November 17, 2023 • 46 mins
Imagine that you could possess a genuine, real-life spellbook -- something that could enable you to summon and command otherworldly powers, to accrue riches and shed light on the dark mysteries of the heavens. People who believe such a thing is possible often point to the legendary Key of Solomon as proof that genuine grimoires exist. But what is this book, exactly? Tune in as the guys attempt to separate the fact from fiction surrounding the Key of Solomon.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, tonight's classic episode bit Esoteric. We've talked about Solomon
in the past, right, the commander of jen and Spirits,
a guy known to practitioners of magic throughout the world.
But what is the key of Solomon?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
This one?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Isn't it about the rings? There's some real D and
D stuff going on in this story where you can
you can get an accessory that's probably a random drop
on like a level forty I don't know, creature, and
then you can command demons.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, it's it's nuts because Solomon is such a tremendous
historical and religious figure, and you know, out of this
panoply of characters in religions from this part of the world,
he stands apart as sort of a prospero, a high magician.
(01:00):
And I don't know. I gotta be honest with you, guys,
I still don't fully understand the key of Solomon.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Wow, why don't we make an episode about it?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And then in the past.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
That's some witchy stuff right there.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Let's jump into the groom WAW.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Noel as
a spirit conduit for Matt, who usually starts the show
but is away on adventures.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
And will return shortly. They call me Ben. We are
joined with our super producer, Paul the Necroman decond Most importantly,
you are here, You are you, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
You know, Ben, I thought the necronomicon was real until
you told me otherwise last time we had that conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Right, this is going to be an episode that those
of you who enjoyed our grimwa episode will find particularly fascinating.
I love that you mentioned the Necronomicon at the top
of the show, Nol, because for everyone listening, if you're
a fan of horror movies, you're intimately familiar with that
old trope of the Cursed Book and Lovecraft's Necronomicon. Howard,
(02:35):
Philip Lovecraft, he made this book. It's a perfect example
of what we're talking about, because for years and years
and years after he admittedly wrote it in a work
of fiction, as a work of fiction mentioned in other
fictional stories, people liked it enough that they just started
saying let's all agree that it's real.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, I mean I think my thing is it just
as becomes such a stand in for like cursed books.
Like you said, I almost thought it was more of
a word than a specific volume, like calling something a
necronomicon or a grimoire, you know, right, that was what
my brand did.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Like how nowadays instead of saying search the Internet, we
just say Google, regardless of which search, or xerox for copy.
That's an interesting comparison not. The Necronomicon may be the
most widely known fictional book of magic in the Western world,
but there are other ones too, you know. On a
lighter note, there's the spell Book in Disney's hocus Pocus,
(03:35):
which I recently rewatched and stand by it is an
enjoyable movie, if not a film. Today, these books are
almost universally thought of as little more than clever bits
of fiction, maybe an extra detail added to flesh out
a fictional world. But as we explored in the previous
(03:56):
video and audio episodes on Grimwaws, these books were real things.
They were physical, tangible books in the real world. They
were often mistakenly or purposefully misattributed to other authors. There
are multiple counterfeit versions, and numerous books took the same
name or something very much like it to increase their
(04:18):
occult street cred. But the books themselves were real, and
in many many cases, various people throughout the centuries would
read these books and attempt the experiments or rituals outlined
in those tones. Today's episode is about one of the
most famous grimoiws in existence, the book or slash books
(04:41):
known as the Key of Solomon. We're going to delve
into the fact and fiction surrounding this book with one
other huge question that we'll get to near the end.
What is this supposed to do and does it actually work?
So here are the facts.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
The Key of Solomon is kind of is this sort
of an umbrella term that is assigned to several different books.
And there's a legend that says the book was originally
created by the biblical King Solomon of mining mining fame.
He had a mine, King Solomon's mind.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Right, he had a seal, he made a temple. Yeah,
according to you'll hear it being phrased as something mentioned
in just Judeo Christian beliefs, but mentioned of King Solomon
also occurs in Holy Books of the Bahai and also
in the Qur'an. According to these legends, these stories, the
(05:35):
man known as King Solomon was the son of the
famous Goliath slaying David, who went on Solomon did went
on to become the ruler of israel An approximately nine
sixty seven BCE, and he was ruling this enormous kingdom
that extended from the Euphrates in the north to Egypt
in the south. And in the religious text he is
(05:58):
presented as one of the wisest men in the history
of civilization. He's kind of and this is not a
one to one comparison religious scholars in the audience, he's
kind of a Tony Stark. He's a genius inventor. He's
a ladies man.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
He's super rich.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
He's super rich exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
And potentially practices the dark arts.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And God appeared to him in a dream during the
early days of his reign, and he said, Solomon, you
can have whatever you desire because you act, you know
how to worship me, and you're honoring me in the
ways and the methods that your father David instructed you to.
(06:43):
And when we say this guy's clever, we're drawing on
numerous anecdotes, and the most famous one which I think
everybody has heard, whether or not you are religious, and
whether or not you're that familiar with Western religion, you've
probably heard the story of the baby right where he
is a judge and these two women come to his
(07:05):
court and they have a baby, and both both of
these people say that is my child.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
I misspoke as well. Solomon is not known for practicing
any dark arts, but there are things that he codified
and committed to text that were used as sort of
a lexicon by others that practiced said dark arts. Is
that accurate, you know?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
And I think the term dark art too, is something
that undergoes an evolution. That's a very good point, because
according to a legend, he was practicing some stuff, but
later it would be called dark arts right by church authorities.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Okay, then all right, so I was too too far
spot on.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But back to these back to these women. These are
the days before DNA testing, obviously, so they say this
is my kid. This lady's Lyne, and the other lady
says no, this person's line, this is truly my child.
And Solomon's solution was to really double down on this.
(08:03):
He said, Okay, you've both convinced me in your own way,
tell you what, Just cut the baby in half, be
done with it. And then one woman was prepared to
accept the decision, but the other one begged King Solomon, please,
it is my child, but give it to this other woman.
I don't want the baby to die.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Classic trope and sci Fi. When you have clones, you know,
and to see which one, or like the evil double
or whatever, to see which one's the real one, sort of,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Was sci Fi draws a lot from religion, that's true,
earlier religion, so of course we know how. We know
how Solomon acted next once he saw one lady giving
up the baby to spare its life.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Yeah, I guess what I'm getting at with like that.
If there's an evil twin, you can usually tell in
sci Fi who's the real one, because the real one
will take a bullet for his lady love or something,
while the evil one will, you know, behave more less
chivalrously right.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Right, And in the case of Solomon, he says, okay, well,
you have proven to me that you are the true mothers,
so that's obviously your child. Again. According to legend, people
from surrounding nations came to hear Solomon's wisdom. He composed
three thousand proverbs, one thousand and five songs. He wrote
(09:22):
the Song of Songs, the Book of Proverbs, and other
religious works. In the Jewish tradition, he is thought to
be the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem and
the last ruler of the Kingdom of Israel before it
was divided into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom
of Judah. And in the tradition concerning the Key of Solomon,
(09:43):
or also in the Lesser Key of Solomon, which well,
we'll have to mention because it's fascinating, the king used
his powers, including a special seal and his magic ring,
to summon and bind spirits, and it was these spirits
that were his workforce for the First Temple. So going
back to dark arts, you know, centuries later, summoning spirits
(10:07):
and spirits of the dead to.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Literally do your dirty work, right, or at least, you know,
the work that you don't feel like doing because masonry breaking. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So this these are the claims about this individual, and
we can get into those a little bit later. We
want to set that up and bracket it. But now
we've got to talk about what's actually in this book,
because the key of Solomon is, as you said, nol
an umbrella term for multiple different translations for multiple I
(10:39):
don't know, differing interpretations of the text. The book itself
is composed of an introduction and then like two smaller books,
and the introduction is a story about how the book
allegedly came to be.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
So in the introduction to the book, readers get a
story about the creation of said text. Solomon writes the
book for his son Rio Boham and tells his son
to hide the book in a sepulchrp upon Solomon's dead.
What's a sepulcher man? That's like a kind of like
a It's like a mausoleum. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
It's like a too small room usually built a stone
or cut into rock, where you put a dead.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Body, okay, or a book, or a dead body with
a book. It's about us. It could be clutching it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So what happens next?
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Well next, and by next I mean years and years later.
Babylonian philosophers find the text while they're repairing Solomon's tomb.
Solomon himself his tomb. No One can understand the text,
so they pray to God for understanding, and so lo
and behold, an angel appears and grants one of the
(11:54):
philosophers the ability to read the text, after he swears
that he will keep it safe and hidden from the
unworthy and the wicked. This is obviously, of course, this
is legend, has it?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yes, legend has it? As this story goes, yeah, this
legend says that the philosopher accepts the bargain and learns
these ancient secrets, and then to keep his word to
these divine forces, this philosopher places a spell on the book,
(12:29):
or what they call conjuration, making it so that even
if you manage to read it, if you are unworthy, unpious,
you're unwise, you don't obey God, or you don't fear God,
you can do every single ritual in here to the
letter and it just won't work, which is very clever.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Isn't interesting too? How the term philosopher used to mean
much more of a almost wizardly type, like I think
even one of the Harry Potter books. In the British
printing it's called the Philosopher's Stone, and then the US
it's called the sorcerer's stone, so they're kind of like
a one to one.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Thing and the philosopher's stone being alchemical exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah, but now we think of philosophers, we just think
of high minded academics that you know.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, and either way could be either way could apply
because it just means lover of wisdom, that's true. But
you're absolutely right. A lot of times people who were
practicing what we would think of as very esoteric rituals
and belief systems were considered philosophers, right, So this is
(13:33):
the intro And one thing that's incredibly clever about this
introduction is that it already bakes in a defense mechanism
for people who say the book is fake or it
doesn't work. It puts the blame for a lack of
success in these rituals, not on the book itself, not
(13:53):
on the nature of magic, but on the audience, the reader,
the practitioner. If you didn't make to turn invisible, then
it's not because that's impossible. It's because you were unworthy,
or you're unwise, or you didn't fear God, which will
(14:14):
come into play later. But let's get into the actual
substance of the book. The text itself the Key of Solomon.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Should we take a little quickie break first.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Though, fantastic idea, let's do it. We have returned. As
we said earlier, the book is divided into two sections.
In book one, you'll learn an astonishing amount of conjurations, curses,
(14:49):
invocations meant to summon and bind spirits. Now we mentioned
spirits before, let's outline let's clarify this a little bit.
Spirits in this sense could be the ghost of dead
human beings or other worldly creatures like angels or demons.
(15:12):
And in many cases a lot of anthropologists will tell
you these and they're correct. Many of these things presented
as demons are built off of earlier what we would
call pagan myths or pagan gods, like the god of
(15:32):
lightning Baal who became Bael. And this is very apparent
in some books that which we'll get to in a moment,
and some books that came after the Key of Solomon
that actually named these demons. The first book, in addition
to these descriptions, contained spells which are called operations or experiments.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Very mathematical sounding and they kill right right.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
So the idea is one series of operations or experiments
can turn the practitioner invisible their spells to make people
like you or fall in love with you, to help
you find stolen or lost items. So there's some practical
stuff in there, and that's just the first book.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
In book two he gets into detailing a lot of
purification rituals that a practitioner of philosophy must undertake, things
like the kinds of clothing they're supposed to wear. The
spell caster or operator, you know, that was the earliest
(16:39):
version of that job, an operator, and it was also
called an exorcist in different translations. So, like you say, Ben,
the translation can make a lot of difference in the
way we look at that particular activity or you know, role,
and it's different. You know, how they should go about
constructing the various tools that they need to do the rituals,
(17:01):
and what kinds of animals should be sacrificed, along with
exactly how to go about sacrificing them.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
With one example here from chapter fourteen of that book.
It's on the chapter fourteen is of the pen ink
and Colors. Just to show you how weird this gets,
or how it's may seem weird to us now, how
specific it gets all things employed for writing, et cetera
(17:30):
in this art should be prepared in the following manner.
I'm going to do a voice. Thou shalt take a
male ghostlin from which thou shalt pluck the third feather
of the right twing, and didn't pluck it it. Thou
shalt say abermei habli lai sami ta athabasiever I don't
I banish from this pen all deceit and arraw, so
(17:51):
that it may be a virtue and efficacy to write
all that tide desaye a been I.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Deny is Hebrew? How deny is like a prayer? Believe?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yeah, these are names in vacations.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
I just remember it from choir from when I was
a kid. It's a very beautiful. Yes, I'm sorry. It's
the Hebrew name for God's That's what that is. But ben,
I'm sorry. The third feather on the right wing? How
do off one determine the third feather? There are a
lot of feathers on a wing.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, right? Do you count from the outside in or
the inside out.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
It's sort of like your grandma's recipes. You know, it's
like a pinch or it doesn't even give you, like
actual measurements. It's a basic ratio, you know, so maybe
the third it doesn't matter, just so if you count,
you know, you use the honor system for plucking feathers.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So the important part here too, And it has further
instructions for what to do after plucking that quill, and
how to make it into a pen, what to do
with the ink. And one thing that's incredibly important about
this is that each of these physical acts are accompanied
by this incantation that one must recity. To simply pluck
(19:02):
a feather from anywhere on the gosling is going to
completely sink the entire experiment. So everything you do has
to be attached to these pronunciations.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
I cannot get over the idea of these as experiments.
It totally goes hand in hand with the kind of
scientific nature of like alchemy and all of that, and
how it all is just kind of like trial and
error type stuff. I really like that.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
And there's and just like modern day experiments, there's intense ritualization.
There's an effort to account for all the variables and
reduce possible intervening variables, right, which is strange because you know,
now safe to say most modern day scientists would not
(19:54):
take kindly to being compared to sorcerers or wizards.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Now I think that Saki and the in the mouth, it's.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Science, sock you. Yeah, yeah, But there's there's an interesting
parallel here. And while this is all fascinating, it's safe
to say that almost anyone could sit down and make
something like this up from whole cloth. We could. We
could say, okay, if you want to if you want
(20:24):
to summon rainfall, then here's what you do. And if
we're making it up, it doesn't matter really to us.
If it works. We say, you find a you find
a stray cat, you make it wear this special headdress
that you made out of grass while you're saying these words,
and then.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Boom, you're making this up.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah right, And the question is this any different or
is this just an older example? How real quote unquote
real is the actual key of Solomon. Here's where it
gets crazy, and this is strange. There are actually several
here's where it gets crazy moments.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Here you're going to say it all every time. No,
I think just once, wonder cup. I'm sort of an umbrella.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
True, it's like a key of Solomon. Kind of thing.
So first, in virtually every translation, this book appears to
be what we call pseudo epigrapha, so meaning falsely attributed
to a legendary author.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Oh a book like that? Wait what so okay? Go on.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
So, for instance, this happened a lot in early Western
religious developments. Three hundred, four hundred, seven hundred years after
something occurred, or after someone was alive, an enterprising scholar
would write a book and say, you know, this is
(21:49):
the book that this guy wrote. I know you've seen
a lot of imitations, but except no imitations, this is
the real book of you know, this disciple or this person,
right from the Torah or something. And experts estimate that
the earliest versions of something like the Key of Solomon
(22:11):
weren't actually written until somewhere between the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
We have a quote from a researcher named Arthur Edward
Waite that says essentially that there's no ground for attributing
the Key of Solomon in its present form a higher
antiquity than the fourteenth or fifteenth century. A lot of
people latch onto that present form thing and say, well,
(22:36):
maybe this version we understand isn't true, but maybe those
Babylonian philosophers really did find some tattered scrolls by a skeleton,
and those scrolls just decayed over time, and people just
kept recopying the.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Story you're talking about, like in the clutches of Solomon's
Dead Hands.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Right, they're saying in the separate supulch.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Sorry, man, I'm having a I'm having a bit of
a day, Ben. Yeah. Yeah, I can't pronounce words.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I can't pronounce words. You know, I'll never forget one
time in elementary school, I gotta I gotta b because
I did a report on Carl Jung swinging a miss.
I just didn't have many people to speak with.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
You know what's been in our business, And by that
I mean the business that is pod.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
You're gonna, you're gonna You're gonna have a few pronunciation
misses every now and then. It's just gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, And you have to wonder what would happen if
we were practitioners of magic?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Oh what if mispronouncing a word totally yielded a an
undesirable or cataclysmic results?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
And furthermore, just while we're on this subject, the act
of making a podcast is in many ways similar there's
a ritual, right that we undergo as individuals, that we
undergo as a group when we're recording that you undergo
as you listen, right, And there's something that we're all
(24:15):
doing together in a way. We're making this strange working together.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It is strange. And also the ritualism of it all
is why I get so thrown every time Matt's not here.
We both get so thrown and we look at each
other because we don't know how to start.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It's true, it's true. And when we say it's true,
we mean it is not just true for us right now,
but it is true for all time. You can go
back to the very beginning of our show and you
can hear those moments that we have just described. Those
(24:51):
moments have something called historocity. Historocity is something that comes
up in the Search for or the Key of Solomon
as well. Historosity is just the fun to say word
that describes the historical authenticity of a given person, place, event,
(25:14):
or thing.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
I love this word.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's a great one because when okay, so,
if you've ever seen those specials on the History Channel
or National Geographic or something wherein they have a documentarian saying,
all right, now we're journeying to this mountain in Turkey
to search for the real Noah's arc. Of course, their
(25:38):
questing for historosity. They want to prove the legends. One
example of this that we return to time and time
again would be the search for the ancient city of Troy,
which was for a long time after was lost, it
was believed to be a myth until someone found it.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Yeah, it looks like we were talking about finding Genghis
Khans burials, side anything, Thelocity of Atlanta's whatever, and it's
all kind of myth and hubbub until you actually do
discover something like that. Is that historoicity there?
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yes, yes, yes, So multiple scholars even today as we
record this, they've examined the works describing King Solomon, and
they've attempted to square these texts with existing physical evidence
or secular contemporary writing, so non religious community based, and
(26:31):
the debate over this stuff continues today. There are some
scholars like this professor Israel Finkelstein, who argue that the
story surrounding the rule of King Solomon are not factually accurate,
and he and people who agree with him, do not
believe the Biblical descriptions of anything should be taken literally.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Wait, so like you they're saying, like Solomon was like
a character, kind of like a made up cartoon.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
They're not quite going that far. Often they're saying that
a lot of this stuff attributed to him doesn't count
because there are people who believe they've found the tomb
of the king of Israel. Right, And you're absolutely correct
(27:21):
though in that there are other scholars who totally say
there's a guy named Philip Davis who says Solomon himself
is totally invented, just made up character, maybe a literary
device to explain the story of Israel at the time,
(27:42):
or various other political circumstances. And then there are still
other scholars who are completely on the other side, like
William Deaver who believed that the biblical stories of Solomon
and his kingdom are more or less trustworthy. So even
now in twenty eighteen, we have three camps of people.
We have a group of people saying yes, totally absolutely,
(28:03):
mostly true, for a group of people saying, well, something
was true but it got exaggerated. And then we have
a group of people who are saying bunk, flim flam, malarkey,
and Hui, all of them, all of them. Yeah, So
the search for physical evidence that would be the real
smoking gun, right. The search for physical evidence continues, and
(28:26):
in the Middle East today, various people argue that they
have found physical evidence of things described in religious works.
And then there's another camp of people who argue that
these ruins are being purposely conflated with other ancient stories
for one reason or another. And one of the big
accusations is that these reasons are politically motivated to give
(28:51):
one group or another in the modern day a more
quote unquote legitimate claim to land. I see, there's another
piece of physical evidence, several pieces that we haven't really
talked about, but we should at least mention. Let's get
to them. After a word from our sponsor, we're back.
(29:16):
The thing about this physical evidence is that we are
still producing new physical evidence, new cultural iterations ultimately derived
from the Key of Solomon in the modern day. You know,
we mentioned there are other books that came later, like
the Testament of Solomon or the Lesser Key of Solomon.
(29:38):
That's the one with the seventy two demons and their
properties named. You know, that's where we can see the
trace of these pagan gods. Those works are still inspiring
works in the modern day.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, like I think we've talked about maybe we have
it on this show. But the movie Hereditary, which I
think you and I'm both enjoyed, enjoy is maybe a
weird way of putting it. It's a quite unpleasant film.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I enjoyed it.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Yeah, well those are your people, man, all right, No, no, no,
but yes, it's a very expertly done kind of psychological
horror show with family drama kind of at its heart.
But this is slight spoilers, slight.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Spoilers, barely abandoned all hope of not being spoiled. Ye
who listen here?
Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yes, but we're not going to do major as well.
It was just the inclusion which if you had your
p's and q's of demonology down, you would have noticed
very early on in the movie that there's a certain
symbol that shows up that is the symbol of one
of the gods or not demons. Rather in this this
lesser key of Solomon called Peymon, and Peymon was one
(30:51):
of the kind of dukes of Hell I believe, or
like one of Satan's you know, what, a prince of Hell.
How would you call him.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, he's a often described as a great king, but
he's obedient to Lucifer, so he's not in charge charge,
but he commands many other, many other.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Spirits, that's right. And he's depicted as having sort of
effeminine features, writing upon a camel, and he commands the
ability to control people and summon other demons, and also
is a big fan of the arts.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
As it turns out, and you'll see folks like the
occultist Carol Poke Runyan, who will come up later, Carol
Poke Runyan who suggests that this name ultimately derives from
a pre existing pagan god. And he says this because
(31:55):
some of those manuscripts depict Payment as a woman writing
a camel. And this goes back to the overall claim
that the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Key of
Solomon themselves are actually rooted in pre existing Mesopotamian mythology.
(32:17):
So again we see the cultural evolution here and it
continues today. That's the thing. History is not so distant
as people would have you believe. The story Hereditary again,
we'll end the spoilers after this. The story of Hereditary
does some excellent research into the foundations of what is
(32:42):
perceived as a demon today and once was not necessarily
associated with anything inherently bad, you know, and it's it's fester.
We have to wonder where the evolution is going to go.
But we said, there's another thing we've run into. What
the Key of Solomon? One of the big questions we're
(33:02):
talking about in this episode. Does it actually work? Meaning
is there some sort of operation or experiment that you,
fellow listeners, Paul and Nola and I could do that
would create a reproducible, predictable outcome. Multiple people maintain that
(33:25):
this is the case that experiments or operations outlined in
the book actually do work, just perhaps not the way
you might assume if you're thinking about magic as the
sort of thing we see in horror movies. According to
this guy we mentioned earlier, pok Runyan, who's an author,
a cultural anthropologist, and we have to say, to be fair,
(33:45):
a complete magic practitioner himself, he is actually doing this stuff.
According to him, the Key of Solomon is more an
example of Western shamanism, and these operations, experiments, and rituals
explained in the text are actually early forms of psychological
(34:07):
psychological experiments, therapy, even.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Really, Yeah, that would never have occurred to me. So
it's almost more along the lines of kind of like
the mystics we talked about on our other show, Ridiculous History,
and the hermits of the Ridge of the Cave of Kelpius,
or the cults. It's like a doomsday cult that was
headed by a philosopher slash astronomer who practice some of
(34:31):
these kind of end times philosophies, but did seem to
be kind of rallying around ritual and this idea of
these sort of mystic arts.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, and that's an excellent point because in that episode
we mentioned that in the modern age, or what appears
to be modern for us, we often have this harsh
and bright divide between what we see as the realm
of the esoteric and the mystic, and the realm of
the ration and the scientific. But the truth of the
(35:03):
matter is, for most of human civilization, those two things
were not considered mutually exclusive. I believe we use the
example of Isaac Newton, who did some profoundly groundbreaking scientific
work but also believed in alchemy, you know. And this
(35:23):
the presence of mysticism in early philosophy, or the presence
of these ritualistic beliefs does not mean that everything was
automatically wrong. And if we look at it from an
anthropological perspective, maybe they were making some psychological breakthrough similar
to that episode we had about the inherent mysticism in
(35:45):
the bicameral mind theory. Right, you're hearing a voice.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
That's right, yeah, and that voice is driving your human train.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
And the voice is you the voices Surprise, surprise, that's
going to be such a shyamal on twist. You know,
I almost wish.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
But Ben, who are you?
Speaker 5 (36:03):
Right?
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Who are we? What are we? That's what we're here
to discuss.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
That's that's what we're getting towards.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
So from an anthropological perspective, then does this sort of
thing work or do operations in here work? According to Runyon,
it's a exploration of the underlying cognitive structure of the
human mind, which sort of functions in terms of symbol
(36:32):
before it functions in terms of language. I think we
may have mentioned on an earlier episode, but the Kekule
problem with Cormack McCarthy who wrote he wrote this article
Nautilus about the relationship between language and the original function
of the human mind and the inspiration.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
For this is.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
The common or not infrequent occurrence where some scientists or
some great thinker is attempting to figure out a problem
and they rack their brains and they picture a gigantic
chalkboard and they just go crazy and throw everything everywhere,
and then they fall asleep and they get the answer
(37:19):
in a dream. But it's never in words, it's in
a symbol.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
So the reason this is important is because with that
emphasis on symbols, with that emphasis on these visual aspects,
these emotional states, over what we call language, Runyan traces
a narrative starting from ancient mystery religions all the way
to more modern theorists like Carl Jung who believed in
(37:47):
the concept of the great unconsciousness and archetypes. And this
means to run you in that the magic is working
because there's the inducement of trances and the use of
ritual that takes the mind to strange and new or
perhaps old and strange places. So several of the acts described,
or the operations rather are in his mind actually means
(38:10):
of self discovery and self hypnosis. But these symbols are important,
and that's before we I think we may be doing
a disservice if we don't talk a little more about
those symbols, because no, you pointed out in early on
in Hereditary demonologist in the crowd notice that symbol, right.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
That's right, Yeah, a friend of ours actually who is
a local practitioner of witchcraft or Weakanism. And also, I believe,
as in the Atlanta chapter of the Church of Satan,
Hale recognize it right off the bat and knew exactly
where the movie was going. So good on him. But Ben,
(38:54):
I maybe being a dummy, but I would like a
little more clarification as to what separates the lesser key
from the you know, just the regular key, and why
is it lesser?
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Right? Yeah, So part of it comes from the textual history.
We mentioned that there were many, many different books that
were either translations of something pre existing, or they were
snatched from other grimwaws, or they were just slapped with
(39:27):
the title of something that would be familiar to the audience,
to the crowd. So the Lesser Key of Solomon Is
is based on another book, or a couple of different books,
one by a guy named Johann Weier Johann Wire called
(39:49):
De Prestigious Damonim and it seems like the Lesser Key
of Solomon was pulled from this other book, not so
much from the Key of Solomon itself. So the big
question is, and it does have a lot of the
(40:10):
same ideas, the big question is if it just got
that title because somebody decided to name it that it's
there's no known author for the book, and it appears
like it was pulled from several different sources, including Buyer.
It was compiled in the mid seventeenth century, mostly from
(40:32):
things that were a couple of centuries older, so it
kind of came after it, which is probably why it
was called the Lesser Key. I see, not inferior quality,
just Rea.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
So and again, like from from the top of the show,
we said this idea of the Key of Solomon was
an umbrella term for several different translations, And yeah, I
can see that that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
So we're encountering we're encountering a couple of things that
we're encountering possibilities of literary hoaxes, which I don't know
if we should be too comfortable with, because the idea
that it would be a literary hoax implies that the
authors may have been cynical and may not have believed
what they were writing, and I don't think that was
(41:16):
always the case at all. We're also encountering the possibility
of deep psychological experimentation in ancient days.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, yeah, now that's fascinating to me, the idea that
some of this sort of ritualism and mysticism was kind
of early forms of psychological healing or control or I'm
not like almost like you'd see at a revival of
some kind, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, interesting, yes, and a good point, because what we
do know is that whether or not this text was
based on some earlier texts before the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries,
or whether it was just made up in the fourteenth
or fifteenth centuries based on non written or orally transmitted traditions,
(42:05):
the fact of the matter is that people who practice
this stuff now may feel like they are practicing something
that is psychologically impactful to them. Right, So is magic
like beauty something in the eye and mind of the ballholder?
We're of course not saying. I mean, I don't know
(42:26):
about you know, I've never done some ritual to try
to appear invisible and.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
Never even warn Camo or anything. No, no, even Scott never, never.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
The best way to be visible in a place is
not to go there.
Speaker 4 (42:42):
That's also true. You've definitely done that before.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I have done that. I'm notorious at the office for that.
But we're not knocking this at all because at heart,
whether you feel this is fascinating folklore, whether you feel
this is a belief system that calls to you, or
whether you feel this is just something fascinating to learn about,
(43:05):
the truth is there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing
wrong with practicing a belief system of your own choice,
so long as and this is the most important part,
so long as you are not hurting anyone. And back
in the day, we had received a number of letters
and notes from your fellow listeners who had said that
(43:28):
they had had strange, inexplicable experiences with everything from Ouija
board to incantations or something that they had found online
or in a library, or even just staring into a mirror,
which is an intensely meditative act. And by the way,
(43:49):
it's one of the acts that or it's one of
the rituals that Poke Runyan himself practices. You can find
him online. He's got a very particular way of speaking.
I think we've played some a little bit off air.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Oh yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's very much a storyteller. But if you have had
those sorts of inexplicable experiences, or if you have attempted
to operate one of the experiments mentioned in the Key
of Solomon or its many translations, please do right to us.
We would like to hear your story. We would like
And that's whether or not you think something strange happened,
(44:28):
or whether you thought it was all a waste of time.
We don't, by the way, we don't think that automatically
means you are unworthy, unbiased.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Or don't fear God, unpious, unpious. I first, I think
you said unbiased, unbiased. That's different.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
That is different. That's a great point either way. You
can you can find us on Instagram, you can find
us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook, especially
our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Where you
can you can see Nol and Matten myself popping up
in digital person.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
You can invoke us. Yeah, we even have little avatars
that we use. That's not true, but we can get them.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We can get them, we can make them. We have
the rituals and we have the ability to successfully enact.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Those operations mainly you mean admin privileges.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, mainly, that's what they call them now exactly.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
So the times have changed.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
The times have changed, but wizardry in some form or
another continues. We would like to hear your experiences with
it as always. Thank you so much for checking out
the episode, and thank you to Paul who we did
not run that nickname past no so we might get
it at the end of this. But Noel, what do
people do if if they don't want to find us
(45:41):
on Twitter, If you don't want to find us on Instagram,
if you say I would, I know? You have a
phone number one A three three std wytk. That's usually
Matt's part two.
Speaker 4 (45:52):
I see what you're doing here. You're trying to invoke
a bit of ritual.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
You're spot on, Noel.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yes, and that's the end of this classic episode. If
you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three stdwytk.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, tonight's classic episode bit Esoteric. We've talked about Solomon
in the past, right, the commander of jen and Spirits,
a guy known to practitioners of magic throughout the world.
But what is the key of Solomon?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
This one?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Isn't it about the rings? There's some real D and
D stuff going on in this story where you can
you can get an accessory that's probably a random drop
on like a level forty I don't know, creature, and
then you can command demons.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, it's it's nuts because Solomon is such a tremendous
historical and religious figure, and you know, out of this
panoply of characters in religions from this part of the world,
he stands apart as sort of a prospero, a high magician.
(01:00):
And I don't know. I gotta be honest with you, guys,
I still don't fully understand the key of Solomon.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Wow, why don't we make an episode about it?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And then in the past.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
That's some witchy stuff right there.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Let's jump into the groom WAW.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Noel as
a spirit conduit for Matt, who usually starts the show
but is away on adventures.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
And will return shortly. They call me Ben. We are
joined with our super producer, Paul the Necroman decond Most importantly,
you are here, You are you, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
You know, Ben, I thought the necronomicon was real until
you told me otherwise last time we had that conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Right, this is going to be an episode that those
of you who enjoyed our grimwa episode will find particularly fascinating.
I love that you mentioned the Necronomicon at the top
of the show, Nol, because for everyone listening, if you're
a fan of horror movies, you're intimately familiar with that
old trope of the Cursed Book and Lovecraft's Necronomicon. Howard,
(02:35):
Philip Lovecraft, he made this book. It's a perfect example
of what we're talking about, because for years and years
and years after he admittedly wrote it in a work
of fiction, as a work of fiction mentioned in other
fictional stories, people liked it enough that they just started
saying let's all agree that it's real.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, I mean I think my thing is it just
as becomes such a stand in for like cursed books.
Like you said, I almost thought it was more of
a word than a specific volume, like calling something a
necronomicon or a grimoire, you know, right, that was what
my brand did.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Like how nowadays instead of saying search the Internet, we
just say Google, regardless of which search, or xerox for copy.
That's an interesting comparison not. The Necronomicon may be the
most widely known fictional book of magic in the Western world,
but there are other ones too, you know. On a
lighter note, there's the spell Book in Disney's hocus Pocus,
(03:35):
which I recently rewatched and stand by it is an
enjoyable movie, if not a film. Today, these books are
almost universally thought of as little more than clever bits
of fiction, maybe an extra detail added to flesh out
a fictional world. But as we explored in the previous
(03:56):
video and audio episodes on Grimwaws, these books were real things.
They were physical, tangible books in the real world. They
were often mistakenly or purposefully misattributed to other authors. There
are multiple counterfeit versions, and numerous books took the same
name or something very much like it to increase their
(04:18):
occult street cred. But the books themselves were real, and
in many many cases, various people throughout the centuries would
read these books and attempt the experiments or rituals outlined
in those tones. Today's episode is about one of the
most famous grimoiws in existence, the book or slash books
(04:41):
known as the Key of Solomon. We're going to delve
into the fact and fiction surrounding this book with one
other huge question that we'll get to near the end.
What is this supposed to do and does it actually work?
So here are the facts.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
The Key of Solomon is kind of is this sort
of an umbrella term that is assigned to several different books.
And there's a legend that says the book was originally
created by the biblical King Solomon of mining mining fame.
He had a mine, King Solomon's mind.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Right, he had a seal, he made a temple. Yeah,
according to you'll hear it being phrased as something mentioned
in just Judeo Christian beliefs, but mentioned of King Solomon
also occurs in Holy Books of the Bahai and also
in the Qur'an. According to these legends, these stories, the
(05:35):
man known as King Solomon was the son of the
famous Goliath slaying David, who went on Solomon did went
on to become the ruler of israel An approximately nine
sixty seven BCE, and he was ruling this enormous kingdom
that extended from the Euphrates in the north to Egypt
in the south. And in the religious text he is
(05:58):
presented as one of the wisest men in the history
of civilization. He's kind of and this is not a
one to one comparison religious scholars in the audience, he's
kind of a Tony Stark. He's a genius inventor. He's
a ladies man.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
He's super rich.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
He's super rich exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
And potentially practices the dark arts.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And God appeared to him in a dream during the
early days of his reign, and he said, Solomon, you
can have whatever you desire because you act, you know
how to worship me, and you're honoring me in the
ways and the methods that your father David instructed you to.
(06:43):
And when we say this guy's clever, we're drawing on
numerous anecdotes, and the most famous one which I think
everybody has heard, whether or not you are religious, and
whether or not you're that familiar with Western religion, you've
probably heard the story of the baby right where he
is a judge and these two women come to his
(07:05):
court and they have a baby, and both both of
these people say that is my child.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
I misspoke as well. Solomon is not known for practicing
any dark arts, but there are things that he codified
and committed to text that were used as sort of
a lexicon by others that practiced said dark arts. Is
that accurate, you know?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
And I think the term dark art too, is something
that undergoes an evolution. That's a very good point, because
according to a legend, he was practicing some stuff, but
later it would be called dark arts right by church authorities.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Okay, then all right, so I was too too far
spot on.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But back to these back to these women. These are
the days before DNA testing, obviously, so they say this
is my kid. This lady's Lyne, and the other lady
says no, this person's line, this is truly my child.
And Solomon's solution was to really double down on this.
(08:03):
He said, Okay, you've both convinced me in your own way,
tell you what, Just cut the baby in half, be
done with it. And then one woman was prepared to
accept the decision, but the other one begged King Solomon, please,
it is my child, but give it to this other woman.
I don't want the baby to die.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Classic trope and sci Fi. When you have clones, you know,
and to see which one, or like the evil double
or whatever, to see which one's the real one, sort of,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Was sci Fi draws a lot from religion, that's true,
earlier religion, so of course we know how. We know
how Solomon acted next once he saw one lady giving
up the baby to spare its life.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Yeah, I guess what I'm getting at with like that.
If there's an evil twin, you can usually tell in
sci Fi who's the real one, because the real one
will take a bullet for his lady love or something,
while the evil one will, you know, behave more less
chivalrously right.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Right, And in the case of Solomon, he says, okay, well,
you have proven to me that you are the true mothers,
so that's obviously your child. Again. According to legend, people
from surrounding nations came to hear Solomon's wisdom. He composed
three thousand proverbs, one thousand and five songs. He wrote
(09:22):
the Song of Songs, the Book of Proverbs, and other
religious works. In the Jewish tradition, he is thought to
be the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem and
the last ruler of the Kingdom of Israel before it
was divided into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom
of Judah. And in the tradition concerning the Key of Solomon,
(09:43):
or also in the Lesser Key of Solomon, which well,
we'll have to mention because it's fascinating, the king used
his powers, including a special seal and his magic ring,
to summon and bind spirits, and it was these spirits
that were his workforce for the First Temple. So going
back to dark arts, you know, centuries later, summoning spirits
(10:07):
and spirits of the dead to.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Literally do your dirty work, right, or at least, you know,
the work that you don't feel like doing because masonry breaking. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So this these are the claims about this individual, and
we can get into those a little bit later. We
want to set that up and bracket it. But now
we've got to talk about what's actually in this book,
because the key of Solomon is, as you said, nol
an umbrella term for multiple different translations for multiple I
(10:39):
don't know, differing interpretations of the text. The book itself
is composed of an introduction and then like two smaller books,
and the introduction is a story about how the book
allegedly came to be.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
So in the introduction to the book, readers get a
story about the creation of said text. Solomon writes the
book for his son Rio Boham and tells his son
to hide the book in a sepulchrp upon Solomon's dead.
What's a sepulcher man? That's like a kind of like
a It's like a mausoleum. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
It's like a too small room usually built a stone
or cut into rock, where you put a dead.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Body, okay, or a book, or a dead body with
a book. It's about us. It could be clutching it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So what happens next?
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Well next, and by next I mean years and years later.
Babylonian philosophers find the text while they're repairing Solomon's tomb.
Solomon himself his tomb. No One can understand the text,
so they pray to God for understanding, and so lo
and behold, an angel appears and grants one of the
(11:54):
philosophers the ability to read the text, after he swears
that he will keep it safe and hidden from the
unworthy and the wicked. This is obviously, of course, this
is legend, has it?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yes, legend has it? As this story goes, yeah, this
legend says that the philosopher accepts the bargain and learns
these ancient secrets, and then to keep his word to
these divine forces, this philosopher places a spell on the book,
(12:29):
or what they call conjuration, making it so that even
if you manage to read it, if you are unworthy, unpious,
you're unwise, you don't obey God, or you don't fear God,
you can do every single ritual in here to the
letter and it just won't work, which is very clever.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Isn't interesting too? How the term philosopher used to mean
much more of a almost wizardly type, like I think
even one of the Harry Potter books. In the British
printing it's called the Philosopher's Stone, and then the US
it's called the sorcerer's stone, so they're kind of like
a one to one.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Thing and the philosopher's stone being alchemical exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah, but now we think of philosophers, we just think
of high minded academics that you know.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, and either way could be either way could apply
because it just means lover of wisdom, that's true. But
you're absolutely right. A lot of times people who were
practicing what we would think of as very esoteric rituals
and belief systems were considered philosophers, right, So this is
(13:33):
the intro And one thing that's incredibly clever about this
introduction is that it already bakes in a defense mechanism
for people who say the book is fake or it
doesn't work. It puts the blame for a lack of
success in these rituals, not on the book itself, not
(13:53):
on the nature of magic, but on the audience, the reader,
the practitioner. If you didn't make to turn invisible, then
it's not because that's impossible. It's because you were unworthy,
or you're unwise, or you didn't fear God, which will
(14:14):
come into play later. But let's get into the actual
substance of the book. The text itself the Key of Solomon.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Should we take a little quickie break first.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Though, fantastic idea, let's do it. We have returned. As
we said earlier, the book is divided into two sections.
In book one, you'll learn an astonishing amount of conjurations, curses,
(14:49):
invocations meant to summon and bind spirits. Now we mentioned
spirits before, let's outline let's clarify this a little bit.
Spirits in this sense could be the ghost of dead
human beings or other worldly creatures like angels or demons.
(15:12):
And in many cases a lot of anthropologists will tell
you these and they're correct. Many of these things presented
as demons are built off of earlier what we would
call pagan myths or pagan gods, like the god of
(15:32):
lightning Baal who became Bael. And this is very apparent
in some books that which we'll get to in a moment,
and some books that came after the Key of Solomon
that actually named these demons. The first book, in addition
to these descriptions, contained spells which are called operations or experiments.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Very mathematical sounding and they kill right right.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
So the idea is one series of operations or experiments
can turn the practitioner invisible their spells to make people
like you or fall in love with you, to help
you find stolen or lost items. So there's some practical
stuff in there, and that's just the first book.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
In book two he gets into detailing a lot of
purification rituals that a practitioner of philosophy must undertake, things
like the kinds of clothing they're supposed to wear. The
spell caster or operator, you know, that was the earliest
(16:39):
version of that job, an operator, and it was also
called an exorcist in different translations. So, like you say, Ben,
the translation can make a lot of difference in the
way we look at that particular activity or you know, role,
and it's different. You know, how they should go about
constructing the various tools that they need to do the rituals,
(17:01):
and what kinds of animals should be sacrificed, along with
exactly how to go about sacrificing them.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
With one example here from chapter fourteen of that book.
It's on the chapter fourteen is of the pen ink
and Colors. Just to show you how weird this gets,
or how it's may seem weird to us now, how
specific it gets all things employed for writing, et cetera
(17:30):
in this art should be prepared in the following manner.
I'm going to do a voice. Thou shalt take a
male ghostlin from which thou shalt pluck the third feather
of the right twing, and didn't pluck it it. Thou
shalt say abermei habli lai sami ta athabasiever I don't
I banish from this pen all deceit and arraw, so
(17:51):
that it may be a virtue and efficacy to write
all that tide desaye a been I.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Deny is Hebrew? How deny is like a prayer? Believe?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yeah, these are names in vacations.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
I just remember it from choir from when I was
a kid. It's a very beautiful. Yes, I'm sorry. It's
the Hebrew name for God's That's what that is. But ben,
I'm sorry. The third feather on the right wing? How
do off one determine the third feather? There are a
lot of feathers on a wing.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, right? Do you count from the outside in or
the inside out.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
It's sort of like your grandma's recipes. You know, it's
like a pinch or it doesn't even give you, like
actual measurements. It's a basic ratio, you know, so maybe
the third it doesn't matter, just so if you count,
you know, you use the honor system for plucking feathers.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So the important part here too, And it has further
instructions for what to do after plucking that quill, and
how to make it into a pen, what to do
with the ink. And one thing that's incredibly important about
this is that each of these physical acts are accompanied
by this incantation that one must recity. To simply pluck
(19:02):
a feather from anywhere on the gosling is going to
completely sink the entire experiment. So everything you do has
to be attached to these pronunciations.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
I cannot get over the idea of these as experiments.
It totally goes hand in hand with the kind of
scientific nature of like alchemy and all of that, and
how it all is just kind of like trial and
error type stuff. I really like that.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
And there's and just like modern day experiments, there's intense ritualization.
There's an effort to account for all the variables and
reduce possible intervening variables, right, which is strange because you know,
now safe to say most modern day scientists would not
(19:54):
take kindly to being compared to sorcerers or wizards.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Now I think that Saki and the in the mouth, it's.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Science, sock you. Yeah, yeah, But there's there's an interesting
parallel here. And while this is all fascinating, it's safe
to say that almost anyone could sit down and make
something like this up from whole cloth. We could. We
could say, okay, if you want to if you want
(20:24):
to summon rainfall, then here's what you do. And if
we're making it up, it doesn't matter really to us.
If it works. We say, you find a you find
a stray cat, you make it wear this special headdress
that you made out of grass while you're saying these words,
and then.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Boom, you're making this up.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah right, And the question is this any different or
is this just an older example? How real quote unquote
real is the actual key of Solomon. Here's where it
gets crazy, and this is strange. There are actually several
here's where it gets crazy moments.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Here you're going to say it all every time. No,
I think just once, wonder cup. I'm sort of an umbrella.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
True, it's like a key of Solomon. Kind of thing.
So first, in virtually every translation, this book appears to
be what we call pseudo epigrapha, so meaning falsely attributed
to a legendary author.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Oh a book like that? Wait what so okay? Go on.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
So, for instance, this happened a lot in early Western
religious developments. Three hundred, four hundred, seven hundred years after
something occurred, or after someone was alive, an enterprising scholar
would write a book and say, you know, this is
(21:49):
the book that this guy wrote. I know you've seen
a lot of imitations, but except no imitations, this is
the real book of you know, this disciple or this person,
right from the Torah or something. And experts estimate that
the earliest versions of something like the Key of Solomon
(22:11):
weren't actually written until somewhere between the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
We have a quote from a researcher named Arthur Edward
Waite that says essentially that there's no ground for attributing
the Key of Solomon in its present form a higher
antiquity than the fourteenth or fifteenth century. A lot of
people latch onto that present form thing and say, well,
(22:36):
maybe this version we understand isn't true, but maybe those
Babylonian philosophers really did find some tattered scrolls by a skeleton,
and those scrolls just decayed over time, and people just
kept recopying the.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Story you're talking about, like in the clutches of Solomon's
Dead Hands.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Right, they're saying in the separate supulch.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Sorry, man, I'm having a I'm having a bit of
a day, Ben. Yeah. Yeah, I can't pronounce words.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I can't pronounce words. You know, I'll never forget one
time in elementary school, I gotta I gotta b because
I did a report on Carl Jung swinging a miss.
I just didn't have many people to speak with.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
You know what's been in our business, And by that
I mean the business that is pod.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
You're gonna, you're gonna You're gonna have a few pronunciation
misses every now and then. It's just gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, And you have to wonder what would happen if
we were practitioners of magic?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Oh what if mispronouncing a word totally yielded a an
undesirable or cataclysmic results?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
And furthermore, just while we're on this subject, the act
of making a podcast is in many ways similar there's
a ritual, right that we undergo as individuals, that we
undergo as a group when we're recording that you undergo
as you listen, right, And there's something that we're all
(24:15):
doing together in a way. We're making this strange working together.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It is strange. And also the ritualism of it all
is why I get so thrown every time Matt's not here.
We both get so thrown and we look at each
other because we don't know how to start.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It's true, it's true. And when we say it's true,
we mean it is not just true for us right now,
but it is true for all time. You can go
back to the very beginning of our show and you
can hear those moments that we have just described. Those
(24:51):
moments have something called historocity. Historocity is something that comes
up in the Search for or the Key of Solomon
as well. Historosity is just the fun to say word
that describes the historical authenticity of a given person, place, event,
(25:14):
or thing.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
I love this word.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's a great one because when okay, so,
if you've ever seen those specials on the History Channel
or National Geographic or something wherein they have a documentarian saying,
all right, now we're journeying to this mountain in Turkey
to search for the real Noah's arc. Of course, their
(25:38):
questing for historosity. They want to prove the legends. One
example of this that we return to time and time
again would be the search for the ancient city of Troy,
which was for a long time after was lost, it
was believed to be a myth until someone found it.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Yeah, it looks like we were talking about finding Genghis
Khans burials, side anything, Thelocity of Atlanta's whatever, and it's
all kind of myth and hubbub until you actually do
discover something like that. Is that historoicity there?
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yes, yes, yes, So multiple scholars even today as we
record this, they've examined the works describing King Solomon, and
they've attempted to square these texts with existing physical evidence
or secular contemporary writing, so non religious community based, and
(26:31):
the debate over this stuff continues today. There are some
scholars like this professor Israel Finkelstein, who argue that the
story surrounding the rule of King Solomon are not factually accurate,
and he and people who agree with him, do not
believe the Biblical descriptions of anything should be taken literally.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Wait, so like you they're saying, like Solomon was like
a character, kind of like a made up cartoon.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
They're not quite going that far. Often they're saying that
a lot of this stuff attributed to him doesn't count
because there are people who believe they've found the tomb
of the king of Israel. Right, And you're absolutely correct
(27:21):
though in that there are other scholars who totally say
there's a guy named Philip Davis who says Solomon himself
is totally invented, just made up character, maybe a literary
device to explain the story of Israel at the time,
(27:42):
or various other political circumstances. And then there are still
other scholars who are completely on the other side, like
William Deaver who believed that the biblical stories of Solomon
and his kingdom are more or less trustworthy. So even
now in twenty eighteen, we have three camps of people.
We have a group of people saying yes, totally absolutely,
(28:03):
mostly true, for a group of people saying, well, something
was true but it got exaggerated. And then we have
a group of people who are saying bunk, flim flam, malarkey,
and Hui, all of them, all of them. Yeah, So
the search for physical evidence that would be the real
smoking gun, right. The search for physical evidence continues, and
(28:26):
in the Middle East today, various people argue that they
have found physical evidence of things described in religious works.
And then there's another camp of people who argue that
these ruins are being purposely conflated with other ancient stories
for one reason or another. And one of the big
accusations is that these reasons are politically motivated to give
(28:51):
one group or another in the modern day a more
quote unquote legitimate claim to land. I see, there's another
piece of physical evidence, several pieces that we haven't really
talked about, but we should at least mention. Let's get
to them. After a word from our sponsor, we're back.
(29:16):
The thing about this physical evidence is that we are
still producing new physical evidence, new cultural iterations ultimately derived
from the Key of Solomon in the modern day. You know,
we mentioned there are other books that came later, like
the Testament of Solomon or the Lesser Key of Solomon.
(29:38):
That's the one with the seventy two demons and their
properties named. You know, that's where we can see the
trace of these pagan gods. Those works are still inspiring
works in the modern day.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, like I think we've talked about maybe we have
it on this show. But the movie Hereditary, which I
think you and I'm both enjoyed, enjoy is maybe a
weird way of putting it. It's a quite unpleasant film.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I enjoyed it.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Yeah, well those are your people, man, all right, No, no, no,
but yes, it's a very expertly done kind of psychological
horror show with family drama kind of at its heart.
But this is slight spoilers, slight.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Spoilers, barely abandoned all hope of not being spoiled. Ye
who listen here?
Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yes, but we're not going to do major as well.
It was just the inclusion which if you had your
p's and q's of demonology down, you would have noticed
very early on in the movie that there's a certain
symbol that shows up that is the symbol of one
of the gods or not demons. Rather in this this
lesser key of Solomon called Peymon, and Peymon was one
(30:51):
of the kind of dukes of Hell I believe, or
like one of Satan's you know, what, a prince of Hell.
How would you call him.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, he's a often described as a great king, but
he's obedient to Lucifer, so he's not in charge charge,
but he commands many other, many other.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Spirits, that's right. And he's depicted as having sort of
effeminine features, writing upon a camel, and he commands the
ability to control people and summon other demons, and also
is a big fan of the arts.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
As it turns out, and you'll see folks like the
occultist Carol Poke Runyan, who will come up later, Carol
Poke Runyan who suggests that this name ultimately derives from
a pre existing pagan god. And he says this because
(31:55):
some of those manuscripts depict Payment as a woman writing
a camel. And this goes back to the overall claim
that the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Key of
Solomon themselves are actually rooted in pre existing Mesopotamian mythology.
(32:17):
So again we see the cultural evolution here and it
continues today. That's the thing. History is not so distant
as people would have you believe. The story Hereditary again,
we'll end the spoilers after this. The story of Hereditary
does some excellent research into the foundations of what is
(32:42):
perceived as a demon today and once was not necessarily
associated with anything inherently bad, you know, and it's it's fester.
We have to wonder where the evolution is going to go.
But we said, there's another thing we've run into. What
the Key of Solomon? One of the big questions we're
(33:02):
talking about in this episode. Does it actually work? Meaning
is there some sort of operation or experiment that you,
fellow listeners, Paul and Nola and I could do that
would create a reproducible, predictable outcome. Multiple people maintain that
(33:25):
this is the case that experiments or operations outlined in
the book actually do work, just perhaps not the way
you might assume if you're thinking about magic as the
sort of thing we see in horror movies. According to
this guy we mentioned earlier, pok Runyan, who's an author,
a cultural anthropologist, and we have to say, to be fair,
(33:45):
a complete magic practitioner himself, he is actually doing this stuff.
According to him, the Key of Solomon is more an
example of Western shamanism, and these operations, experiments, and rituals
explained in the text are actually early forms of psychological
(34:07):
psychological experiments, therapy, even.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Really, Yeah, that would never have occurred to me. So
it's almost more along the lines of kind of like
the mystics we talked about on our other show, Ridiculous History,
and the hermits of the Ridge of the Cave of Kelpius,
or the cults. It's like a doomsday cult that was
headed by a philosopher slash astronomer who practice some of
(34:31):
these kind of end times philosophies, but did seem to
be kind of rallying around ritual and this idea of
these sort of mystic arts.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, and that's an excellent point because in that episode
we mentioned that in the modern age, or what appears
to be modern for us, we often have this harsh
and bright divide between what we see as the realm
of the esoteric and the mystic, and the realm of
the ration and the scientific. But the truth of the
(35:03):
matter is, for most of human civilization, those two things
were not considered mutually exclusive. I believe we use the
example of Isaac Newton, who did some profoundly groundbreaking scientific
work but also believed in alchemy, you know. And this
(35:23):
the presence of mysticism in early philosophy, or the presence
of these ritualistic beliefs does not mean that everything was
automatically wrong. And if we look at it from an
anthropological perspective, maybe they were making some psychological breakthrough similar
to that episode we had about the inherent mysticism in
(35:45):
the bicameral mind theory. Right, you're hearing a voice.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
That's right, yeah, and that voice is driving your human train.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
And the voice is you the voices Surprise, surprise, that's
going to be such a shyamal on twist. You know,
I almost wish.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
But Ben, who are you?
Speaker 5 (36:03):
Right?
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Who are we? What are we? That's what we're here
to discuss.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
That's that's what we're getting towards.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
So from an anthropological perspective, then does this sort of
thing work or do operations in here work? According to Runyon,
it's a exploration of the underlying cognitive structure of the
human mind, which sort of functions in terms of symbol
(36:32):
before it functions in terms of language. I think we
may have mentioned on an earlier episode, but the Kekule
problem with Cormack McCarthy who wrote he wrote this article
Nautilus about the relationship between language and the original function
of the human mind and the inspiration.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
For this is.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
The common or not infrequent occurrence where some scientists or
some great thinker is attempting to figure out a problem
and they rack their brains and they picture a gigantic
chalkboard and they just go crazy and throw everything everywhere,
and then they fall asleep and they get the answer
(37:19):
in a dream. But it's never in words, it's in
a symbol.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
So the reason this is important is because with that
emphasis on symbols, with that emphasis on these visual aspects,
these emotional states, over what we call language, Runyan traces
a narrative starting from ancient mystery religions all the way
to more modern theorists like Carl Jung who believed in
(37:47):
the concept of the great unconsciousness and archetypes. And this
means to run you in that the magic is working
because there's the inducement of trances and the use of
ritual that takes the mind to strange and new or
perhaps old and strange places. So several of the acts described,
or the operations rather are in his mind actually means
(38:10):
of self discovery and self hypnosis. But these symbols are important,
and that's before we I think we may be doing
a disservice if we don't talk a little more about
those symbols, because no, you pointed out in early on
in Hereditary demonologist in the crowd notice that symbol, right.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
That's right, Yeah, a friend of ours actually who is
a local practitioner of witchcraft or Weakanism. And also, I believe,
as in the Atlanta chapter of the Church of Satan,
Hale recognize it right off the bat and knew exactly
where the movie was going. So good on him. But Ben,
(38:54):
I maybe being a dummy, but I would like a
little more clarification as to what separates the lesser key
from the you know, just the regular key, and why
is it lesser?
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Right? Yeah, So part of it comes from the textual history.
We mentioned that there were many, many different books that
were either translations of something pre existing, or they were
snatched from other grimwaws, or they were just slapped with
(39:27):
the title of something that would be familiar to the audience,
to the crowd. So the Lesser Key of Solomon Is
is based on another book, or a couple of different books,
one by a guy named Johann Weier Johann Wire called
(39:49):
De Prestigious Damonim and it seems like the Lesser Key
of Solomon was pulled from this other book, not so
much from the Key of Solomon itself. So the big
question is, and it does have a lot of the
(40:10):
same ideas, the big question is if it just got
that title because somebody decided to name it that it's
there's no known author for the book, and it appears
like it was pulled from several different sources, including Buyer.
It was compiled in the mid seventeenth century, mostly from
(40:32):
things that were a couple of centuries older, so it
kind of came after it, which is probably why it
was called the Lesser Key. I see, not inferior quality,
just Rea.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
So and again, like from from the top of the show,
we said this idea of the Key of Solomon was
an umbrella term for several different translations, And yeah, I
can see that that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
So we're encountering we're encountering a couple of things that
we're encountering possibilities of literary hoaxes, which I don't know
if we should be too comfortable with, because the idea
that it would be a literary hoax implies that the
authors may have been cynical and may not have believed
what they were writing, and I don't think that was
(41:16):
always the case at all. We're also encountering the possibility
of deep psychological experimentation in ancient days.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, yeah, now that's fascinating to me, the idea that
some of this sort of ritualism and mysticism was kind
of early forms of psychological healing or control or I'm
not like almost like you'd see at a revival of
some kind, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, interesting, yes, and a good point, because what we
do know is that whether or not this text was
based on some earlier texts before the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries,
or whether it was just made up in the fourteenth
or fifteenth centuries based on non written or orally transmitted traditions,
(42:05):
the fact of the matter is that people who practice
this stuff now may feel like they are practicing something
that is psychologically impactful to them. Right, So is magic
like beauty something in the eye and mind of the ballholder?
We're of course not saying. I mean, I don't know
(42:26):
about you know, I've never done some ritual to try
to appear invisible and.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
Never even warn Camo or anything. No, no, even Scott never, never.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
The best way to be visible in a place is
not to go there.
Speaker 4 (42:42):
That's also true. You've definitely done that before.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I have done that. I'm notorious at the office for that.
But we're not knocking this at all because at heart,
whether you feel this is fascinating folklore, whether you feel
this is a belief system that calls to you, or
whether you feel this is just something fascinating to learn about,
(43:05):
the truth is there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing
wrong with practicing a belief system of your own choice,
so long as and this is the most important part,
so long as you are not hurting anyone. And back
in the day, we had received a number of letters
and notes from your fellow listeners who had said that
(43:28):
they had had strange, inexplicable experiences with everything from Ouija
board to incantations or something that they had found online
or in a library, or even just staring into a mirror,
which is an intensely meditative act. And by the way,
(43:49):
it's one of the acts that or it's one of
the rituals that Poke Runyan himself practices. You can find
him online. He's got a very particular way of speaking.
I think we've played some a little bit off air.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Oh yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's very much a storyteller. But if you have had
those sorts of inexplicable experiences, or if you have attempted
to operate one of the experiments mentioned in the Key
of Solomon or its many translations, please do right to us.
We would like to hear your story. We would like
And that's whether or not you think something strange happened,
(44:28):
or whether you thought it was all a waste of time.
We don't, by the way, we don't think that automatically
means you are unworthy, unbiased.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Or don't fear God, unpious, unpious. I first, I think
you said unbiased, unbiased. That's different.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
That is different. That's a great point either way. You
can you can find us on Instagram, you can find
us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook, especially
our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Where you
can you can see Nol and Matten myself popping up
in digital person.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
You can invoke us. Yeah, we even have little avatars
that we use. That's not true, but we can get them.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We can get them, we can make them. We have
the rituals and we have the ability to successfully enact.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Those operations mainly you mean admin privileges.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, mainly, that's what they call them now exactly.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
So the times have changed.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
The times have changed, but wizardry in some form or
another continues. We would like to hear your experiences with
it as always. Thank you so much for checking out
the episode, and thank you to Paul who we did
not run that nickname past no so we might get
it at the end of this. But Noel, what do
people do if if they don't want to find us
(45:41):
on Twitter, If you don't want to find us on Instagram,
if you say I would, I know? You have a
phone number one A three three std wytk. That's usually
Matt's part two.
Speaker 4 (45:52):
I see what you're doing here. You're trying to invoke
a bit of ritual.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
You're spot on, Noel.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yes, and that's the end of this classic episode. If
you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three stdwytk.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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