The Cauldron, Part 3

Published Jun 14, 2022, 10:01 AM

On a mundane level, a cauldron is nothing more than a great cooking pot, but it takes on supernatural dimensions in various myths and legends. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the history of cauldrons and their links to tales of witchcraft, rebirth and the mandate of heaven.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, we were out for a little bit, but now we're back, and you know what, we're back with more cauldrons. Our brains are like pots, and those pots are full of pots, and the pots have pots in them, and it's it never stops. I know, my my wife is still teasing me about this. It's like, you guys are still doing episodes about cauldrons and soup, and I'm like, yeah, there's like we're probably going to do three or four of these total, and we're still not going to cover everything. And a lot of it comes down to the fact, and certainly go back and listen to those first two episodes if you haven't, comes down to the fact that we're talking about ancient technology and and since it in we inevitably use technology as a way of understanding ourselves, understand ending the cosmos, etcetera. It ends up becoming a part of our not only a discourse, but of course our religions and uh and so forth. And we see that with the cauldron for sure. Yes, though I have to say one of the big examples we're going to talk about in this episode. I don't know if the whole episode will end up focusing on it, but it's a really interesting historical artifact that is called a cauldron. Like it is called the Gunda Stroop cauldron. But I was reading a paper on it, and the very first sentence of the paper, this author insists that it is not a cauldron, it is a ceremonial container. Yeah. I mean this is something that is kind of under the surface of many of these discussions, right, and like obviously not all of these people would have called this a cauldron, And then you get into discussions of Okay, is it a cauldron or a pot? Is it a cauldron or a bowl? Is it a cauldron or some other kind? You know what exactly? Is the ship billed? Daddy? Oh okay, this is a call and come on, it's it's a it's a big metal pot. I think we can call it a cauldron. Yeah. So you, as we've discussed in previous episodes, we wanted to get into European traditions with the cauldron, and uh, cauldrons in Europe are sometimes uncovered in bogs, places, as we've discussed in the show before, that had sacred connotations to the ancient people who visited them. They were a place between land and water, and so they were also seen as a place between life and death. So various funeral rites seem to have been conducted at various bogs and peat bogs, and given the low oxygen acidic soil of bog environments, we often gain a great deal more insight into what occurred there, especially when it comes to organic materials that would have otherwise decayed. So you know, bodies were left in these bogs and teared in these bogs, and we also see examples of cauldrons and cauldron like artifacts. One notable bog retrieved cauldron is the Gunda strap cauldron, an incomplete but very stunning silver artifact discovered in a bog in Himmland, Denmark in eight now. While dating has been a matter of some discussion here, exact dating anyway, is suspected to date back to between one fifty b c E And the dawn of the Common Era. It was evidently given to the bog and an act of sacrifice, perhaps to a god or gods, but its origins don't seem to be quite Danish. It It bears images that are generally associated with more Southern cultures, lions, deer, griffin's um there. There seems to be a hornet or antlered god on there, alongside other potential gods and goddesses. It contains scenes of warriors falling in battle, and there is actually an image of a magic cauldron. Uh is on this cauldron with a gigantic figure, perhaps a god or a goddess, about to dunk a smaller man into its depths. That's right, we got cauldrons on our cauldrons uh. And I want to come back to more interpretation of this panel later on. Yeah, definitely. As we're talking about the gun distract cauldron, look up the images of it. That's spelled g U n d E s t r U p uh. There are a lot of images online that show the various panels here, the various uh, the various images that we're going to be discussing here, including this one of what is clearly a giant of some sort uh taking a man and dunking him head first uh into a bucket or cauldron or vessel of some sort adjacent to this battle scene. So the exact origins of the cauldron here are still a matter of debate, with some pointing to the Thracians or what is and these would have been people from what is now Bulgaria and Romania. Yet there are also Celtic helmets and trumpets depicted on the cauldron, suggesting it might have been made in a place in the aforementioned region where Thracians and Celts coexisted, though it's uncertain how this then wound up in Denmark. Could have been a tribute, could have been spoils of war. Either way, it may be accurate to think of the Goodness Drop cauldron and not a product of a single culture, a single place, or even a single time, but something that was created by mingling cultures on the move, in part due to Roman expansion and conquest during this time period, and ultimately constructed by different artisans over many years. Oh, I didn't think about the Roman connection, but yeah, so if this would have been in the first century b c e. And the middle of that century was when Julius Caesar himself was waging a war of conquest in Gaul against Celtic tribes in that region, So yeah, that's an interesting possibility. So yeah, Rob you you you dug this thing up, not not physical, you had throught it into our outline, but I got really obsessed with it, um and I I find this artifacts so interesting, specifically because of the different mysteries about it's it's provenance, like you were just talking about, but also about what it's depicting, because there there are tons of what you know, it clearly is showing scenes that are part of a rich mythology that we apparently know little to nothing about, and so there are a lot of attempts to try to understand what the different panels are depicting and if and if so, how they connect to mythologies that we might know something about. But but coming back to that provenance question, Yeah, I think it's so interesting that there are at least three different distinct sort of regional inputs. Now, as you already mentioned, based on physical characteristics of the cauldron, like the silversmithing techniques that were used to create it, it seems to be a product of southeastern Europe. Yes, but most scholars pointing to uh to the metal working techniques of the Thracians who live in As you said, what is today Bulgaria or Romania, and I was trying to figure out what are some examples of this distinctive style that's uh, that's so strongly linked to Thracian culture. Well, I was reading about this on the website for the National Museum of Denmark, which has a lot of great materials about the Gundistrict Cauldron, and they compare the gun District Cauldron to the metal working on a gilded silver pitcher from Bulgaria from roughly three hundred b C. And looking at it, I would agree, Yeah, the techniques and the artistic style look extremely similar. Like the way the animal figures are embossed. Remember that this is not just like an illustration or carving, but this is like hammered and punched metal. So it has raised animal figures with like textures that you could feel with your fingers running over them. And those textures are very similar between the two works. So like the animal figures are embossed and punched with patterns of exture that seemed to indicate hair or fur, and it's extremely distinctive. You see some of the same patterns on the on the apparent herring bone patterns on the clothing of the people on the gun district cauldron. So based on the techniques, it's pretty clear that it was created by an artisan who had been trained in the traditions of Southeastern Europe. But as you also said, the imagery depicts objects and motifs associated with the culture of the Celts who were in more kind of western Central Europe at the time. Uh. And a few examples of this would be a Celtic musical instrument known as the car nix, which we can discuss in more detail later, certain types of Celtic ceremonial jewelry such as an object called a torque, which I can also get to in a minute, and things like that. So those are your two inputs. It's like Celtic subject matter done in the metal working style of the Thracians or of Southeastern Europe, and then it's found in the territory of neither one. It's found up in Jutland in modern day Denmark in a bog So yeah, you really have to wonder how all this comes together, Like did a Celtic person commission a Southeastern European silversmith to make a pot containing images from their culture and mythology, or maybe did it somehow arise from a border region where these cultures came into contact, and then somehow this item ends up in the bogs of Jutland. It would be like finding what a Bulgarian band that only does covers of Celtic music in modern Denmark and wondering like how they came to be there. Ah, yes, the thrash metal polka bands of Canada. Now I wanted to mention just a little bit more about the state that this cauldron, the so called cauldron, was in when it was discovered. Uh So, altogether this object weighs about nine kilograms or about twenty pounds, and it appears to have been deposited in the ball deliberately, especially because it was disassembled when it was put into the bog. So this cauldron has many detachable features, so the rim can be taken off, and the silver image panels which line the sides of the pot, those can be taken off, and when it was found, they were all removed and placed inside the vessel. So I don't know, you see that, And that makes it sound like this wasn't just sort of like it wasn't like it fell off a wagon or something. That sounds like somebody put it in there. There is no text anywhere on it, so it's not like a political cartoon where everything's labeled so you know what it means. It's you just have to infer from the imagery. Uh So, so that makes it difficult to identify things. But the imagery, as you already said, Rob, is is fascinating. There are animals you would not expect to see. There are lions, uh, there are images of gods that we know little or nothing about. In fact, there are even images of elephants. Ah and yeah that that should be surprising, especially like where are these images of elephants coming from? Yeah, exactly. So at this point I just want to pick out a few of the individual plates and focus on what's going on on them, one at a time. So the first one I wanted to look at, I've got a picture for you to look at, Rob, but of course we will describe it for for you out there, the listener. So it shows a god or a mythic figure that's mostly human inform, except it has antlers like a stag growing from its head. And this figure is sitting cross legged right next to an actual stag, and then on the other side of it. There are a bunch of other animals there, four legged, predatory looking animals that might be dogs or maybe lions, I can't tell for sure. And then I love this. A tiny dude riding on the back of a fish is it is now compared to the god with the antlers, the dude is much smaller, But I don't know if it's a question of perspective. Maybe he's farther away, or maybe maybe this is just separate imagery, or maybe the god is supposed to be really big, or maybe the dude's supposed to be really small. I can't tell what the deal with the size differences. But if it is a regular sized man on the fish is back, that is a very big fish. It's got to be like dolphin or shark sized. Yeah. And there's also a kind of a different flavor to these two images. So they the hornet or ant alerd god or whatever this being is supposed to be is in it has has a kind of a serene pose. His legs his or her legs are crossed, uh, holding us what a serpent in one hand? Uh? And I'm not sure what the implement is in the other hand. Oh, well, that's Uh, that is a Celtic object. Actually, I think this is an object that is bigger than just Celtic culture, but it was big in Celtic culture called a torque, which is a type of metal ring worn around the neck that seems to have had significance um for multiple Iron Age European culture, symbolizing power. It's power status or rank, sort of like a crown. So if somebody's wearing a torque, that would seem to indicate that they are a leader or a high status person. So this figure with the antlers has the torque in his right hand, and then in the other hand he's grasping, like you said, the neck of a giant snake. But I just wanted to point out that the snake has features on its head, which one scholar I was looking at identified as rams horns. So that's a snake with ram horns. Oh wow. So that there's clearly a lot going on here, as as one often finds with depictions of powerful individuals or deities or demigods. Uh. And and it's one of these images that I think it speaks across the ages. When you look at this, you get a sense of power and divinity from it. Meanwhile, the individual writing the fish or dolphin, I I it looks more comical to me, and I makes me wonder if there is in fact it is supposed to be comical on some level, like if even if it is a god of some sort, maybe it is a trickster god. Maybe it's something that is not supposed to be interpreted with the same air of reverence as we have with this this central individual. Yeah, I agree, fish boy looks very funny, and I think it's partly in the way his knees are bent and he's sort of reaching forward while riding the fish, almost as if you can imagine him kind of uh rocking and kicking back and forth and saying like go faster, come on now. Obviously, another possible explanation for differences could also be different authors over time. But as we alluded to earlier, but an interesting thing I wanted to point out again. So there's a lot we don't know about what these images are supposed to depict. But this antler headed god who is holding a torque in one hand, is also wearing a torque around his neck, so he appears to be a leader or high status figure himself. But maybe by holding a torque in one hand. Uh. I don't know, just speculating, but maybe it means he can also make a king. He can also give the crown to another thank But to go on to discuss another panel, Rob, I wanted to come back to one you sort of mentioned earlier, the panel that has the cauldron dunking on it, because this panel is really interesting and there was some good interpretive material on the National Museum of Denmark website about it. So this is one of the interior wall panels that this would be lining the inner wall of the cauldron, and there's a lot going on on it, so let's try to break it down piece by piece. So one thing is that there is a row of soldiers on the bottom and they are on foot, they're holding spears and shields, and they are moving towards the left side of the panel. And then above them is a straight horizontal tree branch with little leaves forking off of it. And then above the tree branch are soldiers on horseback moving in the opposite direction of the procession. Below they're moving to the right side of the panel. And then on the lower right side of the panel, there are three warriors playing instruments that are known as carnacs. When I first looked at these things, I had no idea what they were, but I looked them up, and these are a well known type of artifact. Rob I've got a close up for you to look at here. But the car knicks was a wind instrument used by the Celts of the Iron Age. It is essentially a giant s shaped trumpet, but most of the length of this trumpet is a vertical pipe reaching far up above your head. So picture a kind of long periscope tube, except it's not going to your eye, it's connecting to your mouth, and you blow through it, and then the sound comes out of this tube that ends maybe a whole other person's height above your head. Uh. And so the the bell art of this instrument, the part where the sound comes out, would often be shaped to look like an open jawed head of an animal such as a dragon or a serpent, or maybe sometimes a bore. The carnyx was identified in ancient literary sources as associated with warfare, so you might play it on the battlefield for a coordination of tactics or for intimidation of the enemy long distance communication. There you go, but what's going on with the warriors on the bottom row of the panel, Well, they seem to be moving toward the left side, where one by one they will face a god of some kind depicted as a giant who is you know, at least twice as big, a probably three times as big as the warriors, and the god or the giant will grasp a warrior with both hands, turn him upside down, and then dunk him head first into a cauldron. Now, I think there's plenty of room to question the the interpretation of these panels. Again, they don't come with words on them, so they don't explain, and they don't super clearly connect to mythology that we know about. Connections that would be established have to be kind of inferred. They might be kind of tenuous. But the curators of the National Museum of Denmark argue that the warriors on foot in the bottom of this panel, they are being represented as probably in the underworld, meaning that they were just killed in battle, and so they're being depicted as I don't know, the the dead forms of their former selves. And you can tell they're in the underworld because they are underneath this horizontal tree branch Apparently the tree branch probably denotes the earth itself and the division between world. So if the tree branches is the earth, what's below it is the underworld, and what's above it is some kind of heavenly afterlife, and from here the the The interpretation goes on to say that as these figures are dunked into the cauldron by the God, their fate is decided, and this fate might include being resurrected or reincarnated in some exalted state, such as in this heavenly realm up above on the top of the panel, and perhaps as a person of higher status or rank. I remember that the soldiers shown above the branch were on horseback, so maybe this means a fallen warrior could be resurrected as an officer or as a member of the equestrian classes higher socioeconomic class. And I thought it was really interesting how this recalls the imagery of cauldrons used in visions of Hell and multiple very different Asian cultures that we talked about in the previous part of this series, where the cauldrons were not only an instrument of torture in the realms of Hell, but they were secondarily a symbol of transformation into something more honorable and refined, if you could be reincarnated as a sort of better being after the stint in hell and it it makes me think again, Like seeing this motif a rise in multiple different cultures, separated rightly in time and geography and language and and all these different barriers, makes one wonder if there's not a common universal human experience underlying that theme, which would seem to me to be very likely the transformation of raw food into cooked food, or of dirty clothing into clean clothing, as would be just you know, natural things where we see transformed by the work of the cauldron. Yeah, like the basic nature of of cauldron technology and the idea that it it enables transformation, It does seem to be something you just see in culture after culture after culture, just across vast distances on the planet. And the laundry note is is important too. I've seen that pop up in a few different sources pointing to specific cauldrons of note uh, And often discussions regarding that cauldron come back to cooking and the preparation of food, the transformation of of of of organic matter into some sort of delicious or hearty dish, but also sometimes laundry is discussed as a possibility as well, And uh, I mean that is a transformation we I think we tend to totally take for granted that you can have, you know, foul and soiled clothing, and yet here is this fabulous specialized cauldron in your house or at the local laundry map or in the basement of your building that you put these items into and you come back later and behold, they have been refreshed, they are they are new again. Yeah, man, who doesn't love clean laundry, especially clean sheets, is a wonderful thing. Okay, I got another panel I want to focus on. This one's very special and it may be the most important of all of them due to its placement within the cauldron, and that is the panel that is in the bottom of the cauldron bowl. Now I might not have even noticed this one just by looking at pictures of the plates on the Internet, because a lot of the photography that's out there focuses on the side plates for good reason. But I actually saw this one brought up in a curator's video feature from the British Museum that was focused on the District cauldron. I think maybe when um, when they had it on loan or something. But it was by an archaeologist named Julia Farley, and this was really interesting, so that this panel is at the bottom of the pot, so if you're looking down into the pot, it's what you'd see at the very bottom, assuming the pots empty. And because of that feature, I started to think about how if the pot had something in it, like soup or whatever. I don't know if this was ever used to serve sup probably not, actually more more of a ceremonial vessel, but I don't know. I guess I couldn't rule that out. Um, if it had anything in it, this panel would be hidden and then it would be revealed as the contents were taken out of the bull. Um. So what what do you see in this panel? Well, it depicts a gigantic bull reclining. When I first saw it, it looked to me like it was kind of, I don't know, lazily resting. But I've seen it written about as if this bull is laying on the ground because it has been wounded, but I couldn't tell that just by looking at it. So for whatever reason, it's a bull laying on its side. But then with its head propped up, and the head of the bull is actually a very prominently vertically raised three D feature. Technically, the whole thing, like the other panels, is three D. It's all hammered and stamped and embossed into three D textures, but the head of the bull is sort of more three D than the rest, like it really rises into prominence off the base. And then behind the back of the bull we see a goddess or a female warrior posed with sword raised and her legs are bent. They're kind of tucked up under her as if she were jumping, like as if she were in midair at the peak of a great leap, and she's going to come down with the sword and strike and slay this giant bull. So it's an action shot. There are also three dogs in the image. It seems two of them seem to be alive and helping this warrior or goddess slay the bull, and the other dog appears to be dead. Um. But something I noticed also about this bull. So it's got this raised head coming up off of the body, turning at an angle, and then the bull has what looked like two holes behind its eyes exactly where the horns would emerge from. And I wondered, does this mean that the bull uh at some point had some kind of horns I don't know, maybe made of a different material coming out of these holes. Uh, that may be known. And if so, I just didn't find anything about it. So so I don't know. But if so, I like, I wonder what those horns were. And again I don't know if this is significant, but if you had anything opaque in the pot, as the pot was emptied, you would first see the bulls raised head coming up out of that opaque material. But then as more and more was taken out of the pot, as the bottom was revealed, it would reveal the goddess or the female warrior, this person with the sword and her three hounds surrounding the bull, ready to strike. And I thought that was a kind of interesting. It's almost like by taking the contents out of this bowl, it would be pulling back the curtain on the dramatic aspect of the scene. Wow. Yeah, that's a lot to unpack because on one hand, there's just sort of the I guess, the basic pleasure to be had, and this potential scene of like the level of super lowering and revealing horns and then head and then beast. Uh Not unlike some of the novelty mugs you'll find today, where there's some sort of uh like I don't know, like a cartoon octopus on the bottom of the mug. You drink half of your hot cocoa and there's an octopus peering up at you. Uh. I mean that alone is fun. That they alone transcends time and space. But yeah, on top of it, to have this dramatic action scene playing out and then the question arise as well, then is this a story that I mean? What? What? Did it take place beneath a liquid? Did it take place within a caldron? You know? What is the exact connection? How does having it at the bottom of the cauldron? Um? Well, what does that illustrate? What does that do? What is the function of that? Yeah? I love this, though I want to be clear, I'm not I am not arguing that this was used to serve soup. I don't know of any evidence of that. So I guess we don't know what went into this bowl. If anything, we don't know exactly how it was used. But another question is what does the killing of this bull symbolize? So clearly this goddess is is, you know, ready to bring the sword down on its neck, but we don't know what that act meant. And uh, this is another one of the mysteries of the cauldron. The National Museum of Denmark page it has an interpretation that the bull may symbolize chaos, and the woman who is fighting and killing the bull is doing so in order to protect the cosmic order, though I'm not sure exactly what supports that speculation, but I don't know. Yeah, personally, I'm just intoxicated by the mysteries of of like what are the stories that are be being told in these little metal comic strip panels with no words on them, Like we don't know what the surrounding context is and uh and and I I really wish we could. Yeah, yeah, because they I mean, the context would have been clear to to to someone at least a privileged few within the given culture, if not everyone within the given culture. Uh So, yeah, it's it's fascinating, fascinating mystery. Thank thank you, thank you. Now I was looking up to see if there were any good like papers that were using clues in the images to try to understand better what stories were being told or what the significance of these gods and mythic figures were. One paper I found that caught my attention was by a scholar named David Alexander Nance, called Plate F on the Gun District Cauldron Symbols of Spring and Fertility, publishing a journal called and thropo Zoologica in twenty nineteen. And thropo Zoologica a journal put out by the French Museum of Natural History, UH that seems to be focusing on the role of non human animals in the history of humankind, and I looked up Nance. He is a scholar at the University of Aberdeen. Now specifically, this paper adds it tries to do a zoological identification of a bird species on one of the plates in order to help elucidate what the mythic significance may have been. So Nance notes that on this plate called Plate F, which broadly I mean so, first of all, it shows this huge face of like a giant figure with long hair, and then other depictions of uh what maybe the same figure in like smaller uh scenes around the big head. And then the big figure with long hair is holding a bird in its hand. And then there are also birds and I think cats and dogs flanking it in different places, but Nance's specifically looking at the birds and says, hey, wait a second. The birds on this plate have a very distinctive morphological feature, which is zygo d Actually zygod actually is a foot morphology where there are two claws facing forward and two facing backward. And given that characteristic, there are really only a few types of birds it could be. It's obviously not most of them, so so the only real candidate for this is the common cuckoo or Coculus canoris. And this is interesting because the cuckoo connects to a whole other known nexus of of mythological significance, so Nance writes quote. This species is also identified on a number of other widespread European artifacts where it was previously thought to be a bird of prey. The plate depicts a goddess in triplicate flanked by two cuckoos releasing the first cuckoo of spring. The bird is an obligate brood parasite, laying its eggs in other birds nests, leading to misconceptions of its life cycle, and the misconceptions about cuckoos in antiquity were that there were no female cuckoos, that there were only males, and the male birds mated with the host females of all the other bird species. Now that's not true, but apparently Nance argues that that was believed in the ancient world, and for this reason, the cuckoo's symbolized male fertility across many different cultures in its summer range. So during the summer months in in all across Eurasia, this this bird would fly in and then it would be associated with fertility and sometimes with European fertility goddesses like the bird might sort of be it's implied consort. Oh that's fascinating. I mean, that reminds me of various misinterpretations regarding spontaneous generation or the idea that the scara beetle, you know, the dung beetle, emerges from the dong. That it is that it is the thing that that is borne out of of of the dirt and of the waist, as opposed to enufl life form that's making use of this material. Oh yeah, that's interesting. So, but to be biologically precise, what is happening with the cuckoos is that they are depositing their own So cuckoos are mating with cuckoos, and then they're laying cuckoo eggs, they're just laying in the nests of other birds and uh, and so that's known as brood parasitism. But because of the confusion of like not seeing them with their own nests, they were just like, yeah, they're only male cuckoos and they're just uh, they essentially said that they were cook holding the male birds of other species. Yeah, brood parasitism is a is a fascinating topic, and of course we see this in the insect world as well. Yeah, I mean it's it's not certainly but not confined to just these birds. Fascinating topic we could easily come back to because they're also even with the cuckoo there. As I recall, there are a lot of ins and outs regarding m uh, the enforcement of of this poll see yes, both with actions that if sometimes are sometimes compared to almost mafia tactics and uh. And also just like how does the egg appear and how is there like a physical deception or mimicry going on? Yeah, I think there's widely believed to be like just an ongoing evolutionary arms race between the host species ability to recognize cuckoo eggs and be like, wait a minute, no, and then the cuckoo's ability to adapt to that and further blend in oh but sorry. The other thing about the cuckoo that would make it probably associated with fertility would be its seasonal migratory patterns, because this is one of the migratory birds that would show up in UH in northern stretches of Europe and Asia in the summer months, and it was so it might show up in spring. You would say like, oh, there's the there's the first cuckoo of the of the warm season. And so it would thus be associated also with the regeneration of plants and things like that, having fertility associations for that reason. Anyway, I guess we'll call it there for the Gun District cauldron. But I find this such an intriguing artifact. I don't know, like, every time there's a new paper UH providing some some interpretation of of what's going on in these panels, I want to know, yeah, yeah, And and by all means, when you get a chance, you're not driving a vehicle or something, look up images of the Gun District cauldron. And certainly if you have access to the Gun District cauldron. If you can go see it at a museum uh now or in the future, please do so. If you can steal it, you know, tuck it into the bridges and get it out of there and not steal the Gun District cauldron. Um Now. Cauldrons are also found in rivers, which which is interesting. Rivers also have, of course have divine importance in many cultures and one example is the Battersea Cauldron that was found in the river River Thames at Battersea in South London. It's a large riveted bronze vessel with signs of maintenance over many years. Originally crafted an estimated three thousand years ago, so this would have been a highly advanced example of metalwork from this time period. Now. This cauldron is mentioned in a blog entry on the British Museum website by Jennifer Wexler and Neil Wilkins titled Cauldrons and flesh Hooks between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Britain and Ireland. And yeah they they've also point out an example of a three thousand year old flesh hook found in a bog in Northern Ireland and when complete, when one piece. It would have been a long metal and wood rod decorated with bronze birds. The hook would have been used in ritual feasting for the purpose of pulling cooked meat from a cauldron, and such tools were also used when working with with hides and tanning pits and so forth. But this particular artifact also had birds on it, which is pretty interesting. I'm going to read just a quote from that British Museum blog post quote. The two sets of birds may have represented opposing forces in the world of ancient people. Swans are white birds of the water, but also associated with the sun and light, and the family group suggests fertility because they're depicted in a family group here. The ravens, on the other hand, are blackbirds of the air and divine communication, connected with wild uplands. Their dark color and gruesome dietary habits were connected with war and death. These differences may have represented the competing forces of good and evil in the world. But both of them will help you get your meat out of the pot. Yeah, but again, remember the pot is no mere pot. Uh, there's no you know, there are no technologies this central to to human existence that don't take on all these other meanings and metaphors and so forth. So the cauldron is it's where you're cooking your meat, it's where you may be doing your laundry. But that cauldron is also the universe. That cauldron is also life itself. It is the whole experience of humanity. Wow, that's some profound fond Yeah, we didn't even get into fond There you go, another miniature cauldron. Well yeah we did. Come on, flash, this is basically fond talking. You can get any kind of I guess with fond I have so little experience with it. I just instantly think of only cheese and bread, and yeah, it's I I for I forget sometimes that there's a richer tradition of of fond. I mean there are also other, you know, wonderful traditions of you know, communal feasting from heated bowls uh, you know, Chinese hot pot traditions and also um uh and uh and and certainly that's a that's a fun experience if you get a chance to partake of that. I don't think I've ever actually done that. But that's usually with a not with like um, like an oil like you might use to cook and fondu. But that's like a highly flavored broth. Yeah, yeah, broth. And they you can find you plenty of modern restaurants. In fact, I went to one, I want to say this was in Florida, where not only were there was there a hot pot at your table, but there was also a conveyor belt going through like a little sushi conveyor belt, except instead of sushi, it contained various plated ingredients that you could add to the hot pot. Oh that sounds awesome. Yeah it was. It was quite a parade of meats and vegetables. But that's another thing worth worth keeping in mind too with these with these cauldrons, you know, it's like, this is the pot, is this this this thing at the center, It is this thing on the fire. It is the thing that is then communally used. So it you can you can easily imagine how it just becomes this hyper magnet for meaning, especially in the ancient world. You know, I keep thinking back to this, uh, this plate on the Gun District cauldron, the one where the giant god is dunking the warriors in the from the underworld into the cauldron. And one thing I can't tell from the image is the warrior scared to be dunked, or is the warrior excited like he's going in head first. You can see he's got one arm sort of raised up. But that it could be like oh no, oh no, please don't dunk, or it could be like a wee arms up thing. It's hard to tell. Well, I think if if you're being manhandled by a god like this and you're about to be dunked into a cauldron or a vat of some sort, like you should be afraid. I think a certain amount of fear is is ideal. But then again, if the interpretation is right, this warrior is about to maybe be transformed into a higher state of existence. Yeah maybe so maybe so. Now one thing the sort of capping off our serious discussion here, and to be clear, we will be back in another episode on Cauldron's We have a number of of wonderful cauldron mythologies to discuss. Uh. We'll also get into at least a little bit of Dante's Inferno. But uh, this also brings me back to a recent film we looked at on Weird How Cinema, Jason takes Manhattan. There is a scene where Jason, who again can be at least loosely compared to various divine and semi divine beings and in history. Um, he dunked somebody in this vat of like nasty New York water. Uh, possible time. I guess it's not actually toxic sludge, but it looks gross. Kill somebody by drowning them, holding them by the feet, and dunking them. I think it's supposed to be toxic waste. And I think that is part of the mythology of Jason Takes Manhattan, is that New York is full of open steel drums of toxic waste. But the street later that is clearly labeled toxic waste. That confuses the matter. I think it's one of the flavors of the soda fountain machines. And and you know, you you make you a mix, so you get some new grape, and then you get some some diet fanta, and then you get some some toxic waste. Fair fair enough. Um. Now, to be clear, the individual in this movie does not re emerge from the cauldron changed. He's just killed in the bad the bend and the vat or the bucket or whatever it was, the barrel. But well, now hold on a second, I would say that the fact that they are in a Friday movie and that we will later see another Friday movie with an almost exactly the same stock character may in fact me and that these characters are reincarnated throughout each film and sort of attained new forms. You know, you've always got your your jock hunk, you've always got your nerd, you've always got your you know, strict older gentleman um. You know that they show up again and again. So this may in fact be a well I guess it wouldn't be a transformation. Well, I guess you could argue that I don't know. So first of all, I do have to ask is this a widely discussed theory or is I'm just riffing here? No, I say, Okay, maybe maybe a bad character gets dunked and then in the next movie they're reincarnated as a final girl. Okay, yeah, so they're moving up. There is a transformation. Yeah, and so you get it's that hierarchy of kill order where you're going to you either fall down or you ascend upwards. Possibly. Okay, alright, interesting, interesting, you know it's it's also interesting if you take this just context of of immersion and rebirth, which we'll get into some more in our next episode. Like you see this in all sorts of films, Like I was just thinking of the Star Wars films, like what happens when a character is is terribly injured they go into the box to tank? Um, And what is the box to tank but a kind of magical space cauldron that heals your wounds and allows you to re emerge. I thought that scene was weird. Loops Lukes all cut up and he's in that like weird white diaper. Yeah, that I remember as a kid thinking that was funny, and it really and it is still funny. But yeah, I mean, obviously there's a lot of a lot of this comes from also baptismal imagery, and we'll we'll discuss that a little bit in a few sure. I'm also and this is also reminded of a scene, particularly in the film adaptation adaptation of Umberto Echoes The Name of the Rose, in which I believe the second murder has been committed and the body is found immersed in a vat of pigs blood. That the blood that is going to be processed into sausage. Uh. And of course that's a that's a wonderfully terrifying image. I remember, especially from the movie trailer that I watched as a child, because here's this cauldron of blood and two legs sticking out of it. Uh. And and even that, there's so much, so much going on there, because here's the cauldron as a vessel of of of life and death, of food and transformation, but also just here an instrument of murder for some deranged individual who's causing chaos at the abbey. Okay, I think we must cease cauldron ing for today. But there will be one more cauldron, yes, and like I said, it should be a fun one. We'll get into some more mythologies, we'll discuss a little bit of Dante and who knows what else? All right in the mean time, again, if you didn't listen to those first two episodes on the cauld and go back and listen to those, a lot of good, good content there. Uh, join us for the next episode. Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed on Monday's. We usually do listener mail. On Wednesdays, we usually do a monster fact or artifact episode. That's a short form episode. Amount of fridays. We set aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. The masts four Foo

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