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