The Curse

he'd have to draw up a list of suspects. He didn't know for sure. Now, Servandas was not plenty of the younger. He was not an elite. He was not some rich big shot with diarrhea of the pen. Hey, we love plenty of this show, we do. But he he was originally who had diary of the pen Uh, not one of these people, one of these power people who had their memoirs preserved for us. So how do we know about the stolen cloak of this common person, Servanda's.

Well we know about it because in the mid two thousand's, researchers from the University of Lester working at a site within Lester dug up a rectangular sheet of lead about seven inches by three inches, carved with an inscription a curse. It was an entreaty to a god to smite his enemy for stealing from him, and it reads quote to the god Maglus, I give the wrong doer who stole the cloak of Servandas that he destroy him before the ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandas.

So you got a nine day timeline basically nine days to get me back the cloak, or may you be destroyed by Maglus. And then Servanda's helpfully supplies Maglus, which may, I think it's been speculated be a Celtic word meaning prints, often names of gods or things that are just a word for prince or king, like bay All or moluk Um.

But there there's a list of eighteen or nineteen possible subjects, including people like and we don't know who these people are, but people like Sylvester and Germanis, and Riomandus and Regulus. So who are these guys? No idea, but Servandas was comfortable condemning them to the talents of Maglus with this curse. Now I know some of you are probably wondering, well, who stole the cloak? Who you know? Who is the thief? Here? My question is was this a nice cloak? Was it

just was? Is that the thing? Was it just really nice? Or is he just very spiteful over it's it's lost? Well, it could be those things, or it could be that Servandas was very poor and could only afford one cloak, and you know that that a cloak was a significant possession to him, and so stealing a cloak from Servandas in second or third century Roman Britain might be like stealing your car. Now he has time and energy to put into this whole curse business, though I'm I'm assuming

there's a fee associated with that. Well that's a good point, and we'll come back to that in a minute. Yes, you raise good questions. So today, obviously we're going to be talking about curses, and Robert, I don't know about you, but I love curse movies. I think like which is, curse movies are really fun. They're one of my favorite genres of horror. Like a witch puts a curse on somebody and you've got to figure out what to do.

So in this case, you're talking about films where where the protagonist is cursed and has to work their way out of the curse. Yeah. Now there's a variation on this that I don't like at all, which is like the Thinner model, which I don't even want to get into the details of. But that is just like an unusually reprehensible movie or story in general, putting that kind

of thing aside, where like the person cursed really deserved it. Well, that's a film that that explores a very common trope, right where the making and the spitting of curses is the domain of an outsider people or a people of like a lower cast within a given society. Yeah, that's a very common trope. I I don't I don't really like that kind as much. I like the Witch curses. But we should specify for the purposes of the episode

what a curse is. So, a curse is an invocation of magic power to cause injury or misfortune to someone or something. It is essentially the inversion of a blessing. A blessing is a benediction, it's a wish of good will towards someone, and a curse is a malediction, a wish invoking magic to cause ill will, to to convey ill will and cause ill fortune on somebody else. Other names would be like schaden zob or black magic, binding,

cutting off. It's using supernatural power to hurt someone. An invocation aspect here is key because it's not a mere prophecy. It's not someone uh, you know, casting bones and saying, oh, this will transpire, even saying this will transpire because of this transgression. No, it's a it's it's an appeal to uh, to a god or some divine force to to punish, or just simply a magical punishment that essentially emerges from the lips or from writing and then works its its

will on its own. Yeah, curses are not just predictions. They are spoken into existence. Now. Curses are often unleashed by the gods in our our myth and our fiction, cursed placed upon individuals or groups of individuals. One thinks of, say, the curse of Eve, the mark of Cain uh, the various individuals that have been cursed in other fictions, the curse of Innocus uh, dire words becoming dire realities uh, and is one would expect right when the words are

rolling off the lips of a god. All a god needs to do is speak right and things start happening. You also have various monsters that are born from curses, ghosts that are born from curses, even animals too that are the prod up of curses. I'm thinking about, Uh, some of the Greek myths concerning spiders and the curse placed on a rackney. Um, Pumpkinheads a curse. Pumpkin Heads. The werewolf is often a curse as well. Uh, So we have a number of different pots. But I kind

of forgotten about Pumpkinhead. Of exactly how Pumpkinhead worked in the horror movie was a witches curse. Yeah, guy, He he wants revenge on some teenage motor bikers, so he goes to a witch to cast a curse on them. Not a great film, but it does have some great monster effects. And there are any number of cursed villains in fiction, right, I mean, everybody loves a good good villain was some sort of significant curse placed upon them.

For instance, in Big Trouble and Little China, we're told that Lo Pon is cursed by China's first sovereign emperor, uh quinn s Long, and he has the curse of no flesh. Interestingly enough, will return to lo Pan in a bit. Oh well, I look forward to that now. We also would be remnist if we didn't mention our old fend for uh Connor McCloud, Connie mack. The is essentially of a version of the wandering immortal character, a character that is, that is, to some extent cursed with immortality.

This is always a lovely a trope in fiction and mythology folklore as well, the thing that might seem a blessing but is actually a curse. Oh yeah, like the idea that when Jesus prophesied that there was at least someone standing there who was watching him preach, who would not pass away before the Kingdom of God came with power. Um that you know that that has led to the idea of the wandering Jew, that someone standing there that day is actually immortal and still walking around. Right. There's

a there's another variation on this theme. There is I believe it's a Russian tale um or at least East Eastern European tale called the Soldier in Death. Anyone is a frank fan of Jim Hinson's The Storyteller series, there's a wonderful rendition of that little number. But it in this story that the soldier eventually is cursed with a form of immortality because he's basically um frightened. Everyone death is afraid of him, the devils are afraid of him.

Nobody will let him into heaven or hell. Oh that's a good story. Uh. So I want to bring it back to to the curse invoking Maglas against the person who stole the cloak of servandas so, I mentioned that this was inscribed on a lead tablet, right, And it turns out that there are thousands of curse tablets like this from the ancient world. Uh. This one, like most of them, is a small lead or pewter sheet on

which a curse is inscribed with the stylus. And uh, sometimes they'll be rolled up into kind of a scroll, like the metal will be rolled up. And one thing that you can discover by reading various curse tablets from antiquity is that an extremely common genre of curses in actual history appears to consist of curses against people who stole things from you. And one quote I came across

that I thought was interesting. Richard Buckley, co director of the University of Lesser Archaeological Services who is involved in that discovery, uh said quote. It has been suggested, on the basis of name forms and the value of items stolen, that the curses relate to the lives of ordinary people rather than the wealthy, and that they were perhaps commissioned by the dedicator from a professional curse writer. So so generally here we're not dealing with rich people coming to

do curses. We're dealing with common people dealing with common problems, like the theft of an item from their from their person or from their house. And when that gets stolen and they don't know what to do, they can go say to a scribe and pay that person, you know, somebody who's literate, and pay that person to write out a curse on a tablet for them. You know, I think we can all understand and relate to this, uh,

this impulse. If you've ever been a victim of a crime like this and in a theft for instance, and the police are like, yeah, there's nothing we can do, sorry, you're just out however much money you lost on that iPhone charger or whatever it was stolen out of your car. Uh, And then you uh, you know, what what what's left to do? Maybe spend a few dollars and and curse the individual, right, I mean what percentage of small thefts are actually solved and you get your stuff returned? I

would have to guess almost none. Yeah. Absolutely. Now. Now this does make me think though, that if I were a professional um cursed tablet manufacturer in olden times, it sounds like the best thing you could do to to drum up business is to go around stealing random things from people and just like burying them somewhere. Uh, because then people are gonna get piste off and they're gonna say, who stole my cloak? And then they're gonna go buy

another tablet from you. Well, I would guess that would depend on you not believing that the curses are efficacious, Otherwise you'd just be accumulating curses that would actually harm you. Well I would I guess. Yeah. In this model, the the individual making the curses is in on a game. You know, they can't be a true believer. They have to be uh, you know, the the con artist in

the scenario. Well, that is something that we could definitely talk about, because there are obviously differences in belief in the power of curses in witchcraft all throughout history. Uh, you know, we we find these curse tablets all throughout the ancient Mediterranean. They're these wonderful artifacts of evil magic or you know, you could think of it as evil, because we usually think of curses as evil. But really the people who were who were commissioning these, in many

cases we're seeking justice. You know, that they were trying to get back something that had been unfairly taken from them. But there are other varieties of curse tablets that are more just kind of a a desire to get power over arrival or to you know, a desire to hurt some kind of competitor or enemy. In Latin, the curse tablets are known as deficitions. In Greek, they're known as cata desmoi. I don't know if I pronounced those correctly,

but close enough. You know, you'll sometimes hear people from the you know, people talking about the ancient Greco Roman world as a place of unusual reason and skepticism for its time. You know, that sort of characterization of like ancient Greece in ancient Romans places of like philosophy or something.

Oh yeah, there's an there's an entire argument that that science and reason is is birthed solely out of out of Greco Roman tradition, and that and that it only spreads to the far corners of the world, that anything that the you know, the that there were there was taking place in ancient India or ancient China or meso America, that these these didn't really count because they hadn't been touched by a by the Greco Roman vibe yet. Now obviously that's a nonsense. In fact, I don't really know.

I don't come across people making that argument anymore. I think I feel like most most thinkers have have moved beyond that. But I know that in The Demon Hunted World, Segan spends a little time discrediting this notion as well. But the other side of that is just the belief that the ancient Greco Roman and world was this unusually reasonable and skeptical place, relatively free from superstition and paranoia about witchcraft. But the evidence indicates that just really is

not the case. It might be the case among some particular you know, members of the elite or the intelligencia or something. You might read their own memoirs and find that this person in history who left a lot of writing happened to be skeptical about things. But among people in general, the ancient Mediterranean appears to have been run through with fear of witchcraft and with the use of curses, even in the Roman period. Plenty of the Elder rights

in his Natural History in the first century CE. We mentioned him a minute ago in the middle of a section about the power of portents and spells. Quote, there is no one who does not dread being spell bound by means of evil imprecations, and hints the practice after eating eggs or snails of immediately breaking the shells or piercing them with a spoon. I was like, well, what is that about? So this is from the translation the

eight translation by John Bostock. Bostock or Bostock however you say that, And there's a footnote that says, quote, it is a superstition still practice to pierce the shell of an egg after eating it. Less to the witches should come. I've been doing it wrong this whole time, I know. So I went and read a little bit more about this. Basically, the idea is that if you eat an egg and

you leave the shell just sitting around. A witch can come along and prick that shell with a needle while citing the name of a person who wants to cast a curse against you, and that will allow them to do a curse. And this is a common part of like sympathetic magic, like you touch the thing. Yeah, but am I peeling eggs wrong? That's what I'm wondering, because whenever I peel an egg, I like I end up just destroying the eggshell. Like it looks pretty pierced to

me because I've just ripped it to pieces. Well, maybe it's if they find a big shard of it and they can pierce it, or maybe there's this is like a post egg sucking scenario. People are just you know, putting one hole in it and sucking it out. I don't know, you took that to a nasty place. There's nothing wrong with the eating raw egg that way, I guess. I mean of the things one could be doing in in in ancient Greece, as egg sucking sounds reasonable. Yeah,

but it leaves you vulnerable to witchcraft, I guess so. Famously, many curse tablets have been found in the city of Bath, which was a settlement known for its hot springs used as a spa in a bath during Roman times, and the goddess of these hot springs was a Celtic deity named Soulis, who in many of these curses that have been found at Bath, seems to be merged through syncretism with the Roman goddess Minerva as Sulis Minerva. I read that one of these curses from Bath is a bronze

It's for a bronze container that had been stolen. It seems like most of these also have to do with theft, and the curse asked the goddess to make sure that the stolen container ended up old with the thief's blood. That's pretty good. That is really good. That's clever. Yeah, I mean it basically comes back to that old adage, I hope you choke on it. You know, so somebody has has has has obtained something of yours or something

that you feel should be yours through underhanded actions. Then you just you just say, well, I hope, I hope you choke on that. I hope that this brings about your death. And we just kind of we kind of throw that one out. But that is essentially a curse. Even if we we say it, you know, kind of flippantly or comedically. It's the unspoken part of you can have it, you know, and you can have it just

meaning like and something bad is going to happen to you. Yeah, this thing is, this is curse now anyway, I don't want it. But then again, a lot of these curses demand the return of the item, and they say like, if you don't return the items, say, you know, in nine days, may he be destroyed by the ninth day

or something like that. Another one quote Docillianus, son of Bruce Serra's to the Most Holy God, Sulus, I curse him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether and or woman, whether slave or free, that Sulis inflict death upon him, and not allow him sleep or children now and in the future until he has brought my hooded cloak to the temple of her divinity. Now, I like how this particular curse is nice and uh and and and broad.

Here you know, it's it's the it's the buckshot of curses, because it is it is promising for what problem sleeping and potentially problem bearing children. Uh, there's a lot of room here. So if one if the individual who is cursed and like knows that the curses leveled at them, like, Oh, I think he's talking about me because I totally stole that cloak. Uh. Chances are they might encounter a situation where, oh, man, I'm having a little trouble sleeping, or I'm or are

or I'm having trouble conceiving. Maybe it was that curse. Well, yeah, in the secular interpretation, you're trying to get the victim's mind working against them, and we can talk about that more later when we discuss like the psychological and scientific aspects of cursing. But but you're also probably believing in real magic power and thinking, yeah, something bad is going

to happen to this person. That's true. We do have to come back time and time again to the idea that we're dealing with people, more often than the common people here, who do not have anything approaching the scientific understanding of the world. They have magical explanations for how the world works, and therefore that worldview is open to

magical manipulation. Now, you mentioned that you liked the things that have been picked out in this curse, denying you sleep and denying your children general things that are invoked in these curses would be to like make it so the thief cannot defecate or urinate, to make the thief bleed, to cause sexual problems, to prevent them from sleeping or eating. There's all kinds of stuff. But I wonder who picks

out what goes in the curse. Is that up to the scribe who you're commissioning the curse from, or is that up to you? Do you go to a scribe and say, Okay, here's what I want. I want the bleeding and I want the sexual problems. Yeah. Do you think it's it's package based or it's all a cart right, I don't know. You know, I think this would have been a great, a great curse if you just said, all right, whoever stole this cloak from me, every time from now on, for the rest of your life, every

time you stub your toe, that's me. That's this curse, you know, that's that That would be a good one, because nothing is worse than stubbing your toe in that second that you have stubbed it, um and you always feel like somebody's to blame, yes, and you need to blame. So usually, if you're me, you just curse at the coffee table or what have you put that there? Yeah, but then you're like, oh, servandas it was you. So these tablets are actually they're more than just sort of

a magical curiosity. Uh. The tablets of Bath and many others have actually proven useful in helping experts understand the common vernacular language of say Roman Britain in the second to fourth century. Because again, when you think about it,

curse tablets are kind of like graffiti. It's a window into how written language was used by people who we're not writing the kinds of works that get copied and stored in libraries and come down to us through history, you know, like nowadays, I assume future historians will probably get to know what it was like when the average English speaker in the United States used written English because

they can see it all over the internet. But in ancient Rome, unless you like, wrote books that people thought were very valuable, most of the time, people weren't going to see what it looked like when you were, you know, using language. Side note, I wonder if in hip hop, like a distract is considered a curse. That's interesting sort of kind of maybe do you well, I mean, there's a lot of insults but does it actually like, does it invoke a power to wish harm upon you? Maybe?

I don't know. I mean sometimes you could say that, well, they're threats, but their self actualized things. They're like I'm going to do something to you. Yeah, I guess they are. They tend to be more threats than though, though I don't I don't know. There might be some distracts out there. I would love to hear about any distracts that invoke magical forces or sort of the the inner workings of fate. Oh, that's good. I bet there are some. I bet there

have to be some religious ones. Surely there's some like religious sort of distracts. Maybe they're not individual, but I mean one of the big uh selling points of religion, and we'll discuss this more as we go forward, is the idea that God or God's are going to punish those who wronged you or are wronging you or living their life in a way that you don't agree with. Now, there will be some sort of divine vengeance, and therefore you know to invoke that divine vengeance is essentially a curse.

Like anybody has ever stood on a street corner and yelled nasty things with a God sign at participants in a parade or something like that, they're essentially spitting out curses. Now, they probably wouldn't think of it that way because they wouldn't think like, I'm asking the divine power to do something to you. They would probably think of it as saying like, I'm just telling you what the divine power is going to do to you. Anyway, right, Well, they

had their view and it's probably the same. But from this side of the curse, I feel like the two are are basically indistinguishable, Like the guy with the sign is still the jerk in the scenario. Agreed. Now, we have been talking about how often curses are used sort of after the fact to get back at somebody who wronged you, usually somebody who stole something from you. But there's another way you could use an anti theft curse,

which would be a curse employed preemptively against thieves. So I want to talk about medieval anti theft curses in monastic libraries. Uh. Last year, the British Library put up this awesome blog post by a medieval studies scholar named Clark Dreyschen, highlighting medieval books in their collection that contained curses. So, for example, and early fourteenth century copy of a thirteenth century Middle Dutch encyclopedia and beastiary called The Flower of

Nature by Jacob von Merland. It has its own little checkout ledger within the book, you know, like you at a library book, you put the card in. So what you have to picture here is there's a cross under which anyone borrowing the book had to sign their name and then had to swear a dear oath that if they did not return the book they would die. And there's there's one name at least there. It's a midwife named Abstricts hype Motor who signed the oath. So we

we hope Absterricts brought the book back. There's also a fourteenth century commentary on the harmony of the Gospels, inscribed with a printer's note saying, anyone who steals this book will receive quote death from evil things. May the thief of this book die. So instead of a sticker that says this book belongs to blank, it's essentially the same thing.

It's that sticker, but it's like this book belongs to blank, and if you were not blank, you will die, right and it But you know, we're we're getting into an area here. We're talking about books that were tremendously valuable in some cases and uh and also probably had a

bit of the a bit of magic to them. You know, this reminds me of episode that I did with Christian while back about books that were attributed magical properties in a large part base just because of the like the power of writing, like the ideas that were contained within it and made it special. Oh yeah. The author of this blog post actually points out that while some of the curses seem like overkill, I'm going to mention a couple more in a minute that are really overkill, um

for what's deserving of a simple book thief. In context, it makes more sense because of what you're talking about. Like we would today consider stealing a book to be a pretty minor petty crime like shoplifting or something. But this was before the printing press, when books were extremely labor intensive to produce and a copy and often if you lost a copy of the book, you weren't just out a lot of monetary value. It might have been

something that you can't get another copy of. And now add to that exactly what you're saying, maybe this book has important information about how to interpret the Bible that you consider important to saving your eternal soul. This is a book of extremely important ma jical significance in a way, So for a medieval Christian monk, stealing or damaging someone else's religious literature, was this extremely costly and perhaps even dangerous thing to do to them? Yeah, you're you're stealing

from the pool of collected knowledge. Yeah. Now, a couple of other great book curses. One was this book that belonged to the Church of St. Al Dad. In the Gloucester States quote, this book is of St. Al Date. He that takes this book shall be hauled by the neck, bye bye, by who, well, presumably by Christ himself. Also later in the book, a curse is attributed directly to the mouth of Jesus Christ and the curses this book belongs to the Church of St. Al Dad. This book

is one and Christ's curses another. He that takes the one takes the other. I'm in a couple more. There's a twelfth century manuscript known as the Arnstein Bible. It's owned by the Abbey of St. Mary and St. Nicholas and what's now Germany. Uh here here is the inscript and quote a book of Saints Mary and Nicholas of Arnstein. If anyone steals it, may he die, May he be roasted in a frying pan, May the falling sickness and fever attack him, and may he be rotated and hanged. Amen.

I think the rotated is on the wheel, and the falling sickness. I think they're saying that's supposed to be epilepsy. These are odd prayers. I never really heard amen thrown on anything this, uh, you know, overtly ghastly in a while. Well, it makes me think about the version of amen. That's like when someone in church yells that out after after the preacher says something that they agree with. You know, the preacher has had something you agree with, you yell amen.

This is like the person writing the curse being like that was a good curse. I agree with it. I don't know, maybe that's not the best reading. One more, how about a mid fifteenth century book belonging to the Benedictine monastery of St. Albans. It was loaned to monks studying in Oxford. Quote this book is given and used to the Brothers of Oxford by John Weatham Steed father of the Flock of the proto Martyr of the English. If anyone secretly tears this inscription or removes it, may

he feel Judas is noose or forks. And I think that's referring to like being either pitchforks or maybe being impaled on forked trees. But then there are other more spiritual curses, like some of them say, you know, if you steal this book, your name will be deleted from the Book of Life. It's essentially excommunicating you or sending

you to Hell. I wonder if that was thought to be binding or you know, of what extent too, were some of these kind of jokes, if they were if these books were going to be checked out and read by other monks. I mean, is there a certain tongue in cheek vibe going on here? Oh, I wonder that could be the case. I mean, you can see something like that today. It's like the sign that says, uh, so, you know, employee parking only all offenders cars will be

crushed and melted. Yeah, or trespassers will be eaten that sort of thing. Yeah. Like, generally one assumes that these are these are are not meant to be taking at face value. No, I mean I think the books were value bill and they were legit trying to scare people. Yeah. I mean, on on one hand, I can I can see that, see it as a as a legit a scare tactic. But on the other it's also just if you have like a really ridiculous, outlandish, um a curse in the book. I mean, it's kind of a great reminder.

It sticks in your head. It makes you realize, oh, I need to return this. I don't need to just let this sit on my corner of the study or what have you. I don't need to let it gather dust in the scriptorium. I need to return it. That's a very good point. I mean, I think we can return to that again when we discuss the psychological impact of curses. But yeah, a curse sticks in the mind in a way that a general sort of moral injunction might not. You know, just selling somebody you need to

return books you've borrowed. That's easy to forget saying people who don't return books they've borrowed will be roasted and rotated and hanged. Uh. You know you might not believe that, but you're more likely to remember that now we've been talking about warning curses here with library books essentially says a curse will happen to you if you do this thing.

One of the obvious examples I can think of this, which may be a real curse or maybe sort of a myth about a myth, um would be would be the idea of tomb curses, like the curse of the Pharaohs. You know, do not enter here or ye shall be cursed. Maybe we can address that when we come back from a break. Yes, and I need to add that if you skip over the ad you will be cursed. Than alright, we're back now, Robert, can you tell me about tomb curses?

Is the curse of the Pharaoh's real Well, if you watch enough movies, it seems like it is, right, I mean, it's it's it's become a tremendously fun trope and so many different uh, pictures that we watch, fiction that we read. Um, you can't really mention curses at all else without summoning thoughts of the Curse of the Pharaohs, the curse of

the Mummy, etcetera. Um. So for starters, we should point out that, yes, you will find curses and things like curses in a ancient Egyptian magic in setting sail for the afterlife, the dead had to be prepared with spells to counter curses in the realms beyond death, and pyramids and tombs also sometimes engage security features nothing like you'd find in an Indiana Jones movie, really, but certainly sturdy

doors and sometimes false burial chambers as well. But really you can encounter only a very few written warnings in tombs, and from what I've read, you find them protecting the graves of common people as well as as pharaohs, but again very very few cases, and they tended to promise punishment in the afterlife for things like stolen bricks, don't steal bricks from this tomb, or you're you'll get it, or in one case there was a threat of crocodile

attacks in the living world should you mess with the tomb. That's a good one. But this idea of the of the Mummy's curse, this is largely a product of Victorian England and the popular writings of one individual, in particular Marie Corelli, who was a novelist and a stick of the time. Um again, we're getting back to the idea of of just like spiritual ideas, uh, you know, un scientific ideas that are popular with people at the time,

and certainly Victorian England we're dealing with. There's a lot of spiritualism going on, right, and so that is the that that is the the environment from which this emerges. So Correlli, she quoted a quote unquote rare book which she said stated that quote the most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb, diverse secret poisons enclosed in boxes in such wise that they who touched them should not know how they come to suffer secret poison.

Huh yeah, So and then it sounds good, right, you know, the idea that there's gonna be secret poison something or some sort of magical effect that's going to punish anyone who who dares, you know, break open a tomb. Well, Tomb desecration is is widely you know, one of the most prohibited things in many ancient law codes and stuff like. I know, it's clear, as you mentioned that the ancient

Egyptians were very invested in preventing tomb desecration. You're just saying that like achieving that by writing a curse on the tomb was not especially common I know of also worth knowing they universally failed at it, at least in the long term, but also sometimes in the short term. We've we've discussed this before on the podcast that You'll You'll Have, not not only in Egyptian traditions, but in

other traditions as well. It's pretty common to find evidence of tombs having been broken into rated Pilford like we within a lifetime of their construction. Right, it wasn't just modern people going through ancient Egyptian tombs. That being said, nobody robs an ancient tomb quite like like a Victorian era Western explorer. So, as a science journalist Joe Marchant explains in their Ian magazine article The Mummy's Curse Um CORRELLI here was it was kind of ground zero for

all of this curse nonsense. So she at the time she had monished George Herbert for the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, for his involvement in an architect archaeological dig in Egypt, in particular the Tomb of Tuton Common and Uh. And then an interesting thing happened. Herbert died from a mosquito born illness in a Cairo hotel. Okay, or one assumes it was a mosquito born illness because he was bitten

by a mosquito and then grew ill and died. But so he's a guy involved in in excavating the tomb and he dies of some illness, right, and so the stories began to spin out from there. From there, the idea going around that that British archaeologist Howard Carter, who was also a part of this particular endeavor, that he discovered a tablet warning death to tomb raiders, and that he quickly hit it away buried in the sand to

keep the workers from seeing. Now, as as marchant explorers, you you had skeptics of the day saying that this was clearly all bologny. But this was again in the midst of a spiritualist boom. Uh So you had famous minds, including the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was definitely susceptible to uh to this line of thinking. He he ends up, you know, jumping in when people say, well, look, if there's a curse, why didn't Carter die from the curse?

To why did only one of the two principles on this dig die from the curse, and uh, Sir Arthur Conan Doel's response was apparently, quote one might as well say that because bulldogs do not bite everybody, therefore bulldogs do not exist, which is such a ludicrous counter argument Like this is the kind of counter argument one expects to find on you know, in talk radio nowadays, or on you know, political commentating on certain channels. I disagree.

Incredibly tight logic, exactly parallel. You can guess what fall allow it? Right, anybody with the slightest connection to Herbert was looped into the curse. If they happen to die, and if they didn't die, well you just ignored that, right You only focus this is this is key to any kind of supernatural thinking, right you only you only focus on the bits of information that back up your

supernatural premise. Uh. Now, one of the things that we have to acknowledge here is that everybody from this scenario is dead now. So if you want to, you could say, yeah, well the curse must have worked because now nobody is alive. Who who was originally in on the cracking of this tune? Time the ultimate enforcer of all curses? Right? I mean in a way, it's it's perfectly safe to cast a curse because everybody will die and or something bad is

liable to happen to everybody involved. Now, the cool thing is is that scientists and uh and more skeptical minds have applied our scientific understanding of contagions to this idea of a mummy's curse. Egyptologist Herbert Winlock published a chart in the New York Times back in nineteen thirty four that attempted to dismiss a lot of this, uh, you know, mummies curse nonsense by pointing out that of forty people who entered the tomb in question, only six died in

the following twelve years. And some of those people who entered may have happened to be Westerners who were in Egypt in a place with mosquito born diseases that they were not resistant too. Oh yeah, there's so many factors that have nothing to do with any kind of supernatural model. Um. But by the way, if anybody wants to to read this, you can find it on the New York Times website in their archive. But the full title is Curse of

Pharaoh Denied by Winlock. Metropolitan museum director ridicules tale of malediction about Teuton Common tomb. Quote. The so called curse of tutin Common is a superstition, so holy, devoid a foundation foundation that only the most credulous and ill informed person can of a moment's credence to it, according to Herbert Ewinlock, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its curator of Egyptology. So this is false on multiple levels.

Like the the idea of the curse of the Pharaoh's It's not only not true that everybody who went in the tomb died, it's also not even true that there was a curse involved as far as we know, never issued, never enforced, Whereas if you listen to all of the bologna, it sounds like, oh, it was issued and it was enforced.

Isn't it creepy right now? Another individual who sought to apply some common sense to the scenario was Mark Nelson from the University of Tasmania, and he had a study published in a two edition of the British British Medical Journal that compared the death rates for people who entered the tomb at key times with people who are simply in Egypt not only did the tomb not make you more likely to die, everyone that was analyzed in this

particulars particular study generally lived twenty more years. Okay, so actually going into the tomb seems to be like a fountain of youth. Well, or I think I think more along the line is like everybody involved, whether you went into the tomb or not, you had at least twenty more years. So if there was a curse in place, it's working, Like what it takes that long to kick in? Uh, that's not a curse, that's just that's just you living

two more decades. And you have to think about like the what are the what are the probable ages of the individuals that are going out on one of these expeditions. Um, yeah, twenty years does not a curse make, but the appeal of the curse, you know, it seems to play I think, in part on the modern trope of you know, the the modern expert has has gone too far. You know, it's it's essentially the Frankenstein idea, Right, your curiosity led

you to to places that should not be tread by humans. Yeah, and then also I can't help but suspect that there's a certain sense of of you know, buried colonial grave robin guilt here as well. You know, like there's maybe there's this deep idea that what I'm doing is, yes, it's archaeology, but I'm also kind of desecrating a grave here, and uh and and and maybe it ends up playing on some of these like these older, more primal ideas

about um, the inherent defilement of that act. Yeah. I think this is always something strange to consider an archaeology, because of course I love archaeology, and I love what we can discover about the past from it, but it very often involves exposing things that ancient people's did not want exposed, that they wanted left alone. Uh. And that's

true not just in Egyptian archaeology, but everywhere. One of one of the funny things I find about that, though, is that the anxiety, like with the Curse of the Pharaohs as an example, tends to only come up with regard to unearthing the remains or or hidden things of rich people of the past. And you know, when you just dig up like a common mask grave from the past or something, people don't seem to worry about the

same stuff. I feel like that just betrays an extra sort of level of bio us in the way we think about what sort of ancient people's wishes should be honored. If your remains are old enough and you were poor enough, than nobody cares. But if you were very rich, there might be a curse. You never know. If they could afford all this, then they could probably pay the curse crafter Now, and in talking about curses and exploring curses, there's so many different cultures we could look at, so

many different periods of history. I ended up looking around a little bit in Chinese history, and I ended up focusing on a sorcery scare that occurred rather late in Chinese history during the the Ching Dynasty, the last dynasty of China that that last at sixteen forty four through

nineteen twelve. Now, I read before that the Ching Dynasty's penal code was rather harsh on sorcery and called for the execution of not only all those who employed spells and incantations quote to agitate and influence the minds of the people, but also anyone who wrote or edited books of sorcery. So all you had to do is just be the editor you know, or or one would presume, like just proof reading a copy of of a sorceress text could get you end up getting you beheaded. That's harsh.

Now read about about this in the notations to Herbert A. Giles's translation of Pooh Song Wings Strange Tales from a Chinese studio. This is a fabulous book. It's it's widely available in English translation, uh, and it's it's from seventeenth century China, and it collects and retails various weird tales, some of which are horrifying ghost stories about like awful spirits jumping out and gnawing on your head, you know, strange goblins living uh in the forest, that sort of thing.

Others are more whimsical, like a pen dragon that infiltrates a scholars office, or there's there's also a few that are kind of body and hilarious as well. But again, this is a book from seventeenth century China, and it was written in a time that it was sometimes referred to as the troubles Uh. This was in the coastal province of shang Dong. That's where Pusson ling U lived, and there it was an area subject to a various

peasant rebellions. Manshu uprisings. They were unstable times and then UH during the eighteenth century it was also a time of mass panic. I was looking at a book by Philip A. Kun titled Soul Steel Steelers The Chinese Sorcery Scare of seventeen sixty eight. This came out in two thousand six. Uh and um It points out that during the reign of the Qing Long Emperor, a mass hysteria

swept through the people. Quote in the year seventeen sixty eight, on the eve of China's tragic modern age, there ran through her society a premonitory shiver, a vision of sorcerers roaming the land, stealing souls. By enchanting either the written name of the victim or a piece of his hair or thing. The sorcerer would cause him to sicken and die. He then would use the stolen soul force for his

own purposes. Now. Coon points out that a lot of Chinese, a lot of Chinese sorcery, concerns the fragility of this supposed link between the body and the soul, and he also specifically mentions the power of the beggar's curse UH leveled at one who you know refuses to give alms to the poor. Quote, his polluted nature was entirely combatible

with magical terrorism. So in this way, we kind of returned to that idea we talked about earlier, the idea that like the curse is kind of like it's it's the last bit of power that somebody in a in a reduced cast or in a reduced level of society, the last thing they have that they can turn to if they're you know, they're on the street corner and they're asking for a coin from the from the rich man, and the rich man doesn't give them to them. You know, what can you do? You can curse them. You can

you can spit that curse. Uh, And they can't quite take that way from you. They like, even no matter what your position in life, they're they're going to have to deal with that curse that you that you unleashed. Well, I feel like a version of this comes through so often even um, not just in all the real history we've been talking about how curses have been used by people, but even in like say the Witch literature, I mean,

the witch we often forget is an outcast figure. Right that the witch is oppressed, the witch tends to be an ugly old woman at a time when an ugly old woman generally did not hold much power in society, and at times and places where government and society are very misogynist that would look on a single old woman with with disdain and say, you know, why should she have any say over how anything goes? And so maybe

she needs some magic to have a say. Yeah, there's I feel like there's so much potentially unpack with the idea of of of of the beggar figure in their power to curse. You know, it's kind of like you've like you've reduced their stature and you've kind of associated a certain amount of pollution with them, and in doing so, you've kind of given them the power to curse you,

you know. Yeah. Now, I mentioned at the top of the podcast that we would come back to Lo Pan because Lo Pan in a sense, does pop up in Kuhn's book. So Lo Pan, the character from Victor Little China, does not really exist in um in Chinese myth or history, but we do have the figure of Lupan um and he and he does come up in this particular book book, Lupan being the mystic figure uh and inventor Chinese god

of carpentry. You have a particular book called the Lupan Qing, and this text includes instructions for the construction of a house in such a way to deal with the quote various kinds of carpenters, mason's and plasters who will plot to poison, curse and harm the owner. Whoa why would they do that? Well? Uh, I mean, on one hand, maybe it's just that, you know, how he's dealing with contractors. You never know when they're going to curse you behind

your back, right. Uh, seems to belie maybe a guilty conscience on the owner's part, exactly maybe exactly um, or just to sort of a general distrust of everybody that you've you know, I'm assuming in this case, you're probably dealing with a wealthy individual. Who's who's who's either building the house for themselves or or for another wealthy member

of society. Uh So, yeah, they're they're they're a number of different societal elements and economic factors to consider and why they might be uh subject to being cursed or just be paranoid about being cursed. Yeah, okay, I can see that. I Mean, generally, wealth might tend to cause a sense of isolation in your brain, where you start to look around at everybody else and think, oh, they're

all jealous of me. Well, luckily, this particular book included some instructions how to how to create a counter curse against the curse spitting contractor Okay, what do you do? All right? So, first of all, when the roof beam is raised, quote, offer a sacrifice to three types of animal. And then the next recite the following secret charm to master lupon quote. Evil artisans, do you not know that poisons and curses will rebound upon yourselves and bring no

harm to the owner. Let the artisan responsible for the sorcery meet misfortune. I have received the proclamation of the Supreme Ruler, the Jade Emperor, ordering that I shall suffer no harm from others, and that all will redound to my good fortune an urgent decree. Next, you burn a copy of the charm in a private place where no pregnant woman can see it. Then you mix ashes with blood of both a black and a yellow dog. Uh dog blood apparently often factored into magical spells of the time.

Then you dissolve all of this in wine. And then when the main roof beam is raised. You serve this potion to the builders, and the boss of the builders uh that they have to drink three cups of it, and then whoever is plotting sorcery against you will perish. Also, you want to paste of a million inc copy of this um this anti curse a top of the roof beam.

That's a lot of lengths to go to. But it makes me think again how sometimes we've talked about sometimes it seems like magic operates on like the sunk costs kind of issue. Like the more work you put into making a magic spell work, maybe the more effective it feels to you, because it will become harder for you

to admit that it didn't work. Yeah, I wonder too if this is Like I wonder how much of this scenario though, is about legitimate concern that underlings will work evil sorcery against you, or the fear that their their their work will be shoddy, or that they might steal from you, etcetera. Like how much of this is is just making up for lack of oversight in the construction process. Essentially,

I do not steal this book, warning that's possible. But then there's all there's just all kinds of weird psychology about the way that owners tend to resent the people who work for them. You know. Uh, this is almost like a like a weird magical version of an employment contract. Yeah. Now, I do have to say I I have never had an experience with a contractor or repair person, etcetera where

I felt that they were cursing me. Now, just in case anyone out there is listening and they're thinking, hey, well I I worked on Robert's house or I fixed one of Robert's appliances, let me assure you I have never had any experience with with a with a a pair person, or a contractor where I felt like they were cursing me in any way, shape or form. On the other hand, I do think you need to return that bronze vase pretty soon, because I can see it's

filling up with your blood rather quickly. What if Yelp reviews, like negative Route Yelp reviews were um were overtly curses. What if they were they were worded in that way, there's probably something in the in the by laws for for Yelp that you from doing that. From doing evil magic, Yeah, no evil magic, no linguistic sorcery. It privent permitted on the beat on the website. You know, one of the things that's interesting about curses is that it seems like

words are very important to them. Like it is definitely not enough to simply think that you wish ill will to come upon somebody. It is often the case that you need to put it down in writing or have a spell spoken allowed in in conjunction with some kind of ritual. It's putting the ill will into words that

makes it real. Yeah. We see that in the Roman example, and we certainly see it here in this Chinese example, both in that it is plastered to the beam and then also the physical writing is used in a potion that will become a part of the contractor's bodies. So I think maybe this is a good opportunity to transition to talking about the psychology of curses. What's going on when people cast curse spells against others? Are curse spells maybe sometimes actually effective in a way even though magic

isn't real. I'm ready to do that, Are you ready, Robert, Yeah, let's do it. I mean, I think one thing that's important to note here is that a curse need not be entirely psychological or or or or you know, even social. But certainly if if like someone publicly curses you, there's

probably gonna be a certain societal pressure. Like if you're the guy who walks by the beggar and doesn't give them a coin, and the beggar curses you in front of other people, that's I mean, that's essentially like a public shaming to to a certain extent, So there may well be a pipe a price to pay, uh of on a social level. But then if you have other examples where like a curse is but perhaps accompanied by some sort of a monetary penalty or some other kind

of penalty, then um, yeah, again it's not mirror. It's not just a psychological attack. It may have these other components, but for the most part, when we're talking especially about the beggar's curse or the curse of the end of the role who's whose cloak is stolen with no hope of ever getting it back, all you have are the words of the curse, and and to to a certain extent, they might not even be heard or processed by the

individual that is the target. Right, Well, I mean, it's important to think about the curse existing at two levels. It's working at two levels. On one level, or maybe you can even say three levels. One is it works on the person who cast the curse. The other is that it works on the you know, the target of the curse. And the third is that it works on the society in general, the people who you know, the context,

people who observe the curse happening. UM. Now to focus first on the idea of the target of the curse, Like you have had a curse put on you, are there ways that that might actually be effective, that you might think that you are actually suffering from a curse even though there's no magic. And I think quite clearly the answer to that is yes, you know, there's a lot of psychological power. UM. Like the I guess we

should talk about the no Seebo effect. Yeah, we've we've talked about this on the show before in the past. There was an episode from I think eleven about placebos, and then we of course end up talking about no sepos which is in the same way that a curse is the kind of the opposite of a prayer or a or a blessing, the no Seebo effect is the dark reflection of the plus sebo effect exactly. So we're

all very aware of the placebo effect now, right. So the human body responds favorably sometimes to treatments that don't actually chemically do anything to you. So you've got pain in your shoulder, and I give you a pill and tell you it's a pain killer. Even though the pill contains no medicine whatsoever, many people will report that their symptoms are being healed, and sometimes the expectation of benefit leads people to have a greater chance of improvement over

the baseline from all kinds of negative conditions. The effect is powerful enough that it's a standard part of the scientific method in medicine. We always have to control for

placebo effect if you want your study to be valid. Yeah, place the placebo effect is is one of the reasons that any number of like faith healing or alternative medicine, uh, these various practices may be perceived as having a positive benefit because they may well have a marginally measurable positive benefit in the short term, but it's all due to the placebo effect. Or well that I'd say, there are

actually two things. Placebo effect is a strong part. Another strong part I want to mention just real quick is the idea of regression to the mean. Um. So, sometimes I think people overstate the power of the placebo effect, attributing almost magical powers to it. I'm sure you've encountered this to where people think it proves some kind of radical mind over matter state of affairs. I don't think it goes that far. Though. The placebo effect is very

real and very interesting and absolutely worth talking about. It's not like, you know, a magic, almost psychic power kind of right. Sometimes it can be presented it almost like it's it's it's like a lucid dreaming, right, like I have broken free from the boundaries of my physical body.

Thank you placebo effect. All hell the mighty sugar bill. Right, I've I've changed the laws of chemistry with my brain and no uh and And the idea of regression to the mean is important to understand because in fact, many placebo effects can probably be attributed to it. Whenever you hear the words this is a science e term regression to the mean, Basically, you can just think of regression

to the mean as going back to normal. So most of the time you're in a position to be studied for some kind of medical treatment, it's because something has gone wrong with your body. And often after something goes wrong with your body, eventually you just get better. Right whether or not you've got any kind of treatment. Something

went wrong and then it went away. So to test the real effectiveness of placebo's qua placebo effects, you need to not only get a test group getting the real treatment under study, and then a test group getting a fake treatment the placebo group, but also a group that gets no treatment whatsoever, and compare the three of those. In many cases, a significant number of people will get

better even despite getting no treatment at all. But then usually on top of that, you'll get more people getting better in the placebo group, people who think that they're getting treated even though they're not getting anything that does anything chemically real to their body. But, like we said, placebo is robustly observed, very real anyway, The no sebo

effect is the evil twin of the placebo effect. If a placebo can make you feel like you're getting better when there's no physical cause, the no sebo can make you feel worse when there's no physical cause. Yeah, this is the idea that the sugar pill is hurting me

as opposed to the sugar peel A pill is healing me. Yeah, And so in randomized placebo controlled trials of drugs and other medical treatments, people in the placebo group sometimes report not only feeling better despite not receiving the real drug, sometimes they report negative side effects despite not receiving the real drug, and researchers have determined that this is likely

due to the process of informed consent. Right, so, before you sign up to an experiment, subjects have to be told of any known adverse side effects that they might experience due to the drug, even if they end up sorted into the control group. So having been informed of those possible side effects, people sometimes experience and report them even though they're not getting any active ingredients. In other words, a placebo effect for bad things. And there are all

kinds of examples of this. One of them is that the no sebo effect can absolutely make people feel pain. Uh an example cited and I was just reading an article about this in Science from seventeen by Luana Colloca, and Colloca writes about there's a concurrent study in in the journal that talks about how so you can take two creams. I would put some creams on your skin. Robert and these two creams are actually both placebos. Neither

of them do anything. But I've told you that one of the or I've given you indications a visual indications, that one of them is very expensive and one of them is very cheap. And what I tell you they're supposed to do is they will stop itching, but they will increase your sensitivity to pain in the affected area. So not only does this cause people to think that they're experiencing heightened pain, they actually think that the more

expensive looking cream causes them to feel more pain. I think there's another thing going on there that's interesting with like the idea of you having to cast a spell that involves like a cost, like you pay the scribe, or you have to do a lot of steps like building the house. You know, that's something that's costly to you. It seems like the more you spend on a magical spell or a curse, maybe the more effective it is because of some version of this effect, like the more

expensive cream seems like it's giving you worse side effects. Yeah, and plus just the sunk cost. Right, I put this much time and energy into this magical vendetta. It has to work, That's exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Now, Coloca, just note something very quickly that I thought was kind of interesting. What are the evolutionary explanations for the placebo

and no cebo effects? Why would there be a pressure on the creation of our brains through evolution to feel better or worse depending on suggestion rather than actual physical stimuli. Uh and she she mentions quote. In evolutionary terms, no cebo and placebo effects coexist to favor perceptual mechanisms that anticipate threat and dangerous events no cebo effects and promote appetitive and safety behaviors in placebo effects. So it's almost

like giving you a taste of what's to come. I think this also makes sense if you you unroot um our experience with placebo and no cebo no cebo effects, if you if you try and take it outside of the context of of of the human mind and thinking so intently about the future and worrying about what the future is, and you think of it in terms of like a longer biological history of essentially like a dog

eating grass when its stomach is bothering it. Yeah, exactly, um So, so you can clearly see how something like the no cebo effect could be at play and somebody who knows they're the target of a curse. Right, if you're the target of a curse, it might not do everything to you, Like somebody who curses you and says, may he grow horns or something like that, that's not

going to happen. But if it is something like, may you're urine sting ever so slightly when you urinate, or more and more intently, may your may your stomach hurt? May you have stomach pains? And you might start thinking, I think I might have stomach pains. I think there's something going on, And then there to a certain extent,

is something going on via the no cebo effect. Yeah, so we know we're vulnerable to stuff like this, and I think in those kinds of cases, curses could actually be highly effective, depending on if the person believes that the curse could be effective, and especially if the curse appears expensive like the more expensive cream, and if it

is creating stress in the body. And that's always something to look at too there because when we feel heightened levels of stress there there can be physical ramifications for that. There are limits to that, as we'll discussing in in a minute, but but still stress in the body. Uh, can have ill effects on the body. Yes, And now here's another way that we could think of curses as maybe being effective, just in what you're talking about, the idea of the the the threat of a curse causing

stress or anxiety. Um, what about the cases where the person's cloak is stolen and the person doesn't know who stole the cloak and the cast a curse anyway, how could that be doing anything well? I would argue that maybe that could and sort of like an economic standpoint, So take the context of the curse tablets against an unknown thieves. Let's say you remember of the you know, the common classes in in the ancient Mediterranean. Somewhere, one

of your most valuable possessions gets stolen. Somebody takes your bronze pot, or somebody takes your cloak, and you live in a time and place when the authorities are not very helpful to you. They might be Uh, they might not be especially interested in solving the case or getting your stuff back, especially if you're poor. And I checked out what what it was like in the Roman Empire,

like if you got your stuff stolen. I was trying to find evidence of what you would do, right, you know, if you could go to the police or something, what kind of access to justice he would have. And as far as I could tell, the Romans did at different periods have various internal forces which might be thought of as something like police, like the vigil as or the watchman or the urban cohorts. But I've not found any evidence that these forces would actually help common people in

solving petty crimes. Maybe they did in some cases, but I have not found anything about that. It seems more like they were oriented toward heavy jobs like firefighting or putting down riots or violent gangs or mobs. It's almost more like an uh, you know, a domestic military force or something. It is just so difficult for the modernist to imagine this world you're describing. No, I mean there are many yeah, exactly. I mean a lot of people do not have access to any kind of police force

that could give them justice on a small scale. And even if you were privileged enough to like have access to a police force, who's going to take down a report about you getting your cloak stolen or something like that, They're probably not going to be able to get it back for you. A lot of times that written report is about as useful as a written curse. You might pay for a good point, dollars are paying for that written curse, I suppose. So the state can't help you.

You don't really have the power to take matters into your own hands, especially if you're not sure who the culprit is. So what can you do about your stolen cloak? Well, you go to the temple and you pay ascribe to write out a curse tablet for you. It's not actually magic, but imagine if enough people do this and believe in the power of the curses to find and inflict pain

on the culprits. I wonder if it might actually discourage thieves from praying on the power of lists to begin with, Right, if you're surrounded by these cursed tablets nailed up everywhere, they're giving you all these reminders that if I steal something from somebody, I might get a curse cast against me,

and that would be really bad. Then I wouldn't be able to defecate, or you know, I'd bleed into a pot, or have sexual problems or something that might prevent me from stealing somebody's cloak to begin with, Yeah, this, This almost makes me want to devote an episode to to figuring out like what, you know, what sort of mindset the career uh cloak thief, a career criminal might have had then in ancient times? Were they perhaps okay with being cursed? Were they to some degree or even a

large degree? Uh? Did they see through the bologna of the curse and like realize this is just a bunch of people who are angry because I'm really good at stealing cloaks, but so far I can still urinate, so I'm in the clear. Or were there perhaps other magical protections like ultimately, does the does the does the the

curse spitting only work with an certain religious worldview? And if you have a slightly different religion or perhaps different religious values, perhaps you worship another god, then you're protected. At any rate, it still make it probably, it's still definitely makes that the individual feel good, like, well, I'm not going to get that cloak back, but at least I got this curse rolled out. Yeah, it's hard to tell.

I mean, it's hard to look into the two the minds of ancient people and know whether they expected it to work or maybe I don't know, maybe it's possible that people who were putting these curves, you know, paying to get these curses done, or writing them themselves or whatever, we're not always expecting to actually get their thing back. But they were trying to create a kind of curse

culture that might offer a deterrent from committing crimes. It was almost like an altruistic you know, for the greater good kind of thing that I'm doing to discourage cloak stealing in general. Alright, well, on that note, we're gonna do one more break and again. You'll be cursed if you skip the advertisement, but then we'll be right back. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So we've been talking about the ways that curses, even though they're not magic, might

be effective in one way or another. They might be effective against the target of the curse via the no Seebo effect. They might be effective on the society in general via some kind of magic belief system in a deterrent or that would create a deterrent from committing crimes or something. Um then I wonder how they work on

the self. But one quick idea I had. I don't have a whole lot to say about this, but just a thought, is I wonder if sometimes a curse could be a psychological self manipulation technique, like a way to persuade yourself to fully turn against someone you previously had some kind of relationship. Probably not with the curses against like unknown enemies, you know, whoever took my cloak. But when you're cursing somebody, you know, it almost reminds me

of um. You know, sometimes you see people like in movies and stuff, like they go through a breakup or something, and while they're going through the breakup, they just suddenly say lots of really mean, hurtful things to the person they're breaking up with. And obviously, you know you see that, so you know that happens sometimes in reality. That's that's based off people's experiences, And I wonder if people do stuff like that to help themselves enforce a clean break.

It's like, you know, like once I say something like this, I've crossed the line, and now this person is quote dead to me or you know that that you're not going to go back and rekindle the relationship. Perhaps, But then also these curses feel so formal that it feels like it would be easier to take back a formal curse than something that is uh, that is you know that that you just say in a moment of anger,

you know those things that you can truly never unsay. Yeah, I wonder, But I wonder also if putting it into words, written down as a way of trying to make it like untake back double from you know, like if somebody's written it on a lead sheet and then nailed it up somewhere, you can't say like, I take it back now, it's external to you. You've made the curse and you're you're that person is dead to me. Sentiment sort of

public and unalterable. I don't know if people take down crazy Facebook and Twitter posts every day, though I guess sometimes you have. You can say my account was hacked. Sorry. That curse is not really intended for everybody. But I mean there are a lot of ways that I think modern behaviors like you're talking about could be considered equivalent to curses. I mean, putting aside people who would still practice some form of witchcraft and like literally think they're

enacting evil magic against somebody else. There are other like modern equivalents of curses. I think. Yeah, I mean, just to go back to social media, I think We've probably all seen examples of someone pointing out some wrongdoing and saying, in varying degrees of viciousness, saying like, I hope something

bad happens to you because of this. But then also you see the the opposite of that sometimes where someone is going out of their way to to either not make a curse or even to a certain extent, kind of bless the perpetrator. You know, where someone says like, hey, whoever it was who mugged me, uh the other day? Uh, I hope, I hope you find the help that you need. You know that that sort of statement, which can be

a very positive statement to make. Can you see someone make a statement like that and you you're like, yeah, this is a person who had every right to curse the individual who wronged them, but they did not. And there's something noble in that. But it's kind of playing upon the same energy of the curse. It is in the it is in the tradition of the curse. Even if it is if it is a significant improvement. Yeah,

I can see that. And of course, I mean we should not ignore that modern religions that are widely practiced to do have things that are I don't know, maybe not exactly like the you know, curse tablets or something, but are in some form like invoking of supernatural authority

against someone. Oh yeah, I mean you can still find yourself excommunicated in any number of faith and did not nations where you were essentially kicked out of the religion, and any rewards that might await you in the afterlife are therefore denied you. And the time was when you could you could essentially perform this on an entire nation. Uh what a writ of interdict? I believe? Yeah, I think. Uh well, I just looked at a pope innocent. The

third issued an interdict against Norway. It's just like Norwegians. You're out. Sorry, the outside curse on all of you until presumably you know, work things out. Um. And there are forms of excommunication and other religions as well, um in um. In Islamic traditions, there is tach fear, which is a contentious declaration that an individual is a nonbeliever that is sometimes compared to excommunication. And there was a practice of cast excommunication in medieval India, and in Judaism

there is hiram, which is supposedly similar as well. Now if you turn on evangelical television programming in the United States, or if you've had an opportunity to watch any of it um in the last few decades, you've probably seen a lot of prayer activity and m and as well as sometimes something that could definitely be considered a curse. Right, So, if you're praying to God to invoke religious texts, uh, you know, to spit doom at someone in particular, then

you're I think you're essentially talking about a curse. Again, it comes back to the idea of the protester with the sign. They may see it as them just invoking the rule or reminding everybody how God works. But when push comes to shove, how is that different? Really? Well? Yeah, I mean from the from the third party's perspective, it looks a lot like a curse. The person might say, no, no, no, no no, I'm not making this happen. I'm just telling

you how it is. But the victim or the target of this threat is probably going to perceive it essentially as being something like a curse, like I I cast down ill fortune upon you. Yeah, like so many, so many different religion. Let's say, any religion that has a theology of hell. Essentially you have a built in revenge fantasy. And and I think this plays into some of the psychology of the curse, issuing the curse, right, Like I'm I I can't actually get back at whoever stole this

cloak from me, But in my mind they're suffering. In my mind, they're they're going to be tormented. And that's essentially what any health theology really is, like, Oh, those people who didn't believe like me, or the people who actually did something nefarious in a life, they may get away with it now, but in the afterlife they will, they will burn, And in my mind they are burning

in the depraved notions that I have incorporated into my worldview. Well, you could also say, in like the economic example we gave, that perhaps a belief like that might create a deterrent among people from doing something negative. Unfortunately, now I think you could take strong issue with saying that that a that it was worth it to do that deterrent, or

be that it actually worked or did anything. Yeah, and this we kind of get into the whole theological idea that if people were not threatened with hell, they will just they won't. They won't obey any law right, right. I don't put much stock in that, but for my money, especially in today's world, everyone has any kind of access

to the to the marketplace of of religious ideas. Like you, you ultimately choose which version of a particular faith you're going to adhere to, and if you choose the one with the more elaborate, uh, you know, all inclusive revenge fantasy, then you were deciding, like what curses you want to level against nonbelievers or people who have who have sinned, etcetera. Yeah,

it's sort of a cursed by interpretation. Yeah, and then of course you have plenty of individuals in our modern world who have if they're not actually cursing people, they're at least pushing the narrative that there are those out there who are cursing. There have been specific examples with Pat Robertson's claim that Satanist were cursing babies, or Alec Jones saying that, which is, we're using curses and witchcraft

against Donald Trump, that sort of thing. Wait, does Jones believe that the curse or does he claim to believe that the curses are working? I don't know. You'd have to ask Alex Jones about that. But to pick up on what you're saying, a curse can also serve as

a form sort of a public shaming, right. You know, it's been hypothesized that the bath curse tablets I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier, may have been publicly displayed, meaning that people could see the allegations, they could sympathize with the victim, they could shame or punish the perpetrator, they could help the victim with details, maybe to discover who the perpetrator was. Like, something about this historical scenario is saying maybe maybe it wasn't just the

magical qualities. I mean, these people probably did believe in curses and believe there was a magic kind of work being done, but it also might have also been just kind of like the curse is part of a public bulletin board system that helps keep everybody informed about crimes that are going on and and what your friend might

need help with. Now, I'm also reminded in all of this of prosperity churches, you know, churches that in many cases they interpret poverty or even illness as divine punishment, as is essentially a curse from God, which which which really really plays into this older idea, right, if things, if bad things are happening to people and we don't know why, we we we end up attributing all of these magical causes to it. Uh. And we still see this throughout the world. I mean, they're they're. There are

a number of different examples. I was looking at a particular paper though, published in the journal Plos one from researchers at the University of East Anglia, and they point out that many people in rural African communities still believe that disability occurs due to some sort of supernatural force, such as curses such as, you know, a demon afflicting a child, that sort of thing um, and these are

caused by wrongdoing. So, for instance, one of the common versions of the US is there's a there's infidelity and therefore the child of that infidelity is punished with some sort of deformity. But the research has found that as medical understanding grows, apparents are more likely to seek medical aid first rather than a which doctor to you know, interpret what is going on, like why this deformity has

taken place, etcetera. This particular research was condicted conducted in Kenya, by the way, but I think it does illustrate you know, why the idea of a curse work so well, you know, right, because it can what play on anxieties you have about guilt and inadequacy. Yeah, and then on top of just not having access to information about how deformities work, how how medical science works, you know that sort of thing.

And then also especially the curses vague enough. I mean, we're all going to violate a moral value to some extent. At some point, We're all going to do something we are not proud of and we feel guilty about, and then something that we can interpret as bad luck is going to happen to all of us. I mean, if nothing else, you may find yourself in a situation where you accidentally say a square word in front of a child,

and then later you'll stub your toe. And if you and if you wanted to, if there was, if there was support for this interpretation in your worldview, you could say, oh h, that the god of toe stubbing punished me for having sworn in front of that child. So it's quite easy for us to make ourselves the victims of magical causality via magical thinking, even if you know nobody else out there is telling you I'm cursing you. Yeah, because we was. We've discussed plenty of times in the

show before. Our brains are just pattern recognition engines, and we'll often make connections that are not really there. And uh and this is where we see so many different magical ideas about how the world works emerging, right. Um, you know, even outside of traditional beliefs and the developing world. Who I mean, who out there has encountered the the the negative people get cancer model, you know, that kind of Western New Age thinking. It's like, you know what,

it's like the secret kind of Yeah. And and I can see why this is attractive too, because in the same way that if one doesn't have access tom like a modern scientific understanding of disease, they might be susceptible

to to to some sort of magical explanation. I can see where even with access to uh uh to medical understanding of the world, if the if modern medicine is not able to you know, provide the level of of treatment that you would require, I can see where you might turn to some of these magical ideas, you know, or you might sort of stumble back into them or even sort of have them at the same time, I mean, are are we're certainly capable of having to conflicting ideas

in our head at the same time. We're on one level. You know what cancer is, and you know that it has nothing to do with your personality or your life decisions. But still somewhere in the back of your mind there's that old bit of magical thinking, sort of clawing at the door, you know, trying to to to tear you down into believing some other bit of nonsense about it. Yeah, you brought all this on yourself with, like you say,

all that negative thinking. Yeah. Now that being said, psychological stress cannon does have an effect on the body in many ways. Stress can cause a number of physical health problems. But the experts say, if you look, you can find this answer if you look at cancer dot gov. The

link between stress and cancer is weak at best. Yeah, though, as we explained earlier, of course we know all about no cebo effects and stuff, so I can certainly see that ways you know that the ways you're thinking could have especially effects on the subjective experience of the negative parts of an illness. Right, pain might feel like it hurts more if there if your brain is in certain states of of bad feelings or bad expectations or expectations

that you will feel pain. So it's interesting anyway you cut it, uh, the curse at one On one hand, the curse has no power, the curse is just pure magical thinking. But on the other hand, a curse carry some weight. And that's probably why people have been have been spitting curses at each other for so long, and we'll continue to do so in one form or another. Yeah, I think you're right. Really, I'm surprised there aren't more curses today because I imagine a curse gives you a

certain amount of legal protection. Like if like, if you threaten somebody, you can be arrested like that. That that is a that is a crime. But is it a crime to curse someone? Is it a crime to invoke divine powers against them? So if you say I will make you unable to defecate, that that's a crime. But if if you say I will invoke maglus to make it unable make you unable to defecate, man, you know, Yeah, I feel like that's a harder sell to the local

police force. I guess one last thing I would end on is I would say, when I think about curses and stuff. I think it's the kind of thing that, even though I don't believe in magic, I think it's the kind of thing you shouldn't do really because, as you know, because it does have these effects, especially I would say effects on the self, Like even if you don't tell the person about it, you know it, it

kind of dirties your mind. To cast a curse, wishing ill on other people hurts you, It hurts your hurts your mind, it hurts your character absolutely, So hopefully in this episode we've been able to, you know, to make you rethink the world of of the curse. And heck, we didn't even get into the idea of cursed items and allegedly cursed items so much. But that's a whole other area that we could potentially explore in the future. Yeah.

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