You heard it here first: demons are just not that into sodomy. At least in the Reformation period. In “The Heretical Kiss: Eros and Obscenity in the Sabbath” the authors touch on this (it’s also a great article on sexuality in the world of Reformation witch hunts. At least at first, demons just wouldn’t go there, although apparently they get over their hangups and move on. In the modern era, though, Satan, the Rothschilds, Jesuits, and the Illuminati are very pro-sodomy, as it usefully leads to multiple personality disorder and demonic posession. I’m not sure if “whackadoo” is a technical term in rhetoric, but it should be.

Jamin jokes that Buer has five left feet. Sadly, Jacob has supporting evidence. Thank you to Dracontair for this Fosse-inspired Buer.

Get your own copy of the Inferno RPG by Acheron Books on Drive-Thru RPG! It’s very pretty! And as long as we’re on the topic of Inferno-inspired video games, here’s the little indie isometric graphics puzzler based on the Inferno.

More video games! Check out Inkulinati, a game inspired by medieval marginalia!

Right-wing “Christians” attacking fantasy products is hardly news, but since we talk about it, here’s the latest dire warnings of how Disney will infect your children this halloween. (No sodomy involved. This time at least. Just Bette Midler.) There’s nothing original here, though. Just a courtesy link.

If you want a piece of less judgy Christianity, “O Ye Jigs and Juleps!” is a charmer. It’s a cute series of vignettes written by an Episcopalian girl around 1904 or so. It’s almost a different world, but not quite, because churches change slowly and reluctantly,. Jacob loves this book.

Drinks! This week is unusually digressive, 10 minutes in and we’re only just now getting to the Hair of the Dog cocktail, with thanks to The Spruce Eats. Gin, tabasco, lemon juice. No ice, no water, prepare yourself.

This week’s topic is The Wild Hunt. Jacob lifted rather heavily from the Mythillogical video on the Wild Hunt, whose take on the hunt was that while there was lots of material in the Wild Hunt extended universe, the canonical Wild Hunt is a fusion of a bunch of stories that aren’t really related, or aren’t really hunts, or are hunts but don’t quite fit the modern fantasy Wild Hunt, which was a Jacob Grimm concoction. This seems to be truish, maybe if not capital T True, but it’s definitely what Jacob brought to the discussion. Maybe he just likes Jacobs.

Wiki suggests that a proper wild hunt involves a leader of the hunt, a supernatural retinue of hunters (and/or hellish dogs or the souls of the dead). It may be an omen of doom. Wiki points out, though we didn’t get into this, which is kind of unfortunate, that regional traditions describe a “wild hunt,” a “wild host,” or a “wild army.” The Wild Hunt as seen in modern fantasy sits at the center of a bunch of overlapping circles, and it’s an open question how much of the overlapping is because of the way Grimm laid out the circles. Anyway, enough cynicism...

Ghost Riders in the Sky

Lots of folks have covered this one, but Johnny Cash is classic. The song doesn’t go back very far, it was written in 1948. Man sees the devi’s herd and the riders chasing them. Cowboy, change your ways, or with us you will ride, etc. This may be an American adaptatino of the “Buckriders” legend, devil-serving criminals that ride goats. They were hanged for their crimes and devilish ways, a sort of “stand and deliver!” version of the witch trials.

In the Deadlands tabletop RPG (Wild West with a lovecraftian edge), “Los Diablos” come for the party when they’re local heroes, but ain’t yet b...

Up the mountain! You may think we’re going to get into Paradise, but no, that doesn’t happen for another three cantos yet and in another book entirely, so...maybe two years...

Still climbing the mountain with Dante as we continue “Purgatorio,” cantos 9-17. We discuss P on Dante’s face, what’s the point of absolution anyway, reader burnout, mansplaining angels, and more!

Another fun week in the ancient near east! Going further down the road of no return in the Mesopotamian underworld with a look at Erishkegal, the goddess of the dead, and Nergal, the god of death. They’re a great couple, give them a hand.

Like so many of us, you may be wondering what folks drank for fun in Mesopotamia. Apparently their form of ancient beer was pretty close to “liquid bread,” opaque, yeasty, and drunk with very long straws. Made from wild yeast, Jamin suggests (with no evidence but the photos) that it’d be something like a lambic porridge. This seems fair...There’s a very pretty song of praise/instruction set over at Open Culture.

Vegan avocado pancakes, anyone?

This week Jacob is in love with the 2007 “Dante’s Inferno” made in a puppet theater style. We found this while researching various Inferno-inspired films, and this one stood out as being the most unusual of the modern era interpretations. This particular version was a puppet theater film based on Sandow Birk’s amazing modern interpretation of the Divine Comedy, she has many of her illustrations on her portfolio website, very worth looking at.

Jacob attempts to explain a word without knowing the definition of the word. Tragos is the Greek word for, well, tragedy. It’s also the word for spelt (the grain, not past tense of “spell.”) Fun fact, the word “tragedy” is taken from the word roots for “goat song,” and also suggests a voice changing during puberty. Fun, fun.

We found a “new” – well, new to us, podcast: Mark Scarbrough’s “Walking with Dante,” a journey with Dante through the cosmos. The pacing on this one is slow, edging into meditative, with plenty of academic asides and backstory. Apparently it’s the most popular podcast in Sweden!

Photo by Kathryn Grossman, Enkibru tasting at Cleveland, Ohio. With thanks to Ancient Near East Today, “Beer and Brewing in Mesopotamia”

Begin all serious academic research with TVTropes.com, whose treatment of the marriage of Erishkegal and Nergal is deeply informative and should really be used in your next doctoral thesis. Particularly if you work in theoretical physics or some field otherwise unrelated to mythology.

Although you might want to actually read the story yourself. Which, for some reason, I can’t find the link to. Here’s a neopagan-informed interpretation that we used, and this one feels a bit more scholarly. Obviously, we’re playing the story for comedy, and it’s kind of hard to get a clear story of the actual history...even when we were able to find a copy, which...again...still can’t...it was garbled and hard to reconcile the different versions of the translations.

Important

Wemic

Plains and desert-dwelling species that form prides. Favorite food: Wild pig, lamb, and porcupine. Monster Manual II, 1st edition, Dungeons and Dragons. Statistics/instructions for dating a wemic have not been found, but we did find a fan article on marriage customs.

Nergal

Mesopotamian god of plague, the summer sun, war, and death

Nermal

The world’s cutest kitten

Urkel

A character from “Family Matters”

More word fun: “l’amour fou“, borrowed from French, literally means “mad love,” uncontrollable or obsessive passion or infatuation.”

Glittery Hoo-Ha theory was initially developed by romance writer Lani Del Rich. Who is also a podcaster, so that’s neat. Early GHH theory simply stated how extremely and thoroughly the Male was tamed by the GHH, a powerful force that let writers ignore the importance of motivation and logical action. Jacob encountered the “magic hoo-ha” idea in How To Write Hot Sex, a quite good really book of essays on writing erotica (I actually don’t think that LDR was actually a contributor to this anthology...

Well! It has been an absolute heck of a week as central Texas turned into our very own Lake Cocytus and we experienced five degree weather, some of us for the very first time. Don’t laugh, it’s not cold by everyone else’s standards, but we’re not rated for this, really. It’s good to be back to what we’ll generously call normal!

No drink recipe this time, we recommend grabbing whatever you have on hand that’s safe, we went with lawn ice and everclear.

A happy find from the Half Price Books down the street: Mickey’s Inferno! This weird little gem is a 2014 reprint of a 1948 Disney comic from Mouse House’s Italian imprint that lovingly if not faithfully retells Dante’s Inferno for a younger crowd. We have our doubts though. It’s a great comic for members of the hell fandom, and and an interesting cultural artifact, published just after World War II and Italy’s fascist period. More on our blog, but get yourself a copy if you can!

Your hosts are divided as to which one of these is sacred music. Patrick Cassidy, who did the score for “Hannibal,” is returning to his remarkable piece, Vide Cor Meum, into an opera of Dante’s life, love, and work. Also, we’ve had the B-52’s song “Mesopotamia” stuck in our heads. I should read a book! And Vic gives a callout to Quincy Jones’s “Bossa Nova” by way of Austen Powers, so...I’ll just throw that into today’s playlist.

Since we don’t have any drinks for you, please have some food porn. Feel free to start out with the Gelatin Art Market’s gallery pages, beautiful gelatin art cakes (which Victoria was talking about.) Jamin and Jacob were chattering about “water cakes,” which were briefly trending in 2014. Also called “Unicorn tears.” I love stunt cooking, so I learned to make them, working from this recipe blog. They’re amazing perfect little globes made with spring water and just a pinch of agar gelatin, with a flavor that’s kind of like the smell of a crystal clear pond in a Miyazaki film, or possibly licking ghosts. When you dip a spoon into them, they just melt. Frankly, when you look at them cross-eyed, they turn into puddles. My base recipe uses more agar than the original, and is just a bit opaque but in a nice way:

Water Cake (three 2.5-inch servings)
1/4 tsp powdered agar, slightly rounded.
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 1/4 C water (spring water recommended)

Pour agar into a medium saucepan. Add a few tablespoons of water and mix well. Gradually add the remaining water. Add sugar and mix again.

Bring to a moderate boil, stirring occasionally, to thoroughly dissolve the agar. Remove from heat, cool to a temperature that won’t deform your plastic molds.

Using a funnel pour into spherical ice molds (I’m using 2 1/4-inch “Prepara” molds. Chill a few hours or overnight. Carefully decant onto plates, serve with toppings of your choice.

Toppings should be subtle. I was planning out the menu for my water cake food truck, and from top to bottom we have “Kheerly There” (sweetened condensed milk with saffron, pistachios with a pinch of cardamon), “Green, White, and Blue” (vanilla sugar syrup and blackberry puree, toasted almonds with a bit of matcha powder), “The Princess” (coconut cream and lychee syrup, with some sweetened coconut chopped fine, a bit of sugar, and a few sprinkles), and “The Traditional” (brown sugar syrup and a small scoop of kinako soybean flour, or toast some dried soybeans and blitz them for a few seconds.) The plates are still available from Miya Tableware.

Why am I telling you this?
– Jacob

Mesopotamia – Just the Facts

Much of our research came from Wiki, there’s no shame in that, and their articles on the History of Mesopotamia, the Mesopotamian Underworld, Geography of Mesopotamia,and Ancient Mesopotamian Religion really formed the backbone of this episode. I’d also strongly recommend this rich, but somewhat incomplete, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project, extremely helpful for contexts. I also leaned heavily on Bienkowski and ...