February 9, 2010 • 43 mins
Witches are perhaps one of the most reviled and misunderstood groups in history -- but why? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down the Stuff You Should Know about witchcraft in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house stuff Works dot Com? Hey, Chuck Joshers, you
were about to be in Guatemala, buddy, correction, dude, we
(00:20):
are in Guatemala as this is playing. Wow, pretty cool. Huh.
It's the magic of technology. So tell them what we're
plugging here. Well, we're gonna be down in Guatemala finding
out whether education can actually alleviate poverty or not. Right yep. Uh.
And while we're down there, we're going to be blogging
the whole time. Hopefully as we speak there will be
blog posts. Uh. And if we don't have internet access,
(00:40):
it'll be up next week. Yeah. The internet in Guatemala
mayor it may not be spotty. We haven't figured it
out yet, but if not, they'll be out the following week,
right indeed. Okay, Well you can check those out at
the blogs at house stuff works dot com. Chuck and
I share a blog called stuff you Should Know appropriately enough? Right, Yes,
that's that. Right, on with the show with the podcast. Hey,
(01:10):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Chuck. Yes,
I'm gonna paint a scene for you. Literally that might
take a while. And that was my words. What's that
canvas and easil doing it here? Thing? This is just
to help me think. Okay, let's here. I'm just gonna
(01:30):
trust stick figures right here, so don't expect too much.
Imagine right that you are tied to a pole. Okay,
you're far so good. You're bound with your hands behind
your back, less good, and your ankles are also bound
to said pole, which looking up right erect and um,
you notice that there are there's an awful lot of
(01:54):
really dry firewood scattered around you around this pole. That's
not good. It's really not good. Even uh less good?
Is uh? You figuring out that there's some guy, probably
some sort of priest or official, maybe an executioner, coming
towards you with a torch. Other people there there are
(02:16):
tons of people, all of your neighbors, people in your
very small community who you've known your whole life. My
neighbors would be saying that guy, well, this is in
a different time. Okay, So well, let's say that you
know all of your neighbors and work with them in
trade with them, and maybe it helped raise their children,
right right, healed them when they were sick using herbs
(02:38):
and and maybe incantations. There were better times in the past.
Right now, everyone in your town is pointing at you
and laughing at you, and yelling and and calling you
horrible names and accusing you of doing horrible things like
um stealing babies and sucking their blood and yeah, just
doing all sorts of terrible stuff. Right and in front
(02:59):
of you are your daughters. You have a couple of daughters,
and they're being forced to watch this man who's approaching
you with the torch. But not only that, they're being
whipped in front of you. So you're about to die
in one of the most horrible ways of human being
can die, right while you're watching your daughter's being whipped
(03:20):
and the entire town pointing at you, calling you horrible
names and just basically lacking any level of humanity whatsoever.
That's pretty I'm not done yet, really. The guy finally
makes it over and took his sweet ass time. Then
he finally makes it over with the torch and lights
the kindling, and all of a sudden, you got the
(03:40):
hot foot, right the flames start to climb and climb.
You're having trouble breathing. You're extremely hot, your clothes are
catching on fire, your your skin is blistering. The pain
is about as intense as it can possibly be from
what I understand, Burning to death in this manner can
take a matter of ours. Wow. Yeah, until I die, yes,
(04:04):
or until I guess you're completely burned up. Josh, that's awful.
It is pretty awful. I can't imagine a worse way
to die. No, I can't either, Chuck. But do you
want to know something This actually happened to hundreds of
thousands of people during the Middle Ages in Europe and
later on in the United States. We are talking about witches.
(04:25):
We are talking about which is perhaps the craft one
of the most misunderstood or revile groups of all time
in history. Never think about that. No, you probably would
have said gypsies. Yeah, but no, which is okay, that's
my two cents. Yeah, I would agree with that, especially
after reading this article. Yeah, and hearing that story, which
(04:47):
is got the the bad end of the stick. Yeah,
I would agree with that. So where do we go
from here? Josh? To the beginning? Sure? Do we don't
actually know the very beginning, right, because witchcraft and has
been around since like they were pre humans. Right, sure, yeah,
I mean you can make you can make the case
that all pre Christian religions, with the exception of Judaism,
(05:14):
war um, witchcraft basically yeah, because the article pointed out
here that witchcraft, like when times were rosy, everything was great,
but then when plague hit and famine and disease, then
that's when people said, oh, you know, maybe we should
get this shaman to cook up a little potion or
say a spell to the gods and maybe things will
(05:36):
turn in our favor. And if they didn't turn in
their favor, then the shaman or the witch or the
folk deal or whatever usually found the entire town against
him or her right and perhaps even burned at the stake.
But this was before before a certain period. Witchcraft is
basically just like whatever. It was normal, commonplace, everyday stuff,
(05:57):
and there wasn't necessarily anything like evil associated with it
like we do today. It was magic right with a K.
Explain Yes, M A G I C K is to differentiate.
That is a common accepted spelling by modern witches to
differentiate between like let's say, um real witchcraft, David Copperfield
(06:21):
that kind of magic, or an illusionist or John c
Riley as the illusionist at the end of Boogie Nights.
Remember he became a magician at the end. No, I
totally forgot that. Yeah, yeah, that's what he became after
his porn career. I forgot about that anyway, that kind
of magician or the other kind of magic, which is
there's both black and white magic, and they're they're not
(06:44):
necessarily mutually exclusive as the good and evil as we learned. No,
at some point though, the tide very much turned, and
there's actually there's some I should say, uh it turned
at one point, but there were several things that led
up to the turning of the tide, against which is
saying saying Augustine had something to do with this. Well, actually, um,
(07:07):
is it Augustine? Yeah, okay, I know we always say
Augustine and uh you doubt his uh existence at times.
We've gotten some email on that, yeah, um round about uh.
Augustine argued that only God could suspend the normal laws
of the universe. Therefore there couldn't possibly any such beasts,
(07:30):
any such thing as what which is claimed to be
able to do right right, So basically they may as
well have just been engaged in tooth fairy studies or
something like that. They were totally harmless, possibly wacko, but
to the Christian Church they had nothing to do with anything, sure, right, okay,
and that that view was held for a good eight
(07:52):
hundred years, so it's popular. Yeah, So which is where
they went along? Their mary Wade did their own thing.
Christianity went along. It's mary Wade at its own thing,
and um, no real problems right until a d twelve
oh eight and a pope name Innocent. The third went
to war with the Cathers. You heard of these guys, No,
(08:13):
but I've heard of the innocent, have you? Yeah? And
the third had nothing on junior Just let me say that.
Who the second? Yeah, innocent too, No, no, no, we
don't need to get into that ahead anyway. Innocent, the
third not junior? Innocent the third? Did they use junior
to denote popes? Okay um? Innocent? The third declared war
(08:35):
and the Cathers. The Cathers were this kind of um
Christian sect who lived in France, I think northern France
and long doc okay okay um. And they were very
much convinced that on Earth and throughout the universe, there
was a very real war going on between God and
(08:56):
the devil, good and evil, right and dark night and
day right, and there was very clear division and there
was a power struggle going on. The Cather's also clearly
um believed that the Roman Church, the Roman Catholic Church,
was actually the Church of Satan. Okay, yeah, yeah, and
(09:19):
they were very much opposed to the Roman Church. The
Roman Church had more power. Led by Innocent the Third said,
you know what, Cather's, we decided that you guys worshiped
the devil. And not only that, we're going to create
propaganda that shows that our wood carving showing your people
kissing the anus of the devil in person, because you
guys are devil worshipers. Take that. Wow, that was not
(09:43):
a good day. The Cather's were persecuted, they were yeah, yeah,
and to this day they're called the cather heretics. I'm
sure they could have gotten by with like kissing the
hand of the devil or something. I saw a wood
It's like the devil with the clovenhusts and he's bent over,
like kiss my ass, kiss my devil butt. Actually can
I go on. Yet, well, it doesn't get better for witches.
(10:06):
So now we have people who oppose the church worship Satan.
That division has just been created. Okay um. And the
whole reason the pope went after the Cather's the idea
that there was a war between good and evil going
on was actually like, eighty years later adopted by St.
Thomas Aquinas for him, and he's like, Okay, there is
(10:29):
such a thing as demons, and they're here on earth,
and not only are they involved in pleasuring themselves, they
really really like to lead human beings astray from God.
So this is going on. There is real evil, it's
really tangible, and it's all around us all the time.
We have to protect ourselves as Christians. We have to
be suspicious of other people who aren't Christians because they're
(10:49):
probably being led astray by these demons. Now we start
to have everyday people who can possibly be in league
with the devil because it's all around us. Right, And
this when this was first taking root, right, this is
the real start of it. But everything's been leading up
to this boy right, and then finally Chuck in fourteen
eighty four, we have the real seed of how we
(11:12):
view which is and the which scare which led to
the witch executions and persecution. Um. Fortunately for a pair
of German friars took two years to write the Malleus Maleficarum. Okay, right,
it's a basically a witch finding handbook. This is how
we get out, how to seek them out, how to
(11:32):
try them, how to execute them. Basically, these two German friars, Um,
remember the vow of abstinence. We're not very happy with women.
And they basically made all this stuff up. Most whitches
were women, um to tell which anyone who was suspected
of it, any woman who was suspected of it should
be stripped down and search for moles. Right. And then
(11:55):
um also which is like to steal penises from men,
collect them, keep them in a box where they would
move by themselves, and eat oats and corn. Pretty awful idea, right.
And um also like which is when you're trying a witch,
you have to lead her in backwards so she doesn't
have a chance to cast spells on everybody when she's
killing in the room. Makes sense? Just stupid stupid like that? Right,
(12:18):
that's probably gonna get bleaped out, Okay, And that led
to the witch scare of the witch persecution and the
witch executions that we know and love today. Hundreds of
thousands of people, chuck, hundreds of thousands of people were
killed because these two German friars wrote this book and
just made it up. I feel like we could stop there.
(12:40):
I have more. I'll try to interject it later. So, Josh,
should we talk about one of the most famous of
those persecutions. Yes, not single persecution, a set of persecutions
in in Salem, Massachusetts. Of course you've read The Crucible.
You know we're talking about Salem witch trials. Yeah. Should
(13:02):
we go over that real quick? I think we should.
This all started because a couple of precocious teenage girls
may or may not had have had clinical hysteria or
been bored or been bored, maybe epilepsy, you never know.
The point is they were having convulsions and screaming like
as if they were possessing. They were being pinched and poked.
Is that what it was? Yeah, by an unseen force,
(13:25):
bitten and pinched, not poked by an unseen force. They
were they were poked by the witch examiners, I'm sure,
okay uh, and the doctor actually the witch examiner said,
you know, they are clearly bewitched, right, and how because
that stupid book. The stupid book, Yes, he probably had
that in his little doctor physician. He wasn't even a
witch examiner. The guy was the village physician. He was,
(13:46):
and he was like, I can't come up with any explanation.
So they're clearly bewitched, right. And so this led to
the one by one these ladies in Salem, Massachusetts. And
this was clearly before their big liberal influx of liberals
in Massachusetts. Those days are over. Well yeah, true recently
and uh, these women became you know, persecuted and accused
(14:08):
of being witches. And a couple of men too, but yeah,
mostly women, women who lived on their own um, which
was a crime supposedly in um Salem. You know who
didn't help the servant? Was that her name? Yeah, this
was a West Indian servant of one of the girls.
And she really cemented the whole deal when she said
(14:29):
that she admitted in court to dealing with the devil
and flying on sticks and uh said, quote unquote they
made her hurt those girls. Yeah, she didn't help things.
So that really sent it into high gear and what
like people were were killed right, put to death. Yeah,
one guy, um Giles, I can't remember his last name.
(14:50):
He was pressed to death with a heavy stone. He
was like an old man, an elderly man, and they
put they laid him on a big stone and put
an even bigger stone on top of his chest and
the life was pressed out of him. Wow, I've never
heard of that. I believe he was. He was tortured
to death like that because he would not confess to
being a witch. I wonder what they called that was
(15:10):
that called pressing goodness? Me, that's creative. Uh. And that
was um. That went on for a little while under
the rule of the General Court, and then that court
was usurped by the Court of the Judicature and they
basically reversed stance, and not very many witches after that
took place were persecuted. Right. They basically said, okay, the
(15:35):
over just pretend it's never happened. That's literally what happened.
And that was it. No more witchery, Yes, I said.
Only three more people after that were found guilty of
witchcraft and they were even pardoned. Yeah. Later on, and
they still don't know what was up with these two
girls like they said they could have been well, you know,
precocious little girls looking for attention, and they could have
you know, had some mass or not mass hysteria, but
(15:57):
clinical hysteria. I wrote an article for the site UM
about this study this woman conducted, I think in the seventies,
and she proposed that they were actually all poisoned um
by or God, which is a hallucinogen the canons, and
that everybody got it from eating rotten grain and um
was basically tripping. Well, that was one of the theories
(16:19):
of the Enlightenment at one point. It's a bad trip?
Was there a lot of the Enlightenment was because of
bad bread? Yeah, basically people were hallucinating and coming up
with all these amazing inventions. That's awesome. Yeah. I don't
know if that's true though. So where are we, Josh? Well,
we could start to talk about the modern era. Okay, Well,
pagan religion. Well do you want to talk about the
(16:40):
different kinds of witchery around the world. Yeah, I've got
a couple of Like the highlight I want to hear it, Chuck. Okay, Josh,
you know I was going to pick this one. Appalachian
folk magic so cool, can't you see now now putting
like a hex on somebody. That was the worst movie ever.
Appleachi folk magic Josh is you know, clearly around this
(17:03):
area of the southeast, and they have a very much
Christian based idea of it of a Christian God and
a devil as the good and evil like you were
talking about. And they are can use their magic with
a K for good or evil, and they look to
nature for omens and like to portent the future and
(17:23):
their local men. Yeah, I know, we could probably go
up in North Georgia and round up a couple of
these that would be pretty boss. Actually, yeah, yeah, I'd
like to go do that. What's yours? Give me something?
One of my favorites, is it? This is the coolest name.
Pennsylvania Dutch hex craft a k A pow wow yeah um.
And it is from the well Pennsylvania Dutch area of Pennsylvania.
(17:45):
German UH and Dutch settlers including the Amish UM but
also including people who are Reformists like Lutheran's Right Protestants
UM believe in this stuff where you can create eight
good will blessings things like that, usually for the home
UM by creating symbols hexes which UM apparently when they
(18:11):
were when they first arrived and they were talking to
the English, they were saying sex is sex, but the
English herd hex and that's why it's called hex craft.
It's not the least bit um dark like. Right. You
know that you know that pineapple welcome flag that people
like hang outside of their house, that's a Pennsylvania Dutch hecks. Yeah,
(18:34):
um bless this home, that's a Pennsylvania Dutch hecks. The
two partridges with a heart, Pennsylvania Dutch hecks. What about
the nice stuff? You know, it's real pleasant witchcraft. What
about don't tread on me? The rattlesnake? It's a little different,
and that's not the same thing. No uh. And of
course we gotta talk about Wicka. That's probably where we're
(18:55):
going to spend most of our time here, because Wicka
is the most widely even though it's the youngest, well
no, no no about youngest, but only what like sixty years old?
Yeah about, but it's still what the probably the most
widely accepted form of modern witchcraft. Right, and it's a
form of paganism. Right, let's talk about paganism because that
that gets a bad rap. It says um a pagan
(19:17):
is also often interchangeably called a heathen, and basically it's
a pagan can mean either like someone who doesn't subscribe
to the Big Three Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, so any
other religion, including like major established religions like Buddhism, Hinduism,
that kind of thing technically, or it can be it
(19:38):
can denote a religion that existed prior to Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
that kind of thing. And actually the other characteristic of
it um is that it's it's usually polytheistic, more than
one god exactly. That that is the characteristic, right, Yeah,
(20:00):
sort of like the rectangle square thing. Huh, Well, if
if it's if if you have multiple deities, you're definitely pagan.
But if not, does it, I mean necessarily aren't a pagan?
That makes sense? I just blew your mind, isn't it. So?
Pagan actually means country person though, and and Latin. It's
sort of the easiest way to put it, sort of
like just a redneck kind of you know, home and
(20:23):
hearth I think, or hearth dweller is the Latin the
Latin translation. Yeah, but they weren't city people and they
were looked down upon, but it wasn't. They weren't necessarily
bad or anything, right, they're just kind of like you said, rednecks, pumpkins, Appalachian.
And it was later on is when they became associated
with Satan, right, And we've seen why, or we've seen how.
(20:43):
I'll get to why later on, because that'll blow your
mind too, dude, Okay, okay, but yeah, right now, as
far as we know, there's pretty much only one form
of witchcraft practiced in the world, seriously practiced in the world, um,
and that is Wicka. And like you said, Chuck, it's
only a sixty years old, and it was created by
a guy named Gordon Gardner, right, Gerald, Gerald Gardener. His
(21:07):
brother Gordon actually was working on a different religion and
it didn't pan out. It didn't. It's kind of petered out,
so Gordo fell by the wayside and Gerald took over.
None of that is true, by the way, because people
are Wickers are gonna rrite and say, I've never heard
of Gordon. What was his religion? We should make up
a pamphlet, of course, you actually no, Chuck. That's I'm
(21:28):
glad you did that though, because that's a great segue. Um.
There's some real misunderstandings of Wicka and wickens Um. First
and foremost is that they're devil worshipers. Not true, No,
it's not true. As a matter of fact, the Wicka
don't even believe that there is a devil. They don't
believe in the Christian concepts of the devil or hell yeah, exactly, so,
(21:51):
how could you worship the devil if you don't even
believe in exactly Josh, that's a that's a big one,
right there. What's another misconception, Chuck? Well, he Gardner actually
founded it as a life affirming religion that does include
psychic abilities and magic. But the Wiccan takes an oath
or is it a Wickan I guess yeah, it takes
(22:11):
an oath to not do harm. It's like it's only
for self improvement. It's almost like, well, it's not like
self help, but it's only meant to uh, to be
performed on yourself and there right, yeah, and technically there
there is an implied understanding that you could harm other
people with the power that you come to harness through
the Wickan rituals. But they they, like you said, they
(22:34):
take an oath not to harm other people and there's
also a Wicken belief that if you do harm other people,
what is it, the rule of three? If you harm
other people another person, the damage you've inflicted will come
back on you threefold. So there's kind of that um prohibition.
Should we talk about. I think this is really cool,
the life force, cosmic energy. Bet, it is cool. And
(22:57):
this is pretty much the crux of their whole thing. Yeah,
the crux of the whole thing is that Wickens believe, well,
the scientific concepts we all believe is that all matter
vibrates with its own energy. Wickens believe. You don't believe that.
I don't believe. Wickens believe that a witch's body has
that same vibration, both physical and spiritual rate of vibration,
(23:19):
and during these rituals they perform, they vibrate such that
they can create a pathway for energy to flow through
them and call on energy from the gods and deities, right,
rather than I think all of us, in their opinion,
have a physical molecular vibration and a spiritual molecular vibration,
but that they learn how to meld the two together
(23:42):
and become suddenly exceedingly powerful and to channel it from
more powerful thing beings in themselves right and with the
key and right yes, uh, because you have to invoke
a deity to carry out one of their rituals. Do
you want to talk about the Great Right, Chuck, that's
the best one. I think so too. And there's a
there's a sentence in the description of the Great Right
(24:04):
that I just thought was so cute. Yes, Josh, the
Great Right is uh one of the main central ceremonies.
And there's tons and tons of them. Well, they're all
different and there's all different kinds of ways that you
can do them, but we're gonna go over just basically
a generic Great Right ceremony. That's our disclaimer. And we
(24:24):
should say that there are three levels to Wika, and
each level is learned in a year and a day.
Starts out as I think, student teacher and high no,
student practitioner and teacher. So you've got which priestess and
then high priestess or priest Yes, And once you've completed
all those phases, Josh, you are official and you have
(24:46):
the power to perform these rituals. So the Great Right
ritual is actually carried out by the coven. And we
should also say wicker can um performed by themselves. They
can do rituals on their own, but they also have
Covin's right COVID. If you're a fan of American movie,
Um matt Our guests producer clearly as he's laughing. Remember
(25:09):
American Movie. Do you see that in the documentary about Oh?
Really it's good. You should definitely see American movie. He
makes a short film, this crazy filmmaker guy in Wisconsin,
and he calls it COVID instead of ConA. But he
thinks he's right funny. Then you're going to see this thing.
Oh it's great. Shall I continue? Yes? So they can
(25:30):
be into COVID or they can be uh, but let's
say they're in COVID solitary. Sure. Right. For our purposes,
we're gonna describe a COVID ritual, coven ritual. Now you
have me screech. So you have the high Priest and
the high Priestess of the coven right, yes, and you
have the what they're the great right ritual is to
(25:52):
um signify the coming together of Um, the high Priest
and the High Priestess, the God and the goddess. And
when you to come together you mean sexually. Yes. Now
this can be done either symbolically using a f M. Yeah,
sort of like a dull knife. Yeah, it's like a
(26:12):
pretty wicked looking ceremonial knife. No, and that's that represents
the fallus and the cau the cauldron represents the womb.
So the High priest might be like, oh, here comes
the athom and then like the High Priestess is like,
I got the cauldron right here and then boop, you know,
(26:33):
and then the that's the main part of the ritual. Right,
I got one word for that, right, uh. And so
a coven may opt to actually have the High Priest
and the High Priestess engage in the sexual act to
really really just kind of I guess the ritual going. Yeah,
(26:53):
now here's the really cute sentence that I thought came
up in this article. Leanne Oberinger, who wrote it, points
out that often the High Priest and the High Priestess
are married, very cute, and they actually do not perform
the whole COVID has to agree to the literal interpretation
(27:14):
where the sexual act is performed and they have to
all be in agreement, and it does not actually take
place like Caligula style in front of everyone. Now, they
do do that in private. That's another That's another um
misconception is that they have orgies and things like that.
They do. They do have the sexual act once in
a while, Um, like say four the Great Right. But
again Covin's apparently from this article, I've come to learn
(27:37):
that covens are fairly democratic and everyone has to be
in agreement that they're either going to do it symbolically
or they're going to do it literally. Um. Same with
the sky clad right, Yeah, which I've never heard of
that that means naked. Yeah, that's what Wickens called being
naked Skyla sky class. I'm gonna use that at home
next time. Yeah, I'm just sky clad, babe, I'm going
(27:58):
sky clad. But again, you can perform a ritual skyclad,
or you can do it clothed in robes. And again
that's up to the coven as a whole whether they
do that. Um, Chuck, Josh. What's the point of the
Great Ritual, the Great Right Ritual? Well, it can bring
good harvest, that's one reason they'll do that, and to
(28:21):
continue the circle of life so that a new God
can be born at Yule and Yule y u l e.
We found out is the the first day of the
wicked year is uh Sabbat or holy day called Yule?
Is that right? Yeah? And that sounds kind of familiar,
doesn't it, the Yule log it does, Josh, that's funny
(28:42):
that something from Christmas would have to do with a
pagan tradition. Interesting. Um, So you'll is one of the
uh is it Sabbat or Sabbat. I'm gonna say Sabbat.
I'm gonna go with Sabbat and you say covid, I'll
say covin. Okay. Um. That way we get our got
our basis cover and no one can write in. So
we said it wrong, right exactly? We should do that
for everything. I agree. Okay. So Sabbath Sabbath is one
(29:05):
of the holy days uh, and the wicka wickens um
observe eight throughout the year. Like Chuck said, Yule is
the celebration of the winter solstice, and it's them the
time when the goddess gives birth to the new God.
So the great right hastens the Yule birth right? Correct?
(29:25):
After that, you have in bulk i am Bolc, which
is celebrated on February second, right, Yeah, and that's when
the spring crops are planted. Yeah, like with most of
these things that we've heard they uh not even wickan,
but there U rights to the gods. Usually he has
to do with like harvest and growing things, and and
that's what most religious holidays that we had we still
(29:48):
observe today. That's where they find the roots. It's all.
It was all um agrarian. That's what I was trying
to say. You just said it a lot smarter than me.
Though there saw one right which m had something to
do with how loween? What was the deal there? Actually,
the Wickul believe that on this night, the the the
gauze between life and death is virtually removed, and the
(30:12):
dead can communicate with the living. But here's what I
find very cool. The dead's not like go get me
some cigarettes or anything like that. It's a time of
celebrating with your your dead family members, having a feasting
with them, having um basically just hanging out with the
people who in your life who died. So much of
this gets you know, you think it's some dark satanic ritual.
(30:34):
Has nothing to do with any of that. No, it doesn't.
Not to say I'm gonna run out and become a
Wiccan or anything. Back in high school, my friends Stevie
Cohen and I started looking into it and that when
the ninja thing didn't work out. This is after I
was like, wait, how many rocks do we have to
paint different colors? And we have to arrange them? And
what this really really involved? Stuff Like there's a this
(30:55):
article that Obringer wrote, um is pretty detailed. We've only
kind of hit the surface of it. Um. But there's
even more detail to it than this. Greatly, there's a lot.
It's a really detailed religion. Yeah, and they have a
book you know, what's what's that called the Book of Shadows, Yeah,
which I gotta say doesn't really help their case to
(31:18):
you know, people who don't understand what they do. They
could call it, you know, the Little Wicken Handbook and
would probably be like a sweeter, the Book of Green
Fairies or the Book of Unicorns. Why not? Well, but
the Book of Shadows is uh, the witches guide book,
and it is COVID specific, so your own covin would
would write like the spells and the hexes and the
(31:39):
rules and the regulations, what you gotta wear, what time
you gotta show up, whether you're gonna go skyclad? Whether
you're gonna go skyclad, who has to bring the sticky
buns in the coffee to the meanings? You guys to
clean the cauldron, that kind of thing. Uh, cauldron is
a real thing. We should talk about just a few
of these um implements, I guess, and whether or not
they really use them. Lie the broom, yes, did they
(32:02):
fly around on it? Why not? Because which is can't fly?
They do use them to purify the circle where the
rituals take place. They cast a circle and they have
to um purify the area first. Sure they're using the
broom to literally sweep out that. I don't know if
literally was the right word. They used the broom to
sweep out the energy in the area. Uh. They may
(32:25):
also use sage or if they want to go from
the double way amy, they might use a broom that
features sage woven into it. Right, And you just said
casting a circle. That's a big part of most Wiccan ceremonies,
and they will cast a circle is very important at
the beginning with the north, south, east, western points and
at the end of every ceremony they will close that
(32:46):
circle kind of by reversing what they did when they
opened it. Or when they cast it, and the points
represent um, the elements earth, water, fire, and air. Right, Yeah,
let's talk about the pentagram because you probably think it's
like the symbol of the devil, right, I don't, Okay, So, Josh,
(33:08):
let's talk about the pentagram. Okay. Often seeing on you
know Satanic singer band album covers Judas Priest, Yeah, exactly,
because you know they worship the devil, right as far
as the courts and the eighties were concerned. Yeah, Turbo
Lover clearly is a song about Satan. Dude, Judas Priest
was bitch and yeah they were awesome. Yeah, still are.
(33:31):
Uh So the pentacle, Josh, is a five pointed star
enclosed within a circle, right, And the five pointed star
is called the pentagram, But when you put the circle
around it, that's the pinacle, right, yes, And so if
it's upright, which is the one point up, two points down,
it is a symbol of witchcraft and represents earth, fire, water, air,
and spirit. And the circle represents the gods and goddesses
(33:54):
that allow the energy to be focused on the pentagram, right,
and the circle brings all these things together into a
cohesive unit. Yeah. So that's like on the cover of
Rusha's upright. If you flip it upside down, that's when
I think Satan comes into play, because it's like the
goats head or something, isn't that right? Yeah, But even
that's just propaganda. That's what I thought from the that
(34:18):
used against the Knights Templar geez. So you know we've
mentioned they use caldrons, and they do have certain knives,
but they're never used to like blood let or anything
like that. They use that one dull knife to like
draw shapes in the sand and things like that, or
to represent the phallus. Yes, and they have wands. They
(34:39):
use wands. The wand represents fire and the life force
of the witch, and it is a symbol of wisdom
and healing. They can also use a staff, usually about
shoulder high. Yeah. I guess that's probably like the mega
wand or something. You know, the I wand is that it?
You got anything else? I you have something else. I
(35:01):
was doing a little additional research and I came across
a book review of um a book called Caliban and
the Witch by author Sylvia Federici. Basically, she chronicles what
happened to witchcraft to which is um Why this is
why hundreds of thousands of people were killed. And basically
(35:22):
she says that it was um part of a larger
grab for power of the ruling classes from I believe
the fifteen to the eighteen or seventeenth century. All right,
so it was rooted in money. Well, yeah, she makes
the point that um or she she yeah, she believes that.
(35:43):
First of all, Um, women had much more power. Even
though it was still a patriarchy prior to this, women
still had much more power socially they UM, they had
They were basically unionized, They did a lot of the work,
and without them and their reproductive abilities, things would get
all screwed up. So basically to show women who is who,
(36:05):
the church and state, which were virtually indistinguishable at the time,
UM said you know what we're going you're a witch.
We're gonna kill you. And they did it in that
way that we described at the beginning, with the whole
town watching, as much to punish the witch, um as
to send a message to everybody else, like you don't
go against the male patriarchy. You don't go against the patriarchy,
(36:28):
or else we will literally burn you to death at
the stake and whip your daughter in front of you
while this is going on, and they did it over
and over again. And from this brutality they basically, um,
we're able to consolidate their power. They also simultaneously we're
exploring the world and subjugating other people. But at home, Um,
in the Middle Ages, no medieval times, I'm sorry, serves,
(36:51):
each had their own plot of land. They could do
whatever they wanted, so even if they worked for somebody else,
they still had a certain sense of a certain measure
self sufficiency. This stuff was taken away to wage labor
was created, and you have the roots of capitalism and
basically what Federici calls the housewiving of women going on
at the same time. So are are the division between
(37:15):
men and women that we still have today, and the
roots of capitalism find their their place back at this
time in the Middle Ages. Right. And then one more
thing too, I thought this was awesome. She compares the
which scare to uh, the terrorism scare that we're under today,
basically saying, like, you know, people a lot of times
(37:36):
think that, um, that the witch scare was just carried
out by ignorant hicks. Not true. It may have been
carried up by ignorant hicks, but it was very much
encouraged and supported by the ruling class, which was the
church in the state. Right, So there were witches everywhere
which kept people afraid and occupied and kept what you
(37:57):
were able to keep them down through this. They were
too busy chasing shadows and killing innocent people. Same things
going on with terrorism. It's not a perfect analogy, because
there really are terrorists in the world, but the the
amount that it's, the proportion that it's grown too is
uh is similar. Wow, good stuff, Thanks, And that's a
(38:18):
new book. I guess I think it's the review I
read was from early November. Yeah, anything else, John, that's
it man, Good stuff, Chuck, Josh. Like I said, we
just kind of glanced the surface. I think there's so
many more rituals and so many kinds of covids and
(38:38):
witches and potions and hexes. And we've spent hours talking
about that. I think we have. You can type witchcraft
in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot
com to get a lot more information on that. And uh, now,
I guess then it's time for listener mail. And I
(38:58):
call this Ninja Tina jeers Hi, Chuck and Josh. Basically,
let me set this up because it's kind of long.
This kid grew up in southern California, Aren't sorry, in
the suburbs of California, and he AND's in the eighties
like we did. He and his buddies were really into ninja's,
so they decided to do what you did and train
is a ninja in the suburbs of whatever. I guess
(39:18):
you were in Ohio at the time. And so they
had a house next door that was just randomly occupied,
like people would be there and then they wouldn't be there.
They never knew anything about it, but it was usually empty.
So they decided to go into that backyard ninja style
and creep around. So picture this three preteen nerds ninja walking,
(39:38):
shuffling and crawling silently along the neighbor's side yard with
homemade weapons in hand. Uh they made like ninchucks and
stuff like that. And just as we passed the sliding
glass door, the lights spring on. We were completely bathed
in light, locked eyes with this nice Asian family standing
their suitcases and hand having just drive from their part.
I swear no one moved for at least a five
(40:00):
count and we all just stood their surprise, and we
were frozen in our perfect ninja poses, and then we
jumped up, ran off in a very non assassin like
panic to our homes and our rooms, waiting for the
inevitable knock on the door. So it turns out they
were an Asian family that spent most of their time
in Asia, would just come back to the States for
weeks at a time, and so they came up to
the three Ninja teens. Uh. He has no idea what
(40:23):
this poor family must have fought, still none with jet lag,
having just arrived in America to flip on the light
and be met with the sight of three diminutive ninja.
And it still makes him laugh. And that's from Jeremy.
Jeremy also sells tell Josh when he says recidivism is
one bone head word, I get it. And Josh, while
we're on Ninja's I just wanted to bring up during
(40:46):
that episode, you said something that you called puda puda
pooda right, which in Japanese means very fluent, and you
got a lot of email that they had no idea
what this meant, and including this email from Juke in Shanghai.
Shanghai China that is, and Juke was very enthused because
(41:06):
he works with the Japanese person. Okay, so I was
gonna say, how does that qualify him? Yeah, he tries
out these Japanese phrases here. So he went up to
her and said puda poda puddha, and she followed that
with impersonating a bird, including elbow movements, telling me she
thought I was talking about shaky things. And so he
wants to know what the heck why did you embarrass
him like that with puda? I feel like my work
(41:28):
here is done. Now you have to explain. Actually, pura
pura pura, as Juke found out, is not exist. I
made it up. The real word is pana panta uh.
It's on a monopeia in Japanese for fluent. The way
people talked very quickly when they're fluent in something right
into petic gotcha um. So I just started to call
(41:49):
it pa pa and as a result we got um
a couple of self created Japanese pronunciation guys from very
concerned listeners who are worried like we were either having
or I was having a stroke, or was that off
or maybe you were a witch? Maybe, So we have
(42:11):
a phone number for a guy who works with the
Japanese consulate in San Francisco. Anytime we need pronunciation and
my long suffering half okay now, and girlfriend is always
a conserves of information, although I like to learn it
my own way. So pata put up on your home.
That doesn't mean anything. I like it. Okay, um porta
(42:33):
porta porta upon all of your homes. We just decided
that that's our own little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch hex craft,
which means it's a good thing. Right. If you have
your own little version of hex craft, or a blessing
for Chuck and I that we can share with other people,
put in an email and send it to stuff podcast
(42:53):
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
(43:16):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house stuff Works dot Com? Hey, Chuck Joshers, you
were about to be in Guatemala, buddy, correction, dude, we
(00:20):
are in Guatemala as this is playing. Wow, pretty cool. Huh.
It's the magic of technology. So tell them what we're
plugging here. Well, we're gonna be down in Guatemala finding
out whether education can actually alleviate poverty or not. Right yep. Uh.
And while we're down there, we're going to be blogging
the whole time. Hopefully as we speak there will be
blog posts. Uh. And if we don't have internet access,
(00:40):
it'll be up next week. Yeah. The internet in Guatemala
mayor it may not be spotty. We haven't figured it
out yet, but if not, they'll be out the following week,
right indeed. Okay, Well you can check those out at
the blogs at house stuff works dot com. Chuck and
I share a blog called stuff you Should Know appropriately enough? Right, Yes,
that's that. Right, on with the show with the podcast. Hey,
(01:10):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Chuck. Yes,
I'm gonna paint a scene for you. Literally that might
take a while. And that was my words. What's that
canvas and easil doing it here? Thing? This is just
to help me think. Okay, let's here. I'm just gonna
(01:30):
trust stick figures right here, so don't expect too much.
Imagine right that you are tied to a pole. Okay,
you're far so good. You're bound with your hands behind
your back, less good, and your ankles are also bound
to said pole, which looking up right erect and um,
you notice that there are there's an awful lot of
(01:54):
really dry firewood scattered around you around this pole. That's
not good. It's really not good. Even uh less good?
Is uh? You figuring out that there's some guy, probably
some sort of priest or official, maybe an executioner, coming
towards you with a torch. Other people there there are
(02:16):
tons of people, all of your neighbors, people in your
very small community who you've known your whole life. My
neighbors would be saying that guy, well, this is in
a different time. Okay, So well, let's say that you
know all of your neighbors and work with them in
trade with them, and maybe it helped raise their children,
right right, healed them when they were sick using herbs
(02:38):
and and maybe incantations. There were better times in the past.
Right now, everyone in your town is pointing at you
and laughing at you, and yelling and and calling you
horrible names and accusing you of doing horrible things like
um stealing babies and sucking their blood and yeah, just
doing all sorts of terrible stuff. Right and in front
(02:59):
of you are your daughters. You have a couple of daughters,
and they're being forced to watch this man who's approaching
you with the torch. But not only that, they're being
whipped in front of you. So you're about to die
in one of the most horrible ways of human being
can die, right while you're watching your daughter's being whipped
(03:20):
and the entire town pointing at you, calling you horrible
names and just basically lacking any level of humanity whatsoever.
That's pretty I'm not done yet, really. The guy finally
makes it over and took his sweet ass time. Then
he finally makes it over with the torch and lights
the kindling, and all of a sudden, you got the
(03:40):
hot foot, right the flames start to climb and climb.
You're having trouble breathing. You're extremely hot, your clothes are
catching on fire, your your skin is blistering. The pain
is about as intense as it can possibly be from
what I understand, Burning to death in this manner can
take a matter of ours. Wow. Yeah, until I die, yes,
(04:04):
or until I guess you're completely burned up. Josh, that's awful.
It is pretty awful. I can't imagine a worse way
to die. No, I can't either, Chuck. But do you
want to know something This actually happened to hundreds of
thousands of people during the Middle Ages in Europe and
later on in the United States. We are talking about witches.
(04:25):
We are talking about which is perhaps the craft one
of the most misunderstood or revile groups of all time
in history. Never think about that. No, you probably would
have said gypsies. Yeah, but no, which is okay, that's
my two cents. Yeah, I would agree with that, especially
after reading this article. Yeah, and hearing that story, which
(04:47):
is got the the bad end of the stick. Yeah,
I would agree with that. So where do we go
from here? Josh? To the beginning? Sure? Do we don't
actually know the very beginning, right, because witchcraft and has
been around since like they were pre humans. Right, sure, yeah,
I mean you can make you can make the case
that all pre Christian religions, with the exception of Judaism,
(05:14):
war um, witchcraft basically yeah, because the article pointed out
here that witchcraft, like when times were rosy, everything was great,
but then when plague hit and famine and disease, then
that's when people said, oh, you know, maybe we should
get this shaman to cook up a little potion or
say a spell to the gods and maybe things will
(05:36):
turn in our favor. And if they didn't turn in
their favor, then the shaman or the witch or the
folk deal or whatever usually found the entire town against
him or her right and perhaps even burned at the stake.
But this was before before a certain period. Witchcraft is
basically just like whatever. It was normal, commonplace, everyday stuff,
(05:57):
and there wasn't necessarily anything like evil associated with it
like we do today. It was magic right with a K.
Explain Yes, M A G I C K is to differentiate.
That is a common accepted spelling by modern witches to
differentiate between like let's say, um real witchcraft, David Copperfield
(06:21):
that kind of magic, or an illusionist or John c
Riley as the illusionist at the end of Boogie Nights.
Remember he became a magician at the end. No, I
totally forgot that. Yeah, yeah, that's what he became after
his porn career. I forgot about that anyway, that kind
of magician or the other kind of magic, which is
there's both black and white magic, and they're they're not
(06:44):
necessarily mutually exclusive as the good and evil as we learned. No,
at some point though, the tide very much turned, and
there's actually there's some I should say, uh it turned
at one point, but there were several things that led
up to the turning of the tide, against which is
saying saying Augustine had something to do with this. Well, actually, um,
(07:07):
is it Augustine? Yeah, okay, I know we always say
Augustine and uh you doubt his uh existence at times.
We've gotten some email on that, yeah, um round about uh.
Augustine argued that only God could suspend the normal laws
of the universe. Therefore there couldn't possibly any such beasts,
(07:30):
any such thing as what which is claimed to be
able to do right right, So basically they may as
well have just been engaged in tooth fairy studies or
something like that. They were totally harmless, possibly wacko, but
to the Christian Church they had nothing to do with anything, sure, right, okay,
and that that view was held for a good eight
(07:52):
hundred years, so it's popular. Yeah, So which is where
they went along? Their mary Wade did their own thing.
Christianity went along. It's mary Wade at its own thing,
and um, no real problems right until a d twelve
oh eight and a pope name Innocent. The third went
to war with the Cathers. You heard of these guys, No,
(08:13):
but I've heard of the innocent, have you? Yeah? And
the third had nothing on junior Just let me say that.
Who the second? Yeah, innocent too, No, no, no, we
don't need to get into that ahead anyway. Innocent, the
third not junior? Innocent the third? Did they use junior
to denote popes? Okay um? Innocent? The third declared war
(08:35):
and the Cathers. The Cathers were this kind of um
Christian sect who lived in France, I think northern France
and long doc okay okay um. And they were very
much convinced that on Earth and throughout the universe, there
was a very real war going on between God and
(08:56):
the devil, good and evil, right and dark night and
day right, and there was very clear division and there
was a power struggle going on. The Cather's also clearly
um believed that the Roman Church, the Roman Catholic Church,
was actually the Church of Satan. Okay, yeah, yeah, and
(09:19):
they were very much opposed to the Roman Church. The
Roman Church had more power. Led by Innocent the Third said,
you know what, Cather's, we decided that you guys worshiped
the devil. And not only that, we're going to create
propaganda that shows that our wood carving showing your people
kissing the anus of the devil in person, because you
guys are devil worshipers. Take that. Wow, that was not
(09:43):
a good day. The Cather's were persecuted, they were yeah, yeah,
and to this day they're called the cather heretics. I'm
sure they could have gotten by with like kissing the
hand of the devil or something. I saw a wood
It's like the devil with the clovenhusts and he's bent over,
like kiss my ass, kiss my devil butt. Actually can
I go on. Yet, well, it doesn't get better for witches.
(10:06):
So now we have people who oppose the church worship Satan.
That division has just been created. Okay um. And the
whole reason the pope went after the Cather's the idea
that there was a war between good and evil going
on was actually like, eighty years later adopted by St.
Thomas Aquinas for him, and he's like, Okay, there is
(10:29):
such a thing as demons, and they're here on earth,
and not only are they involved in pleasuring themselves, they
really really like to lead human beings astray from God.
So this is going on. There is real evil, it's
really tangible, and it's all around us all the time.
We have to protect ourselves as Christians. We have to
be suspicious of other people who aren't Christians because they're
(10:49):
probably being led astray by these demons. Now we start
to have everyday people who can possibly be in league
with the devil because it's all around us. Right, And
this when this was first taking root, right, this is
the real start of it. But everything's been leading up
to this boy right, and then finally Chuck in fourteen
eighty four, we have the real seed of how we
(11:12):
view which is and the which scare which led to
the witch executions and persecution. Um. Fortunately for a pair
of German friars took two years to write the Malleus Maleficarum. Okay, right,
it's a basically a witch finding handbook. This is how
we get out, how to seek them out, how to
(11:32):
try them, how to execute them. Basically, these two German friars, Um,
remember the vow of abstinence. We're not very happy with women.
And they basically made all this stuff up. Most whitches
were women, um to tell which anyone who was suspected
of it, any woman who was suspected of it should
be stripped down and search for moles. Right. And then
(11:55):
um also which is like to steal penises from men,
collect them, keep them in a box where they would
move by themselves, and eat oats and corn. Pretty awful idea, right.
And um also like which is when you're trying a witch,
you have to lead her in backwards so she doesn't
have a chance to cast spells on everybody when she's
killing in the room. Makes sense? Just stupid stupid like that? Right,
(12:18):
that's probably gonna get bleaped out, Okay, And that led
to the witch scare of the witch persecution and the
witch executions that we know and love today. Hundreds of
thousands of people, chuck, hundreds of thousands of people were
killed because these two German friars wrote this book and
just made it up. I feel like we could stop there.
(12:40):
I have more. I'll try to interject it later. So, Josh,
should we talk about one of the most famous of
those persecutions. Yes, not single persecution, a set of persecutions
in in Salem, Massachusetts. Of course you've read The Crucible.
You know we're talking about Salem witch trials. Yeah. Should
(13:02):
we go over that real quick? I think we should.
This all started because a couple of precocious teenage girls
may or may not had have had clinical hysteria or
been bored or been bored, maybe epilepsy, you never know.
The point is they were having convulsions and screaming like
as if they were possessing. They were being pinched and poked.
Is that what it was? Yeah, by an unseen force,
(13:25):
bitten and pinched, not poked by an unseen force. They
were they were poked by the witch examiners, I'm sure,
okay uh, and the doctor actually the witch examiner said,
you know, they are clearly bewitched, right, and how because
that stupid book. The stupid book, Yes, he probably had
that in his little doctor physician. He wasn't even a
witch examiner. The guy was the village physician. He was,
(13:46):
and he was like, I can't come up with any explanation.
So they're clearly bewitched, right. And so this led to
the one by one these ladies in Salem, Massachusetts. And
this was clearly before their big liberal influx of liberals
in Massachusetts. Those days are over. Well yeah, true recently
and uh, these women became you know, persecuted and accused
(14:08):
of being witches. And a couple of men too, but yeah,
mostly women, women who lived on their own um, which
was a crime supposedly in um Salem. You know who
didn't help the servant? Was that her name? Yeah, this
was a West Indian servant of one of the girls.
And she really cemented the whole deal when she said
(14:29):
that she admitted in court to dealing with the devil
and flying on sticks and uh said, quote unquote they
made her hurt those girls. Yeah, she didn't help things.
So that really sent it into high gear and what
like people were were killed right, put to death. Yeah,
one guy, um Giles, I can't remember his last name.
(14:50):
He was pressed to death with a heavy stone. He
was like an old man, an elderly man, and they
put they laid him on a big stone and put
an even bigger stone on top of his chest and
the life was pressed out of him. Wow, I've never
heard of that. I believe he was. He was tortured
to death like that because he would not confess to
being a witch. I wonder what they called that was
(15:10):
that called pressing goodness? Me, that's creative. Uh. And that
was um. That went on for a little while under
the rule of the General Court, and then that court
was usurped by the Court of the Judicature and they
basically reversed stance, and not very many witches after that
took place were persecuted. Right. They basically said, okay, the
(15:35):
over just pretend it's never happened. That's literally what happened.
And that was it. No more witchery, Yes, I said.
Only three more people after that were found guilty of
witchcraft and they were even pardoned. Yeah. Later on, and
they still don't know what was up with these two
girls like they said they could have been well, you know,
precocious little girls looking for attention, and they could have
you know, had some mass or not mass hysteria, but
(15:57):
clinical hysteria. I wrote an article for the site UM
about this study this woman conducted, I think in the seventies,
and she proposed that they were actually all poisoned um
by or God, which is a hallucinogen the canons, and
that everybody got it from eating rotten grain and um
was basically tripping. Well, that was one of the theories
(16:19):
of the Enlightenment at one point. It's a bad trip?
Was there a lot of the Enlightenment was because of
bad bread? Yeah, basically people were hallucinating and coming up
with all these amazing inventions. That's awesome. Yeah. I don't
know if that's true though. So where are we, Josh? Well,
we could start to talk about the modern era. Okay, Well,
pagan religion. Well do you want to talk about the
(16:40):
different kinds of witchery around the world. Yeah, I've got
a couple of Like the highlight I want to hear it, Chuck. Okay, Josh,
you know I was going to pick this one. Appalachian
folk magic so cool, can't you see now now putting
like a hex on somebody. That was the worst movie ever.
Appleachi folk magic Josh is you know, clearly around this
(17:03):
area of the southeast, and they have a very much
Christian based idea of it of a Christian God and
a devil as the good and evil like you were
talking about. And they are can use their magic with
a K for good or evil, and they look to
nature for omens and like to portent the future and
(17:23):
their local men. Yeah, I know, we could probably go
up in North Georgia and round up a couple of
these that would be pretty boss. Actually, yeah, yeah, I'd
like to go do that. What's yours? Give me something?
One of my favorites, is it? This is the coolest name.
Pennsylvania Dutch hex craft a k A pow wow yeah um.
And it is from the well Pennsylvania Dutch area of Pennsylvania.
(17:45):
German UH and Dutch settlers including the Amish UM but
also including people who are Reformists like Lutheran's Right Protestants
UM believe in this stuff where you can create eight
good will blessings things like that, usually for the home
UM by creating symbols hexes which UM apparently when they
(18:11):
were when they first arrived and they were talking to
the English, they were saying sex is sex, but the
English herd hex and that's why it's called hex craft.
It's not the least bit um dark like. Right. You
know that you know that pineapple welcome flag that people
like hang outside of their house, that's a Pennsylvania Dutch hecks. Yeah,
(18:34):
um bless this home, that's a Pennsylvania Dutch hecks. The
two partridges with a heart, Pennsylvania Dutch hecks. What about
the nice stuff? You know, it's real pleasant witchcraft. What
about don't tread on me? The rattlesnake? It's a little different,
and that's not the same thing. No uh. And of
course we gotta talk about Wicka. That's probably where we're
(18:55):
going to spend most of our time here, because Wicka
is the most widely even though it's the youngest, well
no, no no about youngest, but only what like sixty years old?
Yeah about, but it's still what the probably the most
widely accepted form of modern witchcraft. Right, and it's a
form of paganism. Right, let's talk about paganism because that
that gets a bad rap. It says um a pagan
(19:17):
is also often interchangeably called a heathen, and basically it's
a pagan can mean either like someone who doesn't subscribe
to the Big Three Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, so any
other religion, including like major established religions like Buddhism, Hinduism,
that kind of thing technically, or it can be it
(19:38):
can denote a religion that existed prior to Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
that kind of thing. And actually the other characteristic of
it um is that it's it's usually polytheistic, more than
one god exactly. That that is the characteristic, right, Yeah,
(20:00):
sort of like the rectangle square thing. Huh, Well, if
if it's if if you have multiple deities, you're definitely pagan.
But if not, does it, I mean necessarily aren't a pagan?
That makes sense? I just blew your mind, isn't it. So?
Pagan actually means country person though, and and Latin. It's
sort of the easiest way to put it, sort of
like just a redneck kind of you know, home and
(20:23):
hearth I think, or hearth dweller is the Latin the
Latin translation. Yeah, but they weren't city people and they
were looked down upon, but it wasn't. They weren't necessarily
bad or anything, right, they're just kind of like you said, rednecks, pumpkins, Appalachian.
And it was later on is when they became associated
with Satan, right, And we've seen why, or we've seen how.
(20:43):
I'll get to why later on, because that'll blow your
mind too, dude, Okay, okay, but yeah, right now, as
far as we know, there's pretty much only one form
of witchcraft practiced in the world, seriously practiced in the world, um,
and that is Wicka. And like you said, Chuck, it's
only a sixty years old, and it was created by
a guy named Gordon Gardner, right, Gerald, Gerald Gardener. His
(21:07):
brother Gordon actually was working on a different religion and
it didn't pan out. It didn't. It's kind of petered out,
so Gordo fell by the wayside and Gerald took over.
None of that is true, by the way, because people
are Wickers are gonna rrite and say, I've never heard
of Gordon. What was his religion? We should make up
a pamphlet, of course, you actually no, Chuck. That's I'm
(21:28):
glad you did that though, because that's a great segue. Um.
There's some real misunderstandings of Wicka and wickens Um. First
and foremost is that they're devil worshipers. Not true, No,
it's not true. As a matter of fact, the Wicka
don't even believe that there is a devil. They don't
believe in the Christian concepts of the devil or hell yeah, exactly, so,
(21:51):
how could you worship the devil if you don't even
believe in exactly Josh, that's a that's a big one,
right there. What's another misconception, Chuck? Well, he Gardner actually
founded it as a life affirming religion that does include
psychic abilities and magic. But the Wiccan takes an oath
or is it a Wickan I guess yeah, it takes
(22:11):
an oath to not do harm. It's like it's only
for self improvement. It's almost like, well, it's not like
self help, but it's only meant to uh, to be
performed on yourself and there right, yeah, and technically there
there is an implied understanding that you could harm other
people with the power that you come to harness through
the Wickan rituals. But they they, like you said, they
(22:34):
take an oath not to harm other people and there's
also a Wicken belief that if you do harm other people,
what is it, the rule of three? If you harm
other people another person, the damage you've inflicted will come
back on you threefold. So there's kind of that um prohibition.
Should we talk about. I think this is really cool,
the life force, cosmic energy. Bet, it is cool. And
(22:57):
this is pretty much the crux of their whole thing. Yeah,
the crux of the whole thing is that Wickens believe, well,
the scientific concepts we all believe is that all matter
vibrates with its own energy. Wickens believe. You don't believe that.
I don't believe. Wickens believe that a witch's body has
that same vibration, both physical and spiritual rate of vibration,
(23:19):
and during these rituals they perform, they vibrate such that
they can create a pathway for energy to flow through
them and call on energy from the gods and deities, right,
rather than I think all of us, in their opinion,
have a physical molecular vibration and a spiritual molecular vibration,
but that they learn how to meld the two together
(23:42):
and become suddenly exceedingly powerful and to channel it from
more powerful thing beings in themselves right and with the
key and right yes, uh, because you have to invoke
a deity to carry out one of their rituals. Do
you want to talk about the Great Right, Chuck, that's
the best one. I think so too. And there's a
there's a sentence in the description of the Great Right
(24:04):
that I just thought was so cute. Yes, Josh, the
Great Right is uh one of the main central ceremonies.
And there's tons and tons of them. Well, they're all
different and there's all different kinds of ways that you
can do them, but we're gonna go over just basically
a generic Great Right ceremony. That's our disclaimer. And we
(24:24):
should say that there are three levels to Wika, and
each level is learned in a year and a day.
Starts out as I think, student teacher and high no,
student practitioner and teacher. So you've got which priestess and
then high priestess or priest Yes, And once you've completed
all those phases, Josh, you are official and you have
(24:46):
the power to perform these rituals. So the Great Right
ritual is actually carried out by the coven. And we
should also say wicker can um performed by themselves. They
can do rituals on their own, but they also have
Covin's right COVID. If you're a fan of American movie,
Um matt Our guests producer clearly as he's laughing. Remember
(25:09):
American Movie. Do you see that in the documentary about Oh?
Really it's good. You should definitely see American movie. He
makes a short film, this crazy filmmaker guy in Wisconsin,
and he calls it COVID instead of ConA. But he
thinks he's right funny. Then you're going to see this thing.
Oh it's great. Shall I continue? Yes? So they can
(25:30):
be into COVID or they can be uh, but let's
say they're in COVID solitary. Sure. Right. For our purposes,
we're gonna describe a COVID ritual, coven ritual. Now you
have me screech. So you have the high Priest and
the high Priestess of the coven right, yes, and you
have the what they're the great right ritual is to
(25:52):
um signify the coming together of Um, the high Priest
and the High Priestess, the God and the goddess. And
when you to come together you mean sexually. Yes. Now
this can be done either symbolically using a f M. Yeah,
sort of like a dull knife. Yeah, it's like a
(26:12):
pretty wicked looking ceremonial knife. No, and that's that represents
the fallus and the cau the cauldron represents the womb.
So the High priest might be like, oh, here comes
the athom and then like the High Priestess is like,
I got the cauldron right here and then boop, you know,
(26:33):
and then the that's the main part of the ritual. Right,
I got one word for that, right, uh. And so
a coven may opt to actually have the High Priest
and the High Priestess engage in the sexual act to
really really just kind of I guess the ritual going. Yeah,
(26:53):
now here's the really cute sentence that I thought came
up in this article. Leanne Oberinger, who wrote it, points
out that often the High Priest and the High Priestess
are married, very cute, and they actually do not perform
the whole COVID has to agree to the literal interpretation
(27:14):
where the sexual act is performed and they have to
all be in agreement, and it does not actually take
place like Caligula style in front of everyone. Now, they
do do that in private. That's another That's another um
misconception is that they have orgies and things like that.
They do. They do have the sexual act once in
a while, Um, like say four the Great Right. But
again Covin's apparently from this article, I've come to learn
(27:37):
that covens are fairly democratic and everyone has to be
in agreement that they're either going to do it symbolically
or they're going to do it literally. Um. Same with
the sky clad right, Yeah, which I've never heard of
that that means naked. Yeah, that's what Wickens called being
naked Skyla sky class. I'm gonna use that at home
next time. Yeah, I'm just sky clad, babe, I'm going
(27:58):
sky clad. But again, you can perform a ritual skyclad,
or you can do it clothed in robes. And again
that's up to the coven as a whole whether they
do that. Um, Chuck, Josh. What's the point of the
Great Ritual, the Great Right Ritual? Well, it can bring
good harvest, that's one reason they'll do that, and to
(28:21):
continue the circle of life so that a new God
can be born at Yule and Yule y u l e.
We found out is the the first day of the
wicked year is uh Sabbat or holy day called Yule?
Is that right? Yeah? And that sounds kind of familiar,
doesn't it, the Yule log it does, Josh, that's funny
(28:42):
that something from Christmas would have to do with a
pagan tradition. Interesting. Um, So you'll is one of the
uh is it Sabbat or Sabbat. I'm gonna say Sabbat.
I'm gonna go with Sabbat and you say covid, I'll
say covin. Okay. Um. That way we get our got
our basis cover and no one can write in. So
we said it wrong, right exactly? We should do that
for everything. I agree. Okay. So Sabbath Sabbath is one
(29:05):
of the holy days uh, and the wicka wickens um
observe eight throughout the year. Like Chuck said, Yule is
the celebration of the winter solstice, and it's them the
time when the goddess gives birth to the new God.
So the great right hastens the Yule birth right? Correct?
(29:25):
After that, you have in bulk i am Bolc, which
is celebrated on February second, right, Yeah, and that's when
the spring crops are planted. Yeah, like with most of
these things that we've heard they uh not even wickan,
but there U rights to the gods. Usually he has
to do with like harvest and growing things, and and
that's what most religious holidays that we had we still
(29:48):
observe today. That's where they find the roots. It's all.
It was all um agrarian. That's what I was trying
to say. You just said it a lot smarter than me.
Though there saw one right which m had something to
do with how loween? What was the deal there? Actually,
the Wickul believe that on this night, the the the
gauze between life and death is virtually removed, and the
(30:12):
dead can communicate with the living. But here's what I
find very cool. The dead's not like go get me
some cigarettes or anything like that. It's a time of
celebrating with your your dead family members, having a feasting
with them, having um basically just hanging out with the
people who in your life who died. So much of
this gets you know, you think it's some dark satanic ritual.
(30:34):
Has nothing to do with any of that. No, it doesn't.
Not to say I'm gonna run out and become a
Wiccan or anything. Back in high school, my friends Stevie
Cohen and I started looking into it and that when
the ninja thing didn't work out. This is after I
was like, wait, how many rocks do we have to
paint different colors? And we have to arrange them? And
what this really really involved? Stuff Like there's a this
(30:55):
article that Obringer wrote, um is pretty detailed. We've only
kind of hit the surface of it. Um. But there's
even more detail to it than this. Greatly, there's a lot.
It's a really detailed religion. Yeah, and they have a
book you know, what's what's that called the Book of Shadows, Yeah,
which I gotta say doesn't really help their case to
(31:18):
you know, people who don't understand what they do. They
could call it, you know, the Little Wicken Handbook and
would probably be like a sweeter, the Book of Green
Fairies or the Book of Unicorns. Why not? Well, but
the Book of Shadows is uh, the witches guide book,
and it is COVID specific, so your own covin would
would write like the spells and the hexes and the
(31:39):
rules and the regulations, what you gotta wear, what time
you gotta show up, whether you're gonna go skyclad? Whether
you're gonna go skyclad, who has to bring the sticky
buns in the coffee to the meanings? You guys to
clean the cauldron, that kind of thing. Uh, cauldron is
a real thing. We should talk about just a few
of these um implements, I guess, and whether or not
they really use them. Lie the broom, yes, did they
(32:02):
fly around on it? Why not? Because which is can't fly?
They do use them to purify the circle where the
rituals take place. They cast a circle and they have
to um purify the area first. Sure they're using the
broom to literally sweep out that. I don't know if
literally was the right word. They used the broom to
sweep out the energy in the area. Uh. They may
(32:25):
also use sage or if they want to go from
the double way amy, they might use a broom that
features sage woven into it. Right, And you just said
casting a circle. That's a big part of most Wiccan ceremonies,
and they will cast a circle is very important at
the beginning with the north, south, east, western points and
at the end of every ceremony they will close that
(32:46):
circle kind of by reversing what they did when they
opened it. Or when they cast it, and the points
represent um, the elements earth, water, fire, and air. Right, Yeah,
let's talk about the pentagram because you probably think it's
like the symbol of the devil, right, I don't, Okay, So, Josh,
(33:08):
let's talk about the pentagram. Okay. Often seeing on you
know Satanic singer band album covers Judas Priest, Yeah, exactly,
because you know they worship the devil, right as far
as the courts and the eighties were concerned. Yeah, Turbo
Lover clearly is a song about Satan. Dude, Judas Priest
was bitch and yeah they were awesome. Yeah, still are.
(33:31):
Uh So the pentacle, Josh, is a five pointed star
enclosed within a circle, right, And the five pointed star
is called the pentagram, But when you put the circle
around it, that's the pinacle, right, yes, And so if
it's upright, which is the one point up, two points down,
it is a symbol of witchcraft and represents earth, fire, water, air,
and spirit. And the circle represents the gods and goddesses
(33:54):
that allow the energy to be focused on the pentagram, right,
and the circle brings all these things together into a
cohesive unit. Yeah. So that's like on the cover of
Rusha's upright. If you flip it upside down, that's when
I think Satan comes into play, because it's like the
goats head or something, isn't that right? Yeah, But even
that's just propaganda. That's what I thought from the that
(34:18):
used against the Knights Templar geez. So you know we've
mentioned they use caldrons, and they do have certain knives,
but they're never used to like blood let or anything
like that. They use that one dull knife to like
draw shapes in the sand and things like that, or
to represent the phallus. Yes, and they have wands. They
(34:39):
use wands. The wand represents fire and the life force
of the witch, and it is a symbol of wisdom
and healing. They can also use a staff, usually about
shoulder high. Yeah. I guess that's probably like the mega
wand or something. You know, the I wand is that it?
You got anything else? I you have something else. I
(35:01):
was doing a little additional research and I came across
a book review of um a book called Caliban and
the Witch by author Sylvia Federici. Basically, she chronicles what
happened to witchcraft to which is um Why this is
why hundreds of thousands of people were killed. And basically
(35:22):
she says that it was um part of a larger
grab for power of the ruling classes from I believe
the fifteen to the eighteen or seventeenth century. All right,
so it was rooted in money. Well, yeah, she makes
the point that um or she she yeah, she believes that.
(35:43):
First of all, Um, women had much more power. Even
though it was still a patriarchy prior to this, women
still had much more power socially they UM, they had
They were basically unionized, They did a lot of the work,
and without them and their reproductive abilities, things would get
all screwed up. So basically to show women who is who,
(36:05):
the church and state, which were virtually indistinguishable at the time,
UM said you know what we're going you're a witch.
We're gonna kill you. And they did it in that
way that we described at the beginning, with the whole
town watching, as much to punish the witch, um as
to send a message to everybody else, like you don't
go against the male patriarchy. You don't go against the patriarchy,
(36:28):
or else we will literally burn you to death at
the stake and whip your daughter in front of you
while this is going on, and they did it over
and over again. And from this brutality they basically, um,
we're able to consolidate their power. They also simultaneously we're
exploring the world and subjugating other people. But at home, Um,
in the Middle Ages, no medieval times, I'm sorry, serves,
(36:51):
each had their own plot of land. They could do
whatever they wanted, so even if they worked for somebody else,
they still had a certain sense of a certain measure
self sufficiency. This stuff was taken away to wage labor
was created, and you have the roots of capitalism and
basically what Federici calls the housewiving of women going on
at the same time. So are are the division between
(37:15):
men and women that we still have today, and the
roots of capitalism find their their place back at this
time in the Middle Ages. Right. And then one more
thing too, I thought this was awesome. She compares the
which scare to uh, the terrorism scare that we're under today,
basically saying, like, you know, people a lot of times
(37:36):
think that, um, that the witch scare was just carried
out by ignorant hicks. Not true. It may have been
carried up by ignorant hicks, but it was very much
encouraged and supported by the ruling class, which was the
church in the state. Right, So there were witches everywhere
which kept people afraid and occupied and kept what you
(37:57):
were able to keep them down through this. They were
too busy chasing shadows and killing innocent people. Same things
going on with terrorism. It's not a perfect analogy, because
there really are terrorists in the world, but the the
amount that it's, the proportion that it's grown too is
uh is similar. Wow, good stuff, Thanks, And that's a
(38:18):
new book. I guess I think it's the review I
read was from early November. Yeah, anything else, John, that's
it man, Good stuff, Chuck, Josh. Like I said, we
just kind of glanced the surface. I think there's so
many more rituals and so many kinds of covids and
(38:38):
witches and potions and hexes. And we've spent hours talking
about that. I think we have. You can type witchcraft
in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot
com to get a lot more information on that. And uh, now,
I guess then it's time for listener mail. And I
(38:58):
call this Ninja Tina jeers Hi, Chuck and Josh. Basically,
let me set this up because it's kind of long.
This kid grew up in southern California, Aren't sorry, in
the suburbs of California, and he AND's in the eighties
like we did. He and his buddies were really into ninja's,
so they decided to do what you did and train
is a ninja in the suburbs of whatever. I guess
(39:18):
you were in Ohio at the time. And so they
had a house next door that was just randomly occupied,
like people would be there and then they wouldn't be there.
They never knew anything about it, but it was usually empty.
So they decided to go into that backyard ninja style
and creep around. So picture this three preteen nerds ninja walking,
(39:38):
shuffling and crawling silently along the neighbor's side yard with
homemade weapons in hand. Uh they made like ninchucks and
stuff like that. And just as we passed the sliding
glass door, the lights spring on. We were completely bathed
in light, locked eyes with this nice Asian family standing
their suitcases and hand having just drive from their part.
I swear no one moved for at least a five
(40:00):
count and we all just stood their surprise, and we
were frozen in our perfect ninja poses, and then we
jumped up, ran off in a very non assassin like
panic to our homes and our rooms, waiting for the
inevitable knock on the door. So it turns out they
were an Asian family that spent most of their time
in Asia, would just come back to the States for
weeks at a time, and so they came up to
the three Ninja teens. Uh. He has no idea what
(40:23):
this poor family must have fought, still none with jet lag,
having just arrived in America to flip on the light
and be met with the sight of three diminutive ninja.
And it still makes him laugh. And that's from Jeremy.
Jeremy also sells tell Josh when he says recidivism is
one bone head word, I get it. And Josh, while
we're on Ninja's I just wanted to bring up during
(40:46):
that episode, you said something that you called puda puda
pooda right, which in Japanese means very fluent, and you
got a lot of email that they had no idea
what this meant, and including this email from Juke in Shanghai.
Shanghai China that is, and Juke was very enthused because
(41:06):
he works with the Japanese person. Okay, so I was
gonna say, how does that qualify him? Yeah, he tries
out these Japanese phrases here. So he went up to
her and said puda poda puddha, and she followed that
with impersonating a bird, including elbow movements, telling me she
thought I was talking about shaky things. And so he
wants to know what the heck why did you embarrass
him like that with puda? I feel like my work
(41:28):
here is done. Now you have to explain. Actually, pura
pura pura, as Juke found out, is not exist. I
made it up. The real word is pana panta uh.
It's on a monopeia in Japanese for fluent. The way
people talked very quickly when they're fluent in something right
into petic gotcha um. So I just started to call
(41:49):
it pa pa and as a result we got um
a couple of self created Japanese pronunciation guys from very
concerned listeners who are worried like we were either having
or I was having a stroke, or was that off
or maybe you were a witch? Maybe, So we have
(42:11):
a phone number for a guy who works with the
Japanese consulate in San Francisco. Anytime we need pronunciation and
my long suffering half okay now, and girlfriend is always
a conserves of information, although I like to learn it
my own way. So pata put up on your home.
That doesn't mean anything. I like it. Okay, um porta
(42:33):
porta porta upon all of your homes. We just decided
that that's our own little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch hex craft,
which means it's a good thing. Right. If you have
your own little version of hex craft, or a blessing
for Chuck and I that we can share with other people,
put in an email and send it to stuff podcast
(42:53):
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
(43:16):
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