October 25, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss various demonic and godly hogs from global traditions, as well as one particular real-life hell pig that emerges from the fossil record. (Part 1 of 2) (originally published 10/24/2024)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday. We have a
vault episode for you. This is going to be The
Hogs of Hell Part one. It originally aired ten twenty four,
twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in. I remember, indeed
that in later years the Lord of my country, knowing
I was acquainted with Italy, asked me why, as he
(00:27):
had seen down there some lords went out to pasture
their pigs. And I laughed, realizing that on the contrary,
they were going in search of truffles. But when I
told him that these lords hoped to find the truffle
underground to eat it, he thought I said they were
seeking der Typhon, the devil, and he blessed himself devoutly,
(00:49):
looking at me in amazement. Then the misunderstanding was cleared up,
and we both laughed at it. Such is the magic
of human languages, that, by human accord, often the same
sounds mean different things. Had so of milk umberto echoes
the name of the Rose.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
All right. In today's episode, as the title indicates, and
as the quote suggest, we're turning our attention once more
to beings and monsters that may verge on the demonic,
and this time it is, of course, hogs of hell,
pigs of hell, uh bores of the underworld, and so forth.
We've of course discussed the Garrisne demoniac on the show
(01:44):
before this, being Christ's exorcism of the demonic legion into
a herd of swine, out of a man and into swine.
We did a whole episode about that in the past.
This time, though, it's more about hell pigs of one
sort or another. We're gonna we're gonna explore some different
territory and different interpretations.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That's right, monster pigs, bl z of bores, and pigs
of a more heavenly sword as well. But we start
a lot of these October episodes with examples from horror
movies of the types of creatures we're talking about, and
so I figured we should do the same today. I
know this has come up on the show several times.
I'm not quite sure why we keep pinging back on
(02:25):
this movie so often, but when it comes to horror
movies with monster pigs. I have to mention the nineteen
eighty four Russell Mulcaheek killer pig movie from before the
same director made Highlander in nineteen eighty six. This was
eighty four and the movie is called Razorback Now. I've
described the plot in the past as something like a
(02:48):
combination of Australian Texas Chainsaw massacre and Jaws, but with
a pig instead of a shark. I stand by that.
I think that is a pretty that gives you a
pretty good idea of what you're dealing with. It's been
a while since I've seen it. I don't super highly
recommend it. Like my memory is that is extremely gooey
(03:08):
and gross like at one of the major settings of
the movie is a gray market dog food factory in
the Australian outback, so you can imagine the kind of
chainsaw massacre connotations you'd get there. There's a lot of
body slop. But it is worth mentioning as a movie
because it's one of the relatively few horror films I
can think of where the monster is a pig. I
(03:31):
was looking it up and it seems there have been
several more movies on this theme in recent decades, but
I haven't seen any of those, so this is the
one I'm aware of. And I recall that the movie
does actually do a pretty commendable job of making the
bores mouth a mind rending terror. It's just this hot,
steaming maze of teeth and tusks, and for most of
(03:55):
the movie, in fact, almost never really you really don't
see the creature's whole bit. You just see its mouth almost,
like all there is is a mouth, which I think
is a strong choice. You get a similar kind of
thing in some shark movies, basically all you see or
the gaping Jaws.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, this is not what I've seen, but I know
you admire it, or in my aspects of it. And
I'm looking at some stills here right now, and yeah,
this monster pick looks amazing, Like this is this is
the thoroughly deserving of the title Jaws, but with a pig.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
I mean, it does take serious boldness to approach that
as a concept, because do you can keep the You
can keep the monster hidden much more easily in Jaws
because it's underwater, right, but a boor is just running around,
So yeah, it takes some clever photography to make the
scene convincing and heighten the tension without ever showing us
(04:51):
too much of the bore until the very end.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I guess the thing about a bore is you can
have the boar moving through like the tall grass or
the undergrowth to some extent, it's sort of like it's underwater.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, you can have that. Uh
though this boar I from what IVER call it's taller
than any grass in the setting. It's like a fan
sized bore. Okay, Now, as I said, I haven't really
seen any of these other recent pig monster movies. Maybe
there's some really good ones. I don't know, I can't say.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
But of course, beyond the realm of horror movies, there
are a lot of fascinating pig beings in mythology, religion,
and ancient literature, including good pigs, bad pigs, and everything
in between.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah. Yeah, And I have to admit I never really
looked into them all that much before, and I think
I probably kind of glossed over mentions of bores and
pigs in mythology in the past, just because I don't know.
I'm I didn't have really strong opinions about wild boars.
I don't have any experiences with them. You know, I've
seen various you know, pig and pig kin animals that
(05:56):
the zoos, and they're interesting, but you know, I just
wasn't inspired. So I of course, when we were going
to do this episode, I said, sure, let's do it.
Let's dive in, and I turned to one of my
favorite sources, initial sources for this sort of thing. I
looked to one of folklore's Carol Rose's books, in this case, Giants,
Monsters and Dragons and Encyclopedia Folklore, Legend and Myth great volume,
(06:18):
easily one of my most loved and falling apart books.
But when I started looking around for bores and pig
like creatures, I was surprised at how many there were.
There are a lot of them. Dozens of creatures are
referenced in this book. And I should stress that while
she's pretty exhaustive in these volumes, she is by no
(06:38):
means complete in her chronicling of global traditions. So if
she has dozens, there are more out there as well.
So there are a lot of monstrous, hellish and even
divine pig bore and bore like beings in global traditions.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
This just popped into my head. So it's not a
fully formed thought. Maybe is this not worthy yet, but
it just struck me that you know, a lot of
these animals that we see having a major role in
religion in mythology are animals that exist in both a
(07:15):
wild and domesticated form around the culture. So like you see,
you know, very common to have cattle related, cattle related imagery.
We were just talking about cattle related beings in ancient
Mesopotamian religion, and of course they would have had both
domesticated cattle and the wild orx around them. And we've
(07:36):
seen similar things with goats. You could have domestic goats
and wild goats around you. Maybe something about that kind
of dichotomy where you're seeing like the same animal body
both you know, roaming and running around and doing its
own thing in the wild, but also in a only
slightly altered form as an animal that you keep on
your farms, and that that seems to hit something in
(07:57):
the brain.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah, and definitely seems to influence the way we use
those animals in our language and our symbols and in
our mythology. You know, coming back to for instance, you
know donkeys and asses. We talked about this in the
Mesopotamian Demon episode, the idea of of a ferocious she
demon being associated with a donkey, and how it seems
(08:22):
perhaps laughable if you're thinking from a modern standpoint about
a domestic donkey, but we're talking here about a wild creature.
It was swift, and therefore it's a fitting steed for
a demon.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
S Oh, yeah, that's right. So what was it? The
demonus lamashe Tu is said to ride on a wild donkey,
but also occasionally was depicted maybe with donkey ears.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, yeah, And to your point, we also see this
with cattle versus you know, wilder forms of that creature.
And we'll see that again time and time again. When
it comes to pigs, bores, and pick like creatures. The
various species compose the suborder of Suena known as the
Sua forms. These can be found around the world, from
(09:08):
wild and ferocious bores to pig like cavalinas, and of
course the wild and domestic pigs of the genus sus.
I had when I told my son about this, he
thought this was rich. I was like, you're never gonna
forget the genus of wild and domestic pigs because they're sas.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Is it not sus? I would have said Sue's, but oh,
it's got to be saus.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
It's well sus maybe, but when I read it, I'm like, sus.
Their genus is sus perfect us.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Okay, suck.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So human relationships with these animals, of course, has entailed
many different things. Hunting, consumption, sort of just acknowledgment of
their wild status, observation of their behavior in the wild,
and then poresine imagery and associations. These are going to
vary somewhat from culture to culture and from time to time,
(10:04):
and at times too and kind of counterintuitive ways that
I think sometimes breaks down to, you know, the the
idea of looking to the wild seuiforms as well as
to the domestic suiform and then also having you know,
different cultural influences enter into an area.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah. Thinking about the cultural associations we have with pigs
got me thinking on several different frequencies. I was like,
for one thing, in our culture, isn't it funny how
we we really associate pigs with eating when eating is
something all animals do. Yeah, Like, why is that? And
(10:45):
my best guess is maybe it has something just to
do with the relatively omnivorous appetites of a pig that
you know they famously will kind of they're kind of
not picky about what kinds of things they eat. But
that's also true of many other animals that you think
of us that way.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I think, yeah, we end up comparing ourselves more to
the pig. And they're probably a number of ways to
sort of slice that up, right. I mean, you could
focus on the intelligence of the pig, and the domestic
pig is a pretty bright creature. You could maybe focus
on it's relative hairless. I mean, I say the pigs
(11:21):
are hairless. They do have hair, but a lot of
times they are you're seen or certainly depict it as
being kind of hairless, especially when you're dealing with like
cartoon pigs. Yeah, and we're very we're very strange in
the way that we are, especially with like roadside barbecue
restaurants are very quick to personify the pig and invot
cartoon pigs. Eat at a place where the flesh of
(11:42):
pigs is served under the name of pork.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, the Pulled Pork restaurant where it shows a pig
in a chef's hat, wearing just a shirt with like
a knife and a fork.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, it's gonna often be horrific. So yeah, there's a
to unpack and like American associations of the pig, but
if you go, you know, across the board and throughout time,
you'll find a lot more to look at. For instance,
the wild boar is a powerful image in medieval heraldry.
(12:15):
It's also pretty powerful and Hindu iconography, where it's at
times linked to the divine, as we'll explore. In the
Chinese zodiac the pig is associated with wealth and good fortune.
And I've heard other you know, sort of takes on,
like how the pig is considered in say Thai culture,
where I'm to understand that the term for pig, which
(12:35):
I believe is MoU, is a common nickname of endearment.
So something you might call a child with some endearment,
you know, some some kid that you love, or your
baby brother, and it wouldn't be a put down, it
wouldn't be an insult, that sort of thing. But meanwhile,
elsewhere in time and space, here on Earth, poresine imagery
of course has all these negative connotations tied to as
(12:57):
you said, gluttony or sloth, or even to the unclean
and the demonic.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
That's right. And as we often bring up in these
episodes about monster traditions, looking at beliefs about monsters, especially
monsters based on an animal, I think usually tells us
more about us and our relationship to that animal than
it does about the animal itself. That's right.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So you know, we're going to dive into some examples
from global traditions here, but I will say that as
I was going through them and reading about them, and
some of which they couldn't find enough to really mention here,
but overall I found that you could basically divide them
into sort of three categories with a certain amount of overlap.
So there are primordial bores, often with a real emphasis
(13:43):
on a connection to the earth. You know, they run
around in the earth, they dig in the earth, kind
of as referenced in our cold open here. You know,
they are concerned with things under the soil, and they
go under the soil to get them. So they have
this connection.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
But by primordial, are you saying that they have something
to do with like an initial state of the universe
or with the creation of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yes, like something about like the state of at least
the surface world, and we'll get into some examples of this.
Then there are also divine bores. Often these are ethereocephalic,
so you know it's the head of a bore on
a humanoid body, but not always. There are also divine
(14:27):
bares that are just straight up like a mighty boar
that is also a god. And then another huge area,
and this is one that I think ties directly into
the horror movie example that we kicked off the episode with,
and that is the bore that hunts humans, which is
basically not a huge twist because I mean history and
(14:48):
just basic understanding of wild boars will tell you that
they are they can be dangerous prey, and we can
point to examples throughout history of even famous people, members
of nobility dying in the conquest of a prize bore,
say a bore that they have injured in an attempt
to kill, and then they themselves die of injuries sustained
(15:09):
from the boar.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So the famous and within context somewhat ignoble death of
Robert Barathian in fiction is based somewhat on real incidents.
It's not implausible in royal.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
History, no, not at all. Yeah, I mean, and to
be clear, like wild boars can be dangerous today, and
there are fatal incidents that occur. They can be very
defensive and even aggressive if the circumstances are right. But
these mythic treatments often take it one step beyond. It's
not just that this is a dangerous game to hunt,
(15:44):
but this game actively not only hunts you back, but
might hunt you of its own accord. Like you're not
even trying to hunt the monster boar. It just goes
out and hunts people at night. That sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Okay, So to recaps, you've got boors from the creation,
or bores from the beginning. You've got divine bores or
heavenly bores, and then you've got the board that eats people.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right, One more quick fictional example before we dive into
these examples from global traditions, I should note that in
Dante's Inferno, there are twelve named demons that compose the
Malagrancia in the eighth circle of Hell, and one of
them is clearly named with hogs in mind. This is Curiato,
(16:30):
whose name means swine or a little pig, and we
meet him in Canto twenty one verse one twenty two.
So that's just a quick example of a literary pig
in hell.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I don't remember what the context was, but we've talked
about the Mala bronca before. There were the I think
that name translates to evil claws. And this is the
circle of demons who are shown like surrounding a boiling
lake of pitch, and there are the like I don't know,
like corrupt people and grafters or something that they keep
(17:04):
having to force back down under the pitch. Pretty pretty
nasty job.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
They're demons with jobs, though they have a rope. All right,
enough of the like straight up demonic here, Let's get
into some other examples. So I'd like to start in
Hindu traditions, since these traditions feature some of the most
(17:31):
divine and I think powerful invocations of por sign imagery.
So I turned once more to Nanditha Krishna's excellent book
Sacred Animals of India, in which the author chronicles a
number of different animals and talks about like their you know,
their their role in the natural world in India, conservation status,
(17:53):
and then also the different ways that they're invoked. And
so the author here describes a course, the scie and
power of wild boars creatures that are that are of
course closely tied to the earth. As I mentioned earlier,
they dig for roots in the soil, and in doing
so they turn over the soil, perhaps as the author
suggests informing humans about the value of tilled soil.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Oh, so they could be one of the sort of
like agricultural knowledge givers in a way.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Exactly at the same time, they're also like this natural
force that you know might be beneficial but might also
be destructive. They can they can certainly hurt and kill humans,
but they can also be destructive to human agricultural pursuits
because they may raid crops, they may dig around in
your gardens and so forth. So in essence, we have
a fierce, wild, but not universally hostile creature that is
(18:48):
closely tied to the earth. The bore both tills and
fertilizes the soil, and tradition holds that they're also tied
to rain and monsoon seasons as well, digging right before
the beginning of the monsoon. So one of the major
uses of bor iconography and Hindu traditions is the tenth
incarnation of the god Vishnu and that is of Vadaha.
(19:11):
And there are different stories, of course concerning this incarnation,
as you'll find with just about any particular detail and
the Hindu traditions. But one of the big tales does
involve a demon of sorts. Now more precisely, it involves
an osserra. This is the kind of power seeking demi
god that is often in conflict with the benevolent devas.
(19:33):
So one of these is one of these cases where
the word demon in English seems a precise enough descriptor,
but with certain caveats, you know, like it's the system
of supernatural beings can be compared to that that you
find in Christian mythology. But there's still a lot of
important differences, right.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
We just recently talked about this in our series on
the so called demons of age in Mesopotamia. To what
extent that term does sort of apply and in other
ways doesn't.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
In this case, we have a demon or by the
name of Hironyaksha that steals the earth itself, so rolls
up the earth like a mat, we are told, and
then takes it into the ocean depths. Wow, and yeah,
and so Vishnu is not crazy about this. So Vishnu
takes the form of a great bore, this is Vardaja,
(20:27):
and dives into the ocean to retrieve it, slaying here
in Yaksha. In the fierce battle that ensues. Then Vardaja
restores the earth, and while he is at it, teaches
humans agriculture, because again this is connection between bores and
tilling of the earth, fertilizing the soil. Uh And I
want to note that while many illustrations and depictions of
(20:49):
this battle show Vardaja as a bore and here in
Yaksha as a human or a humanoid demon, there's at
least one illustration that depicts them both as human boar hybrids.
I included this one here for you, Joe. This is
a seventeen forty illustration by Indian painter Manaku of guler Oh.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I like this painting though, so they're shown in conflict here.
Do you know which of the two beings in the
painting is supposed to be the incarnation of Vishnu? Is
it the one with the grayer skin or the green skin?
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It would be the gray skin, I believe, because here
you see a regal, multi armed, noble looking poor sign
individual por sign being and then on the other hand,
you see this wild green monster that is also poor
sign that also has the features of a bore. And
I love this imagery because you get in one image
(21:42):
these two drastically different ways of invoking the imagery of
the boar, the noble and the savage, the good and
the evil, and so forth.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yeah, that's right. So the vicious demonic boar here is
mouth open, its jaws kind of like the to compare
it to the the movie Razorback, it's just all mouthed
a reaching out with its arms to attack, whereas the
Vishnu version of the boar, Yeah, it's standing with its
chin up, you know, raised in kind of lofty defiance.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah. Yeah. And you'll find other depictions of Vardaja in
which pretty much looks like this with gray skin, the
head of a boar, multiple arms. But then you'll also
find depictions where he is just a great bore. Uh.
And I included an image of some sculpture art that
depicts this. Now Naraka, the lord of the underworld Krishna
(22:37):
rights is also held to be the offspring of Vadaha
and the Earth via his spouse Boudevi, which I believe
the sculpture I included here. If you look at it,
there is a female figure on there, kind of like
hanging from one of his tusks. I believe that is
bou Devi.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Whoa oh okay, so I initially interpreted this humanoid figure
to be climbing the boar, as if to climb up
its side and ride it. Be though she's hanging from
its tusk. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Krishna also points to a couple of other Hindu entities
that feature bor iconography. There's the goddess of Vadahai, an
aspect of the goddess Durga. The author also mentions that
the boar is also invoked in Jainism and in Buddhism,
where the goddess ma Richi or Marisi drives a chariot
drawn by seven bores. I believe this figure also factors
(23:31):
into Hinduism and has sometimes depicted as writing a single boar,
though not always all right, let's let's turn to the
world of monstrous boars, because one really important example in
Greco Roman traditions is, of course the Caledonian boar or
the Itolian boar. This is a monstrous boar sent by
the goddess Artemis to punish the King of Kaledon for
(23:55):
lack of proper sacrifices. You didn't throw up the right sacrifices.
You ticked off a god. Have to deal with a
monster pig. It brings great. Oh, it just destroys everything.
It destroys people, It destroys the town, it destroys the
land itself. And then you end up having to have
the heroes Meleager and Atalanta hunt it with their friends,
(24:18):
their allies, slay it, and then get into a big
fight with their allies over who gets what part of
the spoils from the monster pig. Because we see this
time and time again. You'll have some sort of supernatural pig.
But then once you have killed that pig, its parts
are used. You know, it is it is, it is food,
it is you know it's hide has value and so forth.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah, the drama is not done when the monster boor
is slain. In fact, that factors into the next one
you're gonna mention.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Right, Yeah, the Aramanthean boar. This is another monster bore
of Greek myth. This is the one that ravaged Arcadia,
and it ends up being one of the twelve labors
of Hercules having to dispose of this monster boar king.
Eurystheus tells her, you can't slay it, You've got to
(25:07):
bring it back alive. And in most of these tellings
you have this wonderful scene where of course Hercules pulls
this off, brings back this ferocious boar alive, and just
the sight of Hercules carrying this thing is so terrifying
that the tyrant king jumps inside of a jar and hides.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So I thought this was interesting because of the way
the story ties into a weird art meme from the
ancient world that I've noticed. I'll get to that in
a second. But first of all, I was wondering if
there was any like really good ancient texts that describes
this hunt in detail. Maybe there is, but if so,
I couldn't. I couldn't find it. I didn't really come
(25:46):
across anything all that great. It's pretty sparse, you know,
It's just like, oh, and he hunted the boar down.
The best example I came across was from the text
of Pseudo Apollodorus the Library. This is the Phraser translation,
which says, well, first of all, there's a bunch of
drama with Hercules going out to hunt the boar and
then gets into a bunch of stuff with some cinaurs
(26:07):
and his companion gets killed. But then when Hercules, it
says quote, when Hercules had chased the boar with shouts
from a certain thicket, he drove the exhausted animal into
deep snow, trapped it, and brought it to myceny. Now
here's the funny art note. If you look up ancient
Greek pottery depicting this scene where Heracles in the Greek
(26:30):
returns with the boar, multiple pieces I found have the
same style of depicting the scene, so little things about
it are different. It's not like a tracing, you know.
You might have different characters on the sides of the scene,
or different sort of posture or ways of rendering the
Hercules's face and body, but the thing being shown is
(26:51):
the same in every case. So you will have down
below there's an opening of a large jar. I guess
this is the type of Greek jar known as a pithos,
with the king hiding down in the jar, and you
can see like his head and hands popping up out
of it like oh, And then up above you will
have Hercules standing above the opening of the jar, holding
(27:12):
the boar up as if to dump it on top
of the king, or like to plug the king in
the jar with the boar as a cork. And I've
got at least four different m foi from ancient Greece
that depict the scene almost exactly like this Robi. You
can take a look and see what you noticed about
(27:32):
all of these. The first one I've got in the
outline here is from the British Museum. It's a Greek
amphora from the sixth century BCE, and M four a
is also a type of jar that was a smaller
jar jar that would usually be used to store wine
or perfume or oil or something like that. So this
a for a. Hercules is wearing some kind of armor,
(27:53):
but also his thighs and butt cheeks are showing a
little bit, and he's.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He's remarkably clo though. I have to say yes for Heracles.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yes, so Heracles. He's got the boar up on his shoulder,
and the king is down in the jar like no,
don't dump the boar on me, and the boar is
just going straight down on top of him. It looks
like he's gonna to plug him up in there. And
in most versions of this scene he's dropping the boar
head first on the king, but in one I found
it's the last one I've got for you to look
(28:23):
at here, Rob, in this case, he's dropping the boar
tail first onto the king. So I don't know what
the difference is there. I am in no way an
expert on ancient Greek art. I couldn't find anything that's
saying why this scene appears so often and looks so similar.
And I could be totally wrong about this, but I
wonder if this scene is popular to depict on MPI
(28:44):
on jars because the king is hiding in a jar
in the scene.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, I mean Heracles or Hercules, hero of the people
we discussed in the pad. I can't remember we're talking
about it this on a Core episode or a Weird
House cinem episode. I think it was weird House because
we're talking about the Mario Bava Hercules in the Underworld film.
But Hercules stands up to power like this, but he
does not proclaim himself a king, so he's kind of
(29:12):
and he's kind of a workingman's.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Hero in that regard.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I guess, you know, take this job and shove it.
Take this pig and shove it, right.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
That is exactly the vibe of these scenes here. Yeah,
take this pig and shove it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I like how the fourth image that you shared Hercules
is the most naked here, varying levels of nudity for
Hercules in each of them. But then the second one
you shared, Hercules is making this wild Gargonian face that
is really great, almost as if he is saying, wahs up.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, it's asko. Yeah, any experts on ancient Greco Roman
art out there you want to fill us in on
why this scene appears so often and looks so similar? Yeah, right,
in contact that stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
All right, let's see which what other monster picks should
I mention here? There's some that I couldn't find a
lot on. Like, for instance, there's one in Icelandic tradition
that is called by God, not like by God it's
a pick, but like b E I G A D.
And this apparently roughly translates to bringer of fear, which
I like. But then there's one from Irish legend that's
(30:29):
really interesting. This one is the bore of being Goldbain,
and in this there's a whole story for this one.
So this is a monster that was once the mortal
human son of Angus, but upon his son's death in
a quarrel, the father you know, refused to accept this
(30:50):
and refused to accept the custom of death gold from
his killer in to sort of settle the dispute. Instead,
he raises his son from the dead with dark magic
into the form of a great bore that Carol Rose
says has neither tail nor ears. I'm not sure what
the significance of that detail is, but if nothing else,
(31:14):
it tends to show you that this is an unnatural boar.
It is somehow not quite bore and certainly not man. Now.
In doing this and raising up his son like this,
he's also cursing his son's killer, Dimid and for telling
that the two of them, the reincarnated son here and
his killer Domed, are going to be the death of
(31:36):
each other. That he will live as long as this
this unnatural boar that he's raised up, and indeed that's
exactly how it goes down. They fight, they gore and
stab each other. And I think we may have touched
on this story before in our episode about Finn McCool,
because this is where Finn McCool jumps in and tries
(31:56):
to bring healing waters to the dying warrior, and he
tries three times, but it slips through his fingers the
first two times, and by the third time the hero
has already died. All right, This next one comes from
Welsh traditions, and I'm going to butcher this. I know,
my apologies, but it is something like hults do gut
(32:19):
and it is it is the bobtailed black soal. It
is definitely in the category of the boar that hunts.
It was said to be active. I've seen it. I
believe Carol Rose discusses it as being connected with Salin
and then with the introduction of Christianity war that, of
(32:42):
course that has warped more in the direction of Halloween,
and then this creature becomes associated with the devil. But
in essence we're dealing with a with just another boar
who hunts that is monstrous and terrible, certainly kind of
like an evil monster. You're right again, I think the
name here is Hawk du Gita or something to that effect. Again,
(33:07):
I'm not really good with the Welsh tongue here.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, I don't know how to pronounce it hats off
to you, Rob, But I was looking at the entry
on this one in the Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology,
and it says that this is the spectral pig, later
often associated with the devil in Christianity. But the idea
is that it's a spectral pig that would rise up
(33:30):
out of the embers of a dying bonfire on the
night of this like sort of autumn festival night, and
it would rise up out of the embers of the
dying bonfire, and it would catch the last person, I guess,
to the last person in some case to like leave
the festivities or to arrive.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Oh fascinating. Well, let's see we have some other ones here.
There's a Comapoa. This is a Hawaiian primordial monster bore
from Hawaiian mythology, the pig child who raised up the
ocean mud with his snout to form the islands and
some tellings. So again another primordial vision of the bore.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And I like the resonance is there with the Hindu
idea of the incarnation of Vishnu that like has to
swim down into the ocean to retrieve the mat of
the earth and bring it back in this case, raising
up the ocean mud from beneath.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, Like, is there an actual connection there, a reverberation
of belief or is it just come from familiarity with
the animal? You know, and these these sort of metaphors
and ideas emerging from human observation of these animals that
they live in close contact with.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, to be clear, I was not suggesting a causal connection. No, no, no, no,
those two myths.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, yeah, but if if there, if there isn't a
causal connection, it's it's clearly like observing the animal, and
you know the ideas that emerge when we see the
animal and it's on its natural turf. Let's see. Oh,
the legends tell of a monstrous family of bors, like
you could probably call these ogre boors. I think that
(35:07):
fought King Arthur and his knights. May come back to
some of this, but the tellings have a lot of gorings,
Like it's just a whole series of gorings. They're chasing
these boors around, killing off certain boars. Yeah, we'll come
back to these, because there are a few like examples
of the King of Boars.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Did your source of say, which of King Arthur's knights
got got gord because I was just thinking because it's funny.
I know, one of the knights in Arthurian legend is
Sir Bars, and it would be somewhat hilarious if Sir
Bors got gored by a boar.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I do I don't know. I don't know if any
like name knights were gored, but it's possible. Like some
of the particular ones I'm scanning down, I do have
notes on this. Let's say twitrich Tritch. This is a
This is one of the wicked kings who was transformed
into a monstrous boar. So, uh, this is one of
(35:59):
the ones that they do battle with. Then, yeah, there
are various other ones that have names and factor into
this whole series of battles between humans and bores. Oh
now here's another one that Carol ro shares that is
really interesting and has a very cool story to it.
And this is concerning a particular monster pick by the
(36:21):
name of Totoima or I've seen it also spelled dodo Ema.
It's a monster pig of the Oro Kaiva people of
Papua New Guinea. So essentially, this monster pig is a
father of mortal humans who hunts them from their birth
and devours them if he finds them. So the basic
(36:43):
story concerning this monster pig is that I guess at
night it takes the form of the monster pig, but
during the day it takes the form or can take
the form of a mortal man. And in this form,
toto Ema couples with human women, producing human offspring, which
then at night, in the form of the beast, he
(37:04):
seeks out and he consumes if he finds them.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But then one woman ends up birthing twins, and of
course he does what he always does in bore form.
He chases after them to consume them. But when he
finds them, he's only able to consume the boy twin
and the female escapes. Well, the twins mother she's not
gonna take this, she stands up to it. So she
goes to a shaman, and the shaman casts a spell
(37:29):
that causes the boy to grow rapidly into adulthood inside
of Totoima's stomach and then bursting out of him, killing
the monster pig in the process, and then the shaman
marries the daughter. The people feast on the body of Totolima,
and in doing so they consume his power. His supernatural
power the absorb it, and then this story is echoed
(37:52):
in all of the boar feasts to follow in this culture.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Oh. Interesting, So the boy explodes out of the belly
of the boar by growing rapidly. But does that mean
the boy survives?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, I guess he either. I'm not sure of the
details of the spell. Maybe he reforms and then grows,
or maybe the monster consumed him whole, as we see,
of course, in a lot of stories of monsters consuming people,
they are swallowed whole, and then there's this chance for
them to escape somehow, you know, clearly a popular idea,
even in modern fiction and science fiction.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Yeah, I guess I'm more familiar with stories along these lines,
where like, oh, you know the Little Red Riding Hood,
the hunter comes along and cuts open the wolf's stomach
and everybody, and everybody gets out. But I love this
version with the magic spell that causes the yeah, the
the eating child to grow and explode from the inside, and.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Then they eat the monster. Again. We see allusion to
this in the Greek traditions as well. I'm not saying
every monster boar ends up being consumed, but it does
seem to be kind of a frequent idea, like it
is a rare kind of this rare case where the
monster is both for and also on the menu for
human beings.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's interesting. Where you know that
the pig occupies this middle space between somewhere between just
herbivorous prey animal and carnivore, which is, you know, carnivore
is not usually thought of as great eating. Not to
say people wouldn't eat, you know, eat a wolf or whatever,
but but yeah, exactly, but that like the pig is
(39:25):
sort of it's in both camps.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah, okay, two more, just real quick ones here, speaking
of pigs that are eaten there, there is also the
eternally regenerating roasting pig of Valhalla. This is sasrm there
or so soccrom there, whose name just means blackened.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I believe.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I think we've touched on him before, but that's his
entire role. I don't think he has much of a backstory.
He's just a never ending feast pig that reunites.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
So this is not so much pig as pig, but
divine pig as pork.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right yeah, yeah, And then there is at least one
supernatural pig or boar worth talking about here from Chinese traditions,
and that is ping fing or bingfing. This is a
black boar with either I think some tellings the head
of a human, but I think most of the sellings
that I was reading about it's a boar head at
(40:19):
either end. So kind of like the what the push
me pull me from Doctor Doolittle, Doctor Doolittle, of course, yes,
there's like a creature like this to push me, pull
me in that where it has a head on either side.
It's this is the push me pull me of bores
and Chinese mythology.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
This is the variation that appears in the classic text
of the Shanghai Jing, the classic of mountains and seas
that we've touched on the show before, and as with
other two headed creatures, said to be quite obstinate, according
to Richard Strasburg in the book A Chinese bestI Area.
So I guess in this, you know, it's like you
have a two headed animal. Which one's in charge, which
one's the boss. Well, they're both the boss. You have
(40:59):
to talk to both ends.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Of the pain, especially stubborn. Yeah. Stubbornness comes from the head.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah. So again this is just a brief overview of
some of the varieties and some of the basic tropes
you seem to encounter with mythic pigs, mythic bores, and
so forth. I'm sure there are some other interesting ones
that I didn't run across enough details regarding, so if
you have a favorite, write in share them. We would
(41:26):
love to hear about your hell pig.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
All right, Well, it looks like we're out of time
for today, but we are not done with the topic
of monster pigs. So if you can't get enough you
want to learn about more monster pigs, and in fact
monster pigs not only in myth and legend, but in reality,
come back and join us on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
All right. Just a reminder to everyone out there that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays episodes
that are more likely to be monstrous and horror themed
during the month of October, and then we do a
short form episode on Wednesday, and then on Fridays we
set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
weird film on Weird House Cinema. Oh and just a
(42:07):
reminder if you're on Instagram out there, you can follow
us at st b ym podcast and if you would
like to get a stuff to Blow your Mind Halloween
shirt sticker or what have you, check out our tea
public store that should be linked on the Instagram that
should also be linked on our page at stuff to
Blow Yourmind dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday. We have a
vault episode for you. This is going to be The
Hogs of Hell Part one. It originally aired ten twenty four,
twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in. I remember, indeed
that in later years the Lord of my country, knowing
I was acquainted with Italy, asked me why, as he
(00:27):
had seen down there some lords went out to pasture
their pigs. And I laughed, realizing that on the contrary,
they were going in search of truffles. But when I
told him that these lords hoped to find the truffle
underground to eat it, he thought I said they were
seeking der Typhon, the devil, and he blessed himself devoutly,
(00:49):
looking at me in amazement. Then the misunderstanding was cleared up,
and we both laughed at it. Such is the magic
of human languages, that, by human accord, often the same
sounds mean different things. Had so of milk umberto echoes
the name of the Rose.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
All right. In today's episode, as the title indicates, and
as the quote suggest, we're turning our attention once more
to beings and monsters that may verge on the demonic,
and this time it is, of course, hogs of hell,
pigs of hell, uh bores of the underworld, and so forth.
We've of course discussed the Garrisne demoniac on the show
(01:44):
before this, being Christ's exorcism of the demonic legion into
a herd of swine, out of a man and into swine.
We did a whole episode about that in the past.
This time, though, it's more about hell pigs of one
sort or another. We're gonna we're gonna explore some different
territory and different interpretations.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That's right, monster pigs, bl z of bores, and pigs
of a more heavenly sword as well. But we start
a lot of these October episodes with examples from horror
movies of the types of creatures we're talking about, and
so I figured we should do the same today. I
know this has come up on the show several times.
I'm not quite sure why we keep pinging back on
(02:25):
this movie so often, but when it comes to horror
movies with monster pigs. I have to mention the nineteen
eighty four Russell Mulcaheek killer pig movie from before the
same director made Highlander in nineteen eighty six. This was
eighty four and the movie is called Razorback Now. I've
described the plot in the past as something like a
(02:48):
combination of Australian Texas Chainsaw massacre and Jaws, but with
a pig instead of a shark. I stand by that.
I think that is a pretty that gives you a
pretty good idea of what you're dealing with. It's been
a while since I've seen it. I don't super highly
recommend it. Like my memory is that is extremely gooey
(03:08):
and gross like at one of the major settings of
the movie is a gray market dog food factory in
the Australian outback, so you can imagine the kind of
chainsaw massacre connotations you'd get there. There's a lot of
body slop. But it is worth mentioning as a movie
because it's one of the relatively few horror films I
can think of where the monster is a pig. I
(03:31):
was looking it up and it seems there have been
several more movies on this theme in recent decades, but
I haven't seen any of those, so this is the
one I'm aware of. And I recall that the movie
does actually do a pretty commendable job of making the
bores mouth a mind rending terror. It's just this hot,
steaming maze of teeth and tusks, and for most of
(03:55):
the movie, in fact, almost never really you really don't
see the creature's whole bit. You just see its mouth almost,
like all there is is a mouth, which I think
is a strong choice. You get a similar kind of
thing in some shark movies, basically all you see or
the gaping Jaws.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, this is not what I've seen, but I know
you admire it, or in my aspects of it. And
I'm looking at some stills here right now, and yeah,
this monster pick looks amazing, Like this is this is
the thoroughly deserving of the title Jaws, but with a pig.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
I mean, it does take serious boldness to approach that
as a concept, because do you can keep the You
can keep the monster hidden much more easily in Jaws
because it's underwater, right, but a boor is just running around,
So yeah, it takes some clever photography to make the
scene convincing and heighten the tension without ever showing us
(04:51):
too much of the bore until the very end.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I guess the thing about a bore is you can
have the boar moving through like the tall grass or
the undergrowth to some extent, it's sort of like it's underwater.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, you can have that. Uh
though this boar I from what IVER call it's taller
than any grass in the setting. It's like a fan
sized bore. Okay, Now, as I said, I haven't really
seen any of these other recent pig monster movies. Maybe
there's some really good ones. I don't know, I can't say.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
But of course, beyond the realm of horror movies, there
are a lot of fascinating pig beings in mythology, religion,
and ancient literature, including good pigs, bad pigs, and everything
in between.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah. Yeah, And I have to admit I never really
looked into them all that much before, and I think
I probably kind of glossed over mentions of bores and
pigs in mythology in the past, just because I don't know.
I'm I didn't have really strong opinions about wild boars.
I don't have any experiences with them. You know, I've
seen various you know, pig and pig kin animals that
(05:56):
the zoos, and they're interesting, but you know, I just
wasn't inspired. So I of course, when we were going
to do this episode, I said, sure, let's do it.
Let's dive in, and I turned to one of my
favorite sources, initial sources for this sort of thing. I
looked to one of folklore's Carol Rose's books, in this case, Giants,
Monsters and Dragons and Encyclopedia Folklore, Legend and Myth great volume,
(06:18):
easily one of my most loved and falling apart books.
But when I started looking around for bores and pig
like creatures, I was surprised at how many there were.
There are a lot of them. Dozens of creatures are
referenced in this book. And I should stress that while
she's pretty exhaustive in these volumes, she is by no
(06:38):
means complete in her chronicling of global traditions. So if
she has dozens, there are more out there as well.
So there are a lot of monstrous, hellish and even
divine pig bore and bore like beings in global traditions.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
This just popped into my head. So it's not a
fully formed thought. Maybe is this not worthy yet, but
it just struck me that you know, a lot of
these animals that we see having a major role in
religion in mythology are animals that exist in both a
(07:15):
wild and domesticated form around the culture. So like you see,
you know, very common to have cattle related, cattle related imagery.
We were just talking about cattle related beings in ancient
Mesopotamian religion, and of course they would have had both
domesticated cattle and the wild orx around them. And we've
(07:36):
seen similar things with goats. You could have domestic goats
and wild goats around you. Maybe something about that kind
of dichotomy where you're seeing like the same animal body
both you know, roaming and running around and doing its
own thing in the wild, but also in a only
slightly altered form as an animal that you keep on
your farms, and that that seems to hit something in
(07:57):
the brain.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah, and definitely seems to influence the way we use
those animals in our language and our symbols and in
our mythology. You know, coming back to for instance, you
know donkeys and asses. We talked about this in the
Mesopotamian Demon episode, the idea of of a ferocious she
demon being associated with a donkey, and how it seems
(08:22):
perhaps laughable if you're thinking from a modern standpoint about
a domestic donkey, but we're talking here about a wild creature.
It was swift, and therefore it's a fitting steed for
a demon.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
S Oh, yeah, that's right. So what was it? The
demonus lamashe Tu is said to ride on a wild donkey,
but also occasionally was depicted maybe with donkey ears.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, yeah, And to your point, we also see this
with cattle versus you know, wilder forms of that creature.
And we'll see that again time and time again. When
it comes to pigs, bores, and pick like creatures. The
various species compose the suborder of Suena known as the
Sua forms. These can be found around the world, from
(09:08):
wild and ferocious bores to pig like cavalinas, and of
course the wild and domestic pigs of the genus sus.
I had when I told my son about this, he
thought this was rich. I was like, you're never gonna
forget the genus of wild and domestic pigs because they're sas.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Is it not sus? I would have said Sue's, but oh,
it's got to be saus.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
It's well sus maybe, but when I read it, I'm like, sus.
Their genus is sus perfect us.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Okay, suck.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So human relationships with these animals, of course, has entailed
many different things. Hunting, consumption, sort of just acknowledgment of
their wild status, observation of their behavior in the wild,
and then poresine imagery and associations. These are going to
vary somewhat from culture to culture and from time to time,
(10:04):
and at times too and kind of counterintuitive ways that
I think sometimes breaks down to, you know, the the
idea of looking to the wild seuiforms as well as
to the domestic suiform and then also having you know,
different cultural influences enter into an area.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah. Thinking about the cultural associations we have with pigs
got me thinking on several different frequencies. I was like,
for one thing, in our culture, isn't it funny how
we we really associate pigs with eating when eating is
something all animals do. Yeah, Like, why is that? And
(10:45):
my best guess is maybe it has something just to
do with the relatively omnivorous appetites of a pig that
you know they famously will kind of they're kind of
not picky about what kinds of things they eat. But
that's also true of many other animals that you think
of us that way.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I think, yeah, we end up comparing ourselves more to
the pig. And they're probably a number of ways to
sort of slice that up, right. I mean, you could
focus on the intelligence of the pig, and the domestic
pig is a pretty bright creature. You could maybe focus
on it's relative hairless. I mean, I say the pigs
(11:21):
are hairless. They do have hair, but a lot of
times they are you're seen or certainly depict it as
being kind of hairless, especially when you're dealing with like
cartoon pigs. Yeah, and we're very we're very strange in
the way that we are, especially with like roadside barbecue
restaurants are very quick to personify the pig and invot
cartoon pigs. Eat at a place where the flesh of
(11:42):
pigs is served under the name of pork.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, the Pulled Pork restaurant where it shows a pig
in a chef's hat, wearing just a shirt with like
a knife and a fork.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, it's gonna often be horrific. So yeah, there's a
to unpack and like American associations of the pig, but
if you go, you know, across the board and throughout time,
you'll find a lot more to look at. For instance,
the wild boar is a powerful image in medieval heraldry.
(12:15):
It's also pretty powerful and Hindu iconography, where it's at
times linked to the divine, as we'll explore. In the
Chinese zodiac the pig is associated with wealth and good fortune.
And I've heard other you know, sort of takes on,
like how the pig is considered in say Thai culture,
where I'm to understand that the term for pig, which
(12:35):
I believe is MoU, is a common nickname of endearment.
So something you might call a child with some endearment,
you know, some some kid that you love, or your
baby brother, and it wouldn't be a put down, it
wouldn't be an insult, that sort of thing. But meanwhile,
elsewhere in time and space, here on Earth, poresine imagery
of course has all these negative connotations tied to as
(12:57):
you said, gluttony or sloth, or even to the unclean
and the demonic.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
That's right. And as we often bring up in these
episodes about monster traditions, looking at beliefs about monsters, especially
monsters based on an animal, I think usually tells us
more about us and our relationship to that animal than
it does about the animal itself. That's right.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So you know, we're going to dive into some examples
from global traditions here, but I will say that as
I was going through them and reading about them, and
some of which they couldn't find enough to really mention here,
but overall I found that you could basically divide them
into sort of three categories with a certain amount of overlap.
So there are primordial bores, often with a real emphasis
(13:43):
on a connection to the earth. You know, they run
around in the earth, they dig in the earth, kind
of as referenced in our cold open here. You know,
they are concerned with things under the soil, and they
go under the soil to get them. So they have
this connection.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
But by primordial, are you saying that they have something
to do with like an initial state of the universe
or with the creation of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yes, like something about like the state of at least
the surface world, and we'll get into some examples of this.
Then there are also divine bores. Often these are ethereocephalic,
so you know it's the head of a bore on
a humanoid body, but not always. There are also divine
(14:27):
bares that are just straight up like a mighty boar
that is also a god. And then another huge area,
and this is one that I think ties directly into
the horror movie example that we kicked off the episode with,
and that is the bore that hunts humans, which is
basically not a huge twist because I mean history and
(14:48):
just basic understanding of wild boars will tell you that
they are they can be dangerous prey, and we can
point to examples throughout history of even famous people, members
of nobility dying in the conquest of a prize bore,
say a bore that they have injured in an attempt
to kill, and then they themselves die of injuries sustained
(15:09):
from the boar.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So the famous and within context somewhat ignoble death of
Robert Barathian in fiction is based somewhat on real incidents.
It's not implausible in royal.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
History, no, not at all. Yeah, I mean, and to
be clear, like wild boars can be dangerous today, and
there are fatal incidents that occur. They can be very
defensive and even aggressive if the circumstances are right. But
these mythic treatments often take it one step beyond. It's
not just that this is a dangerous game to hunt,
(15:44):
but this game actively not only hunts you back, but
might hunt you of its own accord. Like you're not
even trying to hunt the monster boar. It just goes
out and hunts people at night. That sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Okay, So to recaps, you've got boors from the creation,
or bores from the beginning. You've got divine bores or
heavenly bores, and then you've got the board that eats people.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right, One more quick fictional example before we dive into
these examples from global traditions, I should note that in
Dante's Inferno, there are twelve named demons that compose the
Malagrancia in the eighth circle of Hell, and one of
them is clearly named with hogs in mind. This is Curiato,
(16:30):
whose name means swine or a little pig, and we
meet him in Canto twenty one verse one twenty two.
So that's just a quick example of a literary pig
in hell.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I don't remember what the context was, but we've talked
about the Mala bronca before. There were the I think
that name translates to evil claws. And this is the
circle of demons who are shown like surrounding a boiling
lake of pitch, and there are the like I don't know,
like corrupt people and grafters or something that they keep
(17:04):
having to force back down under the pitch. Pretty pretty
nasty job.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
They're demons with jobs, though they have a rope. All right,
enough of the like straight up demonic here, Let's get
into some other examples. So I'd like to start in
Hindu traditions, since these traditions feature some of the most
(17:31):
divine and I think powerful invocations of por sign imagery.
So I turned once more to Nanditha Krishna's excellent book
Sacred Animals of India, in which the author chronicles a
number of different animals and talks about like their you know,
their their role in the natural world in India, conservation status,
(17:53):
and then also the different ways that they're invoked. And
so the author here describes a course, the scie and
power of wild boars creatures that are that are of
course closely tied to the earth. As I mentioned earlier,
they dig for roots in the soil, and in doing
so they turn over the soil, perhaps as the author
suggests informing humans about the value of tilled soil.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Oh, so they could be one of the sort of
like agricultural knowledge givers in a way.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Exactly at the same time, they're also like this natural
force that you know might be beneficial but might also
be destructive. They can they can certainly hurt and kill humans,
but they can also be destructive to human agricultural pursuits
because they may raid crops, they may dig around in
your gardens and so forth. So in essence, we have
a fierce, wild, but not universally hostile creature that is
(18:48):
closely tied to the earth. The bore both tills and
fertilizes the soil, and tradition holds that they're also tied
to rain and monsoon seasons as well, digging right before
the beginning of the monsoon. So one of the major
uses of bor iconography and Hindu traditions is the tenth
incarnation of the god Vishnu and that is of Vadaha.
(19:11):
And there are different stories, of course concerning this incarnation,
as you'll find with just about any particular detail and
the Hindu traditions. But one of the big tales does
involve a demon of sorts. Now more precisely, it involves
an osserra. This is the kind of power seeking demi
god that is often in conflict with the benevolent devas.
(19:33):
So one of these is one of these cases where
the word demon in English seems a precise enough descriptor,
but with certain caveats, you know, like it's the system
of supernatural beings can be compared to that that you
find in Christian mythology. But there's still a lot of
important differences, right.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
We just recently talked about this in our series on
the so called demons of age in Mesopotamia. To what
extent that term does sort of apply and in other
ways doesn't.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
In this case, we have a demon or by the
name of Hironyaksha that steals the earth itself, so rolls
up the earth like a mat, we are told, and
then takes it into the ocean depths. Wow, and yeah,
and so Vishnu is not crazy about this. So Vishnu
takes the form of a great bore, this is Vardaja,
(20:27):
and dives into the ocean to retrieve it, slaying here
in Yaksha. In the fierce battle that ensues. Then Vardaja
restores the earth, and while he is at it, teaches
humans agriculture, because again this is connection between bores and
tilling of the earth, fertilizing the soil. Uh And I
want to note that while many illustrations and depictions of
(20:49):
this battle show Vardaja as a bore and here in
Yaksha as a human or a humanoid demon, there's at
least one illustration that depicts them both as human boar hybrids.
I included this one here for you, Joe. This is
a seventeen forty illustration by Indian painter Manaku of guler Oh.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I like this painting though, so they're shown in conflict here.
Do you know which of the two beings in the
painting is supposed to be the incarnation of Vishnu? Is
it the one with the grayer skin or the green skin?
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It would be the gray skin, I believe, because here
you see a regal, multi armed, noble looking poor sign
individual por sign being and then on the other hand,
you see this wild green monster that is also poor
sign that also has the features of a bore. And
I love this imagery because you get in one image
(21:42):
these two drastically different ways of invoking the imagery of
the boar, the noble and the savage, the good and
the evil, and so forth.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yeah, that's right. So the vicious demonic boar here is
mouth open, its jaws kind of like the to compare
it to the the movie Razorback, it's just all mouthed
a reaching out with its arms to attack, whereas the
Vishnu version of the boar, Yeah, it's standing with its
chin up, you know, raised in kind of lofty defiance.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah. Yeah. And you'll find other depictions of Vardaja in
which pretty much looks like this with gray skin, the
head of a boar, multiple arms. But then you'll also
find depictions where he is just a great bore. Uh.
And I included an image of some sculpture art that
depicts this. Now Naraka, the lord of the underworld Krishna
(22:37):
rights is also held to be the offspring of Vadaha
and the Earth via his spouse Boudevi, which I believe
the sculpture I included here. If you look at it,
there is a female figure on there, kind of like
hanging from one of his tusks. I believe that is
bou Devi.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Whoa oh okay, so I initially interpreted this humanoid figure
to be climbing the boar, as if to climb up
its side and ride it. Be though she's hanging from
its tusk. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Krishna also points to a couple of other Hindu entities
that feature bor iconography. There's the goddess of Vadahai, an
aspect of the goddess Durga. The author also mentions that
the boar is also invoked in Jainism and in Buddhism,
where the goddess ma Richi or Marisi drives a chariot
drawn by seven bores. I believe this figure also factors
(23:31):
into Hinduism and has sometimes depicted as writing a single boar,
though not always all right, let's let's turn to the
world of monstrous boars, because one really important example in
Greco Roman traditions is, of course the Caledonian boar or
the Itolian boar. This is a monstrous boar sent by
the goddess Artemis to punish the King of Kaledon for
(23:55):
lack of proper sacrifices. You didn't throw up the right sacrifices.
You ticked off a god. Have to deal with a
monster pig. It brings great. Oh, it just destroys everything.
It destroys people, It destroys the town, it destroys the
land itself. And then you end up having to have
the heroes Meleager and Atalanta hunt it with their friends,
(24:18):
their allies, slay it, and then get into a big
fight with their allies over who gets what part of
the spoils from the monster pig. Because we see this
time and time again. You'll have some sort of supernatural pig.
But then once you have killed that pig, its parts
are used. You know, it is it is, it is food,
it is you know it's hide has value and so forth.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah, the drama is not done when the monster boor
is slain. In fact, that factors into the next one
you're gonna mention.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Right, Yeah, the Aramanthean boar. This is another monster bore
of Greek myth. This is the one that ravaged Arcadia,
and it ends up being one of the twelve labors
of Hercules having to dispose of this monster boar king.
Eurystheus tells her, you can't slay it, You've got to
(25:07):
bring it back alive. And in most of these tellings
you have this wonderful scene where of course Hercules pulls
this off, brings back this ferocious boar alive, and just
the sight of Hercules carrying this thing is so terrifying
that the tyrant king jumps inside of a jar and hides.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So I thought this was interesting because of the way
the story ties into a weird art meme from the
ancient world that I've noticed. I'll get to that in
a second. But first of all, I was wondering if
there was any like really good ancient texts that describes
this hunt in detail. Maybe there is, but if so,
I couldn't. I couldn't find it. I didn't really come
(25:46):
across anything all that great. It's pretty sparse, you know,
It's just like, oh, and he hunted the boar down.
The best example I came across was from the text
of Pseudo Apollodorus the Library. This is the Phraser translation,
which says, well, first of all, there's a bunch of
drama with Hercules going out to hunt the boar and
then gets into a bunch of stuff with some cinaurs
(26:07):
and his companion gets killed. But then when Hercules, it
says quote, when Hercules had chased the boar with shouts
from a certain thicket, he drove the exhausted animal into
deep snow, trapped it, and brought it to myceny. Now
here's the funny art note. If you look up ancient
Greek pottery depicting this scene where Heracles in the Greek
(26:30):
returns with the boar, multiple pieces I found have the
same style of depicting the scene, so little things about
it are different. It's not like a tracing, you know.
You might have different characters on the sides of the scene,
or different sort of posture or ways of rendering the
Hercules's face and body, but the thing being shown is
(26:51):
the same in every case. So you will have down
below there's an opening of a large jar. I guess
this is the type of Greek jar known as a pithos,
with the king hiding down in the jar, and you
can see like his head and hands popping up out
of it like oh, And then up above you will
have Hercules standing above the opening of the jar, holding
(27:12):
the boar up as if to dump it on top
of the king, or like to plug the king in
the jar with the boar as a cork. And I've
got at least four different m foi from ancient Greece
that depict the scene almost exactly like this Robi. You
can take a look and see what you noticed about
(27:32):
all of these. The first one I've got in the
outline here is from the British Museum. It's a Greek
amphora from the sixth century BCE, and M four a
is also a type of jar that was a smaller
jar jar that would usually be used to store wine
or perfume or oil or something like that. So this
a for a. Hercules is wearing some kind of armor,
(27:53):
but also his thighs and butt cheeks are showing a
little bit, and he's.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He's remarkably clo though. I have to say yes for Heracles.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yes, so Heracles. He's got the boar up on his shoulder,
and the king is down in the jar like no,
don't dump the boar on me, and the boar is
just going straight down on top of him. It looks
like he's gonna to plug him up in there. And
in most versions of this scene he's dropping the boar
head first on the king, but in one I found
it's the last one I've got for you to look
(28:23):
at here, Rob, in this case, he's dropping the boar
tail first onto the king. So I don't know what
the difference is there. I am in no way an
expert on ancient Greek art. I couldn't find anything that's
saying why this scene appears so often and looks so similar.
And I could be totally wrong about this, but I
wonder if this scene is popular to depict on MPI
(28:44):
on jars because the king is hiding in a jar
in the scene.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, I mean Heracles or Hercules, hero of the people
we discussed in the pad. I can't remember we're talking
about it this on a Core episode or a Weird
House cinem episode. I think it was weird House because
we're talking about the Mario Bava Hercules in the Underworld film.
But Hercules stands up to power like this, but he
does not proclaim himself a king, so he's kind of
(29:12):
and he's kind of a workingman's.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Hero in that regard.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I guess, you know, take this job and shove it.
Take this pig and shove it, right.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
That is exactly the vibe of these scenes here. Yeah,
take this pig and shove it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I like how the fourth image that you shared Hercules
is the most naked here, varying levels of nudity for
Hercules in each of them. But then the second one
you shared, Hercules is making this wild Gargonian face that
is really great, almost as if he is saying, wahs up.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, it's asko. Yeah, any experts on ancient Greco Roman
art out there you want to fill us in on
why this scene appears so often and looks so similar? Yeah, right,
in contact that stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
All right, let's see which what other monster picks should
I mention here? There's some that I couldn't find a
lot on. Like, for instance, there's one in Icelandic tradition
that is called by God, not like by God it's
a pick, but like b E I G A D.
And this apparently roughly translates to bringer of fear, which
I like. But then there's one from Irish legend that's
(30:29):
really interesting. This one is the bore of being Goldbain,
and in this there's a whole story for this one.
So this is a monster that was once the mortal
human son of Angus, but upon his son's death in
a quarrel, the father you know, refused to accept this
(30:50):
and refused to accept the custom of death gold from
his killer in to sort of settle the dispute. Instead,
he raises his son from the dead with dark magic
into the form of a great bore that Carol Rose
says has neither tail nor ears. I'm not sure what
the significance of that detail is, but if nothing else,
(31:14):
it tends to show you that this is an unnatural boar.
It is somehow not quite bore and certainly not man. Now.
In doing this and raising up his son like this,
he's also cursing his son's killer, Dimid and for telling
that the two of them, the reincarnated son here and
his killer Domed, are going to be the death of
(31:36):
each other. That he will live as long as this
this unnatural boar that he's raised up, and indeed that's
exactly how it goes down. They fight, they gore and
stab each other. And I think we may have touched
on this story before in our episode about Finn McCool,
because this is where Finn McCool jumps in and tries
(31:56):
to bring healing waters to the dying warrior, and he
tries three times, but it slips through his fingers the
first two times, and by the third time the hero
has already died. All right, This next one comes from
Welsh traditions, and I'm going to butcher this. I know,
my apologies, but it is something like hults do gut
(32:19):
and it is it is the bobtailed black soal. It
is definitely in the category of the boar that hunts.
It was said to be active. I've seen it. I
believe Carol Rose discusses it as being connected with Salin
and then with the introduction of Christianity war that, of
(32:42):
course that has warped more in the direction of Halloween,
and then this creature becomes associated with the devil. But
in essence we're dealing with a with just another boar
who hunts that is monstrous and terrible, certainly kind of
like an evil monster. You're right again, I think the
name here is Hawk du Gita or something to that effect. Again,
(33:07):
I'm not really good with the Welsh tongue here.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, I don't know how to pronounce it hats off
to you, Rob, But I was looking at the entry
on this one in the Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology,
and it says that this is the spectral pig, later
often associated with the devil in Christianity. But the idea
is that it's a spectral pig that would rise up
(33:30):
out of the embers of a dying bonfire on the
night of this like sort of autumn festival night, and
it would rise up out of the embers of the
dying bonfire, and it would catch the last person, I guess,
to the last person in some case to like leave
the festivities or to arrive.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Oh fascinating. Well, let's see we have some other ones here.
There's a Comapoa. This is a Hawaiian primordial monster bore
from Hawaiian mythology, the pig child who raised up the
ocean mud with his snout to form the islands and
some tellings. So again another primordial vision of the bore.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And I like the resonance is there with the Hindu
idea of the incarnation of Vishnu that like has to
swim down into the ocean to retrieve the mat of
the earth and bring it back in this case, raising
up the ocean mud from beneath.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, Like, is there an actual connection there, a reverberation
of belief or is it just come from familiarity with
the animal? You know, and these these sort of metaphors
and ideas emerging from human observation of these animals that
they live in close contact with.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, to be clear, I was not suggesting a causal connection. No, no, no, no,
those two myths.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, yeah, but if if there, if there isn't a
causal connection, it's it's clearly like observing the animal, and
you know the ideas that emerge when we see the
animal and it's on its natural turf. Let's see. Oh,
the legends tell of a monstrous family of bors, like
you could probably call these ogre boors. I think that
(35:07):
fought King Arthur and his knights. May come back to
some of this, but the tellings have a lot of gorings,
Like it's just a whole series of gorings. They're chasing
these boors around, killing off certain boars. Yeah, we'll come
back to these, because there are a few like examples
of the King of Boars.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Did your source of say, which of King Arthur's knights
got got gord because I was just thinking because it's funny.
I know, one of the knights in Arthurian legend is
Sir Bars, and it would be somewhat hilarious if Sir
Bors got gored by a boar.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I do I don't know. I don't know if any
like name knights were gored, but it's possible. Like some
of the particular ones I'm scanning down, I do have
notes on this. Let's say twitrich Tritch. This is a
This is one of the wicked kings who was transformed
into a monstrous boar. So, uh, this is one of
(35:59):
the ones that they do battle with. Then, yeah, there
are various other ones that have names and factor into
this whole series of battles between humans and bores. Oh
now here's another one that Carol ro shares that is
really interesting and has a very cool story to it.
And this is concerning a particular monster pick by the
(36:21):
name of Totoima or I've seen it also spelled dodo Ema.
It's a monster pig of the Oro Kaiva people of
Papua New Guinea. So essentially, this monster pig is a
father of mortal humans who hunts them from their birth
and devours them if he finds them. So the basic
(36:43):
story concerning this monster pig is that I guess at
night it takes the form of the monster pig, but
during the day it takes the form or can take
the form of a mortal man. And in this form,
toto Ema couples with human women, producing human offspring, which
then at night, in the form of the beast, he
(37:04):
seeks out and he consumes if he finds them.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But then one woman ends up birthing twins, and of
course he does what he always does in bore form.
He chases after them to consume them. But when he
finds them, he's only able to consume the boy twin
and the female escapes. Well, the twins mother she's not
gonna take this, she stands up to it. So she
goes to a shaman, and the shaman casts a spell
(37:29):
that causes the boy to grow rapidly into adulthood inside
of Totoima's stomach and then bursting out of him, killing
the monster pig in the process, and then the shaman
marries the daughter. The people feast on the body of Totolima,
and in doing so they consume his power. His supernatural
power the absorb it, and then this story is echoed
(37:52):
in all of the boar feasts to follow in this culture.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Oh. Interesting, So the boy explodes out of the belly
of the boar by growing rapidly. But does that mean
the boy survives?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, I guess he either. I'm not sure of the
details of the spell. Maybe he reforms and then grows,
or maybe the monster consumed him whole, as we see,
of course, in a lot of stories of monsters consuming people,
they are swallowed whole, and then there's this chance for
them to escape somehow, you know, clearly a popular idea,
even in modern fiction and science fiction.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Yeah, I guess I'm more familiar with stories along these lines,
where like, oh, you know the Little Red Riding Hood,
the hunter comes along and cuts open the wolf's stomach
and everybody, and everybody gets out. But I love this
version with the magic spell that causes the yeah, the
the eating child to grow and explode from the inside, and.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Then they eat the monster. Again. We see allusion to
this in the Greek traditions as well. I'm not saying
every monster boar ends up being consumed, but it does
seem to be kind of a frequent idea, like it
is a rare kind of this rare case where the
monster is both for and also on the menu for
human beings.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's interesting. Where you know that
the pig occupies this middle space between somewhere between just
herbivorous prey animal and carnivore, which is, you know, carnivore
is not usually thought of as great eating. Not to
say people wouldn't eat, you know, eat a wolf or whatever,
but but yeah, exactly, but that like the pig is
(39:25):
sort of it's in both camps.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah, okay, two more, just real quick ones here, speaking
of pigs that are eaten there, there is also the
eternally regenerating roasting pig of Valhalla. This is sasrm there
or so soccrom there, whose name just means blackened.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I believe.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I think we've touched on him before, but that's his
entire role. I don't think he has much of a backstory.
He's just a never ending feast pig that reunites.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
So this is not so much pig as pig, but
divine pig as pork.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right yeah, yeah, And then there is at least one
supernatural pig or boar worth talking about here from Chinese traditions,
and that is ping fing or bingfing. This is a
black boar with either I think some tellings the head
of a human, but I think most of the sellings
that I was reading about it's a boar head at
(40:19):
either end. So kind of like the what the push
me pull me from Doctor Doolittle, Doctor Doolittle, of course, yes,
there's like a creature like this to push me, pull
me in that where it has a head on either side.
It's this is the push me pull me of bores
and Chinese mythology.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
This is the variation that appears in the classic text
of the Shanghai Jing, the classic of mountains and seas
that we've touched on the show before, and as with
other two headed creatures, said to be quite obstinate, according
to Richard Strasburg in the book A Chinese bestI Area.
So I guess in this, you know, it's like you
have a two headed animal. Which one's in charge, which
one's the boss. Well, they're both the boss. You have
(40:59):
to talk to both ends.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Of the pain, especially stubborn. Yeah. Stubbornness comes from the head.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah. So again this is just a brief overview of
some of the varieties and some of the basic tropes
you seem to encounter with mythic pigs, mythic bores, and
so forth. I'm sure there are some other interesting ones
that I didn't run across enough details regarding, so if
you have a favorite, write in share them. We would
(41:26):
love to hear about your hell pig.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
All right, Well, it looks like we're out of time
for today, but we are not done with the topic
of monster pigs. So if you can't get enough you
want to learn about more monster pigs, and in fact
monster pigs not only in myth and legend, but in reality,
come back and join us on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
All right. Just a reminder to everyone out there that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays episodes
that are more likely to be monstrous and horror themed
during the month of October, and then we do a
short form episode on Wednesday, and then on Fridays we
set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
weird film on Weird House Cinema. Oh and just a
(42:07):
reminder if you're on Instagram out there, you can follow
us at st b ym podcast and if you would
like to get a stuff to Blow your Mind Halloween
shirt sticker or what have you, check out our tea
public store that should be linked on the Instagram that
should also be linked on our page at stuff to
Blow Yourmind dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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