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 I'm Julie Douglas. J
Speaker 1: What do you like to put in your witches brew?
Speaker 1: A little A little frog play, yeah, rosemary, yeah, rusty garlic, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Um hey, little crystallized ginger. Nice touch. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend uh scaled dragon's a wolf which is mummy mind,
Speaker 1: gulf off the raven c salt shark, root of himlock
Speaker 1: digged in the dark course, liver of a blasheming jew
Speaker 1: if you can get it, uh, and goll of goat
Speaker 1: slips of you. And of course you want all the
Speaker 1: silver in the moon's eclipse. That's just an old recipe
Speaker 1: that I picked up. You're such as picked up from
Speaker 1: old will there. But seeh I just get my stuff
Speaker 1: from Trader Joe's and you're all of the earth the
Speaker 1: witches all a Trader Joe's is really good, and I
Speaker 1: mean everything for your scale of dragon to uh you know,
Speaker 1: the eye of news and Baboon's blood. Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: excellent pappoms blood. Uh. You know this, This is what
Speaker 1: I love about How Stuff Works. Is that we can
Speaker 1: discuss these things. We've got our own coven here, and
Speaker 1: it really allows us to exchange ideas about witchcraft. There's
Speaker 1: a coven at how stuff works? Yeah, like seriously or
Speaker 1: like literally, there's a covenant how stuff works? Or are
Speaker 1: you just talking about we throw ideas into a call drop?
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, sure it was just metaphorical. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: of course there's not a real covenant. That would be weird. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's metaphorical. All right, Well really, well, I would I
Speaker 1: would imagine your your you must be needing in a
Speaker 1: separate space because, as we know from legends and myth
Speaker 1: and folk tales, the classic version of the witch and
Speaker 1: and by the classic version of which I'm not craning
Speaker 1: this in on on on Wiccan stuff like a modern
Speaker 1: witches of of whom I know some of. My friend
Speaker 1: Michelle is a practicing Wiccan and to my knowledge, she
Speaker 1: just and have a cauldron. No, no, today we're talking
Speaker 1: about the witches that are burned in our memories and
Speaker 1: sometimes yes, um who yeah, who have cauldrons, who are
Speaker 1: meeting in the dark, who are plotting against Macbeth, that
Speaker 1: are casting spells, that are hanging out with cats that
Speaker 1: hate Dorothy, that hate Dorothy, that are dying underneath the
Speaker 1: weight of houses that fall from the sky. Uh. This
Speaker 1: sort of thing, the idea of the Witch is pretty fascinating,
Speaker 1: especially when you get past sort of the the typical
Speaker 1: Halloween idea of just cackling old crones. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could we could just talk for a long time about
Speaker 1: the about about what the Witch represents, because as I've
Speaker 1: discussed before, I mean, the Witch is basically a monster,
Speaker 1: the Hag, the Hag, especially if you see the Hag
Speaker 1: as a monster or the ogress uh, appearing throughout different
Speaker 1: myth cycles where uh. And some of this is tied
Speaker 1: to the idea that some sort of cannibalistic, grotesque old
Speaker 1: woman will come and eat your children if they don't
Speaker 1: behave or that if you're not careful, guys, you might
Speaker 1: be seduced by what seems like a beautiful but turns
Speaker 1: out to be a grotesque monster. Right then sort of
Speaker 1: the 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 I well, I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that Erica John has at interesting perspective on this
Speaker 1: from historical context. And she has a book called Witchcraft
Speaker 1: and some poetry and fiction and some historical data and
Speaker 1: there a few spells in that I don't know, I hope,
Speaker 1: So I think that she actually sort of approached this
Speaker 1: book in that manner of like, Wow, could I become
Speaker 1: a witch myself? Even though um, she's someone who who
Speaker 1: I think is grounded in reality and knows that she
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily going to start flying around. But anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: she is the author of Fear Flying that's she's us
Speaker 1: known of as uh. In her forward of the book,
Speaker 1: she says witchcraft in Europe and America is essentially this
Speaker 1: hearkening back to female divinity within a patriarchal culture. If
Speaker 1: you insist long enough that God is the father, a
Speaker 1: nostalgia for the mother Goddess will be born. If you
Speaker 1: exclude women from church rights, they will practice their magic
Speaker 1: in the fields and forests, in their own kitchens. The
Speaker 1: point is female power cannot be suppressed, it can only
Speaker 1: be driven underground. So this is how she places which
Speaker 1: is really in a historical sense of Okay, what's actually
Speaker 1: happening here, and we talk about which is when we
Speaker 1: get away from this idea of pointy hats and broomsticks,
Speaker 1: even though broomsticks certainly play into it, as we will
Speaker 1: find out. Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned the
Speaker 1: the necessary re emergence of the feminine deity because I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of a series of essays that I read, and
Speaker 1: have I known that you were going to go in
Speaker 1: this direction, I would have would have brought that book
Speaker 1: with me. I'll have to put something on the blocks
Speaker 1: about it. But there there's some interesting material in there
Speaker 1: about depictions of Jesus Christ in medieval art, and in
Speaker 1: some of these depictions, Christ becomes more and more feminine,
Speaker 1: and you you actually have have varying in some cases
Speaker 1: outright heretical. And I'm doing quotes um with air quotes,
Speaker 1: and I figers the heretical ideas or are 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 UM in an effort to
Speaker 1: unify right, to 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 it's sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be wrong. That's not a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the wound is like, 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 dong 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
Speaker 1: bearer which is really powerful, but this person has the
Speaker 1: ability to bring death right through potions magic, uh, generall
Speaker 1: dark shenanigans. Right, yeah, and if they're engaged in food
Speaker 1: preparation too, I mean that's food can be the big
Speaker 1: life giver. But if it's if something's wrong with it,
Speaker 1: that if it becomes toxic in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: if something goes off, there's some sort of bacterial 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 green, 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. And 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 which
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 uh, some depictions of which is
Speaker 1: uh quite naked on top of a stride, exceedingly naked.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing that little Will Shakespeare. Um, well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were naked in the if
Speaker 1: there's any reference to the naked in the text, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth, which is certainly naked,
Speaker 1: which is awesome and uh and has some really naked
Speaker 1: old witches in it, which I thought worked perfectly. But
Speaker 1: he calls back to these old engravings and woodcuts where
Speaker 1: you see naked women flying around in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night talking with goats, riding goats. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: in engaging with the devil and in various way shapes
Speaker 1: and form. Right in terms of there's something to this, right,
Speaker 1: if you scratch the surface a little bit, you'll find
Speaker 1: out that the broom actually figures pretty prominently and in
Speaker 1: which 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 the broom. Yeah, they're kind of like two
Speaker 1: interesting ways of looking at the power of the broom,
Speaker 1: one which will discuss even more as the of course
Speaker 1: the magical thinking side of it. And then there's this
Speaker 1: whole ointment situation ointment, which you think is a gross word,
Speaker 1: but I do. And and now we're about to really
Speaker 1: sort of dive into the flying the ointment here and
Speaker 1: talk about something that's very interesting about the broom in
Speaker 1: the ointment. You want to you want to run with that, Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's this idea that which is they're flying around
Speaker 1: in broomsticks or they're flying around in 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. So they're usually on a jar of
Speaker 1: ointment everything the costume. So they're taking this broom they're
Speaker 1: coding it with with some sort of mysterious ointment that
Speaker 1: they've brewed up, and then they're riding this this broomstick
Speaker 1: naked and just having a wonderful time doing it. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that brings to mind some some various
Speaker 1: scenarios that could be taking place, and there's actually some
Speaker 1: real um some people put some real thought into this
Speaker 1: and the idea that the ointment is in fact a
Speaker 1: drug or has has a pharmaceutical or or or psychedelic
Speaker 1: properties and they are interacting with the ointment on the
Speaker 1: broom Yeah, there are some pharmacologists who say, you know what,
Speaker 1: we think that this is actually what was happening, is
Speaker 1: that these ointments were being made and applied um through
Speaker 1: the skin, basically applying a crazy pharmaceutical ointment to the
Speaker 1: genitals with a broomstick. Yes, yes, in fact they probably
Speaker 1: said that on the side, applied gently to broomstick, then
Speaker 1: ride broomstick. Genitals first and Gothic font And this is
Speaker 1: from the investigation of Lady Alice Kitler in she was
Speaker 1: one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft
Speaker 1: in Ireland. We have this account quote in rifling the
Speaker 1: closet of the lady they found a pipe of ointment,
Speaker 1: wherewith she greased a staff upon which she ambled and
Speaker 1: galloped through thick and thin. Okay, these are the actual
Speaker 1: documents that they're pulling some some of this stuff from,
Speaker 1: and not that we put tremendous amount of stock in
Speaker 1: the prosecutions materials in witchcraft trials. I mean they're no true.
Speaker 1: Take that with a whole lot of salt. But who
Speaker 1: knows that like the idea that there could be some
Speaker 1: shredded truth to this is fascinating. Okay, dig a little deeper.
Speaker 1: And this is from the Journal of the American Society
Speaker 1: of Anesthesiologists, in a paper they called the Legacy of
Speaker 1: a Tropos the fate who cut the thread of Life,
Speaker 1: which I think is really poetic for for a journal um.
Speaker 1: In the paper they describe a tone written by a
Speaker 1: sixteenth century Dutch physician, Johann we Are, who concluded that
Speaker 1: a plant called henbane was a principal ingredient in which
Speaker 1: is brew, along with deadly nightshade and man drake, and
Speaker 1: according to where if 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 thals. 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 and believe oftentimes they do that
Speaker 1: which they do, not transforming themselves into other bodies, not
Speaker 1: by incantations or ceremonies, but by ointments and anointing themselves
Speaker 1: all over. So they had sort of an inkling there
Speaker 1: that yes, they were transcending the experience, but not in
Speaker 1: physical body, not actually where they get together and have
Speaker 1: transcendental experiences and not invite them in folk I know. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is interesting too. The use of soot, which
Speaker 1: is sort of alkaline, would have enhanced the passage of
Speaker 1: organic basis because a weak alkaline environment would be sufficient
Speaker 1: to neutralize the positive ironic charge. This is skin from
Speaker 1: that um and it's thesiolist journal. Uh. This is an
Speaker 1: effective ethnobotanical technique that may be seen with Peruvian cocoa
Speaker 1: tours who mix in their mouth the cocaine containing leaves
Speaker 1: with alkhaline centers to enhance uptake. And this is and
Speaker 1: this is interesting and a topic will probably go into
Speaker 1: in Greater Daytona in a future podcast. But this is
Speaker 1: by far not the only would not be the only
Speaker 1: situation of individuals taking uh some sort of psychedelic substance
Speaker 1: as part of a ritual or or magical practice, right,
Speaker 1: and you actually don't you have an article on licking
Speaker 1: frogs or am I thinking of something else? I have
Speaker 1: a pamphlet. It was handed to me by a guy
Speaker 1: in the train. I've been 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 vn um
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, yeah, that they have that people can
Speaker 1: actually get high. So obviously, through trial and error, over
Speaker 1: thousands of thousands of years, people have figured out different
Speaker 1: properties and plants and animals and manipulate them. So it's
Speaker 1: not weird that someone will come up with an ointment,
Speaker 1: and it's not weird that this person, this female in
Speaker 1: the family, would um be the person to come up
Speaker 1: with these ointments that are are mostly healing right and
Speaker 1: have a sort of power in their household, maybe even
Speaker 1: in their village, as the go to person that has
Speaker 1: all these great little recipes that can make you feel
Speaker 1: a lot better, possibly make you feel as though you
Speaker 1: are writing a broom. And let's also talk about that broom.
Speaker 1: I hate to sort of bring it up, but again,
Speaker 1: you know, why not just the ointment? Why have the broom.
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna point out that this perhaps was
Speaker 1: a a proto sexual aid. So I'm gonna say a
Speaker 1: old timey sex toy basically, yeah, now and uh, and
Speaker 1: I wonder if too, have like a going back vote
Speaker 1: from the from the side of of women liberated women
Speaker 1: engaging in a certain activity and looking instead at um,
Speaker 1: really grumpy men deciding to crack down on this and
Speaker 1: persecute women. Um, I wonder how much with the broom too.
Speaker 1: There's this idea of you have defiled and not only
Speaker 1: have you defiled yourself and you're and you're eight and all,
Speaker 1: but you've also defiled this object which has um sympathetic
Speaker 1: and not sympathetic, oh yes, sympathetic importance in the household
Speaker 1: and in the family. And uh and also is a
Speaker 1: symbol of of of the status and you've somehow perverted
Speaker 1: this artifact. Well. Also, as we know, um, the understanding
Speaker 1: of female sexuality certainly wasn't that complex or nuanced back
Speaker 1: in the day, and some would argue that today it's
Speaker 1: still Yeah, we just did the podcast that they dealt
Speaker 1: with the female orgasm. Obviously, we still as scientists are
Speaker 1: still figuring out exactly what sexual human sexuality and female
Speaker 1: sexuality is all about. Yeah. And so for a woman
Speaker 1: to express sexuality, certainly during uh one period over another,
Speaker 1: depending on what was happening in 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. Uh.
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're talking about. This podcast is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
Speaker 1: At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Speaker 1: Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
Speaker 1: to life's questions. All right, so we're back. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: solved the broomstick problem here. Yeah, and I want to
Speaker 1: add one more thing about the broomstick. I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but be reminded of the bobby the babba yaga, you know,
Speaker 1: the old Russian hag or which or cannibalistic ogress. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know with the tusks for for teeth. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she also shows up in uh. There's a movie called
Speaker 1: Jack Frost which Mr Sents theater three thousand dead years
Speaker 1: ago and it has the Bobbyaga in it. So she's
Speaker 1: a really iconic character in Russian myth um. And she's
Speaker 1: a witch. And she addition to living in a hut
Speaker 1: that walks around on hin legs, she also flies through
Speaker 1: the air, sometimes in an iron kettle and sometimes in
Speaker 1: a mortar and pestle, which of course is the you know,
Speaker 1: the device for crushing up various herbs and what have
Speaker 1: you and making them into powders for use in ointments,
Speaker 1: for use in uh you know, and you go to
Speaker 1: the pharmacist today, and I mean that's the symbol of
Speaker 1: the craft. Yeah. Again, here are these these symbols of domesticity,
Speaker 1: right that that are being harnessed for for powerful uh
Speaker 1: goings on with witches, which I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: and really plays into this idea of the law of contagion,
Speaker 1: which is one of the two laws of sympathetic magic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sympathetic magic is this very old idea, the idea that
Speaker 1: if something I think we've discussed this before, Okay, So
Speaker 1: I have a rubber dinosaur in my hand. All right,
Speaker 1: It's true, And I have touched this rubber dinosaur, right,
Speaker 1: and in touching it, I'm probably doing nothing more than
Speaker 1: getting some of my my skin oil on it, or
Speaker 1: my fingerprints, what have you ink? From my hands? My
Speaker 1: hands are really disgusting. But but then then when I
Speaker 1: when I set it down, the taint of my touch,
Speaker 1: that that will be the extent of it. The idea
Speaker 1: of sympathetic magic is so that there's a there's an
Speaker 1: even greater taint that is applied to this rubber dinosaur,
Speaker 1: and that that I have somehow imbued it with a
Speaker 1: sense of myself. You've transferred yourself to this object. And
Speaker 1: we continue to do this sort of thing today. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just dealing with my own stuff. I'm wearing my
Speaker 1: dad's watch, um that he died in. I'm not a
Speaker 1: logical believer in sympathetic magic, but I am sympathetic towards
Speaker 1: this object, and I have to a certain extent imbued
Speaker 1: it with a sense of him on some level, you know. So,
Speaker 1: I mean we all do this kind of thing every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we talked about this a little bit in the
Speaker 1: Science of Lucky Pants and you know how we ascribe
Speaker 1: meaning to two things, and we think if if I
Speaker 1: do this or if I take this, then you know
Speaker 1: something will happen. Or in the case of your father's watch,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that is for you, a part of him.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that we're all sort of hard water
Speaker 1: aired too to have this sort of symbolism in our lives, right,
Speaker 1: And I should mention I explained the watch. I didn't
Speaker 1: explain why I have a rubber dinosaur in my hand
Speaker 1: and it's a like a squeeze toy that I used
Speaker 1: to keep from fidgeting too much while recording a podcast,
Speaker 1: Just to explain that, why why I have a rubber
Speaker 1: dinosaur on my person? It's true, he squeezes the heck
Speaker 1: out of it, and that's fine, right. Another idea that
Speaker 1: arises from from sympathetic magic is like the idea that
Speaker 1: you can treat a weapon to treat the wound or
Speaker 1: somehow like if you were to say, cut somebody with
Speaker 1: a knife, and then you were to heat up that knife,
Speaker 1: then the person would feel the burning of the wound.
Speaker 1: Things of that nature. Things that almost what we would
Speaker 1: have what a modern um mind would think of as
Speaker 1: like a quantum entanglement exists within the confines of sympathetic
Speaker 1: magic um. You know, things objects becoming painted, objects becoming haunted,
Speaker 1: objects made holy through contact with the really important people
Speaker 1: the whole. I'll never wash this hand again because his
Speaker 1: hand is 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 hide your fingernail clippings, hide your hair,
Speaker 1: because these are parts of you. Well, these are even
Speaker 1: more like this is an even easier thing to buy,
Speaker 1: I think, because these were actually a part of me.
Speaker 1: These things were once my body and now they are,
Speaker 1: you know, hidden away in the wall of the house.
Speaker 1: Lest a sorcerer get ahold of it, use it to
Speaker 1: place a curse on me, to make a nail clipping
Speaker 1: sculpture of me, and then drive pins into me exactly
Speaker 1: that that's my fear um and can only take ninety
Speaker 1: years with nail clippings, and real quick. Another another idea
Speaker 1: that's tied of you mentioned vodoo, and of course that
Speaker 1: instantly brings the mind the idea of the voodoo doll
Speaker 1: and uh. And you see variations on this theme in
Speaker 1: in numerous magical um and and really just practices where
Speaker 1: you have a semblance of something and if I like
Speaker 1: I can hurt the doll to hurt the person that
Speaker 1: the doll resembles, or if I burned somebody in effigy,
Speaker 1: I am And you know this is something you see
Speaker 1: and everything from Guy fox Day to Burning Man. You know,
Speaker 1: where an effigy is burned and I'm by burning the effigy,
Speaker 1: you're on some level hurting the person or the idea
Speaker 1: or feeling or thing that it represents. We see this
Speaker 1: in political rallies all the time. Yeah. Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: comes down to something called the law of similarity, which
Speaker 1: holds that humans inevitably link superficial real life resemblances to
Speaker 1: deep unreal resemblances. Okay, so I think about this in
Speaker 1: terms of the ted dot com talk that you sent me.
Speaker 1: It's by skeptic Michael Schermer, and he was talking about, Uh,
Speaker 1: he's using an examples of how we can't help you
Speaker 1: describe meaning or see patterns, and he brought up the
Speaker 1: case of the Virgin Mary visage on the grilled cheese
Speaker 1: orgin marry grilled cheese. Yeah. Yeah, he's saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got this really sort of grainy pattern recognition in
Speaker 1: our brains, and so we really respond well to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, an image on tree bark or a burnt
Speaker 1: girl cheese sandwich. All of a sudden, some of those
Speaker 1: grainy markings start to take form into an image, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, that's really fascinating it, particularly when he
Speaker 1: pointed out that if you really look at that grilled
Speaker 1: cheese sandwich, it looks more like Jane Russell than it
Speaker 1: does the Virgin Mary because she's got very potty lips. Well,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it comes down to the same reason.
Speaker 1: We can just stare up into the sky at the
Speaker 1: clouds and just see one object after another. Oh it's
Speaker 1: a it's a dragon using a typewriter. It's Lauren Hardy
Speaker 1: making out on a steamboat, you know that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except for that last part. Well, I'm just saying, you
Speaker 1: see random things that may or may not make sense
Speaker 1: in the clouds. Alright, alright, yeah, I mean it is
Speaker 1: it depends on the birth of perceiver, right, and we
Speaker 1: talked about this a little bit in Science of Lucky
Speaker 1: Pants that some people may be more hardwired than others
Speaker 1: to see connections. In a Sandra Huper shoops our article
Speaker 1: about the dopamine connection, neurobiologists Peter Breger found that people
Speaker 1: with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find
Speaker 1: significance and coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where
Speaker 1: there are none. In one trial which skeptics and paranormal
Speaker 1: believers were both given the drug el dopa, of course,
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like a street bill. Dopa increases
Speaker 1: dopamine levels in the brain. The skeptics began to perform
Speaker 1: much more like the believers. You sent me an interesting
Speaker 1: paper to discuss some of the ideas about like what,
Speaker 1: how why ritual is important? Like what is it? What
Speaker 1: 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. Or
Speaker 1: you could be just talking about a local church coming
Speaker 1: together and engaging in song, just like a glee club
Speaker 1: engaging in song. Different communal activities, a community service group
Speaker 1: coming together and picking up trash around a neighborhood. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that kind of thing can under certain definitions,
Speaker 1: be seen as ritual. Yeah, yeah, actually, Uh, they are
Speaker 1: saying that these synchrony rituals are really powerful, and so
Speaker 1: much so that they may have endowed certain groups with
Speaker 1: a competitive advantage over the eon, perhaps even causing some
Speaker 1: cultures to flourish while others Paris sets from the article,
Speaker 1: Uh that I thought, well, that that makes sense why
Speaker 1: we would have these rituals that we participate in. And
Speaker 1: in that article they even 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 uh, even
Speaker 1: chanting 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, And I don't know the
Speaker 1: rest um The rest varies depending on who's singing it.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's something about mamas and boots. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Clearly, I have a vast knowledge of
Speaker 1: military uh songs. But in any case, what they were
Speaker 1: saying is that, you know, we still engage in these
Speaker 1: rituals even though 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: that old school version of a very regimented forces meeting
Speaker 1: on a battlefield and marching into place, basically playing out
Speaker 1: like a table top game that just that does not
Speaker 1: exist anymore, hasn't existed in a while, But a lot
Speaker 1: of these these activities still exist because it builds this bond,
Speaker 1: It builds this this cohesive feeling that we are we
Speaker 1: are one, you know. It's I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: that the idea you see in every boot camp movie ever,
Speaker 1: that these guys enter is this rag tag group of miscreants,
Speaker 1: and then they in the over the course of the
Speaker 1: boot camp they become a fighting force together. They become brothers.
Speaker 1: 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 between the context of magical thinking,
Speaker 1: and this was from an article Do you Believe in Magic?
Speaker 1: And it was saying that that um rituals and magical
Speaker 1: thinking give us a margin of control over the randomness
Speaker 1: in our lives. Um. This is from the article says
Speaker 1: magical thinking is most evident precisely when people feel most helpless.
Speaker 1: Geori Canon, professor at Tel Aviv University, sent questionnaires to
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy four Israelis after the Iraqi SCUD
Speaker 1: missile attacks. Of those who reported the highest level of
Speaker 1: stress were also the most likely to endorse magical beliefs,
Speaker 1: like I have the feeling that the chances of being
Speaker 1: hit during a missile attack are greater if a person
Speaker 1: whose house was attacked is present in the sealed room,
Speaker 1: or to be on the safe side, it is best
Speaker 1: to step into the sealed room right foot first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes it can come down to your
Speaker 1: your face with overwhelming odds or some sort of situation
Speaker 1: that you just cannot control, and it comes down to
Speaker 1: what can I do? I can't actually stop this thing.
Speaker 1: Take the instance of death. When death comes, there's like
Speaker 1: nothing you can do to bring that person back. But
Speaker 1: you can go and pray about it. You can go
Speaker 1: and light a candle about it. You can go and
Speaker 1: engage in various rituals, even if that ritual is just
Speaker 1: something as simple as like a meditation type of thing,
Speaker 1: and it's something you can do, and so there's this
Speaker 1: feeling of I am doing something in the face of
Speaker 1: this uncontrollable force in my life. Well, and it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's been brought up before to that ritual healing practices
Speaker 1: aren't too far away from like the placebo effect, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if you if you engage in this thing, you
Speaker 1: take the sugar pills, then all of a sudden, your
Speaker 1: body is going to respond as if it's actually being
Speaker 1: treated very much the same in a ritual scenario. Another
Speaker 1: idea that came across one of the links you sent me,
Speaker 1: and this comes from Stanford University psychologist and graduate students
Speaker 1: Scott S. Biltmouth, and the idea is that all this
Speaker 1: you know, this synchronicity, this uh, this movement and sound
Speaker 1: in a communal ritual, um, it really comes down to
Speaker 1: economic benefit, with the primary goal of of being to
Speaker 1: spot the reloader, yes, to ferret out the person who's
Speaker 1: not really contributing really right right, So it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're all going to do a big giant
Speaker 1: quare dance, and you can tell that the guy who's
Speaker 1: totally not into it is totally not into being a
Speaker 1: part of the group, and therefore you can't you can't
Speaker 1: trust him as much him or her. You can't trust them,
Speaker 1: you can't rely on them, you know that in the end,
Speaker 1: or you can suspect in the end they're going to
Speaker 1: be looking out for number one rather than the whole group.
Speaker 1: They're not entering into the social contract. I think it's fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, is this is 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 need to be done, but you
Speaker 1: feel like you should. And and part of that is
Speaker 1: 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 are 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 John again.
Speaker 1: She talks about this in her forward 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 participant,
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 cortex.
Speaker 1: Is the imperatives of each coexist uneasily. Huh. 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 Hawks, 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 of ideas. All right, But by the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: most modern Europeans are convinced that magic doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: And and you see which witches and wizards and warlocks.
Speaker 1: You see them prosecuted not as a blaspheming monsters or
Speaker 1: dangerous idea dealers, but rather as charlatan's and frauds, especially
Speaker 1: in the colonies. And then um Hawks points out, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quotation here. He says, by
Speaker 1: the end of the twentieth century, however, this process of
Speaker 1: enlightenment had been subjected to such cogent philosophical and political
Speaker 1: critiques that few people would endorse it unequivocally. We are
Speaker 1: much more conscious us than our forebears of the complicity
Speaker 1: between reason and magic. Uh. And many would argue that
Speaker 1: the postmodern era, with its virtual reality, its faith in
Speaker 1: the image, it's electronic money, it's new Age religions, is
Speaker 1: witnessing a return to the kinds of overtly magical thinking.
Speaker 1: That imperialism unsuccessfully tried to stomp out in the Southern hemisphere,
Speaker 1: which I found really interesting because indeed there are all
Speaker 1: these like electronic money is this unreal thing? I mean,
Speaker 1: the internet itself is kind of this. You know, where
Speaker 1: is the internet? Right? Well, I guess it depends quite
Speaker 1: a bit on our ability to think magically, right, to
Speaker 1: think metaphorically. So perhaps that's the reason why it hasn't
Speaker 1: been done away with by evolution, right, because there are
Speaker 1: some people who say, why why do we even have
Speaker 1: magical thinking anymore? When we have the ability even as
Speaker 1: tiny babies too innately understand physics or math or language
Speaker 1: 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 one more thing
Speaker 1: about about all this before we close out the podcast,
Speaker 1: and that's what we were talking about, which is meeting
Speaker 1: for these Sabbaths, and I keep running across the image
Speaker 1: by Francesca Dagoya the Witches, Sabbath and the Great he Goat,
Speaker 1: which is this this lovely image and Gooya's Goya was awesome.
Speaker 1: And so it's all these women and they're they're they're
Speaker 1: arranged like this big semicircle around this speaker like a
Speaker 1: hare um. Yeah, and there's somebody playing the accordion, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a nice touch there with presumably Satan
Speaker 1: the Great he Goat, this sort of goat figure. And
Speaker 1: and in many of the old woodcuts, I love looking
Speaker 1: at old woodcuts of witches and warlocks and all that,
Speaker 1: and the goat is often depicted as really really raunchy
Speaker 1: and gross, and you know, he's he's really deplorable looking,
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, they're these women are gathering to
Speaker 1: to worship and lay with the horned one, and he's
Speaker 1: so gross and vile. And but in this image the
Speaker 1: Great heat Goat had it seems to inspire some of
Speaker 1: the more sympathetic aspects of like of of a goat
Speaker 1: for starters, and also this kind of he seems like
Speaker 1: a wise old man and these ladies are I can't
Speaker 1: really judge him for going on here and what he
Speaker 1: has to say that's a goat that looks like has wisdom. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting take. But I still prefer the
Speaker 1: like um, the red hued beast as depicted in South Park. Oh,
Speaker 1: and it was very much in touch with his feelings.
Speaker 1: Yeah the way, and you I think you like the
Speaker 1: one from a legend, right, I'm kind of partial to
Speaker 1: the one or Ernest world nine played in The Devil's Reign,
Speaker 1: which had a cameo by Anton LaVey of the Church
Speaker 1: of Satan. But Ernest borg nine turns into this man
Speaker 1: goat creature and it's pretty awesome. I I just can't
Speaker 1: imagine Ernest nine as Satan. Yeah, but real quick, this
Speaker 1: was a Halloween episode. We didn't you didn't explain your
Speaker 1: costume well, because you're supposed to into it what it is?
Speaker 1: Your witch? Yes, excellent. Ye should have brought up broom, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: would have been good. Yeah. Yeah. And of course I'm
Speaker 1: dressed as the great heat Goat, thus the goatee and
Speaker 1: the horns, I got that, yeah, and these filthy hands.
Speaker 1: But anyway, and you look very wise, by the way,
Speaker 1: thank you. I would prefer to be the wise heat
Speaker 1: Goat and the just deplorable wretched he goat, yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you for not painting your body in red. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't get up untime this morning. You know how
Speaker 1: it is. Well, let me reach into the cauldron of
Speaker 1: listeners mail and poke around amongst the gibers and the
Speaker 1: wolf teeth and the and the mummy wrappings and see
Speaker 1: shark eggs, and let me see what we have to
Speaker 1: read from our listener. Ian on Facebook and he was
Speaker 1: responding to our recent episode about the orgasm Wars evolution
Speaker 1: of the the orchasm, and he says, hey, guys, love
Speaker 1: the podcast. Uh, not to get to nippicky, but sexual health. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a subject that I have a great interest
Speaker 1: in and I feel it necessary to report on a
Speaker 1: couple of airs in this episode. First, and I think
Speaker 1: most importantly, you repeatedly stated that the male orgasm is
Speaker 1: required for pregnancy. This is an entirely true The pre
Speaker 1: siminal fluid that is produced by the male organ for
Speaker 1: lubrication also contains enough sperm to cause of pregnancy, thus
Speaker 1: the reason that the pullout and method of birth control
Speaker 1: is not reliable. Unfortunately, this misconception is all too often repeated,
Speaker 1: and in this day and age of team practice, the
Speaker 1: people really need to know that male orgasm does not
Speaker 1: need to occur to cause pregnancy. And then he initially
Speaker 1: forgets his second thing, but then he uh points out
Speaker 1: that um clitterus is acceptable pronounced either way. So you
Speaker 1: said clitter as, I said claturus. I said, let's call
Speaker 1: the whole thing off. I freaked out and thought that
Speaker 1: I was saying it wrong and thought that Colaturus sounded
Speaker 1: like a wizard's name. Yeah, I didn't realize you coul
Speaker 1: say clatorus is to me though, that sounds like a
Speaker 1: great antclaturus or something, which I mean like there could
Speaker 1: be a great ance tours. But back to Ian's first
Speaker 1: point about the presence of sperm and pre siminal fluid um.
Speaker 1: Looking around, it looks like there are different studies to
Speaker 1: go back and forth. There's some that are saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely in some cases sperm in this fluid. On
Speaker 1: other other instances you peak that see people saying, oh,
Speaker 1: that's almost never there. So I don't know. There seems
Speaker 1: to be a lot of literature either either way. Certainly
Speaker 1: it would behoove one too to be careful, to be yes,
Speaker 1: to take caution. In fact, there's a Scrubs episode I
Speaker 1: believe that is it called it is his name John,
Speaker 1: the main character. Um, he impregnates his girlfriend without actually
Speaker 1: having sex that are based on what you just described
Speaker 1: her And I'm not going to go into detail, but
Speaker 1: no spoiler should okay. And we also heard from our
Speaker 1: listener Thoor from sweet would even if he didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to say, I would have to. I don't have
Speaker 1: to mention that we have a listener in door and
Speaker 1: Sweeten just pretty awesome. Yeah, And he says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: So I just listened to the podcast on the Lies,
Speaker 1: and IBA struck me when you were talking about the
Speaker 1: aliens who couldn't lie, and I think I may have
Speaker 1: been referring to China me Elvil's embassy town and that
Speaker 1: he says, if you can't lie, are you then all knowing? Example,
Speaker 1: someone asks you, what are the first fifteen decimals of pie?
Speaker 1: You start by saying, well, three point one, four, one,
Speaker 1: five um um. If you can't lie, you have to
Speaker 1: keep going. So does the inability to lie make you
Speaker 1: know the fifteen decimals? Maybe a bad example that you
Speaker 1: get the idea. Another thing, if you were told when
Speaker 1: you were a kid that watching TV two clothes makes
Speaker 1: your your eyes square and nobody's ever told you that
Speaker 1: it isn't true? Is saying it then a lie? Thanks
Speaker 1: for a lot of very interesting stuff. Smiley face love
Speaker 1: from Sweden thor all right, yeah, I don't think that that.
Speaker 1: If you've not been disabused from the idea, then I
Speaker 1: don't think that it's lying. Right. What it instantly makes
Speaker 1: me think up two is we discussed this in the
Speaker 1: False Memory podcast. It's about how you can you can
Speaker 1: have a memory that is false and you say saying it,
Speaker 1: you think it's true, but on a deeper cognitive level,
Speaker 1: brain scans reveal that you might know the brain may
Speaker 1: know that you are lying. And I find it and
Speaker 1: that's just I just find that an interesting idea, especially
Speaker 1: in relation to this, the idea that even as we
Speaker 1: if we believe something, it doesn't mean that we believe
Speaker 1: it in the deeper levels of the brain. UM. I
Speaker 1: also think it's fascinating that in Sweden, perhaps maybe this
Speaker 1: is a cultural thing, that the myth is that if
Speaker 1: you sit too close to the t V your eyes
Speaker 1: will turn into squares, as opposed to in the United States,
Speaker 1: if you sit too close to the t v you
Speaker 1: will go blind. Oh I didn't notice that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess that's the thing. I read this and I was
Speaker 1: just instantly thinking about our idea. I think your eyes
Speaker 1: square to some square eye? What is square eyed? I
Speaker 1: didn't maybe turn your round eyes into like the actual
Speaker 1: into actual squares, IRUs into squares. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of cool. We may have lost something in translation there,
Speaker 1: but anyway, I love getting email that said love from
Speaker 1: Sweden thor so hopefully, hopefully we'll get more of that
Speaker 1: from other people with even if you don't live in Sweden. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: if you would like to share some ideas with us,
Speaker 1: if you would like to to provide feedback on a
Speaker 1: podcast episode, present ideas for future episodes. You can find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook and you can find us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and I'm both of those. We go by the moniker
Speaker 1: below the Mind and or also you can just search
Speaker 1: for stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook Twitter and you'll
Speaker 1: probably find us, and you can always drop us a
Speaker 1: line at blow the Mind at how stupporks dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow,