# A Guide to the Occult in Ancient Mesopotamia

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 24 Sep 2026, 1 h 00 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75116432/a_guide_to_the_occult_in_ancient_mesopotamia_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Journey into the mysterious world of ancient Mesopotamia and discover the rituals, divination practices, protective magic, and supernatural beliefs that shaped everyday life in some of the world's earliest civilizations. From the temples of Sumer and Akkad to the royal courts of Assyria and Babylonia, this episode explores how ancient Mesopotamians understood the unseen forces they believed surrounded them. Explore the many forms of magic and ritual practiced across Mesopotamia. Discover divination through the examination of animal entrails, celestial observations, dreams, omens, incantations, amulets, protective rituals, and written spells. Learn how priests, diviners, exorcists, healers, and other ritual specialists attempted to interpret supernatural signs and protect individuals, households, and rulers from misfortune. Beyond ritual practices, this episode examines the supernatural beings that populated Mesopotamian religious thought. Encounter gods, demons, ghosts, spirits, monsters, and protective entities, and discover how ancient people understood illness, death, curses, nightmares, bad luck, and unexplained events. Explore figures and traditions associated with beings such as Pazuzu, Lamashtu, the restless dead, and other supernatural forces described in cuneiform sources. The episode also explores the relationship between occult practices, religion, medicine, and political power. Discover why kings relied on omens before making important decisions, how celestial phenomena could influence royal policy, and how rituals were used to respond to perceived threats. In Mesopotamia, what we might now separate into “religion,” “magic,” and “medicine” were often closely interconnected. Drawing on cuneiform tablets, ritual texts, omen collections, archaeological discoveries, temple records, and modern Assyriological scholarship, this immersive journey separates historical evidence from modern occult interpretations and sensationalized claims. Discover what ancient Mesopotamian texts actually reveal about magic, divination, spirits, and the supernatural world. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this episode is perfect for history enthusiasts, ancient civilization lovers, mythology and occult history fans, documentary listeners, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Enter the temples, libraries, and royal courts of ancient Mesopotamia and uncover the mysterious practices used to understand and influence the unseen world.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ancient Mesopotamia, the land of Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, a place
[0:09] Speaker 1: where the supernatural was a part of everyday life. It
[0:13] Speaker 1: is in this world that unseen forces could bring disease
[0:17] Speaker 1: or misfortune, and of course, specialized practitioners wielded the arcane
[0:23] Speaker 1: knowledge to counteract them. In fact, the word occult in
[0:28] Speaker 1: the ancient Mesopotamian context encompasses a broad range of hidden arts, divination, exorcism, incantations, necromancy,
[0:40] Speaker 1: and in general magic rituals that to us might seem
[0:43] Speaker 1: like something out of a story, but to Mesopotamians they
[0:47] Speaker 1: were a serious part of life and a very real
[0:51] Speaker 1: part of history. But occult knowledge in Mesopotamia was not
[0:56] Speaker 1: something that was forbidden or fringed, It was often part
[1:01] Speaker 1: of learned tradition and general religious practice. The people of
[1:05] Speaker 1: Sumer and Akkad, and later Babylonia and Assyria, believed that
[1:10] Speaker 1: the world was teeming with invisible forces. Ghosts, demons, and
[1:15] Speaker 1: gods could influence human lives, and magic was just the
[1:20] Speaker 1: tool that we needed to manage these forces. This is unlike, say,
[1:26] Speaker 1: ancient Egypt, which developed extensive guidebooks for the afterlife. Mesopotamia's
[1:32] Speaker 1: approach to the supernatural was pragmatic and quite varied. Knowledge
[1:37] Speaker 1: of spells and omens were cultivated by scholarly priests, and
[1:42] Speaker 1: by the 3rd millennium BC we find cuneiform texts recording
[1:46] Speaker 1: incantations and protective spells. In fact, the Sumerian word for ghost, gidim,
[1:53] Speaker 1: appears on tablets as far back as the early dynastic period,
[1:57] Speaker 1: 2900 to 2330 BCE. That certainly indicates a deep-seated belief
[2:05] Speaker 1: in these occult practices. Of course, the Mesopotamians imagined themselves
[2:11] Speaker 1: in a demon-haunted world. If someone fell ill or sudden
[2:15] Speaker 1: misfortune struck, it was commonly attributed to malevolent forces. And
[2:22] Speaker 1: it is this mindset that we are brought here to
[2:25] Speaker 1: discuss today. Ancient Mesopotamian occultism. What a topic. Allow me
[2:34] Speaker 1: to welcome you. First, not just to the video, but
[2:37] Speaker 1: to the channel. Always good manners to say hello to
[2:40] Speaker 1: any newcomers. And if you've not yet clicked the subscribe button,
[2:45] Speaker 1: perhaps you'd feel inclined to do so along with leaving
[2:47] Speaker 1: a like and a comment down below. It certainly helps
[2:50] Speaker 1: push us out in the algorithm. And then more people
[2:53] Speaker 1: can experience videos like this and, well, we can somewhat
[2:57] Speaker 1: fight the brain rot on this platform. Now, you will
[3:02] Speaker 1: be able to enjoy this video from start to finish
[3:04] Speaker 1: completely uninterrupted. Because it's completely ad-free, along with all the
[3:09] Speaker 1: other videos on the channel, you won't have any pesky
[3:13] Speaker 1: ads coming up in the middle to disrupt the experience.
[3:17] Speaker 1: This is possible due to the support we receive on
[3:20] Speaker 1: Patreon YouTube memberships. the merch store, and the occasional donation
[3:25] Speaker 1: through either Superthanks or the Patreon, PayPal link, rather. You
[3:31] Speaker 1: can find all these links in the pinned comment, video description,
[3:35] Speaker 1: and the channel description. Now, with all that being said,
[3:40] Speaker 1: welcomes out of the way and e-begging done for, let
[3:43] Speaker 1: us get on to the topic for today. Mesopotamian Occultism.
[3:51] Speaker 1: So let's first understand its practitioners and how they were trained.
[3:56] Speaker 1: You see, far from being outsiders, many occult practitioners were
[3:59] Speaker 1: just part of the apparatus of the intellectual elite. Young
[4:03] Speaker 1: scribes in Mesopotamia underwent a rigorous education in reading and
[4:07] Speaker 1: writing cuneiform, often starting in a tablet school called an eduba,
[4:13] Speaker 1: or perhaps under a family tutor if they had one.
[4:17] Speaker 1: After mastering the basics, a student could specialize in one
[4:20] Speaker 1: of several advanced disciplines. First, divination, barutu, interpreting divine omens
[4:28] Speaker 1: from sources like animal entrails, celestial movements, or strange birth defects.
[4:36] Speaker 1: Diviners were consulted to reveal the god's will or predict
[4:40] Speaker 1: the future. Then we had incantation and exorcism, which is ashputu,
[4:47] Speaker 1: the domain of the exorcists, the Ashibo, who used spells
[4:51] Speaker 1: and rituals to dispel evil influences, whether demons, curses or ghosts,
[4:57] Speaker 1: whichever one it was. They were effectively occult doctors who
[5:01] Speaker 1: addressed those supernatural afflictions. And then we had Lamentation, that is, Kaluto,
[5:10] Speaker 1: the Lamentation priest called the Kalu, would perform chants and
[5:14] Speaker 1: prayers to appease gods in rituals, Now, while not magic
[5:18] Speaker 1: in the demonic sense, this was another specialization in the
[5:22] Speaker 1: broader religious toolkit. Through this advanced training, exorcists and diviners
[5:28] Speaker 1: became basically scholar-priests. They studied and copied tablets containing centuries-old
[5:35] Speaker 1: magical texts. Many texts were written in Sumerian, a language
[5:41] Speaker 1: no longer spoken in the first millennium BCE, but preserved
[5:44] Speaker 1: as a sacred tongue for incantations. A would-be exorcist had
[5:50] Speaker 1: to memorize and master countless incantation formulas, rituals, and proper
[5:55] Speaker 1: liturgy to call on gods like A, the patron of wisdom,
[5:59] Speaker 1: or Shamash, the sun god and judge, for help. And
[6:04] Speaker 1: this was esoteric knowledge, often passed down from father to son. Indeed,
[6:10] Speaker 1: some families specialized in the occult art for generations. For example,
[6:14] Speaker 1: in the city of Sipar, A prominent family in the
[6:17] Speaker 1: 6th century BCE served as exorcists over multiple generations, and
[6:22] Speaker 1: left behind an archive of about 300 tablets recorded to
[6:27] Speaker 1: their profession. Two-thirds of their library was practical business documents,
[6:34] Speaker 1: but about one-third consisted of magico-medical texts, recipes for remedies
[6:41] Speaker 1: and incantations to treat various ailments caused by spirits or sorcery.
[6:47] Speaker 1: This shows how integrated the occult was within both scholarship
[6:50] Speaker 1: and daily life. Exorcists were, at the same time, healers, priests,
[6:56] Speaker 1: and also respected intellectuals. But it is important to distinguish
[7:03] Speaker 1: between legitimate magic practitioners, like the Ashibu or Bauru, who
[7:08] Speaker 1: operated within that sanctioned religious framework, from the sorcerer's who accused,
[7:15] Speaker 1: rather abused, malevolent magic, that is, kishpu in Akkadian. The
[7:22] Speaker 1: Mesopotamians did not have a concept of witchcraft, you see,
[7:25] Speaker 1: as a separate sort of entity within the magical world,
[7:30] Speaker 1: but rather kishpu referred to harmful magic. Essentially, anybody trying
[7:36] Speaker 1: to harness spells to injure or just curse somebody, doing
[7:43] Speaker 1: bad things, basically. Those who practiced such dark arts, now
[7:49] Speaker 1: we might call them witches or warlocks, I suppose, were
[7:53] Speaker 1: feared and despised. In contrast, the exorcists and diviners were
[7:59] Speaker 1: viewed as very positive figures, using occult knowledge for protection
[8:04] Speaker 1: and healing. The moral distinction is even reflected in Mesopotamian lore.
[8:11] Speaker 1: The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi from 1750 BCE has a
[8:16] Speaker 1: provision addressing witchcraft. If someone was accused of casting a
[8:21] Speaker 1: deadly spell on another, but the accusation could not be proven,
[8:25] Speaker 1: the accuser would be put to death for a false accusation. Well,
[8:31] Speaker 1: this certainly would discourage anybody from reporting it, I suppose.
[8:37] Speaker 1: But if the accusation had some basis... the accused had
[8:40] Speaker 1: to undergo an ordeal by water, that is, plunging into
[8:45] Speaker 1: the sacred river. Surviving this trial meant that the person
[8:49] Speaker 1: was innocent, and the accuser would be executed. Drowning was
[8:55] Speaker 1: taken as proof of guilt, and you wouldn't need to
[8:57] Speaker 1: execute the accused because, well, they were already dead at
[9:02] Speaker 1: the bottom of the river. In any case, it's quite
[9:06] Speaker 1: a remarkable law, and it shows two things. First, that
[9:10] Speaker 1: the belief in harmful magic was strong enough to warrant
[9:13] Speaker 1: a trial by ordeal. Second, that misuse of magic was
[9:19] Speaker 1: a serious offence. In Mesopotamia, at that time, there was
[9:25] Speaker 1: good magic, sanctioned and rather appreciated, respected by society, and
[9:32] Speaker 1: of course, bad magic, somewhat less respected and punishable by death.
[9:41] Speaker 1: Now what about the witch? Because we mentioned that word,
[9:44] Speaker 1: didn't we? We can use it in Mesopotamian lore. Well,
[9:51] Speaker 1: a bit of a shadowy figure. Typically imagined as someone,
[9:54] Speaker 1: often a woman, but not exclusively, who employed magic to
[9:58] Speaker 1: harm others for personal gain. gain or just general malice.
[10:03] Speaker 1: Surviving texts depict the fears people had of falling victim
[10:07] Speaker 1: to curses. Illness, loss of love, sudden business failures. Any
[10:12] Speaker 1: unexplained suffering might be blamed on an enemy's spell. One
[10:17] Speaker 1: text implores the gods to undo a witch's curse. described
[10:20] Speaker 1: as an evil thing sent against a man, which has
[10:25] Speaker 1: tied him up like a bundle. The anxiety over witches
[10:30] Speaker 1: was not unlike later witchcraft panics in other cultures, actually.
[10:35] Speaker 1: Except the difference was in Mesopotamia, where there were no
[10:39] Speaker 1: mass witch hunts, no government sanction, things like that. Instead,
[10:45] Speaker 1: afflicted individuals in Mesopotamia would simply hire an exorcist to
[10:49] Speaker 1: break the curse, In fact, some of the most elaborate
[10:54] Speaker 1: occult rituals from Mesopotamia are counter-witchcraft ceremonies. The pinnacle is
[10:59] Speaker 1: a series of tablets known as maklu, meaning burning. Maklu,
[11:06] Speaker 1: from the first millennium BCE, is essentially a comprehensive anti-witchcraft manual. Yeah,
[11:14] Speaker 1: kind of like a ritual ceremony. A dramatic overnight ceremony
[11:19] Speaker 1: to nullify evil spells and destroy the influence of the
[11:23] Speaker 1: malevolent witches. One performance of Maklu is recorded to have
[11:28] Speaker 1: taken place around 670, perhaps on behalf of the Assyrian
[11:34] Speaker 1: king himself. The rite began late in the evening. The
[11:39] Speaker 1: exorcist invoked the gods of night, such as the moon
[11:42] Speaker 1: god Sin, and stars as witnesses, and then set about
[11:48] Speaker 1: burning figurines that represented these suspected witchers, along with their
[11:53] Speaker 1: demonic allies. As the effigies went up in flames, the
[11:59] Speaker 1: priest recited incantations condemning the evil forces to their destruction.
[12:04] Speaker 1: We actually have a translated excerpt from Maklu's first tablet
[12:09] Speaker 1: that gives us a bit of a taste of this
[12:11] Speaker 1: ritual fire magic. I'll read it now, actually. I raise
[12:15] Speaker 1: up the torch. and burn the statues of the demon,
[12:19] Speaker 1: the spirit, the lurker, the ghost, and any evil that
[12:23] Speaker 1: seizes mankind. Dissolve, melt, drip ever away. May your smoke
[12:30] Speaker 1: rise ever heavenward. May the sun extinguish your embers. May
[12:34] Speaker 1: the son of A, the exorcist of the gods, cut
[12:38] Speaker 1: off your emanations. As these words were spoken, the figurines
[12:44] Speaker 1: of the witch and her accomplices were literally melting in
[12:48] Speaker 1: the flames. That imagery, dissolve, grip, melt away, emphasizes total
[12:56] Speaker 1: annihilation of the evil spell. Through sympathetic magic, destroying the
[13:01] Speaker 1: likeness of the witch was believed to destroy her power.
[13:06] Speaker 1: The Maklu ritual continued until dawn. Throughout the night, the
[13:10] Speaker 1: afflicted patient's room was carefully prepared as a kind of
[13:14] Speaker 1: sacred battleground. The exorcist would anoint the patient with holy oil,
[13:20] Speaker 1: draw protective magic circles around the bed, and position apotropaic,
[13:26] Speaker 1: excuse me, at his protective objects at the corners of
[13:30] Speaker 1: the room. Various substances might be used, too. Water for purification,
[13:37] Speaker 1: herbs to ward off the evil spirits, and cords with
[13:41] Speaker 1: knots that are tied and untied as part of the spell-casting.
[13:46] Speaker 1: In any case, at the break of day, as sunlight entered,
[13:50] Speaker 1: which was considered purifying, the patients would wash themselves in
[13:54] Speaker 1: a final cleansing act. By then, according to the ritual texts,
[14:00] Speaker 1: the witch's malevolent influence would be nullified. The tablets say
[14:04] Speaker 1: the witch's body is turned into a phantom, and her
[14:08] Speaker 1: ghost is driven away, implying that any supernatural link or
[14:13] Speaker 1: attachment that she had to the victim had been severed.
[14:17] Speaker 1: It is notable that maklu and similar rituals sometimes mention
[14:21] Speaker 1: both male and female practitioners of evil magic. The word kishpu,
[14:27] Speaker 1: sorcery itself, is gender neutral. However, the stereotype of the
[14:33] Speaker 1: witch as female is strong in the incantations. Often the
[14:38] Speaker 1: texts single out kasaptu, the female witch. Nonetheless, the presence
[14:44] Speaker 1: of male witches, kasapu, is acknowledged too. The exorcists in
[14:50] Speaker 1: their incantations wanted to cover all bases, I suppose. An evildoer,
[14:55] Speaker 1: regardless of gender, needs to be taken care of. The
[15:01] Speaker 1: existence of these elaborate counter-spells tells us that Mesopotamians saw
[15:05] Speaker 1: witchcraft as a real and present danger, but they also
[15:09] Speaker 1: believed it could be confronted with the right rituals. Fear
[15:13] Speaker 1: of witches was balanced by confidence in the protective magic
[15:17] Speaker 1: of the exorcist. People procured amulets, rituals, and all sorts
[15:23] Speaker 1: of blessings to guard against envy and occult attacks. Let's
[15:28] Speaker 1: take this for an example. A common protective measure was
[15:31] Speaker 1: burying small figurines of protective spirits under the thresholds of
[15:35] Speaker 1: one house to block entry of malevolent forces. Assyrian kings
[15:42] Speaker 1: even buried large statues of guardian demons beneath their palaces
[15:45] Speaker 1: to ward off evil. We also find personal incantations meant
[15:51] Speaker 1: to be recited by laypeople. Essentially, home magic to protect children,
[15:58] Speaker 1: to ensure love and prosperity. Of course, that is to
[16:04] Speaker 1: say that professional exorcists were the experts. There was a
[16:09] Speaker 1: little bit of... basic magical know-how that permeated ordinary society.
[16:15] Speaker 1: A little bit of prevention, I suppose, before things got
[16:21] Speaker 1: too out of hand. But let's go beyond human witches,
[16:27] Speaker 1: because the Mesopotamian occult landscape was certainly crowded with demons, too.
[16:33] Speaker 1: There was often the boogeyman, blamed for disease, accidents, madness,
[16:39] Speaker 1: any little inconvenience. These were not devils in the latter
[16:42] Speaker 1: Christian sense, don't quite think of it like that, but
[16:45] Speaker 1: more of a collection of malevolent or mischievous entities, somewhat
[16:51] Speaker 1: personified curses or forces. Others were monstrous figures from old mythology.
[16:58] Speaker 1: So let's just name a few. There was Lamashtu, a
[17:02] Speaker 1: terrifying female demoness who preyed on infants and pregnant women. Pazuzu.
[17:09] Speaker 1: A wind demon with a fearsome visage who, ironically, was
[17:13] Speaker 1: invoked to repel Lamashtu. The Utuku and Ekimu, general terms
[17:20] Speaker 1: for vengeful spirits. The Urabisu, the lurker, who hid in
[17:25] Speaker 1: dark corners to pounce on victims. And the so-called seven
[17:30] Speaker 1: evil spirits who were described as swirling like storms, bringing
[17:34] Speaker 1: destruction in their wake. Mesopotamians. truly felt surrounded by unseen creatures,
[17:41] Speaker 1: any of which could strike, if not kept in check,
[17:44] Speaker 1: that is. The job of an exorcist was essentially demonology
[17:49] Speaker 1: put into practice. He was a healer of supernatural afflictions,
[17:55] Speaker 1: much like a doctor diagnosing an illness. The exorcist would
[17:59] Speaker 1: determine which demon or spirit was at fault by observing
[18:04] Speaker 1: symptoms or omens, and then choose the appropriate remedy. Tablets
[18:09] Speaker 1: from the first millennium BCE preserve dozens of detailed exorcism
[18:13] Speaker 1: protocols and incantations. Excuse me. For example, an exorcist manual
[18:21] Speaker 1: might say, if a patient suffers nightmare and constant fever,
[18:27] Speaker 1: check if a certain demon's influence is indicated. Then perform
[18:31] Speaker 1: a particular ritual on a specific day, using particular herbs
[18:35] Speaker 1: and incantations. One first millennium text known to modern scholars
[18:41] Speaker 1: enumerates many types of demons and the formulate to expel
[18:45] Speaker 1: or perhaps appease them. While the process of exorcism in
[18:51] Speaker 1: Mesopotamia combines spoken spells with physical action, a first-hand description
[18:58] Speaker 1: from cuneiform sources tells us that a typical exorcist ritual
[19:02] Speaker 1: involved hours of preparation and chanting. The exorcist would recite
[19:08] Speaker 1: prayers and incantations, directly addressing the evil entity and commanding
[19:13] Speaker 1: it to leave the patient's body or home. But simultaneously,
[19:19] Speaker 1: he might invoke benevolent forces, calling on a god or
[19:23] Speaker 1: even something like the purifying power of fire and water
[19:27] Speaker 1: to aid in banishing the demon. Physical props were important too.
[19:33] Speaker 1: Incense could be burned to cleanse the area. Frequent cedar
[19:37] Speaker 1: or juniper smoke was thought to drive demons away. The
[19:42] Speaker 1: exorcist also used objects to transfer the evil. A classic
[19:46] Speaker 1: technique was to use a figurine or a bit of wood.
[19:50] Speaker 1: wool as a proxy for the demon or curse. The
[19:53] Speaker 1: incantation would then command the illness or demon to go
[19:56] Speaker 1: into that object, which was subsequently disposed of, for instance, burned, buried,
[20:02] Speaker 1: or perhaps thrown into a river. By dumping the object,
[20:08] Speaker 1: the ailment would, in theory, go away with it. The
[20:13] Speaker 1: method is explicitly described, quote, the evil is put into
[20:17] Speaker 1: an image, and that image is cast out. There's a
[20:23] Speaker 1: practical psychology behind the magic, I suppose. But exorcists did
[20:28] Speaker 1: not only react to possession or illness, they also proactively
[20:32] Speaker 1: protected people. For example, Families placed plaques or amulets depicting Pazuzu.
[20:39] Speaker 1: The demon turned guardian into their homes. Pazuzu had a
[20:44] Speaker 1: monstrous face, talons and wings, and was believed to scare
[20:49] Speaker 1: off other demons. A small bronze Pazuzu figurine might be
[20:54] Speaker 1: hung around a pregnant woman's neck to guard her unborn
[20:57] Speaker 1: child from the clutches of the evil Lamashtu demon. Likewise,
[21:03] Speaker 1: Terracotta plaques depicting friendly spirits or angels were used as
[21:07] Speaker 1: a kind of magical good vibe, I suppose. Even dogs
[21:14] Speaker 1: were considered to be powerful protectors. Archaeologists have found clay
[21:19] Speaker 1: dog figurines buried under thresholds with inscriptions like Do Not Enter.
[21:26] Speaker 1: Effectively a kind of guard dog, but in a spiritual sense,
[21:31] Speaker 1: I suppose. But what is really fascinating is how systematic
[21:37] Speaker 1: Mesopotamian exorcism was. The Ashipu were not improvising on the fly.
[21:44] Speaker 1: They drew on large corpuses of written lore. One such text,
[21:49] Speaker 1: often called the Exorcist Manual by modern scholars, is a
[21:52] Speaker 1: catalogue of incantation series and ritual texts an exorcist should know.
[21:57] Speaker 1: It lists names of dozens of tablet series, such as
[22:03] Speaker 1: evil demons or burning the Marklu series, that is, indicating
[22:08] Speaker 1: that a fully trained exorcist was expected to be familiar
[22:11] Speaker 1: with all of the standard works on magic and demonology. So,
[22:19] Speaker 1: in essence, Mesopotamia developed an early form of occult science.
[22:24] Speaker 1: Knowledge was recorded, standardized, and passed down. A first millennium
[22:30] Speaker 1: exorcist in Assyria might still recite Sumerian language incantations that
[22:36] Speaker 1: were first composed a millennium or more earlier, treating them
[22:40] Speaker 1: as a time-honoured formula with inherent power. We even have
[22:46] Speaker 1: a glimpse of an exorcist's life from a personal archive
[22:50] Speaker 1: found in the city of Asur. It belonged to a
[22:53] Speaker 1: man named Kisiru Asur, who lived in the 7th century BCE.
[22:59] Speaker 1: Tablets from his library show step by step on how
[23:03] Speaker 1: he was trained by his father and grandfather, both exorcists,
[23:06] Speaker 1: by the way, carrying forward the family trade. As an apprentice,
[23:12] Speaker 1: Kisir Ashur studied medical diagnostics, herbal remedies and magical rites,
[23:18] Speaker 1: side by side. One tablet from his instruction records how
[23:23] Speaker 1: to treat a patient's confusion, believed to be caused by
[23:26] Speaker 1: a ghost. The procedure involves sweeping the ground, sprinkling purifying water,
[23:33] Speaker 1: setting up an incense burner and offering beer, then crafting
[23:37] Speaker 1: a figurine of the ghost out of clay, fat and wax.
[23:42] Speaker 1: The patient would then hold his figurine up to the
[23:45] Speaker 1: sun god Shamash, while the exorcist recites a lengthy incantation,
[23:50] Speaker 1: effectively presenting the possessing spirit to the divine light to
[23:54] Speaker 1: be judged and removed. This mix of medical care and
[23:59] Speaker 1: magic was typical. Mesopotamian exorcists did not separate the physical
[24:04] Speaker 1: from the spiritual either. If a demon caused a fever,
[24:09] Speaker 1: the treatment might involve both a cooling poultice and a
[24:13] Speaker 1: spell to cast out the fire demon, as it were. Now, interestingly,
[24:20] Speaker 1: some of the remedies prescribed show a degree of clever
[24:22] Speaker 1: insight into chemistry and psychology, even if they were couched
[24:27] Speaker 1: in ancient magic. One ghost-banishing ritual called for the patient
[24:33] Speaker 1: to wear a pouch containing foul-smelling ingredients like sulfur, fish eyes,
[24:37] Speaker 1: and goat hair, presumably to repulse the ghost. But one
[24:42] Speaker 1: can certainly imagine it might also repel real pests and
[24:47] Speaker 1: possibly even clear nasal congestion. Another cure for persistent ghosts
[24:52] Speaker 1: was to pour out three libations of donkey urine into
[24:56] Speaker 1: the house. Sounds a bit bizarre. And I don't think
[25:01] Speaker 1: many people would be doing the donkey urine trick in
[25:04] Speaker 1: our modern time. Well, actually, you might be surprised. But
[25:09] Speaker 1: the rationale was that every thirsty ghost might drink the
[25:14] Speaker 1: urine thinking it was beer, and then be so disgusted
[25:18] Speaker 1: by the taste that he would flee. Anecdotes like that
[25:22] Speaker 1: certainly show the intersection of superstition and a little bit
[25:26] Speaker 1: of shrewd creativity in Mesopotamian magic. But if we want
[25:32] Speaker 1: to talk about the most, probably the most fascinating, but
[25:36] Speaker 1: also the most controversial factor of Mesopotamian occult practice, it's
[25:41] Speaker 1: probably necromancy. If you don't know what that is, it
[25:45] Speaker 1: is the summoning or consulting of the dead. Mesopotamia had
[25:50] Speaker 1: a very bleak view of the afterlife, you see. All souls,
[25:54] Speaker 1: whether they were good or bad, had to go to Irkala,
[25:59] Speaker 1: the land of no return. a pretty dingy underground realm
[26:04] Speaker 1: of dust and darkness, ruled over by the goddess Ereshkigal.
[26:11] Speaker 1: The dead were thought to be perpetually thirsty and hungry,
[26:15] Speaker 1: subsisting on scraps and muddy water, unless their living relatives
[26:20] Speaker 1: offered them food and drink, and that is why families
[26:23] Speaker 1: made funerary offerings like the Kisbu rituals to their ancestors,
[26:27] Speaker 1: to keep their spirits at peace in the world below.
[26:32] Speaker 1: A neglected ghost or someone who suffered a troubling death
[26:36] Speaker 1: could become a restless ghost, that is, Etumu in Akkadian
[26:40] Speaker 1: and Gidim in Sumerian, that roamed the world of the living.
[26:46] Speaker 1: These ghosts were not abstract wraiths, however. They retained the
[26:51] Speaker 1: personality and the memories of the person. The ghost might
[26:55] Speaker 1: return out of anger, love, or perhaps just simply confusion
[27:02] Speaker 1: at its plight. not realizing that it was actually dead.
[27:08] Speaker 1: In fact, Mesopotamian records have many references to ghosts causing
[27:12] Speaker 1: trouble and how to, quote, lay them. It's not what
[27:17] Speaker 1: you think. One spell vividly describes a haunting by lurking ghost, quote,
[27:23] Speaker 1: an unknown, unidentified ghost of the roaming malicious hooligan type
[27:28] Speaker 1: who flickers like flame and flashes like lightning. sneaking into
[27:32] Speaker 1: houses and terrorizing the living. It doesn't sound good, doesn't it?
[27:39] Speaker 1: It's this text that shows how a ghost frightens and
[27:44] Speaker 1: snarls at its victim, hiding in corners, slithering along walls
[27:49] Speaker 1: and stalking its prey even into the streets. The effect
[27:54] Speaker 1: of these ghostly assaults was believed to be real illness.
[27:57] Speaker 1: Mesopotamians explain certain sicknesses as, quote, ghost possession. For example,
[28:04] Speaker 1: you might get sudden dizziness, nightmares, you might hear disembodied voices,
[28:11] Speaker 1: or even something as specific as a person having ringing
[28:14] Speaker 1: in the ears persistently. That could be blamed on a
[28:18] Speaker 1: ghost literally getting into your head. In fact, cuneiform tablets note,
[28:27] Speaker 1: that the word for ghost could be written with signs
[28:29] Speaker 1: that mean open ear, hinting that the spirit entering through
[28:35] Speaker 1: the ear could cause quite a bit of mischief. If
[28:39] Speaker 1: someone drowned, their ghost might cause their victim to feel
[28:42] Speaker 1: short of breath, like one who has just come up
[28:46] Speaker 1: from water. You know, one's like having that pressure on you,
[28:50] Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So in this way, The manner
[28:54] Speaker 1: of a ghost's death was thought to correlate with the
[28:56] Speaker 1: symptoms it inflicted upon the living. A pretty empathetic yet
[29:03] Speaker 1: quite eerie concept. So, to get rid of a ghost,
[29:09] Speaker 1: Mesopotamian exorcists performed special rituals akin to, I suppose it's
[29:13] Speaker 1: kind of like ghostbusters, this kind of thing. Well, the
[29:18] Speaker 1: aim was often not so much to destroy the ghost
[29:21] Speaker 1: or anything like that, but rather to convince it to
[29:26] Speaker 1: return to the underworld where it belonged, kind of to
[29:29] Speaker 1: trap the ghost. One common ritual involves setting out a
[29:34] Speaker 1: meal for the ghost, bread, water, beer, essentially appeasing it.
[29:40] Speaker 1: and then formally bidding it farewell, to go home to
[29:43] Speaker 1: the realm of the dead. Sometimes more coercive measures would
[29:48] Speaker 1: be needed, including making figurines of the ghost, and burying
[29:53] Speaker 1: them with offerings to symbolically reinter the spirit. There were
[29:58] Speaker 1: also incantations addressed to Ereshkigal and Nergal, the gods of
[30:02] Speaker 1: the underworld, asking them to drag back a wandering ghost
[30:05] Speaker 1: that had escaped their domain. Occasionally, however, the living sought
[30:11] Speaker 1: to summon a ghost intentionally. This is necromancy proper, and
[30:16] Speaker 1: it was rarer. The evidence for necromancy in Mesopotamia is
[30:22] Speaker 1: comparatively scant, which suggests it was not a routine practice.
[30:27] Speaker 1: and may have been seen as quite dangerous and impure.
[30:32] Speaker 1: Yet we do have a few tantalizing references. The earliest
[30:35] Speaker 1: known comes from a 19th century BC Old Assyrian clay
[30:39] Speaker 1: letter found in the city of Ganesh in Anatolia. In
[30:44] Speaker 1: this letter, two women write to their brother, Imdu-Ilu, urging
[30:49] Speaker 1: him to return home because they have received an ominous
[30:53] Speaker 1: warning about his life. But how did they get the warning? Well,
[30:58] Speaker 1: they say that the message came from the god Asur
[31:02] Speaker 1: through three sources, a dream interpreter, an omen reader, and
[31:08] Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead whom they had consulted. In
[31:13] Speaker 1: other words, these women had apparently performed a kind of séance,
[31:19] Speaker 1: communicating with ancestral ghosts to try and glean a bit
[31:23] Speaker 1: of information. Now, this is in fact the oldest known
[31:29] Speaker 1: necromancy on record, and it notably involves women as the practitioners.
[31:35] Speaker 1: The tablet doesn't detail the ritual used, perhaps they poured
[31:37] Speaker 1: libations into a pit or used some conduit to reach
[31:40] Speaker 1: the dead, but it clearly indicates that under extraordinary circumstances,
[31:45] Speaker 1: contacting ghosts was considered a pretty reasonable option. And then
[31:52] Speaker 1: we have later texts too, and they allude to necromancy also.
[31:56] Speaker 1: Mesopotamian lexical texts, essentially ancient glossaries, contain terms for necromancer,
[32:04] Speaker 1: such as sa ilu sheli etemi, literally, the one who
[32:10] Speaker 1: asks for the ghost. Another term was mushelu etemi, quote,
[32:17] Speaker 1: the one who raises a ghost, implying the act of
[32:21] Speaker 1: making a ghost appear, Now, these professions don't turn up
[32:25] Speaker 1: often in actual historical records, again hinting that they were
[32:30] Speaker 1: rare or secretive. But necromancy likely carried a stigma. Disturbing
[32:35] Speaker 1: the dead was potentially an affront to the gods. Interestingly,
[32:40] Speaker 1: in the first millennium, Babylonian and Assyrian texts, necromancy is
[32:44] Speaker 1: sometimes listed among illicit magical practices, right up there with witchcraft.
[32:51] Speaker 1: as things that an exorcist might be called in to counteract.
[32:56] Speaker 1: But still, Mesopotamian literature shows the idea of speaking with
[33:01] Speaker 1: the dead captured the imagination. In the famous Sumerian myth Gilgamesh,
[33:07] Speaker 1: that hero-king from Uruk, I've done a full reading of
[33:11] Speaker 1: it on this channel, and by the way, if you're
[33:12] Speaker 1: interested in that, the readings playlist, he manages to summon
[33:16] Speaker 1: the spirit of his dead friend Enkidu from the underworld
[33:19] Speaker 1: for a conversation. In the story, Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld,
[33:25] Speaker 1: Enkidu's ghost climbs up like a gust of wind through
[33:29] Speaker 1: a crack in the earth after gods allow him to
[33:31] Speaker 1: return briefly. Gilgamesh eagerly asks him what he has seen
[33:35] Speaker 1: among the dead, and Enkidu's spirit replies with haunting images.
[33:41] Speaker 1: For example, he says that those who died without proper
[33:44] Speaker 1: heirs or burial fare poorly, whereas those who had many
[33:48] Speaker 1: sons and proper funerals sit content At one point, Gilgamesh asks,
[33:55] Speaker 1: Did you see my little stillborn children who never knew existence?
[34:00] Speaker 1: Enkidu answers, I saw them. They play at a table
[34:04] Speaker 1: of gold and silver, laden with honey and ghee. This
[34:10] Speaker 1: poignant scene of miscarried infants being cared for in the
[34:13] Speaker 1: afterlife is kind of a rare gentle note in Mesopotamian
[34:16] Speaker 1: underworld lore. But it also implies that that through necromancy
[34:21] Speaker 1: or divine favour, getting knowledge from the dead was possible.
[34:27] Speaker 1: In any case, Gilgamesh managed to learn secrets that only
[34:31] Speaker 1: a dead man could know. Once again, the full story
[34:37] Speaker 1: is quite complex, but it's definitely well worth listening to.
[34:44] Speaker 1: It is accounts like this that blur the line between
[34:46] Speaker 1: approved religious communication and and the taboo art of necromancy.
[34:52] Speaker 1: In practice, what an exorcist might do if necromancy was
[34:56] Speaker 1: required would be to perform a ritual at night, often
[35:00] Speaker 1: in a special pit or hole in the ground called
[35:02] Speaker 1: an apu. Texts in Akkadian, and even other ancient languages,
[35:08] Speaker 1: suggest that a spirit pit could be used to let
[35:12] Speaker 1: a ghost come up to the surface. Offerings of food
[35:16] Speaker 1: or drink will be placed to attract the ghost, too.
[35:21] Speaker 1: So you might imagine a pretty eerie nocturnal ceremony. There's
[35:26] Speaker 1: no way to dress it up as something that is pleasant,
[35:30] Speaker 1: I suppose. A pit gets dug in a courtyard. The
[35:34] Speaker 1: exorcist chants over it while pouring beer and honey to
[35:38] Speaker 1: entice the spirit upward. And perhaps holding a human skull
[35:42] Speaker 1: as a focal point for the spirit. In fact, at
[35:46] Speaker 1: least one late Babylonian ritual involved using a skull as
[35:50] Speaker 1: a vessel for a summoned ghost. The skull, likely obtained
[35:54] Speaker 1: from a burial ground, would house the spirit temporarily, so
[35:58] Speaker 1: it could be questioned safely, and then it would be
[36:01] Speaker 1: reburied to send the ghost back to the underworld. Certainly,
[36:06] Speaker 1: practices like that were deemed as dangerous and double-edged. The
[36:11] Speaker 1: same ghosts that could provide wisdom about the future or
[36:15] Speaker 1: hidden matters, could also bring madness or curse the living
[36:19] Speaker 1: if they were not handled correctly. So you better get
[36:22] Speaker 1: a pretty good exorcist. Definitely not the realm for those,
[36:26] Speaker 1: just for the layman, I suppose. And it is quite
[36:30] Speaker 1: telling that later civilizations, like the Israelites, banned necromancy, like
[36:36] Speaker 1: the Bible story of the Witch of Endor, who summoned
[36:39] Speaker 1: the ghost of Samuel at King Saul's behest. It's essentially
[36:43] Speaker 1: a tale about necromancy, and it portrays Saul's acts as
[36:47] Speaker 1: desperate and sinful. Mesopotamia, being older, shows us the likely
[36:54] Speaker 1: template for such beliefs. Necromancy was a secret art, perhaps
[36:59] Speaker 1: quietly acknowledged, but certainly not openly celebrated. Now, while exorcists
[37:08] Speaker 1: might be called in for serious causes of haunting, or
[37:12] Speaker 1: even demonic possessions, Magical thinking pervaded daily life in general.
[37:18] Speaker 1: People used simpler charms and folk remedies for common needs.
[37:22] Speaker 1: A sort of everyday occultism, alongside the high ceremonial magic.
[37:27] Speaker 1: So let's talk about a few of them. First we
[37:30] Speaker 1: have in terms of health and healing. Many illnesses were
[37:35] Speaker 1: treated with a combination of practical remedies and incantations. A
[37:40] Speaker 1: tablet might prescribe a salve for a wound alongside with
[37:43] Speaker 1: a spoken charm to draw out the infection. One Mesopotamian
[37:49] Speaker 1: cure for toothache actually involves chewing on a certain root
[37:53] Speaker 1: while reciting a myth about the tooth worm. Effectively, a
[37:58] Speaker 1: spell that coaxes the pain to leave. Healers, who could
[38:03] Speaker 1: also be the same as exorcists or other specialists called Ashu,
[38:08] Speaker 1: believed that diseases had supernatural agents. So a fever might
[38:12] Speaker 1: be the breath of a demon, to be driven out
[38:15] Speaker 1: with both cooling herbs and anti-demon incantations. Then we have
[38:22] Speaker 1: protective amulets too, and this is actually very common. So
[38:27] Speaker 1: ordinary people wore amulets inscribed with prayers, or perhaps even
[38:32] Speaker 1: images of protective deities. A common amulet for travellers was
[38:37] Speaker 1: a small clay tablet or cylinder seal depicting the sun
[38:41] Speaker 1: god Shamash, or at some times the storm god Adad,
[38:46] Speaker 1: hoping for their protection as they travel on the road.
[38:50] Speaker 1: Children might wear charms too, to guard against Lilith too,
[38:55] Speaker 1: night spirits akin later to Lilith, or just the evil
[38:58] Speaker 1: eye in general. And even names could be magical. Parents
[39:03] Speaker 1: often gave babies theophoric names like Ili Shuma, my god
[39:10] Speaker 1: has heard, to invoke divine guardianship from birth. And that's
[39:14] Speaker 1: kind of like Egyptian names too. Yeah, there's a bit
[39:17] Speaker 1: of that going on in Egypt as well. Well, we
[39:22] Speaker 1: also have hints of love spells and fertility rituals. One
[39:27] Speaker 1: incantation found on a tablet is effective a love charm
[39:31] Speaker 1: of sorts, calling upon Ishtar to inflame the heart of
[39:34] Speaker 1: a desired lover. And on the flip side, there were
[39:38] Speaker 1: charms to restore sexual potency or cure impotence. The topic
[39:43] Speaker 1: of enough concern that there's entire stories of old Babylonian
[39:48] Speaker 1: incantations for virilities sometimes referred to the Sumerian phrase sazigar,
[39:54] Speaker 1: meaning rise up. These might involve making an amulet with
[40:00] Speaker 1: certain herbs and reciting a plea to a god or
[40:04] Speaker 1: goddess of passion. But then there's just the domestic magic too.
[40:10] Speaker 1: Simple folk rituals that might be done at home without
[40:13] Speaker 1: the real need for a priest. For example, if one's
[40:17] Speaker 1: house felt infected by bad luck A family might sweep
[40:22] Speaker 1: out the house while verbally sweeping out the misfortune, and
[40:25] Speaker 1: then sprinkle salt or flour at the doorway while invoking blessings.
[40:31] Speaker 1: A pretty mundane act with magical intent. Another everyday practice
[40:37] Speaker 1: was the use of figurines or drawings to avert evil.
[40:40] Speaker 1: A homeowner might bury a tiny figurine of a protective
[40:45] Speaker 1: genie at each cardinal point of the house's foundation during construction.
[40:50] Speaker 1: essentially installing a spiritual guard post. Cuneiform instructions for building
[40:58] Speaker 1: a new house often include prayers on how to make
[41:01] Speaker 1: it a house with a happy heart, free of evil,
[41:05] Speaker 1: bridging architecture and magic together. So the key point is
[41:12] Speaker 1: that Mesopotamian magic wasn't confined to temple dark rooms or
[41:17] Speaker 1: royal courts. It was right there in the living rooms
[41:22] Speaker 1: of normal people. The boundary between religion, medicine and magic
[41:27] Speaker 1: was quite a porous one. A mother's lullaby to her
[41:31] Speaker 1: child could double as a protective spell, asking the gods
[41:33] Speaker 1: to keep away nightmares. A farmer seeing pests on his
[41:37] Speaker 1: crops might recite to child to appease the demons of locusts,
[41:42] Speaker 1: as well as physically try to remove them. Effectively, in
[41:48] Speaker 1: their mindset, Visible actions and invisible appeals went hand in hand.
[41:56] Speaker 1: But if we're talking about Mesopotamian occult stuff, we can't
[42:00] Speaker 1: really not mention the divination act of it, and that
[42:03] Speaker 1: is reading signs and, you know, things like that, kind
[42:07] Speaker 1: of like augury, to gain secret knowledge, the future or
[42:10] Speaker 1: the will of the gods. Now, while divination was highly respected,
[42:15] Speaker 1: even more in the exorcism in some context, It can
[42:19] Speaker 1: be considered part of the occult because, well, it involves
[42:23] Speaker 1: hidden knowledge and elaborate rituals quite often. The Mesopotamians were
[42:28] Speaker 1: famed in the ancient world for their divinatory arts. Later
[42:32] Speaker 1: cultures like the Greeks and Romans looked to Chaldeans, a
[42:36] Speaker 1: term they used for Babylonian star priests as masters of astrology. Well,
[42:43] Speaker 1: Mesopotamian diviners used a bewildering array of methods too. So
[42:47] Speaker 1: let's go with the first one, which is liver divination,
[42:52] Speaker 1: which is hepatoscopy. Hepatoscopy, perhaps. Yeah, let's go with hepatoscopy.
[42:58] Speaker 1: That sounds better. Well, it's perhaps the most distinctive method.
[43:03] Speaker 1: This involved examining the liver of a sacrificed sheep or goat.
[43:08] Speaker 1: The liver was seen as a microcosm of the universe,
[43:11] Speaker 1: you see. Diviners would inspect lobes, spots, and strange markings
[43:16] Speaker 1: on the liver's surface. each which would correspond to an
[43:20] Speaker 1: omen in their textbooks. Thousands of clay liver models and
[43:25] Speaker 1: manuals have been found too, indicating how formalised this practice was.
[43:30] Speaker 1: For example, a manual might say, if the liver's gallbladder
[43:33] Speaker 1: is elongated and points to the left, it means an
[43:36] Speaker 1: enemy's army will advance. Kings routinely ask divinos to perform
[43:41] Speaker 1: liver readings before battles or important decisions. And then we have,
[43:46] Speaker 1: of course, Astrology. And, well, traditionally Mesopotamia is seen as
[43:52] Speaker 1: the birthplace of this practice. By the second millennium BCE,
[43:56] Speaker 1: Babylonian scholars were recording the movements of planets and noting
[44:01] Speaker 1: correlations with real-world events. The massive compendium Enuma Anu Enlil
[44:10] Speaker 1: compiles hundreds of celestial omens. Let's look at a typical entry.
[44:17] Speaker 1: If Venus disappears in the West and remains hidden for
[44:21] Speaker 1: however many days, there will be famine in the land.
[44:27] Speaker 1: You see, these star readers believed that the gods wrote
[44:30] Speaker 1: messages in the sky. But they weren't clear. Always a
[44:35] Speaker 1: little cryptic. It was up to them to decode them.
[44:38] Speaker 1: And if you could decode them, well, you could prepare
[44:42] Speaker 1: for what was to come. This is less like personal
[44:46] Speaker 1: horoscope astrology and more like state omens. It was used
[44:51] Speaker 1: to advise kings about the fate of their kingdom. But
[44:55] Speaker 1: of course, one can only imagine that normal people would
[45:00] Speaker 1: be making their own observations of the night sky. After all,
[45:08] Speaker 1: we all look on the same sky, don't we? Well,
[45:12] Speaker 1: next we have Dream Interpretation. Another accepted form of divination
[45:16] Speaker 1: was interpreting people's dreams and visions, this kind of thing.
[45:22] Speaker 1: Special diviners, or sometimes even exorcists, might be called to
[45:26] Speaker 1: interpret a perplexing dream. They had dream omen lists, much
[45:31] Speaker 1: like the omen lists for livers and stars. For instance,
[45:36] Speaker 1: one might consult a tablet that says something like, If
[45:39] Speaker 1: a man dreams he's flying over the earth, it is
[45:43] Speaker 1: a good omen. meaning he will attain a position of power.
[45:48] Speaker 1: Or perhaps, if someone dreams about a river flowing with blood,
[45:54] Speaker 1: it means that disease is about to strike. In any case,
[45:59] Speaker 1: dreams were considered one way the gods, or perhaps even ghosts,
[46:03] Speaker 1: communicated with the living. And then they had the normal,
[46:08] Speaker 1: everyday omens. The Mesopotamians also read meaning into chance events,
[46:15] Speaker 1: If a certain kind of bird flew by one's right,
[46:18] Speaker 1: it could be lucky. But if a black cat crossed
[46:22] Speaker 1: the road, yes, that's right, even then, it goes pretty
[46:27] Speaker 1: far back, doesn't it? Well, that might be a warning.
[46:32] Speaker 1: There were omens drawn from the shapes of oil poured
[46:35] Speaker 1: on water, from the way smoke rose from a fire,
[46:39] Speaker 1: even from the patterns that worms made in wood Pretty
[46:44] Speaker 1: much anything unusual could carry a message. It was just
[46:47] Speaker 1: up to the observer to interpret it. I suppose. It's
[46:53] Speaker 1: a bit of fun in any case. In any case,
[46:57] Speaker 1: it did take an expert to give a proper reading, though.
[47:02] Speaker 1: To look up traditional interpretations. But still, like I said,
[47:06] Speaker 1: as with the night sky, really anyone can observe that
[47:11] Speaker 1: and make up what they want. But importantly, divination was
[47:17] Speaker 1: not considered magic in the sense of casting spells, but
[47:21] Speaker 1: it was part of the same intellectual sphere that often
[47:24] Speaker 1: practiced by the same learned scribes. The diviner, Baru, might
[47:30] Speaker 1: work alongside the exorcist, one diagnosing the future or uncovering
[47:35] Speaker 1: hidden causes, the other performing the remedy. Let's take for example,
[47:42] Speaker 1: If ill omens suggested the king was in danger from
[47:45] Speaker 1: a curse, the exorcist would then be summoned to perform
[47:48] Speaker 1: the apotropaic or protective rituals to avert that fate. Quite
[47:54] Speaker 1: proud of myself for pronouncing that word properly. The sheer
[47:58] Speaker 1: volume of divination texts in Mesopotamia certainly is a testament
[48:03] Speaker 1: to how much they valued knowing the hidden truth. A
[48:07] Speaker 1: king like Esarhaddon of Assyria, 7th century BCE, never undertook
[48:12] Speaker 1: a major campaign without multiple divinations. He would have priests
[48:17] Speaker 1: inspect dozens of livers, and watch the skies for months
[48:22] Speaker 1: for any sign of divine disfavor. If the omens were bad,
[48:28] Speaker 1: he might delay war or perform additional rituals to try
[48:31] Speaker 1: and change the fate. And that certainly is a theme
[48:36] Speaker 1: in the occult, the desire for control. in a very
[48:40] Speaker 1: uncertain world. And by mastering this occult knowledge, whether incantations
[48:46] Speaker 1: to banish a demon or omens to foresee danger, the
[48:50] Speaker 1: Mesopotamians sought to impose a measure of order on that
[48:54] Speaker 1: very unorderly world around them. So we can certainly see
[49:01] Speaker 1: that the occult traditions of ancient Mesopotamia present a pretty
[49:06] Speaker 1: rich history of human attempts to engage with the unseen.
[49:10] Speaker 1: For over 3,000 years, from the first Sumerian city-states to
[49:16] Speaker 1: the late Babylonian Empire, priests and practice refined a pretty
[49:21] Speaker 1: complex system of magical and divinatory knowledge. And they left
[49:25] Speaker 1: behind not only fascinating tales of demons and ghosts, but
[49:30] Speaker 1: also a kind of proto-scientific methodology. Catalogs of symptoms and spells,
[49:37] Speaker 1: observations of the heavens, experiments in ritual efficacy, all carefully
[49:42] Speaker 1: recorded on clay. Well, quite lucky they did that. Clay
[49:47] Speaker 1: lasts a lot longer than papyrus. The fact that a
[49:51] Speaker 1: significant portion of Mesopotamian literature survives, is related to magic
[49:56] Speaker 1: and divination, shows how central the occult really was. And
[50:02] Speaker 1: in a way, the occult was both feared and respected.
[50:06] Speaker 1: People feared malevolent magic with the wrath of demons, but
[50:10] Speaker 1: they also deeply respected the professionals who could harness supernatural
[50:14] Speaker 1: powers for good. Exorcists and diviners held prestigious positions at
[50:20] Speaker 1: court and temples. The texts were copied generation after generation,
[50:26] Speaker 1: even as the spoken language changed. That indicates certainly a
[50:30] Speaker 1: reverence for this wisdom. The legacy of the practisers did
[50:35] Speaker 1: not vanish with Babylon's fall either. Through the Babylonians and Assyrians,
[50:41] Speaker 1: elements of Mesopotamian occult knowledge trickled down into other cultures.
[50:45] Speaker 1: The Hittites, Canaanites, and others of the Near East adopted
[50:50] Speaker 1: or paralleled many Mesopotamian spells and demons. Later, Greek and
[50:55] Speaker 1: Roman writers knew of Babylon's astrological prowess and the Chaldean
[51:01] Speaker 1: experts whose star-law-shaped horoscopic astrology still practice today. Even the
[51:08] Speaker 1: concept of exorcism in religious traditions, the idea that a
[51:13] Speaker 1: trained holy person could come and cast a demon out,
[51:17] Speaker 1: that is certainly uncanny echoes of the Mesopotamian Ashibutu. Some
[51:23] Speaker 1: scholars see lines of continuity, for instance between Mesopotamian demons
[51:28] Speaker 1: Pazuzu and later Middle Eastern demonology, or between the incantation
[51:33] Speaker 1: formulas and biblical psalms of protection. It certainly rhymes, and
[51:39] Speaker 1: everything comes from somewhere. Yet beyond influence, it is stories
[51:45] Speaker 1: and details that really captivate us. So we come away
[51:49] Speaker 1: from studying our Mesopotamian occultism today with a pretty striking image.
[51:54] Speaker 1: That lone figure, that lone exorcist, doing his ritual bonfire,
[51:59] Speaker 1: consuming the wax figures of witches, a ghost bound by
[52:04] Speaker 1: a clay image. a young woman leading him back to
[52:07] Speaker 1: the underworld, priests peering at the liver of a sheep
[52:12] Speaker 1: for hints of the future, or an ancient father whispering
[52:16] Speaker 1: a Sumerian spell to cure his sick child. These are
[52:20] Speaker 1: the scenes among the oldest recorded evidence of humanity's fascination
[52:25] Speaker 1: with the unseen world. And, like we said at the start,
[52:29] Speaker 1: this world was not a separate fringe realm, but it
[52:33] Speaker 1: was just daily existence, an unseen partner, but always there.
[52:40] Speaker 1: Those cuneiform tablets, painstakingly deciphered by modern scholars, reveal that
[52:45] Speaker 1: our ancestors in the cradle of civilization grappled with many
[52:50] Speaker 1: of the same fears that later generations, including our own, have.
[52:55] Speaker 1: Fear of death, illness, unknown calamity. And they responded with
[53:01] Speaker 1: creativity and ritual. So next time, that you're putting, well,
[53:07] Speaker 1: next time you're crossing your fingers behind your back, or
[53:11] Speaker 1: perhaps whispering, please, please, please, please, please, when you want
[53:14] Speaker 1: something to happen, well, that comes from a long tradition. Perhaps,
[53:22] Speaker 1: after 5,000 years, or even longer, it is just built
[53:27] Speaker 1: into the human psychology. Perhaps it always will be. In
[53:35] Speaker 1: any case, I would like to thank you for joining
[53:37] Speaker 1: me today. Interesting topic, hmm? Well, it's usually interesting topics
[53:44] Speaker 1: on here. Of course, that is a little bit subjective,
[53:47] Speaker 1: I suppose. But in any case, I'm going to thank
[53:52] Speaker 1: my top dear patrons and supporters. There's both on Patreon
[53:56] Speaker 1: and YouTube memberships. Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Amber, Susan, Cameron, Gary, Charlene, Lynn-Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edneer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Erin, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[54:17] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Cher, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Dalvery, Anthony, Lucy, Brandon,
[54:30] Speaker 1: Cuckoo Bubonic, Nicholas, Craig, Neftis, Alexander, And that's it for
[54:36] Speaker 1: me from now. So I would like to once again
[54:38] Speaker 1: thank you for joining me, and thank you to our
[54:41] Speaker 1: patrons for keeping everything ad-free. And I hope you enjoyed
[55:02] Speaker 1: the video. Leave a comment down below, and I will
[55:06] Speaker 1: see you whenever you come back, I suppose. I'll be
[55:09] Speaker 1: in the same place. Good night, everyone. And lots of
[55:13] Speaker 1: love to you all.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.