Gods & Ghouls

#29 Ra’s Secret Name & Yara-ma-yha-who

Thanks for your patience as we took a short week break! We are back with episode 29! Jack takes us to Egypt to search for the Sun God, Ra's, secret name. Hint: all of his names are a mouth full. Then Jana travels down under to rest under a fig tree discovering the tale of a vampiric frog-man creature...who has a few odd habits.

Sites & Sources:

Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Pinch

The Mythology Book - Ra’s Secret Name

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Duration:: 35m
Broadcast on:: 08 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Welcome! Welcome! I just like tickled my lips. Like my brain and my lips. Anyway, welcome back to [Laughter] If you... Ignoring Jack, if you hear weird music in the background it is not your phone. You're not accidentally playing two things at once. There is a festival going outside, going on outside, outside of our window, and they're playing really fun, festive music. So, we don't know how long the festival is going to go on, so we need to record anyways, so we're just going to record over it. So, you know, we're going to have nice little lulls of fun music. It's like I know how long it's scheduled for, but I have no clue when it's going to end. Yeah, I don't think that they're having a good time. So, there's people drinking beer outside of our window. They look like they're having a good time. [Laughter] I'm kind of jealous. Jack and I are doing this thing called Silver September. Just because the summer was drinking beer outside. Drinking beer out the window just to taunt us, those assholes. But yeah, summer was busy, summer was long, summer was lots of parties and places and weddings, and it was so much fun, and it was so harmful to the wallet and the liver. So, we are like, okay. It was a bad summer to be a liver enzyme. [Laughter] But yeah, so. So, here we are at Dry September. Dry September, and there's a festival on our freaking street. We should have planned this. With beer and cuisine. Okay, that's where we're at, mentally. Yeah. Episode 29. We're Pat in the Cat. 28. Today's 29. Today's 29. Yeah. Holy crap. And this is a big episode for me. Oh. Because we're going to a new pantheon. We have not talked. So, we've talked about... Mayan, Greek. Yeah. A lot of Norris. Norris. Some Korean. Some Chinese. Some Chinese. Yep. We haven't done any Japanese yet. That's what I was wondering. I was like, wait. I can't remember if that one was... It's like, we're hitting all the major food groups essentially. Oh my god. Where are we going to go? And today, we're going to have one that is like... For me, it's one of the most difficult. But it is ancient Egypt. Oh my god. I love... Ancient Egypt is sick. I love that every single thing that comes out on Discovery. Or travel channel, like, about Egypt. I'm in it. Yeah. I've seen it like 10 times. Like, I love Egypt. I remember loving the game Age of Mythology growing up. It came out in 2004. And in the story mode, there were Egypt missions where you had to like, help put Osiris's body back together because he's one of the gods and he gets famously dismembered and they have to, like, put him back together. And I remember that so vividly. And I'm probably going to play that game after this recording. And that is not the story I'm telling, however. We're going to talk about Amunra. He's the creator of the Egyptian universe. And he's the god of the sun. So, pretty big deal. And in particular, I want to talk about his name and the power that named held in ancient Egyptian mythology. Okay. So, the story is told, well, narrated by the scorpion goddess, Sir Cat. And her name means, it's like loosely translated to like the one who closes the throat. Oh. Yeah. Bad ass. And... Like, strangles people? Like, what is that? Like, like, poison and venom. Oh, okay. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. And it's, ancient context wasn't really about, you know, the secret name of Ra or the true name of Ra who is the sun god. But it was actually a spell to help ward off poison and disease. So, now we think of it like, oh, this story is all about this God's true and secret name that no one knows because he created everyone. So, people call themselves but they never knew his secret name. It's like never knowing someone's middle name. Yes, just like it. And, but yeah, it was originally just a story about healing. Okay. So, in ancient Egypt, knowing someone's true name gives you a lot of power over them because you can use it against them and it kind of gives you a little bit of their vital essence and their power if you even know their name. So, it's a benefit of being around before anyone else. Wow. Okay. The conjuring universe has something very similar. What is your true name? And the story begins with a statement from Circuit about Ra, saying that Ra created heaven, earth, the waters, people, reptiles, birds, fishes, and cattle. I love the word fishes. Fish isn't cattle, but, okay. Yes, we basically created everything. Yeah. Okay. Did he create otters or giraffes or zebras? Like these are my questions. Yes. Yes, because cattle, we're seeing as any animal. And this timeframe was extremely broad. It wasn't just cows. He admitted all this stuff and then he specifically invented cows. Yeah. Heaven and earth, birds, fishes, and cows. [laughter] Which kind of cow? Just all cows? He did not create wagyu. Oh my God. Come on now. What a miss. So, Ra ruled over gods and humans, and he had a physical presence on earth. And Ra was just one of the names that he went by. It's the one that he's known nowadays as the sun god. And, but still, no one knew his true name. And if someone passed away in ancient Egypt and no one remembered their name or just never referred to them, you know what happened to them in the afterlife? Totally tragic. They were destroyed. Oh God. Instant destruction. Wow. It is an ancient dog. Into smithereens. He's terrified that people are going to forget you. Yeah. This is just a human core function of a human. Yep. And Ra's secret name was sealed away in his stomach so no hostile force could use it against him. Like, he created the world. He was pretty powerful. He was like, okay, I don't want anyone to be able to use his power against me. So, let me keep it safe in my tummy. [laughter] That is the most logical place of the day, yes. There's a whale that thought that as well. Oh, call me Ushmail. [laughter] What am I talking about? The only deity that dared to challenge his authority was his daughter Isis. She was super clever. A skilled healer and knew pretty much everything about having an earth. But, you know what she didn't know? Oh. Ra's secret name. Oh. His secret name, his true name. He was known by a lot of things. I should have figured that one out. [laughter] Now, when Ra's started to show symptoms of aging, because this is just like a physical, earthly form of the guy. Sweet. Okay, yeah. She saw that he had a droopy mouth and he was drooling quite a bit. Oh, wow. And... [laughter] You're so dumb. And she saw an opportunity there. Because I guess that she was very clever. She finds some of his saliva on the ground, mixes it with dirt, and shapes it into a snake. That's a lot of saliva. The look Jan has given me. Okay. [laughter] When the snake comes to life, she leaves it in a crossroads that he passes every day. And he takes this crossroads so he can see all the lands and everything that he's created. And since the snake comes from Ra's saliva, it is extremely venomous because it's extremely potent and very powerful. Ra's bitten by the snake the very next day. Goes to the crossroads. Ice is put in the perfect spot. Ra walks by. Okay. Meow. Well, that's not what snakes do, but... [laughter] Bites. The venom burns like fire and raw screams so loud that it alerts all the gods. Dude is hollering. He's then unable to speak in his lips are trembling. And this is the creator of the world, so it's kind of a big deal. It might never be here. He, eventually, someone's enough strength to tell the gods that he has been stung by a creature that he did not create. So he's like, "I have no clue where this came from because I made everything, but I didn't make this." So he asks his children, aka the gods, for help. And they're still just all shocked to see their father Ra and their ruler and their, you know, the original gods get so hurt. And Isis plays it off cool. She pretends to be upset, just like the rest of them. She asks Ra like, "If one of your creations turned against you, if so, like, I promised to destroy it with my magic." And he says, "I didn't make it, but I was just after a walk to see everything that I made and it bit me." And he thinks that it was a snake due to the symptoms. He wasn't sure, but he thinks so because he said he felt colder than water, hotter than fire. He was drenched with sweat and could barely see. Dude's not doing so hot. Isis says, "I can help you. You just have to tell me your name. I need to know..." Why is that necessary? "I need to know your name to have the power that it will give me so I can then successfully heal you." So Ra says, "Try these." People call me the one who created the physical world, the one who made the bull and the cow inventing sex, the one who causes the Nile to flood. How about the one who divided the year into seasons and the day into hours? Okay, they still didn't work. Okay, try these. They call me Keppri in the morning, Ra in the afternoon, and Atum in the evening. The pain continues. Okay. None of them work. Isis insists that she needs to know his true name to heal him. Maybe he forgot. You can't tell. He's like, "Oh, is it this one?" Sorry, it was sealed by a stomach. I accidentally pooped it out. And it's not forever. I don't know what it was. The pain worsens just a little bit. Ra gives in whispers his true name to Isis. And he says that when the time comes, she can pass the secret on to Horus, who was the son of Isis and prophesies to become the next ruler of Egypt. So then Isis uses her magic to draw out the venom. She works, and she saves Ra. And she essentially did all this to help her son become the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Egypt. And to wrap this up with a fun fact, Horus, so he becomes the... It's a fun fact Jack's already laughing at it. He hasn't even gotten to it yet. He becomes the king of Egypt, and he gets poisoned in a similar way by one of the other gods. Go around, come around there. Horus, what's out here tonight, even your fall? It's your momma's fall. I blame it on your mother. It's always the mother's fall. Oh my god. I've been listening to... That's just rude. I got this story from this book I've been listening to a lot lately. It's like my first dive into Egyptian mythology. It's by Geraldine Pinch. Incredible name. Geraldine Pinch. It's called Egyptian mythology, a guide to the gods, goddesses, and traditions of ancient Egypt. And a book that I use to help me research a lot of stories is called the mythology book. They also have a story on this called Ra's Secret Name, but that's just like a one page. That does a very nice job of laying out the logic of the whole conversation that they had in everything. But yeah, Geraldine Pinch. She knows her stuff. She knows her stuff. Wow. What's your real name? Everybody asks me, what's Janna short for? I've come up with weird stuff in the past, but I just... You can just call me she who created the world. She created the world. Or Jennifer. I just say Jennifer occasionally. There's like a lot of names that I like invented because people always ask me what Janna short for. It was like, I didn't even remember, I was in school. It was like the teacher was calling attendance. Janna. Well, of course everybody says it wrong, and then I have a Janna. Yeah. Because they called you Jonathan? They call me Jonathan. That's an nickname for Jonathan. Yes, it is, everybody knows that. That's not weird, it's British, but it's not weird. It's British, but... Yeah, it's like a British. I'll say like... It was good enough for JFK, so... My great grandfather's name was John. Not Jonathan. John. Four letters. Whoa! He went by Jack. Tell me why he went by a four letter. He was like, mmm, let me shorten it to another four letter word. Like, why the fuck did he do that? I don't understand. Anyway, everybody called him Jack. But that's the ghost story. This is your grandpa? He's my... Yeah, he's my... Graham, my mom's mom's... Graham? Our parents? Gotcha. I think so my mom's grandparents, yeah. Both my mom's side of the family, I'm pretty sure. If... Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Or maybe... I don't know. I could have that wrong. But I know it's my mom's side. It's either my grandpa or my grandma on my mom's side's parents. So my mother's grandparents. I just don't remember which... Anyway, that's when my mom was sitting in the nursery when... Or sitting in her room when I was napping in the nursery. I was like... A few weeks old at this point? Two weeks old? Two weeks old? Um... And my mom was just like sitting in the room, like in her bedroom? Like with the monitor on? Did I be a monitor? And reading or doing whatever, like just like sitting there. She's like... She's like... I was not asleep to be clear. Like I was awake, fully freaking awake. You were napping. I was just doing something else. Like folding laundry. I can't remember what she was saying. But she was like... I was not napping. I was awake. And she could hear over the baby monitor. Home alone with just me. Um... And she heard like noise over the baby monitor. And then all of a sudden she heard... Jack! Jack, come here. And of course my mom was like... Look at that! Ran into the nursery. I'm completely sound asleep. No one else is in the nursery. The windows locked. Nothing's like... Nothing's happening. And then she said it took her a second. But like obviously her first instinct was like... My baby! Yeah! Second instinct. But she sat there and thought about it. And this is like... This is before internet. This is before Wi-Fi. This is not like nobody could have like come snuck into the Wi-Fi and like talked and picked up with a weird signal. Um... You know. And known her grandpa's name. And known my mom's grandpa's name. But my mom says like... When she like kind of like sat there like reflected on it. She knew the voice. And it was her grandma's voice. Wow. And she thinks... She assumes that... That her grandmother came to visit the first grand... Or not the first grandchild. Just the grandchild like her kid. And um... Called her husband over. Her... Which is her grandma. Or her grandfather over to see me. The baby. So... But his name was Jack. That is so cool. I know! I love our story. I love our story. I love our story. I'm like... See, I knew. I came out of the womb loving ghost stories. As a ghost signed me up. Yeah. I'm here for it. They don't even like... I mean, they do scare me. Like, it's like scary. But like, ghosts don't scare me. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like... I would love to see a ghost. I mean, again. But... A story for a different day. A podcast. A story for a different day. But yeah. Like, I would totally be one of those people that like, goes around haunted buildings and like... Looks for ghosts. Like, I'd totally do that. You'd be the one who finds them. I would. They've just been around me my whole life. I know they're real. I think it's just... They're just real. It's so crazy. But yeah, I guess you have to have a weird story like that. In order to... Anyways, what's it? Ready for mine? Yeah. That was outside. That festival is super ready for my story. All right. So, Jack. As we've established that is your name. Thank you, co-host. (laughter) Janana. (laughter) Co-host, just tell your story. Do you know about the Yarmah Yahoo? The Yarmah Yahoo. Let me check to see if I hid the secret word in my stomach. Never heard of it. Oh, my God. The Yama or the Yahoo. Well, the Yarmah Yahoo. It's one word? It's like four hyphenated. Oh, gosh. Okay. Yara? A multi-hypertate. Yeah, hoo. Okay. So, the Yarmah Yahoo, or also known as the Yara Matahoo, is a legendary Vampiric Monster/SpiritMan. Oh, hell yeah. Let's do this. (laughter) Legendary Vampiric/SpiritMan. Let's go. Found in southeastern Australia's Aboriginal mythology. I just assumed that you knew every single ounce of information from Australia. It does sound like it, given the name. Oh, okay. There's a place there called Wara, Wara. No, Yara, Yara. They make a lot of wine. The Yara, Yara Valley. Oh, okay. Not to be confused with Walla, Walla. Yes, of course. Why would anyone ever confuse those two? Spoiler alert for next episode. (laughter) According to the legend, the creature resembles a small ish for a human, but large for frog. Red frog-man creature, equipped with a very big head, a large mouth with no teeth, and suckers on the end of its hands and feet. (laughter) It moves in here, pointing at people and then like, "No one gets the other." One day we'll have video, okay, just bear with us. And two microphones. Again, bear with us. So, the Yara Mayahu is said to live in fig trees. I don't know if I can do a story while a shout is happening. They're turning it up. Like we said, we know where it was scheduled to end. We did not think it was going to be over at that time. Tell the story. You can't report during this song. We got a dance. Alright, dance break. We had to wait a minute. (laughter) And we're back. Gosh, I forgot how good of a singer I am. (laughter) Dance break over. The Yara Mayahu is said to live in fig trees. And instead of hunting for food, it's described as waiting for an unsuspecting traveler to rest under the tree. The creature then drops down and places his hands and feet on the victim, using its octopus-like suckers at the end of his fingers and tips of his toes to drink the blood from the body, draining the victim of most of their blood. However, the Yara Mayahu do not fully kill their victims. And the victim is left with just enough blood to remain barely alive. After that, it swallows the person whole, drinks some water, and according to some legends, some tellings, dance. Just to ensure that the victim is settled in the belly. And then takes a nap. I'm kind of rooting for them. (laughter) I'm not even mad. Because everyone in this store is relatable, it's like sitting under a tree to hang out, have a little rest, relatable. Eating something, then having a big meal, then nap, or relatable. Relatable, carboload, I mean, all right? Yeah. You got to take a little nap. A human is a big person. You just got to swallow it whole, dance around, do a little jig, make sure it settles in your tummy and then go to bed. It makes me want to shout. Yay! However, the legend does get weirder. When the Yarmayahu awakens, it is said that it regurgitates its victim, and the victim's skin has a reddish tint to it, and they are shorter in appearance. They have narrowly escaped. I'm like, oh wait, maybe I should just, you know. But anyway, they have narrowly escaped death and are free to go after being knocked down a peg. Sorry. I write puns in the night. I can't call it myself. If the same victim finds themselves entangled in the Yarmayahu suckers again, the same series of events happen, and then they grow even shorter, but are still free to go, so they just keep shrinking. But then, if this bozo rests in the proximity of yet another fig tree, and is again, for the third time, sucked into the Yarmayahu embrace. They come out no shorter, but they do have a larger head. Their mouths are wide and large with no teeth, and if you can't see where this is going, their hands and feet also now are made of suckers. Yes indeed, the victims are transformed into a who? Yarmayahu. Yarmayahu! So in case you are fearful of turning into one of these blood sucking frogs, have no fear, because do I have the solution for you? Also, according to legend, with, you know, three payments of 1999. For a patron tier, 1000 members. Also, according to the legend, the Yarmayahu, who is only active during the day, or also according to the legend, the Yarmayahu is only active during the day, and only targets live prey. So, playing dead until the sunset is said to prevent attacks. But then, you know, you're outside in the dense wilderness in Australia at night, so, you know, it's a really, it's a really choose your own adventure kind of strategy. I think that's a big period of frog, then giant spider, bigger than my car, you know. It's like a travel at night, because the desert's too hot in the day to travel, and you'll die. We get into that, how we get into that? Oh. Hey. My skin. Did you read ahead? The biggest use of this creature, I say, did he read ahead? He doesn't have my notes. I can't read. The biggest use of this creature's tail is to scare children and keep them behaving. So, in Aboriginal communities, the parents warned their sons and daughters about the little red man who hides in the boughs of the wild fig trees. So, as we know, this creature is small and has no teeth, but still very terrifying and feared nonetheless. Here is where David, oh gosh, his last name. Unep, unep, UNAI-P-O-N. Unipon. Unipon? Unipon? I was thinking it was an oo. Unipon? Yeah. If I am saying his last name, I am wrong, I'm so sorry. But here is where David Unipon comes in, and the history lesson portion begins. So, the history of us knowing about this creature is almost as weird as the tail itself. I love this. David was a rider from South Australia, and he searched for the folklore of the Yarmatahu in the summer and fall of 1925. He collected tails passed down orally for generations and sent them to the publishing office of Angus and Robertson in Sydney. When the British colonizers heard tell of the Yarmatahu, the creature was not as foreign as some beings in the physical world or the spirit one that they had encountered in Australia. The Yarmatahu was a vampire, much like the well-known tale of Dracula. Dracula, of course, being the better-known vampire monster quickly overtook or swallowed his rural competition whole. The Aboriginal Vampiric spirit man's story revealed not just the dangers of the lonely unknown, but also provided safety tactics. "This creature is hauntingly creepy and yet surprisingly practical from a community organization standpoint," says Emily Zarka, a professor at Arizona State University, who studies monster tails and is the host of Monstrum on PBS. The Yarmatahu embodies traditional knowledge. In the heat of the summer or the hailstorms of the winter, the legend remains, reminds listeners that it is better to take shelter under the rock ledges of the cliff than the thick bowed trees of the forest where animals hide. So what you were saying is like, "Oh, well, it's like cooler at night." Yeah, it's like kind of a cautionary tale, but kind of also like there is some safety tactics involved. Like, "Hey, just don't hang under trees, whether you think of a monster coming down to eat you, fine, but go hide in the cave." It's like putting a Medusa on an oven. Yeah, it's like a warning. So the wider world would be introduced to the Yarmatahu and mainly, and many of the other creatures that populated the Aboriginal world through David's descriptions, but they would not get to know, or we would not get to know, the author himself. After David penned his accounts in preparation for a book, a misunderstanding developed between the author and the publisher. From the Australian academics, Stephen Mukmukki, M-U-E-C-K-E, so Mukmukki is what I would assume, Mukmukki. People's names, I like... Maybe Stephen Wack? Mwack? Yeah, there's no pronunciation for any of this online. I was like, "Uhhh." And like, I don't even know where they're from. Yeah, so it's like, I can't like guess well. It's the century they're alive sometimes. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And Adam Schumaker, thank God for the name Schumaker, has suggested the root of the disagreement, may have been the difference in understanding of ownership of the intellectual property in Western and Aboriginal cultures, or it simply may have been a miscommunication. Whatever the cause, the result was that David's carefully collected folklore was published in 1930 by William Ramsey Smith, a Scottish doctor who presented David's work as his own, almost word-for-word, in myths and legends of Australian aboriginals. Smith did change the spelling of Yara Matahu to Yara Matahu, which is the more commonly known spelling today. So, David, whatever his last name is, his original manuscript, legendary tales of Australian aboriginals, was finally published three quarters of a century late in 2006. The editors, Steven and Adam, called it an act of reparation, "bringing the stories back to the people and the country of their creation." The effort came in the early days of the vampiric boom that peaked in the 2010s. We all know who started that. The skin of a killer. Where you been, Mocha? The Yara Matahu now lies in weight in the pages of the modern Australian literature, and perhaps in the wild fig trees in South Australia. And that is the Yara Matahu that we should refer to it as. Because I assume David meticulously got better firsthand accounts than this Scottish guy who just stole it, rude. Well, we know that the guy who stole it was meticulous in his copying. He got a word-for-word. But anyway, it's not weird. He sent in all these notes and was working with a publisher, and then it is a mystery of what happened. Something happened. Let me guess. Someone made a lot of money. Someone took someone's word. That's what we know. So that's the Yara Matahu or Yara Matahu. Depending on whose side you're on, I'm just kidding. It reminds me of an Australian mythological story that will probably bring the podcast eventually. Ooh. Just a coolly smile. Ooh. Yeah, it's a good eat. Well, that's it for today. See you next week. I think we got to go dance at a festival now. Yeah. Next week is episode 30, and now they're my house, though. Oh, my God. I swear we're not going to be excited about it. 100 is the one I'm going to celebrate. Okay. 100. 111 is pretty cool. 117 is pretty cool. 117 is Master Chief's number in the Halo games. Hey, I guess we'll get to episode 31st. See you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Gods and Goals podcast. We will have new episodes each week. And for news and updates, you can find us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at Gods and Goals podcast. You can also email us at gods and goals podcast@gmail.com for any stories you'd like to share or any tales you'd like us to cover. Thanks.