Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 355 - Witchcraft!

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Today we do a deep dive on the history of witchcraft. What is witchcraft? How does it differ from organized religion? Why did burning witches ever become a thing, and do witch hunts still occur in the modern world? Why do so many of us have such a strong and irrational fear of people we just don't understand? Going back to some of the earliest written words of Western Civilization, we learn today that a belief in magic and a fear of those who practice it in ways different than we do has fascinated and frightened humans since the very beginning of civilization.  Fear of "the other" led not only to a fear of "witchcraft," but to massive witch hunts, torture, and thousands of people being burned alive. What "others" do we witch hunt today? All of this and more on what immediately became one of my favorite episodes.  Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp tickets are ON SALE! BadMagicMerch.com Get tour tickets at dancummins.tv  Merch: https://www.badmagicmerch.com Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/Pv2A6MrsOBIDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :) For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits!  

Witchcraft. When we think of that word, I bet a lot of the same associations probably come to mind for most of us. Cauldrons bubbling, some woman chanting and throwing stuff in, I have noot, toa frog, in the hopes of conjuring some magical entity, or making some potion that will give its recipient magical powers or harm them. You might think of a being who somehow disgusting, withered almost rotten looking, corrupted a physical representation of evil. Or you might think of its mere image, a seductive figure who uses her magic to burrow herself, deep inside your psyche, charming you, scary you, tricking and arousing you in equal measure. If you're into fantasy series like Game of Thrones, these cultural images come with concrete physical representations, which is the remains day of our culture. And every way from the benign Halloween witches,

Sabrina, the teenage witch, charmed and more to the genuinely frightening, like the witch in Suspiria, Bathsheba, and the conjuring universe, horror remains day, the Blair witch project and more. But even though we know witches, it's likely that most of us don't actually believe in them. Yes, we're aware of or partaken spiritual practices that aren't in line with any established religion. Maybe you track your horoscope or use crystals and sage to protect yourself, but you probably don't believe in a genuine cabal of Satan worshipping women who commune at night and plot to destroy our communities and homes. At least I hope you don't. Some people certainly do, but not most of us.

And I certainly hope things stay that way. I hope you don't regress to what much of the world did believe, not all that long ago. For the majority of human history, most of humanity has certainly believed in and feared witches and witchcraft. Beginning in the earliest days of recorded human society, people lived in a world where magic, or at least the belief in magic, was as commonplace as anything else, where the supernatural world was in tune with this one, and manipulations of it could yield protection

or the opposite of protection. For most of human history, which is where to the world at large, very real, and the witchcraft, they practiced, was real, unquestionably real. And the witchcraft, they practiced, was real, unquestionably real. Today we're going to deep dive into that world, into our long history of magic, superstition, and the forces deep within ourselves that try and understand ourselves, our communities, and the random twists and turns of fate, and sometimes come up with stuff that's a wee bit less than rational to have it all make sense. At the same time, we'll also be talking about how practice is now labeled as witchcraft,

you know, were important traditions that bound communities together. How often time has these practices lived alongside and melded with established religion, and how authorities have tried time and time again to crush these practices, but magic not so easily crushed. The history of witchcraft right now on today's spooky is hell perhaps sexy is hell putting the magic in bad magic hail loose of fena edition of time suck this is Michael McDonald and you're listening to time suck What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man?

What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man?

What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? What's up, man? a succ master guy who thinks he'd be a great history teacher who would also for sure get fired within his first year of teaching.

Cecil Hotel graveyard shift supervisor, poor man's Ed Warren, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, Helos, Fina, praise the Bojangles and glory be to triple M who is touring with the Dubie Brothers right now! What a fool who believe. What a... Ringer away. What a fool who believe. Those lyrics, if you can understand any of the things I just said, they actually kind of fit today. A lot of witch hunt and fools believed whatever they wanted to believe.

Just one real announcement this week, your co-leader presents a design of epic proportions made of 1,020 percent in chill, alabia skin, 200 percent cotton, 350 percent sex. You can't pass it up head on over to the badmagicmerch.com store grab your new and fiery Coat leader tea tank wall art or ceremonial mug today. Scare your friends One more thing before we start have have a great fourth of July. Even if you don't live in the US, eat a fucking hot dog. Grill cheeseburger, watch some fireworks, wear a tank top.

Get hammered, do a little hootin' and hollering. Happy birthday, America. I've been working harder, I'm trying to remember holiday lately. Okay, I got this one. And now I wanna do a topic that is so large, it could take up a series of its own. In fact, multiple series.

For all of human history, different societies have had different conceptions of magic and witchcraft. What it is, how it gets used the right way, how it gets used the wrong way, and how to fight it. Magic is so highly culturally specific that we could deep dive into its varied incarnations for years and some half.

But because we're human beings operating the way human beings do with almost innumerable variations, there do tend to be some similarities, especially in geographical regions and regions that share a common culture or way of life. For today, we'll mostly just be focusing on Europe, from antiquity to the dawn of the 19th century, because it would be the slow build of Western civilization that would help to generate the image of the witch that we know today in the Western world. Cultures around the world from pre-colonized North and South America to the island cultures of the South Pacific to the Far East, the Indus Valley, Eastern Russia, Africa everywhere.

There have been people seen as some type of witch, the basic concept of a witch, not a Western-centric concept. But the West does have its own version of the witch, and witchcraft, and that's today's focus. And this archetype goes back to the dawn of Western civilization, beginning in Mesopotamian city states, developing through the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, and then getting a whole lot more moralistic

with the development of Christianity, we'll track how how at least in the West humans came to associate a belief in particular powers with particular kinds of people in their communities. First, we'll go over some basic definitions as well as taking a wider social odds. We'll end at witchcraft to look at it to understand what it means and how it tends to function in society. History lovers, I've seen some rumblings online about wanting more history-based sucks. Well, I hope this one. And the recent Crusades episode of Saciated, there we go, your historical appetite, you know, a bit for a while. They become some of my favorite episodes. I have loved learning

about topics that have influenced the West present culture that I live in so greatly. Let's get into it. culture that I live in so greatly. Let's get into it. For something that many of us probably feel we have an understanding of almost instinctively that we associate so many images and pieces of media with, which craft is actually very hard to define. Is which craft a practice? Is it a group of practices? Which ones? Do witches from different cultures mean or embody the same thing?

Or do they not? Is witchcraft always bad? Does it even exist? That's a lot of questions. We'll tackle the last one first. This episode will not primarily concern itself with the existence of witchcraft in a literal way.

You know, that is, are there actual fucking witches? Feels like a question more appropriate for scared of death. Have witches ever been scientifically proven in a literal way. You know, that is, are there actual fucking witches? Feels like a question more appropriate for scared of death. Have witches ever been scientifically proven to be real? No, absolutely not. If you could definitely have witch powers, I would probably not be a podcaster, right? I'd be a fucking warlock,

which is the term for a man who practices witchcraft, by the way, he'll come up throughout the episode. I'd be necrcin' left and right. If this shit was definitely real, raise it an army of the dead to recall kinds of havoc, sounds pretty cool. Witchcraft were real, I would have killed more people than any of the serial killers we've covered by far,

by now. Are you kidding me? I'd probably killed a person like, kind of an accident like the first one. Some dickhead back in high schools, junior high, some bully, you know, they really pissed me off. Maybe I cursed them at a moment of anger. Maybe I cursed them a bit too strongly.

Cursed them to death. Oh, whoops. And I feel kind of bad. But also kind of fucking great and powerful. Don't fuck with me, right? Do you understand what a powerful warlock I am? And then I make my peace with crossing that line. I rationalize, compartmentalize,

and I get to curse it and spell cast it and never mention the shit out of my enemies. And people who drive you slow, or look at me weird in the store, when I'm cranky, or bump into me at a concert and don't even acknowledge that. And people who don't wipe off all the little spittled, the white spittled that builds up in the corners of their mouths. We can see that, we can see that,

and we're worried it's gonna get on our faces, so I gotta fucking curse you to death. Anyway, that is not what we're focusing on today. Actual D&D type witchcraft power. For today, I will maintain that witchcraft is real in so far that humans conceived of it and then proceeded to use a belief in it to do a bunch of shit, both good and bad to each other,

to understand their place in the world. In other words, it's because it's only an idea that doesn't mean it's not real. In the words of a professor of history, the College of Charleston, W. Scott Poole, lots of books are out there about monsters. As metaphors for this or that social or psychological process, I do not think this approach works well when it comes to history. In American history, the monsters are real. The metaphors of the American experience are ideas hardwired to historical action rather

than interesting word pictures. I take my monsters seriously. Substitute monster for which? And American for Western. And you have this episode. You're real Lucifina. You might just be a concept, an amalgamation of my perception and understanding

of various historical feminine deities mixed up with my idealized, fantastical version of the female form with a lot of sexuality, but dammit, that doesn't mean you're not real. Hey, Luciferina, but seriously, I understand what Professor Poole is saying. Thousands of people have died over being labeled witches. In certain parts of the world, people are still being executed in 2023 for practicing witchcraft.

So in the sense of actions being taken, witchcraft is very real. Now let's begin with some basic definitions, starting on the ground floor with all this. According to anthropologists, Pamela Moro, witchcraft sorcery and magic relate to encounters with and attempts to control the supernatural. These attempts to control the supernatural almost always arise when humans are concerned with misfortune and harm, accusation and blame, risk and responsibility. In other words, the very ways the society negotiates with itself, making witchcraft sorcery and magic a form of social control.

And social control is not always negative. For example, in ancient Rome, citizens would enact what we might call magical rituals for Rome's destiny, giving citizens the assurance of Rome's place and human history and bolstering civic responsibility. And these rituals did connect citizens more strongly to a cohesive concept of Roman destiny, which certainly did help Rome gain and maintain more power than otherwise would have. Those citizens were not just fighting for themselves, they were fighting for magical gods. Now let's dive a little deeper in our definition. The foundational concept is magic, which encompasses beliefs and behaviors, in which the relationship

between an act and its effect rests on a mystical connection, rather than an empirical or scientific validation. While at its core, magic is than an empirical or scientific validation. While at its core, magic is merely an idea or belief. It manifests in real ways and acts and rituals, texts and spells and objects such as amulets and talismans, right? Things you can say, things you can touch and or see, excuse me not to say see and things you can touch and hold and drink. Which craft and sorcery are terms that describe how humans engage with this magic,

how they manipulate it, mitigate its effects, act as consumers of it and more. You might think of magic like a television, or phone or computer, and witchcraft or sorcery like the streaming services that project a series of images onto that TV phone or computer. So if you engage in witchcraft or sorcery, does that make you a witch? Not necessarily.

Throughout cultures and times, there have always been both permitted forms of magic and prohibited forms of magic. And the prohibited kind is for witches. In ancient Greece, some official magic practitioners, such as oracles, were important figures of temples where they were thought to perform an essential and important duty, negotiating between Greeks and their gods, and they were not thought of as what we would think of as witches. But individual magic practitioners, those not appointed to positions in official ways, they were thought of as shady and bad as fucking witches, bitches. You know, what do you think the ancient oracles were really doing by the way?

Were they actors performing a little theater, a little cosplay, fully aware of the grifts they were running, laughing to themselves in private moments about the fools who believed their bullshit? They all hopped up on psychedelics, truly convinced that they could communicate with the infinite, did some believe that they could access the gods, that they had magical powers of divination, or that they could summon spirits. Did they ever do anything truly magical or were they ancient, you know, wackadoules? You know, the equivalent of some dude or lady

you could find right now in some dark corner of the web or out on the open on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, someone claimed that they're a, maybe a light worker, truly believing that they are someone who can relate divine wisdom to you for a price that they receive from some ancient root race or extraterrestrials or angels, et cetera, that communicate with us telepathically.

So curious what so many mystical folk have truly believed over the years. Anyway, again, these non-official Greek magic practitioners would have been, you know, what anthropologists term witches. People suspected of practicing either deliberately or unconsciously socially prohibited forms of magic Among other characteristics and who are thus often scapegoats members of persecuted groups and reflective of social tensions for example within close knit communities or kin groups Going back to Greece and even further back which craft allegations have tended to erupt in waves Crazes in response to or along the lines of social tensions.

Such tension may be inherent in social organization or as the most recent research documents perceived as an adjustment to a modern life and social change. Witches of honor, the human imagination with remarkable persistence since at least the early days of recorded human history. Destructive and malicious figures. They have always represented the opposite of all positive values, the witches and incarnation of the other, a human being who has betrayed his or her natural allegiances to become an agent of evil. Belief in such persons and such conduct has been made constant across both time and space or has been, not just has may been, but has been constant, especially in the

pre-modern world. We are the least worried about which is we've ever been right now. Part of that is a greater emphasis on scientific proof for what is real and what is not real than we've ever had in human history. Another reason we might not be so worried about which is currently is mobility. Today, we're more mobile than ever. But in the past, if there was someone you didn't get along with in your community, you know, you were most likely just fucking stuck with them.

Until either they died or you did. Quite simply, people could not easily escape one another. The the good old days sounded pretty fucking terrible once again here. Historian Robin Biggs or Briggs, excuse me, Robin Briggs argues that the decline in believing in witchcraft actually has less to do with the rise of science and more to do with the decline of small forced communities. Within those communities, witches were identified as the enemy from within. The figures with the powers to harm anyone who happens to be in their orbit, often for their own personal game. There was a belief that witches in Europe were simply pagans who didn't convert to Christianity

and that is incorrect. Saying that ignores the sociological context of witchcraft. How it's constructed out of a need to explain misfortune and exert control over the community by further marginalizing people already on the margins. Those marginalized people could also be fellow Christians and, you know, sometimes were. Indeed across cultures, Europe and elsewhere, most accused witches were people on the margins, those who were denied traditional avenues to power because of their gender, skin color, their marital status or otherwise, race, religion and nationality also often played a part but not always. And when these marginalized figures found themselves even, you know, excuse me, either more powerless as in relying on charity or more powerful. In the case of a sudden inheritance,

they would draw the attention of the people living around them and thus often draw accusations of witchcraft. But though much of recent witchcraft history has been about witch's persecution, that doesn't always mean that witchcraft, magic or spells have been considered only evil. In many places in Europe, beginning with the spread of Christianity, local witchy traditions blended with Christian ideology. And in various historical pockets, many people found nothing wrong with practicing both at the same time. Through much of the world, especially before Christian hegemony, witchcraft was a kind of

precursor to modern science, something thought of as a rational way to solve a problem, like an illness, which is could sometimes be respected members of the community, though of course, by our own definition, that would make them not which is, since which is our practitioners of evil. See how slippery all the stuff gets? It's so slippery because magic exists in the space between the point where you are to the point where you're looking. Magic was prevalent in the Egyptian and Persian worlds if you were Greek enrollment, because those people were fucking weird because they were not like you. If you're looking at yourself historically you're likely to call magic a religion, a worship, it's a miracle or something else that is not evil, but as soon as your gaze looks outward either at a culture, you know

a cultural other or someone marginalized in your culture, it starts to look like magic, the bad kind, the naughty, malevolent, we better grab our fucking pitchforks and torches and burn the witch, practicing witchcraft kind. One man's faith is another man's sorcery, another man's witchcraft. This is the big theme today. Witchcraft, supposed to sorcery, I guess that's the one we'll be focusing on is, you know, typically feminine, almost always always as time moves forward One woman's faith is often witchcraft other since women were still are accused of witchcraft far more than men

Luciefin just rolled her eyes and muttered something about the patriarchy and men's fragile egos leading them to keep women and other men Who don't look or act like them under their thumbs she may have also said stories old as time Fair Lucie Now let's get into the weeds with all this and gloss over humanity's history with witchcraft in today's Time Suck Timeline. I hope you're as fast and into by humanity's long obsession with witches and witchcraft, as I was learning about all of this. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a Time Suck Timeline. The earliest evidence of some mystical meat sex, performing supposedly,

powerful rights intended to affect the physical or spiritual world, in some way comes from the very first Western civilizations to leave written records. Curse tablets and spells have been found among the earliest uh... cuneiforms of the great messopotamian city-states on tablets written between thirty four hundred and thirty three hundred bc from the very beginning of recorded human history well over five thousand years ago i would actually doesn't seem that long in so many ways to me

the generation is considered around twenty five years that's about two hundred generations back not that many really anyway the production of the production of the fragmitary, fragmentary evidence found chiseled in the small tablets was obviously limited to the small, literate class of priestly scribes that dominated these cities, but they still showed how magic in witchcraft was a central part of the social structure of these cultures. The cities themselves were shaped by magic in their very foundations. Instead of being considered territories under a ruler or another form of a human political unit, like we consider states today, Mesopotamian city states were essentially structured supernaturally.

Each city was typically linked to a particular patron god and his or her cult. Each was centered physically around a great temple complex in which resided the scribe priests who represented a political and social as well as a spiritual elite. Each city was ruled by a priest king who derived his authority from the god he represented. Right? Marduke, for example, was supreme in Babylon. A Syria was the land of the great god Asur. And Nimrod, mighty hunter and war god of the Samaritan city of Uruk, the King of the gods,

before the imposter Zeus took his throne. A king who reigned with Lucifina as his queen, co-rulers and the deities who influenced the concepts of both the Christian God and devil, the original Alpha and Omega, ying and yang, good and evil and equal parts, balanced in both the male and female forms and I am a babbling. But who knows? Maybe some version of Nimrod and Lucifena were patroned deeds of ancient cities. The mess of a taming connection between the physical local,

the city and its supernatural meaning was essential to all aspects of human life. Indeed, to imply a boundary between them probably would have made very little sense to the people who live back then. In short, magic was not only a part of their lives, it was inseparable from their experience as human beings. For them, all varieties of success or misfortune, either as a society or an individual, depended on proper harmony between supernatural forces like gods, deities, what we might call demons and spirits. Victory or defeat in war,

the healthy growth or withering of crops, the fertility of animals, as well as of human beings and individual health and good fortune, or their opposites. All were believed to be derived from an individual's or a society's relationship with powerful spiritual entities. If the gods favored you, the weather nourished your crops and your armies vanquished their foes. If the gods were displeased with you, the fucking witches were in your midst and cursed and fucking shit up for your people, you crops withered, famine decimated your city,

and your weakened soldiers were destroyed in battle. Be gone, Lucifina. To retain favor with the gods, many rights and ceremonies existed to generate and solidify harmony. These included civic rituals for which kings and priestly cast were mainly responsible, but also extended to many individual rights of prayer and purification. Taboos were numerous, and the violation of any of them knowingly or not could disrupt the essential harmony and

essentially end all life as they knew it. Basically, the Mesopotamians were forming the earliest conceptions of spells, curses, blessings, and other rights of supernatural power in Western culture. But other cultures had important magical elements too, often working much the same way. Egypt also had a small priestly class at the top of its social pyramid, pun not intended, but also not avoided, whose primary function was to maintain proper relationships with the gods, on behalf of the rest of society. And Egypt's rulers, the Pharaohs, were not merely earthly representatives of the gods, like Mesopotamian kings, but actually considered literal gods themselves. In Egypt, to the violation of numerous taboos or the failure to observe properly, any of

the rights that they needed to, you know, thought they needed to commit or carry out were believed to lead to disastrous results. So practicing counter spells, purification rights, and protective rituals was of paramount importance to them. The best known ancient Egyptian right is probably one we've all heard of, mummification. Many of us know about the physical process of mummification which involve removing all internal organs,

subject to decay, as well as the brain, which was removed with a special hooked instrument placed up the nostril, damn. Imagine that being part of your fucking job, pulling out some dead person's brain, right? Just pulling out of their head through their nose. What if you hurt yourself doing that? Like you pulled a muscle, strained it?

A weird fucking injury. Someone's probably had it at some point in history. You hurt your hand, my mood? Ah, yeah, strained something. Now my finger just, ah, it hurts like hell. And super busy at work lately, was trying to get caught up, over dead it, pulled to one, one too many brains out of,

out of heads the other day. The corpse preserved in neutron, a type of salt would finally be wrapped in hundreds of yards of linen after having its fucking brain and pulled out in all the organs. And all this made these priests the first in bombers, essentially funeral directors, but they were not just embalmers. Their job was full of distinctly witchy elements as well.

Like as part of the funeral, Egyptian priests performed special religious rights at the tomb's entrance. The most important part of the ceremony was called the opening of the mouth. A priest touched various parts of the mummy with a special instrument to open those parts of the body to the senses, enjoyed in life, and needed in the afterlife. And did anyone else just immediately picture the priest tapping the mummy's butthole and saying something like, for poop and pleasure, the duck eye, how's been opened? Maybe just me. By touching the instrument to the mouth, the dead person could now speak and eat. He was ready for his journey to the afterlife.

The mummy was placed in his coffin or coffins in the burial chamber in now speak and eat. He was ready for his journey to the afterlife. The mummy was placed in his coffin or coffins in the burial chamber in the entrance sealed up. The tomb also had important spells placed in them. One inscribed gem found later by archaeologists depicted a mummy surrounded by writing that commanded the child of a certain woman to sleep as the mummy does, as in to die. It was essentially a curse, right?

For whatever reason, they cursed that woman to have her kid die, which we knew what led to die. It was essentially a curse, right? For whatever reason, they cursed that woman to have her her kid died, which we knew what led to that. A picture to do who was memified on his deathbed, just, you know, leaving that instruction, just like, hey, one more thing. I've placed a curse on my tomb. Fucking hate Karen. I want a child to die and care and to suffer. Karen is the reason I perish. That witch's damn evil stink eye finally done did me in. In Mesopotamian city-states two, the proper repose of the dead and their entry into the other world was critical. Mesopotamians had complex funeral rights as well as protective spells to ward off the

angry dead if these rights were improperly followed. And something that will be important for later, Mesopotamians had a conception of a female magic practitioner who consorted with evil supernatural entities. So in essence, in essence, a witch. Babelownin and Assyrian cultures so concerned about these lady magicians started practicing defensive ceremonies known as a Maklu, literally burning and voking the gods to destroy evil magic. One found on a cuneiform began with the following incantation. I have called upon you gods of the night. With you I have called tonight the veiled bride.

I have called upon twilight midnight and dawn, because of which has bewitched me. A deceitful woman has accused me. Has thereby caused my God and God has to be a strange for me and I have become sickening in the sight of those who behold me. I am therefore unable to rest day or night and the gag continually filling my mouth has kept food distance from my mouth and has diminished the water which passes through my drinking organ. My song of joy has become wailing and my rejoicing morning. It's not like this dude might have had some fucking food poisoning or something.

Maybe bad stomach flu, some weird disease as opposed to a curse. Can't keep any food or water down, his drinking organs all fucked up, he sounds ugly. I don't know, maybe as lepers here or something, I don't know. What's important here is the general nature of the magical assault being described, the witch has not merely performed a single harmful magical act, but has brought pervasive evil. And also the witch is specifically a woman now, speaking ahead to our next civilization. The famous code of Hamarabi.

Hamarabi compiled around 1750 BCE and one of the earliest legal codes known to have existed. I've read that word said several different ways. Hamarabai, Hamarabi. The longest best organized and best preserved legal text from the ancient Near East contained sections directed against specifically magical crimes. The second of the 282 laws states, if a man, charge a man with sorcery and cannot prove it, he who is charged with sorcery shall go to the river. Into the river he shall throw himself. And if the river

overcome him, his accuser shall take to himself his house. If the river show that man to be innocent and he come forth unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be put to death. Pretty fucking shitty way to make legalizations Yeah, I got to make sure that whoever you're accusing a sorcery can't fucking swim only pick weak little sinkers of sorcery Okay, now we jump civilizations again the ancient Greeks would have their own conception of magic and witchcraft Historians generally situate the classic culture of ancient Greece as beginning to develop around the end of the Greek dark ages, a 900 BCE, and coming into full existence around 800 BCE, lasting until about 300 CE with its peak around 400 to 500 BCE.

Ancient Greece and its successor, ancient Rome, would provide Western culture with many of the words it would use to describe magic and witchcraft for centuries to follow. The term magia came into Greek from the east. Its definition was initially fairly precise, although not in any sense that relates directly to modern notions of magic, and certainly not the modern desire to separate the magical from the religious. Magia referred simply to rights and ceremonies performed by a magis. The magi, plural of magis, were the priestly cast of the Persian Empire,

the political and cultural nemesis of the Greek city-states. So why take on the opposing cultures, gods, and rights? Well they were thought to be effective. They explained why the opponents might triumph over the Greeks. The Persians, they weren't better warriors with superior battlefield tactics, not ever. That's a fucking crazy notion. Now, they obviously had the power of magic on their side. Black magic, fucking Persian, wizard witches, and their demon magic. We gotta get a hold of some of that.

In his histories, one account of the conflict between Greece and Persia, the historian Herodotus, who lived from 484 to 425 BCE, describes the Magi as officiates at sacrifices and funeral rights, and interpreters and as interpreters of dreams. He attributed other powers to them as well. When for example, a storm was wrecking the fleet of the Persian king Zerseys, the Magi engaged in certain ceremonies, and the storm did end after four days. Although Herodotus did allow himself to wonder whether the storm might have just simply abated naturally.

A slightly later historian, a xenophon who lived from around 430 to 355 BC, regarded the Magi as experts in all things, having to do with the gods and divine cults. And since the Persians had this power of magic first, that gave magic a bit of a stank on it. Negative connotation. Fucking witches and warlocks and witchcraft, oh my! Herodotus relates how the Magi, unlike the priests of other foreign cults, cults for example, those of Egypt, engaged in animal sacrifices. With their own hands, they killed all manner of living creature.

He claims accepting only humans and dogs. Praise both jangles. At least the dogs were spared. Sorry, Kent Leverts, Katz might have been sacrificed. It seems probably were sacrificed and tortured first, possibly by the thousands, millions maybe. They were, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know why I'm saying that.

I was trying to rile up cap you. No, they were probably gently sacrificed. Even for the persons themselves, the match I were not always benevolent figures. Herodicists describes the brief usurpation or usurpation. There we go. That's a common word to say.

Of the Persian thrown by a magi is just prior to the reign of Derrius, excuse me, Darius, the great, these guys and their fucking salable and fascist, which was from 522 to 486 BCE. This would be confirmed by the, the histune inscription, along historical text carved into a cliff face in the Zagros Mountains along a road that in antiquity connected the city of Babylon with the Persian capital of Ekbatana in media, now central Iran.

It describes how Darius overcame the usurper Galmatah, who was termed a magis, indeed negative descriptions of the magi amongst Greek authors, a bounding ancient Greece. One text linked the magi to wild nighttime wanderers, said they practiced wicked and impious rights. In his play, Etappus the King, the great Greek Tragedy and played right Sophocles who lived from 495 to 436 BC, used the term magis to describe the prophet Tyrecyus by no means in a

positive light. Tyrecyus was regarded as respected seer, whose powers came from the Greek gods. When he made a prediction unfavorable to Etappus, however, the king became enraged and accused him of being a magis.

Shortly thereafter, he labeled him a mantis, a term for a less than respectable, less than respectable diviner, right? Gotta get the king. Good prophecies if you don't want to be labeled a fucking witcher warlock. Tyresias occupies an interesting place in the history of witchcraft, practitioners in ancient Greece. As legendary figure, he was thought to have true powers and expertise, but was not attached to a permanent and respectable institution like other supernatural channels of his day. People who served at temples,

the daughter of the Greek landscape, as professional magic, magic users and leaders of supernatural cults. Those people like the kings and priests of Mesopotamian city states were performing the important supernatural work of keeping harmony with the gods. Tyrecyus instead belonged to a second class of magic practitioners. Those who went out on their own made their living by a combination of begging and peddling their skills. Reminds me of a tarot card reader today on a corner of Bourbon Street, New Orleans

or someplace, or some self-proclaimed psychic on the sunset strip in Hollywood or maybe on a New Jersey boardwalk or somewhere. These people, as we saw in the case of Edip as the king, were thought of as potentially useful, but also as disreputable and possibly sinister. Indeed Plato, one of the founding fathers of Western philosophy, used part of his treat a treatise, republic, to criticize the roving practitioners of supposed magic who would go door to door claiming to have healing or protective powers for offering to harm or curse anyone their clients might designate.

Seems to be the case that people were suspicious of those who used magic outside of the supervision of an institution like a temple where magic would be, you know, used to benefit society. The ancient Greeks seem to have definitely believe, you know, been believers in magic, but also skeptical of those who claim to practice it outside the traditions of the state. Maybe they were worried that these nomadic witches would use magic for their own gain. Maybe to bring their enemies down. What if you happen to become a magized enemy for no good reason? This rogue magic was feared.

And then similar, inherent magic users came over degrees from Persia and abroad, increasing the aspect of otherness associated with it, and the idea that they might be up to something sinister. Now on to the Romans. The earliest known code of Roman law, the 12 tables, usually dated to around 450 BCE, refers to harmful spells or incantations. So much focus on magic in the ancient world. Other Roman legislation referred to the practice of venefaceum, literally meaning poisoning, which was regarded as similar to causing harm through spells or curses.

Venefaceum was a generalized term that covered all sorts of harmful spells and curses. Ancient Roman law usually focused on the effects of magic rather than on magical acts themselves. So long as no crime was committed or clear harm done, there were no laws against magical practices per save for many years in the Roman Empire. This was quite in the Roman civilization. This was quite different from what would come to be the case in Christian Europe years later. And this was because, like with ancient Greece, not all magic was bad in Rome, not at first. If it was performed in an institution for the good of society, it was good. And indeed, a central aspect of Roman civic life was performing rituals to ensure the destiny

of Rome. But still, like in Europe centuries later, there would eventually be criminal punishments for which craft in Rome. Later Roman historians reported that beginning in the second century BCE, there were mass executions for what they still referred to as practitioners of Veneficium. Magistrates ordered executions in 184, 180, 179, and 153 BCE, both in the immediate vicinity of Roman elsewhere in the Italian Peninsula. The numbers of those sentenced to death were in the thousands. These are the first historical records we have of numbers being assigned to the mass execution

of witches. And so it begins, ban the witch for the glory of Rome. The word magia appeared in Latin for the first time in the first century BCE. Roman writers like Cicero, who lived from 106 to 43 BCE, and Catullus, who lived from 84 BCE to 54 BCE, used the concept similar to how the Greeks did. But it was the poet Virgil, who appeared as a character in the Italian poet Dante's Inferno, former Sucks subject, who would broaden this concept of magic into the general term we know it as today in the fourth decade BCE.

Only in the first century CE, however, were the writings of Pliny, the elder, to determine for magic as a general category really appear. In his natural history, Pliny discussed magical vanities. These comprised a wide array of arts covering most of those practices in the ancient world that moderns would see as magical. The arose first in Persia, Pliny explains, where they were developed and used by the Persian Magi. He equates them above all with false medical practices that is bogus spells or other rights

used for healing or for causing physical harm. He also includes notions of false astrology and divinatory rights in his discussions. Basically, Plenty was calling out Wacadus. So hail Plenty. Plenty also equated many ofadus. So, hell, Plenty. Plenty also equated many of these magical practices with false or improper religion, marking the appearance of a new way to describe magic. Superstition.

Superstitious divination, typically referred to non-Roman rights or personalized prophecy, rather than the public rituals designed to determine and ensure the overall destiny of Rome, right? Of course, official Roman worship of God who lived atop some sky mountain and came down and fucked around with us humans in a variety of ways that is truth approved by the state that is religion but any equivalent ideas not state approved that is superstition or witchcraft so meat sacks back then when it came to what was religion and

what was superstition or witchcraft very similar like exactly the same pretty much as meat sacks back then, when it came to what was religion and what was superstition or witchcraft, very similar, like exactly the same pretty much as meat sacks today. What one calls religion and other calls superstition and witchcraft. Important to see how all of this predates Christianity. Christianity did not come up with demonizing the other. It inherited that quality from the religions and cultures that came before it as have, you know, pretty much all other modern religions. Whenever Rome was on shaky ground, undergoing rapid social change or changes in government, people often blamed non-Roman rituals for the upheaval, right? They blamed witchcraft. When in doubt, blame Lucifena. Also, personalized prophecy was regarded as presenting a

significant public danger for the Roman people. Since much of Rome's identity was caught up in a sense of its own trajectory towards future greatness, private revelations, assumably false or at least misleading ones, that my contradictory calling to question Rome's public destiny would corrupt the will of the citizenry. Right? Easy on the fortune telling which is we got a fucking world to take over. In this sense, Cicero strongly condemned Superstitio and his work on divination. Over the following decades, Superstitio gradually came to imply all forms of false or non-Roman rights. Superstitian, the belief of others. It could be applied to foreign cults, which Roman

authorities typically tolerated, although they also feared that these cults would somehow sap the virtue of Roman citizens. The sense of superstition as an improper, misinformed religion would be passed along to Christian Europe. The Christian church would be born in the Roman Empire, not the first date to adopt Christianity, but by far the most powerful and the one that would shape it the most. And Roman traditions and beliefs would help shape Christianity tremendously, even though initially Christianity was labeled a superstitious cult by Roman authorities. Responding in kind to being labeled a cult, early Christian writers declared that Roman devotion to their gods, that was the real cults. Since they were their worship was directed at false gods, the Romans were

misguided and superstitious. They were the other. And now superstition became a general term applied to all pagan religions that Christianity would encounter as it spread across the Roman world and into Northern Europe. Again, my celestial notions are true and righteous. I am religious. Your shit is fucking whack. You are superstitious. You are different than me and you're probably a fucking witch. probably a fucking witch. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself now. In the early 5th century CE, the Roman world was still a mix of religious and supernatural influences, early Christianity, Roman civic rights, and of course, magic. Despite Emperor Constantine, converting to Christianity in the early 4th century, the old gods would still be worshiped for a few centuries more by many in the Roman Empire. Sometime in the later 5th century CE, a well-educated young man, living in the cosmopolitan Roman city of Car later fifth century, CE, a well-educated young man,

living in the cosmopolitan Roman city of Carthage, located on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Near what is now tunas, discovered that a spoon was missing and could not be found anywhere in his household. And the spoon story will relate to witchcraft, I promise. Not just taking a fucking pointless detour here to talk about some ancient dudes boring flatware problems.

Since the spoon was apparently of some value, guessing spoons were a bit harder to come by 1600 years ago than they are now. He has his friend, Lysentius, to consult a certain albicarious who was a famous local diviner, a witch of sorts. Lysentius, accompanied by a slave, sought out this man who, for his part, immediately incorrectly identified the location of the law spoon. He then provided an additional service, telling Lysanthius that the slave who accompanied him had secretly pilfered some of the money that he was carrying to pay the diviner. This Lysanthius reported, uh, Alberticus did before he even had seen the money or knew how much money had been brought to pay him. Did this guy actually have some kind of psychic powers or, you know, is the author of this story just taking some creative license? Alligations of magical practices

like this were common in the ancient world, but this story is special because the man who lost the spoon and sent Lissanteus on his errand was Augustine, future bishop of hippo, saint and the most important and influential of all Latin fathers of the Christian church. In numerous writings, including his famous city of God, and equally important for the subjects dealt with here on the divination of demons, Augustin established virtually all the essential elements of Christian conceptions of magic and superstition that later authorities would follow throughout the European Middle Ages and early modern period. The story, however, reveals a younger Augustin, not yet the church father, but a worldly Roman living in a culture thoroughly permeated with what in modern vocabulary would be called

magical practices. The account above comes from one of Augustin's lesser works, a treatise called against the academics. Augustin offered a perhaps even more telling example of the pervasiveness of magic in his day, and his far more famous confessions In which he recounted how he had once decided to enter a public contest and poetry recitation as a test of his oratory and rhetorical skills on this occasion an anonymous magician approached him asked him what he would be willing to pay in order to be assured of his victory Augustine rejected the offer. Sorry. I paused there for a second.

Because my brain just went rogue. And I just pictured like back in this ancient time, uh, he was, you know, this approach by the Sonata's magician who asked him to pick a card any card and just like had like a little deck of 52 cards randomly. And a fucking top hat and scorching with, I guess that's a clown with the fucking flower there. Anyway, refocusing. Augustin rejected the offer, telling him he deplored filthy rights. Apparently he knew that the magic would involve the ritual killing of an animal and refused to allow even a fly to be killed to ensure his success.

Riding in confessions after his complete conversion to Christianity, Augustin explained that animals were slain in such magical rights as sacrifices to demons. He lamented that at the time this encounter actually took place. He had rejected the magical assistance only out of revulsion at the blood rights involved and not out of pious devotion to God and rejection of demonic ceremonies. But what Augustine implicitly reveals in his accounts is how readily accessible magical services were in the ancient world. So much so that you can walk down the street and have someone try and sell them to you Like someone might do today, you know with a with shoe shine or a bus can on the promenade

Related to that magical services in the ancient world were also often pretty mundane stuff like finding a lost boom One of the most fundamental services was divination interpreting dreams analyzing astrology and making predictions divination, interpreting dreams, analyzing astrology and making predictions. They might attempt to see the future in polished mirrors or in a placid pool of reflective water or the, in the bones of animals. One very common form of divination was to cast lots. A process that came to be called sortelagium, which later became the French word, Sores-Soccellary, and then eventually the English word, Sorcery. Socellary translates most commonly to the English word

of witchcraft, which I find interesting. The phrase, the dius cast comes from casting lots, OG witchcraft, that silly toy, the magic eight ball, that could be considered a form of casting lots. Even a coin toss is a form of casting lots. Right? Will the gods guide me to victory in this battle? Heads for yes, tails for no. Another very common magic, you know, practice of the individual kind of magic was the love spell,

which attempted to instill or in some cases repress passionate feelings. Right? Love magic in Rome was especially common in brothels. The Roman poet Lucian, or Luchin, excuse me, mentioned the prostitute who was rather deficient in physical charms. I.e., not attractive, and she therefore employed a love potion to steal the regular customer of another woman in the same brothel. The belief in such practices persisted throughout the Roman period. The legend of the Christian saint, Hilarion, tells of a young woman living in the Roman

empire who had dedicated her life to Christ. A frustrated student of hers spent an entire year learning magical practices at the temple of a, a, a skleepious in the ancient or in the Egyptian city of Memphis. He was then reported able to cast a spell so powerful that the woman lost all control over herself and was ready to abandon her chastity. Only the power of the saint was able to free her. So we have a saint here writing that only the power of the saint was able to free her. So we have a saint here writing that only the power of the saint could save her, it does a slight conflict of interest. Maybe a bit of bias displayed in this account, but there it is.

There were two ways of doing love magic. One was making potions or filters, the word for potions made in conjunction with other rights or rituals, and another was called a binding spell. This was a spell aimed to restrain or control the will or actions of a particular person and arousing love and sexual desire was a common use. Another common use was to bind witnesses in court so that they would be compelled to deliver testimony of a certain desired kind. Binding spells could even be used to harm a person physically or economically to even kill them. Or you know, none of this shit didn't fucking anything to anybody. Always keep that in mind. Certain spells could also

supposedly be used to bind to craftsman's tools or otherwise make people unproductive. The essence of a binding spell was a verbal formula spoken or written designed to command or compel someone or something. Very typically these formulas were inscribed on gems or other items, often specially made curse tablets composed of thin pieces of lead. Interesting. The inscription usually consisted of the name of the person who would be affected in sometimes images. Nails might even be incorporated to further physicalize the bindine aspect. One famous recovered Roman tablet directed magical forces to bind the horses of an opposing team of chariot racers

or quell their desire for victory in the race or knock out their fucking eyes. That last part seems excessive. Doesn't it right? Freezing them for a bit so they lose the race causing to lose interest. Okay fine, but blasting their fucking eyes out so they lose a race but also are literally blind for the rest of their lives. That seems like overkill. Oftentimes increasing their perceived sinister quality, these tablets included appeals to foreign deities. A Greek spell might invoke a Babylonian god, a Roman could call upon a Hebrew deity or an Egyptian god. The tablets were then often buried in a location

believed to augment their potency, someplace in proximity to the victim, or in a graveyard, or to crossroads, near springs or cast-down wells, basically anywhere spiritual forces were believed to be present, which was a hell of a lot of places, almost everywhere. Aside from tablets, Roman magic practitioners also use a type of voodoo doll, a doll-like form crafted, richly identified with the victim, and then used as part of a binding right.

Sometimes the carcasses of small animals could also be used. Their bodies twisted or bound in some way is a symbol of magical binding. Of course, with all this potential harm came the need for magical protection. Among the most common were forms of protection or amulets or talismans, which might have been seen as the opposite of curse tablets.

They were small objects, perhaps a gem or a figure held to have protective power or inscribed with some sort of protective formula and then carried about the person. In addition, people who felt themselves to be under magical assault could seek a more specific counter spell, either to undo the magic that had been used against them or to strike back against the person who cast the original spell. It's fucking wizard battle, electrical! To attain relief, victims might turn on the gods

or in very public rituals, or they might seek the private services of a professional practitioner of magic. Healing and harming were typically thought to be opposite sides of the same coin. And those who had the knowledge and power to bring about the one were usually believed to also be able to accomplish the other as well.

So magic in its individual mundane or extreme forms pervasive across the Roman world. But again, was a real, honestly, I hope it was. That'd be fucking cool, but I doubt it. If it was, why couldn't Wizards and Witches and Warlocks have magic tools, right? The kind straight out of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, put them in a Coliseum place of a gladier fights, you know, Let him battle it out with spells and curses. Better yet, put two wizards only armed with magic up against gladiators with swords and battle axes, what not. Right, or two witches.

If that would have happened and the fucking wizards or witches would have won, well now I'm a firm believer in true magic. And thinking about wizards and warlocks and witches, fighting it out leads me directly to today's most important sponsor. Time suckers brought to you today by the world's most popular line of generic knockoff figurines, the action hero people set, new from the makers of fighting man, atomic man flying guy, warrior woman attack cat and prophet jeff, comes on witch lady. Do you fear the old witch lady with her magic potion gravy? She will mix for evil tricks, so much shit that will make you sick.

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harm or death resulting from the ingestion of magic which potion gravy stuff. And that fake sponsor marks a good spot for our real sponsor break. Thanks for taking a round. Now back into our story. Before I took a abrupt turn into a generic but really more absurd fake witch action figure, I was talking about the belief in the concept of magic and its practitioners being pervasive across the Roman world. The Roman belief in magic was very strong. There was an entire class of magic practitioners, people who might a thousand years later be called witches, who were considered professionals at this making it a real industry. Even as common as magic was, as we can see from Augustine, even before his conversion to Christianity, many felt there was

something a little sinister about magic, something that made people want to steer clear of it. Indeed, much like future Christian Europe, ancient cultures like Rome conceived of, usually female practitioners of magic, to be somehow inherently evil, and acting in association with dark or nefarious entities. These were represented in ancient Greek literature and myths in the form of characters like Medea, who famously killed her own brother to create a spell of protection for her lover Jason and Cersei who turned men into pigs. The most terrible and terrifying witch presented in ancient literature was Eryktho, as described

in the Roman poet, poet, Lucans, Farsalia, an epic account of the Civil War fought between Julia Caesar and Pompeii. I know also often said Pompeii. This war was conducted mainly in Greece, and Eriktho was made to be an inhabitant of Thessaly, a region with a reputation for dark magic and sinister supernatural powers in the ancient world. She was a truly horrible, semi-demonic figure said to live in tombs, who frequented graveyard, collecting bodies and pieces of bodies she kept for various magical

purposes. She was herself an image of death, and where she walked, plants would with her, and the air would become poisonous. After a great battle, the son of Pompey needed the services of a powerful diviner, and he was sent to aicktho. To work her spell, she scoured the battlefield for an appropriate corpse, then dragged it to a dark forest and performed a complicated and terrible ceremony to make it speak to her. Necromancy, bringing forth knowledge of the underworld. So at this point in our story, we might be asking, where the hell does this type of figure come from? It doesn't seem to have anything in common with the Magi or various common magic practitioners we've already talked about, but historians have linked this figure

to an early type of ritual expert known as a ghost, a sort of sear or medium who could act as an intermediary between the living and the newly dead. The name derived from ghost, a ritual lament over the dead and gotes were specialists in funerary rights and other aspects of treating the dead. In their ceremonies, they often invoked a hecatee goddess of magic in the underworld. Their expertise relating to the spirits of the dead gradually expanded until they were thought to have special powers over all spirits. Initially, they served an important social function, preparing bodies for funeral rights and assuring the souls passage into the underworld. But increasingly, they became regarded as malevolent figures, and the rights they performed

were increasingly believed to be wicked or harmful. The name for their practices, Goatia, became a general term from malevolent magic, and is often translated as witchcraft. In essence, because death is bad, the person that deals with death must also be bad. Big societal case of shooting the messenger. But why were these figures thought of as typically being female? Though the ancient or you know, throughout the ancient world, practitioners of magic were generally male. The person that Augustine went to see about a spoon, for instance, or the person who went door to door offering cursing services. So

why are witches women? One immediately obvious, possible explanation is that the authors of history and legend were all men. And so natural, they used female imagery to depict a strange and sinister other. Over time, especially when that female form didn't depict what they considered to be the right kind of femininity. Indeed, legends in the ancient world

told of women who did not conform to their gender roles being turned into horrible monsters. Like Lilith, Adam's first wife, a woman who comes after Eve and Jewish mythology, and a woman who refuses to accept Adam's authority over her. And thus, she becomes a fearful night-stocking monster, a she-demon. And a figure thought to actually come from pre-Jewish Babylonian and Assyrian religions. She's mentioned in ancient Mesopotamian cuneiforms or versions of her or mentioned. Basically with Lilith, a woman who does no Bayamand labeled a demon. And that might have been how the feminine

became synonymous with evil, a motif reinforced lady with Eve, being the one who leads humanity and to sin, not Adam. Another example of a woman who doesn't listen to male authority, being in league with demonic forces, or at least, you know, able to be manipulated by them. It's almost when you look at these ancient religious stories in a broader historical context, almost like all of this is not about God at all, but instead about ancient dudes controlling ancient women, the patriarchy, the patriarchy, the patriarchy that has been handed down to the present day.

Lucicina just nodded in the affirmative and muttered what sounded a lot like fucking obviously numb nuts. Uh, similarly, the Roman Strix was thought to be an evil monster that flew through the night, praying on sleeping children by devouring them or draining them of their blood. Sometimes, Strix was depicted as an owl-like creature other times as a woman. One myth held that she was once a legendary queen of Libya, who slept with Zeus and was in turn punished by Zeus' wife, Hera, making her another woman who transgressed. Overall there seems to be a basic link in many of these cultures between women and certain

notions of a sinister, nocturnal, and somewhat sexualized threat, images that were then imported into the arena of magical practices and practitioners. Women who don't follow men's rules, bad, unsanctioned practitioners of Women who don't follow men's rules bad, unsanctioned practitioners of magic who don't follow the rules passed by the state to stay controlled by men, bad, witches, women plus magic, the fucking worst. No one in the ancient world actually knew any real life malevolent witches though. They came to associate these legendary female monsters with witchcraft over time and ways I am pointing out. The combining of women and magic into witches

was something that took centuries. And the pairing not always straightforward. Gender and magic have existed in a long time and a complicated social dance, one that will keep untangling as we go forward. Right now, let's talk about another culture that would be incredibly important to the formation of our ideas about witchcraft,

ideas that would play a big role in the witch hunts in Europe, Hebrew culture. During the major witch hunts in Europe, for example, a principle justification for the execution of witches was the injunction in Exodus 2218. Perhaps most famously rendered into English as thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. which to live. Thus, the depictions of magical practices contained in Hebrew scripture, scripture, and how Hebrew scripture judged these practices became essential to the history of witchcraft in Europe. Hebrew cultures, conception of magic was similar to other ancient cultures. There were rights and practices intended to invoke or compel supernatural forces to benefit humans, just like in Greece and Rome. Unlike most other ancient peoples, however, the ancient Hebrews were, or became, monotheists. One God, one big dude in the sky. Thus, while

the Greek's aromans could explain the workings of magical rights by the power of any number of deities or lesser spirits that inhabited the universe, whether they're own or those of other cultures, the Hebrews needed to explain such things in a universe presided over by one God. We can see how magic worked in this context and two of the most famous scriptural accounts concerning magical rights. The contest between Moses and the priests of Pharaoh and Exodus and the contest between Elijah

and the priests of Bale and first kings. An Exodus, the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron to go before Pharaoh and perform a wonder, so that the Egyptian king would see the power of the Hebrew God and release his people from captivity. When Aaron threw down his rod before Pharaoh became a snake, the priests of Pharaoh were able to replicate this feat, however, by their own secret arts. But then Aaron's serpent devoured the Egyptian ones, thereby demonstrating the superiority

of the Hebrew God. But there was no intimation that the powers of the Egyptian priests drawing on their own gods were not real cool trick With a snake thing still pretty bummed that the old wizards didn't shoot lightning each other something though Transform goats into goblins raised dead sense and rotting zombies over to attack each other throw a few fucking fireballs around come on Put on a real show already. The situation was quite different in the later account of Elijah confronting the priests of Bale who had been seducing the Israelites people into idolatry. At the command of the King of Israel, Ahab, the entire nation assembled to observe the contest.

Fucking big show. Literally everybody's there. Ah, Elijah faced 450, 450 priests of Bale. He asked them to build an altar, selectable for sacrifice, and pray to their God to send fire to consume the offering. Although the priests labored at the rites until midday had passed, they produced no effects, then Elijah constructed an altar to the Hebrew God. He too selected a bull, ordered that the sacrifice should be drenched in water, just for good measure. He then invoked the Lord, immediately fired, ascended from heaven, consuming the bowl, the altar, and boiling away the water.

If that happened, pretty fucking cool. Good trick. Called down fire from the sky. The clear implication was that there existed only one divine force in the universe, and the rights of other gods were not simply foreign to the people of Israel, and improper to them, but were in fact utterly empty and false. Here we return to religion versus magic, right?

God demonstrating his supernatural power through his faithful religion, religion, good. Anything a non-believer tries to do in the same vein, magic, not good. If it doesn't come from the one true God, then it must be evil, which in time will mean it must come from the devil. This distinction between religion and magic existed but wasn't flux in the Greek and Roman worlds, but the Hebrews and Hebrew scripture sharpened it, given as things like, again, Exodus 22-18, right, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. That passage, however, should be clarified. The Hebrew word for a magical practitioner, so often later rendered in English as witch,

connotes someone who performs secretive and harmful magic and poisoning and is derived from an older Babylonian word referring to witches, who were thought of as being demonic forces that plague society, not witches acting as individuals against individuals. So it's unclear what kind of witchcraft exists is referring to, meaning it could mean something is basic as don't bring your evil judo around here, or that anyone practicing harmful rituals should be banished not necessarily put to death.

An example of multifaceted Hebrew attitudes towards magical practices can be found in the famous account of the witch of Endor. The first king of the Israelites saw all had a exile. All sorcerers and diviners from his kingdom, he then found himself in need of a favorable prediction, though, on the eve of a great battle. The Lord would not speak to Saul, that is, official religious rights to divine the future had failed him, so he felt like he needed to seek help elsewhere. His servants informed him that a powerful diviner or seer, there was no indication that she was involved in harmful magic or witchcraft of any kind, could be found in Endor. Saul went to her

She summoned the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel to speak with him Saul violated his own law here and his actions were condemned by the ghosts of Samuel But nevertheless he got his information about the coming battle namely that he was gonna fucking lose it Later European biblical scholars would argue that Samuel was actually the devil in disguise But in the original passage there's nothing saying explicitly that the woman's powers were anything evil, and she did end up giving Samuel important information that God did not give him. The seemingly most thorough condemnation of magical practices and Hebrew scripture comes in Deuteronomy. When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving to you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.

your God is giving to you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire or who practices divination or is a sooth saer or an auger or a sorcerer or one who casts spells or who consults ghosts or spirits or one who seeks oracles from the dead. This passage covers many of the forms that magical practices could take in antiquity and appears to offer a fairly unambiguous condemnation of those practices and Why were those practices condemned? Is it because they were really evil or because they were tied to non-Jewish religious practices and

Judaism wanted to separate itself obviously from the old gods and all the old ways associated with those gods in order to place their Religion above its competitors or their competitors and have it overtake them. Remember the Greeks and the Persians, the Romans and the Egyptians, magic is bad if someone else is doing it. This meeting is further highlighted by the fact that the material in Deuteronomy was developed out of a long oral tradition and probably written down after the Babylonian exile when consciousness of the danger of corruption by foreign nations and foreign practices most like the Ediffea pitch. In fact, many of the practices described were not common in pre-Exile Hebrew or Canaanite

culture, but they were common in Babylonia. So in short, the Hebrews developed a stricter line between other cultures when it came to religion and magic. But also follow the line of other ancient cultures and thinking the magic should only be avoided the way other cultures practiced it. And after the death and resurrection of Jesus, it would be a small, juday insect taking with it its ideas about magic and witchcraft, combined with Roman and Greek influences that would grow to become early Christianity.

And that brings us to the time of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, identified by some as Christ already during his lifetime, was born during the reign of Herod the Great, a Jewish king who knelt to Rome between 37 and 4 BCE. Jesus was executed during Pontius Pilates, term as a Roman prefect of Judea between 26 and 36 CE. According to the Acts of the Apostles, his followers were first identified as a distinct sect, Christians, in the city of Antioch and 42 CE. sect Christians in the city of Antioch and 42 CE. The gospel accounts of Christ's life were all written between 70 and 100 CE decades after his death. And while they therefore are not 100% accurate accounts of Christianity's early days, they do represent early Christians' efforts to

construct their own story, a story that included a bunch of magic. The three Magi or the Magi, right, who came to see the infant Jesus, were of course Persian Magi, wise men and astrologers following the sign of a new star, right, they were flacking wizards and warlocks. And then, you know, the symbolized how the ancient world of magic acknowledged Jesus as their religious authority, giving him gifts to symbolize how they had abandoned their old ways. But then Jesus grows up and acts a lot like a orlock. For example, the Gospel of Mark describes the case of a deaf mute man, brought before Jesus, puts his fingers in the man's ears, spat on his tongue, while commanding, be open to the man is

cured. Even more dramatically, the Gospel of John describes how Christ once healed a blind man, spat on the ground, so as to make mud, spread that over the man's eyes, then had him go and wash himself in a pool after which the man could see. Other times Jesus did not use such elaborate means to exert power, simply touching people, or speaking words of command to them, such as be healed, or rise up. He performed miracles according to his own followers. According to non-followers, non-believers, he was performing magic. He typically did not use his powers other magicians did for personal gain or to earn money, yet the similarities were evident between him and witches. Throughout the Gospels, Christ was described as commanded and casting out

demons, which the ancient non-Christians would have naturally suggested the interaction between Magi and Daemon's or Demons that they invoked and commanded. Upon seeing Jesus's power over these powerful spirits, the Bible recounts the Pharisees accused him of being in league with these creatures, declaring by the ruler of demons he cast out demons. To them, since he was an other, Christ was labeled as literally being demonic. To his followers, his religious followers, he was holy. To the Egyptians, Christ, like a super witch, bequeathed his power over demons to his disciples. And ultimately to all Christians, who could then exercise evil spirits in his name. He's like the fucking master vampire, creating other vampires, right? To these other people. Thus to the ancient world of large

tales of Christians made them look a lot like magicians, wielding amazing powers to command the world of the unseen. In this way, they were not very different from the priests of any other cults in the ancient world, all of whom set themselves up as superior to basic magicians, all of whom believe they were the righteous ones and everybody else was evil. And of course, those who opposed Christianity would try to use these comparisons in their favor, the charge that Christ was a magician, which would trouble Christianity for several hundred years. Already in the late century, the Roman author Celcius argued that the young Jesus had studied magical arts in Egypt, the land of occult knowledge, par excellence in the Roman mind.

Early Christians themselves maintained that the Holy Family had spent time in Egypt shortly after Christ's birth, fleeing the persecution of Herod, so the argument seemed plausible. In addition, the image associated with Christ, the cross was often associated by Romans with malevolent magic. And there was the fact that Jesus' powers often had to do with death, resurrecting the dead, resurrecting himself, which had a real demon-y air about it, right? Savior or necromancer. Early Christians had to work extra hard

to draw the line between, you know, real Christianity and all the, uh, focus-pocus stuff. And that would, uh, be a, that would be a challenge because there was a lot of intermingling in the ancient world. For the following several centuries, Christianity would steadily spread across the Roman Empire, initially existing side by side, with the, uh, vibrant pagans of the classical world.

Christians and pagans married, right? Kids together, when those kids got sick for centuries, Christian women were less likely to turn to the Christian God and more likely to turn towards pagan remedies. Spells, herbs, preparations, so much so that an early church father, John, Christus, Christus, them who lived between 347 and 407 CE CE reprimanded these women in public letters. Most early Christians probably saw no inherent conflict between their faith and using many magical rights that they were used to, right, healing, love spells, or the use of magic to defeat enemies in battle.

They blended their views with Germanic paganism then and entirely oral tradition that historians reconstruct mainly from Norse literature and Rune conscriptions. Germanic pagans used a process of ritual divination, which was used not only to predict the future, but to some extent to control it. They also believed specifically in the power of spoken or written words, even without other ritual actions, to create magical realities. Items inscribed with ruins, anything from swords to whale bones, to pieces of bark, or thought

to have uncanny powers by the power of grayscale. All right, this kind of spoken incantations were called gold or an old Icelandic word. I'm probably fucking up somehow meeting a song or spell. People believe that these could be used to control the weather to raise storms to conjure mists and more. All right, and of course the recountorsbells that could heal ward off disease, it provides strength. Like in the classical European world, the experts on these were often thought to be women, usually women with the mysterious or threatening aura to use magic was one thing, but to be an expert in it made you dangerous social outcast. Similarly, the Celts Romans, Romans, other great opponents used magic frequently.

On the whole, they were in the hands of the Druids. Each clan, tribe or kingdom had its Druids who in time of war assisted their host by magical arts. Druids were said, one shit was finally written down after centuries of the telephone game to be able to create clouds, snowstorms, balls of fire, even change day and tonight. Oh, fuck yeah, bro. Now, we're talking about some hardcore magic. You can also fill the area with a clash of battle

or with the dreaded cries of eldritch things. Most druidic magic was accompanied by a spell, transformation, invisibility, power over the elements, and the discovery of hidden persons or things. In other cases, spells were used in medicine or for healing wounds. They also used amulets heavily, believing in the magical properties of things like coral and amber, but Christian authorities, now with Roman empire's power on their side, they don't like any of this. They want a Christianity to be the only

religion. No pagan gods, nobody else to worship or pray to, thus began the process of what historians have called the demonizing of magic in the early Christian era. Demons, demons, they existed in Greek and Latin culture, but they weren't necessarily evil there. They were just lesser deities. They could be good, bad, or neutral. It was common practice that magicians would invoke these spirits to get what they wanted. Hebrew tradition, however, right? As we went over, these spirits always evil.

Big and important shift. Christianity took over these Jewish ideas, believing that demons were purely evil as fuck, and also Christianity expanded their active role in the world, which is a big shift. To the Greeks, Romans, and Jews, demons had long been something that you could invoke, but they wouldn't just fucking show up uninvited. Right, you had to ask for them. But to the Christians, they were now ever present, doing their evil work and recruiting human beings to help them all the fucking time.

Christianity made demons a much bigger deal than any religion before. The world was now filled with demons, agents of Satan, and these demons will be linked directly with magic, right, and with witches. And we're still on the path that we are put on so many centuries ago here in the Western world today. In 306 CE, the first legal condemnation of magic from a Christian framework was instituted. The Synod of El Vira, living in what is now Spain, proclaimed that Christians, known to have practiced magic, should not receive last rights. Get the fuck away from heaven, dirty wets. This ruling was based on the notion that magic was demonic, and thus that the involvement of any Christian with these arts was a serious offense against the faith.

Other locals would follow suit in 314, the Council of Angera prescribed severe penances to Christians who practiced divination. The first clear prohibition of magical rights, more broadly defined for Christians, was issued by the Council of Leidosia in 375, but that mostly applied to the clergy, right? Can have fucking preys, Prax and Witchcraft, which clearly was still going on in the four century. Otherwise, they wouldn't have needed to have held that council bunch of damn witch priests.

So why was this happening now and not in the beginning of Christianity? Well that was because of a man named Constantine, right? The Roman Emperor who reigned between 306 and 337 CE, who supposedly saw a miraculous vision before a crucial battle in 312. The vision was of a cross, and he was told of his imminent victory, which he then did have, and he issued a decree of toleration, proclaiming Christianity to be an officially recognized

and legitimate cult within the Empire. Christianity now had the full weight of imperial power behind it, a way that would use to correct beliefs about religion and superstition, and more firmly placed Christianity in the mainstream. In 438 Roman Emperor Theodosius, the second, who reigned from 408 to 450, issued a much stricter legal code. Christian notions of magic were far more thoroughly embodied in the law now than ever before. All pagan rights were defined as superstitious, and all magical practices and forms of divination were uniformly now prohibited. Not all MBUities were limited, however, in certain magical and other pagan practices were not

totally eradicated from the empire. Nevertheless, by the early 5th century, Christian understandings of magic and superstition dominated the Roman world, and were ready to be passed on to all of Europe in the dark ages Soon Christian authorities would get to work defining just exactly what magic was and why it was bad Around 600 CE the Iberian Peninsula produced the most important work of Christian authority of that period Isador Bishop of Seville and advisor to the Visagothic kings of Spain, would write a massive tomb summing up the totality of ancient knowledge, both classical and Christian.

Of course, he did this from a very Christian perspective. When he came to discuss magic in the eighth book of his etymology in early encyclopedia, he provided a complete history of the concept from ancient times. The first magician was the Persian king Zeraster, he said. Among the subsequent Magi, Isidore included the priests of Pharaoh who contended with Moses and Aaron, the Greek source was Cersei, who transformed Odysseus as men into swine, all such arts he linked to the instruction of wicked angels, and he noted that the Mejai were usually called Malafisa, or Malafisi, there we go, excuse me, because of the inherently evil nature of their acts. This was not historically true,

but Isidore was doing work for the Christian church, and in doing so, he wrote in a lot of history that historically never happened, right? He gave all this a heavy bias. The Romans did the same shit, you know, when they wrote about history, so did the Greeks, the Persians, Samarians, Babylonians, Assyrians, etc. All ancient historians seem to have twisted events, to various degrees, to please their kings, priests, popes, audiences, etc. Kind of like fucking media pundits, twisted truth now, to appeal to their marketing demographic, right, whoever is fucking paying for their ads.

And his book Is a Door describes specific varieties of magical practice. Necromancy, involved divination by summoning the spirits of the dead, while hydromancy involved conjuring visions to appear in clear water. Each of the other elements had a species of divination associated with it, hence, geomancy, aeromancy, pyromancy. He separated all such activities sharply from proper Christian devotion,

maintaining that all magical arts arose from a pestilential association between humans and demons. A topology was a widely used textbook throughout the Middle Ages. So popular, it was red in place of many of the original classical texts that it summarized. And as a result, some of the original works ceased to be copied and were completely lost Giving everything now a decidedly Christian bend So by the early Middle Ages in Europe and in all places of European influence all fucking magic is regarded as evil BANTH THE WHICH! If a practice was magic, it was to be condemned. If it wasn't condemned, then it wasn't magic. It was religion But of course this always opened up ambiguous spaces. Were certain practices demonic, or did they draw on divine power?

Or were they simply ineffective? One work from around this time shows a medieval world full of magic and full of contradictions. Written sometime in the late 500s, Bishop Gregory of Tours, Historia Frank Chorum, describes the history of the Frankish people of modern day friends in their society, a society filled with different kinds of magic. At the lowest level of society, enterant sorcerers traveled the countryside, claiming to carry holy relics, but in fact only deceiving people with magical practices, for when examined their relics consist of nothing more than herbs, roots, and the bones of animals.

Magic could also be found at the highest levels of society, and Gregory famously related how the 6th century queen, Fredagund, was accused of using poisons and other harmful magic against her enemies. Gregory's basic message when he dealt with magic was the same as that found in other early Christian authorities. Pagan rights were demonic superstitions. Pagan deities were actually demons demons and all magic was to be avoided because it drew on demonic power. But when St. Martin discovered a tree blown down

on the side of the road made the and it made the sign of the cross and raised it up again telepathically and downing the tree also with healing powers. Well that wasn't fucking demonic magic. That was a expression of religious piety in God's might. Right? Good and pure. Of course, while in literature, it's easy for writers to make an argument about what was magic and what wasn't. In practice, it was harder to convince people who had been combining these traditions for centuries. So, churches began circulating handbooks of penances now, known as pen- uh, pen- uh, tenials describing penalties for magic and superstition. People who engage in either of these were required to repent and perform some kind of punishment, fasting for a period perhaps, visiting certain shrines,

much harsher punishments will come later. Similarly, church leaders circulated a list of superstitions, which name practices that church officials were supposed to guard against or condemn, mostly the worship of certain trees, stones, and springs. Get that pagan demon shit out of here! 743, the list of superstitions was amended to condemn the use of amulets, incantations, auguries, divination, and weather magic. These decrees circulated wildly through the Frankish realm and even beyond in the Britain and Ireland. The Franks, by the way, at that time, ruled France, the low countries, and into parts of Italy, Austria, and Germany. And soon the Franks would be ruled by a man named Charlemagne, who decided to take up the

defunct Roman title, you know, Emperor, give himself that title. In 789, he issued a systematic and sweeping legal condemnation of magic in a general admonition for his entire kingdom. He took a harsh stance against magic banning all forms of divination and all other magical practices requiring all magicians and enchanters to repent their practices or be condemned to death, right? Ratcheting up the punishment for being pagan now and doing pagan shit. This applied now not only to the Franks, but to any of the people they'd recently conquered, including the still pagan Saxons up in modern day Britain throughout

his reign. Charlemagne continued to issue decrees against magical superstitious and supposedly pagan practices, and he instructed his emissaries to look for and root out such practices throughout his empire. It wasn't because Charlemagne was a particular hater of witchcraft, but because both he and church authorities were starting to realize what Christians had when Constantine permitted Christianity. With an empire behind a religious institution, you got a lot of shit done.

Cracking down on which graphics man to both the authority of Christian rulers and the Christian church, it consolidated their realms into one culture, a culture that could and would be weaponized during the Crusades as we just recently went over a few weeks ago. In 800 CE, a church synod at phryzing, phrysing issued instructions

echoing charlamagne's commands ordering bishops to investigate thoroughly anyone suspected of performing divination in cantations weather magic or other forms of sorcery in their lands who's fucking doing which shit in this inquiry can now involve the use of torture and And here we fucking go. After centuries of buildup, right, what we now think of as witch hunts, they get started.

BAN the witch. And of course, with all the searching for witches, right? You have people starting to get really scared. Around a 20-arge bishop, a agobard of Leon, reported widespread popular panic arising from suspected magical destruction of crops by hillstorms and other means. Abigail himself argued that storms can only arise naturally or by divine causation, but evidently a lot of people didn't think so. They were worried about witches and they lynched several suspected magicians or witches. In 829, a church council at Paris, again,

issued a proclamation condemning all magical practices. This was because the important intellectual authority harbana's maris abit of the monastery of folder from eight twenty two to eight forty two had composed a work titled on magical arts which drew heavily on isador of seville's categorizations and condemnations of magic and divination. But even with all this banning and rooting out going on in eight fifty, a synod at Pavia, complained that magical and superstitious practices were still prevalent, especially magic used to arouse love or hatred and harmful sorcery used to injure or kill. And now accusations of witchcraft even find their way back to the very people in charge.

In a famous case in 855, King Lothair, the second of Lotharinja, present-day portions of Germany, France, and Belgium, divorced his wife who had proven to be barren and married his mistress. An archbishop very much opposed this remarriage, and he accused the mistress of having used magic to prevent the king's wife from successfully conceiving a child. Fucking witch! By the end of the 9th century, Christian authorities in Europe were criticizing magic and superstition more uniformly and were continuing to link magical practices to paganism. All of this only increased as Christian dumb expanded and more and more pagan people

were absorbed into Christian society at the borders of Europe. Around 900 a collection of important documents were rediscovered in a small German village. They supposedly dated from the Council of Angera and 314 CE, but modern historians have actually dated them to around 850. So not really rediscovered, more like just written. Several of the documents were text condemning sorcerers and enchanters, as well as superstitious rights, supposedly still performed before certain trees, stones, or springs as if they were altars.

One began with a specific instruction. Bishop sent the officials and clergy of bishops must labor with all their strength, so that the pernicious art of sotla-gium and malafisium, which was invented by the devil, is eradicated from their districts, and if they find a man or woman follower of this wicked sect, to eject them foully disgraced from their parishes. The document went on to describe how some wicked women who have given themselves back to Satan and been seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons believe and profess that in the hours of the night they ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of the pagans,

and an innumerable multitude of women and the silence of the night traverse great spaces of earth and obey her commands as of their lady and are summoned to her service on certain nights. Hey, Luce de Fina! Sounds like a fucking good time. Summon me to your fucking night, hunts or whatever, great witch. I'll go along with whatever you want to do. All of this sounds a lot like our modern day conception of a witch. This conception of a witch was an amalgamation of classical, Christian, and Germanic thought. The classical part comes from the Greeks and the Romans who believed in groups of spirits that traveled alongside the goddess Hekati, who was associated with Diana.

The Germanic part comes from the myth of the wild hunt, a group of spirits or shades of the dead that would ride behind a goddess named Holda or Holly, a deity associated with fertility in the moon, and of course a notion that it was always demonic that comes from Christianity. These ideas will be replicated a century later by Birchard, Bishop of Worms, who wrote that in the early 11th century about a collection of canon law and earlier church rulings. Like earlier writers, he forbade any Christian to consult with, or otherwise solicit, magicians, or diviners, whose practices he labeled as pagan customs. He also condemned the pagan traditions of worshiping the sun and moon, or reading particular meaning into eclipses or other astral signs. He condemned various spells used for protecting animals from disease or death,

controlling the weather, and arousing love or hatred. He also forbade any Christian to participate in rights or observances performed before various stones, trees or crossroads in the manner of pagans. But Burtchart also added another thing, which had often been implicit in Christian thought before that Christianity would always triumph over these dark forces. Now made explicit. Fuck you, witches. Not today, Satan. Go on, get.

The Treaty of Witchcraft is the foolish errors of misguided and unadicated people, uneducated people, tricked or diluted by demons rather than as serious threats to Christian society. With all of Europe basically under Christian rule now, it isn't hard to see where he got that idea. It was basically a little victory lap and a way to keep people on their toes, right? Christianity won, woo! But don't get lazy!

You gotta stay vigilant. For every vigilant, when it comes to pesky-ass demons. With much of European Christian now, people were somewhat allowed to practice pagan rights alongside Christian worship, producing a harmonious synthesis during this period. Wasn't as much fear of pagan rights competing with Christianity at this time. And perhaps rulers of the day just felt like it'd be easier to let their people keep a few of their old traditions, right? Keeps morale up, chances of uprisings lowered.

Indeed, it seems like most people still did their old, old rituals, simply substituting Christ where they would have said the name of a pagan god before. Right, here are some examples. One book, Bald Leach Book. Sounds like a riveting read. I wrote about how to care for a horse that had fallen ill because it had been elf-shot. Fucking elves. It recommended making an ointment out of doxied and Scottish wax that had now been blessed by having 12 masses set over to apply it along with holy water to the afflicted animal. Right?

The combining of pagan and Christian beliefs. Another manuscript described in a enormously long and complex ritual for restoring fertility to fields ruined by harmful magic. The ceremony involved taking natural elements from the field, clumps of sod, bits of plant, the milk of animals, and now blessing them with masses, fashioning symbolic crosses, invoking divine power through Christ, Mary, the evangelist, and other saints, as well as Saint-Priors. Indeed most common people didn't care what they said or who they really worshiped, just

that it had the intended beneficial effect. But then over subsequent centuries, Christian authorities would continue to worry that these rituals weren't quite Christian enough. That people weren't appropriately schooled in the differences between divine and demonic power. You know, it would go too far in their practices and succumb to evil forces.

When error was suspected, authorities would fall back on the strict categories of pagan versus Christian, demonic versus divine, until the problem had blown over and harmony could exist again. Excuse me. As the early Middle Ages turned to the high Middle Ages, around a thousand C, farming got bigger or sorry, excuse me, farming got better. Cities got bigger and trade took off.

Developments you might think would usher in a, a, a less concerned with magic, but that couldn't be further from the truth. New universities to train religious and civil workers for a widening bureaucracy meant that there were more people to debate the nature of magic on the stars of demons, of natural elements, a more literate population meant that riding on witchcraft could be widely disseminated and discussed. And a bigger state bureaucracy meant more people would be able to investigate charges of witchcraft. And that won't be good for many. But also, people still practice witchcraft, or something that could be considered witchcraft, frequently, and without

drawing significant attention at this time. This witchcraft had a crucial societal role. The most basic purpose for magical rights, items, and spells was to heal. Unsurprising in a world fraught with injury and disease, but lacking effective means to treat these problems. In the Middle Ages, most medical services were provided by barber surgeons, midwives, and village healers. While such people often had considerable practical knowledge of the workings of the human body, they also employed, you know, a wide variety of charms, amulets, herbal potions, and other shit that for sure blurred the line between medicine and magic. In addition to healing, magical practices were also used to ward off disease and to provide

protection for potential injuries. The health of animals too was a major concern, and healing and protective magic focused on domestic animals was a very common. Likewise, the health of crops was a critical concern, and fertility rights were frequently practiced. But the belief in harmful magic was also prevalent, magic capable of causing injury, illness, or death, controlling the will or befuddling the mind, causing animals to fall ill or become infertile, causing crops to wither and bringing storms and hail. There were even a whole days when things just had a bad magical vibe. Throughout the medical ages, the belief was also widespread that certain days were inherently

ill-oamned, especially the so-called Egyptian days, which derived from the ancient Roman belief that Egyptian magicians had determined certain days to be unlucky. Usually they were held to be two Egyptian days each month, although some sources gave other numbers, occasionally as many as 32 per year. That's a lot of fucking shitty days. Don't worry, you can protect yourself with a special spell. These can be practiced by getting a root, picked at a certain time a day,

or a stone polished while reciting certain words. Sometimes these things were combined with medicine, the leaves of a certain tree were said to provide relief from fevers, but only if one wrote an invocation of the Holy Trinity on them in Latin and said the Lord's prayer over them on three consecutive mornings before giving them to the patient. They even used hosts, the Christian term for a piece of bread, transformed to the body

of Christ, to protect fields, cure disease, and ensure fertility. Women might even hold the host in their mouths as they kissed a man in order to incite passionate love, a lot of melding of Christianity and magic here. Carrying the names of the three biblical magi on one person was widely believed to ward off epileptic fits. There was also a specific series of various names of God that supposedly offer protection. It's fire, water, weapons, and poison of all kinds.

There were, of course, or those were, of course, inscribed on gems and jewelry, among the favorite objects for magical inscription, at least among the upper levels of European society in the Middle Ages. Less wealthy people had to settle for, you know, fucking wooden stuff. You've got to take your inscription on what you can afford to have it put on. One source of scribes, a seemingly nonsensical phrase that could be inscribed on a wand of hazelwood.

If a man took this wand, hit a woman three times on the head, then Kister, she would supposedly fall in love with him. Fuck sake, literally beating women with sticks to court them and sexually assault them. Lutzfinnage just shot me a look of don't even fucking try it, pencil dick. Not sure why she felt the need to add the pencil dick part. There were literally dozens of applications for magic for mediating all kinds of relationships. Take this one ritual. To determine the sex of an unborn baby, salt could be placed on the head of a pregnant woman while she slept.

Upon waking, if she first spoke a male name, she'd have a son. But if she spoke a female name, she'd have a daughter. So no whether a woman had been unfaithful in her marriage, a magnet might be placed behind her head while she slept. If unfaithful, she would fall out of the bed. If people were suspected of theft, they could be given a piece of bread on which a certain formula had been written. Theaves would be unable to swallow such bread, while the innocents would have no difficulty

eating it. Must have sucked that time for people with no teeth to be accused of theft, especially dry mouth. Another method of identifying a thief was to gather several suspects together in a room, draw the image of an eye on the wall, and then drive a copper nail into it. The guilty person would definitely cry out when that happened. Did that ever fucking work? It doesn't be a good way to convict dumb, anxiety riddle folks who were just quick to panic. From the 1200 to the 1400s, intellectual activity in Europe became more vibrant than it had been since the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Universities sprung up to educate young men, many of these young men should became interested

in a new scholarly pursuit of magic. This included astronomy closely related to astral magic, and of course, alchemy. Alchemy is defined as a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy, practice in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and concern principally with discovering methods for transmuting baser metals into gold and with finding a universal solvent and in a lixer of life. Yeah, no big whoops, just try and turn whatever shit you have around your house into gold and give you immortality. That's all alchemy is.

Or define as any magical power or process of transmuting the common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value. Or finally, any seemingly magical process of transforming or combining elements into something new. Alchemy had developed an antiquity and survived in the Byzantine East, but re-entered the West via Arabic texts in the 12th century. The first known translation to Latin of an Arabic al-Kamal treatisee, or treatise, excuse me, was that made by Robert of Chester in 1144.

I don't know why I love his name so much. I am Robert of Chester. That's a nice friendly ring to it. My patient would be a nice guy. I am Robert of Chester. Sorry. Since al-Kami seen more closely related to science, it was rarely condemned by religious authorities, even though they were distinctly magical overtones to alchemy.

For one, many basic metals were believed to be connected to heavenly bodies, gold with the sun, silver with the moon, quick silver with mercury, iron with Mars, lead with Saturn. Alchemists had to take the astral forces into account when they performed their experiments. Since alchemy also claimed to be able to unlock occult properties and substances, it could allegedly be used to distill potent healing potions or poisons or purify other materials for use in magical rituals. Some alchemists were even kept at courts as entertainers performing simple chemistry tricks, you know, with chemicals like today's magicians would do.

At the same time, many scholastic authorities tried to link manipulation of the natural world, even in ways like these, with demons and demonology. And generally they concluded that demons were able to control most aspects of the natural world, and that they possessed a great deal of occult knowledge, such as they could produce many wondrous effects. But theologians decided some powers were forbidden to them. They could not, for example, control human will, although they could generate bodily impulses and appetites to which weak willed people might respond. They could also not alter essential substances, although they could manipulate the air around

objects or simply manipulate human organs of perception so that changes would appear to occur. Of course, everything they did was subject to the ultimate authority of God. Yet authorities were convinced that by calling on demons, magicians could achieve a multitude of effects and they now offer detailed explanations for how specific magical results were attained. Their work would lay a foundation for serious, quote unquote, academic proof of the range of demonic powers, adding to the growing seriousness with which all varieties of magical practice were regarded. And it was around this time that the Prince of Demon Satan also became a more you know defined figure. Interesting it took this long right well over a thousand

years after the death of Christ. In Hebrew tradition Satan was an ambiguous figure, but the New Testament clarified that Satan was rebellious angel cast down from heaven. But even so he wasn't yet depicted as the figure that tempted and manipulated human beings, or if he was, he could easily be outwitted by clever monks or wily peasants. But that was about to change, owning also to the rise of the university. With so many people now studying magic, the fear became not that people would summon demons or the devil via misapplied pagan rituals, but purposefully, based on the dark aughts, they had immersed themselves in.

These dark arts were called necromancy by religious authorities that condemned them. Those accused of being necromancers were virtually always clerics, the ones who had the literate ability and time to study it. Necromancy allegedly involved complex rituals, sometimes taking days or weeks, usually within something called a magical circle, a form traced in the earth, or drawn on a piece of paper apartment. The circles were then filled with symbols, and in some cases an offering, animals like bats or birds, or else milk, honey, cheese, or any other type of material.

These offerings would lend credence to religious authorities' ideas that these summoners weren't in charge of the demons they summoned, that they were worshipping them as powerful deities whose will they followed. Necromancy can be used for just about everything creating illusions arousing love or hatred divining the future inflicting physical harm and even curing disease. And of course in modern usage raising an army of the dead, fear me for I'm a great necromancer. Fuck out bro. I'm the zombie king. But even though necromancy could achieve good or bad ends, it always involved demons.

Now, it was big no no with the church. It would come to be considered a type of heresy, a deliberate error emerging not from outside Christianity and the realm of the pagans, but from inside the church. And concerns over heresy would grow and grow eventually not only applying to the educated and elite, but to anyone thought to practice magic. One effect of this was the increased scrutiny of Jewish people, often depicted as sharing many of the same characteristics as heretics, and suspected now of being sorcerers. Here we go again with the suspicion of others. Christian religious students, the overwhelming amount of literate people that used literacy to study religion, they were obviously almost always studying God, they were studying holy

and righteous things, but what would the Jews up to? They didn't worship Christ, so kind of devilish by default, and if they're studying shit, it sure it's f**k isn't the New Testament, so what is it? Just a Torah or some dark arts, Necromancy, burn the witch. Not helping the Jews, they did engage in common magical practices of all sorts, just as Christian to the time still did. But because they were Jews, there was the assumption that their magic was much more devilish. Jews were depicted as kidnapping and killing Christian children as part of demonic rights.

The same charges. That would be later leveled against people suspected of being sorcerers and witches and with all this goddamn Heresy around a new full-time job was created by the church the inquisitor. Oh shit. They were tasked with the repression of all this damn heresy Before that it's simply been the job of the bishops But in 1184 Pope Lucius the second or the third Issued the decree in order to abolish or the third issued the decree in order to abolish. Formally condemning all forms of heresy

and ordering all bishops to conduct a thorough inquiry, at least once or twice every year, into suspected heresy in their diocese. And with an expanding bureaucracy, both of civil systems in the church, a new figurehead would come to perform these actions. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX authorized the first papally appointed inquisitors.

This also had another aim. The church, though they wanted people to be afraid of witchcraft, also didn't want people taken shit into their own hands. In 1075, for example, citizens of Cologne threw a woman from the town wall because they thought she was practicing dark arts. Little bit fucked up. 1128, the people of Ghent eviscerated in Enchantress and paraded her fucking gutted stomach around town, proved somehow of her evil witchy ways. And just

to put fucked up. And there were other, you know, many other examples. The church wanted the justice process to go specifically through them, not anybody else. They wanted to be the ones to needlessly torture the fuck out of people. And they developed a system to determine who needed some torturing. And inquisitor along with a small staff would arrive in a town or a village and enlisting the support of local clerics and secular officials, he would preach a public sermon, usually a fairly pointed one focused on the evils of heresy. He would then call for people to come forward with confessions, accusations, or merely suspicions. And that was when I imagined everyone in the village got real fucking nervous. Having assembled a list of suspects, he would then proceed with

his investigation, questioning the accused, and calling other people to testify, and then torturing the fuck out of people. There were no limits to what inquisitors could do to make sure the devil didn't infect the village, right? Glory be to Geliad under his eye on the wall. They go. The torturing would of course become a hallmark of later witch hunts. This paranoia would be fueled by a series of major famines that hit Europe between 315 and 317, decimating a good chunk of the population and food supply. Then beginning in 1348, the black death, the pestilence, the plague swept across Europe, killing the third of the population. And people wanted to know why is this shit happening to them? Are they being punished?

Well, the church was happy to tell them it was the devil. It was demons. And it was the humans who brought the devil and demons into the world, fucking witches and warlocks most of blame. Spiratic outbakes, outbreaks of plague, would continue for the rest of this century, and then as schism in the church would degrade the Pope's authority significantly, giving them little opportunity to wrestle the decimated countryside

back into the church's control. It was under this atmosphere of chaos and gloom and destruction that inquisitors established their practice. One woman's investigation, we clearly lay out the template for which trials later to come. Alice Kytler of Kilkenny had aroused a good deal of local resentment by outliving several husbands from whom she had gained considerable wealth.

Among her principal opponents were some of these men's children by other marriages, right? They wanted her money. They felt Alice used dark arts to deny them their appropriate inheritances. They suspected Alice used dark arts to deny them their appropriate inheritances. They suspected Alice had somehow enchanted their fathers with magic, and perhaps done away with him by magical means as well. When Alice's fourth husband began to get sick in 1324, charges were brought before the local bishop. Ultimately, Alice and a group of accomplices were accused of having renounced the Christian faith, worshipping demons, and let's get real theatrical, gathering at night at a literal crossroads to offer

sacrifices to demons, Alice even supposedly had a demonic familiar. Who was her lover? Dun dun dun, a demon fucking witch! Many of the charges rested on the confession of one of Alice's servants who was fucking tortured at great length to extract that confession, then burned alive with a stake for her involvement in the crimes. That same year, the prominent inquisitor, but Nad Gwee, would complete his book, The Practice of Inquisition into Heuretical Depravity.

A comprehensive manual of inquisitorial procedures that outlined who practiced which kinds of magic and how they ought to be investigated Not even elites were exempt from the wrath of these inquisitors in 1398 to Augusta Augusta Augusta Oh my god Augusta Dinean monks were executed in Paris after they failed in their attempts to relieve the intermittent madness of the French King Charles the Sixth And then accused his brother Louis of all leans of having used magic against him.

That charge rebounded back on them and they paid for it with their lives. Meanwhile, Louis' wife also accused of practicing sorcery and after Louis's death in 1407, charges of magic would circulate against him. The accusations could find the way to anybody now, especially those who have been practicing what to them were probably routine rituals. They've been doing for decades. In 1428 in the Italian town of Tote, a woman named Mattesusia Francisco Lamborghini Balodaro, Pamirjano, Tulsa Pala, Toro Banderas, or something like that, was initially accused of casting curative spells and performing various types of love magic, including brewing potions, both to incite desire

and to serve as contraceptives. But with the necromantic fervor and full swing, her magic would come to be associated with much more sinister activities. In the course of her trial, she was also charged with murdering children as a literal strict, as his fucking demon monster, of traveling to a diabolical gathering at distant Benavento in order to worship demons. This marked another important turning point. Now, magic now being regarded as a collective or conspiratorial act. Before men and women had been accused of consorting with demons, but typically not in collaboration with other conspirators. Right? Now, members of these sects were still generally called Malafisi, men or Malafasi women, but the meaning of Malafisium

itself took on an added connotation. The term no longer meant just harmful magic or even demonic magic, but now also implied participation in a diabolical cult, cult, cult, a witch's covenant or covenant. She would be in this idea of a deep social conspiracy among a group of people would spread like wildfire. As Matasusia Francisky was sent to the flames of Tote and 1428, right? Burn in the witch. Trails were taken place in the Alpine region of the lair that claimed, perhaps as many as a hundred victims. Bans! So many witches! One 15th century author would describe these sorcerers as members of a large cult, meeting in secrets, nocturnal gatherings where they would force where their Christian faith, worship

demons, engage in sexual orgies, and feast on the flesh of babies. Illuminati, right? And people are still legitimately worried about the same outrageously ludicrous shit today, right? Say, Tannik panic, still going strong in certain circles. I find it continually disturbing. Soon these charges would expand to include stereotypes. We now associate with witches like a pact between witches and demons written in blood. First mentioned in the mid-1430s. And it was around this time that the stereotype

more and more would fall on women. Devil women, always trying to trick and seduce us innocent men would fall on women. Devil women, always trying to trick and seduce us innocent men and steal our wholesome man's souls and play with our innocent men winners. Religious authorities and so-called educated Christian philosophers claimed that since women were inferior to men, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Obviously. They were also more prone to demonic temptations. You simple ladies can't help yourselves. According to the church, you're kind of like dogs, maybe cats, cute, good to have around the house, but mentally inferior.

You know not what you do. Losing wants to fucking destroy this studio right now. In particular, since women are obviously also more vain and more carnal, tamtrises, demons could quickly seduce them with appeals to their beauty and promises of sex. And this was all written by men, of course, that women are the hornier sex.

Does that literally ring true for fucking anyone listening? I know women get horny. I know many women have very powerful sex drive. Hell yeah, hell is the fena, but the hornier sex overall, nah, consistently across many different studies and measures, men have been shown time and time again to have more frequent, more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts

about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation on and on and on. Lucifina knows we're chasing her a lot more than she's chasing us. And the fuckers who wrote all this shit way back when I bet they knew that too, but they didn't write it because you know women were easy targets to demonize. They didn't have power. They weren't officers of the state or the church demonizing them. Very little risk associated with that. It was just a low hanging fruit for a power hungry mother

fuckers. These medieval male authors also said women were quicker to anger than men. And so they sought out or so they sought power to strike out of their enemies. And since all women obviously constantly gossiped, this is all what they're fucking saying. Once one woman attained access to demonic power, she would soon spread this knowledge to others through her gossiping to her fucking covenant fellow witches. Oh, he's covered. It's not coming. Sorry. I think it's Covenant. Damn it. Anyway, from from 1350 to 1400 women would compromise the majority of those accused of witchcraft, just under 60% from 1400 to 1450. This would jump to over 70% and then it would continue to increase

its time would go on for a while. 1459 and 1460 several witch trials took place in the French town of Eris leading to the arrest of 34 people and the execution for a while. 1459 and 1460 several witch trials took place in the French town of Eris, leading to the arrest of 34 people and the execution of a dozen. Based on these trials, Johannes Tinktaurus wrote on the sect of witches in 1460, in which he once again reiterated that witches were a kind of cult. Though not widely read, works like these will serve as sources years later for preachers looking for material to include in sermons, which meant they would eventually find their way to a wide audience. They'll influence authors of later more popular works as well.

And books like these also provided some of the first visual depictions of witches. And illuminated manuscript of Tink Taurus's treatise contained an elaborate illustration of witches worshipping the devil in the form of a goat. And so the devil and goat association begins. Other depictions will show witches riding on broomsticks, which may have been at least partially based on beliefs common in Alpine regions at this time that sorcerers would fly to distant mountains to create storms and hail, right? So that association begins.

Then in 1486, right before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, the most famous treatise on which craft ever written would appear. Malias Malafikharam, the hammer of witches. This will be the most popular book printed in Europe next to the Bible for over a hundred years. This work is commonly attributed to two German inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Springer. But many now think that Kramer was most likely the sole author.

Kramer was a Dominican friar and an early inquisitor in modern day south Germany. He was also an abrasive figure who often aroused antagonism and encountered significant resistance from various local authorities as he attempted to pursue his investigations. He was a super zealot who even other zealots were like, calm, the fuck down with the witch shit dude. He complained about hindrances to his inquisitions in 1484 though to Pope innocent the 8th who responded by issuing the proclamation desiring with greatest order in which he stated his alarm at Kramer's reports of widespread witchcraft in German lands and he explicitly

authorized Kramer and Spranger to take action against any and all suspected witches. And it's an also ordered all officials, ecclesiastic and secular, to cooperate fully with the inquisitors and their investigations. Now the torturing motherfuckers have more power than ever to ban the witches. Opposition didn't go away entirely, however, and Kramer had to abandon many of his early efforts, so he started to write a book. And he would publish it alongside the Pope's decree, given it an heir of authority that it didn't actually have. The first argument Kramer advances in Malius was that all those who maintained witchcraft

was not a heresy. Were themselves guilty of heresy? This was the clear shot at anyone who tried to impede their investigations. Right? How fucked? Oh, you're standing up for some poor old woman accused of witchcraft? You don't want her to be burned alive? Okay, Satan.

We have plenty more logs for the fire. There's room for you to. This attack on anyone defending someone accused of witchcraft will obviously lead to so many more burnings. A lot of blood will end up on Kramer's hands. It's almost like he's the evil one. Kramer produced the longest, most detailed work on witchcraft yet written. In addition to describing the nature of witchcraft as a diabolical heresy and presenting extensive

accounts of the supposed activities of witches, the Malleus also served as a practical handbook, laying out precisely how inquisitors or other authorities should proceed in cases of witchcraft. Most famously, the Malleus dwelled on the gendered nature of witchcraft, much more so than earlier accounts, and more than many later ones as well. Indeed, the almost exclusive association of witchcraft with women was perhaps the work's most original point, based off of former authors who made the tie between femininity and demonic activity, but expanding it so that those who conjured demons were almost always exclusively female. It also accused these female witches essentially of attacking masculinity at its source.

One story Kramer recounted was this, and they was in the town of Mezbeck, in the diocese of Constance, a certain young man who was bewitched in such a way that he could never perform the Connell act with any woman except one. And many have heard him tell that he had often wished to refuse that woman and take flight to other lands. But that, Heathrow, he had been compelled to rise up in the night and come very quickly back, sometimes overland, and sometimes to the air as if he were flying. Her devil pussy trapped him.

That poor bastard, he just could not stop fucking her. Damn you Satan! Why'd you make that evil push so sweet? This if he'd just chuckled, you appreciate some sarcasm. Another story went, in the town of Ratasbon, a certain young man who had an intrigue with a girl wishing to leave her, lost his member. That is to say, some glamour was cast over it so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his own impotent, in his worry over this, he went to a tavern to drink wine and after he had

sat there for a while, he got to a conversation with another woman who was there and told her the cause of his sadness, explaining everything, and demonstrating in his body that it was so. So he shows her his deck. The woman was astute and asked whether he suspected anyone, and when he named such a one unfolding the whole matter, she said, if persuasion is not enough, you must use some violence to endorse, to induce her to restore to you your health. So in the evening, the young man watched the way by which the witch was in the habit of going and Finding her prayed her to restore to him the health of his body and when she maintained that she was innocent and knew nothing about it

He fell upon her and winding it out tightly about her neck choked her saying unless you give me back my health you shall die at my hands Then she being unable to cry out and growing growing black, said, let me go, and I will heal you. The young man then relaxed the pressure of the towel, and the witch touched him with a hand between the thighs, saying, now you have what you desire. And the young man, as he afterwards said, plainly felt before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him by the mere touch of the witch. It must in no way be believed that such members are rightly torn right away from the body, but that they are hidden by the devil through some press to digitorial, so that they can be neither seen nor felt.

Uh, this guy just used some accusation of witchcraft, and sexually assault this lady. Sure sounds like, uh, what happened? Sounds like he was just a fucking, uh, you know, dude just having some impotence problems. And I don't know, mad at some woman and fucking, this is ridiculous. This fucked up book also advocated for torture and burning witches at the stake. It was widely influential. And again, super popular printed in 14 separate editions between 1486 and 1520. It was like an adrenaline shot for decades when it came to witch hunts.

They would continue until the middle 1500s, but then would taper off as important skeptical voices began to speak out against the abuses seen at witch trials. In 1515, the young legal scholar Andrea Alessiate condemned witch hunts that had taken place in the Italian Alps and his report on witches, labeling these trials a new holocaust. Even in the 16th century, not every mind was medieval, that is very nice to hear, and I find that inspiring. In 1519, in the city of Metz, in Alsace, the humanist scholar Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Netisheim, what a fucking name. Rest his life by coming into the defense of an old woman accused of witchcraft by the

Dominican and quizzter, Nicholas Savini, arguing that the woman was senile and deluded and not some servant of the devil. A gripper was himself a student and practitioner of learned magic. He wrote a major study on a cult philosophy when he was only 24, although he didn't allow it to be published for many years because he was afraid of being killed for heresy. Throughout his life, he defended himself against charges that his own magical activities involved the supplication and worship of demons.

Skeptics like a gripper were influenced by the intellectual movement of humanism, which developed an opposition to the medieval intellectual system of scholasticism. Humanism accepted that demons in the devil had power in the world and readily believed in witchcraft, but disavowed excessive legal prosecutions and overzealous prosecutors who pursued innocent victims. Their efforts would lead to a decrease in both the pursuit of and belief in witches with

figures like Martin Luther writing in 1516 that while witches had been common in his youth, they were now not so many. But in later times of paranoia and chaos, accusations of witchcraft would pick up again, and there would be writers to describe them and terrify their audiences further feeding into the fervor. Published in 1563, the book true and horrifying deeds of 63 witches recounted a group of executions at the Vizenstik, a small principality of around 5,000 inhabitants in the highly fragmented southwestern region of the German Empire. This pamphlet described the first major hunt in what would become the region of the most intense witch hunting activity in Europe.

That same year, the English parliament passed a new act, making witchcraft a capital crime, and similarly, harsh legislation was approved in Scotland. Within only a few years in 1566, Protestant England had its first known witch trial. At Chelmisfert in the South east of England, three women were accused and one was ultimately executed. For the rest of the century, which panics would hit various areas of Europe? Let's examine a few now. We'll begin with France. Numerous trials began in the reign in the 1570s, including some conducted by Nicholas Remy, who wrote that he personally condemned between 800 and 900 witches, killed

way more innocent people than any serial killer in history. This was no data significant exaggeration, but still from 181580 until 1620 local authorities did execute close to 2,000 people in this duchy, giving the reign one of the largest total known numbers of witchcraft executions in Europe. Now, let's head north, right? It's two thousand, still way more than any circular. At one point referred to as the witch hunting capital of Scandinavia, the country of Denmark bore a witness to some of early modern Europe's most systematically orchestrated witch trials.

In the latter portion of the 1500s, Denmark became the first country in northern Europe to officially sanction the trial, conviction, and execution of a witch. The civil courts would do their best to pass legislation that trying to figure out just what a witch was in a supposedly rational manner unrelated to religion, a 1617 act divided witchcraft by two discernible categories with varying degrees of punishment for each. Those found to have made a pact with the actual devil and thus freely having forfeit their Christian baptism for satanic pleasure, of course burned at stake as they should have been burned the which other individuals practicing the so-called secret arts primarily the cunning men and

wise women engage in the use of folk magic or folk healing they were just issued a hefty fine and then you know exiled from the land the Danish kings orders also legally bound people to report threats within their community and turn to perceive moral obligation into a legislative tool to persecute undesirables. Failing to divulge information concerning witchcraft and magical practitioners not only became religious negligence, but also put a person at risk of facing their own trial and imprisonment. Following the act, the years from 1617 to 1625 would be referred to as the Great Witch Hunt. Despite the religious aspects, dividing or driving the implementation

of the Witchcraft Act of 1617, and supposed fear of satanic infiltration, nearly half of the trials and accusations in Denmark held an economic element of their core. In total of the recorded 1519 trials in the country's history, In total of the recorded 1519 trials in the country's history, 735 of these stem from allegations surrounding crimes with a primarily economic impact, either directly or indirectly. That's not a coincidence. The case of Bull Dild, Harsher Doctor, encapsulates the Danish criteria for conviction along with reiterating the notion of which isn't as instigators of economic complications. Baudille's troubles began with her own mother, Ingborg, who denounced her as a witch while

she was being tortured following her own conviction for witchcraft. Though she was never charged, Baudille's reputation had been soiled, right? Like her mother was executed several years later, 1614, the same man who accused her mom and testified against her now accused Baudille to witchcraft, 1614, the same man who accused her mom and testified against her now accused Bowdild of witchcraft, this motherfucker, the bane of her existence, a accuser of witchcraft and harassment in the year since Inborg's execution. A witness Hans Svetlfeger alleged that Bowdild had entered his home on one occasion and watched him brew beer and silence.

Oh no, how terrifying. She silently watched him brew beer and silence. Oh no, how terrifying. She silently watched him brew some beer. He set upon her departure, the yeast stopped processing, causing the barrel to fill with bubbles and ruin the brew, fucking which ruined his beer with the devil's help. Although no verbal threats were made, sphere figure was certain that there was no coincidence

and bowdealed was the one to blame for his misfortune. Her unannounced entering of people's homes was apparently not an unheard of complaint as shown by surviving court records, undoubtedly adding to her already rocky reputation. Her social ruin following her mother's accusations, her reputed rudeness and penchant for entering other people's homes, and her perceived ability to destroy her neighbor's livelihoods, all coupled together unquestionably and led to Baudille's demise. From England, the panic spread to Scotland in 1589, where Princess Anne of Denmark left

by ship to Mary King James the Sixth of Scotland, who would later become James I of England. After storms almost wrecked the ship carrying the Princess to Scotland, the royal couple met in Norway to be married, but storms also struck the ship carrying the new fluids back to Scotland. When the Danish minister of finance was accused of under-equipping the ships for the storms, he then accused a group of women in Copenhagen of casting spells, obviously, to raise bad weather they totally fucked him. What a classic passing of the buck.

What? Me? No! It's not my fault the ships were ill look. They were equipped just fine That's why I quit the shit out of those ships with some fucking witches do my efforts One of the suspects a woman named Anna Coldings named five other women as witches who all admitted under extreme torture Of course all of these confessions happen under torture They had sent the devil to climb up the kill of the ship carrying the princess and not kill them, but just, you know, fuck around with supplies because that's what the devil does. Oh boy.

1590 and 1591 Scottish officials in Edinburgh put these witches on trial calling them the North Burwick witches so called because they supposedly gathered at regular sabbaths at North Burwick, some 25 miles east of the capital James observed portion of the trials and they may have inspired the interest of witchcraft and let him to write his book demonology coldings and 12 other women were burned to the stake in 1590 things would stay fucking bachelors crazy in scyland for a long time five intense panic occurred in scy Scotland between 1590 and 1662, with around 2500 of the country's roughly one million residents being accused and executed for witchcraft. Five

times the average European rate per capita. 85% of the accused and executed were women, nearly all of whom were charged with having sex with the devil in addition to being Coral Sim with neighbors or and or a spouse, I think the Coralsem part is what got them killed. Following torture during her 1644 trial, Margaret Watson admitted that she and other witches dug up corpses and turned the deceased into the s7s necromancers. She's also recorded as claiming that Malay Patterson or Mally Patterson, excuse me, rode upon a cat, Janet Lockey, wrote upon a cock,

Hales Fina, right, neck cock, Janet. I know the mean rooster. And she herself wrote upon a bundle of straw in order to reach burial grounds and resurrect the dead. Moe Necromancy. As I kind of mentioned earlier, if these witches really were this powerful, then how did they let these other fucking schmucks capture torturing cut just right away on your magic? Raise some zombies to kill them. Many Halliburton was accused by her husband in 1649 of bringing the devil into their home and after hours and hours of agonizing torture, including the use of thumbscrews, spiked collars, pricking and sleep deprivation, she confessed that she did indeed fornicate with the devil and had access to forbidden knowledge. As an

older woman who likely argued with her husband based on his accusations against her, Haliburna is a prime example of the typical kind of individual accused of and executed for witchcraft. But I'm guessing by the time she confessed, she just wanted to die to be released from the pain of her torture. Another place where witch trials were abundant was Sicily. Between, oh, and I should back up for a second action and just add, you know, divorce was hard to get at this time.

So if you were some guy who just really, really hated your wife a lot and wanted to get rid of her, well, good way to do that accuser of being a witch. Another place where witch trials were money, yeah, as I said, was Sicily between the years of 1579 and 1651, a total of 65 witchcraft cases, a to which involve men are recorded in Sicily as involving the fairy folk. So that's fun. Belief in these beans was commonplace in both Sicily and Italy. Going as far back as the early medieval period and continued well on after the Inquisition,

despite efforts to eliminate supernatural and non-Christian beliefs. Many of the accused felt no shame for having faith in fairies, nor did they understand how they could be perceived as dangerous by the church. Simultaneously, many victims of the trials are also recorded in the stating that the fairy folk became angry when discussing God of the Virgin Mary. But again, when you're being tortured, a threat with torture, you're going to say whatever, you know, you think the people torturing you want you to say. The most famous of the Sicilian fairy witch trials is referred to as the case of the Fischerwife of Palermo. It took place in 1588 under the Sicilian fairy witch trials is referred to as the case of the official wife of Palermo. It took place in 1588 under the Sicilian Inquisition.

The woman her name lost a history describes in her confession, one of the first records of supposed contact between humans and elves in Sicily, and is remarkably similar to the testimony of later fairy witch trials. I just fucking love that that was a thing. It was a whole category of fairy witch trials. Proving the belief, you know, in these angels was commonplace in Sicilian society. She begins her tale by discussing how as an eight-year-old, she flew through the night on the back of a goat, okay, as an eight-year-old does, with a group of women to a large field

in Benavento, where a beautiful lady in a red-colored teenage boy sat on a throne. So there's teenage del. Later, the group of women with whom she arrived, referring to herself as Ensign, told the young girl that she would also be beautiful and rich with countless men to have sex with for only the price of allegiance to the king and queen of fairies. Additionally, the child was not to worship God of the Virgin Mary with the Ensign adding that discussion of such matters was considered root amongst the fairy-foam. The official wife admits she agreed freely, signed her name in a book, filled with strange characters and letters, right, gives her soul over to the devil, accepting the fairies

as her god and goddess to worship for the remainder of her life. During her interrogation, a priest explained the great sin of foregoing allegiance with god, but the woman contested she went along with the activities of the fairy folk, as her time spent with them made her incredibly happy. These beings additionally gave her medicine and knowledge to cure the sick, allowing her to bring in money and be free from poverty. She staunchly refused to claims of dreaming all this up when pressed during questioning, and rebuked the notion that fairies were a relic of a sinful pagan past.

Although her meetings with the fairy folk were non-corpulous, she insisted that the events truly took place, and that by astral projection she was able to meet with her newfound gods and enjoy the pleasures of the realm of Benevento. She was undoubtedly probably schizophrenic, right? A good number of witches burned alive or otherwise punished where people suffering from serious mental illness I'm sure. She was also the rare witch she owned Mercy. Her trial concluded that she had even though she thought she didn't, she had just dreamed all that shit up, and she was not killed. Similarly, to Sicily, there was another place where local traditions ran up against the church, Iceland. Iceland's original inhabitants brought with them the beliefs and practices of the old Norse paganism that over time

would begin to transform and resemble a piece of more uniquely Icelandic culture. Geographical isolation meant that the conversion to Christianity came much later and even following Christian influence, paganism and magic continued to be practiced with little interference. This meant that witch trials came later, with appeared from 1604 to 1720, referred to as the Age of Fire. During that time over 200 people were charged with witchcraft, 120 trials took place, 22 people were executed. Back to the overall timeline now. In 18 or excuse me, in 15, 84, slight difference than three centuries later, a English member of parliament, Reginald Scott, publishes the discovery of

witchcraft. In it, he lists 212 authors whose works in Latin, he had consulted, and 23 authors who wrote in English. He studied the superstitions respecting witchcraft and courts of law and country districts, setting himself to prove that belief in witchcraft and magic went against both religion and reason. He argued that spiritualistic manifestations were either outright lies on the part of witnesses or evidence of their mental disturbance, so just starting to think finally this might be mental illness. A regional to apparently recognize something that sociologists and historians would write extensively about centuries later Which was that people accused of which craft were often pariahs in their communities

All right Everything about them their social standing their habits even their looks mark them as others About some witch suspects from Kent that he knew he said that they were quote, women whom he found commonly old, lame, blueride, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles. Man, fucking, not holding anything back. Said they were also lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces to the horror of all that see them. Regional described one of these women Anna Whittle, who would later be executed as a

very old, withered, spent, and decrepit creature. Her sight almost gone, her lips ever chattered and walking, but no man knew what. And they fucking executed her. How fucking sad? Elderly women, struggling with dementia, probably physical deformities. Women not perceived as attractive, right? Single women with no one to look after them

in this culture, killed because people are irrationally afraid of them, killed because they just fucking creeped others out. You know, targeted because they were so vulnerable. People probably just wanted their money. Who was gonna stand up for them? Meanwhile, folks across the pond now coming across a different kind of witch.

The Native American shapeshifter. In 1584, English adventurers Sir Walter Raleigh pledged to seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory, a promise that led him from the Caribbean to the outer banks of North Carolina in the island of Ronoke. Relief found friendly local natives and apparently fruitful soil, this environment seemed to offer the perfect prospect for the first English colony in the new world. The experience of the Ronoke colony did not follow this pattern of settlement and conquest

though. And we sucked the lost colony of Ronoke quite some time ago here. Just touching on it now. In 1587, a little over 100 settlers came to the island off the North Carolina coast under the leadership of Governor John White. White spent about a month in the new planting, helping to build the village of Raleigh. He then returned to England for supplies, a trip that took much longer than expected because of outbreak of war with Spain. When White returned to Roanoke in 1590, all the settlers had disappeared. The only clue he discovered was a word carved across

two trees, Crow Toad. The name of a local native group, and the nearby island where they lived. But the settlers could not be found there either. Historians have offered many hypotheses of what became of Roanoke, all right? But one, you know, I offered one, fucking spider's got him,

fucking creepy spider's got him. But one that would persist in popular culture throughout the coming decades would be that of evil Native American and shaman. Uh, one of these legends would enter around Virginia dare, the first English child born in North America. Rumors circulated that the young dare was being held captive by local natives and becoming a kind of Indian princess in her adulthood. Desired by a native American shaman, Daer's heart instead belonged to a young warrior. The Jealous shaman transformed Daer into a white doe now who could only be killed by a magic arrow. After a series of tragic errors, the young warrior who truly loved Daer kills her, though her shapeshifting

spirit endured and the people of Eastern North Carolina saw visions of her for centuries. Sometimes the doe spoke in the voice of a woman, in subsequent centuries, these tellings would soothe white anxieties over the brutal nature of the conquest of the new world. In the story of Virginia's tragic end by an evil Native American shaman justified the subsequent removal of Native Americans. And there are, of course, the threatening sexual overtones of the Native American shaman desiring a white woman. In the generation following the disappearance of the Rhoanoke colony, English settlers established permanent and profitable colonies. Calvinist dissenters came from England in 1620,

separatist Calvinist known as the Pilgrims. These first settlers on Plymouth Rock would soon be followed by the Puritans, a much larger sect of dissenting Calvinists, who created the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1630. Puritan ministers saw the founding of the New England colonies as an errand into the wilderness to create a Calvinist utopia, a chance to start over without sin. The new world would become the kingdom of God. But to their great horror, the Puritans found their wide open wilderness full of monsters and witches.

Damn you witches! You're everywhere! We'll catch up with the Puritans more in a bit. First, back in France for a sec. July of 1596, the local administrator and law enforcement officer of the small, Lorraine town of Charm reported the arrest of Bob, wife of Jean Malibab. She was around 60 considered elderly at the time and had fled Charm some months earlier after being called a witch in public. Just as legal proceedings were beginning to be started against her. Until those proceedings began, she and her husband of 27 years have been day-laborers. More recently, they were forced to sell some small plots of land, leaving them with only a house and a garden,

and making them increasingly dependent on charity. After a beating from her husband, the charges alleged, Barb had been seduced by Master Percy, as the devil was often called in the reign of that time, who promised her money in abundance. Months after she left town, the law enforcement officer who charged her of being a witch died, Barb evidently hoped the fervor had died down enough for her to return to Charm. It hadn't, and she was arrested. Shortly thereafter, she tried to hang herself in prison.

When that wasn't successful, she fucking begged it to be put to death without being tortured. She knew what they wanted to do to her. Right? She would not be shown any mercy though. She was tortured for two weeks straight, including being stretched on the rack. And the more she was tortured, the more elaborate her tale of being a witch became. By the end of it, she admitted to at least 20 years in the devil's service. She admitted to killing the cows of neighbors.

She didn't like. And the three horses who belonged to people who had refused to give her charity donations also called alms. She said she'd even killed her neighbor, Claude Basel, because he'd called her an old bigot in which her revenge was to throw powder on Claude's necks or Claude ons or Claude in excuse me inflicted the woman with an illness that killed her 18 months later. To other people, she said she gave lingering illnesses so that their limbs were twisted and they became permanently disabled. Other she said she simply killed, including the servant she'd met in the woods who refused to give her bread. She killed him and broke the necks of his horses, strong magic.

But you know, the same woman can't kill any of her jellers or even distract them enough to make an escape. She said she'd been turned into a cat again by the devil so that she could try to strangle the wife of Claude Hulos, who'd accused Barb of causing a fog on the lake. The plan didn't work, but she still terrified the victim by speaking to her as a cat and subsequently scratching the shit out of her. After Lauren Ruey called her an old witch and accused her of stealing wood from his barn. She wanted to kill him too,

but a wind came in her ear, telling her she had no power over him. So she killed his oxen cows instead. A final torture session had her admitting that she used some kind of devil powder to kill men, women, and children after they refused her homes. Barb even identified three other women

who were fellow witches, and two of these women were arrested and tried Like many other witches Barb claimed that she had been unable to escape the clutches of the devil once she entered his service She also described times in which the devil had told her to do things kill people poison crops But she had refused because those people had been nice to her or she knew that a crop failure would be hard in the entire community When she refused the devil would beat her, throw her great distances. What was markable about Barb's testimony was that she produced an extensive, excuse me, she produced an extensive confession that included just about every contemporary European stereotype about witches, even without hearing this specific charges against her.

Because she confessed before the witnesses had been summoned. Obviously, the story she told were stories that anybody could tell in Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries drawn on a huge reservoir of shared beliefs and fantasies, endlessly recycled as part of everyday experience. Those who accused their neighbors could easily become suspects in their own turn, excuse me, caught up in the remorselessest machinery of local conflict and rumors. Remorseless machinery. So it was a belief system that spread far and wide,

considered rational and simply a part of everyday life. And when Barb probably knew she would have no chance of escaping. On August 6, 1596, Barb was bound to the stake at Charm, burned just enough to feel the fire, then fucking strangled to death before her body was reduced to ashes. They wanted her to hurt as much as possible. All because they thought she might be a witch.

What did she actually do? Not a damn thing. She was a poor labor and a victim of domestic violence. Her and her husband were struggling. He fucking beat her. She fled. She comes back. She gets all this.

Two of the women she accused while being tortured also would be executed the same way, September 3rd. How inverted all of this is, the witches aren't the people behaving in evil ways, but the people putting them on trial and burning them sure are. Many more witch trials would follow in the mid to late 1620s, the central German city of Bamberg found itself in the midst of a major panic over witchcraft. Between 1626 and 1630, civic officials executed around 600 people for this crime. 601 city. Back when less than 15,000 people total lived there. They love to burn the witches back in Bamber. Among the executed was the mayor of the city, Johannes, Jr., or Johannes,ius, fucking Warlock. He was brought into court in the summer of 1628 when other accused witches confessed to having seen him attending

various witches, Sabbaths, including at least one gathering in the town's own electoral council chamber. All the bunch of nonsense, of course, all the bunch of shit people say said while being tortured. Junius maintained his innocence, and so the court turned it to its usual method for obtaining truth. Thumb and leg screws were applied, literally crushing his hands. His legs were broken. He was left lame. His torturers stripped and searched him.

When they found a bluish mark on the left side of his body, they just cut into it three times. He felt no pain, no blood issued for us. So they determined that it was a devil mark, a brand given to juniors by his demonic masters. Finally, they turned to one of the most commonly employed methods of torture used at that period and that place, the stropado binding his arms behind him and attaching them to a rope. They raised juniors up off the ground eight times. He was raised up and then left to or let drop to right before you know, he hit the ground, the rope jerk tight, wrenching his arms backward and excruciatingly painful procedure that dislocated his shoulders.

Throughout all of this, juniors grimly maintained his innocence, but a week later following a further torture, the literally broken man would confess before he was executed, he was able to write a letter somehow from prison to his daughter of Veronica authorities intercepted letter added to his trial dossier where it has been preserved in it junius explained why although innocent he was ready to admit to crimes that he didn't commit uh... you know that would mean certain execution even as you even as he was being taken away from his initial torture session, he wrote the executioner, the official who performed the torture under direction of higher magistrates implored him to admit to being a witch. From his trial, we have tangible proof of what likely happened in almost all of these trials. Confess something, his torture urged whether it be true or not and then something for you cannot

endure the torture which you'll be put to. And even if you bear it all yet, you'll not escape. So after much thought, Junius confessed he asserted that he had been seduced into a diabolical cult by a demon appearing to him in the form of a beautiful woman. He said he had engaged in carnal relations with this woman had traveled to many witches sabbaths, usually riding in a large black dog, a hellhound that would appear to him whenever he was summoned to attend. When pressed, he also identified other witches living in Bamberg, whom he claimed to know from the gatherings. All that he confessed was false. He assured his daughter, and yet he had to confess

for they could never leave off with a torture till one confesses something. Shortly thereafter, he would be publicly burned to death, and the witch hysteria would continue. Between 1645 and 1646, the self proclaimed witch finder general, Matthew Hopkins, professional Kant, who died in 1647, conducted the largest hunt on English oil in the regions of Essex and Sussex, in which nearly 250 people were tried and at least 100 executed. Couple years later, the great Scottish witch hunt, actually a series of trials held in various regions of the country, took place in 1661 and 1662, more than 300 people would die.

Backing up a little heading across the pond. In 1648, Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Massachusetts, I became the first English settler in the new world accused of witchcraft and later executed in New England. The Massachusetts Bay colonies first governor, John Winthrop, called Jones a cunning woman, someone with the ability to make use of herbs and spells. Jones was further alleged to have a malignant

touch that caused her erstwhile patients to vomit and go deaf. Winthrop after bodily search of Jones by the women of Charlestown claim that she exhibited witches, teats and her secret pots, which was by long established superstition, the sign of a witch. It's not these fucking sadistic and really stupid dipshits, uh, likely mistook moles or skin tags for which teats. I guess I hate how many innocent people have been persecuted and or executed throughout history by some of the dumbest mother fuckers alive. Jones was executed in the summer of 1648 and more trials and executions followed.

We've covered the sale in which trials in a previous episode, so we will not go deeply into them here. The witch embodied all the assorted anxieties that early New England pure tanical settlers felt about their new environment, their personal religious turmoil, and their fear of the creatures that lurked in the howling wilderness. Indeed the Puritan movement in England grew out of the fear that the English Church retained too many elements of the satanic Roman Catholic Church. No one was more worried about the devil and demons in witches in the 17th century than the Puritans.

Our country was not founded by wonderful, delightful, fun-loving people fleeing religious persecution like I was taught in school. Our country was founded by some of the most paranoid, fearful, hate-mongering zealots on the fucking planet. The Puritan concept or conception of the spiritual life embodied in John Bunions, the pilgrim's progress, imagined the Christian experience as a war with monstrous beings, inspired by the devil. This understanding of Christian experience as a struggle with monstrous beings inspired by the devil. This understanding of Christian experience as a struggle with the forces of darkness made its way into the founding

of the new world. Not surprisingly, this new world became a geography of witches, witchcraft, and devilish influence in the minds of many of the Puritans. Of course, this affected Native Americans very poorly. Puritan clergymen and all around paranoid lunatic, cotton matter, argued that the native people of North America had a special relationship with the devil and madders new world demonology. The Native Americans had been seduced by Satan to come to America as his special servants. This made them in some literal sense, quote, the children of the devil. And once again, here we are with the other, right? These natives, right? They don't worship a god. They've literally just heard of for the first time. They have their own separate belief system and culture, so they must be

fucking witches and children of the devil. Ah! Other Puritan leaders reinforced his view, seeing the Native Americans as a special trial designed for them by the devil. And so was the Puritan's spiritual and existential mission to fight the devil and destroy these monsters, right? Die, devil's die. He he he. Burn the Native witches.

Burn. At the same time, there was a pervasive idea about the talking about witches attending their trials and even thinking about witchcraft Including an aspect of popular entertainment Mother himself would describe the dark wonders in his writings as the chief entertainments which my readers do expect and shall receive In a world of toiling for crops little to do besides read the bible and pray know HBO max no Netflix Thinking about witchcraft was deliciously fun, a dangerous pastime, right?

Who cares how many people this entertainment actually gets killed? Fuck them! Cotton Mather sounds like a spiritual cousin of Alex Jones. Mather acted as a sort of carnival barker, promising frightening spectacles in his writing that his readers do expect and shall receive. This thrill was also sexual,

as the popular belief about witches held that when they gathered, they had fantastic orgies, including sex with Satan and his demons. How many dudes were beaten off to which orgy fantasies backed in? How many dudes presiding over witch trials that led to women being killed were beating off to fantasies of fucking the same women? To go even darker, how many men coerced women into having sex with them under threat of accusing them of witchcraft if they didn't Lucifer just said all the time that shit happens and has happened all the time Which is represented uncontrolled sexual desire something both very bad and very sexy Which was reflected in the trial of the indentured servant Mary Johnson the second person to be convicted in the Connecticut

Witch hunts and the first person to confess Mary was working as a house servant in Hartford in 1646 where she was accused of theft The second person to be convicted in the Connecticut witch hunts, and the first person to confess. Mary was working as a house servant in Hartford in 1646, where she was accused of theft. She soon moved on to Wester's Field, where she was also working as a servant. Then she was once again accused of thievery, was brought before the local minister Samuel Stone, who whipped her. During her punishment, she revealed she was discontent with her many chores. She confessed she was guilty of witchcraft, and admitted to uncleanness with men and devils,

AKSX, and even to the murder of a child. Curiously, she was not charged with murder or adultery, but charged with familiarity with the devil and sentenced to death, and she was hanged on June 6, 1650. While not nearly as famous as the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which Johnson Connecticut began decades earlier in 1647 and would last intermittently until 1697, half a century. Witchcraft officially became a crime in Connecticut in 1642 with the law stating, if any man or woman be a witch that is hath or consulted with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death.

Like in Salem, women were more often targeted as witches than men for several reasons. At the time, women were viewed as second-class citizens in the patriarchal communities. They lived in, generally bored, the brunt of social and religious intolerance. They were expected to be quiet, submissive, and live under a male head of the household. Those who didn't fit within that mold were subjugated and were at higher risk of being accused of witchcraft. Because of their roles as food prepares, animal tenders and midwives, positions that men put them in, they were blamed for sickness, death, and childbirth problems.

The majority of those women accused as witches, both in Connecticut and elsewhere were poor women, single mothers, widows, women over the age of 40, and those living on the margins of society. Widows were a specific concern to Puritan leaders, especially if they had inherited landed money, which went against Puritan society's core beliefs. This manifested itself into a distrust of married women with no male offspring.

Who was in line to inherit their husbands estates? Should they outlive them? Alternatively, if the wife died before her husband and without producing a male heir, the man's property would go to the community upon his death, creating a person, independent on charity or I'm excuse me independent. God, I can't think of the right word, dependent on charity, which you know, was another thing that singled out a person as being a witch.

It took only a single witness to support a witchcraft trial and conviction. In the spring of 1662, Connecticut's witch hunting reached this peak with a heart-ford, heart-ford, witch panic, which was set off with the death of 80, excuse me, eight-year-old Elizabeth Kelly, slightly different, whose parents were convinced that their neighbor, Goody Ayers, had caused their child's death through magic. Soon several other people in Hartford came forward, claiming to have been afflicted by demonic possession at their neighbor's hands. This ultimately resulted in 12 people being accused of witchcraft and four people being executed. True hysteria. Following these deaths in 1662, the colonial governor, John Winthrop Jr. began to question

the value of the evidence in these witch trials and the possible agenda of the witnesses. As a result, he established more objective criteria for which trials that required at least two witnesses for each alleged act of witch witnesses. As a result, he established more objective criteria for which trials that required at least two witnesses for each alleged act of witchcraft, and in some cases, he personally intervened and overturned verdicts. Executions eventually stopped, but the witch hunts continued. The end of the witch trials in 1693 came with numerous criticisms of how the cases had been handled, but titions on behalf of the accused began to appear in the fall of 1692. In October of that year, Boston merchant Thomas Brattle, a well-traveled member of the scientific Royal Society with an interest in mathematics and astronomy, published an

open letter criticizing the courts. He especially critiqued the Puritan judiciary for allowing spectral evidence, right, which was evidence based on visions, revelations, fucking dreams. I mocked that heavily in the Salem witch trial suck and sightings of alleged apparitions. Significantly rattled and not challenged the idea that supernatural agency had been involved in the trials only that it had worked by different methods than the Puritan judiciary had supposed. Had he challenged the notion of supernatural agency, he would have probably been imprisoned for being a warlock.

The end of Puritanical witch hunting did not unfortunately mark the end of Witch Trial as an America. Fear of that old black magic remained a crucial part of early American life. Marginalized women and enslaved Africans remain the most common targets of later Witch Hunts. And 1705 and 1706, a Virginia couple, Luke and Elizabeth Hill accused Grace Sherwood of Witchcraft. Although the Virginia courts at first found little evidence for the charge, the time-honored

search for the witch's teeth soon revealed two things like tits with several other spots. Okay? Not even sure I want to know what they were talking about there. Sherwood next underwent the infamous water test in which the suspected witch was thrown into water to see if she floated or sank. Sherwood floated and now she faced re-examination by some ancient women who this time discovered clearly diabolical tits on her private parts. They were just determined to fucking screw this lady over. She was subjected to another trial, although the record breaks off at this point making

her fate unclear, but probably wasn't good. Back to Europe now. One of the last witch trials in England was that of Jane Wenham in herfax year in 1712. Following a quarrel, a local farmer accused her of witchcraft, claiming she had caused his cattle to sick and die. Wenham initially denied being a witch, but a potion was found in her room, and she stumbled while reciting the Lord's Prayer, which people suggested evidence of witchcraft. But what was witch trial became a cause celebrity? A cause celebrity, I guess, in English society and even the judge took a lenient view. When the prosecutor suggested that witnesses had seen when I'm flying, the judge remarked

that flying was not illegal. So maybe being funny there, right? I love that he said that's illegal, not impossible. The trial eventually found when I'm guilty, but the judge set aside her conviction and suspended the death penalty and she would die of free woman. In 1730, that same year Benjamin Franklin wrote and published a satirical article about witchcraft entitled, which trial at Mount Holly. The brief narrative describes the determined efforts of a mob in a small New Jersey town

to find a man and woman guilty of witchcraft after they've been accused of making sheep dance and hog sing In a normal proceeding only the accused will be tried But in this one the accused cut a deal to put their accusers also a man and a woman on trial as well The mob decides upon two tests and the first the men and women will be weighed individually against a huge great Bible If it outweighs them, they are witches if they they outweigh it, they are not. In the second test, they will be cast into water. If they sink, they're innocent. If they float, they're guilty. In the inclusion of the accused and the test makes the proceedings less a trial, more of an absurd experiment to which scales and water are used to detect virtue and vice.

The experiments are failure and the article ends with a remark, but it being the general belief of the populace that the women's shifts and the gartus with which they were bound helped to support them. It is said they were mean to try it. It is said they are to be tried again the next warm weather naked. The Taylor is told by a sarcastic narrator. So frankly clearly thought that all the witchcraft stuff was a bunch of a ignorant bullshit and attacked it with some sarcasm and satire Soon after he wrote that the witch craze would die down in the new world Maybe Franklin help without a bit by comedically speaking up against the utter absurdity Dangerous absurdity of an all

While America was now moving into a better more rational direction, at least for white people Superstitions about others still affected African slaves enslaved Africans faced accusations of a special kind of witchcraft known as congeration or more simply sorcery. The use of black magic against the white master class became a common charge against the instigators of slave rebellions.

In 1779, a trial of slave rebels in the territory that would later become the state of Illinois ended with the execution of several slaves for the crimes of Conja and Necromancy. The last official witch trials in Europe will be held in Poland, of course, of course. And they didn't get them all. So many witches in my wife's family, still alive, including her. uh... jk the uh... the rojo which trial took place in seventeen eighty three and resulted in the execution of six women in seventeen ninety three uh... however another certainly the last which trial would take place in independent poll

that year local judge in the city of posnon or posnon accepted the accusation of two women with inflamed eyes who were said to have enchanted their neighbors cattle they were judge guilty of witchcraft and burned alive. Burn the witch! Finally, at the dawn of the 19th century, as the Enlightenment period came to a close the age of modern science began, and fewer and fewer people blamed their misfortune on people with nefarious magical capabilities, at least in the Western world. We'll talk a little bit about how accusations of witchcraft and the execution of witches endures around the world to this day following the timeline.

Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Witchcraft. The idea that someone is practicing harmful magic, summoning supernatural forces or channeling powerful demonic entities to cause people or maybe even entire community's harm. What a strange historical phenomenon. Something that shows up in so many societies, but is always different and always shifting depending on who the in-group is and who the out-group or other is. What looks to one group like religion looks to another group like magic, superstition, and witchcraft.

It's also relative and subjective. As a belief in science and social justice has advanced over the past few centuries a belief in witchcraft has ebbed away. So, you know, thank God for science, irony intended. But the emergence of an emphasis on the scientific method and more reason does not mean that witchcraft is entirely faded from the world.

Some people still find power in witchcraft today, even if it's just a belief that its magic has power. And they embrace elements of witchcraft such as divination, horoscope, reading, crystals, and more. And of course, there are still many irrational fuk heads using accusations of witchcraft to try and take others down. Back the 1980s, American church leaders, social workers, heads of civic organizations, even law enforcement officials came to see that societal ills, the divorce rate, the anxiety produced by step parents and stepchildren, and the sense across the political spectrum of corruption in the American experience was the result of literal fucking witchcraft. Many zealous portraying themselves as the defenders of the American home and traditional family values accused others

who did not worship their god as Satanist, brainwashing, torturing, and murdering children, just as medieval Christians portrayed others centuries earlier. This kind of emphasis on witchcraft has not gone away. Those accusations, by the way, totally false. For better or for worse, many of us meat sacks still obsessed with the idea of the supernatural, with the concept of entities just outside our reach. And the magical ways we might be able to influence the world around us or be able to protect ourselves.

Some like me, just like to wonder about it all, and not assign any certainty to things we cannot scientifically prove like the existence of shadow people, spirits, and other paranormal entities. I fucking love to wonder about that shit. And I do believe in a spiritual realm of some form, you know, that it exists, but I'm fucking love to wonder about that shit. And I do believe in a spiritual realm of some form, you know, that it exists, but I'm not about to tell you have any real answers regarding the true nature of that realm.

And I'm not about to even try and prove to you that it for sure exists. I'm certainly not going to try and have anyone fucking burn to life because they don't share the same unproven beliefs that I do. There has been enough of that in this world. There's still too much that shit going on now, right?

Between 2005 and 2011, over 3000 people put to death and Tanzania for the crime of witchcraft. Before that around 50 to 60,000 more were killed between 1960 and 2000 for the same reason. And it's thought that witch hunts continue there to this day. Fear of the other continues all over the world in Saudi Arabia. People have been executed for witchcraft and sorcery at least as Recently as 2014 Dude was fucking beheaded in 2014 the same year Americans were watching Guardians of the galaxy and theaters for being a sorcerer in India women being killed every year still for being witches the belief in and fear of evil women with magical powers Is not just something that happens within Western Abrahamic belief systems. And it's not just something

that only happened a long time ago. All of this illustrates just how important it is not to demonize others. And that's exactly why I've taken a more vocal stance recently against all the cultural and legal attacks being waged against the LGBTQI plus community. And please don't repolitics. Let me do in this. That's you, not me if you're doing that. My stance has fuck all to do with politics. I don't want politicians or their parties think for me, I think for myself, and I don't want to be somebody, you know, who others look back hundreds from years from now,

and they look at me just like I'm looking at these medieval fucking minded witch hunters at this moment. I'm speaking out because I just don't think an irrational fear of the other should ever be used to justify persecution, but it is. A picture for the Toronto Blue Jays, Anthony Bask, got dropped recently from his team for reposting a video on Instagram

that called Target and Bud Light, evil and demonic, demonic for being supportive of the LGBTQI plus community. He called on fans to boycott them and he is far from alone and doing so. He took the post down, apologized for reposting it, but then also defended his repost later, telling reporters, I stand by my personal beliefs

and everyone is entitled to their personal beliefs, right? Also, I mean, no harm towards any groups of people. Yet, what you do, you are harming equating a marginalized group to being fucking demonic, harms people. Tony, it directly leads to them being attacked, murdered. History has proven that over and over again.

For some reason, a lot of people right now are demonizing gay and or trans people, making wild, unfounded, kind of witch-hunting accusations. You know, they're grooming our kids, they're recruiting our kids. What the fuck are they talking about? Why are these accusations being made? I think because of a witch hunt mentality

that is thousands of years old, right? Like it's in our DNA, an irrational fear of the other. Members of dislike minority groups continue to be stereotyped as represented a danger to the majority culture's most vulnerable members. The ancient Romans worried about the Strix, right? That evil monster flying to the night, praying on sleeping children and devouring them. A monster based on a Libyan queen and other.

The ancient Greeks feared the magic of the Persians, others, Jews in the Middle Ages, others everywhere in Europe, accused of murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. Still are, by many. Black men in the US, the white majority cultures, others often lynched after being falsely accused of raping white women. And in a similar fashion, gay and trans people often are portrayed as a threat to children, even though the stats do not back that up at all.

For many gay and trans are the biggest other right now. Gay or trans does not equal pedophile. We have covered a lot of pedophiles on time, suck. And damn near all of them have been straight, if anyone's been paying attention. I want to be a force of logic, critical thinking and good in the world. And not just jump on mindless hate mongering bandwagon because that might get me more downloads. Why am I bringing any of this up?

Because which burnings don't start off as which burnings, right? They start off as a fear of the other, as paranoia, as hate. They don't start off as which burnings right they start off as a fear of the other as paranoia as hate they don't start off with Violence they start off with suspicion they start off with the unfounded accusations and when people don't speak out at that stage The witch hunters grow more emboldened they push their hate further and further until people do start to be hurt until they die or until more people start to be hurt and die I'm not speaking up right now for money. I'll make more money if I keep my mouth shut. I'm not doing this for adabois. I'll get more if I don't say shit with the culture we have right now.

If I stick to my lane, I'm doing this to be true to who I am. For me, the heart of time sucks. The best of time sucks isn't only grass and dark infotainment, it's also education, introspection, and then application. If I didn't care about that, I'd only release the episodes that got me the most downloads, serial killer sucks. And I would never say anything that could be seen as others as being political, right? It would just be facts and jokes.

But I've wanted this to be more than that from the very beginning of the journey. This is the cult of the curious, not the cult of the status quo. Don't get me wrong, I'm still more really fascinated with the most fucked up tales of true crime. And some weeks I do just wanna have some of that dark escapism. But other weeks I wanna learn, to expand my intellectual horizons, to grow as a human, to become a better meat sack,

and I wanna help others do the same. Again, education, introspection, and application. That's what I love the most about this podcast experiment. Education, what do these stories teach us, right? Introspection, how can we internalize the lessons, let them these stories teach us? Right? Interrespection, how can we internalize the lessons, let them change and mold us in good ways? And finally, application, how can we apply the knowledge we have gained to the world around us to make it better? One way is by speaking out and defending the unfairly marginalized, the others.

And if you don't want to defend the others for all trueistic reasons, okay, fine, do it for selfish ones. If you don't defend the rights of others, how much longer will a baby before the witch hunters come for your rights? Think of that poem. First they came by Martin Nimuler, a German theologian Lutheran pastor born in 1892, a man who once supported Hitler, a man who came to regret that tragic era of his ways, a man who after not doing shit to help the Jews was eventually targeted by the Nazis for his Christian ideals and then imprisoned by the Nazis for nearly

eight years. And then following their defeat at the hands of the Allies in 1946, he wrote, first they came and it's fucking beautiful. A reminder not to make the same mistakes he did. The same mistakes humanity makes over and over and over when it comes to, you know, fear of the other and not doing anything to support, you know, or to end rather persecution of the other. First they came for the socialist and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came from the trade unionist and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. So speak up. American listeners do what America does when we're at our very best, you know, especially during

this most patriotic time of year. Practice what we preach, right? Defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Hail Nimrod, Hail Luzafina, Praise Bojangles, and fuck the fear-based paranoid ignorance that has always led to needless harm and death, to witch hunts. Time now for today's takeaways. Time suck, tough, right takeaway. Number one, witchcraft magic superstition and religion,

these are all heavily cultural and subjective categories. Generally anthropologists define magic as the interaction between our realm and a realm we can't see, and witchcraft and sorcery are the ways humans channel those interactions. Witchcraft especially is a term with a lot of stank on it, dating all the way back to Ancient Greece. The charge that someone is channeling those forces for evil or for their own benefit. Number two, many countries had witch hunting crazes between roughly 1450 and 1700, sometimes multiple crazes.

This could be caused by something as random as a poor harvest and often resulted in the conviction and execution of so-called witches in so much torture. People probably heard legends and tales about witchcraft from their communities, confessed to these stories under torture, and then those stories got more and more incorporated into the stereotypical portrait of a witch. Number three, the media. When these witch crazes happen, they undoubtedly generated reporting, people who were trying to shore up power for themselves as experts on witches, or maybe believe the hype and thought they were actually helping people. And these texts circulated, inspiring both fear and the desire to root more evil out. And these texts made witchcraft and witches seem all the more real to those

going forward. Number four, undoubtedly the most famous and arguably most influential text on witches was Malius Malifakaram, the hammer of witches, written by clergyman and member of the paranoid and hateful cantalafame Heinrich Kramer. Kramer was a despised witch hunter. Many people of his witch crazed day thought his methods were too harsh, but still that asshole heavily influenced witch trials for centuries to come. Indeed it was Kramer, more than any other single individual who developed the wantonly sexual persona of the female witch, the witch that steals a man's penis

and has orgies with the devil. And number five, new info, more info about witch trials occurring around the world in recent times. Organizations like the United Nations and stepping stones, Nigeria have found that the number of witch trials around the world has been increasing in the past few decades. So that's fun.

According to the World Health Organization, who, nearly 25% of pregnant women in Zambia are infected with HIV or AIDS, and many think that witchcraft is to blame. Some of those put on trial for witchcraft are leaders in the nation's scientific community, or government advisors, and so-called witch hunters are killing those accused of witchcraft. In one town in Zambia, a witch hunter killed 16 people in less than four months. Dozens of people have also been killed for being witches and Papua New Guinea in recent years. In January of 2009, a young girl there was burned alive, accused of being a witch and infecting men with HIV and AIDS.

A month later, a father and son were also burned to death after being accused of witchcraft. In the Republic of Benin, the country's government has used people's fears of witchcraft to explain why some people do better than others. According to many legends, a baby that is not born headfirst and with his face upwards, is considered to be a witch. And these so-called baby witches have been blamed for poor agricultural seasons or illnesses and many of these babies are now abandoned or fucking killed. Still happening today. And perhaps the craziest former president, uh,

Yia, Jimmy of the, uh, the Gambia believed who was being targeted by witches recently. According to Andrews the international, as many as a thousand Gambians accused of witchcraft were arrested and tortured and orders from the former former president before he left office in 2017 at least two people died possibly many more than that. President Jamie also claimed to be able to cure AIDS, but just on Thursdays. And he fired doctors who disagreed with him. And again, he was in office until 2017. Actual witchcraft has never been scientifically proven to be real, and yet people still

die over fear of it, a rational fear of the other, what a dangerous fucking thing. Time sucked, tough, right takeaway. Woo! Witchcraft has been sucked. Can't wait for some of the emails, comments and messages. This one's gonna get me. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time suck. Thank you to Queen of the Bad Magic, Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins.

Thanks to Logan, the art warlock for producing and directing today, thanks to Bitelixer for upkeep on the Time suck app, Logan Keith again, for creating the merch at BadMagicMarch.com which will help and run our socials with the suck ranger and a team managed by our social media strategist Ryan Handlesman. Thanks to producer Sophie Evans for some kick ass,

amazing initial research this week. She just keeps getting better. Also thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad. Making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everyone over on the time sucks, subreddit and bad magic subreddit where I feel like we have a lot of witches. Next week on time suck we take a break

from triggering and infuriating some of our listeners maybe and talk about something safe that never seems to upset anyone. So much murder. What are the absurd truth right now? But seriously we are talking about murder again. We're diving back into true crime and getting fetishy, specifically shoe fetishy. Do you have a certain shoe? You think it looks sexy on a partner? Maybe some high heels, some boots, still lettos. Hopefully what matters to you isn't so much the shoe,

it's the person in the shoe. Hopefully when all is said and done it leads to some bang and sex that's mutually fulfilling for the both of you or maybe more than the both of you If you're into that and then you get some pizza afterwards or something Same cannot be said for Jerry Brutos Jerry had a shoe fetish from a young age after finding a pair of black patent leather heels and an organ dump at the age of five That fetish would develop into deep sexual entanglements with his mother punished him for having the shoes burned the shoes

deep sexual entanglements with his mother punished him for having the shoes burned the shoes proceeded to mock him for his wet dreams and any over displays of sexuality for the rest of his childhood and young adult life. With all the serial killers we've covered here, I'm sure you can see where this is going. Pretty soon what would matter to Jerry wasn't the person wearing the shoes if it had ever been, it was a fantasy of a person who would do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He especially wanted to take photographs of women modeling his by now vast collection of shoes and women's underwear shoes and women's underwear that he had stolen and then uh... when that fantasy didn't play out with living women like he wanted to uh... he started to kill them his heinous acts eventually

earned him the nickname the lust killer and the shoe fetish slayer and for at least four women living in Oregon in the late nineteen sixties meeting meeting Jerry Brudos would truly be their worst and last nightmare. The fucking ridiculous story of this piece of shit next week and time suck. Right now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. After some heaviness at the end of this suck, let's start with a light little update. From a total idiot who just ruined his children's minds forever. Cummins Law Victim David Rivera writes. Hello bad magic fam and fellow meat sacks have finally happened. I'm officially a Cummins Law victim.

Normally I listen time suck at work but I'm currently on layoff and join my summer. I was relaxing in my backyard listening to the R Kelly sex cult suck. My wife wanted to go over ice cream. I thought I turned everything off and I went to rally my children my fourteen and eleven year old daughters and their fifteen year old friend my neighbor's daughter So we load up and I start my car and that's when you chime in singing. I believe I can fly with with some alterations, right? I believe I can fly with with some alterations, right? I believe I believe fucking touch our Kelly being forced to suck dick and thing. My wife turns to me and says, oh my god. And everyone is awkwardly laughing.

I turn my radio off and apologize. You can truly happen anyone. Just want to thank everyone for everything you guys do. The rate of five stars wouldn't change a thing. David Rivera. Thanks for sharing your humiliation, David. I hope your daughter's friend can never look at you the same way again Also still pretty fired up about our Kelly The R&B Epstein. Let's try and get that to stick around his name

Right our Kelly the R&B Epstein I'll speak of Epstein a doctor clear something up that I was confused about in the R Kelly suck Dr. Steve writes hello suck lord. I'm just writing you regarding the Arkely Suck where you mentioned that Alia had a case of mono that developed into a Guillain-Barré syndrome. You said you thought you would have heard it pronounced also as Glein-Barr or something and I think you might be confusing it with Epstein-Barr. Guillain-Barré syndrome is thought to be an autoimmune condition that can be triggered Uh, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha me the more you know, hail Nimrod keep on sucking Dr. Steve. God that's exactly what I did. I got Galein fucking Maxwell and fucking Jeffrey Epstein's names in my head and mixed

it all up. More you know is right Dr. Steve. I appreciate little messages like that from experts that clear up some confusion. Yeah Epstein bought it's exactly what I was thinking. Now a little piece in my brain can relax. And now for a message about how learning something about 3 mile Island helped one meat sack understand her father just a tiny bit better. Dangerously radioactive sucker Samantha Rice writes,

hello, just listen to your 3 mile Island podcast. In the 80s and 90s, my dad worked at the INEL. Thanks to your podcast, I researched what he actually did there. His job was to refuel nuclear subs. I didn't realize how dangerous his job was at the time as he was running the heavy equipment that handled the radioactive material. I had no idea what that actually meant,

but now I understand why there were some weekends that he couldn't come home, because he had been exposed to radiation. Another thought I had was that the path of the Chinese balloon would have flown closely to Arco and could have possibly been gathering data on the US's largest nuclear research site. Very interesting. Wanted to thank you for your awesome podcast, always entertaining and informative Samantha

Rice. Well thank you Samantha. What a wild job your dad had. Not being able to come home sometimes on the weekends because of how potentially dangerous that could have been. And some people sure make more sacrifices for their jobs than most of us. And your dad is one of those meat sacks. And yeah, maybe that's exactly what that balloon was doing. Fucking China. I might trust China less than Russia.

And now we'll end on a fascinating meat sack linked to the fountain cult from former teen hippie dirt bag, Megan M. Who writes, hello fellow meat sack is your episode on the fountain cult that has motivated me to write into your suckverse. And I do rarely feel compelled to share much in this fashion. So I felt I must follow through. I spent my six to 10th grade years hiking in the Santa St. Santa Mountains and Santa Monica Mountains. Mostly looking for the best spots,

mostly looking for the best spots to smoke blunts, but also hiking looking in nature. But mostly looking in nature high. I grew up in the infamous San Fernando Valley, and I'm a Valley girl, there's so much sex industry, and left over damaged people in the greater LA area. and I'm a Valley girl. There's so much sex industry and leftover damaged people in the greater LA area. By the time Los Millennials came around,

it seemed most of us were just kids of hippies and ex-Manson family affiliates. Once while the group of us were all on mushrooms or acid or whatever, we went hiking to Box Canyon where my buddy Mark said there was an old Manson family house that burned down. When we got there, we saw what looked like a multi-level home made mostly of stones and other natural looking stuff that it looked like it had burned down.

Due to the fact that we were in a high risk burn area, and the actual location is spawned ranch of the spawn ranch with only a few miles from our hiking trail, there was no reason really to question his claim that we were in fact smoking weed and tripping at an old Manson hangout that most likely burned down in a fire. We would hike to other spots like the Manson caves that are actually located on private property, but are really cool once you sneak past to do with the sandbag gun and climb up the mountain then down into the caves. If you're hearing the episode of the fountain cult, however, I now know for sure that that was not a Manson house. I was in, but the blown up

fountain house. It did look like it had been blown up even all those years later. It didn't look burned down. It was a cool smoke spot, I bet. And all I can say is that it was really cool here. And you described the house, the, the build because I literally sought my memories. Drugs are weird. Back to the Manson caves, those are pitch dark caves that we would crawl into and also do more drugs in. When you got to the middle of the caves, you could see spray paint all over the walls with the Manson family's names. And it was said that it was members themselves who wrote those names there. If you dropped your flashlight in the case, it was gone forever.

So we always got for each. Manson caves were cool. Who knows if the stories are real though? It was fun as a teen to go on the hikes and learn the stories. Just wanted to share that with you. Now I'm a mom and mostly listening to your podcasts. When I go to work in Ohio,

once a week at a cannabis store as a bookkeeper or clean my house. I used to be a teen in the valley and even lived homeless in the hills for about a year when I was 19 years old. The Greater Los Angeles area is a crazy place to grow up, but I made it out and I'm not addicted to too many drugs anymore.

So I think I'm cool. Anyways, keep on sucking. I love your comedy podcast, the fellow meat sack who can't pronounce words, but embraces knowledge and loves history. We're the same breed, maybe when my kids aren't so young, I'll drag my husband out to your summer camp one year, but for now these kids haven't even spent a night away

from us. Lucky kids, we are given them better lives than we had. That's for sure. I'll still take my son and daughter to see the fountain cold house in the canyon one day if they want to though. There are some cool caves near there as well that were filled with bats when I was a teen.

I wonder if they're still there. You used to be able to hear the bats at night and the canyons of the Sanis-Suzanna pass when the homes were at the, where the homes were on that end of the valley. The SFV has endless hikes and trails. The hillside Strangler Suck mentioned most of them sadly. Those dude were so lame.

Anyways, thanks for being awesome. Thanks for making me feel like it's okay to be bad with words, kind of regards, Megan M. Well, Megan, wow, Born and Raised were so much of what I've talked about has happened. What a crazy place to do psychedelics. We're Manson and his clan once hid. Where the fountain had their weird ass compound.

Man, the energy there must be wild. Good on you from going from being homeless to being a great parent, giving your kids a better life than the one you had. Isn't that the hope for all those parents? Or at least a good once? Nothing more fulfilling than feeling like you gave your kids the best childhood you could have given them with what you had and where you came from.

Education, introspection, application, good way to evolve and be a parent too. I bet you're a bad-ass mama, Megan M. And you sound a little witchy too. I like it. Hail, Lucifina. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did!

Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast, everybody! Scare to death and time suck each week! Secret suck each week for space lizards! Please don't burn any witches this week! Find them over for drinks! You know, talk! You'll probably have a great time, find out you have a lot in common. And keep on sucking.

On Magic Productions Around the mouth the cold and go in the poisoned entail's throat. Toles that under cold stone days and nights has 31. Swelled in venom, sleeping God, boiled our first in the charmed pot. Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cold and bubble, burn the witch! Most of that was Shakespeare. You bet all Shakespeare can be, you know,

performed to this music. Where off that raw me out? Whatever else, you know, the Shakespeare road. You