Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Curse Tablets

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Curse tablets are exactly what you think - tablets with curses inscribed on them. But what were they used for, and when did people do this? Hit play and those answers shall be revealed!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Jerry's here sitting in for Dave,

and this is short stuff. Giddy up, tally ho, let's go. Let's make sure this one doesn't blow. Ooh, saucy. Thank you. A curse upon your house. A pox upon you then, jerk. I would never write a curse tablet for you, my friend. No. No, nor would I. I mean, I would even think that would go without saying, because it's just such a jerk move to write a curse tablet against somebody if you think about it. Yeah, I never had heard of these before. These are kind of what it sounds like. It's a tablet. Mm-hmm. This is generally ancient Rome or Greece with a curse inscribed upon it, and you would generally inscribe this curse after somebody's death, right?

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Usually, though. There's one, a famous one in Pompeii that somebody affixed to a tomb, so you could do it after death. And what you were essentially saying, do you want to read that one? Sure. You ready? I'm ready. And this comes to our friends from HouseToForks.com in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. Stranger, stay a short while if it is not too troublesome, and learn what to avoid. This man, who I hoped was a friend of mine, brought prosecutors to me, aka, persecutors sort of? No, I think like, I think he sued him.

Oh, okay. Prosecutors to me. Oh, yeah, sure. And instigated proceedings. I am grateful to the gods and my innocence, Colin. I am free from all trouble. He who deceived us, may he not receive the penates, which are the household gods, nor the underworld. Right. So what this guy who cursed this other person's tomb was saying is, this guy's a jerk. I hope that his soul basically doesn't even make it to the afterlife, that essentially he's just doomed to wander aimlessly for eternity, because he sued me once. That's right. And this is a great example of a sort of a standard issue curse tablet, also known at times as a, oh, here we go, Defixion. Wow, nice. I was going to say the E and pinch my

forefinger and thumb together. Defixion. Yeah, I think that's it. You might be right. But this was a common practice at various times through the ancient times. And they were not necessarily always written on the same thing. Sometimes it was papyrus, sometimes I believe they found lamps and pieces of clay and things like that. It kind of depends on how much money you had. But there was a lot of lead because of the silver mining operations, especially near Athens. And so lead turned out to be a really great sort of permanent thing that you could carve something on and apparently looks really cool when carved upon. Yeah, there's somebody interviewed in the House of Works article that said, you know,

when you write on it, when you carve it, it has like this kind of like silvery line that really kind of pops, I guess, against the dullness of the oxidized lead. And then also it's just easy to write in lead. You can carve in it pretty easily. You don't have to be like a silversmith of any sort to do that. You can just be an average smoe with something sharp. That's right. There was a historian too they talked to that said that it kind of came and went throughout history, but it interestingly was like a real fad and then went away really quickly each time that happened. It wasn't like a gradual rise and fall. They described it as sharp spikes in popularity. Yeah, and I saw that it was the time that it popped up was somewhere around like 500 BCE to

maybe 350 BCE is when it first starts. And if you'll remember Chuck from our bicameralism episode, that's about the time people got their brain, their consciousness in order and started to get superstitious because the gods had abandoned them. Interesting. I think so too. I wonder if this has anything to do with that. Yeah, I mean, sure. Might have just been part of that time, you know. Yeah, why not? Julian Jane's hypothesis wasn't scientific. I can add to it any way I like. All right, so let's, this is very smug the way he said that. I liked it. That always reminds me and you can hear the word smug when Tom Cruise talked to Matt Lauer about being smug.

Oh yeah, no, I never saw that one. Oh, it's one of the great clips. Of course, Matt Lauer ended up being a creep. So I'm not defending him, but I think he was talking about Scientology and he just kept, oh no, he was talking about Glib, sorry. Matt, you're being Glib. Yeah, that's right. I have seen that. Yeah. Good clip. All right, let's take a break and ponder Tom Cruise-ness and we'll be back to talk about Curse tablets right after this. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology,

but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that people seem to do, and this was when they were in fashion, when curse tablets were in fashion, everybody was into them. But it seems like one of the things that you would do is curse your rivals. Sometimes your rival in politics, your rival in business. I think some people cursed the rival chariot teams to their favorite chariot teams, which is neighbors, really longheaded. But it just goes to show people have been

longheaded for thousands of years, right? There's always been longs. Yeah, your neighbors, especially if you have some sort of dispute, anyone who takes you to court. And then also people who are romantic rivals to somebody you like. I saw one that basically said, may, I think Helen be bound when she tries to flirt with or have sex with the dude that I like, whatever his name was, I don't remember. And that basically she was saying, please, gods, intervene and keep her from being able to perform in the sack with Aristophanes, let's say, who I'm now hoping was a man. Or Romulus, by the way, smells bad and has a small pee pee. Yeah, but the whole thing was, the whole thing was that you were basically calling upon the gods,

you're invoking the gods to do something bad to this person that you did not like. Yeah. And so as you would imagine, if you had a lot of money, you were probably more educated, you could probably spell and write these things yourself. But if you were wealthy, you probably paid someone to do it, maybe beautifully. But like you said, all stripes did it. So if you didn't have a lot of money, that may have been one like on a shard of clay. And you would go to, you may not be able to read or write. So you would go to a magician. And these magician, how is described in this House of Works article, were like contract attorneys. And they would kind of give you a template and have blanks and, you know, say fill in the blanks

with like, who's your grievance? What's his name? And what was the grievance? And then they would sort of fill this thing in Fred Flintstone style. And apparently there were times even where they found some examples of these where the name or the grievance was so long that they had to kind of squish it in on these template forms, which is really funny if you think about it. Yeah. And also it sounds like an ancient mad lib, but magic mad lib basically. Yeah, exactly. So these things got so popular and so widespread that in some of the curse tablets, they'll find like clauses that say, and if the other person finds out that I've cursed them and they try to reverse curse me, then I am rubber in their glue in that case and their curse will bounce off of me and stick to

them instead. Right. And they would say, what is rubber? I mean, let's just step back for a second, Chuck, or essentially talking about the same thing. A curse tablet and saying I'm rubber and your glue is basically the same thing. I just think we should point that out. Yeah. And it's funny. I do need to poke a little fun at this article because I didn't include it for your, I should have included it so you could have a laugh too. Sure, I need to laugh. I deleted it. God, I need to laugh. At the end, it was talking about where these things kind of when they fell out of popularity. And it's like, well, some argue that even though they don't do it anymore, our society is still very much like this. And just take a look at Twitter,

that sort of modern version of a curse tablet. I got a laugh. Yeah, I guess I kind of, yeah. I think they were cursing Twitter just then. Another thing too is there was a person interviewed that said that they were like a magical arms race because there'd be curses, counter curses, amulets, like the evil eye, you know, or the eye of Osiris, maybe the very famous like an amulet or symbol that was worn to ward off curses. Like I think that was the rubber that you would wear so that the curses would bounce off of you. Oh, like I'm looking at you, buddy. Basically. And then that's it. Cursed tablets gone for the better. Short stuff out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts,

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