Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and um Julie Witchy Pooh
Speaker 1: Douglas one of my favorite witches witch which who was
Speaker 1: Witchy Pooch. She was like one of those cartoon witches
Speaker 1: and she, you know, she had like the iconic like
Speaker 1: green face and the long nose and the mole and
Speaker 1: she was always making potions, just kind of like a
Speaker 1: kindly witch. Okay, yeah, well that's good. I like that
Speaker 1: the interpretation. I like that at that variegation of the
Speaker 1: witch we're talking about, which is, of course, because this
Speaker 1: is the week of Halloween, so we thought what better
Speaker 1: time than to roll out a couple of our favorite
Speaker 1: spooky episodes and uh and this one's one of them.
Speaker 1: This one deals with you've You've got everything in this story,
Speaker 1: which is psychedelic lubricants, rooms. What more could you want? Right?
Speaker 1: So we hope that you enjoy the Halloween je What
Speaker 1: do you like to put in your witches? Brute? A
Speaker 1: little a little frog play, rosemary, yeah, rusty garlic, yeah
Speaker 1: of course, um, little crystallized ginger, nice touch. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend um scale of dragon to the wolf which
Speaker 1: is mummy man, gulf off the raven c salt shark,
Speaker 1: root of himlock digged in the dark of course, liver
Speaker 1: of a blaspheming jew if you can get it, uh,
Speaker 1: and goll of goat slips of you. And of course
Speaker 1: you want all the silver in the moon's eclipse. That's
Speaker 1: just an old recipe that I picked up. You're such
Speaker 1: a purist, picked up from old will there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just get myself from Trader Joe's and you're all
Speaker 1: of the earth the witches. I'll a Trader Joe's is
Speaker 1: really good. I mean everything from your scale of dragon
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, the eye of Newt and Baboon's blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have excellent pepoon's blood. You know this. This is
Speaker 1: what I love about how stuff works is that we
Speaker 1: can discuss these things. We've got our own coven here
Speaker 1: and it really allows us to exchange ideas about witchcraft.
Speaker 1: There's a coven at how stuff works. Yeah, like seriously
Speaker 1: or like literally, there's a covenant how stuff works? Or
Speaker 1: are you just talking about we throw ideas into a
Speaker 1: call drof? Oh no, yeah, sure, it was just metaphorical yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: of course, there's not a real coven. That would be weird. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's metaphorical. Alright, well really well, I would I would
Speaker 1: imagine you're you. You must be meeting in a separate space, because,
Speaker 1: as we know from legends and myth and folk tales,
Speaker 1: the classic version of the witch, and and by the
Speaker 1: classic version of which I'm not craning this in on
Speaker 1: on on Wiccan stuff, like a modern witches, of of
Speaker 1: whom I know some of My friend Michelle is a
Speaker 1: practicing Wiccan. And to my knowledge, you just don't have
Speaker 1: a cauldron. No, no, Today we're talking about the witches
Speaker 1: that are burned in our memories. And sometimes it's yes,
Speaker 1: um who yeah, who have cauldron? Who are meeting in
Speaker 1: the dark, who are plotting against Macbeth, that are casting spells,
Speaker 1: that are hanging out with cats that hate Dorothy, that
Speaker 1: hate Dorothy, that are dying underneath the weight of houses
Speaker 1: that fall from the sky. Uh. This sort of thing,
Speaker 1: the idea of the witch, is pretty fascinating, especially when
Speaker 1: you get past sort of the the the typical Halloween
Speaker 1: idea of just cackling old crones. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: we could just talk for a long time about the
Speaker 1: about about what the Witch represents, because as I've discussed before,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Witch is basically a monster, the hag,
Speaker 1: the hag, especially if you see the Hag as a
Speaker 1: monster or the ogress, uh, appearing throughout different myth cycles
Speaker 1: where uh, and some of this is tied to the
Speaker 1: idea that some sort of cannibalistic, grotesque old woman will
Speaker 1: come and eat your children if they don't behave, or
Speaker 1: that if you're not careful, guys, you might be seduced
Speaker 1: by what seems like a beautiful woman but turns out
Speaker 1: to be a grotesque monster, right then sort of the
Speaker 1: sucky best thing too, exactly exactly. And then when you
Speaker 1: I mean you also in the Witch you have a
Speaker 1: situation where it's a woman with power, and of course
Speaker 1: that is a very interesting idea throughout a predominantly male
Speaker 1: dominated culture where suddenly here, here are women and they
Speaker 1: have power. And what does his power mean? Is it
Speaker 1: a threat to male dominance? And uh, I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean make me stop, because well, I was gonna say that.
Speaker 1: Erica John has at interesting perspective on this from historical context,
Speaker 1: and she has a book called Witchcraft and some poetry
Speaker 1: and fiction and some historical data in their few spells
Speaker 1: in that I don't know, I hope. So I think
Speaker 1: that she actually sort of approached this book in that
Speaker 1: manner of like, Wow, could I become a witch myself?
Speaker 1: Even though, um, she's someone who I think is grounded
Speaker 1: in reality and knows that she wasn't necessarily going to
Speaker 1: start flying around. But anyway, Um, she is the author
Speaker 1: of fear Flying. That's what she's best known of. As
Speaker 1: in her forward of the book, she says, witchcraft in
Speaker 1: Europe and America is essentially this harkening back to female
Speaker 1: divinity within a patriarchal culture. If you insist long enough
Speaker 1: that God is the father, a nostalgia for the mother
Speaker 1: goddess will be born. If you exclude women from church rights,
Speaker 1: they will practice their magic in the fields and forests,
Speaker 1: in their own kitchens. The point is female power cannot
Speaker 1: be suppressed, It can only be driven underground. So this
Speaker 1: is how she places which is really in a historical
Speaker 1: sense of Okay, what's actually happening here when we talk
Speaker 1: about which is when we get away from this idea
Speaker 1: of pointy hats and broomsticks. Even though broomsticks certainly planned
Speaker 1: to it as we will find out. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you mentioned the the necessary re emergence of
Speaker 1: the feminine deity because I'm reminded of a series of
Speaker 1: essays that I read, and have I known that you
Speaker 1: were going to go in this direction, I would have
Speaker 1: would have brought that book with me off to put
Speaker 1: something on the blocks about it. But there's some interesting
Speaker 1: material in there about depictions of Jesus Christ in medieval art,
Speaker 1: and in some of these depictions, Christ becomes more and
Speaker 1: more feminine, and you you actually have have varying in
Speaker 1: some cases outright heretical. And I'm doing quotes with air quotes,
Speaker 1: and I finker, is there heretical ideas or sometimes they're
Speaker 1: just sort of quasi heretical, where individuals end up worshiping
Speaker 1: a more female version of Christ in the same way
Speaker 1: that there are female depictions of the Buddha. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is sort of a uh an effort to unify
Speaker 1: right right and bring both sides to this right, and
Speaker 1: to focus more on feminine aspects in this case of
Speaker 1: of Jesus and then to venerate those aspects as opposed
Speaker 1: to just bleeding man God on a tree kind of
Speaker 1: a thing. It's a really fascinating accept because you get
Speaker 1: into this whole interesting area of the wound of Christ,
Speaker 1: the spear wound, and how this spear wound is also
Speaker 1: kind of like a vagina. I mean, it's sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be strong. That's not a big deal. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: wound is like vagina. Yeah, next time you see an
Speaker 1: image of doubting Thomas, think about that. Um. But moving
Speaker 1: on side tangent there, But back to which is um
Speaker 1: you were saying? Yeah, Erica doing that, she does. She
Speaker 1: does explore the reasons why we have vilified, which is
Speaker 1: throughout the ages, and one of the things that she
Speaker 1: says really interesting is that women have always been the
Speaker 1: bearers of life right, and we know historically women have
Speaker 1: been repressed on all sorts of different fronts. She also
Speaker 1: says that as women gain power, they began to um
Speaker 1: to sort of be tamped down. And if you ascribe
Speaker 1: witchness to someone, or you put power in the light
Speaker 1: of negativity, then what you're doing essentially is saying that
Speaker 1: not only is this person a life bringer, a life bear,
Speaker 1: which is really powerful, but this person has the ability
Speaker 1: to bring death right through potions, magic, uh general dark shenanigans,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and if they're engaged in food preparation too.
Speaker 1: I mean that's food can be the big life giver.
Speaker 1: But if it's if something's wrong with it, that if
Speaker 1: it becomes toxic in some way, shape or form, if
Speaker 1: something goes off, there's some sort of bacterial, uh infection,
Speaker 1: then it's a killer as well. That's right. That's why
Speaker 1: you should always be kind to your server. Right. You
Speaker 1: never know what's going on in the kitchen. She might
Speaker 1: be a witch. Yep, she might be a witch, or
Speaker 1: he might be right, yeah, a warlock. So it's gonna
Speaker 1: sound flipped to say this, but but all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you've you've got something like a broom, which is becomes
Speaker 1: really important, almost like a very high tech object in
Speaker 1: the thirteenth century, right, which is interesting because I think
Speaker 1: the broom is something we often discount as that very
Speaker 1: Halloween idea of a witch. Like you've got a you know,
Speaker 1: there's like a kindergartener. Let's put a funny nose on her,
Speaker 1: paying her face screen, give her a broom, and she
Speaker 1: can start collecting candy, right, striped tights. Right there we go.
Speaker 1: But I mean it is important to understand that this
Speaker 1: really was a prized object at the home. When we
Speaker 1: talk about the kitchen and who's preparing your food, we're
Speaker 1: also talking about the person who has you know, usually
Speaker 1: elaborately braided broom, a cauldron, right that may have been
Speaker 1: passed down from generation to generation, and these objects start
Speaker 1: to really gain importance that they are key feminine cultural artifacts. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so when you start to think about a witch,
Speaker 1: you start to think about brooms. It would make sense
Speaker 1: that somehow they would factor into the image of a witch.
Speaker 1: But now you'll look at early typographs of which is
Speaker 1: and you'll often see some depictions of which is uh,
Speaker 1: quite naked on top of a stride, exceedingly naked. And
Speaker 1: that's another thing that will Shakespeare. Um, well, no, I
Speaker 1: don't know if they were naked, and that there was
Speaker 1: any reference to the naked in the text. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Roman Polanski's version of Matbeth, which is certainly naked,
Speaker 1: which is awesome and uh and has some really naked
Speaker 1: old witches and which I thought worked perfectly. But back
Speaker 1: to these old engravings and woodcuts where you see naked
Speaker 1: women flying around in the middle of the night talking
Speaker 1: with goats, riding goat, um, you know, in engaging with
Speaker 1: the devil and in various way shapes and form right
Speaker 1: in terms of there's something to this right where if
Speaker 1: you scratch the surface a little bit, you'll find out
Speaker 1: that the broom actually figures pretty prominently and in which
Speaker 1: is work. And let's just back up real quick. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: the broom is the ultimate symbol of domesticity, but in
Speaker 1: the hands of which it can become this really potent
Speaker 1: symbol of liberation. Right, And the more disenfranchised a person is,
Speaker 1: the more that they might turn to magical thinking to
Speaker 1: gain some sort of mastery over their situations. So let's
Speaker 1: look at it this way. Um. You know, maybe someone
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily a self proclaimed which, but perhaps they did
Speaker 1: uh dabble back of the day, you know, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about this historical which in the thirteenth century in
Speaker 1: ointments because it was important for healing in ritual and
Speaker 1: magical spells, because this was a way to gain some
Speaker 1: sort of control over their lives. Right, But back to
Speaker 1: this broom. Yeah, there's kind of like two arresting ways
Speaker 1: of looking at the power of the broom, one which
Speaker 1: will discuss even more as of course, the magical thinking
Speaker 1: side of it. And then there's this whole ointment situation ointment,
Speaker 1: which you think is a gross word, but I do.
Speaker 1: And then and now we're about to really sort of
Speaker 1: dive into the flying ointment here and talk about something
Speaker 1: that's very interesting about the broom in the ointment. You
Speaker 1: want to you want to run with that, Okay, So
Speaker 1: there's this idea that which is they're flying around in
Speaker 1: broomsticks or they're flying around in a chair, but in
Speaker 1: many of these tails and accusations, they are rubbing an
Speaker 1: ointment on the broom or chair first, which it's often
Speaker 1: glossed over generally when you it's not a part of
Speaker 1: the Halloween costume. Um usually on a jar of ointment,
Speaker 1: excepting the costume. So they're taking this broom they're coating
Speaker 1: it with with some sort of mysterious ointment that they've
Speaker 1: brewed up, and then they're riding this this broomstick naked
Speaker 1: and just having a wonderful time doing it. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously that brings to mind some some various scenarios that
Speaker 1: could be taking place, and there's actually some real um
Speaker 1: some people put some real thought into this, and the
Speaker 1: idea that the ointment is in fact a drug or
Speaker 1: has has a pharmaceutical or or or psychedelic properties and
Speaker 1: they are interacting with the ointment on the broom Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some pharmacologists who say, you know what, we
Speaker 1: think that this is actually what was happening, is that
Speaker 1: these ointments were being made and applied um through the skin,
Speaker 1: basically applying a crazy pharmaceutical ointment to the genitals with
Speaker 1: a broomstick. Yes, yes, they probably said that on the
Speaker 1: side applied gently to broomstick, then ride broomstick genitals first
Speaker 1: and gothic font And this is from the investigation of
Speaker 1: Lady Alice Kepler in she was one of the first
Speaker 1: women to be accused of witchcraft in Ireland. We have
Speaker 1: this account quote in rifling the closet of a lady,
Speaker 1: they found a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a
Speaker 1: staff upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin. Okay,
Speaker 1: these are actual documents that they're pulling some some of
Speaker 1: this stuff from, and not that we put tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of stock in the prosecutions materials in witchcraft trials. I
Speaker 1: mean they're no. Take that with a whole lot of salt.
Speaker 1: But who knows, like the idea that there could be
Speaker 1: some shruded truth to this is fascinating. Okay, dig a
Speaker 1: little deeper. And this is from the Journal of the
Speaker 1: American Society of Anesthesiologists and a paper they called the
Speaker 1: Legacy of a Tropos the fate who cut the thread
Speaker 1: of Life, which I think is really poetic for for
Speaker 1: a journal um. In the paper they describe a tone
Speaker 1: written by sixteenth century Dutch physician Johan we Are, who
Speaker 1: concluded that a plant called henbane was a principal ingredient
Speaker 1: in which is through along with deadly nightshade and man drake,
Speaker 1: and according to where there were other ointments, but the
Speaker 1: essential ingredients remained the same in all of them, in
Speaker 1: all the preparations. When they applied to the upper thighs
Speaker 1: or general thills, it was said to induce the sensation
Speaker 1: of rising into the air and flying. And by the way,
Speaker 1: by applying this to their skin and rather than taking
Speaker 1: it orallyy it was much more effective because then they
Speaker 1: didn't have to digest this and have obviously the sort
Speaker 1: of stomach ailments that would accompany that. Right, So at
Speaker 1: some point they figured out that hey, this is this
Speaker 1: is a pretty good way to get high. Well, it
Speaker 1: kind of it's similar in a way to the way
Speaker 1: some medications are applied via suppository rather than taken orally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the dangerous with suppositories if you're taking
Speaker 1: some sort of illicit substances, of course, that you can't
Speaker 1: if you take to take it orally, you can get
Speaker 1: you can become ill and vomited back up. But suppository
Speaker 1: not so much. Yeah. And the people that were studying
Speaker 1: in these appointments, they weren't necessarily thinking that that which
Speaker 1: is at that time we're applying them and then actually
Speaker 1: you know, taking flight. They understood this to have hallucinatory properties.
Speaker 1: Back in the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon even said the
Speaker 1: witches themselves are imaginative. Believe oftentimes they do that which
Speaker 1: they do, not transforming themselves into other bodies, not by
Speaker 1: incantations or ceremonies, but by ointments and anointing themselves all over.
Speaker 1: So they had sort of an inkling there that yes,
Speaker 1: they were transcending the experience, but not in physical body,
Speaker 1: not actually where they get together and have transcendental experiences
Speaker 1: and not invite them in folk I know. Um. And
Speaker 1: this is interesting to the use of soot, which is
Speaker 1: sort of alkaline would have enhanced the passage of organic
Speaker 1: basis because a weak alkaline environment would be sufficient to
Speaker 1: neutralize the positive ironic charge. This is again from that
Speaker 1: um and it's thesiolist journal. Uh. This is an effective
Speaker 1: ethnobotanical technique that may be seen with Peruvian cocoa tours
Speaker 1: who mix in their mouth the cocaine containing leaves with
Speaker 1: alkaline centers to enhance uptake. And this is and this
Speaker 1: is interesting and a topic will probably go into in
Speaker 1: greater detail in a future podcast. But this is by
Speaker 1: far not the only, would not be the only situation
Speaker 1: of individuals taking uh, some sort of psychedelic substance as
Speaker 1: part of a ritual or or magical practice. Right, and
Speaker 1: you actually don't you have an article on licking frogs
Speaker 1: or am I thinking of something else? I have a pamphlet.
Speaker 1: It was handed to me on a by a guy
Speaker 1: in the train, but I've I've been very trepidicious about
Speaker 1: trying it out. There's some hallucinatory frogs that if you've looked,
Speaker 1: actually I think it's maybe the the the vom or
Speaker 1: something that they have that people can actually get high.
Speaker 1: So obviously, through trial and error, over thousands of thousands
Speaker 1: of years people have figured out different properties and plants
Speaker 1: and animals and manipulated them. So it's not weird that
Speaker 1: someone would come up with an ointment. And it's not
Speaker 1: weird that this person, the female and the family would
Speaker 1: um be the person to come up with these ointments,
Speaker 1: are mostly healing right and have a sort of power
Speaker 1: in their household, maybe even in their village, as the
Speaker 1: go to person that has all these great little recipes
Speaker 1: that can make you feel a lot better, possibly make
Speaker 1: you feel as though you are writing a broom. And
Speaker 1: let's also talk about that broom. I hate to sort
Speaker 1: of bring it up, but again, you know, why not
Speaker 1: just apointment? Why have the broom? And I'm just going
Speaker 1: to point out that this perhaps was a a proto
Speaker 1: sexual aid, So I'm gonna say old timey sex toy basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: now and uh, And I wonder if too, have like
Speaker 1: a going back vote from the from the side of
Speaker 1: of women, liberated women engaging in a certain activity and
Speaker 1: looking instead at um, really grumpy men deciding to crack
Speaker 1: down on this and persecute women. Um. I wonder how
Speaker 1: much with the broom too, there's this idea of you
Speaker 1: have defiled. And not only have you defiled yourself and
Speaker 1: your and your faith and all, but you've also defiled
Speaker 1: this object which has um sympathetic and not sympathetic, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: sympathetic importance in the household and in the family and
Speaker 1: uh and also is a symbol of the status. And
Speaker 1: you've somehow perverted this artifact. Well. Also, as we know, um,
Speaker 1: the understanding of female sexuality certainly wasn't that complex or
Speaker 1: nuanced back in the day, and some would argue that
Speaker 1: today it's still Yeah, we just did the podcast. I've
Speaker 1: been dealt with the female orgasm. Obviously, we still scientists
Speaker 1: are still figuring out exactly what sexually human sexuality and
Speaker 1: female sexuality is all about. Yeah, And so for a
Speaker 1: woman to express sexuality, certainly during uh one period over another,
Speaker 1: depending on what was happening when the thirteenth century is
Speaker 1: opposed to the sixteenth century, Uh, they were certainly um
Speaker 1: iconic images and ideals to live up to. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: put it that way, right, So we discussed the ointment
Speaker 1: based importance of flying around on broomsticks and so forth.
Speaker 1: But after this break, we're gonna really get into the
Speaker 1: idea of magical thinking and how that enforces all these
Speaker 1: things we were talking about. All right, so we're back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we solved the broomstick problem here. Yeah, and I want
Speaker 1: to add one more thing about the broomstick. I couldn't
Speaker 1: help but be reminded of the Bobby the Babba yaga,
Speaker 1: you know, the old Russian hag or witch or cannibalistic ogress, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with the tusks for for teeth. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: also shows up in uh, there's a movie called Jack
Speaker 1: Frost which mry sents theater three thousand dead years ago,
Speaker 1: and it has the Bobby Yaga in it. So she's
Speaker 1: a really iconic character in Russian myth um. And she's
Speaker 1: the witch. And she in addition to living in a
Speaker 1: hut that walks around on hin legs, she also flies
Speaker 1: through the air, sometimes in an iron kettle and sometimes
Speaker 1: in a mortar and pestle, which of course is the
Speaker 1: you know, the the device for crushing up various herbs
Speaker 1: and what have you and making them into powders for
Speaker 1: use in ointments, for use in uh you know, and
Speaker 1: you go to the pharmacist today and I mean that's
Speaker 1: the symbol of the craft. Yeah, And here are these
Speaker 1: these symbols of domesticity, right, that that are being harnessed
Speaker 1: for for powerful goings on with witches, which I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting and really plays into this idea of
Speaker 1: the law of contagion, which is one of the two
Speaker 1: laws of sympathetic magic. Ya. Sympathetic magic is this very
Speaker 1: old idea, the idea that if something I think we've
Speaker 1: discussed this before. Okay, so I have a rubber dinosaur
Speaker 1: in my hand, all right, it's true, and I have
Speaker 1: touched this rubber dinosaur, right, and in touching it, I'm
Speaker 1: probably doing nothing more than getting some of my my
Speaker 1: skin oil on it or my fingerprints what have you ink?
Speaker 1: From my hands? My hands are really disgusting. But but then,
Speaker 1: but then when I when I set it down, the
Speaker 1: taint of my touch, that that will be the extent
Speaker 1: of it. The idea of sympathetic magic is so that
Speaker 1: there's a there's an even greater taint that is applied
Speaker 1: to this rubber dinosaur, and that that I have somehow
Speaker 1: imbued it with a sense of myself. You've transferred yourself
Speaker 1: to this object. Yeah, And we continue to do this
Speaker 1: sort of thing today, I mean, just dealing with my
Speaker 1: own stuff I'm wearing my dad's watch that he died in.
Speaker 1: I'm not a logical believer in sympathetic magic, but I
Speaker 1: am sympathetic towards this object, and I have to a
Speaker 1: certain extent imbuted it with a sense of him on
Speaker 1: some level, you know. So, I mean we all do
Speaker 1: this kind of thing every day. Yeah, And we talked
Speaker 1: about this a little bit in the Science of Lucky Pants,
Speaker 1: and you know how we ascribe meaning to things, and
Speaker 1: we think, if if I do this, or if I
Speaker 1: take this, then you know something will happen. Or in
Speaker 1: the case of your father's watch, I mean, that's that
Speaker 1: is for you, a part of him. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: that we're all sort of hardwired to to have this
Speaker 1: sort of symbolism in our lives, right, And I should
Speaker 1: mention I explained the watch. I didn't explain why I
Speaker 1: have a rubber dinosaur in my hand. And it's a
Speaker 1: like a squeeze toy that I used to keep from
Speaker 1: fidgeting too much while recording a podcast. Just to explain that,
Speaker 1: why why I have a rubber dinosaur on my person?
Speaker 1: It's true, he squeezes the heck out of it, and
Speaker 1: that's fine, right, Another idea that arises from from sympathetic
Speaker 1: magic is like the idea that you can treat a
Speaker 1: weapon to treat the wound or somehow like if you
Speaker 1: were to say, cut somebody with a knife, and then
Speaker 1: you were to heat up that knife, then the person
Speaker 1: would feel the burning of the wound. Things of that nature,
Speaker 1: things that almost what we would have what a modern
Speaker 1: um mind would think of as like a quantum entanglement
Speaker 1: exists within the confines of sympathetic magic. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: things objects becoming tainted, objects becoming haunted, objects made holy
Speaker 1: through contact with you know, really important people. The whole.
Speaker 1: I will never wash this hand again because hand is
Speaker 1: come into contact with Brad Pitt's face or something. Well,
Speaker 1: and and if I believed in voodoo or sorcery like that,
Speaker 1: I would probably take care to deposit my fingernail clippings
Speaker 1: in a way which I didn't want someone else to
Speaker 1: get them, right to hiding clippings, hide your hair, because
Speaker 1: these are parts of you. Well, these are even more
Speaker 1: like this is an even easier thing to buy, I think,
Speaker 1: because these were actually a part of me. These things
Speaker 1: were once my body and now they are, you know,
Speaker 1: hidden away in the wall of the house, lest a
Speaker 1: sorcerer get ahold of it, use it to place a
Speaker 1: curse on me, which make a nail clipping sculpture of
Speaker 1: me and then drive pins into me exactly. That's my fear,
Speaker 1: um and can only take ninety years with nail clippings
Speaker 1: and real quick. Another another idea this side of you
Speaker 1: mentioned voodoo, and of course that instantly brings the mind
Speaker 1: the idea of the voodoo doll and uh. And you
Speaker 1: see variations on this theme in numerous magical um and
Speaker 1: religious practices where you have a semblance of something and
Speaker 1: if I like, I can hurt the doll to hurt
Speaker 1: the person that the doll resembles, or if I burn
Speaker 1: somebody in effigy, I am And you know this is
Speaker 1: something you see and everything guy Fox day to uh
Speaker 1: to burning man. You know where an effigy is burned,
Speaker 1: and by burning the effigy, you're on some level hurting
Speaker 1: the person or the idea or feeling or thing that
Speaker 1: it represents. We see this and flipp colw rallies all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. Yeah, And this comes down to something
Speaker 1: called the law of similarity, which holds that humans inevitably
Speaker 1: link superficial real life resemblances to deep unreal resemblances. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think about this in terms of the ted
Speaker 1: dot com talk that you sent meets by skeptic Michael Schermer,
Speaker 1: and he was talking about, uh, he's using examples of
Speaker 1: how we can't help you describe meeting or see patterns.
Speaker 1: And he brought up the case of the Virgin Mary
Speaker 1: visage on the grilled cheese. The Virgin Mary grilled cheese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was saying that, you know, we've got this
Speaker 1: really sort of grainy pattern recognition in our brains, and
Speaker 1: so we really respond well to, like, you know, an
Speaker 1: image on tree bark or a burnt girl cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, some of those grainy markings start
Speaker 1: to take form into an image. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's really fascinating it, particularly when he pointed out that
Speaker 1: if you really look at that grilled cheese sandwich, it
Speaker 1: looks more like Jane Russell it does the version Mary,
Speaker 1: because she's got very potty lips. Well, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it comes down to the same reason we can just
Speaker 1: stare up into the sky the clouds and just see
Speaker 1: one object after another. Oh, it's a it's a dragon
Speaker 1: using a typewriter, it's Lauren Hardy making out on a steamboat.
Speaker 1: You know that kind of thing. Yeah, except for that
Speaker 1: last part. Well, I'm just saying you see random things
Speaker 1: that they or may not make sense in the clouds. Alright, alright, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is. It depends on the perceiver, right.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this a little bit in Science
Speaker 1: of Lucky Pants, that some people may be more hardwired
Speaker 1: than others to see connections. In a Sandra hu Shoop
Speaker 1: Share article about the dopamine connection, neurobiologists Peter Breuger found
Speaker 1: that people with high levels of dopamine are more likely
Speaker 1: to find significance and coincidences and pick out meaning and
Speaker 1: patterns where there are none. In one trial in which
Speaker 1: skeptics and paranormal believers were both given the drug al dopa,
Speaker 1: of course, I know it sounds like a street al
Speaker 1: dopa increases dopamine levels in the brain, the skeptics began
Speaker 1: to perform much more like the believers. You sent me
Speaker 1: an interesting paper to discuss some of the ideas about
Speaker 1: like what, how, why ritual is important? Like what is it?
Speaker 1: What is it accomplished? And when we say ritual, I mean,
Speaker 1: in one hand, we could be talking about which is
Speaker 1: going out into the middle of nowhere on the Sabbath
Speaker 1: and uh and gathering together for dance or whatever. You
Speaker 1: could be just talking about a local church coming together
Speaker 1: and engaging in song, just like a glee club engaging
Speaker 1: in song. You know, different communal activities, a community service
Speaker 1: group coming together and picking up trash around a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, that kind of thing can under certain definitions,
Speaker 1: be seen as ritual. Yeah, yeah, Actually, uh, they're saying
Speaker 1: that these synchrony rituals are really powerful, and so much
Speaker 1: so that they may have endowed certain groups with a
Speaker 1: competitive advantage over the eon, perhaps even causing some cultures
Speaker 1: to flourish while others parish. That's from the article Uh
Speaker 1: that I thought, well that that makes sense why we
Speaker 1: would have these rituals that we participate in. And in
Speaker 1: that article they even uh brought up the observation that
Speaker 1: in modern day military things like um marching in formation
Speaker 1: or muscular bonding, right, muscular bonding, Yeah, and even chanting
Speaker 1: or the songs. I don't know what I've been told. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the name of that one, right, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I've been told. Yeah, and I don't know
Speaker 1: the rest, um well, the rest varies depending on who's
Speaker 1: singing it. I think, yeah, something about Mama's and boots. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Clearly, I have a vast knowledge of
Speaker 1: military uh songs, but any In any case, what they
Speaker 1: were saying is that, you know, we still engage in
Speaker 1: these rituals, even the warfare is not conducted in you know,
Speaker 1: here's one side in a formation of rows against another
Speaker 1: formation of rows that meet on a hilltop. Right, that
Speaker 1: old school version of a very regimented forces meeting on
Speaker 1: a battlefield and marching into place, basically playing out like
Speaker 1: a table top game that just that does not exist anymore,
Speaker 1: hasn't existed in a while. But a lot of these
Speaker 1: these activities still exist because it builds this bond, and
Speaker 1: it builds this uh, this cohesive feeling that we are
Speaker 1: we are one. You know. It's I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: that the idea you see in every boot camp movie
Speaker 1: ever that these guys enterest this rag tag group of
Speaker 1: miscreants and then they in the over the course of
Speaker 1: the boot camp, they become a fighting force together. They
Speaker 1: become brothers. That's right. Yeah, I mean yet through the experience, uh,
Speaker 1: they are are They're transformed into the super group, right.
Speaker 1: So I think that's interesting, particularly in the context of
Speaker 1: magical thinking. And this was from an article Do you
Speaker 1: Believe in Magic? And it was saying that that um
Speaker 1: rituals and magical thinking give us a margin of control
Speaker 1: over the randomness in our lives. UM. This is from
Speaker 1: the article. It says magical thinking is most evident precisely
Speaker 1: when people feel most helpless. Geo Canon, professor at Tel
Speaker 1: Aviv University, sent questionnaires to one hundred and seventy four
Speaker 1: Israelis after the Iraqi SCUD missile attacks. Of those who
Speaker 1: reported the highest level of stress were also the most
Speaker 1: likely to endorse magical beliefs, Like I have the feeling
Speaker 1: that the chances of being hit during a missile attack
Speaker 1: are greater if a person whose house was attacked is
Speaker 1: present in the sealed room, or to be on the
Speaker 1: safe side, it is best to step into the field
Speaker 1: room right foot first. Yeah. And I think sometimes it
Speaker 1: can come down to your your face with overwhelming odds
Speaker 1: or some sort of situation that you just cannot control,
Speaker 1: and it comes down to what can I do. I
Speaker 1: can't actually stop this thing. Take the instance of death.
Speaker 1: When death comes, there's like nothing you can do to
Speaker 1: bring that person back. But you can go and pray
Speaker 1: about it, you can go and light a candle about it,
Speaker 1: you can go and engage in various rituals, even if
Speaker 1: that ritual is just something as simple as like a
Speaker 1: meditation type of thing, and it's something you can do.
Speaker 1: And so there's this feeling of I am doing something
Speaker 1: in the face of this uncontrollable force in my life. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's been brought up before to that
Speaker 1: ritual healing practices aren't too far away from like the
Speaker 1: plus ebo effect, right right, Yeah, Like if you if
Speaker 1: you engage in this thing, you take the sugar pills,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, your body is going to
Speaker 1: respond as if it's actually being treated very much the
Speaker 1: same in a ritual scenario. Another idea that came across
Speaker 1: one of the links you sent me, and this comes
Speaker 1: from Stanford University psychologist and graduate students Scott S. Biltmouth,
Speaker 1: And the idea is that all this, you know, this synchronicity,
Speaker 1: this this movement and sound in a communal ritual um
Speaker 1: it really comes down to economic benefit, with the primary
Speaker 1: goal of of being to spot the freeloader, yes, to
Speaker 1: ferret out the person who's not really contributing really right, Right,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, all right, we're all going
Speaker 1: to do a big giant quare dance, and you can
Speaker 1: tell that the guy who's totally not into it is
Speaker 1: totally not into being a part of the group, and
Speaker 1: therefore you can't you can't trust him as much him
Speaker 1: or her. You can't trust them, you can't rely on them,
Speaker 1: you know that in the end, or you can suspect
Speaker 1: in the end they're going to be looking out for
Speaker 1: number one rather than the whole group. They're not entering
Speaker 1: into the social contract. So I think it's fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, is this just particularly uh important back in
Speaker 1: the days you know, obviously when uh people got together
Speaker 1: in a more I don't know, how would you say
Speaker 1: it's just a more formal way or more intentional way, right,
Speaker 1: Because if you lived two miles five miles from another family,
Speaker 1: then you really had to make a concerted effort to
Speaker 1: get together socially. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us have been in situations where there's like some
Speaker 1: sort of a group activity that's happening with work, and
Speaker 1: you maybe don't really want to go to it, or
Speaker 1: you've got other things that need to be done, but
Speaker 1: you feel like you should. And and part of that
Speaker 1: is because, yeah, it's like the people who don't show up,
Speaker 1: or the people who show up and are really obviously
Speaker 1: not into it. Can they be trusted? Are they really
Speaker 1: a part of the group or they are they freeloaders? Well,
Speaker 1: and then also they're kind of wearing a little bit
Speaker 1: of jerk perfume. You know, you don't want to look
Speaker 1: like a jerk. Okay, So back to Erica jong Um again.
Speaker 1: She talked about this in her ForWord that ritual intention
Speaker 1: counts for everything. It must be positive. And the more
Speaker 1: witches there are sitting in a circle practicing communal intention,
Speaker 1: the more potency the magic will have. Okay, So that's
Speaker 1: the other part of it, right, Like if you participate,
Speaker 1: if not that person is not participating, then they're weakening
Speaker 1: what the group effort is. The desire for magic cannot
Speaker 1: be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to
Speaker 1: practice magic. In love and war, we simultaneously possessed the
Speaker 1: most primitive of brain stems, and the most sophisticated of
Speaker 1: cortex is the imperatives of each coexist uneasily. That reminds
Speaker 1: me a little bit of this bit that I ran
Speaker 1: across in this book The False Myth, Religion and the
Speaker 1: Rise of Representation by David Hawkes, And he points out
Speaker 1: that magical thinking first and foremost. It makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: in to borrow a phrase from William Manchester, a world
Speaker 1: lit only by fire. If you live in a world
Speaker 1: with a lot of a lot of magical beliefs, it
Speaker 1: pays to believe in magic, because that is the currency
Speaker 1: um all right. But by the eighteenth century most un
Speaker 1: Europeans are convinced that magic doesn't exist anymore. And and
Speaker 1: you see which witches and wizards and warlocks. You see
Speaker 1: them prosecuted not as a blaspheming monsters or dangerous idea dealers,
Speaker 1: but rather as charlatan's and frauds, especially in the colonies.
Speaker 1: And then m Hawks points out, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a quotation here, he says, by the end of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, however, this process of enlightenment had been
Speaker 1: subjected to such cogent philosophical and political critiques that few
Speaker 1: people would endorse it unequivocally. We are much more conscious
Speaker 1: than our forebears of the complicity between reason and magic. Uh.
Speaker 1: And many would argue that the postmodern era, with its
Speaker 1: virtual reality, its faith in the image, it's electronic money,
Speaker 1: it's new age religions, is witnessing a return to the
Speaker 1: kinds of overtly magical thinking that imperialism unsuccessfully tried to
Speaker 1: stomp out in the Southern hemisphere, which I found really
Speaker 1: interesting because indeed there are all these like electronic money,
Speaker 1: is this on a real thing? I mean, the internet
Speaker 1: itself is kind of this. You know, where is the internet? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends quite a bit on our ability
Speaker 1: to think magically, right, to think metaphorically. So perhaps that's
Speaker 1: the reason why it hasn't been done away with by evolution, right,
Speaker 1: because there are some people who say, why why do
Speaker 1: we even have magical thinking anymore? When we have the ability,
Speaker 1: even as tiny babies too innately understand physics or math
Speaker 1: or language and what is real and what is not real. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, kids by the age of six or seven
Speaker 1: have a really great idea of what is real and
Speaker 1: usually uh, let you know, Santa Claus or Easter Bunny
Speaker 1: or anything else. So all those miss fall away. That
Speaker 1: being said, why do we keep holding onto it? And
Speaker 1: perhaps that's a reason why. Well, one more thing about
Speaker 1: about all this before we close out the podcast, and
Speaker 1: that's what we were talking about, which is meeting for
Speaker 1: these Sabbaths. And I keep running across the image by
Speaker 1: Francesca Dagoya, the which is Sabbath Great he Goat, which
Speaker 1: is this this lovely image. Mcgoya's Goya was awesome, And
Speaker 1: so it's all these women and they're they're they're arranged
Speaker 1: like this big semicircle around the second like a harem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's somebody playing the accordion, which I thought was
Speaker 1: a nice touch there with presumably Satan the Great he Goat,
Speaker 1: this sort of goat figure. And and in many of
Speaker 1: the old woodcuts, I love looking at old woodcuts of
Speaker 1: witches and warlocks and all that, and the goat is
Speaker 1: often depicted as really really raunchy and gross, and you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's really deplorable looking, and it's like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: these women are gathering to to worship and lay with
Speaker 1: the horned one, and he's so gross and vile and
Speaker 1: but in this image the great he Goat has it
Speaker 1: seems to inspire some of the more sympathetic aspects of
Speaker 1: like of of a goat for starters. And also this
Speaker 1: kind of seems like a wise old man and these
Speaker 1: ladies are I can't really judge him for going on
Speaker 1: and hearing what he has to say. That's a goat
Speaker 1: that looks like has wisdom. Yeah, no, I think that's
Speaker 1: interesting take, but I still prefer the like um, the
Speaker 1: red huge beast as depicted in South Park. Oh, and
Speaker 1: it was very much in touch with his feelings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way, and you I think you like the one
Speaker 1: from a legend, right, I'm kind of partial to the
Speaker 1: one Ernest borlad nine played in The Devil's Reign, which
Speaker 1: had a cameo by Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan.
Speaker 1: But Ernest borgnine turns into this man goat creature. It's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome, all right. So you have it. One of
Speaker 1: our favorite episodes and definitely one we wanted to resurrect
Speaker 1: for your Halloween enjoyment. Indeed, do you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: on witches on Halloween? You can send them to blow
Speaker 1: the mind at house Stuff Works Dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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