From the unexplained to the mundane, join us on our journey to the French.
Hello Ed welcome to Journey to the Fringe where things can get a little spooky.
We are your clearly terrified host Taylor and Chelsea and today we're gonna be talking about those deals that people have heard about before.
They're deals with the devil. I don't know how else to say it really.
I tried to get fancy with it but I have not entered into a pact for better linguistic skills and you guys are listening anyway so we're fine.
Um, no that was perfect.
I think this is always a fun little topic. We need something every year where we're talking about the devil.
He's gotta make an appearance. Why not look at his contractual skills?
The plan today is to kind of go over the history of it. Look at the archetypes of the story and then to give you real or alleged deals with the devil that have seen throughout history.
Yeah I'd be interested in that.
The concept of making a deal with the devil also known as a pact with the devil, a Faustian bargain or a Methystophelian bargain is a cultural motif usually European in origin but we'll get into that a little bit.
It's also heavily elemental to many Christian traditions. You'll remember there's actually a part of the Bible where Jesus gets offered a deal from the devil but he declines it.
That's where he's wandering through the desert and the devil just keeps like asking him to come to his side and he's like come on we got money we got lots of food.
You can use your magics and he said no.
I do not remember that actually.
He said no and there's a word for making a deal.
There's other terms for it. It's a Faustian bargain or a Methystophelian bargain.
Never heard of that.
Yeah they're more German I think than English but we will get into why they're called that as well.
Well okay let's learn.
According to traditional Christian beliefs about witchcraft the pact is between a person and the devil or another demon trading a soul for diabolical favors and these favors vary by the tale but tend to include youth, knowledge, wealth, fame, fortune and power.
Now Chelsea how far back do you think these stories go?
Very far.
I would say when the first like molecule was crawling out of the ocean to become a human.
Okay so you're saying about three billion years ago.
Not quite that far as far as I can tell.
Mostly because there's no recorded records from that time outside of the fossil records.
So it's hard to catalog a contract especially if it's an oral contract.
Over several billion years.
So let's say the first catalog contract is with the devil.
My original inclination was to say it probably goes back as far as Christianity.
That makes sense right?
Like two thousands this year.
So we're thinking logical about it then.
But there are stories that share this archetype of the deal with the devil that go back to about six thousand years or kind of the start of the bronze age.
Generally these stories going back that far relate to sniffs.
Working, making metal and fabricating metal and putting pieces of metal together.
They're traditionally losing these stories due to the fact that they're working around fire and brimstone.
It's an area that's outside of the regular person's parlay.
Or at least understandings generally.
These people are just doing this thing that you don't really know anything about.
But it involves fire so they've probably made a deal.
And you'll see different stories from that area.
Particularly saying like oh this guy's metal is unearthly good compared to others.
And you'll see different stories either where the guy gets these powers and then tricks the deity or the demon who gives him the powers.
If he has such good metal he can trap him in a cage.
Or the pact is for something that the smith deems insignificant and it turns out it's very significant what he's traded for it.
Like a child that he didn't know was in a tree that he traded.
Yeah, apparently he's easy to outsmart from what we know about him.
Yeah.
And there's actually a relatively well known Greek myth going back to like the good old Greek mythology that you could consider a deal with the devil.
And that's Orpheus who is a renowned musician and poet. He marries a nymph named Euridus.
And one day while Euridus was out in the countryside she was bitten by a snake and dies.
Orpheus decides to go to the underworld to bring Euridus back.
He places Lyr so well that he charms the dog Cerberus.
He manages to persuade Hades, the ruler of the underworld and his wife Persephone, to allow him to bring Euridus back to the land of the living.
However, they set a rule when Orpheus is leaving. They say you can't look back at your wife until you're both on the surface.
They end up going. Orpheus leads Euridus all the way back to the entrance.
And the underworld's always in a cave so they're coming out of a cave. Orpheus looks back.
She's still in the cave, deal broken, so she has to go back.
Okay. And Hades would be...
Which it shares the architect. They have an agreement between a deity who rules the underworld that ends up kind of going against what the person thinks is going to do.
Hades would be the equivalent of the devil. Kind of, right?
Kind of. Kind of.
He would have had a different understanding of him back in the day as opposed to an evil entity.
He's more of just a guy who's doing a job.
Yeah. Just like all the other gods.
Yeah. Even torture chambers have guys that were just doing their jobs as opposed to truly evil entities.
But these tales been being told for a long time.
They seem to fall into three different categories as the purpose of the story.
The first one is kind of to teach the lesson of some deals are too good to be true.
That's always you enter a pact for something easy and it turns out that you're giving up something that you don't realize is more valuable than what you're actually getting.
Which at the end of the day is just trying kind of a life lesson they're trying to pass on. Some things are too good to be true.
The next one that's super easy.
Outsiders are bad because the devil gave them these powers. It's just a catch all that outsiders are bad because devil or bad thing.
You'll see a lot of association with deals with the devil with witches, which are really just people that are worshiping nature in a lot of senses and no devil association.
What's well, but because Christianity is there, they have good or bad. You're outside. It's bad and therefore devil associated.
Okay.
You'll also see this with regards to like several people we've talked about like HPB, Alistair Crowley and Mother Shipton were just outsiders of society who were associated with the devil.
They actually made a pact, but I think it was more so just because they were just outside society and it was easier to say that what they were doing was bad.
And then the last category, which I think is the one we see the most nowadays, especially when you're talking about like people who have allegedly really done this, is this person is pretty good at something or better at it than me.
So they probably gained it through other worldly powers.
Yeah, that makes sense though.
Other cultures do have somewhat similar phenomenons. If you're looking at the Middle East, they have Jin or Jinies and a Jinie granting you three wishes, particularly ones that end up backfiring on you is a very similar tale of a deal with the devil.
I think that's similar also with the Monkey Paw.
Exactly. Yeah. But that's all Jin related.
Yeah, I thought the Monkey Paw was Jin related.
Similar stories, however, you're going to see a lot more of people being able to trick Jin and gain power from them in Middle Eastern stories as opposed to deals with the devils generally aren't tricked, except when you're talking about like the stories truly fabricated and have no standing in reality.
Or you know if the devil's coming in and asks you to build a church.
Or was it a wine bar? He wanted a wine bar and they built a church.
He wanted a wine bar. He didn't get the... No, he did get the wine bar, I think.
Yeah.
Eventually he got the wine bar.
I can't remember. That was lost. Yeah.
In India, there are somewhat similar stories of people making deals with what's called the Azuras, which are basically the evil entities in Hindu culture.
I could not find a similar story in Chinese mythology. I did ask a few people, but I was unable to come up with anything.
But these are kind of typical archetypes of those three stories are found basically everywhere.
Do they not have any in China?
I asked several Chinese friends who could not give me a straight answer. So that might be a future story.
Also, not a lot of research came up with anything.
Okay. Weird.
So, yeah, it might be out there. I couldn't find anything.
You would think there'd be something. Just one.
Yeah, you would think.
So I just want to give you quickly. This is the story. You remember how we called it a foushbargen or a Mephistophelian bargain?
Yeah, I'll never remember that, but yes.
This is the story. It's foush'd in the devil, specifically Mephistopheles.
It is a classic tale from German folklore. The story begins with a character named Faust, who is a scholar, and becomes discontented with his life.
He decides to make a pact with the devil, who in this story is called Mephistopheles, in exchange for knowledge and power.
And the story foush'd is unsatisfied with his life as a scholar and becomes depressed.
After an attempt to take his own life, he calls on the devil for further knowledge and magic powers, with which to indulge all the pleasures and knowledge of the world.
In response, Mephistopheles appears as the devil's representative.
He makes a bargain with foush'd. Mephistopheles will serve foush'd with his magic powers for a set number of years,
but at the end of the term, the devil will claim foush'd soul, and foush'd will be eternally enslaved.
During the term of the bargain, foush'd makes use of Mephistopheles in various ways, and then Goche's version of the story, Mephistopheles, helps foush'd to induce a beautiful and innocent young woman,
usually named Gretchen, whose life is ultimately destroyed when she gives birth to foush'd's illegitimate son. Realizing this unholy act, she drowns the child and is held for murder.
Whoever Gretchen's innocence saves her in the end, and she enters heaven after execution.
That's one of those old-school happy endings, eh? Like a brother's grim happy ending.
Yeah, okay, so are we feeling uncertain about this?
We're gonna feel uncertain about a couple of these, but let's keep going.
In the second rendition, foush'd is saved by God via his constantly striving in combination with Gretchen's pleading with God in the form of eternal feminine.
However, in the early tales, foush'd is irrevocably corrupted and believes his sins cannot be forgiven when the term ends, the devil carries him off to hell.
So that's kind of the archetypal one that you see in German mythology, and that's why it's called these things foush'd, in Bargains, Mephistopheles, in Bargains, in German, or in culture too.
Like it's one of the archetype ones that we'll see.
Also, the tale of the smith making the deal with the devil is in the original Brother Grimm's Tomb of Stories.
Okay.
However, it doesn't show up in later versions.
So, we've heard the fables of this. How about we talk about some actual alleged deals with the devil, Chelsea?
Yep, yes.
We're gonna start further back in time, and we're gonna carry on to near today.
Uh-oh. Is that foreshadowing?
Not really.
Okay.
I will start with, of course, not Jesus, but Jesus' interpreter on Earth, the Pope.
Pope Sylvester II.
Originally named Gerbert of Orlac.
Gotta love the name Gerbert.
What? Gerbert of Orlac?
Orlac, yeah.
Orlac. What does that even mean?
I don't know, but there's a reason he chose the name Sylvester. Like, that's better.
I mean, it is better, but it's not, like, the best.
So, the legend of Gerbert grew from the work of the English monk William of Malmesbury and Cardinal Benno.
According to the legend, Gerbert, while studying mathematics and astrology in Muslim cities of Cordoba and Seville,
was accused of having learned sorcery.
Gerbert was supposed to be in possession of a book of spells stolen from an Arab philosopher in Spain.
Gerbert fled, pursued by the victims who could trace the thief by the stars,
Gerbert was aware of the pursuit and hid, hanging from a wooden bridge where suspended between heaven and earth, he was invisible to the magician.
What?
That's actually something that comes up a lot in these deals, is a crossroad or a bridge between the worlds.
So, that's gonna be an entirely different episode, but I just wanted to point out that this is a bridge that he's hiding under,
where it's kind of between and hidden.
Like, there's a reason it's specifically a bridge, but we'll talk about that in some other day.
Like a bat.
Yes.
That's weird.
Gerbert was supposed to have built a brazen head.
This robotic head would answer his questions with yes or no.
And he was also reputed to have packed with a female demon called Merdiana,
who had appeared after he had been rejected by his earthly love,
and with whose help he managed to ascend to the papal throne.
Another legend tells that he won the papacy playing dice with the devil.
I don't know why the devil actually has a hand in who's the pope, but it's part of the deal apparently.
Well, he probably wants someone there that's gonna like help him out.
Well, yeah, but that's not what the pope's supposed to do.
No, but I mean, that makes sense why the devil would want someone on his side.
But like, he gets ultimate authority and like loses it in the gamble of all things to this guy, so...
Throwing bones in the back, Ellie, of all things.
So he has a gambling problem.
According to the legend, Merdiana, or the bronze head told Gerbert that if he should ever read a mass in Jerusalem,
the devil would come for him.
So that's the condition of the pact, like it ends once you read a mass in Jerusalem.
So just don't do that. Like, there's one thing you don't do.
Yeah, I mean, the simple answer, particularly, sorry, this has been 900s.
It's actually pretty easy to avoid going to Jerusalem.
You're traveling all the way to Israel?
Yeah.
This guy actually, you know, pretty smart. He's like, oh, shit, I actually have a pilgrimage coming up to Jerusalem.
I better just cancel that.
Yeah, that is smart.
So he cancels that.
But anyhow, he ends up going and reading a mass in a church in Rome called the church Santa Croce Jerusalem.
I think it's Latin.
Turns out it's actually called the Holy Cross of Jerusalem.
Oh, no.
As soon as he's done, he's like, that was some great mass I just read there.
What's the name of this church you think you would have asked beforehand?
Turns out it's the Holy Cross of Jerusalem.
He says, oh, shit, guess I just lost.
You get sick and ends up dying.
He asked his cardinals to cut up his body and scattered across the city.
And in another version, he was even attacked by the devil while he was reading the mass.
And the devil mutilated him and gave his gouged out eyes to demons to play with in the church.
Repenting, Sylvester II then cut off his hand and his tongue.
And the inscription on Gerbert's tomb today reads,
This place will yield to the sound of the last trumpet, the limbs of the buried Sylvester II at the advent of the Lord.
And there's a legend of these words that says that his bones will rattle in the tomb just before the death of a pope.
Really?
Cool.
I'm left with a few questions.
Okay.
You want to make a point?
I just wanted to say that's one of those fun stories about popes that one day will cover popes in general because they're kind of fun.
That is one of the fun stories.
That's just a one-off.
That is a fun story.
Okay, first one.
That seems like a technicality, but the devil is apparently good at technicalities.
He actually meant a church in Rome.
He should not read a whatever it's called there.
Second, I thought this was going to tie in at some point because I was like,
Wow, Gerbert of Orillac is a very cool name.
So I googled it and all that comes up like initially on the images is teeth.
Oh.
So I thought perhaps this might have something to do with teeth, but it does not.
So I'm not sure why.
I couldn't tell you because when I do this, I do not get teeth.
You do not get teeth.
So there might be something in your search history.
Or something is misspelled.
I don't know.
Fair enough.
The next one, although this is not a specific person, Chelsea, I'm sure you've heard this one before, but it's the devil's Bible.
Not currently.
If you keep reading, maybe.
It's a fairly short one. This is just a legend.
According to a medieval legend associated with the Codex Gigas,
a monk broke his monastic vows and was sentenced to be walled up alive.
In order to avoid his harsh penalty, he promised to create in one night a book to glorify the monastery forever, including all human knowledge.
Near midnight, he became sure that he could not complete the task alone, which I mean, he should have realized that much sooner.
But, you know, he made a special prayer, not addressed to God, but the fallen angel Lucifer, asking him to help finish the book in exchange for his soul.
And the devil completed the manuscript and the monk added the devil's picture out of gratitude for his aid.
If you have never seen it, go look up the devil's Bible. It's pretty cool looking.
It's got big leather pages. It's like four feet tall. It's a massive book.
I've never heard of it, and I can't imagine being under so much pressure to complete something that I'd make a deal with the devil to finish it.
It's either that or be walled in alive. So I really don't know.
Okay, I mean, that is a fair amount of pressure.
Have you looked at the Bible?
I'm looking right now. It's pretty big.
And yeah, it's got that really creepy looking devil in it.
Yeah, the Codex Gigas in National Library of Sweden.
So yeah, you can go look at it if you really want. You can't touch it, obviously, but it's a pretty cool looking thing.
Yeah, that is cool.
Next up, Dr. John Fian, I think. I don't quite know how to say it. It's Scottish, so you know it's just, it's a mouthful to actually say it right.
Anyhow, he was a Scottish schoolmaster in Prestonpans East Lothian and purported sorcerer.
His suspicions of sorcery were caused by a confession from Gaelas Duncan, which after a prompted his examination as a sorcerer.
Fian first openly confessed that he bewitched a gentleman to fall into fits of lunacy once every 24 hours.
Why you're doing this? No idea.
But anyhow, he goes and verifies this.
Fian caused the same gentleman to come before the presence of King James in the King's Chambers on December 24, 1590,
where he purportedly bewitched the man, causing him to be in a hysterical fit for an entire hour of screaming, contorting, and jumping high enough to touch the ceiling of the chambers.
Ah.
Don't know how tall the chambers are either.
Okay.
Like, it's a spin foot jump.
Got two feet avert. That's a lot back then.
It's only like two inches above his head.
Yeah.
But jumping was not invented until the 1600s, so it was a real feat.
After the hour ended, the gentleman declared no memory of the events as if he were asleep.
Fian confessed during a later trial examination that he made a compact, I think the term is actually packed, with Satan,
who were renowned Satan, and vowed to lead the life of a Christian.
The next morning he confessed that during the previous night, the devil came to him in his cell, dressed in all black and with a white wand,
demanding Fian to continue his faithful service, according to the First Oath in promise of their agreement.
Fian testified that he were now Satan, and to his face said,
Now please just imagine that in like the harshest Scottish accent you can.
Like Scrooge McDuck style actually. Just imagine Scrooge McDuck saying that.
That's the most romantic Scottish accent.
He confessed that the devil then answered,
That once ere thou die, thou shalt be mine. And again, just picture that because this is the same guy saying it.
That's also heavy Scottish.
And it's just gonna say, and plus he would be Scottish there in this situation as well.
Yeah. The devil afterwards broke the white wand and immediately vanished from his sight.
He then was given a chance to lead the life he promised, but the same night he stole a key to his cell and escaped.
He was eventually captured and tortured until his execution.
This next part is the torture that he endures, so viewer discretion is advised for the next 30 seconds.
Oh man, what am I gonna do?
You have to listen.
He endured the torture of having his fingernails forcibly extracted, then having iron pins thrust therein,
the pilliwanks, which is the thumb crusher, and the boot to crush his feet until they were so small that they were no longer usable.
Oh my God.
He was reported to have endured the torture without expressing any pain, and he was finally taken to the Castle Hill in Edinburgh,
placed in a cart, strangled and burnt on January 27, 1591.
And this is the weirdest part of the Wikipedia entry.
The cost of his execution was five pounds, 18 shillings, and two Ds.
I don't know what the D is, but I have no idea why they say that.
Did the family have to pay it? Did they take it out of his pocket?
Did it just show up on like the counting record for the year end?
Did the devil pay it?
I don't think so.
It should also be noted that English Ambassador Robert Bose recorded that during his execution,
Fjann denied his confession, saying that he told those tales by fear of torture and to save his life.
So that story might not have actually happened, it is just a story to get torture.
Next up, Urbain Grandier is a French Catholic priest in the mid 1600s,
and in 1632, a group of nuns from the local Ursuline, Convent, accused him of having bewitched them, sending the demon as Maud Asmadi,
among others to commit evil and impudent acts with them.
Aldous Huxley, in his non-fiction novel, The Devil of Luden, argued that the accusations began after Grandier
refused to become the spiritual director of the Convent.
Unaware of the mother superior, Jean de Ange had become obsessed with him after having seen him from afar
and heard of his sexual exploits.
According to Huxley, Mother Jean, enraged by his rejection, instead invited canon Jean Mignon,
an enemy of Grandier, to become the director.
And Jean, I hate, there's a Jean and Jean, so I'm just gonna say Jean.
Jean then accused Grandier of using black magic to seduce her.
The other nuns gradually began to make similar accusations.
However, Montsure des Nuits, counselor at La Flèche, said that Grandier applied for the position,
but that was instead awarded to canon Jean Mignon, an enemy of Montsure Trinquette.
Do you guys come here strictly because we read such good French?
We really read every language nice.
Even Scottish.
Scottish, jeez, I can't use these Scottish words.
I should be done.
And it's basically English.
You know, I'm just gonna skip this story.
It's too damn hard to.
It's too hard to read these French words.
I thought I had it.
You gotta leave that whole thing in.
You know what, that's fine.
Let's move on to Christopher Heisman.
A good old Johann Christoph Heisman.
Good easy name.
1650 to 1700s.
He was a Bavarian born Austrian painter.
He is known for his autobiographically depicted demonical neurosis.
Okay, I'm trying to picture what that means.
That's fair enough.
The so-called Heisman case has been studied in psychology and psychiatry since the early 20th century,
especially by Sigmund Freud.
His early life, he was born in Tronstin Bavaria in 1651 or 1652.
Not that important, wasn't famous or rich, so nobody really knows when he was born.
Little is known of him actually before 1677.
He was an impoverished painter and when he lost a parent,
he allegedly sold his soul to the devil in 1668 to be his bounden son for nine years.
After that time, Heisman's body and soul were to belong to the devil.
Heisman claimed that he gave two packs to the devil,
one written in ink and the other in his own blood.
However, in 1677, when the packs were due, he became anxious and made a pilgrimage to Mary Azell.
And after a successful exorcism, the pact in blood was given back to him by the devil.
I did not know you could exercise a contract, but apparently you can.
So you didn't study this in law school then?
We did not study exercising contracts in law school.
As the demonic infestations continued, Heisman concluded that another exorcism was necessary to retrieve
also the pact on ink that this occurred in 1678.
Now during this time, Heisman painted several pictures of the appearance of the devil and kept diary of his visions.
After his demonical neurosis, Heisman became a brother hospitaler and he died in 1700 in Bohemia.
To preserve the details of his successful exorcism, a manuscript partly in Latin, partly in German,
was composed sometime between 1714 and 1729.
It was rediscovered in the archive in the early 1920s and Sigmund Freud was the first to analyze it in an article entitled
A 17th Century Demonological Neurosis.
After him, several other writers have discussed the case and the most extensive research, including two books,
has probably been carried out by the Belgian psychologist Gaston van den Dreis.
Other notable writers include Michel de Carchu and H.C. Eric Middlefort.
So yeah, deal with the devil that was exorcised and ended.
Also, he's got some famous paintings, you can look up that name.
What was he again?
Christopher Heisman, H-A-I-Z-M-A-N-N.
I was too focused on the neurosis. It brings up a football player.
H-A-I-Z-M-A-N-N.
Ah, yes, okay. This is for sure not him. Okay, give up.
Okay, fair enough.
Next up, Bernard Folk, 1678, was a 17th century Dutch ship captain.
He was renowned for his uncanny speed of trips he would make between the Dutch Republic and Java,
which at the time was the Dutch East Indies.
In one recorded voyage in 1678, he traveled the distance between the Dutch Republic and Java in three months and four days,
which would normally take a ship one year.
He delivered Governor Rick Jolf van Gogh, a stack of letters from which the traveling time could be confirmed,
and in later times a statue was erected of him in the small island of Capercha near the harbor of Batavia.
And the statue was destroyed by the English in 1808.
Because he traveled so fast on his ship, it was rumored that he had been aided by the devil,
and he is often considered to be where the legend of the flying Dutchman comes from,
a ghostly ship doomed to sail the seas forever.
Next up, Niccolò Paganini. In the 1700s, he was both a violinist and a guitarist,
so he didn't stand a chance because he was too good at the music.
Born in 1782 in Genoa, he began learning the violin at the age of seven,
is considered by many the greatest violin virtuoso of all time.
He was so much better than his peers that a rumor circulated and persisted that he must have sold his soul in exchange for his virtuosity.
It could have been that, of course, or it could have been the hours of practice and extremely long fingers,
which allowed him to play three octaves across four strings, which was unheard of.
Yeah, like it wasn't that for sure.
I have my suspicions that it was the devil.
He also likely suffered from something called Marfan syndrome, which is the long fingers.
No, it's the devil.
Generally, people who suffer from Marfan syndrome are exceedingly tall and have long limbs.
Paganini, like all music geniuses, used his skills mostly to get girls,
and he was a great womanizer and was said to trap the souls of young women inside his violin,
although quite how he did it no one ever really explained.
That's quite the rumor.
One concertgoer in Vienna even claimed to have seen the devil guiding Paganini's arm,
which probably made for interesting conversation during the interval.
So that's Niccolò Paganini.
He's also Giuseppe Tartini.
He is also said to have sold his soul to the devil, but also to have composed a song with him.
I wonder how that would sound.
He wrote the song Trillo del Diavolo.
Man, there's...
This is all old Europe, so it's hard for a lot of these words.
Also called the Devil's Trail came to Tartini in a dream.
The music came to him, he said, after his dream self had also sold his soul.
So like he literally had a dream of selling his soul and woke up and wrote this song.
Weird.
Okay.
He failed to check the small print on the deal, however, because the music he wrote down when he awoke
was not as complex as the Devil's Tomb.
Perhaps that's just as well, however, as the Devil's Trail is said to be one of the most technically demanding pieces for violin ever written.
Although he was a very accomplished musician, he soon discovered that he was not good enough to play his own tune,
so he had traded his soul for a tune he could not play.
This one I really like, Kelsey.
It's a man by the name of, wait for it, Jack Parsons.
One name I can actually say.
That sounds wrong.
I know, but that's the...
This one's fairly recent.
This guy was born a few years after the Rape brothers first flew their airplane.
Big fan of sci-fi stories on rocket ships, and he tried to summon the Devil when he was just 13 years old,
because he planned to sell his soul in exchange for a real-life rocket ship.
It didn't work, but he continued to study science as he grew older and tried to create a rocket engine that was powerful enough to go through the Earth's atmosphere.
In his early 20s, he got involved with Alistair Crowley and his occult teachings, which some people consider to be satanic.
Again, Alistair Crowley not necessarily satanic.
We've done a whole few episodes on him.
Parsons attempted a spell called the Babylon Working, where he tried to summon a goddess named Babylon that would help men go to the moon someday.
Jack Parsons, the guy we're talking about, ended up inventing jet fuel that is used by NASA today.
What?
Yeah.
But like, wow.
Yeah.
So kind of just a crazy story.
Next up, Bob Dylan.
No.
Are you serious?
This actually stems from before this, but he did an early 2000s interview on 60 Minutes.
He was asked the question why he continued to play shows despite his massive riches and fame,
and he stated in here, he made a deal to get where I am now, and he is a grateful man who is true to his word.
It all goes back to the destiny thing.
I made a bargain with it a long time ago, and I'm holding up my end.
He's then asked who he made a deal with, and he says, with the chief commander of this Earth and the world we can't see.
Wait, are we assuming that's the devil?
Yes.
Chief commander of Earth.
Yeah, okay.
Despite the fact that you know Bob Dylan is actually a fairly religious person, it's likely God he is talking about or just making a joke.
Because he's a weird guy.
But the theory is that he actually sold his soul right around the time that he went electric,
which we actually just talked about in a previous episode.
We did just reference it.
Which actually makes the part where the person yells Judas make even more sense if you're saying he sold his soul.
Yeah, okay, okay.
I can dig it.
I mean, I mean, he's still in his prime there, but it goes downhill quickly after that.
So he sold his soul for the devil around that time.
It didn't pay off for long.
Oh, he's still going.
Yeah, he sure is.
And he's still going.
Yeah, it's true.
It's true.
So maybe he did.
And last up here is Jimmy Page, guitarist for Led Zeppelin.
He was a student of occultism his whole life and he bought Alaser Crowley's Loch Ness Castle, which everybody believes is haunted.
He has come up before.
That's the one I think where he had summoned that little creepy thing.
Yeah, where he was alleged to have summoned that demon.
Yeah, what's his name again?
I don't know.
Something weird.
Yeah, we go back and listen to that episode.
It's in there.
Yeah.
He followed Crowley's occultist teachings about focusing your intentions on what you want to get out of life.
Apparently Jimmy just wanted to play really good guitar and that's what he got out of it.
Lots of people claim that he had sold his soul to the devil to get such fast fingers to which Page replied that if he had then so had the rest of the band.
Which is not saying it didn't happen, but you know, kind of also saying it didn't happen.
And this is also likely where the rumor comes that if you place their way to heaven backwards, you can hear demonic voices speaking.
I didn't hear that.
I'll have to try it out.
Although without records, it actually feels harder to play things backwards these days.
That's true.
I guess you just have to Google it.
But those are the deals with the devil throughout history.
There are many more.
I just gave you guys a tasting of the ones that I could in fact say most of the words of.
There are many more out there, many different cultures we could have focused on.
I just wanted to give you a big overview of everything.
Chelsea, anything you want to talk about?
Yeah, that was very nice.
And I think most of all, we are feeling grateful, not uncertain at all for your pronunciation of mostly everything in this episode.
It's been amazing.
I didn't realize that the devil has touched so many lives in which we still feel the impacts to the state.
Yeah, you kind of think of these as like very historical things, but honestly, it's any time somebody gets particularly good at something,
there's going to be a rumor that they sold their soul to the devil for that.
Nobody could ever be really good at anything without the help of the devil.
Let's be honest.
So if you know, nobody can be the world's best.
I guess the real lesson is if you know anybody that is really good at anything, just make wild accusations that they've made a deal with the devil.
Tell them that we can exercise the contract and see what they say.
No, that was great.
I quite enjoyed that.
The devil, he wants to help.
He's a good guy.
He wants us to make the most of our talent and a lot of things.
And to go electric sometimes.
The devil loves the electric guitar.
I mean, we all do that.
If it's two things that he loves, it's electric guitar and blues music.
Yep, 100%.
That's his favorite thing.
Everybody knows that.
That's just a fact.
Yeah, if you take nothing else from this episode, please remember those words.
Anyhow, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.
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