Speaker-to-Volcanoes
The AP reports:
For 33 years, Maridjan spoke to Mount Merapi, believing he could appease its unpredictable spirits by throwing offerings of rice, clothes and chickens into the volcano’s gaping crater.
…Maridjan was believed by many to have the ability to speak directly to the mountain and led ceremonies every year to hold back its lava flows by throwing rice, clothes and chickens into its dome.
(emphasis added.)
Well, duh. Of course he could speak to the volcano. Anyone can talk to a mountain, or a river, or dead ancestors. To quote Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I:
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
The real question is, does anything happen as a result of talking to a mountain?
I sort of wonder about those who didn’t believe he could speak directly to the mountain. 🙂
The real question is, does anything happen as a result of talking to a mountain?
In this case, it seems to have reacted to this annoying small critter who kept making noise and tossing small objects at it about the same way we do to a mosquito that buzzes in our ear.
Sucks to be someone who lives there, I guess.
Except that that, too, seems to have just been coincidence. The guy’d been doing his schtick for over thirty years, after all.
To steal a line from Fight Club, “Over a long enough time line, everyone’s chances of being killed in a lava flow go to 100%.”