Stuff You Should Know - How Witchcraft Works

Episode Date: February 10, 2010

Witches are perhaps one of the most reviled and misunderstood groups in history -- but why? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down the Stuff You Should Know about witchcraft in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey Chuck. Joshers. You were about to be in Guatemala, buddy. Correction, dude, we are in Guatemala as this is playing. Wow. That's pretty cool, huh? Yeah, it's the magic of technology. So tell them what we're plugging here.

Well, we're gonna be down in Guatemala finding out whether education can actually alleviate poverty or not, right? Yep. And while we're down there, we're going to be blogging the whole time. Hopefully, as we speak, there will be blog posts and if we don't have internet access,

it'll be up next week. Yeah, the internet in Guatemala may or may not be spotty. We haven't figured it out yet, but if not, they'll be up the following week, right? Indeed. Okay, well you can check those out at the blogs at HowStuffWorks.com. Chuck and I share a blog called

Stuff You Should Know Appropriately Enough, right? Yes. That's that, right? On with the show. On with the podcast. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Chuck.

Yes, Josh. I'm gonna paint a scene for you. Literally, that might take a while. No, with my words. What's that canvas and easel doing in here then? This is just to help me think. Okay, gotcha. Okay.

What's here? I'm just gonna draw stick figures right here, so don't expect too much. Gotcha. Imagine, right, that you are tied to a pole. Okay, you're far so good. You're bound with your hands behind your back. Less good.

And your ankles are also bound to said pole. Yeah, which is looking around. It's upright, it's erect. Sure. And you notice that there are, there's an awful lot of really dry firewood scattered around you around this pole. That's not good.

It's really not good. Even less good is you figuring out that there's some guy, probably some sort of priest or official, maybe an executioner coming towards you with a torch. Are there people there? There are tons of people, all of your neighbors, people in your very small community who you've known your whole life.

Oh, my neighbors would be saying, who's that guy? Well, this is in a different time. Okay. Okay, so let's say that you know all of your neighbors and work with them and trade with them and maybe it helped raise their children. Wow. Right?

Healed them when they were sick using herbs and maybe incantations. There were better times in the past, right? Now, everyone in your town is pointing at you and laughing at you and yelling and calling you horrible names and accusing you of doing horrible things like stealing babies and sucking their blood.

Wow. Yeah, just doing all sorts of terrible stuff, right? Sure. And in front of you are your daughters. You have a couple of daughters. Okay. And they're being forced to watch this man who's approaching you with the torch.

But not only that, they're being whipped in front of you. Wow. So you're about to die in one of the most horrible ways a human being can die, right? While you're watching your daughters being whipped and the entire town pointing at you, calling you horrible names

and just basically lacking any level of humanity whatsoever. Wow. That's pretty rosy. Oh, I'm not done yet. Really? The guy finally makes it over. He took his sweet ass time, didn't he? Sure.

He finally makes it over with the torch and lights the kindling and all of a sudden, you got the hot foot, right? The flames start to climb and climb. You're having trouble breathing. You're extremely hot. Your clothes are catching on fire. Yeah, sure.

Your skin is blistering. The pain is about as intense as it can possibly be. Of course. From what I understand, burning to death in this manner can take a matter of hours. Wow. Yeah. Until I die.

Yes. Or until, I guess, you're completely burned up. Josh, that's awful. It is pretty awful. I can't imagine a worse way to die. No, I can't either, Chuck. But do you want to know something? What's that?

What actually happened to hundreds of thousands of people during the Middle Ages in Europe and later on in the United States? We are talking about witches. We are talking about witches. Perhaps the witchcraft. One of the most misunderstood or reviled groups of all time in history.

Yeah. Never think about that. No. You probably would have said gypsies. Yeah, but no. Witches? Yeah. That's my two cents.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Especially after reading this article. Yeah. And hearing that story. Which has got the bad end of the stick. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. So where do we go from here, Josh?

To the beginning? Sure. We don't actually know the very beginning, right? Because witchcraft has been around since, like there were prehumans, right? Sure. Yeah, I mean, you can make the case that all pre-Christian religions

with the exception of Judaism were witchcraft, basically. Yeah, because the article pointed out here that witchcraft, like when times were rosy, everything was great. But then when plague hit and famine and disease, then that's when people said, oh, you know, maybe we should get this shaman to cook up a little potion or say a spell to the gods

and maybe things will turn in our favor. And if they didn't turn in their favor, then the shaman or the witch or the folk healer, whatever, usually found the entire town against him or her, right? And perhaps even burned at the stake. But this was before a certain period, witchcraft was basically just like whatever. It was normal, commonplace, everyday stuff.

Yeah. And there wasn't necessarily anything like evil associated with it like we do today. It was magic. Right, with a K, explain. Yes, M-A-G-I-C-K is to differentiate. That is a common accepted spelling by modern witches to differentiate between like, let's say.

Real witchcraft. David Copperfield. Right. That kind of magic. An illusion. An illusionist. Yes. Or John C. Riley as the illusionist

at the end of Boogie Nights. Remember he became a magician at the end? No, I totally forgot that. Yeah, yeah, that's what he became after his porn career. I forgot about that. Anyway, that kind of magician or the other kind of magic which is there's both black and white magic and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive

as to good and evil. Right. As we learned. No, at some point though, the tide very much turned. And there's actually a, there's some, I should say it turned at one point, but there were several things that led up to the turning of the tide against witches, right?

Did he say Augustine had something to do with this? Well, actually, is it Augustine? Yeah. Okay. I know we always say Augustine and you doubt his existence at times. We've gotten some email on that. Yeah.

Round about AD 420, Augustine argued that only God could suspend the normal laws of the universe. Therefore, there couldn't possibly be any such thing as what witches claim to be able to do, right? So basically they may as well have just been engaged in tooth fairy studies or something like that. They were totally harmless, possibly wacko, but to the Christian church,

they had nothing to do with anything. Sure. Right? Okay. And that view was held for a good 800 years. So it was popular. Yeah. So witches were, they went along their merry way,

did their own thing, Christianity went along, it's merry way, did its own thing, and no real problems, right? Right. Until AD 1208 and a pope named Innocent III went to war with the Cathars. You heard of these guys? No, but I've heard of the Innocents.

Have you? Yeah, and the third had nothing on Junior. Just let me say that. Who, the second? Yeah, yeah. What were you telling me? Innocent II, no, no, no, we don't need to get into that. Okay, go ahead though.

Anyway, Innocent III, not Junior. Right. Innocent III, did they use Junior to denote popes? No, no. Okay, Innocent III declared war on the Cathars. The Cathars were this kind of Christian sect who lived in France, I think Northern France, in Long Dock. Okay.

Okay. And they were very much convinced that on earth and throughout the universe, there was a very real war going on between God and the devil. Sure. And evil, right? Light and dark night and day, right? And there was very clear division

and there was a power struggle going on. Okay. The Cathars also clearly believed that the Roman church, the Roman Catholic church, was actually the church of Satan. Okay. They really believed that, huh? Yeah.

Oh, wow. Yeah, and they were very much opposed to the Roman church. Okay. The Roman church had more power led by Innocent III, said, you know what, Cathars? We decided that you guys worship the devil and not only that, we're gonna create propaganda that shows that our wood carvings showing your people

kissing the anus of the devil in person because you guys are devil worshipers. Take that. Wow. That was not a good day. The Cathars were persecuted. They really did that? Yeah, yeah.

And to this day, they're called the Cathar heretics. I'm sure they could have gotten by with like kissing the hand of the devil or something. I saw a wood carving. It's a little overboard. It's like the devil with the Clovenhust and he's bent over like, kiss my ass. Kiss my devil butt.

Exactly. Can I go on? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Does it get better? It does. Well, it doesn't get better for witches. Okay.

So now we have people who oppose the church. Yes. Worship Satan. Yes. That division has just been created. Gotcha. Okay. And the whole reason the Pope went after the Cathars,

the idea that there was a war between good and evil going on, was actually like 80 years later adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas. Okay. For him. And he's like, okay, there is such a thing as demons and they're here on earth

and not only are they involved in pleasuring themselves, they really, really like to lead human beings astray from God. So this is going on. There is real evil. It's really tangible and it's all around us all the time. We have to protect ourselves as Christians. We have to be suspicious of other people

who aren't Christians because they're probably being led astray by these demons. Okay. Now we start to have everyday people who can possibly be in league with the devil because it's all around us, right? All right. And this is when this was first taking root, right?

This is the real start of it. But everything's been leading up to this point, right? Okay. And then finally, Chuck, in 1484, we have the real seed of how we view witches and the witch scare, which led to the witch executions and persecution. Sure.

But in 1484, a pair of German friars took two years to write the Malleus Maleficarum. Okay. All right? It's basically a witch finding handbook. This is where we get- How to seek them out? How to seek them out, how to try them,

how to execute them. Gotcha. Basically these two German friars, remember the vow of abstinence, were not very happy with women and they basically made all this stuff up. Most witches were women to tell a witch, anyone who's suspected of it, any woman who's suspected of it,

should be stripped down and searched for moles. Right. And then also witches like to steal penises from men, collect them, keep them in a box where they would move by themselves and eat oats and corn. Pretty awful idea, right? And also witches, when you're trying a witch, you have to lead her in backwards

so she doesn't have a chance to cast spells on everybody when she's coming in the room. Makes sense. Stupid, stupid, like that, right? That's probably gonna get bleeped out, huh? I think so. Okay, and that led to the witch scare, the witch persecution and the witch executions

that we know and love today. Hundreds of thousands of people, Chuck. Wow. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed because these two German friars wrote this book and just made it up. I feel like we could stop there. I have more, I'll try to interject it later.

So Josh. Yes. Should we talk about one of the most famous of those persecutions? Yes. Not single persecution, a set of persecutions in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, of course. If you've read the Crucible,

we're talking about Salem witch trials. Yeah. Yeah, should we go over that real quick? I think we should. This all started because a couple of precocious teenage girls may or may not have had clinical hysteria. Or been bored.

Or been bored, maybe epilepsy, you never know. Point is they were having convulsions and screaming, like as if they were possessing, they were being pinched and poked, is that what it was? Yeah, by an unseen force. Bitten and pinched, not poked, by an unseen force. They were poked by the witch examiners, I'm sure. Oh, okay.

And the doctor, actually, the witch examiners said, you know, they are clearly bewitched. Right, and how? Because that stupid book, probably. The stupid book. Yes, he probably had that. In his little doctor's office. A physician, he wasn't even a witch examiner.

The guy was the village physician. Yeah, he was a doctor. And he was like, I can't come up with any explanations, so they're clearly bewitched. Right, and so this led to the one by one, these ladies in Salem, Massachusetts, and this was clearly before their big liberal influx of liberals in Massachusetts.

Those days are over. Well, yeah, true. Recently. And these women became persecuted and accused of being witches. And a couple of men too, but yeah, mostly women. Yeah. Women who lived on their own.

Of course. Which was a crime, supposedly, in Salem. You know who didn't help? The servant. That's your book. Was that her name? Yeah. Yeah, this was a West Indian servant of one of the girls,

and she really cemented the whole deal when she said that she admitted in court to dealing with the devil and flying on sticks and said, quote unquote, they made her hurt those girls. Yeah, she didn't help things. Yeah, so that really sent it into high gear. Yeah. And what, like 20 people were killed, right?

Mm-hmm. Put to death. Yeah, one guy, Giles, I can't remember his last name, he was pressed to death with a heavy stone. He was like an old man, an elderly man, and they laid him on a big stone and put an even bigger stone on top of his chest, and the life was pressed out of him.

Wow. Yeah. I've never heard of that. I believe he was tortured to death like that because he would not confess to being a witch. I wonder what they called that. What was that called, pressing or something, it was? Yeah.

Goodness me, that's creative. And that went on for a little while under the rule of the general court, but then that court was usurped by the court of the judicature. Nice. And they basically reversed stance and not very many witches

after that took place were persecuted. Right, they basically said, okay, the witch one is over. It's crazy. Let's all just pretend this never happened. Yeah. It's literally what happened. And that was it. No more witchery.

Yeah, I said only three more people after that were found guilty of witchcraft, and they were even pardoned. Yeah. Later on, and they still don't know what was up with these two girls. Like we said, they could have been, you know, precocious little girls looking for attention,

or they could have, you know, had some mass, or not mass hysteria, but clinical hysteria. I wrote an article for the site about this study this woman conducted, I think in the 70s, and she proposed that they were actually all poisoned by ergot. Oh, really? This is a hallucinogen to humans,

and that everybody got it from eating rotten grain, and was basically tripping. Well, that was one of the theories of the Enlightenment at one point. It's a bad trip. It was a lot of the Enlightenment was because of bad bread. Yeah. Basically people were hallucinating

and coming up with all these amazing inventions. That's awesome. Yeah, I don't know if that's true, though. Yeah. So where are we, Josh? Well, we could start to talk about the modern era. Okay. Well, pagan religion?

Well, do you want to talk about the different kinds of witchery around the world? Yeah, I've got a couple I'd like to highlight. I want to hear it, Chuck. Okay. Josh, you know I was going to pick this one. Appalachian folk magic. So cool.

Can't you see Nell? They typo Nell. Putting like a hex on somebody. That was the worst movie ever. Appalachian folk magic, Josh, is clearly around this area of the Southeast, and they have a very much Christian-based idea of it, of a Christian god and a devil as the good and evil like you were talking about.

And they are, can use their magic with a K for good or evil, and they look to nature for omens, and like to portent the future. Yeah. And they're local men. Yeah, I know. We could probably go up in North Georgia and round up a couple of these.

That would be pretty boss, actually. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to go do that. What's yours? Give me something. One of my favorites is, this is the coolest name, Pennsylvania Dutch hexcraft, aka Pow Wow. Yeah, and it is from the, well,

Pennsylvania Dutch area of Pennsylvania, German and Dutch settlers, including the Amish, but also including people who are reformist, like Lutherans, right, Protestants, believe in this stuff where you can create good will, blessings, things like that. Usually for the home, by creating symbols, hexes, which apparently when they first arrived

and they were talking to the English, they were saying, sexes, six. But the English heard hex, and that's why it's called hexcraft. It's not the least bit dark. Yeah, you think of a hex is a bad thing. Right, you know that pineapple welcome flag that people like hang outside of their house sometimes?

Sure. Pennsylvania Dutch hex. Really? Yeah, bless this home. That's a Pennsylvania Dutch hex. The two partridges with a heart. Right. Pennsylvania Dutch hex.

What about the... Pretty nice stuff, you know, it's real pleasant witchcraft. What about, don't tread on me, the rattlesnake. It's a little different. That's not the same thing. No. Okay.

And of course, we gotta talk about Wicca. That's probably where we're gonna spend most of our time here, because Wicca is the most widely, even though it's the youngest, well, I don't know about youngest, but only what, like 60 years old? Yeah, about. But it's still probably the most widely accepted form

of modern witchcraft. Right, and it's a form of paganism, right? Let's talk about paganism. Okay. Because that gets a bad rap. It does. A pagan is also often interchangeably called a heathen. Yeah.

And basically it's a pagan can mean either like someone who doesn't subscribe to the big three, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Sure. Any other religion, including major established religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, that kind of thing. They're technically pagan. Or it can denote a religion that existed prior

to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, that kind of thing. Gotcha. And actually the other characteristic of it is that it's usually polytheistic. Right. More than one God. Exactly, that is the characteristic, right? Yeah.

It's sort of like the rectangle square thing. Huh? Well, if you have multiple deities, you're definitely pagan, but if not, does it mean you necessarily aren't a pagan? Does that make sense? I just blew your mind, didn't I? Yeah, you did. Wow.

So pagan actually means country person though, and Latin, that's sort of the easiest way to put it. Sort of like just a redneck. Kind of, you know? Home in hearth, I think, or hearth dweller is the Latin translation. Yeah, but they weren't city people and they were looked down upon,

but it wasn't, they weren't necessarily bad or anything. Right, they were just kind of, like you said, rednecks, bumpkins, Appalachian. And it was later on as when they became associated with Satan. Right, and we've seen why, or we've seen how, I'll get to why later on, because that'll blow your mind too, dude.

Okay. Okay, but yeah, right now, as far as we know, there's pretty much only one form of witchcraft practiced in the world, seriously practiced in the world. Yeah. And that is Wicca. Right.

And like you said, Chuck, it's only about 60 years old. And it was created by a guy named Gordon Gardner, right? Gerald Gardner. Gerald Gardner. His brother Gordon actually was working on a different religion and it didn't pan out. It didn't, it just kind of petered out. So Gordo fell by the wayside and Gerald took over.

Right. None of that is true, by the way. Because people are Wiccas who are gonna write in saying, I've never heard of Gordon. What was his religion? We should make up a pamphlet. And curse you! Actually, no, Chuck.

I know. I'm glad you did that though, because that's a great segue. There's some real misunderstandings of Wicca. Yeah, big time. And Wiccans. First and foremost is that they're devil worshipers. Not true.

No, it's not true. As a matter of fact, the Wicca don't even believe that there is a devil. They don't believe in the Christian concepts of the devil or hell. Yeah, exactly. So how could you worship the devil if you don't even believe in him?

Exactly, Josh. That's a big one right there. What's another misconception, Chuck? Well, Gardner actually founded it as a life-affirming religion that does include psychic abilities and magic. But the Wicca takes an oath, or is it a Wiccan, I guess?

Yeah. Takes an oath to not do harm. It's only for self-improvement. It's almost like, well, it's not like self-help, but it's only meant to be performed on yourself. Isn't that right? Yeah, and technically there is an implied understanding that you could harm other people with the power

that you come to harness through the Wiccan rituals. But like you said, they take an oath not to harm other people. And there's also a Wiccan belief that if you do harm other people, what is it, the rule of three? If you harm other people, another person, the damage you've inflicted will come back on you threefold. So there's kind of that prohibition.

Should we talk about, I think this is really cool, the life force cosmic energy bit. It is cool, and this is pretty much the crux of their whole thing. Yeah, the crux of the whole thing is that Wiccans believe, well, the scientific concept we all believe is that all matter vibrates with its own energy. Wiccans believe, you don't believe that?

I don't believe that. Wiccans believe that a witch's body has that same vibration, both physical and spiritual, rate of vibration. And during these rituals they perform, and they vibrate such that they can create a pathway for energy to flow through them and call on energy from the gods and deities. Right, rather than, I think all of us,

in their opinion, have a physical, molecular vibration and a spiritual, molecular vibration, but that they learn how to meld the two together and become suddenly exceedingly powerful. Yeah, and to channel it from more powerful beings in themselves. Right, and with the key. Right, yes, because you have to invoke a deity

to carry out one of their rituals. Do you wanna talk about the great rite, Chuck? That's the best one. I think so too, and there's a sentence in the description of the great rite that I just thought was so cute. Yes, Josh, the great rite is one of the main central ceremonies, and there's tons and tons of them.

They're all different, and there's all different kinds of ways that you can do them, but we're gonna go over just basically a generic great rite ceremony. Right. That's our disclaimer. And we should say that there are three levels to Wicca, and each level is learned in a year and a day.

Starts out as, I think, student, teacher, and high, no, student, practitioner, and teacher. Right. So you've got witch, priestess, and then high priestess, or priest. Yes, and once you've completed all those phases, Josh, you are official, and you have the power to perform these rituals.

So the great rite ritual is actually carried out by the coven, and we should also say Wicca can perform by themselves. They can do rituals on their own. Yeah, sure. But they also have covens, right? Coven, if you're a fan of American movie. Matt, our guest producer, clearly is, he's laughing.

Remember American movie? Did you see that documentary about, oh really? It's good. You should definitely see American movie. Okay. He makes a short film, this crazy filmmaker guy in Wisconsin, and he calls it coven, instead of coven. Okay.

But he thinks he's right, this is a funny thing. You're gonna see this thing. Oh, it's great. Okay. Shall I continue? Yes. Okay. So they can be in a coven, or they can be...

But let's say they're in a coven. A solitary, sure. Right. For our purposes, we're gonna describe a coven ritual. Coven ritual. Now you have me screwed up. Yeah, I like coven more. So you have the high priest and the high priestess

of the coven, right? Yes. And you have the, what the great right ritual is to signify the coming together of the high priest and the high priestess, the God and the goddess. And when you say come together, you mean sexually? Yes.

Now this can be done either symbolically. Sure. Using a FM. Yeah, sort of like a dull knife. Yeah, it's like a pretty wicked looking ceremonial knife. Yeah, yeah. Not used to cut things though. No.

And that represents the phallus. Sure. And the cauldron represents the womb. So the high priest might be like, oh, here comes the anthem. And then the high priestess is like, I got the cauldron right here. And then boop, you know.

And then that's the main part of the ritual, right? I got one word for that. Boring. Right. And so a coven may opt to actually have the high priest and the high priestess engage in the sexual act. Yes. To really, really just kind of get the ritual going.

Yeah. Now here's the really cute sentence that I thought came up in this article. Leanne Obringer, who wrote it, points out that often the high priest and the high priestess are married. Very cute. It is very cute. And they actually do not perform.

The whole coven has to agree to the literal interpretation where the sexual act is performed. Right. And they have to all be in agreement. And it does not actually take place, like Caligula style in front of everyone. No. They do do that in private.

That's another misconception is that they have orgies and things like that. They do have the sexual act once in a while, like say for the great right. But again, covens apparently from this article have come to learn that covens are fairly democratic. Sure. And everyone has to be in agreement

that they're either going to do it symbolically or they're going to do it literally. Same with Skyclad, right? Yeah, which I'd never heard of that. That means naked. Yeah. Neckad. Yeah, that's what Wiccan's called being naked.

Skyclad. Skyclad. I'm going to use that at home next time. Yeah, I'm just Skyclad, honey. Babe, I'm going Skyclad. But again, like you can perform a ritual Skyclad or you can do it clothed in robes. And again, that's up to the coven as a whole,

whether they do that. Chuck. Josh. What's the point of the great ritual? The great right ritual? Well, it can bring good harvest. That's one reason they'll do that. And to continue the circle of life

so that a new God can be born at Yule. And Yule, Y-U-L-E we found out, is the first day of the Wiccan year is a sabbat or holy day called Yule. Is that right? Yeah, and that sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it, the Yule log? It does, Chuck. It's funny that something from Christmas

would have to do with a pagan tradition. Interesting. Weird. So Yule is one of the, is it sabbat or sabbat? I'm going to say sabbat. I'm going to go with sabbat. And you say coven, I'll say coven, OK? That way we got our bases covered.

No one can write in, so we said it wrong. Right, exactly. We should do that for everything. I agree. So a sabbat is one of the holy days. And the Wiccans observe eight throughout the year. Like Chuck said, Yule is the celebration of the winter solstice.

And it's the time when the goddess gives birth to the new God. So the great rite hastens the Yule birth, right? Correct. After that you have imbulc, I-M-B-O-L-C, which is celebrated on February 2nd, right? Yeah. And that's when the spring crops are planted.

Yeah, like with most of these things that we've heard, they not even Wiccan, but their rites to the gods. Usually he has to do with harvest and growing things. And that's what most religious holidays that we still observe today, that's where they find their roots. It was all agrarian. That's what I was trying to say. You just said it a lot smarter than me, though.

And then there's Sawan, which had something to do with Halloween. What was the deal there? Actually, the Wicca believed that on this night, the gauze between life and death is virtually removed and the dead can communicate with the living. But here's what I find very cool. The dead's not like, go get me some cigarettes or anything like that.

It's a time of celebrating with your dead family members, having a feasting with them, basically just hanging out with the people in your life who died. That's nice. Isn't it? So much of this, you think it's some dark, satanic ritual. It has nothing to do with any of that. No, it doesn't.

Not to say I'm going to run out and become a Wiccan or anything. Back in high school, my friend Stevie Cohen and I started looking into it. Is that when the ninja thing didn't work out? Wait, this is after. I was like, wait, how many rocks do we have to paint different colors? And we have to arrange them in what?

Because it's really, really involved stuff. There's this article that Obringer wrote. It's pretty detailed. We've only kind of hit the surface of it. But there's even more detail to it than this, greatly. There's a lot. It's a really detailed religion. Yeah, and they have a book.

What's that called? The Book of Shadows? Yeah, which I got to say doesn't really help their case to people who don't understand what they do. Sure. They could call it the little Wiccan handbook, and it'd probably be like a sweeter name. The Book of Green Fairies, or the Book of Unicorns.

Why not? Well, the Book of Shadows is the witch's guidebook, and it is coven-specific. So your own coven would write the spells, and the hexes, and the rules, and the regulations, what you've got to wear, what time you've got to show up. Whether you're going to go skyclad. Whether you're going to go skyclad,

who has to bring the sticky buns and the coffee to the meetings, who has to clean the cauldron, that kind of thing. Nice. Cauldron is a real thing. We should talk about just a few of these implements, I guess, and whether or not they really use them, like the broom.

Yes. Do they fly around on it? No. Why not? Because witches can't fly. OK. They do use them to purify the circle where the rituals take place.

They cast a circle, and they have to purify the area first. They're using the broom to literally sweep out the energy in the area. They may also use sage, or if they want to go for the double whammy, they might use a broom that features sage woven into it. Right. And you just said casting a circle.

That's a big part of most Wiccan ceremonies, and they will cast a circle. It's very important at the beginning, with the north, south, east, western points. And at the end of every ceremony, they will close that circle kind of by reversing what they did when they opened it, or when they cast it. And the points represent the elements, earth, water, fire,

and air. Yes. Right? Yeah. Let's talk about the pentagram, because you probably think it's like the symbol of the devil, right? I don't. OK.

So Josh, let's talk about the pentagram. OK. Often seen on Satanic singer-band album covers. Sure. Judas Priest. Yeah, exactly, because they worship the devil, right? As far as the courts in the 80s were concerned, yeah. Right.

Turbo Lover clearly is a song about Satan. Dude, Judas Priest was bitchin'. Yeah, they were awesome. Still are. Sure. So the pentacle, Josh, is a five-pointed star enclosed within a circle. Right, and the five-pointed star is called the pentagram.

Right. But when you put the circle around it, that's the pentacle, right? Yes, OK. And so if it's upright, which is the one-point-up, two-points-down, it is a symbol of witchcraft and represents earth, fire, water, air, and spirit. And the circle represents the gods and goddesses

that allow the energy to be focused on the pentagram. Right, and the circle brings all these things together into a cohesive unit. Yeah, so that's like on the cover of Rush's 2112. 2112, upright. If you flip it upside down, that's when I think Satan comes into play, because it's like the goat's head or something.

Isn't that right? Yeah, but even that's just Christian propaganda. That's what I thought. From the, that used against the Knights Templar. Jeez. I know. So, you know, we've mentioned they use cauldrons, and they do have certain knives, but they're never used

to like bloodlet or anything like that. They use that one dull knife to like draw shapes in the sand and things like that, or to represent the phallus. Yes. Kink in the cauldron. They have wands, they use wands. Yeah, they do. The wand represents fire and the life force of the witch,

and it is a symbol of wisdom and healing. They can also use a staff usually about shoulder high. Yeah. I guess that's probably like the mega wand or something. Sure. You know? The eye wand. Sure.

So is that it? You got anything else? I do have something else. I was doing a little additional research, and I came across a book review of a book called Caliban and the Witch by author Sylvia Federici. Let's hear it. Basically, she chronicles what happened to witchcraft,

to witches, why hundreds of thousands of people were killed. And basically, she says that it was part of a larger grab for power of the ruling classes from, I believe, the 15th to the 18th or 17th century. OK, so it was rooted in money? Well, yeah, she makes the point that, or she believes that, first of all, women had much more power, even though it was still a patriarchy.

Yeah. Prior to this, women still had much more power socially. They were basically unionized. They did a lot of the work and without them, and their reproductive abilities. Sure. Things would get all screwed up. So basically, to show women who was who, the church and state,

which were virtually indistinguishable at the time, said, you know what, you're a witch, we're going to kill you. And they did it in that way that we described at the beginning with the whole town watching as much to punish the witch as to send a message to everybody else. Like, you don't go against the male patriarch. You don't go against the patriarchy, or else we will literally burn you to death at the stake.

And whip your daughter in front of you while this is going on. And they did it over and over again. And from this brutality, they basically were able to consolidate their power. They also simultaneously were exploring the world and subjugating other people. But at home, in the Middle Ages, no, medieval times, I'm sorry, surfs each had their own plot of land.

They could do whatever they wanted. Right. Even if they worked for somebody else, they still had a certain sense of a certain measure of self-sufficiency. Right. And this stuff was taken away, too. Wage labor was created.

And you have the roots of capitalism, and basically what Federici calls the house-wiving of women going on at the same time. So the division between men and women that we still have today and the roots of capitalism find their place back at this time in the Middle Ages, right? Yeah. And then one more thing, too.

What you got? I thought this was awesome. She compares the witch scare to the terrorism scare that we're under today. Really? Basically saying, like, people a lot of times think that the witch scare was just carried out by ignorant hicks.

Not true. It may have been carried out by ignorant hicks, but it was very much encouraged and supported by the ruling class, which was the church in the state. Right. Right? So there were witches everywhere, which kept people afraid and occupied.

And kept what you were able to keep them down through this. They were too busy chasing shadows and killing innocent people. Same things going on with terrorism. It's not a perfect analogy, because there really are terrorists in the world, but the amount that it's, the proportion that it's grown to is similar. Wow.

Good stuff. Thanks. And that's a new book, I guess. I think the review I read was from early November. I'll have to check that out. Anything else, John? That's it, man. Good stuff.

Thanks. Chuck? Josh. Like I said, we just kind of glanced the surface. There's so many more rituals and so many kinds of covens and witches and potions and hexes, and we'd spend hours talking about that. I think we have.

OK. You can type witchcraft in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com to get a lot more information on that. And now, I guess, then, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Ninja Teenagers. Hi, Chuck and Josh. Basically, let me set this up because it's kind of long. This kid grew up in Southern California, I'm sorry,

in the suburbs of California. And he and his in the 80s like we did, and he and his buddies were really into ninjas. So they decided to do what you did and train as a ninja. Nice. In the suburbs of whatever. I guess you were in Ohio at the time. And so they had a house next door that was just randomly

occupied like people would be there, and then they wouldn't be there. They never knew anything about it, but it was usually empty. So they decided to go into that backyard ninja style and creep around. So picture this, three preteen nerds, ninja walking, shuffling, and crawling silently along the neighbor side yard with homemade weapons in hand.

They made like nun chucks and stuff like that. And just as we passed the sliding glass door, the lights spring on, we were completely bathed in light, locked eyes with this nice Asian family standing there suitcases in hand, having just arrived from the airport. I swear no one moved for at least a five count. And we all just stood there surprised, and we were frozen in our perfect ninja poses.

Then we jumped up, ran off in a very non-assassin-like panic to our homes and our rooms waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. So it turns out they were an Asian family that spent most of their time in Asia. We'd just come back to the States for weeks at a time. And so they came up to the three ninja teens. He has no idea what this poor family must have thought,

still numb with jet lag, having just arrived in America, to flip on the light and be met with the sight of three diminutive ninja. And it still makes him laugh, and that is from Jeremy. Jeremy also tells Josh when he says recidivism is one bone head word, I get it. Nice. And Josh, while we're on ninjas,

I just wanted to bring up. During that episode, you said something that you called puta, puta, puta. Right, which in Japanese means very fluent. He got a lot of email that they had no idea what this meant, including this email from Jupe in Shanghai, Shanghai, China, that is. And Jupe was very enthused because he

works with a Japanese person. OK, so I was going to say, how does that qualify him? Yeah, he tries out these Japanese phrases he here, so he went up to her and said puta, puta, puta. No. And she followed that with impersonating a bird, including elbow movements, telling me she thought I was talking about shaky things.

So he wants to know what the heck, why did you embarrass him like that with puta, puta, puta? I feel like my work here is done. No, you have to explain. Actually, puta, puta, puta, as Jupe found out, does not exist. I made it up. The real word is para, para.

It's anamanopeia in Japanese for fluent, the way people talk very quickly when they're fluent in something, right, para, para? Gotcha. So I just started to call it puta, puta, puta. And as a result, we got a couple of self-created Japanese pronunciation guides from very concerned listeners who were worried like we were either having,

or I was having a stroke, or it was that off. Or maybe you were a witch. Maybe. So we have a phone number for a guy who works with the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco, anytime we need pronunciation. And my long-suffering half-okinawan girlfriend is always a good source of information,

although I like to learn it my own way. Of course. So para, para is puta, puta, puta. Puta, puta, up on your home, I'm sure. It doesn't mean anything. I like it. OK. Puta, puta, puta, up on all of your homes,

we just decided that that's our own little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch-Hexcraft, which means it's a good thing, right? If you have your own little version of Hexcraft, or a blessing for Chuck and I that we can share with other people, put it in an email and send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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