Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 4: super producer Paul Rady Day Decads. Most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want.
Speaker 3: You to know.
Speaker 4: It is the most wonderful time of the year. Fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realist. Happy Halloween. We hope that this finds you
Speaker 4: in good spirits. We also hope that you tune in
Speaker 4: to a couple other Halloween episodes our crew is doing.
Speaker 4: As we mentioned, Thirteen Days of Halloween is officially out.
Speaker 4: Do check it. You will enjoy it, we hope.
Speaker 5: And also, and if you haven't listened to all of
Speaker 5: the other three seasons, as you're like going through one
Speaker 5: episode per day for season four, just go back and
Speaker 5: relift the.
Speaker 4: Other Yeah stories.
Speaker 6: Almost done with my spooky synth score for the story
Speaker 6: we talked about last episode. I'm really excited China crank
Speaker 6: that out today for the future, because now by the
Speaker 6: time you hear this, it will already be out in
Speaker 6: the world.
Speaker 4: And Matt has for many years with Aaron Mankey and
Speaker 4: Alex Williams ran the ship for thirteen days. I have
Speaker 4: been privileged to write several episodes every season. You will
Speaker 4: probably be able to tell which ones in Oh and
Speaker 4: last plug check out ridiculous history or episode on trick
Speaker 4: or treating. And you're never too old to trick or tree.
Speaker 4: You're never to wear it.
Speaker 6: Here's a cutoff, I think for expecting candy. But you
Speaker 6: can like get accompany kids, you know, if you.
Speaker 4: On a costume and people are already walking around.
Speaker 3: I mean, cons are trick or treating for adults.
Speaker 4: I think you know, respectfully disagree, but yeah.
Speaker 6: Never mind, you can't be an adult trick or treat
Speaker 6: expect that's like a whole thing.
Speaker 3: People will we'll look at you funny.
Speaker 4: Well, let us know what you think, folks.
Speaker 5: I just have to say, so far, for eight years,
Speaker 5: I have gone to costume and walked around with my son,
Speaker 5: uh you know, kind of trick or treating with him
Speaker 5: as his surrogate when he was too young to actually
Speaker 5: say the words. And then you know, now I just
Speaker 5: kind of stand back, and but I still wear a costume.
Speaker 4: You had some epic costumes too, twickle tweet, I love
Speaker 4: it twickle teating. And we since we love Halloween so
Speaker 4: very much, we also like to do an episode that
Speaker 4: speaks to some of the conventional tropes and ideas of Halloween.
Speaker 4: We wanted to dive into something pretty bizarre tonight. There
Speaker 4: is a tinge of ridiculous history to this story, allegations
Speaker 4: of unearthly powers and infernal contracts. Most importantly, there's a
Speaker 4: hell of a lot of conspiracy. In this evening's exploration,
Speaker 4: we're talking about witch hunts, the fact, the fiction, and
Speaker 4: the big question how did witch hunts actually work? Why
Speaker 4: were they so prevalent in the past, in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 4: and particularly at the end, why do they remain prevalent
Speaker 4: in parts of the world today. Here are the facts,
Speaker 4: I guess, Noel Matt we got to talk about the
Speaker 4: fictional version and also say we're not dunking on Wickens
Speaker 4: at all or any like non Christian belief systems.
Speaker 3: Never.
Speaker 6: I mean, some of my favorite people in my life
Speaker 6: are Wickens. Every Wicked I've ever known has been a lovely,
Speaker 6: kind human.
Speaker 4: Person, super nice, like Midwestern or Canadian level nice. The Wickens,
Speaker 4: you know, they're like, hey, we're gonna come hang out.
Speaker 4: We're always having a pot luck, you know, and you
Speaker 4: might not get all the levels of conversation, but they're
Speaker 4: they're just like anybody else, very kind to people who
Speaker 4: have a set of beliefs that you may not share.
Speaker 4: The fictional versions of witch hunts, though shout out to
Speaker 4: shout out to one of the first things Aaron Manke
Speaker 4: worked on with us. The fictional versions of witch hunts
Speaker 4: in the West are usually depicted like this. This is
Speaker 4: pretty much every movie. There's a place that vaguely resembles
Speaker 4: medieval Europe or the early European founded American colonies, and
Speaker 4: things go bad for the town, right, they're bad signs.
Speaker 4: People are all increasingly poor, and children or or livestock
Speaker 4: or still born or born cursed, you know, which means
Speaker 4: having some sort of physical or mental ailment. The well
Speaker 4: what runs dry, that's always a big thing. The crops fail,
Speaker 4: or most of the crops, and people are scared, and
Speaker 4: they're hungry and they're tired, and they pray in the
Speaker 4: church and God leaves them on red.
Speaker 3: Isn't it funny? That meant that's not funny.
Speaker 6: It's horrifying that just how many things that were entirely
Speaker 6: based around ignorance were blamed on witches, you know, and
Speaker 6: demonic forces.
Speaker 3: It's tale as old as time.
Speaker 6: And now we use the term witch hunt to describe,
Speaker 6: I mean, it's been politicized obviously, but describe somebody being
Speaker 6: you know, heckled or you know, gone after, you know,
Speaker 6: for something they supposedly didn't do. But now again it's
Speaker 6: been used kind of as like almost a dog whistle
Speaker 6: for something they probably did do. But it's a witch hunt,
Speaker 6: so everyone's after me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and it's weird how similar and different simultaneously those
Speaker 5: fictional versions are to reality, right, like, because there really
Speaker 5: were bad things happening all the time in medieval Europe
Speaker 5: or in the American colonies, or you know, in Scotland
Speaker 5: or wherever you were in the world. Bad stuff was
Speaker 5: happening all the time in medieval ages in the sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, are you kidding? The lack of sanitation alone. Eventually,
Speaker 4: this fright ferments both in the real world and in fiction,
Speaker 4: and let's stay in fiction for now. Eventually the fight ferments,
Speaker 4: as it often does, into anger, the town authorities feel
Speaker 4: their credibility is under question, and so they put someone
Speaker 4: else to the question. For any fans of the inquisition,
Speaker 4: and they look for someone to blame, or the town
Speaker 4: does it themselves. They start spreading rumors, they start saying, hey,
Speaker 4: I saw so and so walking by the day before
Speaker 4: all those cattle were still born, et cetera. And there's
Speaker 4: not really there's not really any proof of this, as
Speaker 4: we'll see in any kangaroo court of a witch trial. There,
Speaker 4: especially in the Nissan American colonies, there was this directive
Speaker 4: that spiritual evidence or perspective or experience was admissible. So
Speaker 4: you didn't have to talk about something you could prove
Speaker 4: if you were a witness, you could talk about something
Speaker 4: you believed, and you could be forthright in saying, well,
Speaker 4: she's got a weird hat. You know. In fiction, there's
Speaker 4: you know, in fiction, the witch is almost always a woman,
Speaker 4: overwhelmingly so, and gets arrested by the ecclesiastical authorities, the
Speaker 4: church powers, and she's put on trial for any number
Speaker 4: of bizarre crimes. You get testimony from victims, stuff like
Speaker 4: old widow Hammerschmidt put a hex on my farm, or
Speaker 4: she put a magic bridle on me and turned me
Speaker 4: into a horse against my will, and we went to
Speaker 4: midnight sabots meetings of witches. And then it's usually implied
Speaker 4: that there was some sort of fornication with other witches
Speaker 4: or with the devil. Stuff that's a little too fast
Speaker 4: and loose, and sometimes devil's in the form of a goat.
Speaker 4: So you got best reality, that's scandalous. And in fiction,
Speaker 4: very few of the witches ever get their charges dismissed.
Speaker 4: Oh and in fact as well, very few people accused
Speaker 4: of witchcraft ever got their charges dismissed then and today.
Speaker 6: Well, because it's also like hard to prove a negative,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean, when there's no actual proof
Speaker 6: for the thing other than things that are made up
Speaker 6: by the folks that are trying to convict these people.
Speaker 6: It all goes back to doesn't all go back but
Speaker 6: a great you know, I guess parody of this is
Speaker 6: in Monty Python, where it's like, is she made of wood?
Speaker 3: Is she then she's a duck? What else floats? Or whatever?
Speaker 6: Like it's that absurd, the you know, the factors they
Speaker 6: used to prove these things, and in fiction as well
Speaker 6: as fact, no matter how bizarre the accusations, how scant
Speaker 6: or manufacture, the evidence, how solid the defendants alibi.
Speaker 4: These were always what we would call kangaroo courts. They
Speaker 4: were I would argue, more public theater than legal proceedings.
Speaker 4: So the witch was almost always found guilty. In the
Speaker 4: world of fiction, novels, play short stories, films, they almost
Speaker 4: always show a violent execution, drowning, death by asphyxiation, being
Speaker 4: crushed by rocks, burning at the stake as the witch,
Speaker 4: with her dying words utters a terrible curse that will
Speaker 4: haunt the town for generations, and a full franchise of
Speaker 4: film to come cool. I mean, if you live in
Speaker 4: the US, you're probably most familiar with the Salem witch
Speaker 4: trials because fiction spends a lot of time and money
Speaker 4: on them. But the issue, the genuine conspiracy, goes far,
Speaker 4: far beyond Salem. Maybe we talk about the fact versions here, because,
Speaker 4: as you pointed out, Matt, there are commonalities. These breathless
Speaker 4: fictional adaptations did not come from a vacuum.
Speaker 5: No, No, people have been studying witchcraft and trials of
Speaker 5: witchcraft for god. I mean, it's been three hundred and
Speaker 5: thirty one years since the Salem witch trials, and well
Speaker 5: before that, hundreds of years before that, human beings were
Speaker 5: obsessed with witches, like in the fifteen hundreds in Scotland.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just it goes way, way, way back.
Speaker 4: So fourteen hundreds in Germany. Oh, yeah, witch hunts were
Speaker 4: so hot, you know, such an industry.
Speaker 5: And you're right, you guys are so right that it
Speaker 5: goes back to fear, it goes back to religious belief
Speaker 5: and a bunch of other things. I think all of us. Well,
Speaker 5: I don't know, did you guys have to read The
Speaker 5: Crucible like as.
Speaker 4: Part of your.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really great piece of work.
Speaker 4: I took several classes on the history of witchcraft and
Speaker 4: witch hunts college Nice.
Speaker 2: Well you know what I mean. Well, that's cool.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I didn't have that. That would have been awesome. I
Speaker 2: would do that. Jeez.
Speaker 5: We just you know, when we made Unobscured, we talked
Speaker 5: to Aaron Manke. We were in Boston and all over
Speaker 5: the place. They are like talking to people who've spent
Speaker 5: their lives researching the Salem witch Trials alone, just that
Speaker 5: one section of history, right to try and find the
Speaker 5: best understanding of what actually occurred and why, right, and
Speaker 5: it is it It is a weird mixture of all
Speaker 5: the stuff we just talked about, the fictional things with Again,
Speaker 5: it's it's like with politics and hardened religious belief and
Speaker 5: people controlling towns and countries with that religious belief as law.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And while the fictional stuff is cool, right, one of
Speaker 4: I think one of our collective favorite recent horror films
Speaker 4: is literally The Witch, The Witch. While that's all cool,
Speaker 4: the factual versions are unfortunately severely uncool. Accusations of practicing
Speaker 4: illegal or damaging magic, left hand path stuff, for any
Speaker 4: of the initiated in the audience this evening, Those accusations
Speaker 4: are found in every single ancient culture, all throughout history,
Speaker 4: all around the world, zero exceptions. Like you were saying, Matt,
Speaker 4: it's not just Salem, it's not just Europe, it's not
Speaker 4: just the global West. But there is a difference. The
Speaker 4: focus on the West comes from something relatively distinct. Accusations
Speaker 4: of witchcraft in other cultures were openly often a means
Speaker 4: to express or resolve social tensions, but they had different
Speaker 4: consequences from those in Western society. And the eleventh century
Speaker 4: witchcraft and sorcery, the attitudes toward it began to change,
Speaker 4: and this part of this was due to ecclesiastical authorities.
Speaker 4: It's a process that transforms the Western perspective on witchcraft
Speaker 4: and immediately associates it with heresy, with chetat right, with
Speaker 4: the devil. It's a lucifer and by the fourteenth century,
Speaker 4: this fear of heresy, heretical blasphemous thought, and this fear
Speaker 4: of Satan coming into your home. Right, this added charges
Speaker 4: of diabolism of devil worshiping to the usual indictment of witches.
Speaker 4: Before this time, in most of the world, it would
Speaker 4: have been trafficking with evil spirits. It would have been
Speaker 4: using the technology of magic in an incorrect or deleterious way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as opposed to like, you know, the wizards and
Speaker 6: witches of King Arthur's court, you know, some of which
Speaker 6: are like hanging out and like they're part of the
Speaker 6: team and they're like doing you a solid. That did
Speaker 6: not spring from this kind of thinking, although of course
Speaker 6: that is some of the earliest forms of Christianity back then.
Speaker 6: But this version that we're talking about was a way
Speaker 6: of weaponizing this and othering people by putting them in
Speaker 6: you know, the camp of practicing some of those those
Speaker 6: things that you were talking about then.
Speaker 5: Well, don't don't forget there are learned people in these
Speaker 5: times that do things like design temples and you know,
Speaker 5: do stonecraft work, who practice some pretty some things that
Speaker 5: you might find pretty strange at the time, that people
Speaker 5: might have found to be magical or alchemical, right, and
Speaker 5: who there were beliefs going around, but it was this
Speaker 5: like that was the magic for good kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Right until it was politically convenient to target those people,
Speaker 4: the hedge doctors, the you know, like if you'll you'll
Speaker 4: know when you've entered a witch hunt phase of society
Speaker 4: when like your local doc in a box or minute
Speaker 4: clinic starts getting targeted. Well, I'm kidding, it's not gonna
Speaker 4: be them, It's going to be your local smoke shop
Speaker 4: or alternative medicine shop.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, and like a shaman, a shaman who is
Speaker 5: very it's very distinct and different from someone practicing witchcraft.
Speaker 5: But depending on the viewer, right, and the beliefs of
Speaker 5: that viewer, it could be the same thing.
Speaker 4: It could be a synonymous, right, because any it's othering, right,
Speaker 4: anything that is not me is some antagonistic amorphous them.
Speaker 4: And this this is important because in the West, what
Speaker 4: happened is that people began associating any esoteric, non Christian
Speaker 4: belief or practice with witchcraft, with worship, with maleficium, which
Speaker 4: is malevolent sorcery. And there's a famous book about that
Speaker 4: which we'll talk about. That book is responsible for a
Speaker 4: lot of deaths. This combo meal sorcery being inherently associated
Speaker 4: with the Christian concept of the devil is what made
Speaker 4: witchcraft unique in the West from the fourteenth century all
Speaker 4: the way to the seventeen hundreds, which is, were believed
Speaker 4: to inherently hate the idea of Christianity. They were making
Speaker 4: pacts with the devil. They could call upon demons to
Speaker 4: accomplish magical deeds, but unlike Solomon, when they did it,
Speaker 4: it was bad. When Solomon did it, it was just
Speaker 4: sort of dope, right, yeah, yeah, that give it thumbs
Speaker 4: up on that one. And then they would be accused
Speaker 4: of specific symbolic acts of disrespect, desecrating the crucifix, talking trash,
Speaker 4: or doing mean stuff to the Eucharist, consecrated bread and wine. Oh,
Speaker 4: and then they know they had sex outside of marriage
Speaker 4: was the idea. They could change shapes. They kidnapped and
Speaker 4: murdered children to eat them or to use parts of
Speaker 4: their body in magic rituals, and that one. Oh, remember
Speaker 4: that that comes in at the end of tonight's episode.
Speaker 4: But our point is that's a lot. And the reality
Speaker 4: is that while some people, because thousands and thousands of
Speaker 4: folks died as a result of witch hunts, while some
Speaker 4: of those people probably did practice what was considered sorcery,
Speaker 4: and while some of them may have practiced it with
Speaker 4: the intent to harm another person or living thing, some
Speaker 4: may have even thought they were worshiping the devil, in reality,
Speaker 4: if you look at it, not a single victim of
Speaker 4: a witch hunt ever fit the fictional depiction of a
Speaker 4: real witch. Which witch which sounds surprising, because, believe it
Speaker 4: or not, folks, there is a conspiracy afoot, a hoof
Speaker 4: never mind, I yes, yeah, a cloven hoof in the
Speaker 4: world of witch hunts. Believe it or not, it was
Speaker 4: not the witches who were conspiring.
Speaker 5: And really quickly, guys, I want to shout out an
Speaker 5: historian in a book that ties directly back to the
Speaker 5: things you were talking about, Ben where women were often
Speaker 5: targeted and sexuality was often kind of at the heart
Speaker 5: of this, like especially a woman who was taking sexuality,
Speaker 5: her sexuality into her own hands, and wasn't you know,
Speaker 5: living by all of the rules that were being imposed
Speaker 5: on her. There's a book titled Six Women of Salem,
Speaker 5: The Untold Story of the Accused and their accusers in
Speaker 5: the Salem Witch Trials, is written by Marilyn Roach, and
Speaker 5: it is It is just a fascinating book that it
Speaker 5: does look at six individual women and goes deep into
Speaker 5: their lives and stories to look at why they were
Speaker 5: accused and like all of the social stuff going on
Speaker 5: around them and in especially inner social relationships that they
Speaker 5: had and onlookers, and how they became involved in the
Speaker 5: Salem witch Trials.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate you pointing that book out, Matt. I
Speaker 4: enjoyed it as well. And perhaps we are launching a
Speaker 4: bit of a defense of those accused of witchcraft again,
Speaker 4: not just in Salem, but in the world entire Believe
Speaker 4: it or not, Folks, while this conspiracy is afoot, it
Speaker 4: was not the witches conspiring. It never has been. We're
Speaker 4: going to pause for a word from our sponsor and
Speaker 4: then we're gonna I think we'll nerd out on some
Speaker 4: more books. Here's where it gets crazy, all right, Back
Speaker 4: in the day. The ancient civilizations took the existence of spirits, good,
Speaker 4: evil and neutral as fact. Magic was considered a kind
Speaker 4: of technology, and the idea was that if you were
Speaker 4: a responsible member of society, you needed both religion and
Speaker 4: magic to defend yourself from spirits, to appease those spirits,
Speaker 4: to like Solomon, occasionally control them. And this all changed
Speaker 4: with the rise of Christianity. God in the Christian theology
Speaker 4: is seen as the sole source of all good things,
Speaker 4: and therefore to practice tactics that are not expressly condoned
Speaker 4: in greenlit by biblical texts became heresy and blasphemy, no
Speaker 4: matter the intention of the magician.
Speaker 6: And there are passages in the Bible that condemn that
Speaker 6: kind of stuff right like. So it's like the rules
Speaker 6: are set forth in the holiest of holy texts for
Speaker 6: this particular belief system.
Speaker 5: Oh I'm gonna do it, guys, real fast, ready, Exodus twenty.
Speaker 5: I am the Lord, thy God, which have brought thee
Speaker 5: out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
Speaker 5: of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Speaker 5: Thou shalt not make unto the any graven image or
Speaker 5: any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or
Speaker 5: that is in the earth beneath, or that is in
Speaker 5: the water under the earth.
Speaker 6: No merch got it to ask matt who is meant
Speaker 6: to be speaking there, who is meant to have interpreted?
Speaker 2: But like, who talking to Moses?
Speaker 3: He's talking to Moses.
Speaker 6: Okay, so this is all coming from Moses saying, God
Speaker 6: spoke to me, and he's said this.
Speaker 5: Stuff on Mount Sinai one of the six or seven
Speaker 5: times Moses went up to the mountain and said.
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, the tablets right, the commandments well in the sea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but there's a series of like hanging outs that
Speaker 5: Moses had with God on Mount Sinai where he literally
Speaker 5: said to everybody else, don't come up here. God said,
Speaker 5: he will literally kill you with the sword if you
Speaker 5: come up here. Don't come up here.
Speaker 3: Hey, no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Speaker 4: A little bit of silent information, a little.
Speaker 5: Bit maybe, but anyway, Yeah, Exodus goes on in all
Speaker 5: of the commandments of the Ten Commandments that you know,
Speaker 5: as well as a bunch of other rules and laws
Speaker 5: that God communicated to Moses according to the Bible, that
Speaker 5: have to do with that very thing. Do not worship
Speaker 5: anything that is not me, and also don't hurt any
Speaker 5: fatherless children or widows or it says literally in the Bible,
Speaker 5: in the King James version, that God will kill you
Speaker 5: with the sword and leave your children fatherless.
Speaker 3: Oh that's fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's also there are also multiple mentions in the
Speaker 4: Bible of magic of not practicing magic, right dude.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: And the idea then again, is that magic is now
Speaker 4: defined in Christian theology as anything that is not God,
Speaker 4: no matter if it's helpful, like anything that is the
Speaker 4: only spells you are allowed to do are prayers.
Speaker 6: Well, heck, I mean it reminds me of like, what
Speaker 6: is it Christian scientists that don't believe in medicine or
Speaker 6: there's certain you know, subsets of Christianity that won't put
Speaker 6: anything external into their body because I mean, in some ways,
Speaker 6: the modern form of magic, I guess is things like
Speaker 6: medicine and surgery and stuff that is a way of
Speaker 6: controlling the narrative, you know, beyond what God hath you know,
Speaker 6: ordained to be the case.
Speaker 4: And this is an odd reversal of history. Just a
Speaker 4: side note, you know, the so the Christians and we
Speaker 4: have a lot of Christians in the audience here, we
Speaker 4: know that you are not launching which hunts. We got
Speaker 4: your back, folks, don't worry. But back in the day
Speaker 4: when Christians were functioning as a state force to repress descent,
Speaker 4: you have to wonder whether they were aware that Roman
Speaker 4: civilization had earlier done the exact same thing to them.
Speaker 4: And of course Jewish communities were always going to be
Speaker 4: targeted whenever it was politically convenient. We'll see microcosmic version
Speaker 4: of this when we look at witch hunts. The real
Speaker 4: conspiracy behind witch hunts was on the part of the
Speaker 4: witch hunters, not their victims. To get a better understanding
Speaker 4: of this, Matt I would recommend, in addition to six Women,
Speaker 4: folks who are interested should check out a fantastic book
Speaker 4: by doctor Carol F. Carlson, which is called The Devil
Speaker 4: in the Shape of a Woman. This thing was published
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty seven, but take our word for it, folks,
Speaker 4: it's a banger because Carlson is one of the first academics,
Speaker 4: the first researchers to do a serious, intense interrogation and
Speaker 4: Puritan history in the early American colonies. And as a
Speaker 4: result of this investigation and which also applies to Europe. Later,
Speaker 4: Carlson found that there were specific predictable demographic dimensions to
Speaker 4: people accused of witchcraft in New England. Those dimensions were
Speaker 4: the three big ones were the age of the victim
Speaker 4: or the accused, their marital status, and their social class.
Speaker 4: This again, it applied to the European theater, and the
Speaker 4: European theater set the tone in the thirteen and fourteen eleven,
Speaker 4: in the eleven hundreds to like the fourteen hundreds, it's
Speaker 4: set the tone for everything that happened in Salem, the
Speaker 4: tragic events, which kind of pale in comparison to the
Speaker 4: to the murder programs of Europe is nuts. Because even
Speaker 4: Pope Alexander the Fourth outlawed witchcraft trials in twelve fifty eight.
Speaker 4: It was like, ah, it gets out of hand?
Speaker 3: How out of hand?
Speaker 4: Yeah, how long can a church exist if we kill
Speaker 4: everyone that we want to show up?
Speaker 6: You know, well, with fear of God is one thing,
Speaker 6: but like fear of pain, of death, you know, at
Speaker 6: the hands of these purveyors of the Word of God,
Speaker 6: starts to really erode trust in your leaders after a while, right.
Speaker 5: Think about the paranoia that would exist in any small
Speaker 5: village right where like you're looking around at everybody, trying
Speaker 5: to make sure you're never doing anything that could ever be,
Speaker 5: even in the most remote way, associated with witchcraft.
Speaker 4: Yeah, trying to outhollly roller each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh yeah, it's a Puritan Olympics over here, and.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 4: I love that, well done. Yes, And so the Pope
Speaker 4: who is like the Grand Puba, the big authority, he's
Speaker 4: got the hat and everything. For people practicing Catholicism, this
Speaker 4: is a direct spiritual ideological descendant of everything that you
Speaker 4: Christ wants you to do. So when this guy says
Speaker 4: stop or go, you're supposed to stop or go. However,
Speaker 4: in this case, after he makes that decree in twelve
Speaker 4: fifty eight, that papal bull in that case, his decision
Speaker 4: gets thrown out. A few centuries later, you know, the
Speaker 4: Malleius Maleficarum comes out, which is the the gold standard
Speaker 4: on how to torture and execute and convict witches. It
Speaker 4: doesn't spend much time on figuring out whether they're innocent.
Speaker 4: Just spoiler, have.
Speaker 6: You guys seen that movie Drag Me to Hell? Yes,
Speaker 6: it's a little problematic on hindsight.
Speaker 3: It came out in like two thousand.
Speaker 6: And nine is like a Roma woman who is the
Speaker 6: you know, the villain who basically curses this woman who
Speaker 6: totally doesn't deserve it. But the way they portray the
Speaker 6: Roma culture is a little problematic. But there is a
Speaker 6: book presented at some point by like a seer figure.
Speaker 6: It's called like the Sacrifice of Animals in the Service
Speaker 6: of a Deity. And I bet books like that exist
Speaker 6: with those like woodcut kind of like prints, you know,
Speaker 6: of like here's exhibit a how you slaughter the goat
Speaker 6: and do all the things.
Speaker 4: You know, check out our Grimoar episode.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, for sure. But again, sorry guys, that's an
Speaker 5: exodus of how you need to sacrifice animals on my
Speaker 5: very specific stone altar that you're not even supposed to
Speaker 5: touch with a hammer or something or you're gonna mess
Speaker 5: it up, but don't sacrifice them on non stone altars.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It's also related the animal sacrifice in particular, which
Speaker 4: is a magical ritual, right. It's also closely related to
Speaker 4: keeping kosher, to kashrut, to Islamic laws about what is
Speaker 4: halal or haram, and so we we see this all
Speaker 4: occurs concurrently. Why did people ignore the Pope will get
Speaker 4: to that. One big part of it was the Protestant Reformation.
Speaker 4: That lead single from Martin Luther went viral, absolute banger
Speaker 4: in the early fifteen hundreds when he wrote ninety five
Speaker 4: Theces you know, which is clearly what Jay Z is
Speaker 4: referencing when he says ninety nine problems about it. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of doctrine in there and.
Speaker 5: So but a witch is not one right?
Speaker 4: Which is not one?
Speaker 2: Love it?
Speaker 4: Okay, that's in the mixtape. So both of these camps
Speaker 4: at Christianity, Protestants and Catholics beat me here again, Paul,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm cursing Lott. These groups hate each other.
Speaker 4: They think the other one is basically a devil worshiper
Speaker 4: with more steps. And because they had this intense beef
Speaker 4: with one another, they needed to recruit folks. They needed
Speaker 4: butts and seats, they needed hearts and minds, and they
Speaker 4: realized quite quickly. It was very cold, but they realized
Speaker 4: quite quickly one of the best ways to convert people
Speaker 4: was to show the power of your God and your
Speaker 4: belief on the ground in the field. You know what
Speaker 4: I mean. Burn some witches show people that there are
Speaker 4: real world consequences for joining the wrong team.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or just hang them or pillary them, you know,
Speaker 5: leave them, leave their body there for a little while,
Speaker 5: so everybody got to see.
Speaker 4: Everybody can afford rocks, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 4: drowning of course, if there's a convenient water source. And
Speaker 4: if she floats, she's a witch. If she dies, you.
Speaker 3: Know, meant to be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's talk about just really quickly that the ordeal
Speaker 5: of the like the what is it, the swimming what
Speaker 5: do they call the swimming test?
Speaker 2: I think back in.
Speaker 4: The dunking stool things like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, So there's a great article. It's I
Speaker 5: think a blog that's a part of the Library of
Speaker 5: Congress where Nathan Dorn goes through back in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: He goes through and looks at the swimming test in particular,
Speaker 5: and my goodness, you guys. He cites the legal arguments
Speaker 5: that were occurring about this swimming test. If this person
Speaker 5: is a witch, will put them in the water. If
Speaker 5: they float, they're a witch. If they don't float, they're
Speaker 5: not a witch. And all things are great. But they're
Speaker 5: going back and forth saying, like one guy will say, oh, well, god,
Speaker 5: surely will show us the witch is true nature if
Speaker 5: we throw her to the water and another says, well,
Speaker 5: do you presume to demand a miracle of God every
Speaker 5: time you, you know, do this? And the one says no,
Speaker 5: the water itself will reject the witch's body.
Speaker 6: I mean, is of God? He hath brought that. I
Speaker 6: screwed it up earlier. The monty python bid as a
Speaker 6: duck floats in water. If the woman weighs the same
Speaker 6: as a duck, then she is made of wood. The
Speaker 6: woman weighs the same as a duck, therefore the woman
Speaker 6: is a witch. That's the round up. But it's obviously
Speaker 6: inspired by what you're talking about, because it's so absurd.
Speaker 4: And the ducking stool that was the predecessor of this
Speaker 4: specific type of execution was at first just a form
Speaker 4: of social humiliation and punishment, similar to a pillory. You
Speaker 4: would be you would be punished for being something like
Speaker 4: a disorderly woman or complaining too much, or a tradesman
Speaker 4: who swindles, and they'll dunk you and everybody will be like, hahha,
Speaker 4: look at you. You're wet and your life sucks. But
Speaker 4: the people who are laughing most of the time their
Speaker 4: lives also sucked, and eventually they weaponized this just to
Speaker 4: finish this lab. Eventually they weaponize this to kill people.
Speaker 6: And isn't it funny slash terrifying that the remnants of
Speaker 6: that are at like a local fair or a state
Speaker 6: fair with like the dunk tank that is totally a
Speaker 6: modern Bread and Circus's version without killing.
Speaker 3: Of exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 6: For people to be able to like have schadenfreud of
Speaker 6: watching someone get you know, humiliated publicly, but you know,
Speaker 6: with less consequences but lower stakes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll see. It depends on how the rule of
Speaker 4: law functions going forward, which is another twist at the
Speaker 4: end of this episode. So in short, folks which need
Speaker 4: to know is that witch hunts were a decentralized on
Speaker 4: and off again industry, an early version of satanic panic,
Speaker 4: but they're also a business and business, dear friends, was
Speaker 4: quite good when it was happening. The groups who were
Speaker 4: most vulnerable to being accused of witchcraft, and thanks again
Speaker 4: to Carlson's fantastic research, they're going to be women and
Speaker 4: these women are going to be over forty and the
Speaker 4: data we can find is kind of mixed when it
Speaker 4: goes to marriage status, but the main thing is social
Speaker 4: position social class. Women who were in line to inherit
Speaker 4: land or asset from fathers and husbands who had passed
Speaker 4: away often fell under suspicion, especially if they didn't have
Speaker 4: a child right because if they had a child, they
Speaker 4: could be kind of like a SuSaA, you know, they
Speaker 4: could they could rule their property and then fall back
Speaker 4: on the kid, especially if it's a young boy, for
Speaker 4: to keep everything right in the eyes of the law.
Speaker 4: But without that, and especially if they did if they
Speaker 4: could no longer bear children, or if they were too
Speaker 4: powerful and patriarchal communities, then they were targeted. They were
Speaker 4: stripped of their livelihoods because you can't take it with you.
Speaker 6: I can only imagine that the inability perhaps to have
Speaker 6: children was even used as proof they've been stricken barren
Speaker 6: by the infernal One, you know, stuff like that. I'm
Speaker 6: sure that was said at times.
Speaker 4: And matter being a mother who has a stillborn child
Speaker 4: or child that dies shortly after being born, and experiencing
Speaker 4: one of the most unspeakable traumas of human existence, only
Speaker 4: to have the authorities in your town say it is
Speaker 4: proof that you worship the devil when it rains, it poors.
Speaker 5: Indeed, man, it all goes back to the biblical traditions.
Speaker 5: The stuff that's written in there about what.
Speaker 2: Literally the.
Speaker 5: I don't even know how to put it, the stuff
Speaker 5: that shows that the male, the man, is in charge
Speaker 5: of all these things, right and as you said, Ben,
Speaker 5: the child, if it is a male, then it becomes
Speaker 5: the next bearer of all of the importance in that family.
Speaker 5: But absolutely, you know, nothing is granted, especially two wives
Speaker 5: to daughters, and you know it. In Exodus it talks
Speaker 5: about selling daughters off.
Speaker 4: Basically that means you possess with your right hand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, your possessions. So you yeah, it's just again, it's
Speaker 5: so deeply root in that stuff. I really appreciate the
Speaker 5: book Bend, because that The Devil in the shape of
Speaker 5: Woman's just a perfect book to show exactly how deeply
Speaker 5: rooted all of this stuff is.
Speaker 4: Quick correction, that which you possess the right hand is
Speaker 4: a reference to the Koran, which also, by the way, surprise,
Speaker 4: Bads witchcraft.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, is it also a reference to the right
Speaker 6: hand of God, the Father and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: And is that to tiede in in any way?
Speaker 6: I've always wondered, like the left hand path versus the
Speaker 6: right hand.
Speaker 4: It's like a microcosmic I think echo of that. The
Speaker 4: idea of possessing something with one's right hand is that
Speaker 4: it is ethically just and sound for you to be
Speaker 4: the person controlling this thing, whether it is whether it
Speaker 4: is a tool, a handheld tool, whether it is property,
Speaker 4: whether it is a family member, or you know, again,
Speaker 4: also people a slave. It's talking about slavery as well.
Speaker 2: Dude.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't have to get into we don't have
Speaker 4: to get into the Antebellum theology that got weaponized in
Speaker 4: the US a few centuries after Salem. But we got
Speaker 4: to tell you, the commonality of demographic is important here.
Speaker 4: The people most likely to be accused of witches didn't
Speaker 4: really change in the West for a very long time.
Speaker 4: And the folks who the folks who were prosecuting this,
Speaker 4: Protestant denominations as well as Catholic officials. A lot of times,
Speaker 4: they were not experts in theology or law. They just,
Speaker 4: like ancient societies, believed magic was a fundamental scientific reality.
Speaker 4: They believed witches were reality the way that we would
Speaker 4: consider the speed of light a constant today. You know,
Speaker 4: you might disagree with people, but you're like, h yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, light that's the thing. Gravity that's the thing.
Speaker 4: You know, the periodic table, that's pretty non controversial. And
Speaker 4: you know, picture them having these conversations and saying like, well,
Speaker 4: the papist are bad, but witches are real though, right,
Speaker 4: And then everybody's like, oh, yeah, totally yeah, I mean witches. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 6: It's just so fascinating to think of like such an
Speaker 6: unprovable constant like that guiding so much of history, and
Speaker 6: the rule is kind of being made up by the
Speaker 6: ones with all the power every step of the way.
Speaker 3: Sounds like no way to.
Speaker 4: Live, you know, jeez, a lot of people didn't live
Speaker 4: exactly true, And weirdly enough, this is something I think
Speaker 4: surprises a lot of people. Puritans in in general were
Speaker 4: comparatively more progressive than the European counterparts, especially when they
Speaker 4: went to the colonies.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: And when we say progressive, no we don't mean the
Speaker 4: modern version of progressive. We mean they were a little
Speaker 4: less crappy toward women. European clergy typically believed women were
Speaker 4: innately given to evil, and as such they would be
Speaker 4: more vulnerable targets if infernal actors, the devil turned them
Speaker 4: against the mission of God, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the serpent did it in Eden right.
Speaker 4: Classic classic and said sarcastically so and very anti reptile,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, the whole tenor of that.
Speaker 4: But Puritanism, in contrast, viewed women as naturally good and
Speaker 4: godly capable of doing one of the most godlike things
Speaker 4: you can do, which is to create life. And they
Speaker 4: were better than dudes asterisk so long as they stayed
Speaker 4: within their strictly defined roles determined by the church.
Speaker 6: I think that's probably largely why women have been so
Speaker 6: demonized throughout history, because they have the most fundamental power,
Speaker 6: you know, to produce male heirs or whatever, just to
Speaker 6: create life, a thing that nobody else can do. So
Speaker 6: it makes sense to target them, you know, at such
Speaker 6: a fundamental level and try to control them, because they
Speaker 6: have this power that nobody else has, you know. I
Speaker 6: mean historically that's what you do when someone's more powerful
Speaker 6: than you, You try to subjugate them as best you
Speaker 6: possibly can.
Speaker 4: Hm. I mean, it's true that any women who deviate
Speaker 4: from these social norms foisted upon them from birth, they
Speaker 4: were immediately open to accusations of witchcraft. And we're not
Speaker 4: just talking about sex outside of marriage. We're not just
Speaker 4: talking about raising your voice in the public square to say, hey,
Speaker 4: make life better for everyone. We're talking about stuff like literacy,
Speaker 4: like reading other than the Bible. Now we get you
Speaker 4: in trouble in this progressive environment. The odds are stacked. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the odds were stacked against women from the beginning and
Speaker 4: continue to be so today. I would argue, but look
Speaker 4: there's a conspiracy. Right at this point we got to again.
Speaker 4: We might say, all right, look, no one involved in
Speaker 4: a witch hunt, victim, persecutor audience. None of them were
Speaker 4: stupid people. In fact, a lot of them were good
Speaker 4: faith actors, and they were rationalizing the arrest, the torture,
Speaker 4: the executions as a matter of fighting for the greater good.
Speaker 4: But just like an evil spell, the well of their
Speaker 4: cognition was poisoned. They had ulterior motives which were inseparable
Speaker 4: from their ostensible mission. Their accusations came from economic, familial,
Speaker 4: and community disagreements. Look at almost any witch hunt throughout
Speaker 4: Western history and you can trace a rise in problems
Speaker 4: to a rise in accusations of witchcraft.
Speaker 6: Right, for example, as the European colonies in New England
Speaker 6: started to grow. Land was at a premium, you know,
Speaker 6: it's a finite resource. It became more scarce. People were
Speaker 6: like just scooping it all up, and economic inequality became
Speaker 6: much more of a concern with each of these new
Speaker 6: kind of problems that were you know, introduced because of
Speaker 6: these changing circumstances, These accusations.
Speaker 3: Began to grow as a result of disputes.
Speaker 6: Right, It's like my neighbor is possessed by the devil
Speaker 6: because he won't respect my property line, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. It's also it's also weird because this
Speaker 4: to the point about control you're making, this solidifies, this
Speaker 4: solidified stability for the given hierarchy of the time. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like a solid witchcraft prosecution, one that looks good.
Speaker 4: It justifies the existence of the leadership structure. You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, let's just say the quiet part out loud.
Speaker 4: War is almost always great for the career of a
Speaker 4: US president. It is extremely rare for those guys not
Speaker 4: to get re elected. If enough people.
Speaker 2: Die in any country in any conflict.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, most of them because it solidifies some sort
Speaker 6: of national pride or mourning kind of or like I
Speaker 6: would think it'd be the opposite, or it's like, look
Speaker 6: with this jerk dead. He killed our boys, you know,
Speaker 6: he sent them out to their deaths. But somehow it's
Speaker 6: this counterintuitive results.
Speaker 3: It's very interesting.
Speaker 5: Well, it's the need if a belief, right. I think
Speaker 5: maybe that's inside of humans or is evolutionary or something
Speaker 5: where if we are in a time of war, we
Speaker 5: don't want to change guard. We don't want to you know,
Speaker 5: the people are in charge us. We don't want to
Speaker 5: switch everybody out. No, that team is already on alert.
Speaker 5: They're the ones in charge, are there, right. I don't
Speaker 5: know if that in my mind that's.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. It's about certainly part of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and this is all right. So this is
Speaker 4: the issue. Just like you could say a president or
Speaker 4: a political leader may be incentivized by certain things that
Speaker 4: are terrible for innocent people. The witch hunters, the judges,
Speaker 4: even the civilian accusers were incentivized to find witches and
Speaker 4: not to give them a fair shake to convict them.
Speaker 4: The accusers in allegations of possession especially, they often themselves
Speaker 4: were acting out of self defense. They were young women
Speaker 4: from what you would consider the working poor strata of
Speaker 4: their given society. And they were terrified that because as
Speaker 4: they were on the outs, they might get accused of
Speaker 4: being witches. So how do you do that? You get
Speaker 4: in front of it. And then they were expressing frustrations
Speaker 4: with a terribly unfair world, and sometimes they would adopt
Speaker 4: the wild, uncontrollable mannerisms, at least according to Carlson, and
Speaker 4: they would claim this was a case of possession at
Speaker 4: the hands of a witch, not me her. And this
Speaker 4: was one of the only forms, at least in New England,
Speaker 4: of acting out that was acceptable to puritanical society. And
Speaker 4: of course numerous other similarities throughout the world. Exorcisms in Islam,
Speaker 4: the case of the Screaming Girls of Malaysia. Check that
Speaker 4: episode out.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, And what you're describing is a big plot
Speaker 6: point in the Crucible, you know, where it's like these
Speaker 6: young girls that are you know, doing all this crazy
Speaker 6: stuff and it gets not blamed on the girls, but
Speaker 6: blamed on someone who has communed with the devil to
Speaker 6: have them influence, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's a way.
Speaker 6: And also the person that gets targeted is already an
Speaker 6: other is a is a black woman, you know, who
Speaker 6: is already seen as being a little problematic in our society,
Speaker 6: you know, the society of the very white, you know,
Speaker 6: colony that's portrayed in The Crucible.
Speaker 5: One more book recommendation, because you know, we're saying these things,
Speaker 5: but not all historians agree with a lot of the things,
Speaker 5: which is which is really cool because you kind of
Speaker 5: get to see the truth and reality and everything we're
Speaker 5: talking about here. But then there are also counterpoints that
Speaker 5: you can explore. And I would just recommend in the
Speaker 5: Devil's Snare the Salem witch Craft Crisis of sixteen ninety
Speaker 5: two by Mary Beth Norton, another amazing historian that like
Speaker 5: will kind of break down, like say, yes, that is
Speaker 5: true in these like certain instances, and then there's this
Speaker 5: other weird thing that was happening over here. I think
Speaker 5: it's just worth it, worth your time if you're really
Speaker 5: interested in this stuff.
Speaker 4: And in Norton's defense, she is far from a one
Speaker 4: trick pony historian. Her speciality is colonial history overall, OK,
Speaker 4: And I think she tuned into a zeitgeist with exploring
Speaker 4: the Salem witch trials, which I understand why they get
Speaker 4: such intense examination, especially in the United States. It is
Speaker 4: important to remember, of course, that there's a precedent set
Speaker 4: there another book recommendation. You want to see the mentality
Speaker 4: of where a lot of these folks were coming from,
Speaker 4: not just in Salem, but in New England overall. Check
Speaker 4: out Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. That is,
Speaker 4: oh man, the way it's written. Still, I totally disagree,
Speaker 4: by the way, And I hope if you're hearing this
Speaker 4: show and you've read this book or this screed, I
Speaker 4: hope you disagree to But we have to admit that
Speaker 4: guy could write. Mather could write, He knew how to
Speaker 4: move a crowd.
Speaker 3: Why is God so angry all the time?
Speaker 4: You guys, Well, if you asked Mather, he has some
Speaker 4: pretty specific opinions on that one. And they didn't. They
Speaker 4: also did not practice what we would call metaphor right.
Speaker 4: They did not practice analogy or simile or any of
Speaker 4: that stuff. So like there was a snake that came
Speaker 4: into the chapel or Mather was preaching one time, and
Speaker 4: he killed the snake in front of the in front
Speaker 4: of the crowd, in front of the church, I should say,
Speaker 4: and to the crowd, this was not just a weird coincidence.
Speaker 4: This was not a cool analogy. The devil came and
Speaker 4: with the power of God, Mather killed him in front
Speaker 4: of everybody. You just can't get a live show like
Speaker 4: that in a lot of places.
Speaker 2: His boot was involved as well.
Speaker 6: I think, yes, yeah, just so I will crush these
Speaker 6: sepent under my boot heel pretty much vanquish thee it was.
Speaker 4: It was a revival energy, I mean. Okay. So as
Speaker 4: for the hunters and judges, here is the genuine conspiracy
Speaker 4: that doesn't get talked about often enough in Europe. In
Speaker 4: the Nisse and US as well, these folks worked on commission.
Speaker 4: If someone's legally convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death,
Speaker 4: almost always based on a confession derived from torture any Land,
Speaker 4: any assets they possess are automatically up for grats. The
Speaker 4: Church Protestant or Catholic gets its vig and some of
Speaker 4: the rest goes to these persecutors. Prosecutors, judges, sometimes even
Speaker 4: witnesses themselves as a payment as recompense for their good deeds.
Speaker 5: So dude, yeah, The Church of England, in the form
Speaker 5: of local magistrates, would pay monthly wages to witch hunters
Speaker 5: in England in like the sixteen hundre, like almost like
Speaker 5: you said, on a commission basis, Like here's a monthly
Speaker 5: wage for that witch you put away. Thanks for doing that, which,
Speaker 5: my god, if that's not a motive, Holy mackerel and ps.
Speaker 5: You're getting paid by the way often in firewood. That's
Speaker 5: one of the major's that was.
Speaker 4: Very it was. It was the bitcoin of its day.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 4: So let's do a thought experiment. Imagine you're a person
Speaker 4: living during one of these satanic panics during the time
Speaker 4: of witchcraft hunters. You know, let's make it tough for
Speaker 4: you in this situation. What do we need? What do
Speaker 4: we need to make someone a target of witchcraft accusations?
Speaker 4: You got to be widowed, right, No kids, those are
Speaker 4: checking the boxes.
Speaker 2: No always, but yes, that's very good, right, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, you know, not a profile, but but yeah, that
Speaker 4: that makes you. These are the factors that make you
Speaker 4: increasingly likely to be considered a witch widowed, no kids,
Speaker 4: you got money, he got land. You know, other farms
Speaker 4: weren't doing so well the past season, but you, through
Speaker 4: some inexplicable circumstance, you had a pretty bumper crop. People
Speaker 4: increasingly envy your success they start to ask some questions,
Speaker 4: reasonable questions at first. They always are why her? Why
Speaker 4: not me? Why that farm? Why not mine?
Speaker 5: Because she has a cat and a birthmark? Obviously, surely
Speaker 5: it can't just be luck. God has a plan, And
Speaker 5: weren't we all supposed to be in the same boat?
Speaker 5: Why is this person not? Also, wasn't she saying something
Speaker 5: kind of controversial within earshot of the chapel maybe a
Speaker 5: few years back. I can't remember exactly what it was,
Speaker 5: but I think it was something like this, and then
Speaker 5: boom boom boom, rumor spread you get arrested. What's your
Speaker 5: experience in court going to be like if the judge
Speaker 5: is sentencing you, the prosecutor adjudicating your case, and even
Speaker 5: a few of the witnesses all know in advance that
Speaker 5: they get a piece of your farm and a payment
Speaker 5: from the church upon your conviction and death. Dude, Well,
Speaker 5: so the question is, then, how do you prove without
Speaker 5: evidence that this person that you want all their stuff
Speaker 5: is a witch so that you can take all their stuff?
Speaker 5: And that's how you get stuff like the swimming method, right,
Speaker 5: Because now we've got a way that we can prove
Speaker 5: in the eyes of the law, Oh, this is in
Speaker 5: fact a witch, and she must.
Speaker 2: You know, all of her land is bestowed upon us.
Speaker 4: Now, while we're talking about the legal proceedings, Matt, do
Speaker 4: you want to talk a little bit about compregators.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, this is a vocabulary word for me at least.
Speaker 5: A compregator a sworn witness to the innocence or good
Speaker 5: character of an accused person. And the reason why this
Speaker 5: comes up for me at least is because I was
Speaker 5: reading that article from Nathan Dorn. I'll just read a
Speaker 5: quick part of it here. There were some crimes this
Speaker 5: is talking about like seventeen, sixteenth, seventeenth century England. Okay,
Speaker 5: Nathan says there were some crimes that were simply not
Speaker 5: amenable to other forms of judicial proof, namely crimes for
Speaker 5: which there was no witness for which the defendant could
Speaker 5: not find compregators or witnesses to their good character, or
Speaker 5: for which the defendant's oath was held to be unreliable.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: And he's citing Bartlett here, which I don't have the
Speaker 5: exact site citing for, but I know that author. I
Speaker 5: just can't connect the data here. But just one last thing.
Speaker 5: In these cases, what was needed was evidence from an
Speaker 5: absolute or divine point of view. So things like this,
Speaker 5: the ordeal stuff, the trials that witches would go through,
Speaker 5: was a way to supply that point of view in
Speaker 5: a way that a lot of people. Not everybody in
Speaker 5: a village or a town or city would believe, but
Speaker 5: enough of them would believe it because it matches up
Speaker 5: with their pre existing.
Speaker 4: Beliefs one hundred percent, you know. And and here's the
Speaker 4: other part of it. Witch hunters like the notorious Matthew
Speaker 4: Hopkins he was for in his day. He was sort
Speaker 4: of the Drake of witch hunting or the Kanye of
Speaker 4: witch hunting. The ya excuse me, and he and his
Speaker 4: team and his croney crony's, his goons. They were krone. Interesting.
Speaker 4: They were not paid just for doing their job, right,
Speaker 4: They were paid upon conviction. And this meant that every dismissal,
Speaker 4: every single person accused of witchcraft and later found innocent,
Speaker 4: directly weighted to money and time out of their collective pockets.
Speaker 4: So we have to ask ourselves how much work did
Speaker 4: these people really want to put in to investigating innocence?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Dude?
Speaker 5: Can we say he he had over three hundred women
Speaker 5: execute it.
Speaker 4: He's a terrible person three.
Speaker 5: Hundred month salary for each one of those.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: You can read his book by the way. He wrote
Speaker 5: a book in sixteen forty six is titled The Discovery
Speaker 5: of Witches An Answer to Several Queries Lately Help and
Speaker 5: he calls himself Matthew Hopkins witch Finder.
Speaker 4: Ah, yes, witch finder too. Also, while we're at it,
Speaker 4: in book recommendations, there is a fantastic series from the
Speaker 4: hell Boy universe. I think it's Edward Gray Witchfinder. So
Speaker 4: if you dig hell Boy, check that one out. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's super good, super good. And these witch hunts, we
Speaker 4: do have to say they overwhelmingly targeted women, but men
Speaker 4: were also not immune, and people who were non binary,
Speaker 4: although they wouldn't have been called that at that time,
Speaker 4: they were also not immune. While women were over whelmingly targeted,
Speaker 4: other people would be targeted, especially they were socially isolated
Speaker 4: again unmarried, if they had controversial public opinions, or if
Speaker 4: they suffered from a mental or physical ailment like Peter Stump,
Speaker 4: which is an entrance to a rabbit hole. You can
Speaker 4: search of your own accord, folks, And what better time
Speaker 4: to do that than now as we take an ad break.
Speaker 4: Of course, it's our pallem that Frederick can assure you folks.
Speaker 4: There are no longer actual witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts.
Speaker 4: There's a ton of tourism.
Speaker 5: I don't think so. I don't think there anymore right now.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean there aren't witch hunts all over
Speaker 5: the planet every year, like all the time.
Speaker 3: They're all into Washington, d C. Mainly. No, they're everywhere.
Speaker 6: Everywhere there is descents or you know, contradicting opinions. It's
Speaker 6: very easy to use the same concept, you know, dismissed
Speaker 6: of any of the supernatural trappings, and just you know,
Speaker 6: do the same exact thing, but instead of like being
Speaker 6: a actual witch, it's like you did this thing or
Speaker 6: you've got the secret agenda or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: When people talk about witch hunts today, they are usually
Speaker 4: going to be in the realm of politics. They're going
Speaker 4: to be political opponents attempting to delegitimize a criticism of
Speaker 4: themselves or their associates, kind of a dog whistle, as
Speaker 4: someone mentioned earlier. But no one's accusing each other of
Speaker 4: practicing malfesium. And we'll get to that modern day turn
Speaker 4: at the very end you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, like I mean, but they are right.
Speaker 5: Like I was reading a Scientific American the over a
Speaker 5: thousand people every year are charged with witchcraft.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, Why are there not actual occult witch hunts
Speaker 4: or diabolist hunts here in the US today? It's because
Speaker 4: it's It's not like the authorities one day said, okay, nice,
Speaker 4: we got the last one high five freeze frame roll credits.
Speaker 4: What happened is that life got better overall. That's exactly
Speaker 4: what happened. Those socioeconomic factors were removed, people felt less
Speaker 4: of a squeeze, and as a result, the hunts began
Speaker 4: to die out. But because this is not a single
Speaker 4: set of events, because it's a collection of tactics triggered
Speaker 4: by socioeconomic pressures, the result in the deaths of innocent people.
Speaker 4: Like you said, Matt, witch hunts do continue in the
Speaker 4: modern day. They're not in the news as much unless
Speaker 4: you look for it, but innocent people do continue to
Speaker 4: die due to these false accusations and allegations. Modern witch
Speaker 4: hunts right now have resulted in a much higher death
Speaker 4: toll than the old school ones in Europe and the colonies,
Speaker 4: particularly if you're looking at the hot spots you're looking
Speaker 4: at India, the Amazon, a lot of Sub Saharan Africa,
Speaker 4: and Papua New Guinea.
Speaker 6: So why you might be asking yourself is this the case?
Speaker 6: Without painting with too broad a brush here we can
Speaker 6: see a lot of similar socioeconomic factors at play, starting
Speaker 6: off with the economic inequality, differences about ruling powers and
Speaker 6: conflicts between those in power, a need for control, a
Speaker 6: need for on the individual level to avoid feeling out
Speaker 6: of control. In fact, if you want to go into
Speaker 6: actual belief here, perhaps exercising some control by blaming external forces,
Speaker 6: you know, for certain events that are troubling to you
Speaker 6: in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the idea of taking agency, right, I can alter
Speaker 4: the world such that I set it at my community,
Speaker 4: my personal existence.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: However I get to that point, I am fighting for
Speaker 4: greater good, and indeed I am fighting for my continued
Speaker 4: existence and prosperity. We have notable cases, each of which
Speaker 4: could be their own episode. There are tons of witchcraft
Speaker 4: accusations every year on the African continent Sub Saharan Africa
Speaker 4: in particular, often against children. See also our earlier mentions
Speaker 4: of the mutilation of children who have albinism. For magical purposes.
Speaker 4: So there's kind of a both sides argument, because there
Speaker 4: are also as evil and unclean as it is, there
Speaker 4: are people engaging in the murder of children for magical purposes,
Speaker 4: which is something like Hopkins of old often accused people
Speaker 4: of but it is actually happening in some parts of
Speaker 4: the world. And if you go to rural India you
Speaker 4: see a similar, somewhat paradoxical thing. People go to local
Speaker 4: holy figures, practitioners of traditional magic or esoteric beliefs. But
Speaker 4: those same societies will also target women for witchcraft. And
Speaker 4: it's even worse than it was in Salem or in
Speaker 4: Europe back in the day. In these cases, the women
Speaker 4: accused are often knowingly framed and attacked without trial and
Speaker 4: sometimes murdered, and the cases go on and on and on,
Speaker 4: and to be completely honest, they're conspiracies. They're likely going
Speaker 4: to continue because we're talking about parts of civilization where
Speaker 4: belief in magic as a weapon has itself become weaponized
Speaker 4: as a tool of material gain and ideological control. And
Speaker 4: that's crazy, right, but it's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Check out the article how social turmoil has increased witch
Speaker 5: hunts throughout history from Scientific American. It's written by Sylvia
Speaker 5: Fi I think is how you'd say it, and Alice
Speaker 5: Markham canter. It's really interesting and they point to over
Speaker 5: a thousand people who are accused of witchcraft every year.
Speaker 5: So that's like people who get expelled out of their homes,
Speaker 5: people who get as you said, been killed or you know,
Speaker 5: tortured basically because they're being accused of witchcraft. And I
Speaker 5: would also recommend listening. We made an episode guys a
Speaker 5: while back. I think it was called is Witchcraft on
Speaker 5: the Rise? And there's a video Modern Witchcraft something like
Speaker 5: that that speaks directly to this subject.
Speaker 4: And that's how I'm glad you mentioned that Scientific American article,
Speaker 4: Matt because that came out this year, folks, that came
Speaker 4: out in May of twenty twenty three. So the conspiracies
Speaker 4: are real. Don't ever forget. It goes deeper than the
Speaker 4: government's debt, you know what I mean. At this point,
Speaker 4: we want to pass the broomstick or the mortar and
Speaker 4: pestle to you. Thank you for joining our or sabat.
Speaker 4: What do you think, folks? Have you or someone you
Speaker 4: know ever been involved in a case of ostensible witchcraft?
Speaker 4: Do you believe there may have at any point in history,
Speaker 4: then some real sand to these accusations. Send us the
Speaker 4: spookiest stories you can find. We try to be easy
Speaker 4: to find online.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 6: You can find us at conspiracy Stuff on all of
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Speaker 6: and YouTube where conspiracy stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 5: Hey, we have a phone number. It's one eight three
Speaker 5: three std WYTK. When you call in, give yourself a
Speaker 5: nickname and let us know if we can use your
Speaker 5: message on the air. Guys, I forgot to mention something. Well,
Speaker 5: we're gonna do it right here and doesn't matter. Danvers, Massachusetts.
Speaker 5: There's a place that the three of us need to go.
Speaker 5: It's called the Danvers Arc Center. It's at the Peabody
Speaker 5: Institute Library. They have actual writings, so like actual artifacts
Speaker 5: and books and letters that were all written around the
Speaker 5: Salem witch Trials at the time, and they've got a
Speaker 5: whole section there on the Danvers State Hospital for the Insane.
Speaker 5: Do you guys know that place heard of but never visited. Guys,
Speaker 5: we need to we need to take a trip out
Speaker 5: to Danvers to do stuff on that place. No Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Sorry,
Speaker 5: like it is at some of the oldest American history
Speaker 5: that exists. And man, just that stuff about how society
Speaker 5: treated people in a more modern time who were dealing
Speaker 5: with mental illness, Like oh, man, we should do this.
Speaker 2: Oh but if you.
Speaker 5: Don't want to call our number, why not instead to
Speaker 5: send us a good old fashioned email.
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