Haunted Cosmos - Concerning Magic

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben seek to lay a foundation for how Christians can best approach the topic of magic.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!Want to keep nefarious fairy Bigfoots away and also avoid icky seed oils, preservatives, artificial colorants, and other nasties in your daily shower routine? Then check out the vast array of homemade soaps from our friends at Indigo Sundries Soap Co.! Go to indigosundriessoap.com to learn more—and as our gift to you, use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!This episode is sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee! Visit their website here to purchase your first bag!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Gray Toad Tallow! Check out graytoadtallow.com and use discount code COSMOS15 for 15% off of your order.This episode is also sponsored by Rooted Pines Homestead! Visit their website today and get 10% off your order by using code HAUNTEDCOSMOS10 at checkout.This episode is also sponsored by Stonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today.Finally, this episode is sponsored by Aaron D. Schneider. Visit his website here and support him!Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Indigo Sundry Soap, Routed Pines Homestead, Greytoed Tallow, Stonecrop Wealth Advisors, Author Aaron Schneider, Squirley Joe's Coffee, and our supporters at patreon.com. Did you know that our top two patrons get early access to all of our main shows, and all of our patrons get our main shows ad-free? Patrons also get access to our exclusive weekly show, The Dusty Tome, only available on patreon.com. So, if you like the show,

consider becoming a patron today to get access to all these benefits and more. And now, on with the show. According to the lore masters of ancient Babylon, the first days after the great flood were no less tumultuous than the storm itself had been for the residents of Uruk, one of the first cities of men

that was founded by a mighty king in the days after the deluge. After Uruk's first kings passed, a man named Gilgamesh began to rule the city. You see, this Gilgamesh, who was renowned for his might and craftsmanship in building Uriks' towering city walls, was the de facto king because of his demigod heritage. And since he had no equal among the sons of men, he tended to do whatever his depraved mind desired. He exercised what he felt was his lordly right of taking a new bride for himself on her wedding night. In doing this, he not only terrorized the women, but also poisoned the well of Uriq's generations,

sowing doubt into the minds of all the young husbands and fathers as to the true descent of their firstborn children. He also exasperated the young men more directly by forcing them to engage in feats of strength, fights, games, and battles with him. He took his lessons in ruling from the leech of Proverbs 30, verse 15, whose two daughters are named Give and Give. After years of this malevolent reign, the people had finally had enough. They began to oppose Gilgamesh, in mass, thinking numbers on their end could make a match of the otherworldly's strength on his. They were wrong. Gilgamesh did not suffer their disobedience and squashed all attempts at organized revolt with ease. Readers of the story would at this point be forgiven for thinking the cause of the

old Babylonians to be without hope. But the people of Uruk did have one last card to play in their quest for succor from the tyrant king. Even back then, it had already been well known that the gods favored this land, so fertile and nestled between the great rivers, tigers, and Euphrates, and so the people cried out to those gods and begged for help. The pantheon listened, and was moved to pity at the helpless plight of pathetic man, so small and irritating most of the time. The gods then took counsel and devised a plan. One day, a trapper who lived in Urduk was hiking through the wild lands outside the city's walls, when he caught sight of a strange creature ripping the game from his traps and destroying the traps themselves in the process. Enraged, the man

stormed back to the city and into the temple of the sun god Shamash, where he worshipped and then asked how this new threat might be dealt with. Shamash, well aware of the larger plan at play, arranged for one of his cult temple prostitutes, a woman named Shamhat, to venture out and meet Enkidu. She was charged with the task of seducing and domesticating him, so that he might soon challenge Gilgamesh's rule, being formed by the gods into a wild man equal to the king and strength. After seven days of this activity between Shamhat and Enkadoo, the wild man was finally tame enough. He was ready to go into the city and begin his life as a true man, a citizen. Shortly thereafter, Enkidu heard of Gilgamesh's devilish treatment of new brides from a

passerby on the street. Incadu was incensed at this barber and went straight towards Urick Center to intervene at a wedding in order to stop this evil from happening again. When Gilgamesh saw that his way to the bridal chamber was blocked by this strange newcomer, the two began an epic fight. The match was fierce and long, and as it raged on, Gilgamesh's heart was softened. Eventually Gilgamesh did best in Cadu, and the wild man was compelled to confess the king's superior strength, endurance, and toughness.

But the change which took place during the fight proved to stick even when the fighting stopped. Gilgamesh embraced Enkidu as a friend, and humbled by the sincere challenge of the fight, began to rule Uruk as a benevolent and generous king to the people. Who among us, especially the men, failed to relate to Gilgamesh and Incadu? Who among us has not experienced deep friendship with one whom we initially thought to be a bitter rival? At any rate, thus began a legendary brotherhood that would help shape the very foundations of Western civilization. Gilgamesh and Incadu embarked upon a number of famous adventures together

almost immediately, adventures that included their descent into the underworld to help a goddess protect her tree of fertility and their invasion of a cedar forest, perhaps in Lebanon, in order to get wood for their people and slay the monstrous giant that haunted the trees therein. But all friendships must eventually end on the earth. And it was in the wake of this successful but daunting journey into the giant's forest that tragedy struck Gilgamesh. For as the gods looked down on the mighty labors of the two friends, one of them, a goddess named Ishtar, the so-called Queen of Heaven,

and Mesopotamian counterpart to the Canaanite goddess Asherah, decided she very much liked what she saw in Gilgamesh. So she offered herself to him as a bride, but due to her unsavory treatment of previous lovers, Gilgamesh spurned her advances. The spiteful queen of heaven left wanting and humiliated appealed to her father, the high god Anu, and asked him to send the great bowl of heaven to carry out her revenge on Uruk. And here we find a small but important thread, which we must cling to in our study today.

For when Anu initially refused Ishtar's request, the goddess threatened to, quote, raise the dead of the earth, who will outnumber the living and will destroy all life, end quote. Keep this in mind, how the queen of heaven, claims the right and power to raise up the dead from her own bosom, implying that the dead are under her mercy and will. Back to the story, Anu relents at this threat from his daughter and releases the bull on the unsuspecting Uruk. The devastation is incalculable.

The bull drinks the Euphrates until its flow is greatly lessened. He dries up the marshlands. His stomping forms earthen pits that swallow men, and he kills countless of Gilgamesh's people. Finally, having collected their wits, the king and his friend Enkidu stand defiantly against the bull's onslaught and viciously fight the creature. Though endowed with divine power in its own right, so were its opponents. Together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu throw the bull down, and in the heat of triumph, Enkidu begins

to taunt Ishtar by throwing pieces of the animal at her face. Unfortunately, as they say, the second crime scene is worse than the first. While Ishtar was angry at Gilgamesh for his earlier rejection of her love, she flies into an uncontrollable tempest at Enkidu's mockery and gloating. The goddess cursed the wild man she helped make and thus marked him for death. For 12 days, Enkidu is plagued with dreams foreboding his doom until he finally succumbs to his curse at the end. Gilgamesh holds the body of his friend to his chest,

denying that he could possibly be dead, having been so mighty. but when a maggot falls from his dead friend's nose, he realizes the truth. His best friend is gone forever. Gilgamesh, now tormented by grief, wandered the rolling hills in the wilderness. He grew disheveled in appearance and slightly crazed in mind. His grief grew to paranoia as he finally understood the fullness of man's hopelessness and sorrow, that after all of their bitter fighting for life, they will nonetheless all die. He began to dreadfully fear his own death in the dark,

that certainly lay beyond it. In this mad fixation, he decided to embark upon a journey of last hope to a strange man that few in his day had ever met, but whom all revered with wonder and envy. He went out to find Utna pushed him, the far away, the builder of the great boat that survived the great flood, who was granted a form of immortality by the gods. After a perilous journey to the very ends of the world, where heaven and dust are said to meet, Gilgamesh was ferried across the waters of death and arrived at the feet of this corrupted Noahic figure. With humility, the anti-hero asks Utna Pushdom how he received his immortality.

Utna pushed him, with refreshing matter-of-factness, explained that when the gods decided to flood the earth in order to quiet man so they might rest, the god Enki took pity on he and his family and told him to build a great boat that could withstand the floodwaters. The god gave Utna Pushdim Precise Dimensions and instructed him To seal the sides with pitch and bitchymen After the flood came and Turned the rest of mankind back to clay

The gods relented and regretted their actions At the same time Utna Pushedim's boat Came to rest on top of a mountain From whence he sent three birds A raven, a swallow and a dove Out of the window of the boat Once the raven failed to return He opened the boat and encamped

at the foot of the mountain He offered sacrifices to appease the pantheon that formed around him, promising him never to forget this day. When the god and Lil arrives, who was the chief proponent of the flood, an artificer of its destruction, he was initially angry that there were any survivors at all. But he was softened by the rebukes of the other gods and came to love Uttna pushed him and his wife.

And so in that love, he gave them both immortality. Gilgamesh marveled at the man, but Uttna pushed him, having run a woman. recounted his unique history, began to chastise Gilgamesh for thinking that he could somehow overcome death by his own wits and strength. He encouraged the demigod to enjoy the human things of life, the love of his wife, the embraces of his children, and the good food of the earth, before peacefully accepting the death that must come to him. Gilgamesh, now utterly dejected, but no longer paranoid, solemnly got back into his boat that he might be ferried across the water

of death once more. But to his surprise, Utna pushed him and his wife got into the boat as well, a final show of goodwill to the mighty man who had finally suffered the brutal bludgeon of life on the earth. Moved to the utmost pity, Utna Push Tim's wife urged her husband to give a royal and parting gift to Gilgamesh. He consented and told Gilgamesh that, though he cannot live forever, he can become a young man once more. He told him that at the bottom of the Great Sea, there was a box storm plant that grows which, if consumed, could take away the effects of time on the mind and body. Now motivated to great deeds once again by this secret knowledge,

Gilgamesh strapped heavy stones to his feet so that he could walk on the ocean floor and plunged into the depths. He found the plant and charged to the surface in excitement, but he didn't dare to ingest it before testing it on an older subject back in Uruk. However, to Gilgamesh's dismay and horror, a serpent came along on his journey home and stole the plant from Gilgamesh, consuming it all in a single bite. Gilgamesh watched as the serpent shed his skin.

He descended into madness once more. And in this tale, though left incomplete, we see glimmers of what would become a central focus for much of humanity throughout its history. A repulsed, an aversive attitude towards death coupled with a meaningless and futile outlook on life. Of course, we know why this is, and we know why this natural instinct in itself is not all bad. Man was not supposed to die, but he brought it on himself and now must reckon with it. And of course, we also know how we must reckon with it.

But man is sinful. And there have been many attempts to reckon with death by thwarting it with tricky means. These attempts have only served to turn one evil into multiplied evils. Take, for example, the later Babylonians. They, like their forefather, did not like death, decay, hardship, or affliction, and so also tried to avoid it. As these people followed in the wake of their ancient and pseudo-mythical king Gilgamesh, they delved into sorcery and magic, and eventually found a lore even deeper, one that sought to plumb the depths of wisdom given to man by the kings that came before the great flood.

These kings, or sages, were called the Apkalu, and they were demigods whose blood was more pure than Gilgamesh, and were therefore more potent and prescient. The myths told of how these Apkalu brought great gifts, of knowledge and sorcery from the gods to man, so that man might live in peace and wonder at the world without the troubling weight of evil, sickness, sorrow, or death. We even find spells carved into cuneiform tablets instructing parents on how to exercise the demon from their baby who was causing it to cry.

Even inconvenience was too inconvenient and evil for them. Thus the Babylonians began to practice something called apotropaeic magic, a type of of magic ritual done under the watchful gaze of a stone carving of one of the Apcalo, which is meant to protect the user from evil influences and spirits, harmful misfortune, and bad luck. This practice was nearly as widespread as agriculture, trade, and war in those days. Why is this? Was it just because they were an ignorant folk devoid of understanding on how the natural world operates, giving rain to some and drought to others? Or perhaps was it the habit of people led along by something almost true. Were they tempted like Gilgamesh was,

with the promise of ease and even youthful immortality? Were they remembering something they believed really happened and that they believed could happen again to them, even if only on a smaller scale? You see, there are many who believe that Gilgamesh did not fail in his quest at all. Again, there is an alleged deeper magic that lies behind the dark veil of man's deep past. That antediluvian time we are privy to so little of. Some say that Gilgamesh is just a regional name for a far older man, the man named Nimrod, who not only built the walls of Uruk but founded her very foundations in the land of Shinar. The legend of Nimrod was taken to the corners of the world when the great dispersion happened,

and his name was often changed. To the Egyptian, for example, he became the hero Osiris. According to old inscriptions dug up in Mesopotamian and Egyptian cities, inscriptions that we simply cannot rely on, by the way, Nimrod had a wife named Ishtar, the queen of heaven. Upon Nimrod's death, Ishtar began to spread the word that he had actually been a god and would return again when he was pleased to. Thus, the queen of heaven sowed the seed of necromancy,

of returning from the grave in the hearts of the earliest men. Allegedly, a few years later, Ishtar was visited by Nimrod's spirit and the night, and the goddess was left with child. But this was not just any child. This was the promised child, the hoped-for child, the child which would be the Nimrod reincarnate on the earth. The promised child of the queen of heaven was born and was indeed a new Nimrod, and depending on who an ancient person would ask,

The child's name was either Horace or Gilgamesh. Thus we see an unholy and brutal corruption of the promise to Adam in the garden played out in the legends of mankind from his earliest days after the fall. Instead of the seed of the woman, it is the fallen goddess posing as the queen of heaven. Instead of crushing the serpent's head,

he molts his skin like a serpent does and proclaims to man the glorious lie, that he need not fear death because death is an illusion, a thing to never be feared. He does not destroy death, he wields it as a sceptor to oppress his people. In all of this complicated legend and story, and it is complicated, full of twists and contradictions and false beginnings, I only want to say this, that magic, necromancy, and yes, even witchcraft, have been a chief pastime of man for all of his history.

What are we to make of it all? To begin, let us define terms. Witchcraft is a thing defined by the use of magic for evil purposes. Its partner, necromancy, is the use of magic in order to commune with the dead for some personal gain. But okay, now, what is magic? This one is more difficult to nail down. Oxford says that magic is the practice of using supernatural forces in order to influence events. But this seems too broad.

I would say some things that are very good are magical, and I don't think that would be wrong to say. but using supernatural forces is definitely bad. Therefore, in the interest of being easier to understand, I would propose we lump all these terms and all other branches off of these main terms into the single term, Dark Magic, and we give it the following definition. Dark magic is the act of working with and by evil supernatural forces

in order to twist nature to achieve some end contrary to nature. But with that done, we now return to the question. What do we make of it all? Why does this matter? Who cares about dark magic? During the time of the late Middle Ages, as the humanism of men like Erasmus started to bud in the minds of early reformers, an old fear awoke in the hearts of those who would soon be leading figures of the Renaissance. For long centuries, as Christendom was at its height in medieval Europe, witchcraft was a thing not often thought of among the nobility, the laity, or even the clergy. It appears that the concern of such heinous crimes had vanished because the heinous crimes themselves had vanished.

Long gone were the days of widespread folk paganism in the dark and dreary forests of Europe and Britain. Christ had conquered those lands. Any who shrunk back to the old ways of sorcery and darkness were few, uninspiring to others and generally quiet. However, as the Renaissance took hold, this gradually began to change. Soon enough, which tribes were.

began to pop up in high-profile cities. Entire regions were sent into a frenzied bout of worry about the threat of witches. The church became involved and designated certain men as witch hunters, whose jurisdiction ended with the world's boundary and whose jurisprudence is questionable today. But our concern is not with what caused these witch trials to spring up as if out of nowhere, nor is our concern with the practices of those who sought to save their communities from the witches. Instead, our interest lies in the supposed practice of these witches, one whose name reveals the inverse religion that all dark magic really is, the Witch's Sabbath.

You see, since the rise of Christianity began in Rome, the gathering of witches had been something well known to exist. After all, many former witches and wizards had repented and been saved, had they not? But for all that time leading up to the 1600s, these gatherings had been referred to as which assemblies, convents, or even synagogues. Dark magic was seen as a lie that existed alongside the truth that was always trying to stunt the effectiveness of the truth's leaven by a kind of cosmological pincer movement. Once Christendom began to wane from the height of its visible glory and power, though, the understanding of what dark magic, indeed what every false way was, started to be

more and more clear to the people. These evil practices were not something separated, utterly from the truth of Christ, they were akin to negative images or versions of it. Dark magic was not just another form of paganism. It was an Antichrist, Lathspell, that was seeking to undermine the kingdom of heaven from within. This was a thing, well, tagged as Satanic, as Satan's own evil and fallen version of the glorious and good salvation. Thus, their meetings took on new meanings as well. They were not just the gathering of evil fools.

they were in anti-church filled with anti-Christians. Therefore, the witch's convent became the witch's Sabbath, the devil's horrible attempt at true and holy day of rest taken by God and given to man as a gift. What happened, and still happens today, at these witches' sabbaths, is a story that remains elusive to anyone that does not actively participate in them. Hence, our knowledge of them exclusively comes from witness testimony that is difficult to fully rely upon or verify.

But there's one story that seems to help us in our quest a bit more than others. In 1619, as the Catholic Inquisition continued its wave of judgment in Europe, a trial was taking place in the beautiful but foreboding mountains of Fruilli in northeastern Italy. It was a uniquely strange trial, for it showcased the depth of evil some were capable of, alongside the lengths of genuine and heartfelt syncretism others were willing to go to. In this region, apparently for many decades at the time of the trial, the locals had been engaged in a sort of spiritual battle, which would recommence on four days of each year. On one side of the fray, you had a group called the Benendante, a group of agrarian cult members who had been Christianized under the influence of missionaries that arrived in their cities centuries before. They claimed to represent the forces of God, the forces of certain light in their ongoing fight with evil.

On the other side was the group of witches, both male and female, that had constantly plagued this area of the world for as long as any of the residents could remember, with oral folk traditions including witches in the area dating all the way back to the time of the Etruscans, fighting against Romulus for the honor of their stolen daughters. According to these supposedly righteous and god-fearing Benindante, they would travel out of their bodies after having fallen asleep on the night of these battles. Their spirits would fly to the hills, usually in the form of small woodland creatures like birds and cats. And they would fight with long fennel stalks against the witch army, which was armed by their sorghum brimsticks.

If the Benendante prevailed, they could expect a fruitful crop yield for that year. But the witch's victory would mean near famine for the region. Among the many fascinating aspects of this story, one that deserves brief mention is the Benendante's urgent claims to membership in Christ. church. They stressed that they had no say in whether or not they fought. They simply always did, and had to. But upon their alleged conversion to the Christian faith, they saw their war as a noble duty and fight for God's reign over the mountains over against the attempted theft of the devil. So it was claimed that some of these Benendante had not always been good, but had also served for the devil for a time before their repentance. Thus, a large fraction of these, quote, good walkers.

as their name means, were well acquainted with the induction rituals and practices of the witches that stood against them. One of these converts, a woman named Maria, gave testimony to her near entry into the devil's battalions during an inquiry by the Catholic Church. The woman who was in her 50s claimed that more than 30 years before, her godfather had began imploring her to join him on his journeys to the devil's Sabbath that took place in a field outside of their village called Joseph There, he said, she would see the most beautiful things. Maria's father, disgusted at his friends joining the witches in the first place, urged him to stop tempting the girl, and even bribed him with wheat and wine, but the godfather refused. Thus, the young and foolish Maria agreed to go

with her godfather to the devil's assembly at the next opportunity. She slept one night, having prepared herself for the journey with various charms, totems, and incantations to the devil, and was soon taken up in spirit and rode upon the back of a black chicken to the field of Josephat. Though she could see and sense everything around her, she knew that she was in spirit and that her body was back in bed, bereft of life and blood until she should return. She said that as she approached the field, she saw the spirits gathering in their various forms around the devil, and the field of battle. She noticed the Ben and Dante, and knew some among their ranks.

She saw the witches with their sorghum stalks as well. Maria says that she was taken to see a vision of heaven, whereupon she saw God and the Virgin Mary. But she was immediately dragged to hell as well, where she saw demons boiling the damned, themselves in obvious agony. Now Maria is said to have gone back to the field of Josephat and encamped in the army of witches.

She then went before the abbot of the witch army, an old crone who was a master witch, and who was sent directly by Satan in order to do his bidding there. Maria watched as each spirit was asked by the Abbas, whether they wanted to perform good or bad deeds. When any would say they wanted to do bad, they would be given a stalk with which they might fight the Benendante, or they would be blessed with potions, powders, and spells they could use to steal and drink blood from the infants of the region. These witches were vampiric and needed the sign of the devil in order to be nourished by the blood of youth. If any said they wanted to do good, they would be sent away and banished into the Benendante camp. Maria, regretting her curiosity, said she wanted to do good and was thus sent away to the men and dante.

There, she says, an angel came to her, serving in a similar role as the devil's abyss but for the forces of light, and offered her special powder that she might use to heal those who have had their blood stolen by the witches and have therefore been bewitched themselves. However, the validity of Maria's claims on behalf of all the Ben and Dante was called into serious question when she claimed that though they did not fight for the devil, they still, for some reason, had to vocally recant their faith in Christ. Though she said this with all solemnity intact, she took it back the next day, and claimed that neither she nor any Benin Danty had ever actually recanted their faith in Christ in order to gain these spiritual fighting abilities. And so, in this story we see some features of the Sabbath unique to the story of the night battles itself,

but we also see some common denominators with the larger lore surrounding the phenomenon. At these most unholy services, the witches and wizards together are said to dance around the devil with demons in their ranks. They are said to defile themselves with the devil and his legions in various ways, thus becoming one among them. They are said to eat the flesh and drink the blood of children. They make potions to be used in the torment of others, and ultimately the witches are nourished by darkness, and are charged by their false God to go and wreak havoc on the world that God made and has redeemed image bearers that fill it. In all of this introduction, then, we see that in a rejection of the Holy God, men and women have fallen in league to the unholy legions of hell

in a way that creates a dark parallel of the proper worship of that holy God they have rejected. Today, one might hear a man like Michael Weatherly say that part of the reason he's Catholic is because Mass, or the partaking of the Lord's Supper, is a form of magic given to man in order to ward off evil. This is close enough to the truth to sound cool, but it is not true and is even dangerous. Grace does not twist nature to achieve an end contrary to it. Rather, grace restores what has fallen in nature. To call the sacrament's magic is to massively lessen the sacrament, but that is just what the dark magicians want to do. The Lord's Supper is not magic. The Lord's supper is worship from people to God and gracious love from God to his people. Magic, dark magic,

as we see from the witch's Sabbath, is a corruption of this proper worship. an improper one in the hopes of usurping God's power to achieve the user's own ends. Much like the tyrannical Gilgamesh before his friendship with Enkadoo, witches and wizards, no only two daughters. Give and give. Welcome everyone to this episode of Haunted Cosmos. Why are we laughing already? Because we are an hour and ten minutes according to the clock into this recording. It's definitely shorter than that. But let me give you the situation. Yeah, what happened? So it was a long cold open. It was. Maybe the long.

longest we've ever done. Yeah, we'll find out. And, but for like 20, 25 minutes before that, Brian and I were looking at Zillow and homie at homes that will never be able to record. Just trying to see the coolest one that we can find. Okay, we found four and a half million dollar home with a barrel riding arena. Like a 25,000 square foot barrel riding arena. I think we need it. I, and it was really nice. Honestly, it's well done. For this giveaway, sign up for Patreon. And we will not buy you a $4.5 million barrel riding arena home. But I promise you this.

If we ever buy that four million dollar barrel riding home, we will fly you out. You're all invited. And no, no. Then this is not going to happen. We will fly. This might happen, though. We'll fly out one lucky sign up. Hey, one day we got to do it.

Yeah. Buy the barrel riding? No, one day when we hit a certain patron goal, we've got to like fly someone out and do something cool. That would be really cool. Have them on an episode. Have them read a story. That would be really cool. Wouldn't that be cool? What do you guys? Let us know in the comments. Do you think that be fun? Would you all do it? If you'll do it, we might. If you're, if you're interested, just let us know. We'll give you a hard maybe. So Brian, important. Yeah, go ahead. Speaking of giveaways. Yeah. We are going to do, we are going to do another giveaway.

Can you tell us a little bit about it? So we're going to be doing a giveaway for anybody who signs up to support the show on Patreon today, the day that this episode comes out, we're going to pick a handful of you guys and send you one of the books that was recommended to us by, was it Dr. Glenn Sunshine? It was Dr. Glenn Sunshine. Great man. Yeah. And he,

I don't know what he's doing right now, but I know he's on theology podcast. If you haven't listened to Theology Podcast with C.R. Wiley and Dr. Sunshine and, oh, who's the other guy? I know, I'm embarrassing. Never remember the last. They're going to be like, they're going to discuss this moment on their next episode. Look, third guy.

I'm so sorry. So sorry. I'm really sorry. I don't take this as any indication of how I feel about you as a person. It's that we're dumb. I just literally forgot your name. We both did. But Dr. Sunshine recommended several books to us on witch research and some of the history

surrounding witches. So we're going to be giving away. What's the book title we're giving away? It's called Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Kike Heifer. Yeah. Obviously German. Of some kind. But his name is Richard and it's magic in the middle ages.

And it really is a fascinating. book. We're going to send you guys brand new copy straight from Amazon. Yeah, like Brian said, several of y'all. And we're not going to put a hard number on it right now, but sign up. You may be one of the winners. It'll be proportional. That's right. It'll be proportional to the number of people that sign up. So here's the thing. If you, if like a thousand of you sign up, we might give away like three. No. We'll definitely. You have a high chance. Three's the floor no matter what. And thank you guys to all of our supporters. It really does mean the world to us. We love this project. We love continuing to weave together the history and the stories and the important,

I think, apologetic and theological issues and cultural issues and also just have fun doing it. So thank you guys for supporting the show. Couldn't do it without you. And there's a link to our Patreon where you can support it. And seriously, thank you guys. We've been able to hire Ben full time. Yeah. To produce this show. And also, that's because you guys have put us, I think, in the top 600. Let me just. Let me check. I haven't checked in a few days.

Yeah. We were, I think, below the, like, we were in like five something. Last I saw, we were in, we were number six, 66, which, wow. Eclipse yesterday, the day of recording. And the eclipse. We are currently 599th. Yeah. So we broke into the five.

And there's like 250,000 plus Patreon channel. Plus. Don't forget that plus. You guys really, it's doing a lot of work. have been just amazing in support for the show. Sharing it with friends. We keep finding new listeners in far-flung places in the world that are enjoying the ride with us.

So thanks, guys, but it's time. I would like to say, we just really, just one more like, fine. I know that you guys get annoyed at the amount of housekeeping and non-related stuff we talk about, but deal with it. I would like to take a brief moment to plug the new Christian and Press conference that's coming up this June, June. Six to the eighth. Six to the eighth.

Thank you. And it's in Ogden, Utah. One of the things that we're going to be doing, among many other things, is a live haunted cosmos show. And when I say that, I mean, like, we're aiming to do scripted with music in the background, spooky, vibe. Our vibe. So hopefully...

We're going to vibe. First of all, hopefully it works. Second of all, hopefully you're all there. And you also like it. So come to that conference. You can go to New Christen and Press. com slash conference, and there is going to be a leak in the description of this show so that you can easily find that. And you can use code haunted cosmos, all caps, to get 10% off tickets. So,

check it out. Look at that. Check it out. Look at that. Executive decision. Check it out. That's amazing. So Brian, yeah. How are you today? Man, I'm doing so good and I'm ready to talk about witches and necromancy. That's what I'm ready for. Me too. Yeah. What do you think about witches and necromancy? You know, what's interesting is to me is the gap between the real historical phenomenon and the cultural perception of it is fairly broad, even though there's some aspects of it that are, you know, definitely accurate. Yes. There's spells and there's, there really are people making potions.

Potions. Really are people casting spells and curses and things like, there really are people like daily. But what's interesting as well is that the way that we've typically thought about witches in modern culture, it's corresponded to the way that we've thought about spiritual things in general. So as with the rise of modernity,

as we've embraced more materialistic, rationalistic, scientism, these kinds of ideas that the world is explicable through merely physical phenomenon, the movement of atoms, that we've recast a lot of our ideas about supernatural phenomenon

to be, you know, more like think Harry Potter. Yeah. Where Harry Potter is the general idea of Harry Potter for witches and wizards isn't that they are allying themselves with dark spiritual beings to access the power of those dark spiritual beings. But it's more like, imagine that magic was like some kind of force like electromagnetism. And it was just this neutral. You could take it and wield it for good or you could take it and wield it for bad. But the force itself is morally neutral.

it's kind of like the force in the Jedi's and the Star Wars. Right. Some people will have it. Some people don't. Yeah. You can be used good or bad. It's just out there and you can go to the dark or the light, but it's all in balance. And basically it's just the moral character of the witch or wizard who's using this power, again, like electromagnetism or the nuclear energy can be used to power a submarine or it can be used to blow up an entire city. And what you do with it is up to the moral agent. Yeah. I almost said for them.

However. However. And this is one of the reasons why when you look at stories, fictional stories, when Christians can get really worked up about whether or not there's magic or things in fictional stories, is that a lot of times you have to understand what witchcraft actually is in the scriptures.

We've talked about this before. But that witchcraft, wizardry, these potions and spells, it's not just a person with some special abilities or not even accessing a morally neutral force that's just kind of out there that doesn't have its own intelligence but it's actually human beings allying themselves self-consciously intentionally

with a dark spiritual power that has an intelligence to it and saying, hey, let's work together. What can I give you of myself, my soul. What can I give you of my allegiance, my worship, in order for you to do for me the evil and unnatural things that I want done? That will tarnish God's image, that will rob him of glory. So one of the theses, I think we can say, is that you don't do magic or witchcraft or necromancy on accident. Yeah. Is that like, it requires some intentional partnership that you know about

with forces of darkness where you're saying, yes, I'm going to give myself over to this. And one of the practical examples that I can think about from the modern day is your wife using essential oils is not witchcraft. Right, totally. It simply isn't. It's just not. And homeopathy is simply not witchcraft. Yeah, even if the founder of this movement was like probably corrupt in himself, that doesn't then like, ideas don't work the same as genetics. it doesn't then mean that every user is the same and adheres to the same things. And I would also give some asterisks here. When we say that you do it on purpose, it doesn't mean that there can be deception.

Yeah, 100%. A Ouija board is a good example of this, where when you're using a Ouija board or something like a similar, you know, automatic writing or some of these supernaturalists, a seance, things like that, you might be calling out to what you think is the spirit of a departed loved one. Right. And you might be deceived and contact a spiritual power that's pretending to be that. Right. And you might not know that you're doing witchcraft as such, but you're self-consciously calling out to a spiritual power.

Right. And that's the key point is that... What you are doing on purpose. Let's just use the Ouija board as an example. When you're doing witchcraft, the thing that you won't be deceived on is that you will be doing something or trying to achieve something. that is unnatural, that's contrary to the way that God made the world. And so therefore, if you work back from that, you're saying that you're having to take advantage of some kind of spiritual force to achieve something that you want, even if it's just entertainment. Like a lot of kids use Ouija boards because they think it's fun.

Oh, it'll be fun, yeah. But they're still having to assent to the air, give themselves over to the idea that I am talking to a dead person. Yeah. I'm talking to a dead spirit. I'm inviting a spiritual power in it. Right. That in itself isn't deceiving. It's saying that, you know, on the top of the board. And you have to accept that as part of the tool. Some of this is also mixed up in other forms of demonic deception. An example that I think that comes to mind that's less obvious is like the new age. And you have things like manifestation and the secret kind of stuff where people believe that they're projecting out their will or their request.

They're essentially praying to the universe through intentionality and, you know, what's the word, where they're picturing or they're picturing the reality they want to exist. Yeah. They're manifesting it out. And you'll have guys like Michael Weatherly, whom we cited in the cold open, I believe. Michael Weatherly, spiritual guy, he's gone to like what he calls, like literally Hogwarts. It's like a school of the occult. Yep.

And Michael Weatherly will say things like, yeah, the Catholic Mass is just magic. And he has a British accent. So say, like, you know, what is prayer? It's basically just manifestation. Well, that in itself is deceptive because the British accent makes you think he's right. It makes you think he's smart. Now, when I pray whether or not I'm actually speaking with, you know, say God or some spiritual force, I'm actually manifesting my desires to the world.

And, you know, he does all this stuff. And he basically what he's saying is he's recasting Christian ideas into a pagan or cultic. necromanic and in also overlapping with a new age spiritualism that is still inviting supernatural power in, even if it's misunderstanding what the nature of that supernatural power is. What it's fundamentally doing is it's toying with the world of the supernatural as if it is going to be able to gain benevolent power, power that's going to help it. And contrary to this, I would say Christians are not not using supernatural power. Christians are just using the correct supernatural power, where they are appealing to God,

who is the ultimate fountainhead of all that is good and beautiful, the spirit, the spirit, God himself, God is spirit. And God invites us to wage spiritual war with spiritual power using, but what is it? It's the strength of his might. Right. So that's the key distinction is that there's no neutral, magical power out there that's just crackling through the world, like electromagnetism or something. There is spiritual power. There's evil spiritual power, which is spiritual power, turned in rebellion against the living God.

And it may take the form of 10,000 different deceptions. Right. And then there is the spiritual power of God and his hosts, and also human beings are spiritual. and they have spiritual power. Like, these are not, spiritual powers everywhere, but there's no neutral form of it anywhere. Right, exactly. It's kind of the point that I'm trying to make here.

So it's interesting to me, this is a really long answer to your question, that when you come to the topic of like witchcraft or modern day, you know, Wicca, magic and Wicca and things like this, what you're doing is you're finding people who are trying to posit, they're trying to materialize,

they're trying to rationalize and scientismize spiritual beings to where they can carve out a category that is this kind of moral neutral current of magical power that I can tap into. And I'm the captain of my own ship and none of it's really like ultimately I am the, I'm the power, I'm the God who commands this power. This is actually part of why a project like this and others like it are important in their own right is because when when people and they are start to see the bankruptcy of a materialist worldview. A materialist is asking an atom to be something that an atom is not, which is

metaphysical. Nothing in the natural world that you can see is metaphysical. You have to go beyond that for metaphysical questions. But the materialists are doing that. And everyone's seeing like that is just simply it can't be right. And so they're turning to things like, you know, self-help environmentalism. And the thing is, is when you start to get into those very human categories of even the world that you live in, it is a human world. And of course, your own heart, you have to get into metaphysical things. Like what's lying behind this base surface that I can see? And one of the dangers of that is if you don't have your metaphysical nose properly trained, you won't be able to smell the bull crap, so to speak.

And so an example of this that I've seen is Instagram pages and TikTok pages that are women who are really into self-help and the manifesting kind of stuff. And it sounds really benign because they're just saying like, well, you know, you think the positive thought and you do this seemingly innocuous thing. But then as you watch their trajectory, it is without acceptance. into the realm of occultism. Yeah. And so they start to do things,

and I won't be crude here, I know that children watch the show, where they will give their blood to the earth. Yeah. And they will, like, say an incantation as they're doing it, where they're thanking the Earth Mother

for receiving that. And I'm like, okay, it started a year ago with you saying, I want to get into self-help. I'm an enneagram six, and I am going to start telling myself, I'm going to start manifesting

like today is going to be this and this and this, or I'm a, I'm a Pisces and, you know, whatever. And then it inevitably goes to this, this really dark place. And you really don't even know how it got there. But it's because you were, you were thinking empirically about things that are metaphysical, about a level beyond the empirical and things that you can see. It also makes me think of, and this kind of gets back to what you were saying about how there's this, there's this negotiation sort of that takes place where the force of darkness is saying something akin to what can I give you

that will then make you give me this really and exchange. It's some level of exchange, but one way or another, the image bear is the one that always comes out at a net loss. That's right. Even by engaging in it, they're at a net loss. But even like, if everything was neutral

and you just waited on the scales, the human is the one that's losing in the exchange. Yeah. And the example that I like to think of is from the DMT episode where this season two, episode 10, where there was a story of a girl and her name escapes me. But she was on a trip, and it was her fourth trip with increasing dosage. And she had met these beings before. They were these like cloaked, you know, hooded beings. And they were inviting her into the cosmic, all of the, all the words that we all know, the cosmic theater or whatever.

And they were telling her things like, we want to get. give you all of this. We want to give you this special knowledge so that you can ascend to the higher plane and things that sound to someone who's not a Christian, like very great things, great ideas. And it would give them a lot of power. But every single time, they would require her to offer more of herself up to them. And they would never actually make good on their promise. And she had this moment of lucidity where she came back from a trip. And she like jotted down in a journal or something or told the scientist who was doing the test that yet they just keep taking things from me. Yeah. And they're never giving me back anything. Yeah, really. But so somehow they make you

feel really good. Yeah. Like there's this euphoric, almost runners high when you come down for some people. Some people is just always horrible. Yeah. But when they're sober enough to think through the exchange, they're left thinking like, I didn't get anything. Yeah. Brian, I got bad news. The other day, I was using one of the big box soap products to wash myself. And I got this weird urge to go buy a Stanley cup and fill it with iced coffee. And it started to feel a little cold in the house. I just wanted to wrap myself up in like a heavy wool blanket. And then also, I started Googling ticket prices to Taylor Swift concerts. Ben, what are you doing? Don't you know that these big box soap companies just jam all their soaps full of hormone disrupting chemicals? They're probably turning you into a girl.

Well, I know that now, but what am I supposed to do about it? Ben, you, Ignorant Normie, all you've needed to do is go to indigo sundry soap.com and support a great Christian family business that's making all sorts of soaps that are completely free of hormone disrupting chemicals and other nasties. Okay, I am literally going to indigo sundry soap.com right now. Tell me what to buy. Ben, what I would recommend doing is clicking on bundles and then selecting the best one for you. You could get the men's six pack. You could get my favorite, the clay bundle. Ooh, I like the pipe and jug bundle. That seems cool. Or a men's six pack.

six-pack, because that'll make me feel like I have something that I actually don't. So true, King. And you know what else I heard? Because they're such good friends of the show, Indigo Sundry Soap Company is offering 10% off your order if you just use all caps, discount code haunted Cosmos, no spaces. Wait, Brian, you're going way too fast. I didn't get all that. Is that information in the show description? Ben, you ignorant normie, it's always in the show description.

Okay, so I'm going to go to indigosundrysoap.com. I'm going to pick the men's six-pack bundle, and I'm going to use code Haunted Cosmos at checkout, all caps, no spaces, and if I forgot all that, it's in the description of the show. Of course, Ben, and if you just do that, then you will stop wanting to do all of those girly things, and maybe you'll, I don't know, maybe want to buy a classic car to restore or something dignified. If you're like us, the changing seasons wreak havoc on your skin, leaving you in constant search of a healthy product that actually works to keep your skin both healthy and comfortable. Well, they are really onto something over at Grey Toad Tallow.

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to be good stewards, they make sure that their products are the highest quality and aren't harmful to families, homes, or the world. They also teach free herbalism on their YouTube channel for those wanting to take back what new agers have tried to distort in worshiping creation rather than the creator. So why support big companies who knowingly use cheap and harmful products just because it's better on their pocketbooks? When you could get 10% off your first order at Ruted Pines homestead by using code Haunted Cosmos 10. That's Haunted Cosmos 10, all caps, one word to support your brothers and sisters in Christ. Check out the show notes for more details and links and to connect with them on social media. So think of like these witches are an example. They are promised, you know,

youth and strength and power and goods from the devil. But what do they do to get it? Well, they worship him, they commit these heinous acts, they, you know, kill children and drink their blood, and they still are just old crones who die. Well, because the point is, the point is this principle in scripture that man can't serve two masters. And so the point of that is deep, because there's no option as well to not have a master. Right. Human beings are contingent creatures. So we were made to rely upon some other thing for our existence.

and for our essence and our being. And so you always have to choose fundamentally between two masters, which means that all of us are always going to be giving our whole selves to some master. So the deception is that I'm going to give myself to these powers, and they're going to benefit me. They're going to think of in Acts when the slave girl had the spirit of divination. Okay. And however that happened initially, it was basically, I'll give you this ability. Yeah. And it will benefit you. Benefited her masters ultimately. Yeah. And then what happened? Well, the apostles came in and they freed her from that mastery. And I don't know fully, like hopefully to the mastery of Christ. So she's actually not just swept clean, but also filled with the spirit. Yeah. Right. So that's not going from being mastered by spiritual powers to not being mastered by spiritual power.

It's going from being mastered by spiritual powers that promise life and deliver death to being mastered by a spiritual power that promises life and delivers life. And the interesting thing is that the means, the message of the means by which that life is achieved is by the evil dark powers, it's you, other people die so that you can live. And the message of Christ, of course, is that in death, in dying to yourself, picking up your cross, in claiming, yes, Christ, you are a Lord, and you are a Lord over me. That is a death. It feels like losing because it's losing.

It is losing. But in that loss, which is a product of God's grace, you actually do get true life, which is, and this is going to sound maybe bad, but it's a subservient life. It's a life where you're saying, actually mine is supposed to be spent for the good of God, the worship of God, and for the good of those around me, the good of my neighbor. Whereas the magical answer would be, in the dark magical answer, would be other people's life should be spent for your good. Or even with the example of that Instagram trend that I talked about earlier, there may be a sort of die-to-self mentality. But it's not so that God can be worshipped.

It's so that this idea of like the earth can be blessed. Some of these witches may say, like, yes, my life is supposed to be spent. for the good of Gaia, Mother Earth. You know, and so they'll pour their blood out. You can't not give yourself to some God. And you're, and you may think that you're giving yourself to yourself, but you simply are worshipping demonic forces and doing that. And you're making yourself a God.

Right. This is why, I mean, fundamentally, it's right to go to the metaphysics of a thing. Like, metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with first principles. Right. So it's basically asking, like, what is the fundamental, not just what is the thing, but what is the nature of the thing? Where did it come from? What is its purpose and origin

and all of these questions? When you approach the world through the metaphysics of modernity, you'll end up in one of two directions, either materialism, which makes creation just an end in itself, itself. It's just is, there's no real metaphysics. There's no, I mean, there's materialist metaphysics,

but it's, it's, it's actually, what it is, is just pantheism. It's just ridiculous. Materialistic metaphysics is just panthers. He's just boiling everything down to atoms. There's no real meaning. There's no real purpose. It just is.

The other direction you can go is into this spiritual world of, while there are any other spiritual answer that you give. Well, it is a spiritual world and is suffused with power. And I'm going to align myself with them. Which is why I'm comfortable, genuinely, not even using. When I say magic, I mean black magic. I know, me too. Yeah.

The reason that I even made. that distinction is because colloquially, people will say, like, wow, that song was magical. And I know what they mean, and it doesn't mean that it was like some satanic thing. Do you mean that they're a lot? And so I don't want to be an autistic about it, like an autistic about it, but say like at the end of the day, this root definition is very much that if you're talking about magic and the way that we tend to understand magic, it is evil. Yeah.

Now, if you're colloquially calling something magical, whatever. Like when people say, well, you know, there's just good magic is a lot. yourself with God, and like, that's what Moses is doing. Right. Well, not really. Magic has a meaning. So the way we're using it here, magic just is allying yourself with false spiritual forces to achieve some end that's

contrary to God's end, the reason for which he created the thing. Whereas it's not that Christians are not aligning themselves with supernatural forces or wielding supernatural power. It's not like, well, there's the bad magic people who are involved in supernatural stuff. And then Christians are the good people who are not involved in supernatural stuff. No, yeah, that's definitely not what we're saying. We're just involved in wielding the spiritual powers in the way that they were appointed by the one who made them and upholds them. Right.

Which is prayer appealing to God again, which is obvious when you're saying. It's not manifesting. It is a child to a father. It's not you imposing your will on the world via your own power. It's you appealing, again, as a servant of the power that is good for the ends that that good power appointed. Right. It's like when Gandalf stands on the bridge and he says, I am a wielder of the flame. The secret fire.

Oh, the secret fire. What is he saying? Which dwells with a luvitar. Yeah, that's what he's saying. And this is why it is, I think, this is a side note, but it is ill-conceived when Christians reject stories with supernatural power as all witchcraft. because in Lord of the Rings we have all of these different features of like quote unquote magic

where Gandalf is doing word magic a word of command to shut the door at the ballrog that kind of thing but what Tolkien is attempting to display in that story again Tolkien would maybe not like every way I'm explaining this

but is that distinction where Gandalf is appealing to the creator's supernatural power and his nature to achieve the ends that that supernatural power intended for the nature of things to combat evil and to uphold good. And essentially what we would sum up is the law of loving God and loving your neighbor. Right. That's what Gandalf is doing.

And so he's righteous. He's not at tapping in as a neutral force. And he's also, and this is what we're doing in prayer if you're like a supplicant or let's say you are confronted with the demonic force and you're saying, in Christ's name, I rebuke thee. What you're doing is you're actually, you're still being a supplicant in that moment because it even says this in Jude

where it talks about the Archangel Michael disputing over the body of Moses with the devil. And it says that Michael didn't go and rebuke the devil by his own power, but he says the Lord rebuked. Yeah, he didn't deign to invoke his own authority. You're still supplicating in that moment. It's the proper, you're following the proper hierarchy of the thing. And you're trying to do that, just like you do with any prayer, in accordance with God's will.

And God's will is a thing that makes the world more of what it ought to be, not less. And so it is still this very non-self-centered means of power wielding. That's why, like, and to some extent, I'm even on. uncomfortable using the term wielding. But it is. You are doing that. It's just that you're doing it in the proper channels and in the proper order of how power ought to be wielded. You're a vehicle that was created for a certain end, and one of the ends you were created for is to wield power. Yes. That's something that's actually good. It's good to wield power, both in the natural realm and the supernatural realm. And it's easy for us to think about it in the natural realm, because it's

the thing that we see in our most concerned with. But it is also, of course, true that it's in the supernatural realm as well, when Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 16 to put on the armor of God, it includes a sword. We are supposed to go and attack and be proactive and offensive to certain things, but it's the order that's really important. I would like to say on a meta level of this show, that this was one of the topics that leaves me more bewildered than when I started. It is incredibly difficult and it's full of contradictions. And it's one of those things that's so shrouded in historical secrecy that it's hard to find answers to questions without doing it yourself, which of course, none of us should do. Don't. And here's our advice. Don't. Don't. And if you do repent.

And don't do it again. If you have, yes. And so just to kind of maybe explain a bit of why the cold open was the way it was, I kept reading everywhere. and primary sources, that magic starts with the Chaldaans. Magic starts with the Babylonians because they were the first, they were the first civilization that we have. We even see that in Genesis. After the flood, the Tower of Babel was the first city after Cain's city. It's interesting how the city is connected with sin, but I'm going to leave that there.

And then Helzion is the new city. But anyway, the point being, I wanted to start with Gilgamesh, because that's really the the fundamental root of what we would call Western civilization. And it is fascinating to see how even in that, you get these corrupted ideas of what is man, what is man for? There's obviously some elements of truth to it as well, because common grace is real. But even in that, you get this obsession with death.

Even the demigod Gilgamesh is thinking, like this is still just my end. So I'm supposed to just love my wife and love, my kids and enjoy good food and drink and then I'll just die. And if I'm, if things go great, I'll just be remembered. And that's all there is. And it leaves him, you know, sullen. And finally he resigns himself to it and takes what gladness he can from it. But I really wanted to start there because that is the root of Babylon. And Babylon, it does play a big role in the root of Western civilization. And so I think that that is part of why, like, there's something in there where if a smarter man were to look at it, he would be able to tell us what exactly is lying at the base at the genesis of magic.

And of course, we could talk about Genesis 6-4 and how maybe it was a quote-unquote gift given to man by the fallen angels. I would certainly think that that's reasonable. But ultimately, we don't know. Like there's a lot of first principles of this topic that we don't know and have a very difficult time defining. Yeah, like in terms of the actual practice on that level, like the concept of what it is is very clear. And then where it gets unclear is when you get down in the weeds of like how and what and why. And those are the places where you actually shouldn't go. Yeah, exactly.

You just don't need to. That's part of the point is that I'm making is in order to get there, you'd have to. compromise yourself. Yeah, when you look at Acts 8 and Acts 13 and you look at these essentially stories where you have magic

and magicians involve. The Christian answer to them and the way that Luke approaches these stories is that when they repent, they bring all their magic books and they burn them.

Yeah. And that's it. They set them on fire. Which I'm sure is part of why we have the gap of knowledge that we have. Exactly. Because as Christendom

swept over the world, these books were burned and they were done away with. Yeah, they were done away with. So we have less now, which is a good thing. And so I guess take this episode for what it's worth as the most basic attempt to not participate in the works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Yeah. Yeah. And certainly not explain how it's done because we just don't know. So when we have necromancy and witchcraft, to summarize, what we have are people contacting or allying themselves with, in terms of necromancy, again, from the root of the dead. dead. It's like, I'm going to bring back the dead and I'm going to commune with the dead with the spiritual power of the dead or the spirits of the dead and even maybe bring back the dead to life,

not via death burial and resurrection through Christ and glory, but actually through dark means and witchcraft, aligning yourself with spiritual power, with the gods, lower G, with the demons, with the unclean spirits, with any supernatural power to achieve ends that are contrary to nature. And when we say that, we don't mean that some of the ends they would achieve like trying to gain blessing. They're working with, they want more things. They want more goods. But what we're saying in terms of nature is, again, that first principle issue of

what did God make the world to be and do? The nature of a thing in its essence must obey God. Even me. What am I for? So really, contrary to nature. We mean, actually, it's another way of saying, obediently to the maker of nature. This is, when we say contrary to nature, what I'm thinking of is James, when he says that you ask but you don't have because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions.

Right. So you're not asking or doing something in accordance with God's will. That's what I mean to be contradictory to nature. And that's why it's important to go all the way back and all the way forward. You see this all the way back in the Caldeans and the Babylonians. You see it in the, all the peoples in the land. the DMT episode, again, we did a lot of deep diving on one aspect of this witchcraft type of stuff in terms of the hallucinogenic drugs in its connection with these supernatural powers.

But what we're saying is that go all the way back and what do you see? People aligning themselves and worship, giving themselves in exchange for power with spiritual beings to accomplish ends contrary to the nature of the creator. And then all the way forward, what do you find? Yeah. Even pop self-help podcast versions of this where little witches get their little covens and they think like, I'm going to call out to the moon and the moon is going to give me power. And what are they doing? They're doing the same thing. That's the threat I want everybody to take away and understand. And the takeaway that you should have when you see those silly little podcasts with those silly women is not, wow, look at them wasting their time calling on the moon. It's real. It is, wow, look at them destroying their souls. By calling on something, they're not, wow, look at them wasting their time. They're really. It's real. It is, wow. Look at them destroying their souls. by calling on something that somehow is real. And with that, that's actually a really good segue. It is a good segue.

I think to getting into the story of Greek magic, a far more closer route to us of Western civilization. I'll start. Yeah, take us there, Ben. The Greeks, though a people most concerned with knowledge and cunning and shrewd natural investigation, were nonetheless a spiritual people. Their worship of their fickle and oftentimes tricky pantheon

revealed much about their own values and shed great light on how they viewed the concept of magic in general. To them, magic, deified in the goddess named Hecatei, was much akin to the rest of the natural world and that it could be categorized and systematized. This systemization was done in such extreme measure for the magic arts that we can actually discern three main types of magic practiced in Greece,

with a hierarchy, use, and defined reputation assigned to each category. The first form of magic was also the highest form, the supernatural power which was the ability of those closest in communion with the gods, the word literally means work relating to the gods, and was the high ritualistic and religious magic reserved for the priestly class and temple servants in the land. One might recall to mind our study of the Ilusian mysteries from episode 10 of season two of haunted cosmos. The secrecy surrounding that religious rite, though certainly more secretive than others in Greece, represents the normal air of wonder that surrounded the magic of the gods and their priests on the earth. It involved the trial of the priests to bind his very consciousness with that of the God he was dedicated to so that his will might be fully given over to the divine. In this way, the priest could return from his Olympian journey and direct the attendant worshippers in the way they should go.

As an aside, modern Wicca claims to be practicing its magic in this same category, which makes me wonder which God are they claiming to commune with? But more on that shortly. The second form of magic for the Greeks was the political magic. The state, in an attempt to enact laws and civil rule that was pleasing to the gods, frequently sought answers to their many questions from Sears, such as the Oracle at Delphi, Dodona, and Asclepius, to name a few. These witches, for that simply is what they're not.

they were, would normally commune with the gods via some psychedelic substance. Indeed, Asclepius being the god of Pharmakea is no coincidence here. But in addition to Oracle consultation, the civil sphere would also hire sorcerers to read entrails from dead animals and flight patterns from birds in order to predict the future via omens. The third category, which was also viewed in the lowest esteem, was the popular magic. This primarily consisted of two things, Maggea and Goetia. Magaea was practiced by professionals who were employed by elites to bless their work, fill their homes with protective charms, predict their own futures and fortunes,

and even curse others who the employer considered an enemy. On the flip side of this respectable magic was the charlatan practice of Goetia. These fake sorcerers were peddlers of love potions and healing herbs that only the lowest class of society thought actually worked. With this great display of esoteric organization, It is no surprise that the Greeks, as mentioned earlier, had various gods who played roles in the potency and validity of these practices. What might be surprising, however, is that the primary god, or in this case, goddess, of magic and sorcery and witchcraft among the Greeks, was not one whose beginning is found in the Greek myths.

Instead, Hecate, the goddess of magic and the moon and ghosts and fertility and the underworld, was one the Greeks claimed had already existed for a long time, before they ever settled in the foothills of Olympus. In ancient Egypt, the peoples would eagerly await the annual flooding of the Nile, for it would mean a fruitful crop yield and a reason to celebrate another productive cycle of sustenance in the earth. This annual flooding would be marked by a couple of things. One expected and one less expected. Upon the widening of its banks, the fruitful Nile would itself inspire fruitfulness in the peoples it fed.

Thus, a large influx of children to the society would be a regular occurrence about nine months after each flooding season. Hopefully, I'm making sense to everybody. In this way, the Nile's flooding was associated with fertility and childbirth. The problem was, these were traits of a goddess, and the Nile was already ruled instead by a powerful god named Knoom. Luckily, the Egyptians did not have to wait long for this puzzle to be solved for them. According to them, a goddess made herself known in the form of a love for a love for. woman with the head and face of a frog. Suddenly, the people realized it.

The other thing that happened when the Nile flooded, the thing less expected that the Egyptians had failed to notice before, was that the frogs would begin to lay their eggs at the new and expanded banks. Thus, more people saw more frogs in their daily lives when the Nile flooded and when they were more fertile. And so this new goddess, whose name was Hequette, and who had the head of a frog,

was clearly the goddess of fertility. But that was not all she was in power over. See, she was also a close friend of the Egyptian queen of heaven, the goddess Hathor, who later became ISIS. In this friendship, Haket assumed some of the powers that the queen of heaven is said to have, and so also became the goddess of sorcery. The claim then is that when the Greeks first settled their fertile land, the goddess Hequette was already powerfully at work in it.

But the Greeks balked at the old Egyptian name, and so referred to her instead as the noble Hecchkech. This is, by the way, that goddess that the modern witches claimed to connect with in the same religious manner as the ancient Greek priests. But who exactly is this Hecate? Well, she's not just a goddess revered even by Zeus himself, but is one apparently humble and able to condescend herself to serve the larger purpose of the pantheon she predates. In this way, she's associated with a consort of other goddesses that serve to complete the image

of the full queen of heaven for the Greeks. In her fertility, she is one with Artemis. In her lordship over the moon and its three phases of full and crescent and dark, she is one with Selene, and in her oversight of the underworld, she is one with Hades and his soul and bride, Persephone. Due to these connections with other powerful members of the pantheon, Hecate has long been represented in art as having three faces, or even sometimes three bodies all rolled into one form.

These faces show her power in connection with other deities, while also showing her overall seniority to them. Thus our ancient and pre-Greek queen of heaven and sorcery is shown to us as a corruption of the true and Trinitarian God, who is the high king of heaven and earth and who suffers not a witch to live. Hecate serves as an inversion of the true God of gods, a mockery of the greatest revelation given to the world,

and she inspires this same inversion, hatred, and mockery in all those who love and follow her. Indeed, she has done this for all time, for all witches it is said, are given their power by Hecatee, and one ancient story in particular shows us just how ugly and twisted this power is. Long ago, the king of Thessaly, who was named Aeson, sought to quench an uprising and revolt against the throne led by his half-brother Pellius. Unfortunately for Aeson, and indeed all of Thessaly, it was too little too late. The bitterness against his brother had been nourished in Pellius' heart for long enough, and his

grand conspiracy covered more of the royal court than Asan could have imagined. The aging king stood before Pellius humiliated, but not without lingering threads of pride. He did not beg for mercy from the new usurping king, nor did he say anything at all. Rather, he stood with a straight back in defiance of the rebels. This, for whatever reason, and most likely despite Aeson's ultimate wish, worked to spare the old king's life. Instead of killing Aeson, Pellius showed him mercy by making him mercy. him watch as the rest of his family was killed instead.

Aeson could hardly endure the torture, but kept a small flicker of hope in his heart that one of his progeny, a newborn son named Jason, might find some way to be concealed and saved. And he was. Jason's mother, who had literally just given birth, told her servants to surround her and the child and pretend to mourn, thus tricking Aes into thinking the child was a stillborn, and the mother was miserable enough already. Jason was then taken to the centaur Chiron to be kept safe and reared and taught the ways of manhood and war. As Jason grew, he took counsel with himself and devised how he might reclaim the throne of his father that by right belonged to him. He, however, was not alone in his plotting.

Pellius also sought the insight of the gods in order to learn how he might protect his kingdom from the inevitable wrath that will eventually come to him for his brutal theft of power. Strangely, the gods told Pellius only one thing. Beware of the man with one sandal. And so, the heroic story of Jason and the Argonauts was set to begin in the theater of Greece's ancient glory, for it was not long before Jason returned to destroy Pellius and reclaim the throne, only he had lost one of his sandals on the journey back to Thessaly, allowing Pellius to catch him in his trickery before it began. Trying to kill the now young man in a way that would absolve him of any further bloodgild, Pellius looked at Jason haughtily and said,

To take my throne, which you shall, you must go on a quest to find the golden fleece. Jason accepted the challenge to find the legendary and valuable garment of the gods, assembled his team of heroes, and set out upon one of the most epic adventures the West has ever seen. But here is where we find the beam leading us back to the sorcery of Hecate, for on his journey, Jason eventually falls in love with a woman named Media. Media, one of Hecate's chief priestesses and one of the most prolific witches the world has ever seen,

loved Jason greatly, and also greatly pitied the tragic hand he had been dealt by the gods. Thus, she not only gave Jason her love, but also her help in using magic to make it through all the turmoils his road to the golden fleece threw at him and his men. In her communion with the fallen goddess, Media finally aided Jason in his final approach to the fleece, which was guarded by bulls whose hooves were brass and whose breath was fire, and a dragon that never slept but always lay at the foot of the tree on which the fleece was hung. Media concocted the sleeping charms of lunacy Jason then used to tame the creatures and win the fleece.

The two lovers then returned to Thessaly in a parade of triumph, but their mirth was short-lived. When they arrived back to the city, Jason was saddened to see his father, Aeson, and his uncle, Pellius, too old and decrepit, to do so much. much as react to his glory. His father couldn't comprehend the glory his son had won for him, and Pellius failed to understand the shame in infamy his name would now suffer. So, driven by desperation, Jason asked Media whether she could summon her powers and make an old man young once more. Media consented, and so we come to it at last. Media drew a circle into the pale dirt which covered the flat top of a small lookout over Thessaly. It had failed to rain for many weeks,

but that appeared to be about to change as the sky grew darker and blacker above the city and above the witch's circle. She bid the Argonauts place an iron cauldron at the northern edge of the circle and kindle a fire beneath it. She filled the cauldron with water, oils of different scents,

incense from all manner of leaves, and pieces of different creatures that had been long dead and that Jason could not descry. The entire hillside was filled with the fume and the stench of that brew. Media proceeded to lay the old and unwitting Aeson, bereft of all dignity now, in the midst of the circle with his face set up towards the sky, which seemed to swirl now above them. As she spoke an incantation and called upon

Hecatee with a pathos of one who has clearly done this before and knows the fearfulness of it, she slit the throat of Jason's father and collected his blood before spilling it into the stinking cauldron. As Jason protested in tears, Media shot him a glance, which said in a message stronger than words to quiet himself. Two grotesque monsters descended from the sky as the fumes grew in intensity with the addition of the old and paper-thin blood from the victim king. The demons flew here and there and cried in a language unknown things that neither media nor Jason ever remembered thereafter. Suddenly and somehow, by a power that surpassed any Jason would imagine attributing to the gods, his father's blood now infused with the sinister mixture and incantation from the dark,

darkness flooded back into his father. Aeson awoke with vigor and shock. He stood and embraced his son, now equal to him in strength and complexion. Pellius' daughters, looking on in wonder, asked if Media would do the same service for their father. Media consented, deceiving them, and took the body of Pellius. She instructed his daughters to chop it up finally before throwing it into the cauldron. They did so, and he never came back. Pop quiz.

I'm ready. Do you know why they're called the Argonauts? I do. I do, but I forgot. But is it something that has to do with Argon? Like there was some kind of mineral or element? I don't know. Dude.

I don't remember. It's from the Greek Argonautis, which refers to your mom. Of the ship. So close. Of the ship Argo. Okay. so his companions sailed in the ship on the journey for the golden fleece. Yes.

Argo. And so they were called Argonauts. Do you know who was the form on the prow of Argo? Easy. It was your mom. I actually, I don't remember. I was hoping you'd remember. I was hoping you'd be so cool.

But there's a form. But there's a form. There was a form. And it's not your mom. Hey, your mom's a lovely woman. I don't. Dude, your mom too. I've met her.

She's amazing. She's great. My mom is a lovely woman, by the way. Also, if whatever's on the ship's prow is a, really hideous creature, I didn't mean it. Okay? Like, I really, that was by accident.

So, wow. A lot of connections here again. Yeah. To history and these stories woven together. We're going ancient Greece. And that had interchange with Egypt. And which had interchange with going all the way back to all the other Eastern. And we'll actually find that it goes a little further.

And it has interchange with the Gaulish regions. Yeah. And then, you know what, where else? Satan in the Garden of Eden. Hell. And hell. Like hell. No, I love seeing these connections because you start to realize, again, people think that the world is made up of all of these multiplicitous religious ideas, and they're all this

grab bag. And it's like, you've got this, you know, boutique little Egyptian religion over here. And then there was the ancient Greeks and the Romans. And it was all these kind of hermetically sealed off boxes of, you know, religious ideology. And really there's just two. Yeah. There's the religion of the serpent, again, from Genesis. Bad.

All the way forward. And what do you have? Like, demons and death and dragons and worshipping death. And then you have the religion of the seat of the serpent. Oh, wow. The seat of the woman. And literally all of history. I've said this before.

I tweeted it the other day. And I stand by it. And I stand by you saying it. And I'm quoting from the book that we're writing. Yeah. But all of history is an exposition of the great words in the garden that the seat of the woman will come and he will crush the serpent's head and the serpent will bruise his heel. Ben right now is like Obama giving himself the battle. In the words of the grave loss from me.

No, what's funny is that so in chapel right now for St. Brendan's classical Christian Academy here at Refuge Church, I'm talking about, I'm talking about that. Like, what is the world haunted by? Is it haunted at all? And it's haunted by this, like, this curse, but also promise of the serpent and the sun. And the whole thing is just me being like, so anyway, my show is amazing. And all of you kids are like, I'm sick of it. Actually, no, they're constantly listening to it. All the kids are like, shut up about the sun.

They're like, shut up about the sun. Except not Jesus. Yeah, no. That actually was a bad choice. That's true. How many demons, ghosts, or vampires do you have in your investment portfolio? Well, if you've invested in the S&P 500, it's probably more than you think, since it's full of companies who actively support causes that go against your faith. Stonecrop Wealth Advisers is here to help.

Stonecrop offers faith-based portfolios to help you direct your hard-earned investment dollars away from those kinds of companies and towards companies that are having a positive impact on society. They also offer comprehensive financial planning to help give you peace of mind about your future that these investment dollars support. Get the demons out of your portfolio and instead invest in God's kingdom while you grow your wealth. Contact Stonecrop Wealth Advisors today by visiting Stonecropadvisors.com slash haunted cosmos. That's stonecropperadvisors.com slash haunted cosmos or just click the link in the description below. Investment advisory services offered through StoneCrop Wealth Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A boy finding monsters in shadowy ruins, an exile searching the edges of civilization, a child who could change the fate of nations,

disgraced dwarish soldiers fighting behind enemy lines. I'm Aaron D. Schneider, military and heroic fantasy author. You can find the stories I've described to so much more at my website, aaron D. Schneider.com. If you're looking for stories that are beauty wrapped in barbed wire, worship amidst war, and jagged characters carving their way to the truth, and check out my books at Aaron D. Schneider. Brian, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning?

Yeah, hopefully everybody does that. Sure, maybe. But do you ever feel tired when you wake up? Well, yeah, Ben, I used to all the time. But then I started drinking this new drink. It's actually called coffee, and it helps you wake up. No way. There's a drink that does that.

Man, I should give it a shot. You definitely need to try this. And when you do, you should buy your coffee from Squirley Joe's coffee. They're a thoroughly Christian company who sends you a great coffee at an affordable price. Plus, they even donate some of their proceeds to Operation Underground Railroad, helping the effort to end child trafficking. Okay, wait, I actually have heard of Squirley Joe's Coffee, and they are really great. They make it super easy to order exactly what you want if you go to www.

www.squarelyjo's.com. That's www.squarelyjo's.com and click Shop Coffee. And first time buyers can sign up to receive 20% off of their first order. Just go to www. Squirleyjo's.com or use the link in the description below. Squirrely Joe's Coffee. Share coffee, serve humbly, live faithfully. So, okay.

I see in our notes that you somehow want to weave this in and make some conjection about the moon being governed by a Fay elemental intelligence. I am going to be. beat this drum once more. Okay. Hey, Ben. Take us there. Thomas Aquinas.

Okay. And his Summa Theologica talks about in league with Albertus Magnus that clearly, and I am directly quoting, I'm not.

He's not. Clearly, the planets and stars are governed by supernatural intelligence. Okay. Not that, like, Venus is literally a thing, like ego the living planet from Marvel.

You mean like Venus isn't, because Venus literally is a thing. Okay. It's a planet. Not like a, like, I don't mean that Venus is an angel. Okay, you don't mean like that when you look at the planet, you're literally looking at an angel. An angel.

I mean. But you're, I don't know if I'm quite, you're, a heavenly sphere appointed in the heavens to rule of the signs and seasons that is governed by an intelligence who is created by God. You're looking at a thing that governs and that is, therefore governed by an intelligence because non-animate things don't govern.

You know that I'm, you know that I'm willing to go there. As a possibility. I would go to the very gates of Mordor. I would have gone. I am going to. And so, and I'm not trying to like really, people can't convince me otherwise. So I'm not going to try and like sell that. But the thing is, uh, Hecatee and literally every, every, like, witchy thing in all of

history is connected to the moon. Yeah. And so it just, you know, it makes one wonder, what is that? Like, why is that? Is there something to it? And the thing that I always go back to, and this is going to sound ridiculous, is if you ask like a teacher of an elementary school or a nurse that works the night shift or really anybody that works with people. Uh-huh. What it's like after a full moon. Yeah. They're going to be like, oh, it's crazy. The kids are nuts. Like, the people are nuts. The crazy. And so therefore, the moon is. confirmed as a favorite. Can I read this? This went viral. Okay. I want you to sound design this too.

Okay. Keep all of this. What are you about to do? I'm about to read a thread. It's connecting witches in the moon from Twitter. Did I write it? You didn't. This was in July 2020. I remember this. Okay. I remember when all this happened. I was laughing uproarously with it. Oh.

It's from winged alitus. Jupy. I will sound design it. And I quote, I'm just now going to read a Twitter thread. Okay. All caps. What's going on with the moon? Star emoji.

A thread because everyone is confused. Basically, I'm just going to yell loud when it's all caps. Basically, in the past few days, a group of fresh baby witches decided to band together and hex the fay. And then the moon. And they did. They're now planning to hex the sun too. Star, or asterisk, inexperienced witches who should only be researching and doing protection work. That's what they mean by baby witches.

Inexperience wishes. Wishes. You should only be researching and doing protection work. Continuing. What's a hex? A hex is essentially spellwork that is a collection of negative energy and is directed as someone, something, or a group of someone's slash somethings. These are intended to have negative effects and cause harm to them in their lives.

These baby witches specifically stemmed from which TikTok, witch talk. Who are the Faye? Well, technically, the Faye are Celtic. specific, so it's more accurate to say fair folk, since essentially they are non-human creatures that fairies are based on. It is extremely important to note that fair folk do not abide by human morals because they're not human. Morality is a human construct. Fair folk are not inherently malevolent, but they have different customs than we do. But when they're bad word with, when you mess with them is what they're saying, woo baby, you've now got trickery for the rest of your

life and maybe a bloodline curse, if you're lucky. They'll probably also steal your soul. This is all now in caps. Faye slash Fairfolk work is not for beginners in any form. They are to be respected, but you should not begin a relationship with them without years of experience in witchcraft and research about them. Next up, the moon thing. After hexing the Faye, this group of newbie witches decided to hex the moon. Yeah, the planet, the moon. They hexed it. Why does this matter? Well, for witches, the moon is integral to our work. Most notably, it fuels spells and provides power.

Obviously, you shouldn't. Question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, disrespect the moon. But actually, the moon thing matters because there are gods that rule the moon. And hurting the moon hurts them. Not so much physically as hurts their energy slash power and hurts them emotionally. Artemis. According to those who work with her,

Artemis is especially affected. But the gods whose domain is the moon are mostly worried about their followers, as this affects their energy, too. Why does Apollo matter? In case you don't know, Artemis and Apollo are twins. Artemis is the goddess of the moon. Apollo is the god of the sun. As siblings, they are very intertwined. And as his sister has been hexed, he is ticked off.

Apollo will take action for his sister, even though she is entirely capable of taking action for herself. But Apollo? He's the god of health and medicine. They hexed his sister in the middle of an increasingly dangerous pandemic. What will happen to the hexers? If the gods are merciful, their hex will be sent back to them, and they will be hexed by the gods. Yeah, that's mercy. If there's no mercy, a curse, lifelong, at least probably on their bloodline.

I hope this helped explain. Let me know if you have questions. I'll answer to the best of my ability or direct you to resources that can answer better than I can. look, first of all, that was way longer than I thought it was going to be. Second. Super relevant. Why did they write it in the first place? No, it's super relevant.

So they said the moon was hexed. Here's what happened. On witch talk, which again, I read it seriously because this is very, this is illustrative of what we're talking about. Sure. Okay. You read it seriously, but also were like screaming. It was pretty funny. It made me laugh uproariously when I first read it.

Yeah. So all the way back, ancient times, witchcraft, blah, blah, blah, blah. Romancey, all this stuff, through line all the way to the present. What do you see? They're doing the same thing. So when we say witches are doing the same thing, we mean they even understand themselves to be doing the same thing. Oh, yeah. 100%. So witch talk is TikTok for witches where all these, you know, baby witches, these new witches, they're recruiting. It's a fast growing religion. They should only be doing potions. They should only be doing protective work. At the most. And learning. They should be sitting and learning from the adult witches or the grown witches or the, the hacks. The hacks. We call them hacks. Full flags. Yeah. Okay. So these baby witches all got together and they were like, we're going to flex.

We're going to hex the moon. Okay. And the whole thread, the whole point of the thread was, first of all, don't do that. It's dumb because the moon is going to hex you back. But second, you're making the brother of the moon goddess mad and he's the god of medicine. And it was in 2020. It was in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic. And so he was saying like, why would you hex the god of medicine right in the middle

of a pandemic? We need a call on Apollo's to help us. And now he's mad at us. And he's going to group all of the witches together because some baby witches were hex and his sister. Dude, and like, look what happened. And these people, by the way, this is not a joke. They're all serious.

I mean. And they should be because it's real. Yeah, I was going to say like... And the point is, to your point, they even understand this very ancient idea that is at least plausible that there are other powers that, God has appointed to rule in different places.

We know that's true from scriptures, but... I'm sorry, I'm stuck on just one thing. The corrupted version of that is what the witches are doing. Right. Okay. Yes. Again, they are recognizing something real. Yes. And that is that there is the interwoven tapestry of natural and supernatural everywhere you look.

And that doesn't stop when you suddenly leave the atmosphere. Right. But they're just twisting it. Here's the thing that I can't get past. Yeah. The reason that they hexed the moon. Just because? I think what it was is that they were baby witches

and they just got... And they were like, guys, guess what we can do? Here's what it's like, you're teaching your kids how to shoot. Give him a pellet gun, whatever. All right. Let's say you take him to the gun range, though, and all of a sudden, they look over and they see

like a bump stock AR-15. Yeah, okay. Okay, and what is an inexperienced young shooter going to do? He's just going to start shooting everything. Right. So these baby witches don't know what they're doing. So they're like, so they're starting hexing everything. I don't think you guys understand.

We could hex the moon. They all team up. Why don't we then? Let's do it. And to quote Jeff Goldblum, I would respond with, your scientists were so obsessed with whether or not they could do something. Yeah. It didn't stop to consider whether or not they should.

That's right. That's exactly right. And I mean, I couldn't have said it about myself. So it was a rebuke from a seasoned witch to say, baby witches stop hexing the moon during a pandemic. Look at what you're doing. Think about this. Think this through.

They're all. Know you're targeting and what is behind. They're all dumb, but not in the way you think. No. They're all like... No, that's the... That's the deception. Yeah.

Is it you think, oh, this is funny and cute and TikTok and all this stuff? And I'm like... People get into it and then they're like pretty soon they're commuting with ancient, undying, malevolent, the spiritual beings that hate them. Who have the fires of hell awaiting them at the end of all things. Yeah. Well, I think that's actually a better commentary on the moon than I probably could have given. It's also a real modern day example of witchcraft. I read that directly from Twitter.

So here's what I read that. would like to do now. Okay. So I want to try to pull together a few things. Okay. One, and it's things that we've already said, but I'll just recap before we get into this story. So one is Hecquette, that Egyptian goddess of sorcery, deeply connected to the moon. Yeah. And in fact, some think that they were just the same goddess with different names and different regions. Okay. And then you have Hekate, who's the Greek goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, also deeply connected to the moon, has the moon as part of her consort. And now we're moving a little a little bit further north, ladies and gentlemen.

And so I would like to begin our story of the goddess Hertha. Yeah, let's hear it. As Rome enjoyed its conquesting time at the height of its republic, long before Caesar crossed the Rubicon and claimed lordship over the world, the legions under the pro-consuls began pushing the boundaries of the city-state into the mysterious region of Gaul. Among the many shocking things they found there, not the least of them was their different religious sects.

These pagan rites and cults shocked the Romans who were themselves an unprecedented mixture of paganism and piety. It was not the different gods and liturgies that took the Romans back so much. It was the sheer, to them at least, indecency of the Gaulish gods and liturgies. For long, a particular cult had dwelt in the crags of southern Gaul that worshipped the familiar figure, the Queen of Heaven. It was a society whose religious leaders were exclusively women, but who were women of the most necromanic sort. Their pope, so to speak, who they claimed was the same woman the Egyptians called ISIS reincarnated over and over again for them, was a woman whose title there was Hertha, the chief priestess and the Gaulish virgin of the ancient Egyptian goddess. She was given the power akin to the Greek Pythias, like the one housed at the oracle at Delphine.

and could commune with the gods as if she was one of them. She, as an example for her subordinate priestesses, was a strict virgin, who was also, and this is very fascinating, promised to someday conceive a son, a savior, a king to rule the Gauls in their golden age. It was said that when Rome crossed the borders of mountain and river guarding the bleak land of the barbarians, they found the reigning heartha clothed in black raiment

with a white veil over her face. She wore a crown and bore a sickle emblazoned in her vestment. She bore a sandal on one foot and a Poulan-style pointed boot on the other to represent her innocence and gravity all at the same time. She was, in addition to heaven, the queen also of the druids. Again at the time of Rome's first forays in Tagal, the reigning hertha took upon herself the name Melusin. This Melusin, like all the other herthas before her,

was one of the fay, and though she often bore the form of an enshrower, esteemed and beautiful woman, it was said that her true form was that of a mermaid, or in the most severe of cases, that of a woman's torso with serpent legs. It is said that as this Melusin made formal connections among the Romans, a lord whose name was Lucinin took a great liking to her. To his joy, the feeling was mutual. Melison was willing to utterly break the weighty vow of her office for the sake of this man's love and companionship in life. However, due to her preter natural nature, she demanded that Lucanin not inquire too deeply into her role as Hertha or her sorcery.

And he consented to this at first. But as weeks wore on, Lucaninan's curiosity overtook him, and he sought to espy Melison when she was unaware to see the truth behind the captivating beauty. So it was that Lucan saw the Gaul's witch queen turned back to her serpent form, through a window on a dark night. He cried at the monstrous sight, and his presence was immediately known to Melison, who faded and fled and grew weary of the world. Yet legend says that she still returns from fairyland

to yield a lamentation at the grave of anyone from Melisans' lineage who dies. But as Rome continued in her exploits, growing from Republic to Empire under Augustus, she also quickly spread into the farther reaches of the world. For Romans, upon reaching the top of Gaul, saw the faint outline of other lands across what was apparently a small channel in a broader ocean. Thus began Rome's travels and subjugation of the great island of Britannia and Glicanus,

and surprises of all surprises, they found that much the same religion as the old Gauls and their witch queen had also been there, and it appeared for just as long. In fact, the Gaulish and druidic influence would remain far longer in resilient Britannia. It was said among King Arthur Pendragon's Court that the wizard Merlin was the preternatural offspring of some unknown peasant woman and a demonic incubus of the night. This union, though granting Merlin his immense power and knowledge of deep lore, apparently did not push him down the road to hell despite his demonic father's intention. Instead, a strange saint of the earliest times after Rome's flight from Britannia named Blaze, blessed the young Merlin and saved him from his

fate of Antichrist. So Merlin maintained his powers of influence over the world in her events, but turned them to more virtuous purposes. The exploits of Merlin are many and contested. Indeed, the man's own existence, which is based off of a Welsh wild man named Merden, is hotly debated still today. But if the old accounts which arise

long after Merlin's time are to be believed, he had a hand in a great deal and may even still be alive today. Merlin made claims to have seen the construction of Stonehenge itself as he gazed on times past with his mind's eye. He said in an effort to help King Arthur's

father, Uther Pendragon, build a great monument, that brute force would be of no help to gain stones similar to the prehistoric stonehenge. Instead, magic would be required to carry the stones over the vast distances and plant them next to the elder megalith on Salisbury Plain. Merlin said that the magic was one of great and mysterious sound, which he could play and use against nature should the king desire. However, it seemed this claimed power was frightening to the king, who bid Merlin not to undertake a task that was only fit for the gods. As Merlin grew old, he became infatuated with the Faye, who was preternatural like him,

but who was bound as a water spirit to the high lake of Lynn Ogwin in Snowdonia of Wales. She was Vivian, the lady of the lake. In his desire to impress the ghastly maiden, Merlin showed her keen attention and constantly implored her for her hand in marriage. But each time the lady refused. One day, though, Vivian sent for the wizard in great urgency, and Merlin, predictably, returned her urgency with that of his own, wondering what his love could want from him.

But upon reaching the lake, the lady showed interest only in talking with the magi and learning of his craft. Merlin was pleased at his chance to impress Vivian, and so undertook to show her his greatest creation. He walked her to a cave, delved into the side of a great cliff near to the lake. Inside of the cave was a stone table, perfectly flat and square and heavier than all others, for it had been carved out of the cave itself. Merlin told Vivian that it would someday be his and her own tomb, and that it was protected by a charm which ensured that,

when said, the sepulchre would never open. Thus, they would be able to rest together until the end of days. At this, mischief grew in Vivian's heart. She feigned disbelief and told Merlin to go, show her how he might fit upon the stone table. Once done, she spoke the charm he had just relayed to her and laughed as the stone door shut upon the wizard hero forever. None. Not even he could ever open it again. It is said today that if one is wandering alone by the tomb of Merlin, they will know they're there by the faint moans of sorrow they hear faintly,

as if they are escaping from the hills themselves. Thus the legend of the druid in Gaulish Hertha's influence was well acquainted with the greatest legends of England. Merlin is real. Historical. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Look.

I know. Coral Castle. We're going to drop a... Coral Castle. A little teaser here. Coral Castle. Go ahead. No, look up.

Coral Castle. Look it up. Because it's crazy. But also, maybe just wait for the Hanna Cosmos episode on... Don't look it up. Coral Castle. Don't spoil it. Don't spoil it.

Why would you even think about doing that? Ben, every time I say the word that they would look up, bleep it out in the sound design. That's a lot of work. That's so much... That's actually not a lot of work. There's like two to three minutes tops. Listen to me though. Okay.

Teaser. Okay. Ape teaser, if you will. The problem is we are slated to do an episode in season three on megaliths and how they were built. And beat that out what you just said. In the ancient world. Yeah. And it is really difficult.

But we haven't solved it. I've done some rudimentary. Some cursory research. And it's like, okay, what is this? rabbit hole. Dude, it's so much math that I haven't done in a really long time.

And I'm having a hard time like working through it, chugging through it. You know what I mean? Anyway. So hopefully that happens. Man up. Hey, listen to me.

I'm not going to take orders from a man who is dressed like he owns a pup putt golf course. Dude, you take that back right now. I have the dopest like seersucker white linen blazer. If you're on the YouTube,

you can see it. and the guys are so jealous of it that they act like they think it's funny. I said that so that I would have an excuse to say, No, King, you look handsome today. Thanks, bro. You look so good. Thanks, my guy.

To all of the four to one star reviews saying stop calling each other handsome, the answer is no. The answer is absolutely not. The answer is... I once again won't apologize for being friends with someone. No. Look, there's not that much to say

in response to what we just read, especially with the Hertha and the Gaulish people that we haven't already said. But I did think the Merlin story was really fascinating. Because really the only thing that it shows is that the mythic history of Britain by the English people is also one that's laced with magic. Yeah.

And so, like, point being, no one is immune to this. And the weird thing is that Merlin was sort of like a hero, a good guy. He was supposed to be the Antichrist, but then was saved. by what, are you about to say some stuff? Do you see the deeper moral point of the story? Yes, of course, I do.

And I would like for you to share it with all of the listeners. The deeper moral point of the story. Don't give your strength to women. Well, that's true. Is that you should beware the wielding of this power. What does he end up entombed by? His own magic. And it takes CS Lewis to bring him out.

Your own magic. That's true. And that is strength. It takes the NIC. but ultimately they're trying, but then, you know. Yeah, but ultimately, like, ultimately, it was C.S. Louis. But the point actually is that he's entombed by his own magic, so beware.

Like, you can try to wield this for good, but beware. It will be able to be able to be. Specifically by, and not only entombed by his own magic, but his own magic used for the selfish means of trying to impress a fairy, yeah, Lady of the Lake. Look, don't try to get with a Fay Lady. I'm telling you guys, Lady of the Lakes, they're tricky. You don't want any spiritual entity that comes to you and is like, look, I'm a beautiful woman.

First of all, probably snakey in her true form. That's right. Lamya. Anyone? Lamy. Stricks. Secondly. Lilith.

Lilith. All of them. The Green, the Lady of the Green Colonel. Melison? It's all the same. Messilin? It's all the same. So don't.

Messilin. Yeah. Magic isn't good. Don't seek it. Don't do magic. Don't do magic. Hey, look, main takeaway of the show, don't do magic. Hope you guys enjoyed that story.

Yeah, that legitimately is. Yeah, that's the point. And also, so there's one kind of category that I thought would be interesting to close with. And it's necromancy in its purest form, which is bringing people back from the dead. But also this kind of like idea of smaller charms, love potions, love magic, trying to trick someone into falling in love with you. And how that also is not an innocent thing. And so we're going to close the episode by two stories. It's a hagiographic story of St. Cyprian and St. Justina.

And no, it's not that Cyprian. It's a different Cyprian. And then we're going to close with the story of Phelanum in Macates, which is, I believe, how you pronounce the name. Love it. So I'm going to start with Cyprian and Justina. Among the popular stories of dramatic conversions of the ancient people, the story of St. Cyprian and St. Justina stands out as one of the greatest there is.

During the reign of Decius in the year 250, Cyprian, a sorcerer of Antioch, practiced his dark magic. He transformed himself and other creatures into other things, controlled the winds of the air, made thunder and rain from calm days, and cursed fields and people alike with blight or plague. He had studied the charms of Chaldea while studying in Egypt. He had been commissioned by the priests of Apollo in Greece, and he had lived a life sustained by only eating acorns from an oak tree after the setting of the sun each day.

He was a true disciple of darkness and hated all goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. He loved himself, and he failed even to do that very well. While at large in Antioch, Cyprian led many pupils astray to his arts. He killed many enemies of people. people he had never met before with magic from a distance or poisons up close. He even attended demonic assemblies where he sacrificed young men and women upon altars to the prince of demons. And yet, though the young wretch did not know it, it would soon be God's good pleasure to save even him from the tortures of hell. And that salvation occurred in the following manner.

At that time, there lived a woman in Antioch named Justina. She was a woman most beautiful, chaste, and devout to Christianity. Though she came from pagan parents, she herself presented the truth of Christ's gospel to them, and in time they both confessed Christ as Lord and received baptism from the church. In fact, the local clergy were so impressed by the faith and quick maturity of Justina's father that he eventually became a presbyter in Antioch. The fruitfulness born in the family was wonderful, and Justina, continuing in her chastity, eventually swore an oath of virginity before God,

an oath she intended by all means to always keep. Again, at this same time, a young man named Aglaeus also lived in Antioch. He was an opulent man and a son of rich parents. He lived in utter luxury and carelessness, always getting what he wanted. He was prideful, though charming, and his exploits with the women of the town were well-known to all. It came to pass that one day, Aglias caught sight of Justina from afar, and captivated by her beauty, pursued her with evil intentions in his heart. He studied the habits and paths of the maiden and would take every opportunity to praise her beauty for all to hear, including herself.

But Justina, for her part, paid no mind to the suitor. This lack of response from his target, though, inflamed the lust of Aglias all the more, and after she denied her hand in marriage to his face one day, he began to plot how he might instead defile her. He waited in the dark enclave of a path he knew she would take and sprang his attack on her when she passed. He began dragging her back to his home violently, but Justina spat on him and beat his face and let out screams which echoed through the city. The people came quickly to rescue the girl and shame Aglias, who did go away humiliated and scorned. He found the home of the sorcerer Cyprian and asked for his aid in winning the heart of Justina. Cyprian obliged and called to his presence a host of lustful demons capable of filling the most pious of hearts with impurity and darkness.

In the midst of their counsel, they spoke much of their past successes in dragging the saints to hell. This comforted Cyprian, and so he enlisted their help and instructed Aglias to do exactly as all of them said to. But the sorcerer, the suitor, and the forces of evil had underestimated the power of the spirit which raised Christ from the dead and the heart of the girl. Three times the demons sought to corrupt her, and three times she resisted and they fled. Finally, the devil himself intervened, and Cyprian gave Aglias the form of a bird. He instructed the youth to fly, carried by demons through the air, into Justina's open window, whereupon he would take on his human form once more and find himself in the maiden's own room. But as Aglias and the demon approached Justina's room, she happened to look out and see them.

But at the mere gaze of Justina, the demon fled and the false form of Aglias fell away. And so he fell from the sky and grasped on to the edge of a roof. The young man would have fallen and been dashed to pieces had not the prayers of Justina for his preservation prevailed. After this, Cyprian repented of all of his shameful deeds, overwhelmed at the complete impotence of the devil against the power of Christ.

He burned his books and begged for baptism. He and Justina became fast friends after it all, and they remained leading saints of Antioch for the remainder of their days. Some tangentially similar events took place in the city of Trollis in Asia Minor in the midmost of Emperor Hadrian's reign of Rome over 100 years before Decius. Christianity was still in such infancy as to fear complete annihilation at any moment. And indeed, depending on where a Christian lived during Hadrian's reign, it was some of the worst days in church history in terms of lives lost in martyrdom.

But it was also one of the worst times for the widespread practice of demonic and utterly black magic. For Christ's victory was won, and the demons were being put to flight everywhere. Thus, those who grabbed hold of the evil crafts sought for all new ways to increase their power and position in the spiritual world, but their position was perilous,

and the warring armies of light and darkness were quick to betray their true power at any moment. In this unseen but so often manifested turmoil, a well-documented case presents itself in the reports of Hadrian's governors who received and verified, the contents of a letter from a freedman of Shalus named Flegon. The events Flegon recorded and proceeded thus.

A young noble woman, originally from Corinth and named Philineum, fell into desperate love with a poor young man named Makatis. Makatis, a tavern keeper, was slow to act upon his passion for the woman, partly due to his chaste nature, having too much respect for her situation. But through chance meetings between them, the mutual captivation by the one, towards and for the other was clear enough for both. The two began openly speaking of their love

and desire for marriage to one another. Eventually, and it didn't take very long at all, Felenium's parents, Demoscrates, in Cherito, discovered their daughter's misplaced attention and forbade her from ever speaking to the peasant tavernkeeper ever again. Driven to even greater heights of love by this difficulty, Felenium escaped her estate in the night

and took refuge in Mochate's own home, beginning a contraband affair that would last for a full story. six months. Only at the end of those six months, the girl's parents discovered her whereabouts and the baseness of their daughter's actions, and so took her to be rehabilitated back in Corinth. But Phelenium was not able to subdue her love and descended into a deadly melancholy. She did not eat or drink, nor did she sleep. Her skin grew pale and her figure too thin until she finally died from grief. Her parents, deeply troubled by the perceived hand they had played

in the death of their entire world, purchased an exquisite tomb for her, and laid her therein in the richest garments of the day. Yet, in all of this, shame at how the events transpired drove the parents to secrecy. There were no other mourners at Felonyum's funeral. Indeed, Mochetees was utterly unaware that his lost love was dead and lost him forever. Eventually, word spread of the girl's death in place of burial.

Mockaties went to the tomb in the evening to avert any gossiping eyes to pay his respects to his lady Philinium. But as he was leaving the place, just as the moon began to paint the world of dark, dark and translucent pale blue. Mockatis heard a sound like a great stone being moved. He whirled around and beheld his love, still pale and cold and painted with a face of sorrow and apathy,

walking slowly out of her tomb with a lamp to light her way. Mockaties ran to Phelinium and embraced her in the night. As a touch of her lover, Felenium seemed to return to her full vitality. The two passed the night together in warm embrace as Mokatis asked her all manner of questions about how she could possibly be back. These questions, it is said, were mostly evaded by the woman.

And in the morning, before daybreak and before Mochate's had begun to stir, Pheleneum rose and vanished. On the following night, Felinium's old governess, who had dearly loved the child and regretted her untimely end, wandered near to the dwelling of Mochite's, unable to sleep, and driven by some kind of instinct. In this state, which was in the very middle of the night, the governess saw a faint light within the home of Mochite's, and driven by curiosity and not known.

knowing what she was doing, went up to the door and peered inside. Whereupon she saw the ghastly and pale form of felonium come into Makati's room and join the man once more. The old woman could hardly contain her shock and horror at what she had witnessed, but somehow managed to silently escape the grounds and go to inform her mistress of what had transpired. The two women then retired back to Makati's home and spied once more through the cracked door. Just then, a moonbeam lit the chamber through the window and in the cold light, Cherito, Phileaniam's mother saw the burial garments of her daughter lying on a bench beside the bed, a bed which clearly housed two forms rather than just one.

The women, driven to rage at the twisted evil that was clearly occurring, informed Demoscrates of everything. The trio then marched to Makate's home the next day and confronted him with their knowledge of the truth. The young man, though frightened, did not deny it and even produced articles of their daughter's clothing to prove that he was not engaged in anything sinister, at least not to his knowledge. To further bolster his claim of innocence, he invited them to hide in his chambers that night to witness the coming of their daughter's true form for themselves. They consented to this, and thus began their weight.

Thus, soon after Phileaniam's arrival, Mocchus cried out with the signal, and the parents rushed in with torches. The young woman, taken by death, in such an untimely way, rose from the bed with an agonized expression, formed upon a still pale and emaciated face and proclaimed, Oh, my father and my mother, why have you been jealous of my happiness

and why have you pursued me even beyond the grave? My love had compelled the infernal gods. The power of death was suspended. Three days only and I should have been restored to life. But your cruel curiosity makes void the miracle of nature. You are killing me a second time. Upon speaking these words, Pheleneum fell back, a dead weight onto her bed.

Her body wasted away and an odor filled the home quickly. After moments, nothing remains. remained but the sparse parts of a girl who had been dead already five days. And so, Felonyum's attempt at necromancy for herself, a process which had begun in Corinth weeks before her death, had failed. Want more haunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content,

as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.