresome, very criesome.

It's it's interesting, like I guess with the with the with the clipping of coins, they're sort of, hey, if you you boil clippings from our money, will boil you. Sort of a thing like you you melt money, you get melted. I'm not sure exactly what the poisoning thing is, excepted like poisoning was just something they really wanted to to, uh to to to draw a line on, you know, and say, look, this is really bad and therefore you

get boiled if you do it. Yeah. I can't prove this, but I have a gut suspicion, and it's that poisoning is a type of crime that is especially horrifying to kings and royal people. Uh you know, it's it's the kind of thing they could imagine happening to them. Don't mess with the king's money or the king's food. Both

must be deterred in the strongest sense. Um. It's also interesting looking at the the European use of boiling executions, because you would see this tradition later on as you know, tales were being told of what what is surely going on in various foreign parts of the world, be at Africa or Asia. Uh, you know there would be the especially in like sort of the pulp era. Uh, this idea of of boiling people is something that the other does,

whereas history tells them. I mean, certainly there are examples of boiling in various cultures, but but clearly there was a long history of it occurring in Europe as well. Oh yeah, clearly you can see that as just part of a fiction that sort of exotic sizes other parts of the world by imagining like horrific, horrific things that might happen there, probably without any evidential basis than now.

Turning briefly to Greek mythology, of course, we have to remember that, uh, this is boiling alive is the way that the master artificer uh Datalust kills King Minos, trapping him in a bath that boils him alive. Um clever, And this it seems like the very sort of revenge that data List would use against his enemy. Oh, I didn't remember that part of the story. That's interesting. I believe it is depicted in one of the Jim Hinson Greek storyteller episodes. They have I think two different ones

that involved data lists. But back to Eastern depictions of Hell. So um, there's that line in Big Trouble in Little China. I believe it's from the Uh, the character Eddie who says, uh, the Chinese have a lot of Hell's um. And indeed you'll you find Eastern depictions of Hell. Often they will include generally eighteen different um die you or under worlds. And the exact nature of these hell's or underworld's vary from text to text, but each one has a different flavor.

They are different, like this is where you encounter the hill of knives, or this is the one where you encounter the boiling feces, that sort of thing. Several of them were listed in that passage I read earlier from the story of the Wizard's Lesson, and I actually don't know the answer here with these. Also, like in some of the classic Christian depictions of Hell, have specific tortures

for people who's depending on their characteristic sin. Yes, absolutely, and in case in this case, the the hell of of oil cauldrons would be reserved for thieves and a few other kind of related transgressions. Now at this point, I'd like to come back to that Paul Marabelais article Visions of Asian Hell, in which he discusses Asian visions of hell at length, and as as mentioned previously, he singles out the alchemical nature of cauldrons and Chinese traditions,

which is, it seems very key here. So on the mundane level, it is a piece of technology that allows us to transform the nature of various ingredients into food, and then on the sacred level, it allows us to

transform flesh into something befitting of a god. And so Marabola discusses examples of boiling cauldrons and the hells of Tibetan buddhism Um, which, to remind everyone, does center around the continuation of souls within the wheel of sam Sorrow, which is a karma based system in which souls tumble through incarnations that may be human or animal, but may also be incarnations such as you know, hungry ghosts, heavenly and powerful davas or in or indeed you might be

reborn into the hell realms of Naraka. And the goal is ultimately, in the grand scheme of Buddhism, to remove oneself from this endless wheel and attain freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth, because that's the only way to just sort of win. I guess you would say, like, if you keep playing the game of sam Sara, you're just gonna pinball around, you know. So you might, you might ascend on high into the form of a demigod adeva.

But then perhaps all that power and wrath that you have at your disposal that ends up corrupting you and propels your soul back down into the hell realm. So the hell's in this case, they're not really It's not about permanent suffering like you encounter in some interpretations of Western depictions of Christian hell, where it's like, well, you screwed up, you went with the wrong side, now you're in hell. For let's say, ever, uh No, in this case,

hell is a place you're moving through. Your soul is moving through here, and you'll uh in all likelihood be reincarnated into a different incarnation in one of these other realms. So, as Miroboli discusses these visions often depicted in art, they already have this um this this feel of transformation or purging to them. Um So demonic beings might be cooking

human souls, but to what end? Right, we have to remember that cooking is a transformation, and the form of cooking in the cauldron of sacrifice is supernaturally so oh interesting, So I think I see the connection he's making here the same way you might, uh say, in in some Chinese traditions use a ding or a cauldron to to make a burnt sacrifice um to the gods in order

to to appease them to improve your fortune. In for example, this Buddhist vision of Hell, you may also be put into a cauldron yourself, but in this in a similar way, are transformed into something potentially holier. Yes, And this ends up being reflected in Dallas traditions as well, which Endaoism is perhaps more concerned with transformation of the soul or self and immortality, but it ends up being influenced by Buddhism when Buddhism Uh enters into China from India roughly

two thousand years ago. Uh And so, in considering images of cauldrons in Hell and the Chinese temple of ching Hwong in Linza Shoe in western China, Mirabel says quote, in fact, we could interpret the dallast Hell as some enormous cauldron into which have been poured the ingredients necessary to permutate the present state of imperfect beings into their possible perfection by long and painstaking alchemical assimilations. Interesting. Yeah, so I really love that, uh, that idea. And again

it comes back to again that question question. You might ask, well, if if the if some Europeans were hesitant to take take a sort of divine um legacy of the cauldron and then place it into pictions of hell, even if you're dealing sort of different religious traditions, why would you

see it in Chinese traditions? And I think it is because you have this different view of what what Hell is doing, this idea that these depictions of torment are not about like in game suffering, they are about changing you into something else, which is the purpose of the daying, the purpose of the cauldron, whether you're dealing with the process on Earth or something more celestial or indeed something in one of the hell's And I should also point out, yeah,

that you also see this this these visions of of hell outside of Chinese traditions and and outside of of Indian divisions, is also pops up in Japanese views of of of Hell and so forth. All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode then, but I'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have additional things you'd like to add about Chinese traditions of cauldrons, be they the you know, the nine cauldrons of You the Great, or or these various depictions of Dallast and

Buddhist hell. Uh. I'd love to hear from anyone out there. Likewise, any any sort of pop culture and fiction related treatments of cauldrons that kind of match up with what we've discussed here today totally. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find those episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we publish our core episodes. Those are the main episodes of Stuff

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