Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do Cool Stuff your podcast.
Speaker 2: That's normally not about holidays, but sometimes it's about holidays.
Speaker 2: When it's a holiday like today, which is the holiday
Speaker 2: known as Spooky Season. That's pretty much the only thing
Speaker 2: I ever honestly call it. I don't even call it Halloween.
Speaker 2: I just call it spooky time.
Speaker 1: It is, and boy is it. I know.
Speaker 2: Our spooky guest today is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm worrying. I changed into my spooky sweatshirt
Speaker 1: for a candidate that I like. This is Boo. She's trimmed,
Speaker 1: so one of my favorite spooky clothing items.
Speaker 2: I love that. It's so good. We're so scary. It
Speaker 2: just exist. It's enough to make people not sleep at night.
Speaker 1: Kind of a just a brilliant merch line by if
Speaker 1: you live in Sokol maybe a girl. Oh yeah, she's great,
Speaker 1: she's the best. I just performed it her drag show
Speaker 1: fundraiser and cops a ghost sweatshirt. Very fun.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. The other voice
Speaker 2: that you're hearing is Sophie. You all know this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Hi, I'm Sophie. It's me. Hi.
Speaker 2: Our audio engineers.
Speaker 1: Ian Hi, Ian Hi, Ian Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 2: Now I feel like I have to, like now, I
Speaker 2: feel like the podcast will fall apart if I don't
Speaker 2: say Hi, Ian, Like It's like.
Speaker 1: No, you're right, it will. We did that and Ian's
Speaker 1: I mean that this sounds like a very early Stephen
Speaker 1: King novel where Ian's life will somehow fall apart.
Speaker 2: We better keep it up.
Speaker 1: I in my life. So this is important that we
Speaker 1: do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Our theme music is written for us by
Speaker 2: un Woman, and this week we are talking about the
Speaker 2: larger series of holidays that encompass Spooky Times. Spooky Times
Speaker 2: is the large umbrella with you know all hallow Tide
Speaker 2: and Halloween and La Muria. Everyone knows Lamia obviously, I
Speaker 2: mean among us. Yeah, so today I promise you witch burning.
Speaker 2: It's it's a weird thing to promise people, but there's
Speaker 2: like they do some cool stuff before they get burned.
Speaker 2: That's that's honestly. The usual format of the show is
Speaker 2: bad things happening to good people.
Speaker 1: Are we going to my homeland in this episode? Boston
Speaker 1: just Massachusetts Salem adjacent, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Not so much. Now we're gonna it's gonna be mostly
Speaker 2: Scottish Wish trials. Oh, okay, interesting, but well before we
Speaker 2: get to that, a thousand years before the early Catholic Church,
Speaker 2: They're like, we should have a day to celebrate all
Speaker 2: of our martyrs since people keep getting like flate alive
Speaker 2: and crucified in shipt for being Christian, because there was
Speaker 2: a period of time, very long time ago when anti
Speaker 2: Christian impression was real for a couple hundred years. Different
Speaker 2: areas use different days of you know, different calend days
Speaker 2: for this. Some people use May thirteenth, the day of Lemuria.
Speaker 2: I read one source claim of the earliest name of
Speaker 2: the saint's remembrance day was Lamuria, but I suspect that
Speaker 2: I was not able to confirm that. Okay, in either
Speaker 2: the year six hundred and nine or six hundred and ten,
Speaker 2: Pope Boniface the Fourth whose name should be Boniface, but
Speaker 2: it is not for some weird reason.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was like, is there a fun reason or did.
Speaker 2: You know just spell Boniface?
Speaker 1: And who is such a bummer when they're like and
Speaker 1: the name is less fun now? And who can say why?
Speaker 2: Yeah? All right, so Boniface the Fourth formalized the day
Speaker 2: to May thirteenth, and was like fuck yeah, fuckla Muria.
Speaker 2: That's what it is exactly how he said, Shitmuria. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was a big shitstirr.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I.
Speaker 2: And friend of the Pod. Syncretism is happening all over Europe, right, ye,
Speaker 2: people are christianizing a name and then continuing to do
Speaker 2: whatever they actually want to do. In both, everyone's died
Speaker 2: laughing because of something that the leader the listener doesn't
Speaker 2: get to know. I just died.
Speaker 1: Feless the way you said. It's so good. Sorry listeners,
Speaker 1: you will never never know either. There are some things
Speaker 1: that you're not trace that we are protecting you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in both Bavaria, which is now part of
Speaker 2: Germany and the British Isles, people were like, you know,
Speaker 2: I know that Boniface said we should do it on
Speaker 2: the May thirteenth, but what about November first, since that's
Speaker 2: kind of when we want to do it, and when
Speaker 2: we do this kind of shit anyway, that's our like
Speaker 2: dead day anyway.
Speaker 1: Probably, So it's sort of like, let's just fold it
Speaker 1: into the dead the existing dead day we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. And so also people were like, and also
Speaker 2: we should celebrate All Saints seat of just the Martyred
Speaker 2: Saints in an all Saints matter way.
Speaker 1: And I was like, whoa, Okay, this son is familiar,
Speaker 1: but not in the same way.
Speaker 2: Right, No, rights, Also the like Saint all Saints versus
Speaker 2: like the Martyred Saints. You mean, yeah, I am under
Speaker 2: the impression. So these names get really blurry or not blurry.
Speaker 2: They change what they mean in ways that don't make
Speaker 2: sense to me. Okay, because let's see, so well, we'll
Speaker 2: get to it. By the year eight hundred, you've got
Speaker 2: the Feast of All Saints spreading throughout the Christian world
Speaker 2: because like All Saints Day wasn't necessarily these these names
Speaker 2: didn't show up till later overall, so you get the
Speaker 2: Feast of All Saints spreading around the Christian world around
Speaker 2: the year eight hundred or so, except for the Eastern
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church, which is like, we did. Our whole thing
Speaker 2: is that we don't change our holidays for you motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: So they kept theirs in the spring fifty days after
Speaker 2: no on the Sunday after Pentecost, which is fifty days
Speaker 2: after Easter, which I don't remember how to pick when. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it's a spring thing for them.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Some people say that November first was picked because a Sowen.
Speaker 2: Other people was like, no, the Germans did at first
Speaker 2: and had nothing to do with sowen. See the aforementioned
Speaker 2: people arguing about fucking everything constantly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the year eighteen thirty five, Pope Gregory the fourth
Speaker 2: was like, sure, fine, what the fuck ever, Well, just
Speaker 2: it's on November first. It's that's it, and you get
Speaker 2: All Saints Day as we know it today, except no
Speaker 2: one knows All Saints Day. People know Halloween. Then you
Speaker 2: get All Souls Day the day after. Together it gets
Speaker 2: the name All Hallows Tied or All hallow Tied, and
Speaker 2: it's a holiday of remembering the dead, especially the people
Speaker 2: who died in the last year. It's a day of
Speaker 2: putting up memorial plaques, of lighting candles, of talking with
Speaker 2: your dead friends. In Finland, which is largely Lutheran, graveyards
Speaker 2: are a sea of light, as candles are placed on
Speaker 2: graves in some places and where in Europe chrysanthemums are
Speaker 2: placed on graves. In some places, people leave meals on
Speaker 2: the graves of the dead. Some places, it's slightly different everywhere,
Speaker 2: but it's like spooky and interesting. Honestly. Some places insist
Speaker 2: that the celebrations on the day be all somber and
Speaker 2: serious and quiet. But then Halloween October thirty first, have
Speaker 2: you didn't I actually didn't even know the etymology of Halloween.
Speaker 2: I feel like a poser. Have you heard the like
Speaker 2: how it's Halloween? No, No, it's the Scot's abbreviation for
Speaker 2: All Hallows Eve because evening was shortened to een.
Speaker 1: Oh it's okay, wow, that is very Scottish as them
Speaker 1: to do. So they just so the various punctuation just
Speaker 1: like cycles itself out over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you see people when they're like trying to
Speaker 2: be a little bit like spooky, or maybe they just
Speaker 2: actually live somewhere where people still do this, there'll still
Speaker 2: be an apostrophe between the two ease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that also just sounds like, yeah, like someone in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood who had really who's really trying to prove something?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, all Pedants Eve. And the reason it's all
Speaker 2: Hollows Day is because All Saints Day and Sainted and
Speaker 2: Hallowed are sort of synonymous, right, So all Hallows all
Speaker 2: Saints sometimes called hallow Mass, which is a way more
Speaker 2: metal word for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And then you get all Souls Day on November two,
Speaker 2: the day after lots of places conflate all Saints Day
Speaker 2: and all Souls Day and are like, whatever is just
Speaker 2: the day for everyone who's dead?
Speaker 1: And then I and maybe this is not the focus
Speaker 1: of this episode, but like, how does the Day of
Speaker 1: the Dead square with all of this too? Like was
Speaker 1: that shifted from what? Was that always November first? Or
Speaker 1: did that shift at any point in time?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm glad, Slush terrified you asked. I thought
Speaker 2: about including this in the scripts, and I decided not to,
Speaker 2: But now I'll just talk about it. There is a
Speaker 2: hot debate about whether or not Day of the Dead
Speaker 2: pre days Christianity, and there are pro Indigenous arguments on
Speaker 2: both sides. Okay, are like no, this was a Christianization
Speaker 2: of a thing, and other people being like, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's kind of the answer. It is
Speaker 2: just mostly presented as that this is a specific indigenous
Speaker 2: tradition or a pre Christian tradition that has always been
Speaker 2: on this date. However, there are a lot of historians,
Speaker 2: including indigenous historians in Mexico, who are making the argument
Speaker 2: that that was like a specific propaganda thing in order
Speaker 2: to do something and I don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, I truly was just curious where I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it felt naive to be like, wow, all cultures agree
Speaker 1: that this is just kind of the vibe this time
Speaker 1: of year, but I just didn't know.
Speaker 2: That's kind of where I came into it thinking, right,
Speaker 2: because it's like, it makes sense to me that as
Speaker 2: you watch the leaves fall off the.
Speaker 1: Trees and yeah, like death rebirth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I think probably a ton of cultures like
Speaker 2: and there's actually a bunch of East Asian and maybe
Speaker 2: Southeast Asian cultures where a lot of the specific traditions
Speaker 2: are also way pre date Christianity, and so like, I
Speaker 2: think there is a vibe of this pre dating Christianity
Speaker 2: all over the world. But it's like like I just
Speaker 2: straight up don't know enough. I spent a while trying
Speaker 2: to research it.
Speaker 1: That's fast. I mean, I don't know nearly enough about
Speaker 1: Dadlis Martos. And there's I mean like because I live
Speaker 1: close to the border, like there's a ton of celebration
Speaker 1: and I just didn't know if it was connected.
Speaker 2: Okay, interesting, and then the other thing is like once
Speaker 2: again it's like shit that comes out of some criticism
Speaker 2: is still fucking beautiful, and like what part of it
Speaker 2: came from what? Like, it is still absolutely a cultural
Speaker 2: thing that is beautiful in matters, you know, and absolutely so,
Speaker 2: and so with all Hollis Tide, All Saints Day is
Speaker 2: for celebrating not just the Saints, but everyone who's made
Speaker 2: it into Heaven. Where's all souls Day is a day
Speaker 2: for praying for everyone who's trapped in purgatory. And since
Speaker 2: most Protestants don't believe in purgatory, they don't they leave
Speaker 2: that one out.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's so interesting that because I think because I
Speaker 1: grew up such a like an amalgam of Christianity of
Speaker 1: kind of like whatever was around, whatever was available, and
Speaker 1: whatever it was not homophobic, that would be the place
Speaker 1: we would go. And so I feel like the little
Speaker 1: shades of gray and like Protestants don't believe in purgatory,
Speaker 1: didn't know and technically grew up Protestant at various times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and different Protestant denominations do and don't believe
Speaker 2: in purgatory, but overall that's like kind of one of
Speaker 2: the like it's usually the ones that are a little
Speaker 2: bit closer to Catholicism that still don't believe in purgatory,
Speaker 2: and then man, I felt on so many rabbit holes. Anyway,
Speaker 2: people don't need to know about Catholic universalism. So the
Speaker 2: idea that some people argue about whether everyone goes into
Speaker 2: have or whether some people stay in like, it's all
Speaker 2: fucking people like to argue about weird shit, about stuff
Speaker 2: that no one can see, and it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: And so the reason that Halloween is celebrated is that
Speaker 2: the early Church follow the Jewish tradition and the Celtic
Speaker 2: tradition also in a bunch of other places tradition. And
Speaker 2: the day starts the night before at sundown, so like,
Speaker 2: which makes sense because at first you're like, why would
Speaker 2: the day start? Then you're like, well, the last day's over,
Speaker 2: isn't it right right, So like, so the new day starts,
Speaker 2: and so you have all Hallow's Day starts with all
Speaker 2: hollows eve the night before.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's a cool holiday. The whole thing celebrating
Speaker 2: your ancestors is fucking cool. Getting in touch with dead
Speaker 2: is really useful for people, whether or not there's an afterlife.
Speaker 1: I always was curious if you could be choosy about
Speaker 1: which ancestors you do and do not want to welcome,
Speaker 1: you know, probably because they're you know, not everyone has
Speaker 1: the ancestors that they would be like, yeah, everyone come back.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now yeah, you probably like you put up like
Speaker 2: a specific like John, stay out. You know, I killed
Speaker 2: you for a reason. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The people, for example, your ancestors who you personally
Speaker 1: have murdered, you're not going to want them back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I built a time machine. It was very expensive.
Speaker 2: So you've got these three holidays by the ninth century.
Speaker 2: By the ninth century, you've got the trade one which
Speaker 2: I did not know the word, which is a name
Speaker 2: for a three day holiday. Okay, except for hundreds of
Speaker 2: years it was an octave, an eight day holiday, because
Speaker 2: everyone has always known that spooky season should be given
Speaker 2: some fucking breathing room. Sowyn was usually three days before
Speaker 2: and three days after November one, so for a full
Speaker 2: week of spook times. And so the medieval period goes onward,
Speaker 2: and you know now that we've got the holiday, and
Speaker 2: now the medieval period hits, and the medieval period sucked
Speaker 2: for a lot of people. During death, people in Europe
Speaker 2: got really interested in death for some weird reason amadically,
Speaker 2: and now you get that done. I know, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: one day I'll do an episode about the like the
Speaker 2: Black Death in women's rights, about how like women got
Speaker 2: like so much more power in the Middle Ages after
Speaker 2: everyone died, because then like they were allowed to like
Speaker 2: own more property and like run more stuff because the
Speaker 2: people are.
Speaker 1: It's like World War two lodgic. Yeah, yes, I can
Speaker 1: we talk about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, Well, I only know I would need to
Speaker 2: do more research. I have that level of it right now.
Speaker 1: That's so cool and also so depressing.
Speaker 2: I know. And then there's also stuff where, like, at
Speaker 2: least by late medieval period, I think in Western Europe,
Speaker 2: women could own property if they were unmarried, and so
Speaker 2: there's like all these women like trying to figure out
Speaker 2: ways to stay unmarried. See our episode about murder their husbands.
Speaker 1: Wow, So did it set off like a black widow
Speaker 1: epidemic kind of?
Speaker 2: Well, the black widow stuff that was a couple hundred
Speaker 2: years later. The at least the episodes that we did
Speaker 2: was on the like aquatafauna and the like the like
Speaker 2: famous Italian poisoners and stuff like that, and how those
Speaker 2: just this thing where like the same lady you go
Speaker 2: to for your your astrology and your abortion will also
Speaker 2: like give you poison to kill your husband if he sucks.
Speaker 1: That's what happened in House of Gucci. Okay, I can
Speaker 1: get see you're wondering.
Speaker 2: I've never even heard of it. I don't know how
Speaker 2: Scucci is.
Speaker 1: That's all right, that meant something to someone, that's.
Speaker 2: Okay, it matters. So because of Black Death, you get
Speaker 2: the Don's macabre, the dance of death, the image of
Speaker 2: happy dancing skeletons, and like people are just like really
Speaker 2: kind of thinking about dying a lot for some weird reason.
Speaker 2: The other thing that happened, so that ties into some
Speaker 2: Halloween symbolism. That's why I'm tying throwing that part in.
Speaker 2: The other thing that ties into Halloween way more than
Speaker 2: I thought it would. It's the fucking witch hunts. You know,
Speaker 2: people talk about like human progresses if it's linear, and
Speaker 2: that's obviously not true.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: During most of the medieval period, the Catholic Church didn't
Speaker 2: give a fuck about witches because witchcraft wasn't real, so
Speaker 2: it was just pagan superstition. So why would you burn
Speaker 2: people over superstition, which is very similar to the argument
Speaker 2: that people nowadays make about the witch trials.
Speaker 1: Also right, interesting, I'm like, okay, let them cook. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: unfortunately they cooked up some real shit. Just stirred that
Speaker 1: shit in the cauldron.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, according to early medieval stuff, no one was
Speaker 2: consorting with the devil. That's nonsense. He's not like a
Speaker 2: guy who shows up and.
Speaker 1: He's like, ah, not a sexy guy that you'd want
Speaker 1: to hang out with. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no need to burn people at the
Speaker 2: stake about it. The first not the first inquisition, the
Speaker 2: an inquisition that I don't know enough to say is
Speaker 2: the first. But the Catholic Church put together an inquisition
Speaker 2: in southern France and twelve thirty three, and this was
Speaker 2: to kill not witches but the weird heretical pescatarian communists, cultists,
Speaker 2: the Cathars who may or may not be future friends
Speaker 2: of the pot. But they're actually only like they're more
Speaker 2: like interesting than like cool. Anyway, the inquisition sticks around,
Speaker 2: they kill a witch here or there. You start getting
Speaker 2: more and more like witch laws on stuff. But it's
Speaker 2: not a it's like a thing that can happen, but
Speaker 2: you don't have the specific witches hang out with the
Speaker 2: devil thing until several hundred years later. Interesting, by the
Speaker 2: end of the sixteenth century you get witch trials in
Speaker 2: fucking earnest. Protestants and Catholics like to argue about who
Speaker 2: was more evil during the witch hunts. Catholics pull ahead
Speaker 2: overall more evil because the witch hunts in southwest Germany
Speaker 2: were the most brutal anywhere in Europe.
Speaker 1: Rare w for Protestants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but as relates to Sowyn and Halloween and spooky season,
Speaker 2: we're gonna look over at Scotland where Protestants were really
Speaker 2: unhappy about the syncretic Catholics and all their pagany goodness.
Speaker 2: And also they didn't like that people were like doing
Speaker 2: divination and playing mash and performing health care.
Speaker 1: Oh well, how dare they?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the witch hunts were a war on women,
Speaker 2: they were a warren traditional healing, they were a war
Speaker 2: on Syncriticism, and they were a consolidation of power by
Speaker 2: various Christian sects. The pagan horn gods are like the
Speaker 2: fucking devil. This is where you start to see diabolic witchery.
Speaker 2: You see the devil fucking witches and which is really
Speaker 2: interesting to me, is this like symbolism because one because
Speaker 2: it's hot, Two because the nuns are married to Jesus
Speaker 2: but never fuck. I mean they fuck each other, but
Speaker 2: they never get to fuck their husband.
Speaker 1: Right, they all get to fuck Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whereas witches aren't married to Satan, but they get
Speaker 2: to fuck him and each other constantly.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, it seems like almost a better deal as
Speaker 1: long as as long as the proper consent is being exchanged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's just two strange sides of medieval saphism
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell. Excellent. One day, well,
Speaker 2: one day I'm gonna do an episode about the women
Speaker 2: who led peasant revolves and stuff. But first I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you about six sick deals. You can go
Speaker 2: to the store and.
Speaker 1: Buy stuff once again, you got my ass?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like just like show up with like a symbol,
Speaker 2: like a little like thing like a green piece of
Speaker 2: paper that says five on it, and that's enough. Well
Speaker 2: now it's not enough for shit. You can't even fucking.
Speaker 1: I's going on a rant again about in this economy.
Speaker 2: In this economy, you can't even just write five on
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and trade it for food anymore.
Speaker 2: But what you can do is listen to ads or
Speaker 2: oh hey, cool Zone media directly by setting up for
Speaker 2: cool is the Media, and then you don't have to
Speaker 2: hear ads. And either way, it supports people making podcasts
Speaker 2: that you all clearly don't hate because you're listening, unless
Speaker 2: you're hate listening, in which case what are you doing
Speaker 2: with your life?
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm like, if you're hate listening, uh, I've passed
Speaker 1: the point where I'm going to scold you for it.
Speaker 1: I know, A streams a stream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm going to just say things in order
Speaker 2: to get people to know I'm not going to do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jokes on you, bitch.
Speaker 2: You played yourself. Yeah, that's right, just like you're about
Speaker 2: to play these ads. Yea, And we're back. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to quote from an anonymous article called Devil's Night
Speaker 2: that was republished by a public a press called ill Will,
Speaker 2: and it was originally published in Mass magazine. It's anonymous,
Speaker 2: so I have to give you all these things so
Speaker 2: if anyone has a chance to possibly find it. It
Speaker 2: talks about a book by Sylvia Federici called Calaban the
Speaker 2: Witch quote, which is just the book that kind of
Speaker 2: does the most of discussing the witch hunts as like
Speaker 2: a war on women and ties it into primitive accumulation
Speaker 2: and all this kind of interesting theory stuff. But here's
Speaker 2: our quote. Federici traces the lineage of this coordinated mass
Speaker 2: murder beyond just the Christian elitees fear of paganism into
Speaker 2: a whole world of popular peasant revolts and the powerful,
Speaker 2: undomesticated women who likely organized them. By highlighting that many
Speaker 2: of these women lived alone, relied on public assistance, were
Speaker 2: sexually promiscuous, and encouraged nonprocreative sex by means of contraception
Speaker 2: and abortions. I know, early state builders were able to
Speaker 2: target these embodied impediments to patriarchal governance, heteronormativity, population growth,
Speaker 2: compulsory labor, domestication, and social order, in a word, civilization
Speaker 2: by portraying them as enemies to life self and so
Speaker 2: basically they kind of create the category of witch. Like
Speaker 2: there wasn't a before the witch hunts. There was a
Speaker 2: bunch of different people doing witchy things under a bunch
Speaker 2: of names, and they were diverse people, living diverse lives,
Speaker 2: but outside the new social norm that was being built
Speaker 2: up as like the Christian state was being made, you know,
Speaker 2: and so they get accused of murdering infants, and therefore
Speaker 2: let's murder all of them and anyone who's ever looked
Speaker 2: at them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is, I mean whatever, far from
Speaker 1: the first person to make this observation, but the idea
Speaker 1: that like, if you are not having sex in the
Speaker 1: interest of creating infants, then surely you have a vested
Speaker 1: interest in killing existing infants. Where you're just like, what
Speaker 1: is this like perverted lodge, you know, like the idea
Speaker 1: of like I don't know, just like not wanting an
Speaker 1: infant yourself, not even in it, you know, indefinite sense,
Speaker 1: but just today equals that you wish all babies dead.
Speaker 1: Which I think that there is still a version of
Speaker 1: that logic that exists now, but you know, it's just
Speaker 1: like such baby little bean brain logic. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: these these these witches sound great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, they're they're they're.
Speaker 1: They're sucking, fucking, and mining their own business. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: three amazing qualities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And one of the things that actually surprised
Speaker 2: me to learn this anti witch hysteria wasn't as populist
Speaker 2: as people think before there was the mass hysteria, and
Speaker 2: like neighbor accusing neighbor, there were people who literally went
Speaker 2: town to town and taught people how to be pieces
Speaker 2: of shit about this.
Speaker 1: They would like, I mean that feels familiar. Yeah, YouTube
Speaker 1: was for for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so they would teach people how to
Speaker 2: recognize witches. And before that everyone's like, whatever, it's the
Speaker 2: lady who like, you know, means that I can continue
Speaker 2: to cheating my husband or whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: An important part of society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is so, which means that the witch hunts
Speaker 2: were in many ways top down, and we're going to
Speaker 2: take it all the way up to the top. That's
Speaker 2: not a we're gonna we're gonna tie it into a
Speaker 2: king pretty soon, okay, but it is a a top
Speaker 2: down method of the destruction of women and wildness and freedom.
Speaker 2: Because something that's come up before on the show is
Speaker 2: that in the medieval European mind, the idea of womanness
Speaker 2: was wildness, irrationality, chaos and like non civilization. Excellent, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And as for the witch's Sabbath, the midnight gathering of women,
Speaker 2: these might have happened, right like the women would go
Speaker 2: and fucking go do things in the woods. It's like
Speaker 2: a thing people would probably do, right, They would do
Speaker 2: this for a thousand different reason. One of them was
Speaker 2: probably peasants plotting revolts against classic enemy of the pod,
Speaker 2: the Enclosure of the Commons, which is happening. I promised
Speaker 2: you I'd work in the enclosure of the Commons.
Speaker 1: That's something that I never had really considered. But also
Speaker 1: it makes total sense where it's like, why are they
Speaker 1: always in the woods? It's a go. Perhaps they are
Speaker 1: evading surveillance. Maybe that's maybe they don't feel safe outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is anything changing about society? And are there armed
Speaker 2: revolts around it? Hmmm, must be unrelated to what women
Speaker 2: are doing.
Speaker 1: Why would you go to a place where you maybe
Speaker 1: couldn't be as easily detected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating, Okay, okay. And then as a tangent, but
Speaker 2: just while people have their Bengo cards out and we
Speaker 2: just crossed off, Margret talks about the Enclosure of the Commons.
Speaker 2: I can tie the industrial workers of the world into Halloween.
Speaker 1: God damn it serious.
Speaker 2: Because one of their logos, one of their old logos,
Speaker 2: is a black cat called Sabo cat great, and it
Speaker 2: is absolutely and intentionally a witch style old cat with
Speaker 2: like hair raised and stuff, you know, and it is
Speaker 2: the symbol for industrial sabotage done by the workers. Anyway,
Speaker 2: witch hunts. Why do these witch hunts tie to Halloween?
Speaker 2: Besides of course witches being cool, right, and Halloween being cool.
Speaker 1: And black cats being cool.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Unfortunately, the way that they get tight well
Speaker 2: we'll hear about it. So this is the same medieval
Speaker 2: period where the holiday that the Christians built starts turning
Speaker 2: on them, right, they built this Halloween holiday, Halloween comes from.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it has a lot of these
Speaker 2: roots and these other things, but it is like a
Speaker 2: pretty actually Christian holiday. But it also then becomes the
Speaker 2: time of witches, sabbaths and black magic. And to quote
Speaker 2: a writer named Louisia Morro, the choice of all hallows
Speaker 2: all hollows as a major holiday for witches and devils
Speaker 2: was no doubt coerced from the accused with a political
Speaker 2: agenda in mind. Because there's this king and he's a bastard.
Speaker 2: All kings are bastard, but this guy, there's another a
Speaker 2: cap the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a kind of like spelling cool with a K.
Speaker 2: I know, although I usually hate when anyone replaces a
Speaker 2: C with a K. It's usually a bad sign.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but but you know, in this case, if at
Speaker 1: least applicable, exactly cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this king is extra bad, as I have learned
Speaker 2: by guests telling me I should not say he is
Speaker 2: a baddie, but it's instead.
Speaker 1: Bad Margaret, Yeah, I wish I could have been the
Speaker 1: one to tell you, yeah, baddie. The vernacular is shifted
Speaker 1: in a way that I'm very in favor of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, no, totally yeah, I'm I know things
Speaker 2: now I didn't many ways say that you yourself are
Speaker 2: perhaps a baddie. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 2: So there's a king named King James the sixth and
Speaker 2: first he is I'm assuming both. Yeah, no, absolutely boo,
Speaker 2: he is both because of some nonsensical rich people bullshit.
Speaker 2: In fifteen eighty nine, he sails off to Denmark to
Speaker 2: marry his queen to be Anne of Denmark, but a
Speaker 2: furious storm rose up and he was driven to shore elsewhere.
Speaker 2: He had had to divert his fleet, and he consulted
Speaker 2: with a Danish demonologist, and the guy was like witches,
Speaker 2: definitely witches. That's how you got the storm totally was
Speaker 2: a bunch of witches.
Speaker 1: Check please, I know I suspect it's witches. That will
Speaker 1: be one thousand medieval dollars.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Of course, if your job is demonologist, what
Speaker 2: answer do you think the guy's going to give.
Speaker 1: You, really one of the best scams going to this day, demonologist,
Speaker 1: easy money. Yeah, I suspect it as a demon yeah,
Speaker 1: quoth whomever? Yeah? Great.
Speaker 2: And if there's two things that King James the sixth
Speaker 2: and first, I don't understand why you can't add them together,
Speaker 2: be the seventh there are two things he hated. It
Speaker 2: was witches and it was women.
Speaker 1: Oh well, surely these things aren't connected.
Speaker 2: No, and he's not one of the people who did. Actually,
Speaker 2: a lot of the connection of the two actually start
Speaker 2: tying into your uncle's job.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: If there's a third thing he hates, it's Catholics, but
Speaker 2: we'll tie that in later.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So there are two witches, sorry, two witch hunts in
Speaker 2: two different countries related to this one storm. First, in Denmark,
Speaker 2: thirteen women are arrested and burned at the stake, including
Speaker 2: Anna Colding's mother of the devil, which is a sick
Speaker 2: title to earn, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, I mean yeah, if nothing else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we know they were guilty because after they
Speaker 2: can they confessed, after torture, and they confess that they
Speaker 2: caused the storm by summoning demons to hide aboard the ship,
Speaker 2: who then climbed up the masts and caused the storm.
Speaker 1: Sure, and I mean they were only provoked successively to
Speaker 1: near death to have to admit this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, women are saying, you know, they don't like
Speaker 2: telling the truth, right, we are famously liars. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 2: we all know this. Yeah, the room is absolutely completely bright.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? So thirteen dead women is
Speaker 2: not enough for King James, also known as the person
Speaker 2: who oversaw the translation of the Bible that right wing
Speaker 2: people love today. No way, Yeah, the King James Bible.
Speaker 2: And then actually, what's funny is that.
Speaker 1: With the chances there's been so many of those motherfuckers
Speaker 1: and it's that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the reasons that it's like people
Speaker 2: like it, it's a really beautiful translation because he was
Speaker 2: a Yeah, he was a gay man who really liked
Speaker 2: things to be pretty and like put a lot of
Speaker 2: care into stuff.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we have to that's a best for another day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good lord, So.
Speaker 2: He needs to kill some more women. What if Scottish
Speaker 2: women were in on it too. Scott is soon going
Speaker 2: to be one of the world leaders in the murder
Speaker 2: of women. But at this point there weren't too many
Speaker 2: witch trials there actually, partly because in this place the
Speaker 2: Catholics were kind of on the like whatever, syncretism is fine,
Speaker 2: who gives a shit?
Speaker 1: You know, kind of a nascent industry. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I bet someone's going to be like, wait, there's potential
Speaker 1: for growth and always the industry of dealing with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And actually a lot of the people get accused
Speaker 2: of witchcraft are very high up in their towns, and
Speaker 2: I'm certain that there's like direct political things behind all
Speaker 2: of it. You know, sure makes sense. So they've arrested
Speaker 2: a serving girl named Gellye Duncan, and I think this.
Speaker 2: I think she was arrested prior to the I read
Speaker 2: a bunch of articles about this, but they're all very
Speaker 2: like popit. I mean, I run a pop history podcast.
Speaker 2: I can't really complain, but like, anyway, she's arrested and
Speaker 2: her employer knows she's It's pretty sure she's a witch
Speaker 2: because she one is really good at healing. How fucking
Speaker 2: weird is that? And two sometimes she sneaks out at
Speaker 2: night from the house that she's like forced to live
Speaker 2: in as a serving girl. All very suspicious, but it
Speaker 2: becomes even more obviously just a witch because they strip
Speaker 2: her naked and shave her head to toe and lo
Speaker 2: and behold, Yeah, there's gonna be some misogynst violence in here.
Speaker 2: I'll try not to linger on it. Lo and behold,
Speaker 2: she has a birthmark on her neck. The proof is
Speaker 2: right there. And she denied everything at first, but fortunately
Speaker 2: they got the truth out of her after a while somehow,
Speaker 2: and she confessed and named names.
Speaker 1: So surely no one shaving her had birthmarks themselves, that
Speaker 1: would be that would be shocking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, one just has birthmarks. That's not why
Speaker 2: they're called birthmarks, although they specifically call them devil's marks,
Speaker 2: and specifically the devil would lick you in intimate places
Speaker 2: and sometimes it would leave a mark.
Speaker 1: That's something that I my mom would tell me, not
Speaker 1: from the devil but God. The reason that we have
Speaker 1: they'll ridge fil between the nose is that before you
Speaker 1: leave Heaven to be born, God goes sh and puts
Speaker 1: his finger and it just is shut tell me my secrets.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and.
Speaker 1: Then show and then shoves you down though whatever, oh
Speaker 1: that you go through to be born. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like the shush, the shut the fuck up mark,
Speaker 1: oh that all humans have. And if you meet someone
Speaker 1: that doesn't have to shut the fuck up, Mark, they
Speaker 1: know shit and they'll tell.
Speaker 2: You okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So after she reveals the secrets.
Speaker 1: She didn't have to shut the fuck up Mark.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Between sixty and two hundred witches, mostly but not exclusively
Speaker 2: women are now put on trial. And it's a fun
Speaker 2: historical note to tie into your uncle. About ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of the people killed for being witches and
Speaker 2: medieval Europe were men, and the concept of dividing it
Speaker 2: between witch and wizard or warlock is more modern coming
Speaker 2: centuries later, once again showing that progress isn't linear because
Speaker 2: I think men could be witches.
Speaker 1: It's truly why not? And also just to like equalize
Speaker 1: justifying killing them for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. So there are these huge trials, the
Speaker 2: Berwick witch Trials, and King James the sixth then first
Speaker 2: shows up in person. He's only one guy because he's
Speaker 2: fucking obsessed with witchcraft and he's trying to figure out
Speaker 2: you know, oh they fucking cause the storm, right, you
Speaker 2: know all these witches, and there's one witch who is
Speaker 2: the evilest and baddest witch of them all, Agnes Samson.
Speaker 1: She's a baddie. She is a baddie, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because she's gonna do some She does some cool shit.
Speaker 2: It has some negative consequences, but it's worth it, all right.
Speaker 2: So she's torture for days before the trial. She's left
Speaker 2: Shane to a wall by her face using what's called
Speaker 2: a witch's bridle or a scolds bridle or a nag's bridle.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1: For fox sake? I don't. Maybe I would visually recognize that.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It is a device that goes over the head and
Speaker 2: like forces a bit into the victim's mouth to keep
Speaker 2: it from talking. Sometimes the spikes on the inside of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do know what you're talking about. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had to look this one up to check if
Speaker 2: it was real, because I'm very like fool me once
Speaker 2: about the Iron Maiden. Sure, because the Iron Maiden is
Speaker 2: a nineteenth century invention where they were like look how
Speaker 2: barbaric the medieval people were, and they like made up
Speaker 2: a thing. Medieval people absolutely would have used the Iron Maiden.
Speaker 2: They just didn't happen to think of it.
Speaker 1: They did.
Speaker 2: Like I cut out so much torture and execution methods
Speaker 2: from the show every now and then I feel like
Speaker 2: I have to include it to like give a picture
Speaker 2: of it. I have read so many ways that medieval
Speaker 2: people have killed each other, usually by way.
Speaker 1: Why would they be like, no, this is where I
Speaker 1: draw the line. Yeah, it's just it was a lie
Speaker 1: of ingenuity. No one could live long enough to have
Speaker 1: that idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly because they kept getting thrown into, thrown off
Speaker 2: of rooftops and sacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's absolutely the scolds bridle, and it is absolutely
Speaker 2: a shut the fuck up woman, It's just a it's
Speaker 2: just a tool misogyny. Also real and deployed during the
Speaker 2: interrogations was the breast ripper, which is does what it
Speaker 2: says it does, okay, and it is a way to
Speaker 2: remove parts of people's bodies. Could you imagine inventing the
Speaker 2: breast ripper and thinking you are on the side of
Speaker 2: the angels.
Speaker 1: I unfortunately can very clearly hear someone saying that and
Speaker 1: believing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's the problem with like religious systems
Speaker 2: like this. So Agnes Sampson, after days chained to a
Speaker 2: wall by her face, she confesses, and according to her
Speaker 2: torture confessions, these witches, mostly women, hundreds of them, slipped
Speaker 2: into the woods at night to dance with the devil
Speaker 2: and kiss his butt cheeks. Since then, and since they
Speaker 2: hated James just so so much and they just didn't
Speaker 2: want to be happy, right, you know, they went to
Speaker 2: the graveyard, disinterred corpses, cut them up, and then on
Speaker 2: sowin they rode out into see into the sea in sieves,
Speaker 2: which was like a classic witch thing is to Yeah,
Speaker 2: then tied either living or dead cats depending on which
Speaker 2: version you read, to the body parts, and then throw
Speaker 2: them into the water. This summoned the storm that almost
Speaker 2: killed James. Never mind the fact that other witches had
Speaker 2: had already confessed and been executed for the exact same crime.
Speaker 1: I just always find it interesting that, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: evil and there's like such a long history of it,
Speaker 1: but just like the logic behind being like and they
Speaker 1: figured this out, You're like, what sort of scientific method
Speaker 1: process don't think this went through. Like we tried like
Speaker 1: strapping rabbits and to corpses, but that the results you know,
Speaker 1: kind of diminishing returns there. So then we started slaughtering cats,
Speaker 1: and then we started slaughtering like.
Speaker 3: It's just I mean it is, it's obviously absurd, but
Speaker 3: it's just it just feels like there's no like even
Speaker 3: ADUs c much less further, it's what goofballs that were
Speaker 3: needlessly slaughtering women, I know, what dufises.
Speaker 2: What fools And the imagination of one side where they're
Speaker 2: like and this is how we like summon the storm
Speaker 2: is like way less harmful than the imagination of what
Speaker 2: new ways can we come up with the torture and
Speaker 2: murder people? You know, right? Yeah, So King James shows
Speaker 2: up and he goes in person and supposedly he this
Speaker 2: is like where he like he like starts off skeptical.
Speaker 2: He's like, I don't know if I even believe in witches,
Speaker 2: and I actually don't buy that part. But you know,
Speaker 2: since he's like the evil Molder, he wants to believe.
Speaker 2: And so Agnes Samson, she's like, you know what, fuck
Speaker 2: this guy, you don't believe her witches come here. She
Speaker 2: leans in. He leans in close to her, and she
Speaker 2: whispers into his ear and she tells him the private
Speaker 2: details of his own wedding night.
Speaker 1: Oh, I like her.
Speaker 2: This to James proves that she's a witch. Don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong. I hope she was. But apparently royal wedding
Speaker 2: nights were literally public events. There were court people in
Speaker 2: attendance to make sure the wedding was consummated.
Speaker 1: I believe. I mean that tracks. Yeah, so was she
Speaker 1: just like kind of reading an article to him and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, reading the public record back to him, right,
Speaker 1: Like either some gossip got out or she did magic,
Speaker 1: or she did the thing that every fortune teller in
Speaker 1: history knows how to do, which is a cold read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or you know, say what they're what you think
Speaker 2: is likely?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you know you like what you did technically,
Speaker 1: fuck but you weren't very good at it.
Speaker 2: He's like, you like me more, which is true in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 1: How could that? How could she know? Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: a killer?
Speaker 2: She knows I'm gay, And I'm like sad because it's
Speaker 2: like such a good owned to do, Like be like, fine,
Speaker 2: fuck you I am a witch right before you die
Speaker 2: to spoiler alert, she does not survive this. On the
Speaker 2: other hand, he goes, well, we'll tell you what he does,
Speaker 2: but first I want to tell you about Oh, what's
Speaker 2: what's what sponsor should we have for this podcast? Cats
Speaker 2: live ones that you don't if you do magic with them,
Speaker 2: it's like they're willing participants. This brought to you by Familiars.
Speaker 2: That is our sponsor this week is Familiars love that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and nothing familiar is only yeah. Now hopefully you don't
Speaker 2: hear anything else. If it was, it was a mistake
Speaker 2: and we're back. So about probably about sixty people were
Speaker 2: executed at the end of this trial. I've read all
Speaker 2: kinds of numbers and this is a very consequential event
Speaker 2: in history. This opened the floodgates for witch trials in Scotland.
Speaker 2: There are three thy one hundred accused witches in Scotland.
Speaker 2: Over the next hundred years, thirteen hundred of them are executed.
Speaker 2: It also turned James into an anti witchcraft zealot. He
Speaker 2: wrote a whole fucking book called Demonologies that actually talks
Speaker 2: about Lamurres, the ghosts from Pagan Rome and call Back
Speaker 2: to Monday.
Speaker 1: That's so funny that it's like I mean today with
Speaker 1: like today algorith my logic would be, like you enjoyed
Speaker 1: the King James Bible, would you want to read Demonologists
Speaker 1: by King James relevant to your interest?
Speaker 2: Well, but that's not that, because yeah, his big thing.
Speaker 2: He wasn't like writing being like, obviously everyone knows about
Speaker 2: witches and demons and so I'm just going to write
Speaker 2: down it. He was trying to convince people that they
Speaker 2: were real. Because this is even though the witch trials
Speaker 2: are starting to kick in overall, people are like, what
Speaker 2: are you fucking talking about? This is some superstitious nonsense.
Speaker 2: The devil isn't hanging out in the woods with horns
Speaker 2: making ladies kisses butt.
Speaker 1: Oh but is he just like doubling down and down
Speaker 1: and down until people sort of start to capitulate to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's fucking king, which is a he.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: And so in this book he writes about women. It's
Speaker 2: it's not very progressive.
Speaker 1: Of quote, not a have to cancel k chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a problematic king.
Speaker 1: That's a brutal quote.
Speaker 2: What can be the cause that there are twenty women
Speaker 2: given to that craft where there is one man? The
Speaker 2: reason is easy, whereas that sex is frailer than man is,
Speaker 2: So it is it easier to be entrapped in these
Speaker 2: gross snares of the devil, as was overwell prove it
Speaker 2: provided to be true by the serpents deceiving Eve at
Speaker 2: the beginning, which makes him the more familiar with that
Speaker 2: sex since that time.
Speaker 1: Trauma queen. Yeah yeah, all right, well let him cook.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's working up says some cool ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Trials also cemented Sowyn as the time for
Speaker 2: which is to dance with the devil and kiss a
Speaker 2: sweet button. My theory, he was probably walking up and
Speaker 2: down out of Hell, working ouse glutes.
Speaker 1: You know, sure, yeah, you get to. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: witches aren't kissing that butt for nothing. There's some there's
Speaker 1: some appeal to that butt. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They were pretty much just millennials ahead of their time.
Speaker 1: Real worship of the butt. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The sailing and a sieve was cemented forever by Shakespeare
Speaker 2: soon after, when the witches of Macbeth say, but in
Speaker 2: a sieve, i'll thither sail, and like a rat without
Speaker 2: a tail, i'll sew, I'll do, I'll do, And then
Speaker 2: they conjure up a storm. Now, King James also hated Catholics,
Speaker 2: and this is tied into it because Scotland was like
Speaker 2: kind of on a like what if we don't burn
Speaker 2: all our healers alive and what.
Speaker 1: If we didn't light every woman interested in ostensibly science
Speaker 1: on fire?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. And so James is like, he's Protestant.
Speaker 2: That's a big hole, big complicated thing. It's a big
Speaker 2: part of his identity. And Catholics have always been distrusted
Speaker 2: by various rulers because of foreign allegiances, and England didn't
Speaker 2: like having the Catholic Highlands in Scotland since France was,
Speaker 2: you know, Catholic and France is the bad guy forever, right,
Speaker 2: and then also their forgiveness for syncretics got the Catholics
Speaker 2: branded as Pagans by the Anglicans. I'm fine with this. Also,
Speaker 2: the Catholics deified Mary, and James is a misogynist, so
Speaker 2: he's like, well, what the fuck? They basically worship a women,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, since the Catholics were into
Speaker 2: having a goddess Mary and women were irrational, so I
Speaker 2: better go kill thirteen hundred women in Scotland.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we're just using logic that makes total sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, for all your numerology heads, I'm not when
Speaker 2: I hate this stuff. I'm just making a joke with this.
Speaker 2: What ties into the conspiracy to kill King James the
Speaker 2: sixth and the one?
Speaker 1: Right, I'm like not against that, honestly.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, V for Vendetta V five right eh, Okay,
Speaker 2: if you remove the if you subtract the one from
Speaker 2: the anyway, whatever the fuck. Okay. So the other conspiracy
Speaker 2: that tried to kill fucking James was the V for Vendetta.
Speaker 2: Guy the fifth of November, you said you'd never forget
Speaker 2: Jamie Guy Fox.
Speaker 1: I remembered him. I see his little mask a spirit
Speaker 1: Halloween and Burbank I remember him, I know.
Speaker 2: And like God, I would be so mad if I
Speaker 2: was Alan Moore where I wrote this like anarchist superhero
Speaker 2: and then the only people who do anything with it
Speaker 2: are absolutely shit.
Speaker 1: It fuckings like it's it is like you're it is
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. The art is out of your control.
Speaker 1: But then it's like, ask Alan Moore about that and
Speaker 1: see how he fucking feels. Because there's some real there's
Speaker 1: some real outliers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the Gunpowder plot where Guy FOWX tried to
Speaker 2: blow Parliament or whatever. He was trying to kill King
Speaker 2: James of too many numbers, and he was trying to
Speaker 2: kill him for his repression of the Catholics, which means
Speaker 2: we can sort of tangentially claim that guy Fox is
Speaker 2: on the side of the witches. But this is me
Speaker 2: making a stretch. But I want to make that stretch
Speaker 2: because it feels good and just you know, stretching it
Speaker 2: feel it?
Speaker 1: Does you know?
Speaker 2: It feels good to stretch. Yeah. But also his Fifth
Speaker 2: of November ties directly into Halloween. Really, it was for
Speaker 2: decades after the seventeenth century, decades it was celebrated on
Speaker 2: the same day as Halloween, the fifth of November thing
Speaker 2: the like fuck the Pope, we hate all the Catholics day,
Speaker 2: uh huh. And then eventually the Protestants were like in
Speaker 2: sixteen forty seven, they were like, look, we're fine with
Speaker 2: the anti Catholic bonfires, but note of the fact Halloween
Speaker 2: fun having, and the general like like, could you keep
Speaker 2: it a little more focused on just hating Catholics. We
Speaker 2: don't like fun. But the riotous elements of we hate
Speaker 2: Atholics Day filtered down into the mischief of Halloween, which
Speaker 2: we'll talk about it a little bit interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: As we get closed, as we close out the medieval era,
Speaker 2: we start seeing Halloween like we know it now. There's strange,
Speaker 2: syncretic rituals. There's mischief, there's cross dressing and costuming, there's
Speaker 2: door to door acquisition of snacks, there's jack o lanterns,
Speaker 2: all that good stuff. These are all hundreds of years old.
Speaker 2: We especially see them in Ireland, in Scotland, and when
Speaker 2: the immigrants from these countries start showing up in larger
Speaker 2: numbers in the US, we see it here too. So
Speaker 2: thanks potato famine for giving us Halloween drunken public revelry.
Speaker 2: In the sixteenth century, people started demanding contributions from passerbys
Speaker 2: and neighbors to carry on their hedonism, like they were
Speaker 2: all like run around and these are actually a lot
Speaker 2: of these are the like we hate Catholic Day stuff.
Speaker 2: In the seventeenth century, you start getting public choir performances
Speaker 2: where people men and women alike as best as I
Speaker 2: can tell, would dress up as maidens with like the
Speaker 2: hoods and stuff, you know, like old timy medieval women's clothes,
Speaker 2: and then sing songs about wanting to get fucked.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is.
Speaker 2: One of the potential origins of the costuming of Halloween.
Speaker 2: There's other ones too, specifically people dressing up to emulate
Speaker 2: the spirits and things like that.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: The Mischief Night in England was on November fifth, and
Speaker 2: people went from burning effigies the Pope to burning effigies
Speaker 2: of any politician they didn't like. People went around door
Speaker 2: to door demanding contributions of firewood and money from the
Speaker 2: rich for their celebrations. Cool, and I promised you purge reference,
Speaker 2: it was seen as justifiable to steal firewood from anyone
Speaker 2: who denied it, and it became a night of permission,
Speaker 2: not a It was more of a go poach rabbits
Speaker 2: on rich people's land, and not to kill your neighbor's thing.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: But anyone who is unpopular in your neighborhood, especially if
Speaker 2: you're rich and unpopular, we see your windows broken and
Speaker 2: your garden's uprooted.
Speaker 1: That is really I really like reframing the purge as
Speaker 1: a night of permission. Yeah, it's just like kind of
Speaker 1: a softer, more fun way of putting it, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Mischief. Mischief Night comes over later to the US
Speaker 2: as October thirtieth, Halloween en as I guess you could
Speaker 2: call it. But before that, mummery starts showing up at
Speaker 2: this point in the British Isles, which is the practice
Speaker 2: of costuming and wild costumes and performing door to door
Speaker 2: and demanding food, booze, and money, which is probably the
Speaker 2: most logical origin of trick or treating, although there's the
Speaker 2: stuff that comes before it, like dressing up as.
Speaker 1: Let's bring it back the other two though, Like yeah, also,
Speaker 1: while I've got you here with my kid dressed as Scoopy,
Speaker 1: give me like beer and twenty dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I thought you were gonna say, like I thought you're
Speaker 2: saying about the wanting to get fucked part.
Speaker 1: Oh and for a grand finale yeah fuck me raw
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah, that's just neighborly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's a night of permission.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And so the more ritual side of this mummery and
Speaker 2: the and all of this is dressing up as the
Speaker 2: spirits and offering good fortune for those who donate to
Speaker 2: your cause. So the pious would bake soul cakes, which
Speaker 2: are sweet biscuits to commemorate the dead, and then give
Speaker 2: them out to the soulers who would pray for their souls. Basically,
Speaker 2: it's like you go around, you'd be like, hey, give
Speaker 2: me a soul cake, and I will pray for the
Speaker 2: people that you baked, that you've thought about as you
Speaker 2: baked these cakes.
Speaker 1: Okay, that feels like a very Christian concept, like prayer,
Speaker 1: like prayer candles, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Totally, but it's also just like sweet, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's nice cake. It's also possible this is a backwards
Speaker 2: adaptation from the Wassale cake, which is like a Christmas thing.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, But.
Speaker 2: Then there's like other things that are like no, this
Speaker 2: is older, like nah, this is older, and like whatever.
Speaker 1: Who gives a shit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's as it's fuzzy because there's too much
Speaker 2: written about it instead of fuzzy because there's not enough
Speaker 2: written about it. Then you get the Jack o Lantern,
Speaker 2: the most common origin story that you hear, the version
Speaker 2: I heard on all the podcasts I listened to, which
Speaker 2: is a good origin too. And it's not a wrong. Well,
Speaker 2: they're all wrong, it's all myths. Who gives a shit?
Speaker 2: One of the origin stories is a guy named Stingy
Speaker 2: Jack who is clearly irish and he tries to trick
Speaker 2: the devil. He does. He tricks the devil a couple times,
Speaker 2: and as a result, he's like left to wander the
Speaker 2: world and he's denied heaven and hell alike, and he
Speaker 2: lights his way with his lantern. These are carved first
Speaker 2: from turn ups and then they get carved from pumpkins
Speaker 2: in the US. And this is a decent story, and
Speaker 2: there's like other versions of it where like, actually he's
Speaker 2: just like kind of shitty his whole life, and then
Speaker 2: he shows up to heaven and Heaven's like the fuck
Speaker 2: out of here. You don't belong here. And this story
Speaker 2: and the way we talk about jack of lanterns is
Speaker 2: this physical object goes back to about the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 2: or we have evidence them to from the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 2: where people have jack o' lantern contests at like the bar,
Speaker 2: and it's sometimes called the Jack McLantern. It was also
Speaker 2: called Hobbane's lantern from hobb and his Lantern. Really yeah,
Speaker 2: I like that one. That's great. The older concept than
Speaker 2: this that possibly also gives its name is it's related
Speaker 2: to the will, the will of the wisp. Have you
Speaker 2: heard of the will of the Wisp.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I can't remember in what context I would
Speaker 1: have heard it.
Speaker 2: So the will of the Wisp is the like folklore
Speaker 2: of when you're walking by or in a bog you
Speaker 2: see fairy lights and you follow them and they lead
Speaker 2: you to your death. And all over the world people
Speaker 2: have versions of this where you because people see weird
Speaker 2: fucking shit at night, right, and so these are the
Speaker 2: they mislay travelers. They draw them into the swamps and
Speaker 2: they're always just out of reach. And will of the
Speaker 2: Wisp comes from Will, the name of a guy, right, Will,
Speaker 2: and then his and then his torch. A wisp is
Speaker 2: a word for a shitty torch made out of like
Speaker 2: bundled sticks and paper.
Speaker 1: Not to go all will logic, but that feels like
Speaker 1: so on the nose. That like when I finally saw
Speaker 1: good Will Hunting and then I found out the character's
Speaker 1: name was Will Hunting. What the fuck? It's just a
Speaker 1: guy Will Monjack same ye that pissed me off.
Speaker 2: Also, didn't they let you get away with that? In Massachusetts?
Speaker 1: Will of the Wisp? Don't we do not? I mean no,
Speaker 1: we actually do claim gooble. But the point is that's
Speaker 1: it was just a guy named Will. That makes it
Speaker 1: way less romantic but also much funnier.
Speaker 2: I know, and so Also other words for the same
Speaker 2: thing was Jack of the Lantern or hob and his lantern.
Speaker 2: That's the Jack o lantern, and I still.
Speaker 1: Like it Jack and Will, just like hob and Hobb. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know a Hobb, but like I, I one
Speaker 1: could argue that names of two of my bosses are
Speaker 1: jacking Will. So this is like shocking to hear?
Speaker 2: Well, have they ever led you astray into a swamp?
Speaker 2: My exact thought.
Speaker 1: I can't say that on on Mike, Do we know
Speaker 1: a hobb Besides no, I can only say Miranda Hobbs
Speaker 1: from Seximicity, Miranda Hobbs or Hobbs and Shaw. Those are
Speaker 1: Calvin and Calvin and Hobbs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, huh, I guess guess guess somebody is gonna need
Speaker 4: to hire a hobb Jamie.
Speaker 2: It's a name that people should bring back, Hobbiny. I
Speaker 2: like it. It's named Hobby anymore.
Speaker 1: M hm where all my Hobbini's at?
Speaker 2: We're full up on Clayton's. Yeah, for sure, it's fine.
Speaker 1: The guy who murders cartoon lions and Tarizan. I don't
Speaker 1: know why that just popped into my head, but it's true,
Speaker 1: right anyways.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, speaking of not really murder but mischief, Mischief
Speaker 2: Night reached a fevered pitch during the Great Depression nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three was referred to as Black Halloween, and to
Speaker 2: quote Ill will again quote youth gangs from this period
Speaker 2: ripped down street signs, sawed down telephone poles, opened fire hydrants,
Speaker 2: disabled street lights, barricaded streets with stolen gates and refuse,
Speaker 2: dragged tree stumps onto railroad tracks, overturned cars, removed manhole covers,
Speaker 2: tore up the boards of wooden sidewalks, smashed storefront windows,
Speaker 2: held shopkeepers hostage, dropped fireworks into mailboxes, unhooked poles from
Speaker 2: the tops of street cars, spread grease over trolley car tracks,
Speaker 2: put empty barrels over church steeples, attacked the police, and
Speaker 2: burned almost anything they could set a fire.
Speaker 1: Okay, honey, Okay, no, no, it's great.
Speaker 2: By in nineteen forty five, after World War Two, it
Speaker 2: starts cutting down. But in nineteen or that starts whatever.
Speaker 2: We'll get to it. But in nineteen forty five, after
Speaker 2: thirteen Halloween, rioters were arrested in Toronto, seven thousand boys
Speaker 2: and girls tried to storm the police station to free
Speaker 2: their friends.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: They were turned away with tear gas and water cannons.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like.
Speaker 1: Sure, not surprised to hear that, but very fucking cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and an overall my heart is with this particular thing.
Speaker 2: But most Mischief Night mobs were misogynists, and many of
Speaker 2: them were racist. And chaos for chaos's sake has some
Speaker 2: interesting beauty but is not specifically endorsable. It's how I feel.
Speaker 2: But whenever I hear about seven thousand boys and girls
Speaker 2: trying to storm the police station to free their friends,
Speaker 2: I'm on there.
Speaker 1: So it just fills your heart. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it was this spirit of chaos that brought
Speaker 2: in the Halloween reformers, who were like, Halloween needs to
Speaker 2: become wholesome. Starting in about nineteen forty five, trying to
Speaker 2: redirect all that energy trick or treating was a specific
Speaker 2: development of how to redirect the youth into like basically consumerism.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they like wrote about it at the time.
Speaker 2: They were like, I don't have I didn't include the quotes,
Speaker 2: but there's like in the Journal of Parenting or whatever.
Speaker 2: They'd be like, we're doing.
Speaker 1: This thing redirect to your children's political outrage, and yeah,
Speaker 1: pensiont for anti establishment chaos into little treats. Why not both?
Speaker 1: And why not both?
Speaker 2: That's exactly exactly how I feel. And it was also
Speaker 2: post World War Two that candy companies so there's no
Speaker 2: more sugar rationing after World War Two ends, the nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five candy companies are like, fuck, yeah, let's just
Speaker 2: fuck those kids up. Let's just fuck their bodies with
Speaker 2: fuck tons of sugar.
Speaker 1: The timing is like, yeah, the timing is fucked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It feels like absolutely perfect timing to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's actually do a hard, hard right to consumerism. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And so for like twenty years you get the like
Speaker 2: sort of golden era of like Halloween as is pictured
Speaker 2: in the classic Americana right right, But now the Halloween's
Speaker 2: a little bit tamed and like as generations go by,
Speaker 2: they no longer know why they say trick or treat
Speaker 2: versus like just give me a treat, you know, right?
Speaker 2: That was this tame Halloween was far too much. Starting
Speaker 2: in the late sixties, you get the demonization of Halloween.
Speaker 2: It's nineteen sixty seven, you get the first rumors of
Speaker 2: razor blades in the apples. Yeah, and the wasp suburbanites
Speaker 2: went to war against the Christian holiday that has very
Speaker 2: minimal roots in paganism, no more than like Christmas, that
Speaker 2: was developed specifically to keep kids acting right.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're fucking dumb asses, is it. It's
Speaker 1: almost like they're just losers with a lot of time
Speaker 1: on their hands, isn't it. Yeah, just like get you know,
Speaker 1: get whip up a froth, getting pissed off about fucking
Speaker 1: whatever God. That is really satisfying to hear. Honestly, Yeah, they.
Speaker 2: Just I love that. They're just wrong. They're like, there's
Speaker 2: pagan holiday, like you're like barely. It is absolutely all
Speaker 2: of the recognizable elements that we are aware of were
Speaker 2: developed since Christianity.
Speaker 1: And like, imagine a story about Christianity that ends with
Speaker 1: the call coming from inside the house. Why couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: this being the case?
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, terrific. Well done everyone.
Speaker 2: There's one more real brief flare up of Halloween's spirit
Speaker 2: in ways that are both interesting and also largely bad.
Speaker 2: Devil's Night, Okay, In nineteen eighty three, you get Devil's Night,
Speaker 2: which started I think in Detroit. I wrote Chicago in
Speaker 2: the script, but I think I was because I was
Speaker 2: thinking that the crow takes place in Chicago. I don't
Speaker 2: know where the crow takes place, but in my head
Speaker 2: at Chicago. But anyway, Detroit Devil's Night. You have this
Speaker 2: city that is like fucking abandoned by white flight, and
Speaker 2: it's just like a fucking hard place to live, and
Speaker 2: so people are like, what if we just burn shit
Speaker 2: down on Halloween? Ween, So on October thirtieth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: there are two hundred and ninety seven arsons in Detroit.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Some of them are angry kids in a dying town.
Speaker 2: Some of them are insurance fraud some of them are
Speaker 2: land grabs. Like this is why it's like hard to
Speaker 2: not just be like fuck, yeah, fuck it, burn it
Speaker 2: all down, is it?
Speaker 1: Like right?
Speaker 2: Sometimes the people who want to burn things down are
Speaker 2: like actually doing it for really evil reasons. Yeah, But
Speaker 2: you could also say that bonfires are an essential part
Speaker 2: of Halloween and that communities come together to stare into
Speaker 2: the flames to keep evil at bay.
Speaker 1: Many things can be true at once, Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: have not the time to get into how the Satanic
Speaker 1: panic layers on with this.
Speaker 2: I thought about it and I.
Speaker 1: Was like an other day, Yeah, so many potential tangents. Wow,
Speaker 1: oh god, I just the Christian self phone is really unparalleled, unparalleled.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is like maybe the third episode
Speaker 1: I've heard that ends in a Christian cell phone. Well,
Speaker 1: this is when I wasn't aware of and I uh,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love I mean, I feel a
Speaker 1: little more personally connected to Halloween in the way I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting to. And also my uncle wasn't totally wrong
Speaker 1: because this does seem to be like a commercialized amalgamation
Speaker 1: of five different things sort of kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I mean, you know, what is any
Speaker 2: attempt at like finding some path to understanding and divine
Speaker 2: besides like figuring some shit out. Sorry, I got distracted
Speaker 2: because Anderson was just displayed to us on thenranging.
Speaker 4: And like, well she woke up and was like, oh shit,
Speaker 4: eighty Jamie, what do you doing?
Speaker 2: He but yeah, thanks for coming to my Halloween spooky times.
Speaker 2: And yeah, no, I actually felt a similar like because
Speaker 2: at first I was like I wanted the easy through line,
Speaker 2: I wanted the like aha, and then instead I'm like
Speaker 2: it's what we make of it. Like the labels don't
Speaker 2: really matter, the like spirit of spooky Times is what matters,
Speaker 2: and we can all embody that in whatever ways we want.
Speaker 1: That puts me at peace.
Speaker 2: Everything is permitted except certain things.
Speaker 1: And so when I'm wearing my thirteen going on thirty
Speaker 1: costume tonight, I can rest assured that I'm taking place.
Speaker 1: I'm taking part in a bastardized version of something really beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, but it's it's bastards all the way down
Speaker 2: in a in a nice way, you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, thank you, Margaret. That was so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the plug here at the end.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think. Just listen to Ghost Church. I
Speaker 1: think that's the closest project I've done that feels very
Speaker 1: much a cousin, not a not a larva cousin, but
Speaker 1: also you know, a bit of a larva cousin to
Speaker 1: the Limeria that was this, that was this series. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: listen to Ghost Church. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: if you so choose, and buy my book about hot
Speaker 1: dogs and have have a you know, I have a
Speaker 1: good This comes out on All Saints Day. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: dinner and talk to your dad, have a nice time,
Speaker 1: easy mac and talk to your grandma.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm going to make I'm making a mac
Speaker 2: and cheese to night. Now I've just suddenly decided I'm
Speaker 2: always really hungry at the end of these recordings. That's
Speaker 2: not what anyone needs to know. What instead people need
Speaker 2: to know is you can follow me on the internet
Speaker 2: by going into whatever social thing and typing in my name,
Speaker 2: and that is how you'll find me and get the
Speaker 2: book about hot dogs. Message Jamie incessantly about hot dogs.
Speaker 2: The cool thing about doing something like that is that
Speaker 2: people really like when you only talk to them about
Speaker 2: the one thing.
Speaker 1: And surely you're the first to send it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like making fun of people's names, Like whenever
Speaker 2: you make jokes about people's names, you're always the first
Speaker 2: person to say it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, did you know that my name lines up
Speaker 1: with the colloquial j lo Because no one's ever fucking
Speaker 1: told me that before.
Speaker 2: You know what, I'm the one person who never would
Speaker 2: have told you that.
Speaker 1: Because I know. And that's why her bond is so powerful.
Speaker 2: So for you guysing to plug at.
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: All right, see y'all next week.
Speaker 1: Bye bye, cool people.
Speaker 4: Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 4: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Of b.