In the summer of 429 BCE, Athens was dying. Plague had come in through the port, bodies were stacked in the streets, and the city that believed it needed no one went looking for help from a goddess it had spent a century calling barbarian.
Her name was Bendis. She came from Thrace, the wild country north of Greece, and she came by sea, carried in the memory of merchants, mercenaries, and enslaved women who had been taken from their homes and sold in the Athenian market. She was a huntress. She carried two spears, and the ancients could never quite agree on what the second one was for.
Athens gave her land. Athens gave her a sanctuary on the hill above the harbor. And Athens gave her something it had never given any god before: a race of torches, run at night, on horseback, with fire passed hand to hand through the dark.
This week, we follow Bendis from the Thracian highlands to the Piraeus waterfront, through Plato's strangest opening paragraph, through the fox-skin cap and the fawn skin, through an etymology that may mean the one who binds and we ask what it means when a city in crisis opens its gates to a goddess it doesn't understand.

REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Ancient sources

• Plato, Republic 327a–328b — the Piraeus opening, the two processions, the mounted torch relay.
• Herodotus, Histories 4.33 (wheat straw offering to "Queen Artemis" by Thracian and Paeonian women); 5.7 (the gods of the Thracians).
• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.47–2.54 — the plague at Athens, including the collapse of religious observance.
• Strabo, Geography 10.3.16 — Bendis among Thracian ecstatic rites, alongside Cotys.
• Cratinus, Thrattai (Thracian Women), fragments — the dilonchos / two-spear epithet.
• Scholia to Plato, Republic 327a — ancient explanations of the twin spears.

• Robert Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, 1996) — chapter on foreign cults at Athens; the standard treatment of how Bendis got in.
• Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) — festival calendar, the Bendideia.
• Christopher Planeaux, "The Date of Bendis' Entry into Attica," Classical Journal 96.2 (2000–2001) — the core article on the contested chronology. Read this one if you read only one.
• Zofia Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace (Oxford, 1998) — Thracian religion and material culture on its own terms rather than through Greek eyes.
• Jan Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East — useful on ecstatic cult and Greek anxieties about it.

In the winter of 1679, a woman walked out of a church in Paris and into the hands of the police. Her name was Catherine Monvoisin, but all of Paris knew her as La Voisin: "The Neighbor." She read palms, sold love potions, and, investigators claimed, supplied poison to some of the most powerful women in France. Behind her garden wall, they said, a priest said midnight masses over a naked woman's body, and the blood of infants was offered to demons for the love of a king.

This Halloween, we go to the edge of seventeenth-century Paris, to a house with a furnace in the garden, a courtroom draped in black, and a scandal so dangerous that Louis XIV ordered the evidence sealed. What did La Voisin really do? What was invented under torture? And who, exactly, was she selling to?

Content note: this episode discusses poisoning, infant death (alleged), torture, and execution by burning. It is based on historical sources, and much of the most sensational testimony was extracted under duress. We'll flag what is documented and what is legend.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Books and scholarship

• Anne Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003). The best modern English-language narrative and a core source for this episode.
• Lynn Wood Mollenauer, Strange Revelations: Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIV's France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2007). A careful study of the trials and the culture of magic and sacrilege.
• Frances Mossiker, The Affair of the Poisons: Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan, and One of History's Great Unsolved Mysteries (New York: Knopf, 1969). An older, popular narrative.
• Frantz Funck-Brentano, Le Drame des poisons (Paris, 1899). Foundational early scholarship, available in English as Princes and Poisoners (1901).
• François Ravaisson (ed.), Archives de la Bastille (Paris, published in volumes from the 1860s onward). Published documents from the Bastille archives, including material from the Chambre Ardente.
• Nancy Mitford, The Sun King (1966). For general background on Louis XIV's court, including Madame de Montespan.

• Madame de Sévigné, Letters (to her daughter, Madame de Grignan). The letter following La Voisin's execution (dated the 23rd of February 1680) is the best-known contemporary account of her final days. Many English translations exist. Her letters also track the Brinvilliers scandal.

• Encyclopædia Britannica (1911 ed.) entry "La Voisin," notes the role of La Reynie's preserved notes and gives the fate of other prisoners.
• Wikipedia, "La Voisin," and "Affair of the Poisons" (useful for dates and names; note that the "2,500 victims" figure appearing there and elsewhere is unsourced and should be treated with caution).
• Encyclopedia.com, "La Voisin (?-1680)."
• Paris Zigzag, "Paris sombre : la terrifiante Affaire des Poisons" (French-language popular history; useful on Desgrez and the Chambre Ardente).
• Connexion France, "Sorceress, midwife, poisoner: meet La Voisin."

Four thousand years before anyone worried about being watched online, the people of ancient Mesopotamia believed something far worse: that a goddess named Belet-Seri had been recording every single thing they said and did, every day of their lives and that when they died, she would read it all aloud.

Tonight, for Halloween, we descend into Irkalla, the Mesopotamian land of no return, to meet the "Lady of the Steppe," scribe of the underworld court of Ereshkigal. Who was she? Whose daughter, whose sister, whose wife? Why did a civilization obsessed with omens, ghosts, and proper burial fear a goddess who never raised a weapon, never cursed a soul, and simply... wrote? Grab a candle. She's already writing this down.

References:

1. Asher-Greve, J. M., & Westenholz, J. G. (2013). Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships, and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources. Academic Press Fribourg / Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen.
2. Krul, J. (2018). The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk. Brill.
3. Katz, D. (2003). The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources. CDL Press.
4. Brisch, N. (2019). "Geštinanna/Belet-ṣeri (goddess)." Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy. Available at: oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg
5. Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VII (Enkidu's dream of the underworld) multiple translations, including Andrew George's The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics).
6. Udug-hul incantation series (Old Babylonian exorcism texts) referenced via Krul (2018) and Katz (2003).
7. Wikipedia contributors, "Belet-Seri" and "Geshtinanna," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
8. Black, J., Green, A., & Rickards, T. (1992). Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. British Museum Press.

She had the head of a lion, the teeth of a donkey, and the talons of a monstrous bird. She nursed a dog and a pig at her own breast, rode a donkey through the rivers of the underworld, and according to the people of ancient Mesopotamia, she came for your children in the dark. This October, we meet Lamashtu: a figure so feared that an entire industry of amulets, incantations, and household exorcisms grew up around keeping her away from newborns and their mothers. We'll dig into who she really was not quite a demon, not quite a goddess, something ancient Mesopotamians themselves struggled to categorize and what four thousand years of terrified parents can tell us about how a civilization confronted the fragility of new life.

References:
Primary: Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian Lamashtu incantations (c. 2000 BCE onward); Neo-Assyrian amulets and plaques (British Museum, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art collections).
Modern: Farber, Walter, Lamaštu: An Edition of the Canonical Series of Lamaštu Incantations and Rituals and Related Texts from the Second and First Millennia B.C. (Winona Lake, 2014); Black & Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (1992); Abusch & Schwemer, Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals (2011).

Before there were jack-o'-lanterns, there was garlic and poppy heads hung on doorways to keep death away. This October, we descend into one of the darkest and least-discussed corners of Roman religion: Mania, the goddess of the dead, the mother of ghosts, and the terrifying matriarch behind the household spirits every Roman family depended on. We'll trace her from Etruscan tomb paintings to Roman crossroads shrines, uncover the disturbing oracle that once demanded child sacrifice in her name, and ask what her worship and Rome's discomfort with it reveals about how an entire civilization made peace with death. This is a goddess whose name survives today in a word we all use, usually without knowing where it came from: mania.

References:
Ancient: Varro, Macrobius, Festus, Ovid, Arnobius, records of the Arval Brethren. Modern: Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology; Laing, "The Origin of the Cult of the Lares" (1921); Müller, Die Etrusker; Dennis, The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria.

Beneath the green hills of what is now Somerset, England, a wound in the earth has been pouring out scalding, mineral-red water for over ten thousand years. Long before Rome ever set a sandal on British soil, the people who lived beside that wound believed a goddess lived inside it, one who could heal a dying body and curse a thief's soul in the same breath. Her name was Sulis.

In this episode, we descend into the sacred spring at Aquae Sulis to meet a goddess of sun, water, sight, and vengeance; a deity so rooted to her one square mile of earth that even the Romans, who renamed every god they met, could not fully rename her. We trace her murky lineage, the cosmology of the Iron Age Britons who first knelt at her waters, the curse tablets that still whisper the grudges of ordinary Roman-British people, and the strange, patient way she disappeared and never quite left.

REFERENCES

1. Sulis, Myth and Folklore Wiki (Fandom) — https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Sulis
2. Sulis, A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Oxford Reference — https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100541661
3. Sulis, Goddess of Celtic Mythology: Characteristics & Depictions, Study.com — https://study.com/academy/lesson/sulis-celtic-goddess-mythology-history.html
4. "Aquae Sulis: The Epitome of Roman Syncretization with the Celts," Ancient Origins — https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/aquae-sulis-epitome-roman-syncretization-celts-002562
5. "Sulis: Goddess of Healing Waters," Goddesses Hub — https://goddesseshub.com/sulis/
6. "Sulis: The Healing Goddess of Bath," Abyssal Consciousness — https://drvictorbodo.com/2024/10/13/sulis-the-healing-goddess-of-bath/
7. "Sulis: An Introduction to the Goddess of the Solar Springs," The Pagan Collective — https://thepagancollective.com/2026/01/18/sulis-an-introduction-to-the-goddess-of-the-solar-springs-celtic-mythology-explained/
8. Sulis, Digital Maps of the Ancient World — https://digitalmapsoftheancientworld.com/mythology/roman-mythology/celtic-gods/sulis/
9. "Curse Tablets from Roman Britain," History of Information — https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4156
10. Bath Curse Tablets, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_curse_tablets
11. "Roman Curse Tablets from the Bath: Manuscripts for Magic, Ritual, and Religion," Academia.edu
12. "The Ancient Roman Art of the Defixio Curse Tablet," L'Italo-Americano — https://italoamericano.org/roman-defixiones/
13. "Companion: Defixiones (Curse Tablets)," Feminae Romanae — https://feminaeromanae.org/defixiones.html
14. "Getting Even in Roman Britain: The Curse Tablets from Bath (Aquae Sulis)," FolkloreThursday — https://folklorethursday.com/halloween/getting-even-roman-britain-curse-tablets-bath-aquae-sulis/
15. "Tab.Sulis 32. Curse Tablet," Roman Inscriptions of Britain — https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabSulis32
16. "Roman Curse Tablets from the Baths," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity — https://www.ijssh.org/uploadfile/vol13/1111-CCH008.pdf
17. Sulis, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulis

Before Zeus, before Olympus, before light had a name, there was Night. In this episode, we sit with Nyx, the primordial goddess who existed before the gods we know, and ask what it means to worship a deity who is older than order itself. We trace her lineage from Chaos, meet her vast and unruly family of children (Sleep, Death, Fate, and more), explore the myths where even Zeus dared not cross her, and unpack the popular misconceptions that paint her as simply "evil" or "dark" in the shallow sense. We close with a practical, respectful guide to connecting with Nyx today, including offerings, timing, and a guided closing reflection for anyone who has ever needed permission to rest.

REFERENCES

• Hesiod. Theogony, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White. 8th–7th century BCE. Available via the Perseus Digital Library.
• Homer. Iliad, Book XIV. Trans. various. 8th century BCE.
• Orphic Hymns, compiled c. 2nd–3rd century CE from earlier Orphic tradition (6th century BCE onward).
• Pausanias. Description of Greece, Book I ("Attica"), on the oracle of Night at Megara.
• Ovid. Fasti, Book V, on the Lemuria and offerings to Night.
• Statius. Thebaid, invocation to Nox.
• Theoi Project. "Nyx." theoi.com/Protogenos/Nyx.html — compiled primary-source translations and citations.
• World History Encyclopedia. "Nyx." worldhistory.org/Nyx/.
• Greek Legends and Myths. "The Children of Nyx in Greek Mythology." greeklegendsandmyths.com/children-of-nyx.html.
• History Cooperative. "Nyx: Greek Goddess of the Night." historycooperative.org/nyx-goddess-of-the-night/.
• GreekReporter.com. "Nyx, the Ancient Greek Goddess of the Night."
• Mythology Source. "Nyx Greek Goddess of the Night — A Complete Guide."
• Satyori. "Nyx and Her Children."
• Otherworldly Oracle. "Nyx Goddess of Night: 10 Ways to Work With the Dark Creatrix."
• Salvati Soul. "Nyx Worship: How to Honor the Goddess of Night Today."

• Bitesized Ancient History. "The Greek Goddess Nyx."