The Blindboy Podcast - Hieronymus Bosch

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

I chat about the painter Hieronymous Bosch, and how our modern vision of Hell is based on 12th century Cork Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dust off the bus conductor's custard, you stunning donicas. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Thank you for the lovely feedback regarding last week's episode where I had a chat with Sinead O'Connor. Sinead was fantastic, crack. I'd love to have her back on the podcast again to talk about whatever, talk about anything. I loved hearing about her artistic process,

her opinions on religion. She's a fabulously interesting person. If you're a newer listener to this podcast, I suggest going back and listening to some earlier episodes and familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener,

if you're a droopy Susan or a sideways Kevin, then you know the crack, you're very welcome. I'm feeling a bit optimistic this week, feeling slightly better because this time next week I will have visited a gym. The gyms are back open on Monday the 7th of fucking June and I just can't wait I can't fucking wait I can't believe I think the last time I stepped foot in the gym

must have been December before we went into that big long lockdown and I'm just looking forward to having a place to go that's it having a place to go and a thing to do going to the gym lifting weights and also

i i've got an achilles fucking heel injury that's not going away because i can't rest it because to rest it means not to exercise at all and when i get back to the to the gym, I can literally rest my Achilles, I don't have to run, I can get my cardio in many different ways that have no impact on my fucking heel, so I can actually let my heel rest and I can build up all the muscles on my legs and my calves and the whole shebang using specialist equipment, so I'm unbelievably happy about the gym coming back and I'm looking forward to what this is going to do to my overall fucking well-being because it was tough going for a few months there and it's impacting my capacity to create it's impacting my my output I'm supposed to be writing a book at the moment which is that's a lot of work as you can imagine and currently I'm supposed to be writing a book at the moment, which is, that's a lot of work as you can imagine.

And currently, I'm kind of just able to do this podcast, to put all the work that goes into doing this podcast and to doing my Twitch stream. But I don't have the mental energy for writing a fucking book. And I think the ritual, the ritual and pattern of going to a place called a gym and doing exercises and there being other people there. I think the excitement of that will realign me creatively. And then I'll probably get vaccinated in about a month. I reckon like July is when people in their 30s are getting vaccinated isn't it I'm not 100% sure so I've got a hot take for you this week I'm gonna do an art history podcast because I love doing art history podcasts and I know I know you enjoy them and I had a love So the hot take for me is...

My process is I'll decide what I'm doing a podcast about and I'll do a shit ton of research and I'll read and read and read into the topic. And I usually go for academic journals and original sources. I tend not to use Wikipedia now I don't find anything wrong with Wikipedia I really don't

people say oh don't use Wikipedia Wikipedia is fucking grand like it's there's citations in Wikipedia so it's not necessarily unreliable the reason I don't use Wikipedia is it's no crack. It's no, the fun is in the research.

The fun is in the deep, the deep dive into the research. And also sometimes you'd listen to a podcast or see a video and you can tell that they've used Wikipedia because some of their wording and language is similar to the Wikipedia article. And that's no fun. And I won't get the hot take if I'm using Wikipedia. I'll only get the hot take

if I'm deep in the research. And the hot take for me, and I'm just going to describe what a hot take is because I'm aware that I have new listeners this week because of Sinead O'Connor last week. A hot take for me is the story. Like this podcast is going to be about

painting from the 1500s a painter from the 1500s and there's a way to do that that's really fucking boring you know there's a way to talk about painting from the 1500s and make it really fucking boring

and to not pay any respect to the subject matter and make it really fucking boring and to not pay any respect to the subject matter and do it in a very dull academic way and engage nobody and unfortunately that's often the case you know that's often the case about when it comes to things like art history or history in general quite a lot of the stuff out there it's it's not engaging and it's preaching to the choir and it's not doing anything to make a subject matter fucking exciting to somebody who's new to it and who's uninitiated so when i do a hot take what i'm doing is i'm taking the mechanics of fiction and applying it to a historical account To tell you the most interesting version of that story. So that it's fun.

And fucking entertaining. And really enjoyable for me. Because that's how I learn shit to be honest. If I'm reading something. When I get excited. If I'm reading something factual. And my brain gets excited. And starts making creative connections with other things.

That's when I consolidate something to my memory. And understand it better. And I'm going to be as factually accurate as I can. I'll never deliberately mislead. But I do all the research myself. So I might get a little detail wrong. Here and there. I try my best not to.

But it does happen. And that's a consequence of. Listening to a small independent podcast that's made by one person who's very passionate about what they're doing but there's going to be a little bit of error, it's like if you go to a fucking micro brewery and they make

small batch craft beer in the fucking brewery and it's yummy and lovely and unique but there's floaty bits in it me getting the odd fact wrong is the floaty bits you cunts

so this week's hot take is about hell in particular our contemporary western vision of hell the images that come to your mind when I mention hell. I think I can make a plausible

robust argument that our contemporary vision of hell is actually based on Cork in Ireland. And that's what this week's podcast is going to be about. And I'm going to do it via the 16th century painter painter Hieronymus Bosch

so I've been wanting to do a podcast on the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch for for some time I've been looking into him for a couple of months and I never got to do it because there's very little information about himself, about Hieronymus Bosch. He was a Dutch painter, oil painter, painted in the late 15th century, early 16th century. But he'd be, I think he'd be the type of painter that most people who aren't into painting if you saw a Hieronymus Bosch painting you'd be like okay I've seen that before because it's very very unique for the time Bosch was famous for painting

visions of heaven and hell really fucking Hieronymus Bosch is sometimes called a proto-surrealist painter. In that the surrealist movement of the 20th century, people like Salvador Dali. Now, Salvador Dali is a very famous painter. Most people would know a Salvador Dali painting if they saw it.

Dali was a surrealist. He was inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud and he wanted to paint the fantastical landscapes of the unconscious mind Salvador Dally was painting dreams essentially so his paintings were surreal

they weren't rooted in reality they were imaginative paintings and they were metaphorical because like I said Dally is taking influence from fucking Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. And he's interested in the paranoid symbolism of the human mind. What crazy things do we see in our dreams that are metaphors for feelings or fears in real life? And how can I paint these things how can I make

them visual that was Dali's crack now Hieronymus Bosch 400 years previously previous to Dali his paintings look as surreal but he's not painting metaphor Hieronymus Bosch would have literally believed I'm painting fucking hell and I'm painting heaven and these things are real and they're not of this world but this isn't metaphor this is the other this is the other world his paintings were a visual warning to whoever saw them of I'm gonna paint what is literally there for you after you die depending on whether you're a good person or a bad person. How could I best describe Hieronymus Bosch? His paintings are like, remember Where's Wally?

You know Where's Wally or Where's Waldo if you're American. He would paint like a giant Where's Wally painting except it's people being tortured in hell. He made horror paintings. And I can't imagine what these must have been like to someone in the 15th or 16th century. Because the printing press is only a recent enough thing. Whatever paintings you did see they were often biblical paintings that would portray Christ or Mary. They weren't very surreal.

You'd get the odd angel maybe. But Hieronymus Bosch was trying to paint what demons look like. He was trying to paint the torture and fantastic landscape of hell and purgatory and heaven. and fantastic landscape of hell and purgatory and heaven and it would have been like a Marvel movie at the time or a Michael Bay film

you don't there's not a lot of subtlety in a Hieronymus Bosch painting they're very crowded there's hundreds and hundreds of figures and you can zoom in at any point in a painting go into a small little detail and you can zoom in at any point in a painting go into a small little detail and you see

something fucking crazy like a person being tortured because there's a flute being shoved up their arse or a bird with human legs eating a man whole and the difference between Hieronymus Bosch's paintings and we'll say

the surrealists 500 years later is I don't think Hieronymus Basch's paintings and we'll say the Surrealists 500 years later is I don't think Hieronymus Basch was trying to be surreal. Basch was a Christian fundamentalist. He would have been a hardcore Christian fundamentalist a couple of years before the Protestant Reformation. And Basch was a member of a group called the Highly Respected Brotherhood of Our Lady which were

like an elite organisation of Christians. So they took their Christianity very seriously and also this Highly Respected Brotherhood of Our Lady they were involved in what was known as the Collection of Indulgences and the Collection of of indulgences.

And the collection of indulgences was when the Catholic Church, basically, they went to rich people and said to rich people, if you just pay us money, that can actually absolve your sins and you can get a place in heaven. So you can buy your place in heaven if you're rich enough. And Bosch would have been involved in this. That's one of the reasons that Protestantism came about. Because when Martin Luther did his fucking theses on the wall. He was like this shit's wrong.

You can't buy your way into heaven. What the fuck is that about? But it's important I think. When we're looking at the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. It's important to look at the fact that he was also involved in this elite Christian organisation that were selling indulgences to rich people and here's why

so Bosch's patron would have been Henry III of Nassau now Nassau I think I think Nassau was like a kingdom that incorporated the Netherlands and Germany. Doesn't exist anymore.

But his patron was a fucking king. And Bosch would have been very high up in the court. So what Bosch is doing is painting terrifying detailed visions of hell. And the person who would have owned one of Hieronymus Bosch's paintings would have been this king, Henry III, right? So imagine a scene like this. Henry III, he's the fucking king, incredibly wealthy. He holds a dinner. And at the dinner are a load of other incredibly wealthy people.

So they're fallible human beings. They're Christians, but they're fallible human beings. They're Christians, but they're fallible human beings. So there might be some boldness going on at these dinners. There might be sex workers there. They might be drinking too much. They might be dancing. They might be engaged in sinful activities. So the dinner finishes,

and then Henry brings his guests into a room. And Henry says, Now I've got this painting inside here, lads, that Hieronymus Bosch is after doing for me. It's called the Garden of Earthly Delights. Now how this painting works is it's not like a traditional painting. It's what's called a triptych, which means it's three panels. Think of it less like a painting and imagine it like a wardrobe. So the guests walk into this room and you're presented with what looks a bit like a wardrobe. On the front of this is the first image you see.

And this is called the Garden of Earthly Delights if you want to check it out. The first image you see is a kind of a gray image of the earth as it's just created and then you open the painting up like a wardrobe and there you have three panels on the left panel you see the garden of eden okay it? It's Adam and Eve. God is there and Adam and Eve are there and it's a beautiful garden. It's very colourful and nice and you have the fountain of life

in the background. Everything on the left panel is perfect and pure and nice and like I said it's like Where's Wally? It's

you gotta get up right close and look at all the small little details. And this is what would have been happening with the rich people in the room that have been looking at that left panel going oh wow there's Adam there's Eve. Oh is that a little cat? Wow what's that in the background? Oh that animal's called a giraffe you've never seen one of them. They're in Africa. Oh my god wow. Then you've got the center panel, which is the biggest panel. Now again, this looks like the Garden of Eden. It's very bright, it's very friendly, and you've just got hundreds and hundreds of naked figures. And these people are in the Garden

of Eden. They're in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Now for the rich guests, this probably would have been the most entertaining panel from a conversational point of view like each panel it takes the classic story structure set up, conflict, resolution so the set up on the left is there's the fucking, there's Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden you know that, very simple now you've got the middle, here's the conflict

so this looks like the Garden of Eden it's crowded with figures, naked figures and animals and all sorts and if you get in real close to see what's going on and then you look real close and you see a bunch of people fucking each other there's like there's a lot of sexual stuff going on there's

there's lads with their arses pointed at other lads there's gay stuff going on there's loads of animals, there's gay stuff going on there's loads of animals, there's people eating loads of fruit off bushes and it kind of looks like fun but then they start talking

about it and the king or Bosh himself or a fucking bishop who's present is going, yeah these people are engaging in sin, these people are actually, they're destroying the Garden of Eden here. You see them now, they're all fornicating and they're all adultering

and they're eating too much food and those people are gambling. Now you have this big conversation going on and you have the conflict of sin. And this is like a Marvel film to the rich guests because they don't get this type of visual stimulation they're never going to see

something as fantastical as this in their life in the 1500s so now they're conversing about these things but then at some point someone probably says but this is the shit

that you get up to like you're all wealthy you have orgies in your fucking mansions don't you and you eat too much food and you gamble now they're talking about fucking sin then you move on to the other panel on the right

you pull it back and you reveal it and the panel on the right is the resolution and that's hell so now you present your rich wealthy guests with fucking this is what happens and it would have been utterly terrifying this this is the panel that represents the horror you've got people with musical instruments shoved up their fucking arses you've people

with they're getting their throats cut you've got burning fires you have everyone who was in the middle panel now being brutally tortured in graphic detail for all eternity. And you have lots and lots of grotesque demons. You've got very ugly frightening demons that are half human half animal which would have blown the minds of a person from the 1500s who doesn't have TV and who truly believes that this is a an accurate figurative representation of hell

so now your guests are starting to get pretty fucking scared because this is the 1500s and it's not surrealism this isn't a metaphor this is a vision handed down from fucking God to represent this is what hell is like and this is what's going to happen to you

if you don't repent from sin. And everyone is there going, fuck it, but I've done all this shit. How do I repent? And, you know, like I said, they're fallible human beings, so a lot of them are going to be saying, I've too much money.

I'm not going to stop fucking having banquets and orgies. I love this shit. I don't want to fucking stop doing this. I don't want to repent now. Well, it just so happens that I'm King Henry III and the painter Hieronymus Bosch, who's involved in this fucking brotherhood organization, it just so happens that if you pay us money,

we can give that to the church and then your sins are wiped clean you can get into heaven, not a bother you can give us money and you don't have to worry about that third panel you can live in paradise and that's how I view Hieronymus Bosch's paintings that's what they were

and the modern equivalent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting the modern equivalent is there's theseus Bosch painting the modern equivalent is there's these conferences that are happening right now in the world for the super super rich, for the elite and they're conferences that sell people compounds in New Zealand so there's this huge market at the moment for very very rich people, billionaires to move to New Zealand

and to buy compounds and shelters in the event of climate change, societal collapse, whatever. Like, they'd be milking it now with coronavirus. They'd be using coronavirus to scare the shit out of them. Like, even Dubai. Look at Dubai. Dubai just went, coronavirus? No, we're not going to do coronavirus.

Super rich people, come over here. We'll make sure all the workers get it. But you won't get it. You come to Dubai. You don't have to do any quarantine or any shit like that. But these conferences now are selling land in New Zealand because New Zealand is seen as the safest place in the event of rising seas and all this. But they have these huge conferences with the wealthiest people in the world and they basically scare the living fuck out of them for two hours about everything horrendous

that may happen and then at the end of it they say and here's a compound for 100 million in New Zealand where you can avoid all of this you can can bring your family. And you can live in this bunker. With all the food forever. And you'll be fine. And that's the modern equivalent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. You're essentially using a type of propaganda. To scare the living fuck. Out of people who have everything. And to get money out of them.

And I'm not saying that like. Climate change isn't a threat. And all of this. But what I am saying is that like climate change isn't a threat and all of this but what I am saying is that if you look up these online conferences that they have for very rich people they're trying to scare the fuck out of them because they're selling them a solution it's identical

that's what Hieronymus Bosch's paintings were that was their purpose at the time it was church propaganda to sell indulgences now that was going to be my hot take on Bosch. That was going to be my hot take. That it was a way to frighten rich people into paying up money. And how this is similar to what's being done right now with climate change.

And then I got looking into it more. And I found an even fucking hotter take which I'm far more interested in so it's worth noting that hell isn't really mentioned much in the actual fucking bible okay it's certainly not described in much detail hell in the bible I think it's mentioned only like 40 times

and it's generally described as a lonely place where God isn't present hell in the bible is more it's the absence of God's love and hell as this

terrible fiery place of torture that's a more modern invention our visual idea of hell even today our visual idea of fire and volcanoes and torture and pain visually you can kind of lay that at the feet of Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch and his paintings he laid the foundations for what we visually see hell as right he can totally have credit for that

and you'd be kind of thinking where did Hieronymus Bosch get his ideas for where hell is where did that come from and a lot of people would place that as, there's an Italian poet called Dante and he wrote a poem called The Divine Comedy, the first part of which is called Inferno, Dante's Inferno. And Dante describes a very detailed vision of hell where people are, with different areas where people are tortured in specific ways that relate to the sins that they committed and that's very present in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch this group of people are being tortured in this way because they were

adulterers or that group of people are being tortured in that way over there because they were gamblers and then this person's being tortured in that way over there because they were gamblers. And then this person's being tortured like that because they were a glutton. And Dante has this present in his poem, The Divine Comedy. But I went looking into it fucking more. And it didn't come from Dante. Our modern vision of hell comes from Cork

in the 12th century and that's what I want to speak about this week but before I do that so I have uninterrupted flow I think it's time for a little ocarina pause You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation.

Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind.

So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca That's sunrisechallenge.ca That was the Ocarina Pause. You would have heard a digitally inserted advert that Acast would have put in there. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, that Acast would have put in there. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page,

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really helpful, catch me on Twitch once a week, twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast, where I'm making an ongoing musical to the events of a video game, that's good crack so Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch's paintings and Cork

in Ireland and how are they connected so I fucking love finding out about the Irish cultural footprint about the sheer scale of influence that Irish culture has had on the world that we're not fully aware of and this one for me was just

it was shocking and it was fantastic to learn about we can nearly take credit for the modern vision of what hell is. So there's a manuscript that was written in Ireland in the 12th century. It's a religious manuscript called the Visio Tnog Dali. Visio as in, I think that's Latin. Visio like vision and Tnog Dali then is a Gaelaelic name and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. So this vision was written by a monk called Brother Marcus.

He was an Irish monk called Brother Marcus who was based in Scotland I believe. And he was the first person to write this vision down in 1149 so there was this knight from Cork so he probably would have been a Norman knight now whether he was real or not I don't know but he was a knight from Cork who he basically claimed that he died and visited fucking heaven and hell

like an alien abduction story That he died. And was. And visited fucking heaven and hell. Like an alien abduction story. Or an ayahuasca trip. This knight from Cork. Who met brother Marcus. Was like. I fucking died. For three days.

And I went to fucking hell. Alright. I was there. And he told brother Marcus this story. And brother Marcus wrote it down it down and that became the Visio Tnugdali. So the story is that the knight, Tnugdalus, he was a prick. He lived in Cork and he was a bollocks. He was riding everything around him. He was gambling. He was stealing.

He was engaging in every single sin that was available to him and then one day he ends up eating dinner in someone's house

and he's acting the bollocks in the house and after he takes a few bites he collapses and they don't know what it is

but he's basically like, I'm dying, I'm dead. So they get to Nug Dallas's body and they lay it out on a slab because they're like, he's dead. But they noticed that the left side of his body is still a tiny bit warm. So they're like, well, if he was fucking dead, he'd be fully cold. So let's not bury him yet. Just leave him there. So for three days and three nights Tanug Dallis was in a coma I suppose and it's when this happened he claimed that his soul went to fucking hell and that's what the vision of Tanug Dallis is about and this is the first time that we see a graphic vivid description of hell as not just a

a place where you're absent from God but a very terrifying arena of torture so the first thing that happens is that Knogdallas finds himself in the biblical version of hell that empty, empty lonely place where God is in present

that's the first place he lands in and it's dark and then all of a sudden he's overcome with this mad feeling of dread and fear and running towards him are these massive wild wolves with their mouths open and their eyes are full of fire

and they're gnashing at him and biting at his flesh. Now I'd imagine that's a reference to, like in ancient Greek mythology, in the underworld, which is like the Greek version of hell, there's a dog called Cerberus that has three heads that guards the gates of the other world in Greek mythology so I'll imagine it's a reference to that

but he's down there anyway and there's these he describes their smell the smell is unlike anything any person has ever smelled, these real stinking smelly dogs biting at his feet and ripping his flesh off. But just before he's about to die

in hell, this angel appears. And the angel is like, I'm gonna guide you through hell. I'm gonna guide you through hell and I'm gonna show you all the sins that you did and I'm gonna show you what awaits you. You're not dead.

You're very lucky, tugged Alice. I'm gonna guide you through this now and I'm gonna to show you what awaits you you're not dead you're very lucky Tug Dallas I'm going to guide you through this now and I'm going to talk you through it and when you're beside me you're going to be protected by the love of God but you're going to have to fucking

you're going to deal with some real shit now over the next three fucking days so this is where the angel guides him through different parts of hell where different souls are tortured in unique ways according to the sins that they committed

in real life and this is the first time we really start to see this so the angel takes him into this dark tunnel with no light and it says the ground was an expanse of burning coals over the hot coals was laid iron that was glowing red from the heat And it says... And then the angel said... This is where people go if they've been murderers.

So the people who've murdered in life, their souls are in this place forever. Basically being poked by red hot pokers and with roaring hot iron going in and out of their bodies for all of eternity in continual agony. Also as well there's specific descriptions

of demons that have the classic tongues and forks. when you think of hell the vision of hell and you imagine these little red devils that have three pronged forks this occurs in the vision of

Tongdali it's they're on this mountain and one half of the mountain is snow and the other half is fire and the demons catch people and they skewer them on their skewers and they dip them between fire and snow to extremes

forever then the angel takes him now into a new place and there's this giant fucking boar like this absolutely massive boar with these big metal tusks and every time the boar opens its mouth loads of devils fly around its mouth and the angel explains that this is the punishment for men who are covetous for people who are really greedy

who are never full that they always want more they're always looking at what someone else has, either it be someone else's fucking wife, or someone else's possessions, or whatever, they just keep coveting over and over, so the punishment for these people is this huge giant boar, it has an insatiable appetite, and will just eat you forever, continually devouring you and shitting you out, and devouring you and shitting you out, and devouring you and shitting you out. And one of the most amazing things about this giant boar

is he has two tusks, and hanging off either two tusks are Fergus MacRee and Conall Carnock. And these are two characters from the Ulster cycle of Irish mythology. Fergus MacRee, he's in The Taun. The Taun is an epic Irish poem and I think Fergus Macri, I think he ended up being one of Queen Maeve's boyfriends or something like that. But they're hanging off the tusk of this giant boar in hell. And I think the reason they put that there is it was Irish Christianity trying to demonise

previous pagan mythology to show that these characters who you think are heroes from the taun, they're actually down in hell hanging off of boar's tusks. So now the angel disappears all of a sudden and Tung Dallas is getting eaten by the fucking boar. And it says the fiend came quickly and bound him up and cast him into the beast's mouth.

He was beaten by evil spirits his bones were gnawed at by hungry lions and his vital organs were pulled out by dragons venomous snakes consumed his limbs fire burned him then ice froze him

his tears stung his cheeks like fire and then he was released and the angel was beside him and the angel said I rescued you with the love of God so a theme is emerging where basically the angel is dragging him through each of these different types of hell he's experiencing each

torturous pain and then suddenly being rescued and being reminded it doesn't have to be this way you can repent with the love of god so then he takes him on to a new bit and it's just this giant pit of fire like lava with these fish inside in the lava that are jumping up ready to bite and all across the lava is this tiny tiny fucking bridge that's the width of a palm and then the angel says to tongue dallas this is what happens to thieves so if you were thieving in your your mortal life what you have

to do in this part of hell is for all of eternity you have to carry everything you ever stole on your back and try and walk across this tiny bridge that's the width of a palm and not fall in so the angel says to Tong Dallas you were robbing cows that's what you used to do, you used to rob people's cows and Tong Dallas is like ah it was only one

and said well fuck that so Tong Dallas has to lead a wild cow across this tiny bridge the width of a palm while fiery fish jump up into the air and try and fucking eat his legs. And that's the punishment for thievery. So then the angel brings him into a nougat which is this giant building where there's nothing but butchers.

Butchers standing around the place with giant knives and cleavers. And the angel says that this is the punishment for people who are brutal. So Tong Dallas gets chopped into loads of little pieces. By all these butchers and hacked to bits. And then his body joins back together again. And he's basically being butchered for all of eternity. Then they move on to another place you're kind of getting the point

this is something you get with Irish mythology it's very repetitive and kind of list based but they move on to a new place now and this bit I find fascinating because this is the modern description of the devil so it says

soon they came upon a hideous creature that filled Tungdal with terror. It seemed more evil and dangerous than anything he'd seen before, with two enormous black wings, and with claws of iron and steel protruding from its feet. Its neck was long and slender. It held a huge head with two burning red eyes set wide apart, It held a huge head with two burning red eyes set wide apart. And it spat fire in a seemingly indistinguishable stream.

And its nose was tipped with iron. And that's the devil. And basically what this area is, it's the punishment for clergymen and priests who don't obey the rules of the church. That they're forever eaten by the devil and shat out. So it goes on like this, continual fire and torture and terrifying creatures and specific torture for specific crimes or specific sins. Then the angel takes him to purgatory, which is a bit boring. It's people there for ages and there's wind and rain and they're not particularly happy but they're not necessarily being tortured and then finally the angel takes

him to heaven where everything is beautiful and blue and serene and there's plenty of food and the water is clear and it's a beautiful garden and the story ends with Tug Dallas being in heaven with the angel going fuck it this gaff is nice I like this place and then he sees two men

and he starts to get pissed off because he recognises the two men in heaven and he goes to the angel the fuck is this what's going on here I know those fellas that fella there is called Conkabar McDermott O'Brien And he goes to the angel. The fuck is this? What's going on here? I know those fellas.

That fella there is called Conqueror McDermott O'Brien. He was the king of North Munster. And that fella there is called Dunnock McCarthy. He was the king of South Munster. And the two of them were tyrants. They did nothing but wage war on each other. They've murdered hundreds of people. The fuck are the two of them doing here in heaven? They're pricks.

And then the angel says to him, they are pricks. They're murderous pricks. But they repented before they died. Even though those men killed all those people and committed all these sins before they died,

they repented and they accepted God's love and that's why they're here in the kingdom of heaven so it kind of goes on like that and Tungdalas you know he meets all these these mythical Irish figures

and kings and all of this while in heaven and then eventually the angel explains Christianity to him and he accepts the angel explains Christianity to him and he accepts the he has communion, he accepts the Eucharist

and then he's returned to his body and he's a changed man and he lives his life virtuously from then on and that story the vision of Thug Daly it later became known as an the vision of Tnogdali it later became known as an

Aisling Aisling means vision in Irish and visionary poems or visionary tales of a character having a vision of another world is a tradition in Irish storytelling

and I think it wasn't until the 17th or 18th century that they started to call it an Aisling but there would have been many stories like that but what makes that special is that was written down in 1149 which was about 5 years before

the Norman invasion of Ireland so the Normans were basically the Brits so in 1155 the Pope was English, the only ever English Pope Pope Adrian IV and Pope Adrian

basically granted permission to Strongbow, the Normans to come over and take over Ireland and the reason that they gave was they're Christian in Ireland but they're not really Christian they have their own thing going on where it's Christianity mixed with kind of pagan Irish mythology and we don't like that so he wanted to introduce what was called the Gregorian reforms

which was Britain gets to take over Ireland so that you can make Irish Christianity more in line with Rome and that story that Visio Tognali it's basically that it's reject your mythology reject the past of Ireland

and repent and become proper Christians that's what that is but that vision became the equivalent of and repent and become proper Christians. That's what that is. But that vision became the equivalent of a bestseller in all of Europe. Now, the printing press wasn't a thing, but it was so successful as a vision of hell, as this terrifying vision of hell, that it got rewritten 170 times

in Europe which would have been blockbuster film equivalent so it was all over Europe it was one of the most popular visions of hell that had ever been written about and Dante's Inferno guarantee you Dante's Inferno took inspiration

which was 100 years later would have taken inspiration from that Irish epic visionary poem which describes different types of torture for different types of sins in hell and that was

written about Cork like the people at the time would have genuinely believed that this knight from Cork he actually died and actually visited hell and this is his real description of hell and that's why it would have been so powerful. But he's not, he's a human being. Whoever the fuck this knight was, was living in Cork and the experiences of his vision

are going to be informed by whatever the fuck happened to him in Cork. Now how does Hieronymus Bosch tie into this? Well this manuscript was eventually made into an illuminated manuscript in, was it in France? I think it was in France but it got made into an illuminated manuscript called the Getty Tondle and an illuminated manuscript meant that there was images, pictures. So in 1475 someone illustrated this story and this was the biggest influence on Hieronymus Bosch. Hieronymus Bosch had a copy of this book and he was getting all his visions of the torture of hell

and the visual representations from this book called the Getty Tundle, which was a visual representation of that 12th century Irish story. So our modern vision of hell, as visually represented by the paintings of Hieronymus Bash, is based upon Cork. By the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Is based upon Cork. There's a story about hell.

From a person living in Cork. And whatever it is about the fucking wild boars. The dogs. The butchers chopping them up. The king of monster. This is all Cork. Imagery. The fucking little devils with pitchforks

poking people in the arse it comes from Irish mythology it's about cork so when Hieronymus Bosch was painting his fantastical visions of hell with all the little details

like it was entirely fantastical in that he wasn't if he was painting a tree he wasn't actually painting a tree what he would do is he would have a library and he would collect as many images as possible

and his two main sources were this book which was the visual translation of this Irish myth of hell and the other books he used were what were known as bestiaries so

Hieronymus Bosch would have been painting like America was quote unquote discovered in 1492 so Bosch would have been painting around the time of what was called the Age of Discovery so you know sailors were moving into Africa

over to South America so the two big influence in Bosch's paintings it's Cork and then he used to also have these books bestiaries which were someone might head to Africa and they'd draw a lion or they'd draw a giraffe and they'd draw a lion

or they'd draw a giraffe or they'd draw a pineapple. And that's what you see also in Bosch's paintings. These exotic creatures and exotic fruits. I don't know why he was doing that because there's giraffes elephants, tigers, lions all these things in his paintings

maybe these were there because of who the audience was the audience is these really rich people who might have the capital to one day visit these places what you also see in Hieronymus Bosch's paintings when he represents hell and sin

is you see the roots of racism there are black people present in some of his paintings and because he was such a hardcore orthodox christian in the context of his paintings what black people meant was moors they were is Islamic. So there's a few references to Islam and there's also the Turkish flag in certain parts of some of his paintings too. As a way to communicate that

Islam is bad, that they're heretics and you can look at some of his paintings and he's presenting interracial sex as a sin. Also, musical instruments feature quite heavily in his vision of hell. Guitars, lutes, hardy-gardies, these are seen as sinful things that only occur in hell because to dance and to listen to music and to deviate from anything but Christian music was seen as sinful.

So that's this week's hot take I think I've made a plausible a really plausible and strong argument there as to why our contemporary vision of hell may have come from fucking Cork it genuinely may have come from Cork

and I think that's fucking hilarious and also just another utterly fantastic thing about Irish culture and it's funny because our vision of hell is just so

ridiculously paranoid it's so fucking over the top like one of my favourite things about Irish mythology is hyperbole. Like you'd be reading something about Cú Chulainn and they'll talk about how strong Cú Chulainn is and they'll say that like he was able to pick up a lot of stones from the ground and throw it at a flock of swans and take down 20 of them at once and there's this sense of utterly ridiculous exaggerations, like all Irish

mythology reads like the worst liar you've ever met, like Irish mythology is like, it's it starts off really interesting and you're engaged and then something batshit ridiculous happens and you can't take it seriously anymore

like the fucking the story of the salmon of knowledge unbelievable story there's this salmon and it contains all the knowledge in the world and if you catch it and you eat it you will gain all the knowledge in the world wow

wow yeah and his name is Fintan and he eats acorns. And that's it I'm done. It's like why'd you have to throw that bit in? It was fucking brilliant. Fantastic mythical salmon. And then you tell me his name is Fintan and he eats fucking acorns.

And we brought that same paranoid over the top bullshit energy to the vision of fucking hell it's like oh Rory you were in hell you were I was yeah what was it like there was a boar a giant boar with two tusks with two

lads hanging off each tusk oh yeah and what did he do he eats you forever and shits you out loads alright anything else yeah there's this fucking room and there's a lot of butchers in it

and what do they do they keep chopping you up and you grow back and then they keep chopping you up and you grow back class no one else is going to be that fucking ridiculous so we did that

to hell so fair play to us and then Hieronymus Bosch fuck it man I can blame Cork on Protestantism I can blame Cork on Protestantism Hieronymus Bosch copied the specific

Cork ultra paranoid vision of hell this was used to sell indulgences to rich people on the continent to basically go man fucking hell

there's going to be a boar that's going to eat you and shit you out a million times fuck I wouldn't like that yeah you better pay me money man, fucking hell, there's going to be a boar that's going to eat you and shit you out a million times. Fuck, I wouldn't like that. Yeah, you better pay me money. Pay the church some money and then you won't have to live through that. And then Martin Luther was like, because he's a German, this is fucking ridiculous.

This is ridiculous. You're telling rich people that they're going to go somewhere where there's butchers that will chop them up forever and they keep growing back and if they give you money they don't have to do it this is fucking ridiculous 95 theses to the wall Protestantism is invented Protestantism got invented because of a paranoid man from Cork in the 12th century

there's my fucking hot take there you go alright dog bless I'll talk to you next week I don't know what about rock city you're the best fans in the league

bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on Saturday April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario

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