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- [00:00]
A
Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free and finally breathe. Alfred, since we spoke, I've been sleeping exceptionally well. I don't know why that is. Maybe the pep talk you gave me about how important it is to sleep well and to be thinking about your hands has been.
- [00:27]
B
Maybe it was the soporific effect of listening to me go on a rant about the importance of sleeping.
- [00:33]
A
I think the importance of sleeping is all highly underrated. So I'm semi evangelical about the need to sleep well. The problem is that I'm a late night person. So I.
- [00:44]
B
This is actually very hypocritical of us, Peter, because we actually do send messages to each other at like 1 or 2am as we're thinking about episodes. We are not modeling good sleep behavior here.
- [00:56]
A
So how come you're awake at that time of night?
- [00:58]
B
I'm a late night person too. The thing is, that's when I get my best work done. In my ideal world, I would then be able to sleep late. And so my grievances with a society that is structured around the requirement that you get up early because I would rather arrange my day so that it starts later and finishes later. But you know, I have a child in school and I have people who work office hours that I have to have meetings with and it doesn't quite work. But if I'm writing, like if I, if I'm on kind of writing retreat mode where I have control of my time, I really will work till 2 or 3 in the morning and then get up at 10.
- [01:32]
A
The right thing to do is to put, put your devices away. I think that's a challenge. So I've, I've written all my books late into the night and it's. You're right when the phone doesn't ring and you can concentrate. But it's the curse of having your, your mobile devices nearby and you could be super efficient with them, but they're a real challenge and I think that they, they have obvious negative correlation with mental health. The fact you're constantly having to check what's been coming in and that you feel you need to reply to them in real time. I think it's not good for anybody's emotional state of mind because. And I hate the fact I'm reaching for it.
- [02:05]
B
Maybe the challenges of modern life are so excessive that that's the reason people are reaching for more supernatural and magical solutions. Because today we are looking at the legacy of shamans, oracles and gurus. And there is a legacy, Peter, because all of these ideas are enjoying a huge resurgence at the moment.
- [02:37]
A
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankerpen.
- [02:41]
B
I'm Afra Hersch.
- [02:42]
A
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [02:58]
B
This is episode four in our history of wellness and well being. Shamans, oracles and gurus.
- [03:10]
A
So it's an interesting one. We talked a bit before about dreams and their interpretations and who gets to do that, how important those things are. But ancient healing and the link with the divine is something I think is really worth talking about, what it means for the history of early ideas about wellness, about wellbeing and about physical and mental health.
- [03:29]
B
Well, the Mesopotamian model, I think is really interesting, Peter. So they saw illness as the intrusion of these unseen forces. Illness was never considered random. It Mesopotamian culture, it always had a cause. And that cause was almost always something invisible to the human eye, something that lay in the more supernatural, invisible realm.
- [03:51]
A
Yeah. So there's a nice example you can give of a Mesopotamian healer, for example, looking at illnesses. So just imagine a household of Nippur in Mesopotamia, what's now Iraq, around, I don't know, three, four thousand years ago, somebody becomes weak, feverish and unable to sleep. So their family summons an ashipu. So that's a healer, exorcist. And in lots of societies around the world today, those kind of shamanic, semi divine, semi priestly have multiple different kinds of roles. But the ashipu arrives with a clay tablet listing different kinds of omens, a libation bowl for which to give offerings, some herbs and maybe like a small clay figurine. And this priestly person would investigate the family and talk to them and would say, you know, has the patient failed to wash before eating, perhaps? Or did they observe proper rituals that should have been offered earlier in the week? Had they disturbed a grave recently? Had there been a quarrel, perhaps with a neighbour, or had somebody been angry with them? You know, is there a reason that a demon might have been invited in because of a sense of displeasure? And in Mesopotamian thinking, illness was an arrival. It was an intrusive entity that had entered the body. So the ashipu might declare that the patient had been affected by a lamashtu, which is a female demon who harmed infants or adults, or perhaps by the ghosts of an improperly buried relative. But you needed to find an explanation. And those kinds of attempts to solve things would then proceed with a diagnosis. Bit like when you go to the gp, says, this is what's wrong with you. And then, like, the GP would send you off with a prescription. In Mesopotamian cultures, the archipu would say, look, I'm going to read some recitations while I'm holding a small figurine, and I'm going to tell the family, this is the intruder, and we're going to drive it out. And people had to believe that they thought that that might be something that worked. And so the ashipu would pour water over the figurine. They might bur incense that circle the patient with smoke, place herbs under the bed to trap the spirit. And the main thing is that this is about behavioral remedies. And it would encourage and explain the importance that you should cleanse, you should have dietary changes, you should make sure that you make your ritual obligations, and also that you should have improved sleep rhythm. So we've used the word holistic a few times in these last few episodes, but it's about trying to create a whole ecosystem around what has happened, how to fix it, why has it happened, and how it's not going to happen again.
- [06:34]
B
Those ideas don't sound at all alien to me. I mean, in many African cultures, there's still often the explanation of illness that's otherwise difficult to explain, or misfortune is still often explained by the supernatural, someone having cast some kind of spell or some kind of unwanted spirit possession. And, you know, I think there's also a tendency to exoticize these ideas and think of them as either from ancient times or from African or Asian cultures that people in Western societies don't understand as well. But actually, one of the things I found fascinating to learn is that the Church of England still has an exorcist for every single diocese. It's something they keep a little bit quiet. I think they're a little bit embarrassed by the fact that this idea still persists in, like, the modern Anglican Church. But, you know, much as it might not be something you see evidence of in everyday life, there is the legacy of those ideas even in England today, that, you know, it is possible for somebody to be possessed by an evil spirit and that that could be an explanation for illness, behavior, distress, and that the cure for that is to have a vicar who is specially denoted as the diocese exorcist to come and perform various rites, in this case in accordance with the Bible and The New Testament. But it's a very persistent idea. And I wonder why we are a little bit squeamish about it in societies like modern Britain when it has such a long history and it remains something that's so prevalent in much of the world today.
- [07:58]
A
I think that's right. You think, you know, anthropologists always quick to remind how many different parts of the world, how diverse our world is, how many different peoples there are. But one of the things that is very common is the belief in the supernatural and the belief in particularly interveners, whether they're vicars or shamans, to be able to commune and to talk to or to understand that supernatural. And I think people who live in cities or, you know, we think that we're the height of civilization because, you know, the cities are more sophisticated, they're wealthier, and knowledge looks different. We sort of assume that other people don't know what they're talking about and also we don't pay them much attention. But those ideas about. And shamanic cultures, they're very visible in lots of different parts of the world, and not only in places that are remote and untouched and yet to be shown the gifts of enlightenment. But what's really interesting in a lot of those today, as in the past, the shaman's body itself is particularly interesting and important because the shaman will transform through trance and through movement and ordeal. So shamans, it's a very physically demanding role to play in the community, often has slightly unusual patterns of what it means within your community, because you are obviously human, but you. Because of your gifts and your role, you know, there's. There are interventions that slightly ambiguous about whether you are a requirement and a necessity for the community, whether you are able to also inflict things on people that they don't understand and that you're responsible for some of those. But so there's. There's very interesting worlds, but they're not just like I said, in. In remote parts of the world that time has forgotten and a long way from home. They're ubiquitous in Africa, lots of parts of Russia, for example, too. The profound belief in how you can find individuals who are able to work out what's going on, explain it and drive away demons. It's a really important one.
- [09:52]
B
Well, I think it's really important to say that shamanic healing is not superstition. It's not kind of like hocus pocus made up. It's actually early forms of psychology and understanding the mind body connection that's performed through the body of the shaman, who is Somebody who, as you said, Peter, takes on this role. It's a very demanding role and it's the sacred one within communities that have these systems. And actually one of my bugbears is that I think now because of our new curiosity in these ancient knowledge systems and ideas that many parts of the world have lost, people are trying to tap back into those practices, but they're doing it without the grounding in the cultural context and the continuity of knowledge. So people are basically self appointing shamans that they are self identifying as shamans. They're holding themselves out as shamans. They're charging, you know, $1,000 an hour on Instagram for sessions, one on one sessions, or they're running ayahuasca retreats. But they're stripping it of these millennia of history that built up knowledge and wisdom as to how to make this work and how to keep it safe. Because plant medicine, for example, that's often used in shamanic ceremonies, it really is medicine. It's potent, it can have quite serious psychological and health consequences if it's not used properly. And in ancient times, I feel like that responsibility was almost regulated. It was regulated by community and by culture. This is quite an unregulated world. Anyone can essentially self appoint to that role and build up a following using social media or kind of modern sales and marketing techniques. And I think that's dangerous. So it's probably quite useful to remind people that this is not just a fun imaginary thing to do, it really is real. And for most of human history, it was often the main point of call for solving both physical and emotional problems and also connecting people to the spiritual realm, which was deemed an essential part of awareness and understanding in life.
- [11:42]
A
Yeah, look, I think that that's right. And on top, you know, it's. You've got to have outcomes that are able to deliver results. Right. Otherwise the shaman's role gets diminished if you're called in to solve problems and you don't do it. So it's all very well going off into a trance, but you've got to be able to not just offer explanations, but also remedies. And so that role, I think going back in time, it's quite interesting to think about. And in fact, because of burial evidence, we can do some sort of reconstructions of what we think these look like in the past. So, for example, in burials in southern Siberia from the Bronze Age, in a place called Minusinsk in the Minasinsk Basin, we find burial sites that have copper and bronze mirrors, iron and bone rings that are Sewn into coats, drums, bundles of herbs like juniper and ephedra, and masked with animal motifs and also bird claw pendants. These are kind of classic traditional engagements with the rural communities, with the outside world, the ecologies around. And from these objects, we find them quite often buried together. Archaeologists can have some ideas about what a ritual performance would have looked and been like. They'd have gone on for several hours. A drum would have been beaten by the shaman until the rhythm starts to alter their consciousness. There'll be quite often chanting of the name of ancestors, inhaling of aromatic smoke. One of the things I've done a bit of work on in the last couple of years is the diffusion both of cannabis across Eurasia, not by hippies and, you know, posh kids wanting to have a nice time, but to do with altering your mind, that ability, or the sense that you can have slightly different sensory experiences. Very significant in creating ideas about rituals and interventions, but also in different forms of psychotics that allow you to have higher levels of experience. So we know that the Vikings, for example, in Russia, as they come down the river systems of Russia and what's now Ukraine, are quite liable to be taking doses of psychedelic mushrooms that probably makes them turn into. Feel like they're turning into bears, which is where the term berserker comes from. So you have these kinds of experiences where the inhalation explains a lot of.
- [13:55]
B
What I've read about Viking behavior.
- [13:57]
A
There you go. But it's to do with inhaled states of mind and of consciousness. And, you know, then the shaman would be rocking and swaying or dancing until they enter a trance. And during that ritual, the shaman might. Might travel to go negotiate with the spirits and to beg for mercy or to tell them to stop causing an illness. And so all these things to have a kind of deep thought about how to kind of get into that state. And so the drum is, in some cases, particularly in these places, which are, like in Siberia, where it's home to domestication horses, the drum symbolizes the horse. The mask is a transformational, the transformation of the shaman into an animal form. And the mirror is a way of seeing into that spirit world. And you mentioned Afwa, that it's a psychological thing. Not surprising if you're a patient or a member of the family of somebody who's ill, for example, you know, you're going to be maybe fearful, you're going to be shocked. There's some kind of catharsis, and there's a huge emotional release because there's a sensation that you're Being protected by someone and that person's part of the community. So it has a kind of theater to it that has its own value in creating ties across different communities. That's really, really, really valuable.
- [15:07]
B
Let me ask you something, Peter, because, you know, I'm a huge fan of your books and I think that your research is so exquisite and unparalleled. Really like it's so in depth but also so accessible. I want to know, in service of this great project of researching and writing these amazing books, how far you personally have gone. Have you ever taken part in any of these shamanic rituals or any of these other supernatural practices that ancient cultures that still survive practice as part of your journeys for your, for your writing and research?
- [15:43]
A
No, I mean, I think that I'm not an anthropologist and so I think those things, you have to be both respectful and understanding of the community that you're part of. And shamans were using that word in quite a broad term. I mean, that means lots of different things to different people. So no, I'd be slightly, I mean I'd be slightly wary, I think of taking part as a kind of, as a, as a tourist and enjoying it rather than understanding it, you know, and it's also, it's also something that's not necessarily something that as an outsider you get invited to do because you haven't been passing, have you?
- [16:14]
B
Afra, I've been, I've definitely taken part in community rituals not involving any psychedelic or transcendental substances. I'm actually, I've got a lot of friends who've paid eye watering sums to go to Costa Rica, for example, and, and take part in a shamanic led ayahuasca ceremony. And they, they've reported, I mean, very profound experiences. I'm very reluctant to do that because I think it's a quite a serious thing to do and you need a clear reason and to do it. But I have definitely participated in, in rituals. I mean, through my reporting and work and travel in West Africa and Senegal, Mali and Ghana, where you're kind of part of this communal transcendental experience. And yeah, it is. And this is so without any particular substances just being part of, as you describe it, like the drumming, the chanting, the invocation, the performances. Because you'll have people who then embody the spirit of ancestors or gods, you know, and they'll dress up in these quite sometimes like jaw dropping outfits that are really scary to look at and it really is powerful. And I can see how in a world before you had TV and the Internet and you know, before you had like manufactured images, this was like an incredibly potent form of entertainment, but also the ability to kind of tap into another realm. Yeah, but I like you, I'm weary of taking part in shamanic rituals that aren't from my culture or my understanding. And I think that if you do that, you should probably make sure you're very versed in what surrounds it and what it means before kind of dabbling like a tourist.
- [17:54]
A
But you know, lots of communities on our beautiful planet are filled with people who are thrilled to meet outsiders and very respectful, hospitable, extremely generous.
- [18:04]
B
That's why I asked because you often I've been invited to take part in all kinds of things and I suspect you have as well.
- [18:09]
A
Oh yeah. I mean, you know, to weddings in Sumatra where, you know, not, not only you just peek in, but you're, you know, you think you might get a. But you get, you get put next to the bride and the groom. You know, it's sort of, and so, and, and everybody being, you know, the British think that the right thing to do is to escape out the back door as quickly as possible. But, but people love to include. But I think it's that there are different levels about what kinds of things are easier and more justifiable. And, and maybe it's also that, you know, you've got to be in the right place to, to do that. So. But, but it is, I think, like I said, I think you find these kinds of experiences in lots of different parts of the world. But yeah, I can promise you I'm never going to go to Costa rica to spend $10,000 to discover myself, but good luck to people who, who can. I mean, what, what I think is interesting about that process, you know, without mocking what people might do with their own time, money and beliefs, is that what people are trying to do is to find a higher truth. Right. And, and if you feel that you need to find that and have a extremely profound experience to get you away from trauma or bad experiences or to make you happy or whatever, it's part of that process of trying to correct or fix or improve or to remedy. And I think that that's easy to laugh at as well, but I think it's something that speaks to the idea of people trying to think about how do they jumpstart that process of self healing and of purification, how becoming a better person. And often the psychotics and drugs, whether it's ayahuasca or other things, are about trying to ingest something or smoke something or experience Something that sort of resets you and takes you back to a different state where your sins are taken away from you. I'm a Catholic, so, you know, that's sort of one of the purposes of taking the Eucharist is at mass, which is that you know, your sins get forgiven, you become pure. And that process of purification, it's quite a beautiful one, but it requires a demand to recognize that things aren't quite what they should be. And you need to either atoned for it or put it right.
- [20:05]
B
I think anyone who practices a modern religion can relate to the connection between spiritual, physical, well being and purity. And in ancient times, purity was something that was ritualized through these purification cycles. So I think we talked earlier about how temple priests in ancient Egypt were required to bathe four times a day, often in these sacred lakes that were besides major temples. And there were other purification rituals that you would do in ancient Egypt. For example, shaving body hair, because body hair was associated with impurity. And I think we still have that idea now. You know, sometimes if you're going to be baptized in an evangelical tradition, you'll shave your head. It's this idea of kind of hairless skin making you more open to a spiritual ritual. And they would scrub their skin with basically sodium carbonate, which is a natural antimicrobial, wash their garments in clean water, apply scented oils and recite purifications like my heart is purified, my limbs are pure, all evil is driven away. Do you know what this reminds me of, Peter?
- [21:09]
A
God.
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B
This reminds me of a modern day high end spa experience where you might go and have some epilation, you know, a wax, then you'll have a scrub with some extremely expensive kind of salt scrub thing. And then, you know, you, you will be massaged with essential oils. And then you probably be given like an affirmation to repeat. And then they'll give you a nice clean, fluffy dressing gown and give you some herbal tea. I mean, basically they're just trying to replicate what ancient Egyptian priests were able to do four times a day. What a life.
- [21:41]
A
And here instead of four times a day, it's just all through January as everybody tries to get themselves reset through their wellness rituals.
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B
But for anyone who pays for these expensive services at spas, you'll know that it really does make you feel good because being clean and bathing reduces your risk of infection. These kind of scrubs disinfect and remove impurities from the skin. Oils are very moisturizing and replenishing from all of the natural oils that are lost through washing and sweat and then the ritual repetition helps in modern parlance re regulate your nervous system. Something that again, the ancients understood this like reducing anxiety, stabilizing your emotional state. So as is often the case with the subject Peter, we seem to be coming full circle and when we come back after our next circle after the break, we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics which is oracles and the sacred prediction of the future. Foreign.
- [22:45]
A
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- [23:01]
C
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- [23:41]
A
So Afro, you mentioned oracles. I love a good oracle. I mean they're really important in the ancient Greek world. At Delphi go to find someone who pronounces something usually almost incomprehensible. So you know the modern day oracle is going up, someone at a train station in a country whose language you don't understand and asking where the exit is or where platform 12 is. And then you get a piece of information. You can understand some of it, but it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So you're basically back to square one, just relying on guesswork. But you like a good oracle.
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B
I'm so interested in oracles. I mean they obviously still exist in many cultures and you know, on like a macro scale but also a micro scale, there are lots of individual people who feel they have this gift of being able to see things that are coming. And actually again I've noticed, I think in this cultural environment where people are now becoming much more curious about ancient ideas, people are more open about discussing that. I mean I was at a film dinner for awards season the other day and this director, well known female director who I won't name who I sat next to, was telling me how she's always had the gift of seeing and it was something that she kept hidden because she was Ashamed of it. But now, you know, it's kind of part of her work. And I just thought it's so interesting that she was framing it that way. So it just makes me more curious about what the ancient history of oracles and the beliefs around them are.
- [25:00]
A
Did she win?
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B
Well, we don't know yet. So maybe.
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A
Did she tell you she's gonna. If she can see. If she can see into the future. I mean, she knows what to wear, right?
- [25:08]
B
Well, she knows what to wear and she knows what films to make next. I think. I think that's another thing that, you know, this kind of requirement that if you have a gift, you must have it on tap. You know, you must have the answer to this question, otherwise you don't have the gift. It doesn't work like that because, like all things in the supernatural realm, we don't fully understand how they work. And it's not a kind of transactional experience. It's something that, you know, doesn't really conform to the material world patterns of input, output. And that's one of the things I find intriguing about it.
- [25:40]
A
It's funny, there are some parts of the world where different cultures are very suspicious of dogs and don't like dogs, particularly, because the sense that. Because the dogs can. They're thought to be able to sense what's coming in advance the same way that they'd bark before somebody gets to the door. And that kind of sense of premonition is very unsettling if you think that people do have a head start on you or can see things in advance or, you know, as anyone who's got a dog, sometimes the dog would bark at a noise that there isn't anybody at the front door. And that's almost more terrifying than if there's. Than if there is.
- [26:11]
B
Well, this. Actually, it's a really good example of how you allocate something as natural or a supernatural phenomenon. Because, for example, there are lots of stories of dogs being able to detect cancer in their owners before science or medical science has, because they can smell a difference. So there's something.
- [26:28]
A
Diabetes dogs. Yeah, that's right.
- [26:29]
B
Diabetes dogs. But also, if you think of hurricanes or tsunamis, you know, you see weird patterns of bird migration or animals behaving strangely before a storm. I wouldn't describe that as supernatural. I would just describe it as kind of material data that humans aren't able to detect, that animals have a superior ability to interpret. But it kind of shows that these boundaries are a little porous because basically, as humans, we've tended to describe things we don't understand as supernatural or mysterious, whereas actually they are often just evidence of our limited capacity to understand the world we live in. And I think that's kind of at the heart of oracles, you know, because now, for example, if an ancient person was to look at my phone and see my weather app, that would seem like some kind of supernatural interpretation, when actually it's the satellite technology that we have now is able to give us more data about weather that we didn't have before then or in the past, we would have relied on something more supernatural. So I think it's often a question of language.
- [27:27]
A
I think it's also that with health, the idea of an oracle is can you anticipate who is going to fall ill and with what? So there's quite a lot of evidence and sources from the past about people consulting oracles about the causes of disease, of epidemics. So quite often, for example, Herodotus writes about how when there was a severe pandemic, there's political turmoil, and this is, of course, understood to signal divine displeasure. And so you send envoys, in this case to Delphi to go and find out why that might be the case. And at Delphi, there's the Pythia, the high priestess of Apollo is the voice of the Delphic oracle. And she would offer an explanation and an instruction. And sometimes it would be quite ambiguous to understand what it is that that instruction actually meant. And in a way, because it's ambiguous or hard to understand, that makes it more valuable rather than less so as well. Obviously, there's been a zoonotic jump. Having something that is a bit more mysterious and requires more thought is obviously probably more helpful for the person who is the oracle. If you don't necessarily think that people can see into the future. So the fact that it's incomprehensible gives a bit of wiggle room that you might get things wrong. But it is also that the language of the divine is of course, not going to be exactly the same as the language of the profane or of the human, and that therefore, the kind of the ways in which you get these divinations or these answers or guidance has to be quite hard to understand.
- [28:59]
B
Have you ever sought the services of a psychic or a fortune teller or an astrologer or somebody who uses kind of more cosmic forces to see into the future?
- [29:12]
A
PETER I think the most recent experience was getting my predicted grades for A levels, so quite a long time ago.
- [29:18]
B
That's definitely a supernatural, mysterious business that's beyond the realm of human.
- [29:23]
A
No, no, I, I haven't. Have you?
- [29:26]
B
What have I done? I'm very wide open to these knowledge systems. I've never done tarot because I'm a little bit superstitious about. Like it's just not part of my cultural background and I feel as if I'm not meant to know some things for a reason, if that makes sense.
- [29:43]
A
Okay.
- [29:44]
B
But listeners might spot wild inconsistencies and illogicality in this. I love astrology and I'm very, very interested in it. But that makes perfect sense to me since we're part of a solar system in which all the planets and the elements are connected. And you know, I would look to understand my physical geological environment on Earth to make sense of things in my life. It makes perfect sense that the movements of other planets would also have an impact on my experience. So very receptive to astrology. And I think again, it's something people misinterpret. Like they'll say, your horoscope in this magazine said that your going to make money this year and you didn't. So it's all nonsense. You know, it doesn't work like that. It's often questions of interpretation and I don't think you should use it to predict specific things that are going to happen. But it's more like a weather forecast. It gives you a sense of the climate you're going to face, what the kind of patterns that might affect you will be. And then of course, you still have individual agency and there are still all other kinds of forces you don't understand that will determine exactly what your experience will be. But I have had psychics volunteer information uninvited, which has turned out to be true. And maybe that's one reason I'm quite receptive. So when I was 20 in, in Ghana, a woman told me all these things. She was doing my hair. Actually, I've never met her before. I sat down, had my hair done and she just started telling me things about myself which she couldn't have known and about my future, which she also couldn't have known. And every single one of those things turned out to be true. And I've never forgotten that. And it, I think because it was quite a formative age, it made me much more receptive to the idea that someone can have these kind of gifts. And then my mom also did.
- [31:22]
A
She mentioned the legacy podcast Afwa I don't your Ghanaian hairdresser.
- [31:25]
B
This came from, you know, maybe she said, one day you're going to meet this man called Peter Frank Pan. And then you're going to, and everything's going to change.
- [31:33]
A
Well, being you're going to talk about the oracle in Ghana and then now everyone who goes get their hair cut is going to ask what numbers to battle in the lottery. I wonder whether this is a good topic for our lovely subscribers to share their experiences in our chat room and you know, maybe for Q A to be thinking about which areas we, we should think about or which topics they'd like us to talk about. But I think that, you know, there's, there's a lot of faith healers and faith healing that goes on. Lots of people who believe that there are ways in which they can be cured and restored. And you know, sometimes those become tragic exercises where people refuse to take proven medicines because they would rather try and solve things in different ways. And you know, those things we sometimes read about in the press. But I wonder what people's experiences are about confronting and thinking about the future and how open minded you need to be about that. Or whether it's something which is just sort of guesswork that's dressed up as superstition. But you know, like I said, there are lots of people in the world who live in different ways to perhaps people listening in central Oxford or in Wimbledon when we record that sound completely crazy, but they are believed by lots of people. And I think anthropologists are always careful to explain that. There are so many. With 8 billion people on Earth, there are so many different diverse cultures and experiences and projections about the past and the present and the future that probably bears mind to be open minded about some of these things. But what about oracles afro different traditions? How do you, how do people try to think about using oracles? Is it about restoring calm? Is it about giving explanations? What's the purpose of consulting oracles?
- [33:10]
B
Well, if you look at early Vedic India, for example, so this is like around 1200 to 600 BCE there are lots of ideas about the connection between predicting what's going to happen and healing practices. So in Rigdev, for example, there are hymns referencing healing deities and medicinal plants. And in Atharvaveda, which is the earliest body of Indian medical incantations and herbal knowledge, there's a real emphasis on how the spiritual order can be harnessed to heal the contemporary physical realm and how these things are connected.
- [33:46]
A
That's right. And the Brahmanas, you know, there's a lot to do with mental and emotional distress. And so the Atma Veda for example, talks about how to, it has hymns about how to address night terrors, fears and anxiety, insomnia, you know, the feeling of being possessed. You know, more than 100 hymns that are dealing with disease, with herbs and with therapeutic substances. And I think all these traditions are showing how profoundly our common ancestors are thinking about health. And interestingly, not just physical health, mental health is such an important part of these things too. And again, I imagine a lot of listeners will be thinking that ideas about diagnosis of mental health is something that's very new rather than something that has been a source of concern to identify, diagnose and treat for thousands of years.
- [34:33]
B
Peter Talking about these ancient histories of wellness has been so good for my well being. I'm genuinely curious about these knowledge systems and I think it's fascinating how they are being reincarnated today, sometimes in cynical ways, but other times in quite restorative ways that I think are reconnecting us with ideas that we lost and maybe shouldn't have. So I think it's been brilliant to talk about this. And it's part of a longer series we're doing in this new year to think about wellness. And in our next series we're going to look specifically at the connection between women and healing. Because for much of human history, all of the things we've talked about today, knowledge of herbs, connection to the divine, other things we haven't talked so much about, like childbirth, midwifery and allegations of witchcraft, have been very, very dominated by women, both the genius of women and the persecution of women. So we're going to look really closely at that in our next series. So please join us then and thank you so much for listening.
- [35:37]
A
Thanks for listening to Legacy.
- [35:39]
B
Don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player. You can also watch all our episodes on YouTube, so make sure you're subscribed there too.
- [35:46]
A
And of course we're on all the socials, all the links are in the show notes for this episode or just search for Legacy Podcast. I'm Peter Frankopan. I'm Afua Hirsch and we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.
- [36:17]
C
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