Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realists. We are returning to you from far
Speaker 1: away with some classic episodes that we think you will
Speaker 1: really enjoy. Sometimes will air interviews, sometimes will air full episodes,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we'll be able to do something really special,
Speaker 1: like share a previous exploration we had a long time ago, Noel,
Speaker 1: we were on the road, we were going live. Once
Speaker 1: upon a time we talked about real life covet.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, this is a live show, and we're
Speaker 2: all familiar with the spooky stereotypical witches that are depicted
Speaker 2: in films like the Vivivich in fiction and folklore, etc.
Speaker 2: But what does that look like in the real world?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How much sand is there to those historic descriptions of
Speaker 1: you know, pointy hats writing brooms through the sky. How
Speaker 1: much of that is Hollywood? How much of that is
Speaker 1: ancient folklore? How much of that, along with reporting of
Speaker 1: infernal black masses and so on, was nothing more than
Speaker 1: a hit piece. This is the question we answer in
Speaker 1: this live show.
Speaker 2: Special Halloween episode Live from the iHeart Offices in New
Speaker 2: York set.
Speaker 4: Oh that's where it was. Yes, that's correct, So get
Speaker 4: spoopy with us.
Speaker 5: Indeed, let's roll it.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 6: Hello, everyone, welcome to the pre show introduction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sort of the lobby or the foyer to
Speaker 1: the actual show.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm glad we have that door opening and the
Speaker 6: you know, the beginning, the ding dong doorbell, just let
Speaker 6: you know you're walking into the foyer.
Speaker 1: Now the proper word is doorbell, not the ding dong
Speaker 1: ding dong.
Speaker 4: Six there second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, it's true. The three of us recently
Speaker 1: went to New York City, just like you've heard about
Speaker 1: in the salty commercials, and we did an episode on
Speaker 1: real life covens.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's looking at the history of really what a
Speaker 6: witch is, what it you know, what it is in
Speaker 6: popular culture, How it's how the concept has been viewed
Speaker 6: over the centuries, as well as what an actual group
Speaker 6: of people who would be who would consider themselves to
Speaker 6: be witches, how they function together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was something we were asked to do
Speaker 2: at our home offices at iHeart Media headquarters in Midtown New.
Speaker 5: York and it was a pretty tight little affair.
Speaker 2: I think we did about thirty five minutes on the
Speaker 2: subject and then we're.
Speaker 5: Out to light bites and cocktails and schmoosery. And it
Speaker 5: was a very nice evening.
Speaker 2: And we had a lovely intro by a friend of
Speaker 2: the show, ConL Byrne, which you will not hear, but
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 5: It was nice, filthy, It was filthy but glowing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like Bob Saget's stand up set. Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: very excited about this. We wanted to share it with you.
Speaker 7: We also want you to know that we did this,
Speaker 7: of course, right before Halloween, so you're us hyping up.
Speaker 1: The Halloween that was passed. So travel back there with
Speaker 1: us and let us determine between fiction and fact, which
Speaker 1: which is the most accurate?
Speaker 6: Yes, and Ben is right, your calendars are correct. It
Speaker 6: is not Halloween. But but let's let's have some how
Speaker 6: about some early nostalgia for Halloween twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: I can't wait without further ado.
Speaker 4: Here we go.
Speaker 6: Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 6: my name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: That's our super producer, Paul mission controlled Decan on the
Speaker 1: figure of ones and twos. Give it up for him.
Speaker 1: But most importantly, you are here. You are you, and
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff. They don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Live at iHeart headquarters here in New York.
Speaker 4: So give it up for yourself.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, we are in fact recording this. This will
Speaker 5: be a real episode of the show.
Speaker 2: So you are part of podcast history, or at least
Speaker 2: part of our podcast feed.
Speaker 1: Right, So you're sort of you're all co host with
Speaker 1: us tonight, and we're standing in a.
Speaker 6: Very surreal place that most of you just think is
Speaker 6: normal now, but it most certainly is not.
Speaker 1: There's like a hologram in the hallway, they change.
Speaker 2: The lights, there's a smoke machine in the conference room
Speaker 2: that we've been posted up at, and lasers.
Speaker 5: It's bonkers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we almost just stayed and played with that.
Speaker 8: This.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 1: As you're hearing this out there in podcast lands, it
Speaker 1: is almost Halloween, one of the very most wonderful times
Speaker 1: of the year, according to us at least, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got a cavalcade of potential monsters that are going
Speaker 1: to be strolling the streets. We think of vampires, right,
Speaker 1: we think of were wolves, and of course we think
Speaker 1: of witches.
Speaker 6: Now, modern science has pretty much conclusively proven that vampires
Speaker 6: and werewolves didn't exist, at least in the way that
Speaker 6: we popularly think about them or the way we imagine
Speaker 6: them and portray them. However, witches are a little bit different.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 2: So what is this stereotypical kind of type of witch
Speaker 2: that we think of, Where does it come from? And
Speaker 2: most importantly, are any of those strange stories actually true?
Speaker 1: So we have to start addressing that question the way
Speaker 1: we always start addressing any question witches, sorry, which is
Speaker 1: with the facts. So here are the facts. It's fair
Speaker 1: to say that we're all pretty familiar with at least
Speaker 1: the stereotype of the Western European witch, right, we know
Speaker 1: the traditional witch and film fiction folklore. They'll typically be
Speaker 1: a woman, they're often older. They've got for some reason,
Speaker 1: a wide brimmed, pointy hat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they might have warts or like weird green skin
Speaker 2: like in the Wizard of Oz, or some kind of
Speaker 2: at least jaundice appearance or whatever.
Speaker 5: And they've got talent.
Speaker 2: Like nails, very goth dark clothing, they have wicked cackles,
Speaker 2: and after all that, they might fly through the sky,
Speaker 2: usually with the aid of some sort of household appliance,
Speaker 2: like a like a broom or a mortar and pestle,
Speaker 2: or to modernize it, maybe a vacuum cleaners.
Speaker 5: I don't know, says us. A lot only.
Speaker 6: Also a lot of times we'll have a demonic sidekick
Speaker 6: called a familiar, which is, you know, a rat and
Speaker 6: an owl or something to that effect, maybe a cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should note the stereotype of familiars in Europe
Speaker 1: came about before Europeans knew what chihuahuas are. Those are
Speaker 1: the most demonic of household pets. I'm sorry, I wait,
Speaker 1: some enemies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they look like evil little blueberry muffins
Speaker 2: with their weird, dead black eyes. It's absolutely while you
Speaker 2: were shivering unclear, it's a different it's a different episode,
Speaker 2: is what it is.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But okay, so we're talking so that's a witch singular individual.
Speaker 1: But what happens when we get to the idea of
Speaker 1: a group of witches? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So according to these stories, very seldom would you
Speaker 6: see a witch who was acting alone. A lot of
Speaker 6: times you'd see them colluding and conspiring with like minded
Speaker 6: other practitioners of sorcery. In these things that were called
Speaker 6: and are called covens, at least within the popular culture.
Speaker 6: And these were secretive groups that would meet together to
Speaker 6: you know, worship a certain deity or an evil entity
Speaker 6: or and a lot of times try and make the
Speaker 6: infernal powers that exist within that realm happen on the
Speaker 6: mortal plane.
Speaker 2: And as secretive groups tend to do, they would meet
Speaker 2: in secretive places like old standing stones in the woods, cemeteries,
Speaker 2: ancient sites outside of town, abandoned buildings, and cellars, and
Speaker 2: covens witches were engaged in perverse mockeries or parodies of
Speaker 2: religious rights, Christian rights specifically. The most famous coven right
Speaker 2: was something that's called the black mass.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, come on, yeah.
Speaker 6: It all sounds scary. And as we're going through here,
Speaker 6: we're gonna we're kind of weaving this tale right of
Speaker 6: what this stuff was like or what the way we
Speaker 6: think about it right.
Speaker 5: Reception for sure.
Speaker 6: So we're getting into a tale now that's not for
Speaker 6: the faint of heart.
Speaker 4: True. Oh yeah, we should have said that at the top.
Speaker 4: But these are adults. I think we're.
Speaker 6: Fine, We're going to we can handle this together. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the descriptions of black masses, this was a popular
Speaker 1: scary news story of the day, right, and we have
Speaker 1: found genuine descriptions, or what purport to be genuine descriptions
Speaker 1: of a black mass. One in particular that spoke to
Speaker 1: us was from a book written in fifteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: It was called, in a burst of creativity, the Antichrist.
Speaker 1: It was written by a guy named Floramond, Dave Raymond
Speaker 1: and a great name. Yeah, and let's names we're just
Speaker 1: better back then true, And let's just let's set the
Speaker 1: stage there. There's a tale of a woman who is
Speaker 1: going to potentially be a witch, right, she's she's in
Speaker 1: the recruitment process like that guy at the beginning of
Speaker 1: Lost Boys. And so she is taken to a field
Speaker 1: out in the wild, and in dur Raymond's account, a mysterious,
Speaker 1: specifically Italian man draws this ring with a rod of holly,
Speaker 1: he reads a spell.
Speaker 4: From a black book.
Speaker 1: And the whole description, by the way, just harps on
Speaker 1: the fact that this guy.
Speaker 2: Was Italian, and yeah, it's oddly specific, and I quote.
Speaker 8: Thereupon appeared a large horned goat, all black, accompanied by
Speaker 8: two women as well as a man dressed as a priest.
Speaker 8: The goat asked who this girl was, and when the
Speaker 8: Italian man weird replied that he had brought her to
Speaker 8: be his, the goat made him make the sign of
Speaker 8: the cross with his left hand.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 2: And then he commanded all of them to come and
Speaker 2: greet him, which they immediately did. And another odd detail,
Speaker 2: kissing his rear, his haunches, his his backside.
Speaker 6: Yep, Okay, here's where it gets rough. Remember I am
Speaker 6: reading a quotation. Okay, here we go, we can do
Speaker 6: this quote. The goat had a lighted black candle between
Speaker 6: its two horns, from which the others lit their own candles.
Speaker 6: The goat took the woman aside, laid her in the woods,
Speaker 6: and carnally knew her.
Speaker 5: Wait what is that? I don't understand.
Speaker 6: We're we're just gonna breathe, We're gonna keep going here,
Speaker 6: to which she took an extreme displeasure. Okay, obviously suffered
Speaker 6: much pain. God, this is horrible, and felt his seat
Speaker 6: as cold as ice.
Speaker 5: Oh why is it cold? I don't know, it's infernal powers.
Speaker 5: I don't understand why it's why it's icy.
Speaker 1: Cot Well, maybe because this is like pre Dante's Inferno. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair, Okay, but that wasn't the culmination of the party.
Speaker 1: After that, all the witches began to dance in circles,
Speaker 1: their backs turned to one another. The person performing the
Speaker 1: service was clothed in a black robe, but he didn't
Speaker 1: have a cross. He would raise still an understand this park.
Speaker 1: He would raise like a round slice of turnip and
Speaker 1: it would be die black. They would use that instead
Speaker 1: of the host. And then when he had it at elevation,
Speaker 1: he would scream out.
Speaker 4: Master, helpots.
Speaker 1: And they put water in the chwelis instead of wine
Speaker 1: to make holy water. They had somehow trained this goat
Speaker 1: to urinate in a hole in the ground. And honestly,
Speaker 1: out of that whole description, the turnip is the most
Speaker 1: confusing part to me.
Speaker 2: I have a theory a turnip is like a very
Speaker 2: pure kind of white. Is the driven snow vegetable, And
Speaker 2: when you die it black, it's sort of like a
Speaker 2: putrification of purity.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they just didn't have a budget, you know,
Speaker 1: like if they just found a turnip.
Speaker 2: So in this group, these folks would perform these acts
Speaker 2: of witchcraft, and everyone gave a story as to how
Speaker 2: the things they were doing were aiding in the infernal
Speaker 2: causes of hell.
Speaker 5: Right, this is very important.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, And supposedly they were doing this at least
Speaker 6: twice a week and with at least sixty other people
Speaker 6: gathered together. So imagine what we just described. Imagine doing
Speaker 6: that twice a week.
Speaker 4: It's like Wednesdays and Fridays.
Speaker 2: So serious commitment a building community is really important though,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 6: Well yeah, but it also is going to get into
Speaker 6: later like why these why these descriptions are you know
Speaker 6: there there are a lot of issues with them, so
Speaker 6: let's let's just continue going.
Speaker 5: You can't deny that it's spooky stuff though.
Speaker 6: But the idea is if you were imagine you're in
Speaker 6: the fifteen hundreds and you've read an account like that,
Speaker 6: and maybe perhaps you believe that some of this could
Speaker 6: be true. If even a small portion of the stuff
Speaker 6: we just described was true, you know, which is conspiring
Speaker 6: and doing these evil things, then European Christianity as it
Speaker 6: stood as as an institution was basically in deep trouble.
Speaker 6: And what could the righteous and upstanding citizens, the institutions,
Speaker 6: the governments that are meant to protect those citizens, what
Speaker 6: could they do to stand against some something so insidious
Speaker 6: and hellish as this.
Speaker 1: Well, nowadays we like to say, no one expects the
Speaker 1: Spanish Inquisition.
Speaker 5: Right, birds h nerds anybody? No, Okay, it's just a
Speaker 5: mony python right.
Speaker 6: I got it.
Speaker 1: But back in the day, the thing is, the Inquisition,
Speaker 1: especially the Spanish one, was very much expected because they
Speaker 1: were real pills.
Speaker 4: These were dangerous dudes.
Speaker 1: Who saw themselves, at least ostensibly as agents of the
Speaker 1: divine and they thought their ultimate goal was not just
Speaker 1: a root out wickedness, but to save souls. And if
Speaker 1: a few bodies had to be broken or a few
Speaker 1: people had to be tortured for the greater good. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: like russ Cole says and true detective, sometimes you need
Speaker 1: bad men to keep the other bad men from the door.
Speaker 5: So how did these inquisitions work? Right?
Speaker 2: So, contrary to popular belief, the Inquisition wasn't just created
Speaker 2: to hunt down witches.
Speaker 5: It was much broader than that.
Speaker 2: Beginning in the twelfth century, the Catholic Church set up
Speaker 2: the Office of the Inquisition to punish anyone that was
Speaker 2: even remotely speaking out against Catholicism. And they saw it
Speaker 2: as heresy, which was literally any religion or belief system
Speaker 2: that was not Catholicism.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so they weren't just hunting witches. That's not what
Speaker 6: it was about. They were also persecuting, torturing, and murdering
Speaker 6: people of other faiths, Muslims, people of Jewish faith. They
Speaker 6: were It was the worst manifestation, or let's say, the
Speaker 6: worst manifestation of the Inquisition occurred when the Spanish Inquisition
Speaker 6: executed over thirty two thousand people over the course of
Speaker 6: two hundred years.
Speaker 2: I'm not a math scholar or anything, but those are
Speaker 2: those numbers are troubling, I would say.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, yeah, they were very much expected, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yep, And we also see all
Speaker 1: sorts of allegations like what so, no, what were they
Speaker 1: actually looking for.
Speaker 2: They were looking for things like well poisonings, poisonings of
Speaker 2: the well, which I think is an emo band, which
Speaker 2: is a great name, influencing the weather for nefarious purposes,
Speaker 2: because that was a big deal.
Speaker 5: I would, you know, wipe out people's crops.
Speaker 1: You blamed the witches, right, There wasn't any meteorology, just
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, so why.
Speaker 4: Not blame a witch?
Speaker 1: Also practicing any sort of thing that could be remotely
Speaker 1: considered magic, even innocuous magic, even early medical science, like
Speaker 1: healing people with herbs that would get you hanged, or
Speaker 1: making prophecies, engaging in any kind of thing that looked
Speaker 1: like a ritual that also didn't look super catholic.
Speaker 4: Oh oh, I forgot my favorite.
Speaker 1: There was this big thing about people transforming dudes into
Speaker 1: horses and riding them around at night.
Speaker 4: It was like a huge.
Speaker 6: Issue as like a punishment. Yeah, that sounds so much fun. Okay,
Speaker 6: all right. Anyway, they were also accused of seducing other
Speaker 6: members of their community. They were accused of messing with livestock,
Speaker 6: making cows milk go bad, or just.
Speaker 5: Hurling inside out like the aliens.
Speaker 4: No, no, it's just bad milk.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, or they would just out and out kill them.
Speaker 6: They would curse people. Sometimes they'd be accused of murdering
Speaker 6: and assassinating people. There there, they were accused of all
Speaker 6: kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, so magic aside, what whatever you you may believe,
Speaker 2: Did anyone actually do any of these absolutely bonkers things
Speaker 2: that we've just laid out.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: So yes, yes, sort of, we're not saying magic works,
Speaker 1: but there were real people genuinely doing at least some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that witches were accused of doing.
Speaker 4: The problem is.
Speaker 1: The people accused of witchcraft and all these dastardly things.
Speaker 1: These people generally just fell into like a few very
Speaker 1: much non evil witch necromancer categories. They were like midwives,
Speaker 1: traditional healers. I mean, if you think, not to get
Speaker 1: too topical, but if you think that healthcare stinks nowadays,
Speaker 1: thank your lucky stars you were not alive during the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages.
Speaker 4: It was terrible.
Speaker 1: Infections ran rampant. Things that can be cured with a
Speaker 1: pill nowadays could be a death sentence. Back then, infant
Speaker 1: mortality was cartoonishly high, and many women also died in
Speaker 1: the process of childbirth. It was a dangerous, dangerous time.
Speaker 2: So let's just imagine that your a grieving spouse or
Speaker 2: parent who's recently lost a loved one in childbirth. You
Speaker 2: know that you're a good Christian spiritually speaking, God has
Speaker 2: no reason to smite you or your loved ones. Right,
Speaker 2: So someone must have put their proverbial finger on the
Speaker 2: proverbial scale, flipping it in a very tragic direction.
Speaker 4: Right. So what does that all mean?
Speaker 2: Well, it means that your immediate suspect is the midwife, right,
Speaker 2: because she's already sort of on the fringes of society.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned earlier, she is a practitioner of these
Speaker 2: cures that involve herbs and some of these more esoteric remedies. Right,
Speaker 2: so if she has the ability to use things to heal,
Speaker 2: surely she must also have the ability to use these
Speaker 2: things to kill.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So we found something written by Lee Wayley. She
Speaker 6: wrote Women in the Practice of Medical Care in Early
Speaker 6: Modern Europe, and I'm just going to read a quote
Speaker 6: from that to you guys. It says, during the Renaissance,
Speaker 6: a number of strategies were taken to eliminate women and
Speaker 6: other popular healers from the medical feshion. And this was
Speaker 6: the period when medicine and science lost their spiritual dimensions.
Speaker 6: So healers as healers magicians and wishes. Wishes lost their
Speaker 6: claim to manipulate the spiritual forces of the world. So,
Speaker 6: now this is important, right, that that idea that the
Speaker 6: spiritual and medicine just were completely divorced from one another,
Speaker 6: and no longer can the herbs or anything make me
Speaker 6: feel better. It has to be something that a doctor
Speaker 6: tells me. And here's why that's important. The exclusion took
Speaker 6: two paths. One the new requirement for people practicing medicine
Speaker 6: to have a license. And here's the catch. If you
Speaker 6: were a woman, you couldn't get the license. It was
Speaker 6: almost like they were purposefully or they was as though
Speaker 6: they were purposefully creating turning it into a male dominated thing.
Speaker 2: So much misogyny wrapped up in all of this stuff
Speaker 2: in the way in the Middle Age, Well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because because women couldn't go to university to get
Speaker 6: the training necessary to get that license, so then therefore
Speaker 6: they cannot work in that field. And the other thing
Speaker 6: here is that if there is a traditional healer, you
Speaker 6: could literally just say, oh, well that's a witch.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It sounds silly nowadays, but if you had a problem
Speaker 1: with someone, you could just accuse them of being a
Speaker 1: witch that flew like people believed it.
Speaker 5: Call them a witch.
Speaker 2: Then you just have things, and you have like folks
Speaker 2: like seers or other practitioners of fortune telling or the like.
Speaker 2: They had a strong connection to the other side, right,
Speaker 2: people like you researched this matt Ursula Southhile, also known
Speaker 2: as Mother Shipton, and she was believed by many of
Speaker 2: her contemporaries in the seventeenth century in England to be
Speaker 2: a witch because of her belief that she could foresee
Speaker 2: the future things like executions, fires, and plagues.
Speaker 5: She actually predicted.
Speaker 2: Or foretold rather that the end of the world would
Speaker 2: come in eighteen eighty one, and she.
Speaker 6: Also supposedly predicted the Internet would be a thing.
Speaker 2: No, however, predicts the internet except al Gore kind of
Speaker 2: did that.
Speaker 6: Well in the seventeenth century. She was talking about how
Speaker 6: one day soon information will just be in the ether,
Speaker 6: will be everywhere, which is its Wi Fi?
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, or whatever in cloud.
Speaker 2: So luckily she was not persecuted in the same way
Speaker 2: that many women of her ilk were. She was never tortured,
Speaker 2: she was not killed, and thankfully the end also did
Speaker 2: not come in eighteen eighty one, so she may have
Speaker 2: been off the mark on that particular.
Speaker 1: Also, like side note, though, how many people predict the
Speaker 1: end of the world every year? Like does anybody else
Speaker 1: have end of the world fatigue? You know, like I'm
Speaker 1: a nineties baby and I can't recall a year that
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be the last.
Speaker 5: I'm ready for it to happen.
Speaker 4: I don't like that dispoint.
Speaker 5: Wow, sorry, hot take, hot take.
Speaker 4: Well we'll finish the show. We'll finish this.
Speaker 6: I genuinely thought it was going to be December twelfth,
Speaker 6: I think, or what was it, twenty twelve. Joe Rogan
Speaker 6: had a show that night. I thought it was going
Speaker 6: to be over.
Speaker 5: He's a witch bro.
Speaker 4: Everything was fine, so other people would be.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, doctor, there's medical practitioners of some sort,
Speaker 1: but also people who were practicing not just the non
Speaker 1: Christian religion, but a non Catholic religion.
Speaker 4: Because we have to face it.
Speaker 1: Despite the best efforts of the Church at the time,
Speaker 1: everybody knew Christianity was far from the first religion on
Speaker 1: the block, and Catholic churches had sought to subvert, supplant,
Speaker 1: and suppress pre existing belief systems. But when you have
Speaker 1: a tradition and it's deeply rooted, people are going to
Speaker 1: continue to practice it to the best of their abilities,
Speaker 1: so they'll just go underground. And these weren't evil beliefs
Speaker 1: by any means. These are things like ancestor worship, animist beliefs, polytheism,
Speaker 1: and so on. And because the Church, because that clashed
Speaker 1: with social control, they conflated all of these practices with
Speaker 1: things like sorcery, necromancy, etc.
Speaker 2: And then you have the category of folks with legitimate
Speaker 2: mental illness. Mental illness or what is today referred to
Speaker 2: as a neuroatypical behavior existed during that time as well.
Speaker 2: Of course, in some cases, folks with mental illness or
Speaker 2: cognitive conditions might have actually been considered blessed by God
Speaker 2: are capable.
Speaker 5: Of receiving visions from on high.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone's seen Mid Summar, but one
Speaker 2: of the characters that sort of is the village seer,
Speaker 2: is someone that clearly has a condition of this sort.
Speaker 2: But then it would there would be the flip side
Speaker 2: of it, right where that was much more prevalent, absolutely, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: And then there'd be the flip side of it where
Speaker 2: they were absolutely victimized and used as scapegoats because it
Speaker 2: was an easy way to say which devil.
Speaker 6: Yeah, speaking of scapegoats, this has been a running theme
Speaker 6: of this entire episode. Another group of people who were
Speaker 6: victimized were vulnerable members of society, like widows, the disabled.
Speaker 6: And again, what's the main thing you've been hearing probably
Speaker 6: that's just been kind of hitting the back of your
Speaker 6: head is the misogyny that was involved in all of
Speaker 6: this stuff. In fact, the largest demographic of people persecuted
Speaker 6: for witchcraft were actually elderly women, and a lot of
Speaker 6: that had to do with well, there's a lot of
Speaker 6: it that had to do with misogyny just at large.
Speaker 6: But hold on a second. We were talking about the individuals, right,
Speaker 6: We're talking about each individual person, what their role was,
Speaker 6: why they were persecuted. But what about the whole idea
Speaker 6: of them getting together and working together?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 7: Yes, so we did stereotypes of witches and we just
Speaker 7: busted that, hopefully, right, hopefully so I think we did.
Speaker 7: And we did stereotypes of covens. Yes, well, what were
Speaker 7: real covens? See, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: History is funny, and history is a lot more dynamic
Speaker 1: than people would sometimes have us believe. History is a conversation, Right,
Speaker 1: William Faulkner said, the past isn't over, it's not even past.
Speaker 1: And what we look at when we dig into covens
Speaker 1: and the concept of covens is that the idea that
Speaker 1: a coven was a name for a group of witches
Speaker 1: came way, way, way afterward after any of these events.
Speaker 1: The word coven first came around sometime in fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: so there had already been witch hunts, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: used to describe meetings of witches until a trial in
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty two for a woman named Isabelle Goudi.
Speaker 4: Before then, it was just like meet up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was just a hangout.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And it wasn't until nineteen twenty one that that term
Speaker 6: became popularly associated with the gatherings specifically of witches. And
Speaker 6: this association was made within an author, Margaret Murray's work,
Speaker 6: The Witch Cult in Western Europe. I love that title,
Speaker 6: and yes, oh me too, And this work also helped
Speaker 6: solidify there's a common idea that within a coven there
Speaker 6: would be thirteen members, exactly thirteen members, and there are
Speaker 6: some accounts that say that's twelve actual what you would
Speaker 6: call witches, as well as either a leader or the
Speaker 6: devil or deity themselves. So you'd have actually like twelve
Speaker 6: apostles and then one leader or one deity, right.
Speaker 2: And Murray actually believed that having twelve witches was a
Speaker 2: mockery of Jesus's twelve disciples. And while it's true that
Speaker 2: the number thirty teen does hold significance within certain wick
Speaker 2: and belief systems, the number of members of a coven
Speaker 2: was generally not a requirement. There was no hard and
Speaker 2: fast rule. But we have also found several modern covens
Speaker 2: that do only allow thirteen members. So why did people
Speaker 2: bother hunting witches in the first place? I think partially
Speaker 2: it was because they genuinely believed they were doing God's work,
Speaker 2: fighting the infernal and insidious forces of hell, of darkness.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, that's what it said on the label. Sure,
Speaker 4: but there's a dirty truth to this.
Speaker 1: You see, the way the laws usually worked said that
Speaker 1: if someone was convicted of witchcraft, whomever they were, the
Speaker 1: person who convicted them got their possessions, all of their
Speaker 1: worldly possessions, like, good job you. And this means that
Speaker 1: in many cases witch hunters were working on commission.
Speaker 6: Basically that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like you have some bills to pay, you're
Speaker 1: a witch hunter, you probably have three or four victims
Speaker 1: picked out. And now you know, Fortunately for history, for anthropology,
Speaker 1: for science, for humanity at large, these inquisitions and these
Speaker 1: other persecution programs did not wipe out every non Catholic religion,
Speaker 1: and you can still find modern groups identify as covens
Speaker 1: or witches or pagans of some sort today.
Speaker 6: So let's get a little bit closer to modern day
Speaker 6: and talk about witchcraft occurring right now. We've got some
Speaker 6: further examples a little bit further down here, but we
Speaker 6: do know that a lot of groups within the United
Speaker 6: States and across the whole world practice a range of religions.
Speaker 6: If you're imagining witchcraft is one thing, you are just
Speaker 6: dead wrong, because it's there's so many different belief systems
Speaker 6: that can be or that are commonly described in that way,
Speaker 6: and it's all stuff that might even fit the old
Speaker 6: Catholic definition of witchcraft, even though it is not that.
Speaker 6: We also know that some of the most historically prominent
Speaker 6: versions of a coven or witchcraft group, such as this guy,
Speaker 6: Gerald Gardner's New Forest Coven, they have been soundly debunked
Speaker 6: by research that's occurred in the modern day.
Speaker 2: And later research it does continue into the modern day.
Speaker 2: So let's think about the adventures of an American anthropologist
Speaker 2: by the name of TM Lherman. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: TM Luhrman moved to London and kind of embedded herself
Speaker 2: in what you could consider a contemporary British form of
Speaker 2: witchcraft and magic, which is very much still around today,
Speaker 2: and she asked herself, why would anyone take up the
Speaker 2: practice of magic, something as weird as magic, especially since,
Speaker 2: according to observers that she interviewed, it doesn't necessarily work.
Speaker 2: So to find out, she attended hundreds of secret meetings
Speaker 2: and this is a from an article from The New
Speaker 2: York Times reviewing a work that she did called Covens
Speaker 2: and Chaos Groups. She enacted dozens of rituals, and she
Speaker 2: actually wrote some herself, which kind of shows you how
Speaker 2: open ended improv Yeah, it's absolutely improv As she read
Speaker 2: tarot card, she sewed her own magic robes. She even
Speaker 2: would ingest psychotropic substances to get into some sort of
Speaker 2: fugue like reverie state, the type that the Druids would
Speaker 2: have put themselves into in order to conduct their magic.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, allegedly allegedly.
Speaker 6: And one of the main things she discovered that was
Speaker 6: occurring within a lot of these groups was cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 6: This this idea that the people who were, you know,
Speaker 6: magicians in witches, the people that she was associating with,
Speaker 6: often remembered their magical successes. So if they're going to
Speaker 6: do a ritual or something, they remember that time. Then
Speaker 6: something kind of worked out a little bit better than
Speaker 6: the failures. The ones were absolutely nothing occurred, and the
Speaker 6: definition of success ended up becoming so broad and subjective.
Speaker 6: And it's just that you realize, or she realized that
Speaker 6: there was a lot of generous interpretation that was occurring
Speaker 6: within the group and within the with the individuals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, solely for comparison. Some of us probably work with
Speaker 1: metrics and things in our day jobs. Right, we have
Speaker 1: a way to measure success. This this way of measuring
Speaker 1: success was a lot less like, uh, let's look at
Speaker 1: the facts, and a lot more like, well, I did
Speaker 1: a ritual with water yesterday, and uh I saw some
Speaker 1: water the next day, so boom.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: But it's also not to completely discount it, right, That's
Speaker 6: not what we're saying. We're just we're just saying it
Speaker 6: was easier to believe it if you were within the
Speaker 6: group and you had those beliefs already.
Speaker 2: That's the same way when you you know, design an
Speaker 2: algorithm and you say this is the end all be
Speaker 2: all of something, there's somebody else that says, no, mine,
Speaker 2: mine is the end all be all. It's the same
Speaker 2: with anything when you interpret data and information. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of it is kind of happenstance, and it's hard
Speaker 2: to know exactly which one is the right answer, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, here's the thing. Okay, so we're talking about
Speaker 6: a specific version of witchcraft. But it is very very
Speaker 6: important to note here that there are still human beings
Speaker 6: across the planet right now in some very particular areas
Speaker 6: that are being accused of witchcraft still and they are
Speaker 6: being hunted for that reason.
Speaker 1: And are these are isolated cases, but it's true. Again,
Speaker 1: we're not saying magic works, but there are more people
Speaker 1: than you might believe who are practicing what they would
Speaker 1: call this left hand magic stuff. Let's talk about something
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but
Speaker 1: narco cults. Right, we know what cartels are, we know
Speaker 1: what the narcos are, Right, there are actual narco cults.
Speaker 1: There was this sort of black magic that was happening
Speaker 1: in Mexico, and we wanted to give you a specific
Speaker 1: case of this. In nineteen eighty nine, Mexican authorities stumbled
Speaker 1: across a genuine human sacrifice cult that was related to
Speaker 1: the drug cartels.
Speaker 4: They were led by a guy.
Speaker 1: Named Adolfo Costanzo, who was only twenty six.
Speaker 4: By the way, he's a cult leader at twenty six.
Speaker 5: That's pretty good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean kind of.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean it wasn't a good cult though.
Speaker 1: As the thing, Oh okay, it wasn't like a friendly
Speaker 1: mister Rogers type.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, I'm thirty six and I feel you.
Speaker 1: Yet I fell asleep trying to put on my pants once,
Speaker 1: so like this this thing is, this is weird. He
Speaker 1: and his followers were called the Narco Satanists. They committed
Speaker 1: multiple acts of human sacrifice, adopted from non Satanic Caribbean
Speaker 1: religions up to and including cannibalism, because they thought it
Speaker 1: would render them invisible, invincible, immune to bullets, and they
Speaker 1: you know, we have to ask did they really believe this?
Speaker 1: The answer I would argue is yes, because they were
Speaker 1: killing people. They were literally wearing necks plats of human
Speaker 1: vertebrate when authorities caught them.
Speaker 6: You go through, they have to have believed it.
Speaker 2: I think at least this all goes down to the
Speaker 2: power of belief for sure. And they were eventually caught,
Speaker 2: thank god, during an investigation into the death of an
Speaker 2: American by the name of Mark Kilroy, who is one
Speaker 2: of their final victims. So at least at the end
Speaker 2: their covens, magic didn't didn't just save them from being
Speaker 2: found out. And it turns out that magic motivated murders
Speaker 2: are popular across the entire globe. You've got areas of
Speaker 2: South Asia, some parts of Europe, the Middle East, and
Speaker 2: several African countries where people are genuinely absolutely being murdered
Speaker 2: for perceived reasons that are magical related.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I think we're all familiar with albinism or you know,
Speaker 6: being in albino. A lot of people with who suffer
Speaker 6: from albinism are hunted in places like Tanzania and MALOWI
Speaker 6: are sorry, how do you say it? Malawi?
Speaker 5: Malawi?
Speaker 6: They are They're murdered because their organs are being harvested
Speaker 6: for magical purposes. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.
Speaker 6: Their hair and their body parts where a lot of
Speaker 6: times or throughout history the subject of folklore of magical interest,
Speaker 6: specifically in those regions, but recently they've been touted as
Speaker 6: a crucial component of any sure fire potion making. So
Speaker 6: if there's some witch doctor a in a tribe somewhere
Speaker 6: and they want to make a potion. They will seek
Speaker 6: out this stuff.
Speaker 1: Money, wealth, power, true love, you know, all the all
Speaker 1: the basic ones. And in Saudi Arabia and in the
Speaker 1: Islamic State, multiple people have been executed, like very recently
Speaker 1: for the crime the perceived crime of witchcraft.
Speaker 6: Now, now, okay, we've been yeah, we've been going over
Speaker 6: all the historical stuff, the scary stuff. Let's let's talk
Speaker 6: about if you're going to go out right now and
Speaker 6: try and find a coven here in Manhattan. Uh, here's
Speaker 6: the cool thing. You can do it, and they exist,
Speaker 6: and you can actually probably go to a greeting or
Speaker 6: to a gathering. You could probably if it's a full
Speaker 6: moon or a new moon, you can go right now.
Speaker 6: There's a website. If you aim your browser at witch
Speaker 6: vox w I T C h v o x dot
Speaker 6: com you can find all of the locally or a
Speaker 6: lot of at least the locally run covens, clans and coves.
Speaker 4: You got an example for us, I do.
Speaker 6: Do you wanna? Can you go over it a little
Speaker 6: where I can tell you, Yeah, it's called hecate. That's
Speaker 6: one way to say it's other hecat is another way
Speaker 6: to pronounce it. But Hecate's Sacred Temple Torchbearer of the Crossroads.
Speaker 6: This is self described as a group of those who
Speaker 6: are devotees or followers of the goddess Hecate that wish
Speaker 6: to belong to a temple that honors and worships her.
Speaker 6: And uh, who is.
Speaker 7: Hecataeu It's the It's the Greek goddess right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 7: the ancient Greek Hecata, as described on wicca spiritually dot
Speaker 7: com as the goddess of all doors, gates all transitions
Speaker 7: from one place to another or state of being, and
Speaker 7: the original hedge sitter, the hag, the hex mistress.
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of people with multiple superlatives like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she's described as like the queen of witches in
Speaker 6: a lot of places.
Speaker 2: Sure, And this particular group, Hackate's Sacred Temple offers classes
Speaker 2: and other opportunities for the curious to learn about their
Speaker 2: organization and believe. I don't want to downplay anything, but
Speaker 2: it almost feels more like a community group or like
Speaker 2: a like a nice kind of like knitting circle or
Speaker 2: something more than it is some sort of like devil worship,
Speaker 2: be sacrificing.
Speaker 1: It's like a rotarian vibe or something.
Speaker 6: That's the whole point. It's it's a place for people
Speaker 6: to hang out and worship the way they want to worship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what I don't want to skip. There
Speaker 1: are modern witches, there are modern covens. None of them
Speaker 1: are out to get you. None probably just want to
Speaker 1: hang out.
Speaker 2: With really quickly, I just met somebody a little while.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to out anybody, but it was.
Speaker 5: Like, Yeah, I had a coworker who was a witch.
Speaker 4: She was super cool.
Speaker 2: I loved hearing the story about her beliefs. Didn't like
Speaker 2: her as a person kind.
Speaker 4: Of because we met them.
Speaker 2: We all met we absolutely, yeah, but had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with the belief system more just kind of a
Speaker 2: creepy person.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: But my hairdresser who just moved away. Sadly, you have
Speaker 6: a hairdresser or a salon person, a person who does
Speaker 6: my hair. She's amazing, she's she's waking, and she just
Speaker 6: moves away and im and I'm just so sad. But she, Uh,
Speaker 6: she was incredible because she could touch my head and
Speaker 6: then tell me things about my son's life.
Speaker 4: Oh weird, dude, do you think she just looked on
Speaker 4: your Facebook? I mean I'm not trying to be rude.
Speaker 6: That probably so, but but it is true.
Speaker 1: People tend to just be people, and that's like, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe that's a disappointing spoiler for some folks, But the
Speaker 1: vast majority of ancient witches and covens, just like the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the ones around today, they were not
Speaker 1: after you either. You know, the more we dig into
Speaker 1: this question, the more apparent it becomes that the allegations
Speaker 1: of some vast, shadowy conspiracy of individuals in league with
Speaker 1: infernal powers, we're just not true. They there may have been,
Speaker 1: and they're likely were isolated groups of people in communities
Speaker 1: practicing pre Christian spiritual traditions, but they weren't out.
Speaker 4: To like take over the world for Satan.
Speaker 1: And I know that's gonna be kind of rough news
Speaker 1: for some heavy metal fans out there.
Speaker 5: I'm sad personally sad about Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a bummer, but it's true portsinacious d.
Speaker 5: So you know, there you have it. There.
Speaker 2: There really are real, real life witches and real life
Speaker 2: groups identifying themselves as covens. But as Ben said, the
Speaker 2: vast majority are harmless practitioners of spiritual beliefs that they
Speaker 2: hold deep and deer, and they're certainly not not out
Speaker 2: to get you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or are they?
Speaker 5: I think they're I think they're probably not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're probably not. But that is our show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming, everybody. We hope that
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: We ho o.
Speaker 6: Alright, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you Coddle, thanks to Paul, thanks to you, thanks to.
Speaker 5: You, Bag, thank you.
Speaker 6: Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
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