Lore - Episode 221: Remote Control

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

One of our most common desires, no matter our culture, religion, or station in life, is something that countless practitioners of folk magic have spent their lives pursuing—sometimes with dark results. Written and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with research by GennaRose Nethercott, and music by Chad Lawson. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: Rocket Money: Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way, by going to RocketMoney.com/LORE.  Squarespace: Build your own powerful, professional website, with free hosting, zero patches or upgrades, and 24/7 award-winning customer support. Start your free trial website today at Squarespace.com/lore, and when you make your first purchase, use offer code LORE to save 10%. To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

Strike! Tell me something I don't know, Amp. Well, unlike that nasty curveball, there aren't any surprises when you finance your next car with Carvana. You get real terms personalized for you, right in your strike zone. Really? Steerike! How am I supposed to focus when you're telling me about Carvana? Well, Slugger, you gotta keep your eye on the ball.

Just like you can keep an eye on your customized down-and-monthly car payments. I can customize those? He's out and on his way to finance his next car with Carvana. Visit Carvana.com or download the app to get pre-qualified today. We'll drive you happy at Carvana. The Beatles set it best, noting that sometimes if we hope to get by, we're going to need a little help from our friends. And that was the situation an archaeologist found himself in back in the late 1920s.

He had two objects on his desk that were found 100 miles apart, but they were somehow connected One was a golden ring found by a farmer way back in 1785 in an area of England that had once been occupied by the Romans. The other found many years later and many miles away at the site of an old Celtic temple was a tablet, and yet both of them had the same person's name on them, Senecaianus. The archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, wanted answers to their mysterious connection, but he needed someone who was better with translating old Latin than he was, so he called in his friend John, who, among other career highlights, had worked on the Oxford English Dictionary.

And as Wheeler predicted, John was able to shed light on the mystery. The tablet's message translated as, Sylvianus has lost a ring, among those who bear the name of Senecaianus to none grant health until he bring back the ring to the temple. It turns out the ring had originally belonged to a Roman man named Sylvianus, but was stolen by another guy named Senecaianus. And while the thief carved his name onto his precious prize, the old owner had carved something else, not just a memo, but a curse tablet. It's an ancient idea, but one that held on for thousands of years.

When in need, a curse could be written down and offered up in just the right way, bending the threads of fate to their wishes, often for nefarious reasons, like heaping misfortune upon a thief. But sometimes those curses have featured something that has the power to shake people to their core, to alter their world and leave them feeling powerless. I'm talking, of course, about love. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. It's at the center of so many parts of life.

It's been the cause of war, the path to peace, and the reason for communities to stick together through difficult times. No matter where you go around the world or who you talk to, it has proven to be a universal value. Love. And just like everything else that humans have wanted or needed over the millennia, like food, resources, safety, and good health, the desire for love has driven people to find ways to control it.

Enter the love spell. The earliest known example of love magic is pretty old, dating back over 4,200 years. It's found on a clay tablet from an area of Iraq that was once home to the ancient city of Qish, and its message is surprisingly timeless. By Ishtar and Ishara, I conjure you. So long as his neck and your neck are not entwined, may you not find peace. It's an example of what's known as a binding spell. Love is designed to control and constrain the actions of another person.

And of course, it was an idea that didn't stay in Mesopotamia. Centuries later, it was alive and well in ancient Egypt, too. One Egyptian love spell begins by hailing the gods, naming the man's love interest, and then requesting that she be drawn to him and, I quote, like a cow after grass. Which, yeah, doesn't sound that romantic, I know, but cows love grass. They need it, actually, so logically, it does make sense. It's an example that leans on the emotional side of love, evoking desire and need. But most Egyptian love spells actually ignored things like affection and instead focused

on controlling the circumstances that kept them apart. Factors like family, social station, and politics all got in the way of love, so naturally, these spells tried to manipulate that. Even the ancient Greeks got in on the fun. Now, there were two primary types of love magic in their culture, Eros and Philea. The best way to differentiate them would be to say that Eros dealt with the physical attraction and desire, while Philea focused on romantic affection, two sides of the same coin that most people were looking for.

Love magic that leaned toward the Eros side of things was practiced mostly by men. The goal was to induce lust and passion in the person they were interested in. And it's worth pointing out that the ancient Greeks viewed erotic love as a disease inflicted upon humans by gods like Pan and Aphrodite. So love spells with that focus tended to have intense, sometimes even violent, language. Eros love spells sometimes used charms known as agogay. And fruit, oddly enough, things like apples and quints. Because well, why not, right?

And on the Philea side of things, the language was more centered around faithfulness and affection. These were love spells primarily used by women to keep their partners interested in staying together and were usually implemented when they noticed that their partner was starting to stray. This side of love magic for the ancient Greeks had amulets of its own, and a lot of the focus was actually on beautification, sort of a magical cosmetic industry in a way, echoes of a hope that if one was able to make themselves more attractive, their partner wouldn't wander away.

But all things change as time goes by, and love spells have been no exception. As culture shifted in different places, the ways in which love magic was used also shifted with it. And a good example of this is in the Italian Renaissance. All of a sudden, marriage had become a major foundation for society. Not because of romance, mind you, but because marriage had become the glue that connected businesses and political alliances. This was a time when the success or failure of a marriage could determine the success

or failure of an entire community. Which meant that love magic had to adapt. Gone were the spells that aimed at physical attraction or feelings of affection, and in their place arrived a new focus, removing the obstacles to that important alliance. Love magic of that era tried to help people climb the social ladder, or encourage one family to accept a husband or wife for their heir that they might have overlooked. Which of course leads to the Inquisition, as all roads do. Yes, it's most often associated with witchcraft and heretics, but through these socially

manipulative love spells, all of a sudden, women were vying for power through means that were seen as supernatural. Because the assumption was, if a woman was in control, there had to be a devilish reason why. A little bit of context first. There's an old collection of Greek magical spells from the 2nd century BC that really shows off the scope of this folklore. It might not be the most story-driven content, but it'll be fun for you to share with friends

at a party someday. One object described in this manuscript is the love doll. Think of these as the stereotypical voodoo doll, except their purpose was to inflict romance and desire instead of pain and suffering. A person would craft a doll that looked like their love interest, and then anything they did to that doll would be transferred to that person. Sort of a remote control romance, I guess. But a lot of the elements described in the manuscript dealt with a concept called sympathetic

magic. This is where the ingredients or amulets that resemble a thing affect that thing magically. For example, asparagus was often fed to grooms before their wedding night to serve as an aphrodisiac. Because if plants help the body part that they look like, then asparagus, oh well, you get the point. There was also Spanish fly, otherwise known as the blister beetle. The wings of the bug could be dried and crushed into a powder and then used in tonics as an

aphrodisiac. And folks certainly did feel a bit flush and warm from this stuff, but that's because it was poisonous. As little as 32 milligrams could shut down a person's kidneys. Oh, and don't forget periwinkle flowers crushed up with worms or stolen sacramental bread from the Catholic Church. Or human elements, such as blood, sweats, and other bodily fluids, usually baked into a cake of some kind.

Which should sound familiar if you remember the story of Lavoisin, the French woman who served the social elites of Paris in the 1670s. She was said to have created love potions by crushing up the bones and blood of infants, which obviously wasn't looked upon too kindly once people found out. And how far did her human flesh-based potions go? All the way to the top, it seems. King Louis XIV's own mistress, Madame de Montespagne, bought the stuff from Lavoisin for over a decade, adding it daily to the king's meals in an attempt to win his affections

and become his queen. But remember what I said about how society, and more specifically the Church, viewed women who used love magic to get ahead in life. Madame de Montespagne was viewed as overly ambitious and power-hungry, which led to an investigation and the arrest of her supplier, Lavoisin. Whether Montespagne's motive was anything more than a simple desire for love, though, will forever be a mystery. And then there's Anne Boleyn.

When King Henry VIII abandoned Catherine of Aragon, folks would have assumed that it would be for political reasons, a better alliance, or some other union that delivered power to the crown. But instead, he married Anne, a woman with no political clout at all. Naturally, rumors started because, well, that's what people do. They whispered that Anne had bewitched the king, that she had used magic or the dark arts to entrap him. And these stories weren't helped by the darker lies that Anne had six fingers on her right

hand or visible moles on a protruding tooth, rumors that were used by others to paint her as a witch. Her miscarriage in 1536 was even used as proof of these witchcraft accusations. Back then, a number of events could be classified as a monstrous birth, and those who were looking for any excuse necessary to paint Anne Boleyn as a power-hungry witch had a lot to work with. Today, it's clear that there is no evidence that a love spell was ever involved in her relationship with King Henry VIII, but the fact that most people assume that there was

can be seen as proof of just how common that belief was at the time. What is clear, though, is just how entwined love magic has always been with the pursuit of wealth and power. These days, help is always around the corner. If you want something to help with your headache or a vitamin to better balance your nutrition, you might go to your local pharmacy to get it. But the Greek word at the root, pharmacon, can actually mean medicine and poison. Judging by the drug commercials on TV and their seemingly endless list of complications

and side effects, maybe that's still true. The things crafted to help us can also do us harm. And that even applies to love potions. Mary was considered by many to be an old maid. In 1746, she was roughly 26 years old and had yet to get married like the rest of her peers. And exactly why was a mystery, considering that she was kind, skilled, and the daughter of a wealthy lawyer.

In fact, her father, Francis Blandi, was pretty well known throughout Oxfordshire, and he was ready to see Mary, well, married, and to hand over her dowry of 10,000 pounds. But for those who love historic currency conversion, that was a tidy fortune, probably worth around $2 million today. And that's when Captain William Henry Cranston showed up. He was descended from Scottish royalty and had moved south to England to start a new life. And at some point in 1746, he met and fell in love with Mary Blandi.

Now considering all the things we've discussed about social barriers and difficult families, it might be safe to assume that Mary's father might have resisted a newcomer to town. But instead, he welcomed him in. Literally, Cranston was welcomed into their home, where he lived with Mary and her father. But close quarters tend to breed discomfort, and soon enough it became clear that there was a problem with the young captain. It seems that he was already married. His wife's name was Ann Murray, and she, along with their child, still lived in Scotland.

But Cranston swore that the marriage wasn't legitimate and promised to resolve the matter. He sent letters to Ann, but they went unanswered. So he ultimately made a trip north to see her in person. Eventually, Mary's father got fed up and called the whole thing off. Everything about this other marriage smelled fishy to him, and Mary would no longer be allowed to wed the captain. He kicked the young man out and told him to stay away. But love is a powerful force, and while her father might have lost interest, Mary couldn't

let go. And that's when Cranston came to her with a plan. He had obtained a love potion, a powder, really, that Mary could use on her father in order to win back his favor. He was, after all, an obstacle to their happiness, so earning his approval was key. So Mary did what Cranston told her to do. Every day she prepared the meals for her father and added a bit of the white powder, with hope and prayer that her troubles would go away.

This went on for months, too, until one day her father did respond to the magic powder. By dying. The aftermath was a blur of panic and emotions. Mary tried to get rid of the rest of the love charm, but a household servant managed to save some of it. The authorities recalled, and Mary was caught trying to leave town to join Cranston, after which they planned to head to France. And while this was long before the age of modern forensic science, a local doctor did

try to test the powder that the servant had saved. He suspected it was arsenic and performed a number of tests on both the mysterious powder and a real arsenic sample, and in each case, Mary's love charm performed the same way that the poison did. And with that, Mary went to trial. Of course, she proclaimed her innocence. She had no idea the powder was anything dangerous, just a love potion given to her by Cranston. But the young man, who incidentally turned out to be penniless and therefore deeply interested

in Mary's dowry, was nowhere to be found. So Mary was convicted of murder instead. On April 6th of 1752, she was hanged for her mistake. Cranston never got a penny of her money, though, but he did slip away to France in the end. And he died there, just a year after Mary paid for his crime with her life. They are, without a doubt, one of humankind's oldest forms of magic. From binding spells carved on clay tablets and magical scrolls to poisonous elixirs and miniature dolls, it seems one thing has always been true.

Love makes us do crazy things. But sometimes love isn't the true motivation. Sometimes the actions of those who use love charms was really about something deeper, something even more core to who we are as a species. Love magic was ultimately about control and power. And here's the wild part of it all. There are many who believe that these charms actually worked, just not for the reasons you might think.

You see, the very act of obtaining or creating a love charm had a way of boosting a person's confidence. And confidence is attractive. And for the innocent target of those charms and spells, learning that someone was trying to win their affection often made the situation better. What better way to know a person is truly committed to you than learning that they've tried to employ magic to keep you together? Of course, that doesn't make it right.

Should we be out there manipulating other people with attempted charms and magic? Probably not. But history makes it clear that a lot of people have refused to play by the rules. And the relics and evidence they've left behind is fascinating. Oh, and one last thing. Remember our archaeologist from the beginning, Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his helpful friend John? There's no way to know if that cursed tablet ever actually had the power to bring the stolen

ring back to its owner. My guess, considering how the two objects were found so far apart, is that Sylvianus never saw his precious jewelry again. There aren't many people who remember those artifacts today, which is understandable. They're just two small fragments of the past, grains of sand on the beach of archaeology. But even still, they made an impact on John, whose Latin translation brought their story to life. So he wrote his own version of their story, a precious ring inscribed with old language

and a spiteful owner who wanted it back. That story, I'm glad to say, is known by all because it's the main thread running through the fictional world he built, a world that's been enjoyed by millions and millions of readers over the years. John, of course, was J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. After diving deep into the history of love potions and charms, one thing has become very clear to me. The way love works is often a mystery, and folklore is really good about rising to the

challenge. Thankfully, we've moved on from using dangerous chemicals to unlock the hearts of those we desire. Well, almost. It turns out that folklore is still alive and well, if you know where to look. Then, if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll share one more example of love gone wrong. This episode of Lore was sponsored by Rocket Money.

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Juan arrived in New Jersey in 1953 when he was in his mid-40s. It was a chance for a new life, a fresh start, and that meant two things, finding a job and finding true love. Like a lot of newly-arrived immigrants, Juan quickly found work doing manual labor, in his case on a local farm. But he also caught wind of a company writing a Spanish-English dictionary, and being bilingual and well-read, he offered his services. The company quickly hired him.

But while working there, he discovered the constant stream of advertisements that were sent to his employer, magazines and books of all topics, shapes, and flavors, and that included some that dealt with the occult and black magic. More than a little curious, Juan placed an order for a few of them. And that's how he found himself spending his nights in his little shack on the farm, reading through books on the dark arts. Spells of all kinds were offered up in these books as real and powerful, and there was one particular kind of a spell he was keenly interested in trying, a love spell.

All Juan had to do was sort through the instructions and the ingredients necessary to make it all Most of the stuff was easy to find, and the ritual itself was going to be simple, just a circle on the ground that he could use to summon the devil, who would grant him his wish making his love spell become real. The only tough piece of the puzzle to crack was an item on the list, the cranium of a murderer. Juan really didn't want to get caught robbing a grave, so he twisted the meaning of the object to also include the cranium of someone killed by a murderer, and that murderer would

be him. On the night of October 13th, 1956, Juan waited for one of the other farmhands, a young teenager named Roger Carletto, to come into his shack to bomb a cigarette like he did most every night. But this time, when Roger turned his back, Juan struck him down and ended his life. Then while the owners of the farm, Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblum, were asleep, he buried the boy's body beneath the chicken yard. And then he waited.

Week after week, Juan maintained his patience as he waited for the corpse to decompose enough to allow him to harvest the cranium that he needed for the ritual. And finally, seven months later, it was time. Digging down to Roger's remains, Juan used a knife to cut the cranium away and then reburied the rest of the evidence. That night, he set up his magic circle, all the necessary ingredients on hand, including the fragment of skull from a murder victim. He recited the incantation, followed the instructions, and did everything by the book.

And then, nothing. No arrival of the devil, no clear sign that his spell had worked, nothing. Frustrated, Juan decided to wait a little while. Maybe love spells needed time to click into place, but after another two months of hoping for success, he finally decided that the ritual had failed. So he began to plan his final move, turning himself in to the police. At first, that plan involved breaking into the home of his employers there on the farm, making a scene and allowing them to call the police.

Maybe it was a nervousness thing, or maybe he wanted to maintain a way out. I'm guessing the latter, because once he got inside and woke the old couple up and the police were called, he chickened out and then blamed the murder of Roger on them. But his guilty conscience caught up in the end. Unable to live with what he had done between murdering one person and ruining the lives of two others, he finally crumbled under the weight of it all and confessed. The Rosenblums were set free, and Roger Carletto's true killer was finally behind bars. And it's a powerful lesson about the true danger of magic.

Like so many others throughout history, Juan Rivera Aponte never did manage to get his love spell to work. What he did get, though, was life in prison. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Jenna Rose Nethercots and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast, there is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life.

Information about all of that and more is available over at lorpodcast.com. For fans of video, Lore is available on YouTube. Each new episode is released alongside the podcast, but in talking head style video format. Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.