The interaction between oil and water has fascinated us since ancient times, and it has factored into practices as diverse as divination rituals and attempts to calm turbulent waters at sea with storm oil. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the effect of oil on troubled waters. (Originally published 07/20/2023, Part 1 of 2)
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and it is a Saturday, so it's time for another episode from the vault. This is going to be part one of our series on oil and Troubled Water. This originally published on July twentieth, twenty twenty three. It's a part one of two and it gets into the fascinating interactions between oil and water and how it's factored into practices as diverse as divination, rituals and attempts to calm the sea with oil. So, without further ado, let's jump right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert.
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
We have a fun journey to tell take you on in the next couple of episodes, probably going to be a two parter, but who knows. We never know. We don't know what the future is going to bring. But this is one that on the surface of things, you might think, oh, well, oil and water, how interesting could that get? But it gets pretty interesting because you know, we're going to get into divination, We're going to get into the idea of pouring storm oil into the sea to calm turbulent waters. There's a lot to talk about here, but at the very base level, oil and water two things that famously don't mix. You've probably observed varying levels of the interaction before. Perhaps you've just seen like a film of oil on the surface of a puddle, or you've observed the separation of cooking oil combined with another liquid in a mixing bowl. It instantly catches the eye. I'm not going to say it necessarily always captures the human imagination, but there is something about it that you can't help but know.
Did you ever have one of those toys when you were a kid where there is I actually don't know what liquids they use in these, but presumably it's water and then some kind of lipid based colored liquid, maybe like red or blue, that bubbles through the water and maybe spins a little pin wheel or something.
Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. I do remember these. They're really fun for a brief period of time, and then they go into the junk drawer.
Well, maybe I'm just easily amused. I remember turning mine over and over a lot.
Yeah, well, I mean it's memorable. I'm not saying it's forgotten. That it certainly ends up in the toy chest.
I bet that one's really fun when it breaks. That'd be a great origin story for like a long dormant virus or something, the dangerous microorganism encased within the item of power.
What strange oil did they end up using. Yeah, well it's not just children, It's not just the inner child as well. Humans have interactions of oil and water intriguing since ancient times. And yeah, indeed it does trace back into the realm of ancient magic and divination. You know, various tales and we'll touch on some of these of like ancient kings and so forth, seeking out the word and the wisdom of diviners who use various methods to sort of reach into the murky future and make sense of the strange shapes there. Now, divination is, of course the attempt to seek guidance concerning the future and decisions that impact future events. As we've discussed in the show before. You can certainly think of it as a as the right of supernatural guidance, which it is, but especially in the ancient context too, we might think of it as well as a means of sort of generating a randomized direction that is weighted by belief for superstition. You know, if presented with two choices, all things being equal, you know, flip a coin, but not a trivial coin, not a completely trivial coin, because this coin is weighted supernatural belief. But then also you keep it from being just you know, completely random, because it also entails an art of interpretation. It's not just a coin anyone can flip and anyone can read. You need a specialist who's going to read the coin, read whatever it is you're reading, and perhaps too you know, read the client, read the patron and or the you know, the larger events going on and so so, yeah, there's a there's an art to divination as well.
So it's often interesting when you think about a lot of the stories of what the interpreter does. I mean, there are some cases where they get real specific about things, but most of the time it seems like they are adding in ambiguity that makes it harder to falsify the prediction.
Yeah, sort of the you know, there's obviously an art to the cold read, and you know, there's a level of manipulation to carrying it out as well. And also there's a lot of self preservation, especially when you're dealing with you know, dark and gloomy kings and ancient times. If you want to be a diviner that lives a long life, or even a reasonably long life, you do have to read the room and figure out exactly what kind of message you're going to relay to the ruler.
Look, I always said there would be a decisive victory. I didn't say which side would get.
So there are various methods of divination that have been used over the years. We talked about about many on the show before in the past, and we're going to touch on several different ones here, but specifically concerning oil and water divination, this is what the ancient Greeks would come to call lacanamancy, the use of oil poured into a basin of water to tell the future.
Yeah, so the name lacanomancy comes from the Greek lakane, meaning bowl. So this is lacanomancy meaning bowl divination. And in the literature, yeah, it seems most often to refer to omens in mixtures of oil or water, either in a bowl or in a cup and could apparently be done either way, maybe by I think more often by pouring oil into water, but maybe also by pouring water into oil. Though there are some other definitions for this word that seem to overlap with the concept of hydromancy, meaning divination through water. And since the name only means bowl, like the name doesn't mean oil, I guess it could also involve these other things, like you have a bowl of water and you drop gems in it and see what they do to get your omen, or you drop gold or silver coins in, or you like move, you know, move the water around and see which way the ripples go. There are a number of ways of doing this, but the oil and water one seems to have been prominent in the ancient Near East.
Yeah. Yeah, this this lines up with what I was reading as well. I was looking at a book from nineteen eighty one titled Oracles and Divination, and in particular, there's a section in it by O. R. Gurney that says, yes, these these practices, they tended to involve a bowl or a basin of some sort, and yes, one would either pour oil into water or water into oil, and the oil would cause various shapes on the surface of the water, and these would be used through the diviner's art or the barus art. I believe barrou is the term in ancient Babylon to predict the future. There is also a variation called al romance, which used flour instead of oil. So you know, take heart, if you're out of oil and you have some flour on hand, you can also go with that.
Method make you the loosest of dose.
Now. Gurney also mentions that there now are slash were I'm not sure if this is like the current count. This is again a text from eighty one the six known surviving tablets from ancient Mesopotamia dealing with oil omens, and the author includes a couple of examples here that I wanted to read. So these would be different nuggets of wisdom to help you the diviner interpret what's happening in the bowl. Quote. If from the middle of the oil two drops come out, one big, the other small, the man's wife will bear a sun for a sick man, he will recover. And then the next one here concerns the use of flower instead of oil. If the flower in the east takes the shape of a lion's face, the man is in the grip of a ghost of one who lies in the open country. The sun will consign it, the ghost to the wind, and he will get well.
Oh wow, that's creepy. So wait, flower forms a lion's face. Does that mean the ghost of one who lies in the open country? Does that mean a ghost of someone who didn't receive a proper burial?
Would that be? That was what it made me think of. I'm not certain, and the author doesn't go into detail on this, but yeah, it made me think of other superstitions we've discussed from other traditions involving the unburied or the improperly buried dead.
This was a subject often of great concern in the literature and folklore of the ancient world, that like people like not getting a proper burial was really something you didn't want.
Yeah. Now, another form of divination that he mentions is lebanomancy, which is divination by smoke from throwing cedar shavings on an incense burner. And this would be kind of similar, like you throw the wood shavings on their smoke billows up, and however the smoke is moving, what shapes it seems to be forming. That is the basis of your vision of the future. M Now, he writes that the use of entrails and a sacrificed animal would become more popular, but oil, flower and smoke based divination would remain a cheaper option, but also still one that would be invoked and used by various important individuals, including kings, such as when cassite Ogham the Second, he says, prayed to the god Shamish by oil before setting out on a quest to reclaim stolen statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum.
It's interesting that you mentioned lacanamancy as a cheaper alternative to reading omens in the entrails of sacrificed animals. I came across that exact same claim and some other sources. I don't know if they're citing from a common source that says that, but yeah, that is interesting obviously. So I guess the benefit of reading the entrails of a sacrificed animal is you're almost like, you know, you're paying for the really high price ticket for your message from the gods, Like you're taking a good animal, getting it sacrificed. I suppose at the altar of the god you're asking for the answer from and then its entrails will tell you something. And the budget option, yeah, is just a little bit of olive oil and some water or some flour or something like that.
Yeah. And I'm just guessing here. I mean, maybe that's not always available. Maybe sometimes the old ways are thought the best, or maybe sometimes you have a situation where even a king is getting a second or third opinion on a matter, and it's like, well, okay, what do the Lacinda mancers have to say about this? Maybe they'll give me the answer that I want to hear now. The author here Gurney, goes on and mentions that there's also a form of Lacando mancy that was used by the Hittites that involved a basin or a tub filled with water. Certainly, but instead of adding oil or flour, you would add what might be a snake or possibly an eel, and its movements in the enclosed space of the tank would foretell the future. And it does not in this case sound like the animal was sacrificed. It's just about you put the animal in there, watch it swim around. How does it behave its movements are going to reveal what the future holds? For us now I was looking at concerning this topic appears in the Influence of surface films on interfacial flow Dynamics from nineteen ninety seven by Sean Patrick McKenna, and this author writes that lacana manci is, of course one of the forms of divination practice during the eighteenth century BCE in the Hamarabi ruled Old Babylonian Empire, and points out, Yeah, there's several tablets of the time period unearthed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that list examples of the kind of mancy and guides for interpreting what's going on in the water. This author also shares some examples translated from these tablets. A few of these include the following. If the oil sinks, then rises and spreads around the water for the campaign, unfavorable consequences for the sick divine punishment. If the oil splits in two for the campaign, both camps should march together for the sick death. If a drop emerges in the east and remains stationary for the camp pain booty for the sick recovery. If two drops emerge, one large, one small, a male child will be born for the sick recovery, if the oil fills the bowl for the sick, death for the campaign, defeat for the leader.
This last one actually raises questions for me, because the question is if the oil fills the bowl. Knowing what we know about the physics of oil and water today, I mean, I think what will pretty much always happen is that over time, any oil in the water will spread out as far as it can, and so it will pretty much always spread to fill the surface of water in a bowl. So it takes time for it to do that. So maybe you've got to put a time limit on it. Otherwise it's always going to be death or defeat for the leader. I would think.
Yeah, I think there has to be an immediacy to this. And obviously, if you especially if you don't have a steady hand, all of your divinations can't be you know, death for the sick and defeat for the leader of an army. That's going to be bad for business, I think.
But it's interesting to see the pairings of the different interpretations with like the two different kinds of battles, the battle for health within the body, in the battle you know, for the in the military campaign going on for the King. So some of these pairings make sense to me, like unfavorable consequences for the military campaign with divine punishment for the sick death and defeat death and defeat booty and recovery. That peering makes sense. The one I was confused about is if the oil splits in two, that means for the sick death for the campaign, both camps should march together.
Yeah, I'm maud you exactly sure what to make of that either.
Yeah, though, I like that because that's not just stating an outcome, that's giving advice.
Yeah. Now, obviously another issue that all this raises is you know, what what kinds of oil are you using in what kinds of water? You know, there could conceivably be differences in the reaction that takes place. Well, one source I looked at this is from D. Tabor. This is from nineteen eighty Babylonian Lacanomancy, an ancient text on the spreading of oil on water, and in that the author suggests that the water here is likely rain water and the oil is some manner of vegetable oil. I found that interesting, like the rain water, especially because on one hand, okay, I guess this is going to be how you're going to obtain the purest water that is also free of any oils that might, you know, otherwise contaminate it. And then on the other hand, there is something kind of supernatural to it as well, like this is the water that came from the sky, from the realm of the gods, and therefore I can imagine that playing a role in all of this as well. Now, another interesting thing that came up in one of these sources is they pointed this out Joe, that apparently in the Old Testament, in Genesis forty four five, there is a reference to lacanamancy. There's a there's a bit that goes, is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth he have done evil in so doing so?
This is a very interesting case. I think this is not necessarily a reference to lacanomancy, though that is a good candidate for what it is referring to. It is definitely referring to a form of divination, which means I think maybe this is a good time for a digression on references to divination in the Bible. And here I have to apologize because I got seriously over zealous in pursuing this digression, which is only lightly related to the topic to begin with, So please bear with me, but I think it's interesting subject. So there are actually a lot of references to divination in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible, or what Christians would call the Old Testament, contains references to a bunch of different methods of divination. First of all, there is actually a divination method officially sanctioned by the Torah and by the priest class in the Bible, which is known as the Urim and Thummim, which seems to have been some other kind of object. It's like a pair of objects worn on the ceremonial breastplate of the high priest. And while the exact form of these objects and the procedure for using them is not certain, it seems they would essentially be used for casting lots of some kind by the high priest in order to receive answers from God, possibly answers to yes or no questions about what would happen in the future, will we be successful in battle and so forth, or answers to questions about the guilt or innocence of an alleged sinner. Sometimes They're represented as like gems that flash with a divine light in order to project messages. I think there were some interpretations in the later rabbinical literature like this, but I think that's all sort of like later writers speculating on what these original passages in the scriptures meant.
Now the urim and thummim here, if I'm correct on this, this is this kind of often depict that is kind of a multi code, like you said, crystal plate that is worn from the neck. And I remember as a child, I would experience a certain amount of excitement and maybe a little bit of confusion because at the time I would have my Star Wars books on one hand, and then I would have, you know, some of these illustrated like Old Testament stories books on the other and these looked kind of these made me think of the chest plate of Darth Vader.
Oh wow, yeah, well, the chess plate of Darth Vader, Like it's got all the little tic TACs and stuff on it.
Red lights and all, and oftentimes these illustrations you see some sort of like red gems in there as well.
Yeah, So I think what it does, what is clear is that these objects are linked to the breastplate of the high priest in some way, like it said that maybe they are put in or put on the breastplate, but it's not exactly clear what they are. But what is clear is that they are somehow used in an officially in bounds divination process. This is what the followers of the God of Israel were supposed to use for divination purposes if they needed to. But the Hebrew Bible also contains numerous references to other forms of divination, such as necromancy. This is apparently a big concern in the era of the Mosaic Law, and despite its modern interpretation as a kind of evil sorcery used for like calling up armies of undead skeleton soldiers and zombie swarms to go, you know, get your paladins. Originally necromancy meant communication with the dead for the purpose of divination, not raising zombie soldiers.
Now, to be clear, even in like the modern dungeons and Dragons eccusage of necromancy, yes, there's a lot of calling up the dead and using all sorts of you know, weird spectral hands and so forth. There is still a little bit of talking to the dead, though they keep it real a little bit there, and we see a bit of that in the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie. There's a whole scene of speaking with the dead and trying to gain wisdom from them.
Oh yeah, it's played mostly for comedy, I recall. Yeah, like they have a fixed number of questions they can ask and so forth. Yeah, So that's what necromancy means in this context, though it's not. Yeah, it's not the zombie soldiers. It's the talking to the dead for the purposes of gaining hidden information or knowing the past or knowing the future. Anyway, in the Mosaic law there are general prohibitions against divination and wizardry and magic of all forms, but one of the forms of divination that is specific called out in these verses is necromancy. Also, there is a very famous story in the Bible about a consultation with a dead prophet. This is in First Samuel chapter twenty eight, where Saul, the King of Israel, famously he goes to a village called Indoor to meet with a wise woman or a witch who can speak to the dead. And this is significant in the story because Saul has condemned witchcraft and has previously banished all the wizards and fortune tellers from Israel. But then he's facing a military conflict with another nation, with the Philistines, and he wants to know what he should do, and apparently he tries to get an answer from the sanctioned methods of information. He tries to consult the Urim and Thumim, he tries to have a dream from God or get some kind of direct revelation, and nothing ends up with no guidance and has no idea what to do from any of the official channels, so he goes rogue. He violates his own edict. He puts on a disguise and seeks out a necromancer to speak to the dead prophet Samuel. He wants to get Samuel's advice on what he should do, and this does not go well, so he does go to the woman in disguise. She figures out it's Saul by the way. She's like, oh, wait a minute, you said we're not allowed to do this, and he's like, oh no, don't worry about it. I need you to talk to Samuel. So she raises Samuel from the grave. I think she can see him, but Saul can't, and he's trying to talk with him, and Samuel just does not help. He seems to be kind of irritated for being woken up from the sleep of death, and then he condemns Saul for his treachery. And then Samuel tells him that his army is going to be defeated and he will lose his kingship, and Samuel is right. The army is defeated and Saul falls on his own sword and dies. And this story seems to, at least in part, emphasize how you really shouldn't go off trail on divination methods.
Yeah, stick to the to the legal methods. Don't go into a legal divination.
By the way, if you've never seen it, everyone should look up William Blake's painting of Saul and the Spirit of Samuel and the Witch of Indoor.
Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, I mean all of Blake's illustrations. Those hand colored illustrations are always so great. This one's no exception. By the way, The Witch of Indoor would also come to play a part in the nineteen eighty five film The Battle for Indoor. Weird how cinema listeners may remember no real connection to the Biblical account other than other that we're dealing with a moon of indoor and there is a witch on it.
You were also not supposed to divine the future with the help of Wilford Brimley. But anyway, so that's a story from the Bible from after the delivery of the Mosaic Law, which contains all of these prohibitions against divination in general, presumably with the exception of the urim and thumim and the prohibitions against necromancy in particular. But there are also interesting references to divination from before the law when it seems to have different connotations. So one of these that occurs here is the example you raised earlier. This is where we're coming back to La canamancy. This is the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis, which is a long and complicated story, so I'll try to do the very condensed and simplified version. Joseph is one of the twelve sons of the biblical patriarch Jacob, and Jacob in the story shows favoritism toward him over his other brothers, even buying him a splendid coat of many colors. They made a musical about it.
Yes, yeah, classic story.
But his brothers, who are less favored by their father, become very jealous, so one day they conspire, they beat him up, they trap him in a well, and they sell him into slavery, where he ends up being transported to Egypt. But they take Joseph's coat to their father, covered in the blood of a goat, and convince him that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.
Again children's story. I remember reading it alongside My Star Wars as a child.
But in Egypt, Joseph does pretty well. He manages to rise from lowly servitude and at one point he's imprisoned, he manages to rise out of that to the rank of the pharaoh's most senior lieutenant. He's like the number two in Egypt. And the way he does this is by showing a talent for divination. He is able to interpret the omens of the future in dreams, and by correctly analyzing pharaoh's dreams, he brings great prosperity to Egypt at a time of famine for all the surrounding nations. And actually, since it matters to my interpretation of this story in a minute, the specific way this works is that the pharaoh dreams of seven fat cows that are eaten they're like swallowed up by seven lean cows, and seven rotten stalks of grain that consumes seven good stalks of grain, and Joseph realizes that this means they're going to be seven years of good crops followed by seven years of famine, and so to anticipate the famine, the Egyptians must ration their good crops and store up extra grain during the years of abundance. Joseph's prediction or his interpretation of the dream comes true, and so later suffering from famine like all of the surrounding nations are, Joseph's brothers come to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, whom they do not recognize. They don't know it's him, and then they have several interactions actually, but in the last one in secret, Joseph hides his silver cup in the grain bag carried by his youngest brother Benjamin. He then arranges to have his youngest brother caught quote stealing the cup again he actually actually planted it on him, and then demands Benjamin be given to him as a slave as punishment, and instead their older brother Judah asks that he be made a slave in Benjamin's play, and this causes Joseph to break down in tears. He reveals his identity, he forgives his brothers, and the family is reunited and allowed to relocate to a fertile part of Egypt. But it is the part of the story about the silver cup that relates to divination. So when Joseph's steward finds the silver cup hidden in Benjamin's sack, he says, just as Joseph commands him to. He says, why have you repaid evil for good? Is not this the one from which my lord drinks and with which he indeed practices divination? You have done evil in so doing. Now. Of course, it doesn't say exactly what kind of divination he does in the cup, So it could be a form of hydromancy, where you would, you know, put water in the cup or some liquid and drop coins or gems or other objects into the water and see what they do. It could be maybe used for a form of scrying, since it's silver. Scrying is reading the future in reflection, and a shiny surface such as a silver cup. Often a crystal ball is used for scrying, but based on a lot of the commentaries. I found a good candidate for what is being described here is lacanomancy, where he would be, you know, dropping oil into water or doing one of the other things we've been talking about. But in any case, I think this passage is interesting because I think the staging of the theft of the silver cup used for divination is supposed to be interpreted as more profound than like mere burglary of an expensive cup. This is the cup in which Joseph receives omens about the future, and if you remember the earlier part of the story, correctly, interpreting omens about the future is how Joseph rose to his position of prominence in the first place. It was the dream interpretations, you know, the Fadoleine cows and so forth. And it's also how Egypt is currently in a good position with this grain surplus during years of famine. So in a way, I think with that gloss, it makes sense to wonder if stealing Joseph's divination cup in the story is kind of an espionage caper. It would be like stealing the codes to the nuclear arsenal in a modern spy thriller. This is a piece of supernatural technology that helps give Egypt its strategic advantage over other nations.
Hmmm, that's fascinating. So I'm a little out of practice with this particular Bible story. But Joseph frames one of his brothers for stealing.
It, but then he undoes it.
Yeah, he does it when another for his youngest brother. Yea, his youngest brother is then fingered for the crime, and he's like, oh, I didn't want to enslave him. He wanted to enslave them both.
No, no, no, no, he didn't want to enslave any of them. I think I think he wanted to test them. It's one of those kind of stories. I think. So he plants that, Yeah, he frames his youngest brother, who he loves, for the crime. Then he says, I'm gonna make him a slave, and then because the older brother is like no, no, no, take me instead. Then I think that that softens his heart and he forgives his brothers for what they did to him.
Replicated family dynamic anyway you cut it, Yes, But to your point, yeah, this is not just any cup or any silver cup. This isn't is this isn't an artifact of the art of divination that Joseph practices. So this is this is vital, this is this has strategic importance for the Egyptians.
Yes, and in this specific story, it is divination in particular that has made Egypt prosperous. And so anyway, thinking about the idea of dropping oil and water in a cup or a basin to receive messages from from the heavens or from the gods. You know, while even mundane objects were often used for divination in the ancient world, it seems clear to me why the behavior of oil on water could inspire a kind of oracular fascination. Like there's that sense of strangeness and wonder about it that actually I found to be captured quite well in a passage in a letter written by Benjamin Franklin in the year seventeen seventy three. We're going to get more into Benjamin Franklin, I think in the next part in this series. But I wanted to read this passage because it articulates the kind of amazing weirdness here when you really pay attention to it. So Franklin's writing to somebody named William Brownrigg in November seventeen seventy three, and he says, in these experiments. One circumstance struck me with particular surprise. There was the sudden, wide, and forcible spreading of a drop of oil on the face of the water, which I do not know that anybody has hitherto considered. If a drop of oil is put on a polished marble table or on a looking glass that lies horizontally, the drop remains in place, spreading very little. But when put on water, it spreads instantly many feet around, becoming so thin as to produce the prismatic colors for a considerable space, and beyond them so much thinner as to be invisible except in its effect of smoothing the waves. Now, as I said, we'll come back to Benjamin Franklin in the next part of the series. But while I don't know if he was the first person to notice the way that oil spreads over the water, I actually somewhat doubt that he definitely was not the first person to notice these other strange properties, like the prismatic colors that tend to shine out from oil spreading over a pool of water, And he was certainly not the first person to notice the apparent ability of oil to somehow soothe the chop of threatening waters.
Yeah, and this was the thing that drew us into this topic initially, because I know, for my part anyway, I don't think i'd come across this before, this idea of oil being used to calm storm waters, because I mean, it just sounds so completely magical, and it will continue to sound completely magical while also having a basis in fact in science to at least a limited degree. So the accounts that we have dealing with this with this idea, these come from far after the time of ancient Babylon. One of the earliest, if not the earliest. It seems to go back to the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle lived three eighty four through three point twenty two BCE, and these a lot of his writings are generally just attributed to three point fifty BCE. So Aristotle brings this up in problems or Problemata physica, asking why is it that the sea, which is heavier than fresh water, is more transparent? Is it because it's fattier composition? Now, oil poured on the surface of water makes it more transparent, and the sea having fat in it is naturally more transparent.
Uh huh, okay, several things.
There's also a part in I was looking up oil in various of these ancient writings, and I noticed in meteorology, Aristotle also points out that oil contains air. So there's a lot of you know, mixed information here.
Purely speculating here that this could be totally wrong. But I wonder if he's tempted to think that because oil floats on the top of water, therefore like air rises like bubbles through the water.
M Yeah, that sounds likely. All right. I think we're gonna come back to Aristotle, but we're going to skip ahead now to another favorite source on the show, and that is, of course Roman historian Plenty of the Elder, who lived twenty three or twenty four CE through seventy nine. See. I have to say Plenty talks a lot about oils in the natural history. Like if you just start searching for searching up the word oil, you're going to find him mentioning all sorts of medicinal oils. Uh. There's also a section titled waters which serve as a substitute for oil, concerning waters that emit light and heal wounds. So a lot in there for oil fans to consume and to try to make sense of he's in generally a big fan of oils, and he busts this out in Book two, chapter one oh six. There's a whole info dump regarding wisdom concerning the water, and he says everything is soothed by oil and that this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it's smooth any part which is rough and transmits the light to them. M okay, So I think this is tying in with what we were talking about earlier with Aristotle as well, and I've seen this particular bit translated as sprinkled from the mouth as well, so I believe leave. The scenario here is that Plenty is sharing something that he has heard or read regarding free divers carrying some small quantity of oil in their mouths during the dive and spitting it out to make the surrounding water more visible during the dive while they're, you know, looking for something like a molluskh. Now, this the quote I read is from the Mayoff translation of Plenty, and he notes in the notes for this that while this would be proven to be correct, the effect is greatly exaggerated both here and elsewhere. So keep that in mind. As we're going here, we're dealing with, you know, second and third hand accounts of these things that the definitely seem to have a certain basis in fact, but also are greatly exaggerated in the retelling.
Okay, well, I imagine we'll return to the mechanics of this, if possible, in the next episode. But do you have any idea how exactly this would work that would make the water more visible?
What's my understanding that that what we're dealing with here is that, Yeah, the idea is that oil will sort of smooth out the surface of troubled water, but that it will also smooth things out underneath the water, and if you are free diving looking for again, you know, fish or shells or what have you, that some small amount of oil released into that water would make it clearer and easier to see these things and or allow light to filter down more effectively. Again, we'll get into the actual science of this probably in the next episode, and we have to keep in mind that again we're doing probably the second or third hand information here. I'm guessing here this is something that Plenty had had heard regarding some free diving people, and even though he would have certainly been familiar with ships and all. I don't remember in reading anything that indicated that he himself would have any firsthand experience with diving underneath the water. Now, another author who gets into some of this is Plutarch, who have forty six through one nineteen CE. He also references Aristotle in Causes of Natural Phenomena, and according to Heinrich Hunifus in Oil Untroubled Waters a historical survey, this is likely referencing a lost portion of Aristotle's Problemata reads as follows. This is from Plutarch. What is the reason for the clearness and calm produced when the sea is sprinkled with oil? Is it as Aristotle says that the wind slipping over the smoothness so caused makes no impression and raises no swell? Or does this plausibly explain the external phenomena? Only they say that when divers take oil into their mouths and blow it out in the depths, they get illumination and can see through the water. Surely it is impossible to adduce slipping of the wind in the cause there. Consider, then, whether the oil does not, by reason of its density, push and force aside the sea, which is earthy and irregular. Subsequently, when it flows back to its former position and draws together, intermediate passages are left in it, which offer transparency and clear visibility to the organs of sight.
Oh that's interesting. So again I wonder if I'm understanding Plutarch right here, But it sounds like maybe he's saying that, like when oil is spit out under the water, it kind of clears channels in the water. I wonder if that would work by like attracting particles in the water that would be making the water cloudy into the oil, and then dragging them away with it as the oil rises.
Yeah, I'm not sure. I couldn't find much information on this particular detail of the scenario. Maybe I'll find something for the next episode. But yeah, it's like you'd have to put ourselves in the like in the position of an ancient free diver who's you know, I assume, not using any kind of covering for their eyes. I did run across some mentions of these practices where they talk more like they were putting the oil in their eyes, which, again I don't know how that's factoring into the sort of telephone game of you know, second third and fourth hand reporting on this during ancient times, in addition to translation errors. All right, but in this we've touched on this other big area, something that we're going to have a lot more to discuss in the next episode as well, and that is, Hey, if you dump some quantity of oil, and the quantity seems to vary tremendously, if you dump that into a stormy sea, well that's just going to smooth everything out, smooth sailing thanks to the oil.
Okay, what do we have any stories about how this works?
We do. We have a pretty good story here, and it comes to us from the English monk Bead, who lived somewhere around six seventy two or six seventy three through seven thirty.
Five, often known as the Venerable Bead. It's good if you can get venerable attached to your name.
Yes. So the year here that he's talking about is six fifty one, and King Oswig sometimes it's spelled Oswig of Northumbria sends out a priest to bring his bride home from Kent, and one Bishop Aiden blesses the priest and gives him some holy oil and tells him, when you set sail, you're going to encounter some really stormy weather. There's going to be some high winds, so remember to pour this oil that I'm giving you into the sea, and that's gonna calm everything out. And this is later described as a flask, so I'm assuming we're talking about a magic potion quantity of oil here, rather than say, a barrel of oil. So Bed claimed that everything happened as the bishop said it would. When the storms came, the priest poured the flask of holy oil into the sea and the storm died down. And Bid insisted that the miracle was no mere fable, that he had heard it from reliable sources close to the matter, so you know, he was like, this works. This is not a tall tale. This is reality. Also worth noting by the way that Osweg or Oswig was said. It was said that he and his queen had been gifted multiple holy relics, including a cross with a key to it made from the chains of the apostles Peter and Paul.
Okay, Well, as much as this does just sound like a standard magical item legend, I think whether or not the story is plausible actually maybe more a matter of degree rather than just like it could happen or it couldn't. I don't know about using oil to stop a storm. But in the next episode we're going to end up exploring some surprising grains of truth in this kind of legend.
Yeah, and you might be surprised too. It just what kind of legs this idea had concerning the idea that, yeah, you might want to have some oil on hand in case the water gets choppy.
So maybe we got to call it there for today, but we'll be back next time to talk about pouring oil on the seas.
Yeah, this one was more in depth than I expected, and you never expect it, but Ben Franklin often does show up. This is not the first episode where you don't expect Ben Franklin, but here he comes sauntering up with his weird energy and strange ideas, becoming a part of the story of a particular invention or natural phenomena or what have you.
So tune in next time.
In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, well you'll find them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those are the core episodes and the Stuff to Blow your Own podcast feed listener mail on Monday. On Wednesday, a short form artifact or monster effect. On on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
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