Hammer of the Witches

the malius mellificarum. We'll get into all that in a minute, but really the starting point here is, of course, the idea of the which the modern idea of the witch that emerges from past lies, truths, atrocities, all of which we're going to discuss in this episode. For your part, Julie, what what do you think of when you hear the word which, Well, I always think about the archetype, right,

I think about a witch on a broom. I think about all the children's stories which are rife with witches, from Snow White to the Wizard of Oz, right, which is are so ingrained in our culture, and so on a personal level, I think as a female, it's always been of interest to me because I think it's some

sort of subconscious level when you are a female. You know that this is an archetype and that you know, society has been saying for a long time, you know, women have the sort of evil side to them, and that's really where the roots of this idea of which

is comes from. Which we'll discuss and will unpack this idea a little bit more later, but backing up and sort of looking at this topic, I think it's fascinating in the context of the last four hundred, six hundred years of history to try to get a bead on

psychologically where we're coming from. Um, no matter what topic it is that we're covering, there's always going to be a bit of flavoring from this idea, of of which is whether or not we know it just sounds like a ridiculous statements to say, but kind of looking you to your own life and look at how stories or even news stories or fiction is created, and then look back to these tales of witches and you will see some of some of the roots or the blueprint of

how we go about our lives. Like from a modern standpoint, which the gender issues involved in the idea of the witch are fascinating. Think of Hollywood, for instance, countless beautiful younger actresses, they have all the starring female roles. Then they get a little older, what do they inevitably play? They end up playing witches. I mean, it's almost a

joke at this point. In fact, I've heard maybe it was Glenn Close, I want to say, who was joking about reaching the age where she suddenly was receiving a lot of roles for witches. Yeah, you know which, Like, what does that say about us? And certainly the witch is an important character in fiction. I always think to the witches in Macbeth is just one of the classic examples of of eagle witchery in modern fiction and in our modern understanding of what a witch is. That's obviously

that's a huge archetype to fall back on. But where do these archetypes arise from? That's what we're gonna talk about in this episode. And one thing we need to get out and get clear right off the bat is the difference between which and wiccan and uh. For me, I mean I tend to I didn't think about this all that much because I tend to think of them

in two distinct categories like wickens. To me, those are people I know, I know wickens in real life I see them, you know, these are people who have a particular religious, um spiritual belief system and more power to them. And then in the other category, I tend to lump the witches from mcbethum historical witches and everything else. Well. And it's so we have weakens in one pocket, and we're talking more about in nature based system right um.

And then we have witchcraft, which is entirely different witchcraft we're going to discuss um more in terms of religion and how it was actually something that was created uh and not something necessarily practiced by people throughout the ages. That witchcraft is this largely um fictionalized account all boils to the surface around fourteen hundred as well discussed now

before that. You obviously have stories of monsters, hags in female female monsters that prey upon on children and cause mayhem. Those are as old as his human history, and they exist in every society on Earth. Every culture has a sort of which and in likewise cultures around the world have There are always there's always gonna be a history of females who are in important roles that may or may not have some sort of attributed uh, spiritual or

or healing powers about them. That's also as old as time. But fourteen hundred that's when we see the emergence, the real emergen gents of the idea of the evil witch, the demonic witch. And out of that time bubbles all of this horrible witchcraft persecution, right because at that point we are people went from looking at which is as a psychological embodiment of evil and wrongdoing and try to then say that humans could actually physically embody this idea

of evil. Okay, so that gives license to do a lot of horrible things. And when we talk about horrible things, what we are talking about are people who were killed and tortured. And from the fourteen hundreds to the seventeen hundreds and estimated half million people were executed for witchcraft, were accused and executed, mostly women. Them are women, some men and then also children as youngest like seven or eight were tried and executed on crimes as hard and

unbelievable as the sexual relations with a demon. So we're going to go and try to do is get to the bottom of the reason why this happened. Um, try to take this long view and look back in history and figure out all the different elements that led up to this. But I did want to mention that it's not just in past history. We'll talk a little bit more about that later on. Exorcism still take place around the world, and the magical thinking involved in all of this.

We're gonna look at a lot of the different sources of this witchcraft persecution, and so many of those sources, be they cultural or economic, they're still around today. To think about that as we move forward. It is absolutely relevant to today. And I just wanted to read a quick quote from Erica Johng in her book, which is she says, clearly, there are pagan beliefs still present in our modern world, and none of them inspires in us a lust for torturing and incinerating our neighbors here in

the West. That's what she's talking about. But lest we make the mistake of assuming that our ancestors were less intelligent than we, a concept known as doom height or primeval stupidity, let us think of all the things we would kill our neighbors for. That which is not dead, she is merely hibernating, and which hunting itself, is hardly dead. It is merely waiting to be born again under a different name exactly. So let's go back to fourteen hundred again.

This is a key point in history where suddenly we see this idea of the witch rising to the surface of thought in Western Europe. It's interesting if you look back before Dred you had plenty of stories of individuals seeking advice from the devil or his demons, engaging in various magical spells and and and seeking demonic aid. But

they were called necromancers. They were They were men. They were generally learned men, members of the clergy, or for all intents and purposes, scientists or wizards if you will. They were. They were the kind of people who owned a library, had access to quote unquote secret knowledge, and could could really dive into the sort of occultist nonsense, hardcore and it was it was generally considered that this

was not something that women were up for. This was again, this was something that learned, powerful men did, not some crazy woman down the street with too many cats. Okay, it was. It was a very sexist idea because you know, every all things equal, why shouldn't women be able to reach out to the devil for aid? Right prior to fourteen hundred when it came to seeking the advice of demons and entering packs. It was a man's world for sure. Yeah.

And and necromancer would have been one of a triumvirant of dark arts here. So you'd have white magic, dark magic, and then you would have necromancy. Yeah. White magic would be a stuff like you go to your local healer and and he or she would have some sort of shamanist expels. So it would be a mixture of things that were you know, some of it were probably actual folk remedies that worked, and some things that were purely superstitious and magical thinking. Likewise, the dark magic would be

your area of putting hexes on things or curses. Um. Again, magical thinking uh and too, maybe into a limited extent, maybe actual folk uh, anti remedies if you will, um. But but for the most part, magical thinking in that

department as well, aimed at harming people. And then you had necromancy, which was reaching out into the void, trying to contact the realms beyond death, trying to contact spirits and demons and uh and and really it brings my mind back to our previous episode on Luigi Boards and Bloody Mary in these various semi occult parlor tricks that we played at our various sweepovers when we were kids, Like those were all things that you would do with

this kind of butterfly in your stomach nervousness, because we were reaching out to see if there was something out there, to see if you could touch this supernatural idea that we create in the world. And uh and necromancy was was basically that, and on some levels a very learned example of that, where you would have books and books about how to reach out and touch something that exists only in your mind. So to your point, this was

male territory. And so you would have scholars, you would have clergy who would look to this and say, there's no way that a woman could be a witch as we know, as we have come to term a witch. There's no way that she could be or have this sort of relationship with the devil and and um, you know, fly on broomsticks during the night. It's impossible. So they were actually that that was really sort of their position

on women couldn't assume this this type of power. And in the churches, um and certainly you would have stories of people doing magical things and because because again magical thinking is as oldest human history. Likewise, paranormal experience is

a biological reality. As we've discussed when we've talked about UFO abductions and whatnot in the past, those experiences, no matter how we color them with with our cultural pigments, um things such as sleep paralysis are real and occur, and then our interpretation of them that may involve anything from uh an extraterrestrial to a wood nomp. Likewise, individuals of varying degrees of psychosis are going to have experiences that do not match up with everyone else's real world experiences.

I mean, the list goes on and on. But if you came to the clergy prior to fourteen hundred and you said, hey, lady down the road, she's flying around at night and summon in goblins, they the official church stance was that is nonsense, that does not fly with church doctrine. Cut that stuff out. Yeah, And actually there were some laws that were saying, hey, there are no witches first of all, the second of all, do not persecute or kill witches. Okay, so this was generally the

accepted idea. Yeah, but then that begins to change and That's what's so fascinating about this because around fourteen hundred, not only does the idea of the witch the demon summoning which arise in Europe, but it is pushed for, it is campaigned for, it is the literature is published

and distributed into the world. Making the case and having that the point is having to make the strong case because prior to four hundred, it was not a generally accepted idea that women could women could do this, We're doing this. It was a reality that had to be created by men. Well. Also, you have different religious I guess you could say sex of um of Christianity who are really trying to be the completely religious monopoly out there.

And so we have talked I actually talked about this before, but I think it's pretty well known that a lot of pagan sites where their rituals occurred, you know, churches were built there. Um, there's a lot of appropriation of Pagans. You'll see that in saints and in Catholicism. Yeah, you see if saints, old heroes become saints, old gods are wrapped up in demonology and become demons. Uh, the opposite

been of the various angels before four. This was for a few hundred years as a craze of angelology and demonology, where you were just sort of populating the ranks of

imagined havens and hells with different demons and angels. So, I mean the problem here is that, um, not only are you trying to have a monopoly on religion here through Christianity, but um, you have you have this imaginary, wicked religion that is basically created by some people in Christianity to try to further define this this evil and work against it, um, and and feel as though these persecutions are justified by lines like an exodus, this is

thou shalt not permit sorceress to live. So there seems to be these justifications coming online. And in addition to that, if you look at previous to the fifteenth century, you have a lot of grappling with what is Christianity. And we'll talk more about that later about trying to define it and order it and take all the different interpretations and all of the different writings and come up with some sort of cohesive like let's all fall in line

behind this idea. Yeah, and let's not add to it too much with a bunch of angels and demons, because that's that's an example there where the Church had to finally say, whoa guys, let's stop making up angels and demons.

We have enough, We probably have too many. And certainly you also see the history of heresy in the adxistence of the Spanish Inquisition, um in in the Catholic Church that was there too sort of edit the text to keep people from adding too much to it, from deviating what was perceived to be the core message of Christianity.

So so if you were off message, then you were committing heresy right that you were ringed in For instance, the Dalcinians, they were a heresy that believed not only the poverty of Christ, but that everyone should be poor, that the Church should be poor, and that the rich should be violently opposed, sort of a much bloodier version, say of occupy Wall Street. I guess you could say, with a certain harsh medieval flare, but that is an idea that sprang up and it had to be, in

the Church's eyes, squelched. But the heresies are all things where for the most part the heresies were real. It was somebody with an opinion or a view of Christianity that that deviated from what was seen as the core path.

You might add some lies on top of that to press the case to actually eliminate them, but for the most part, they were going after actual beliefs, right, So I mean this is I mean, if you look at the Inquisition and different aspects of the campaign you're talking about from eleven to sixteen hundred, and because of religious or political beliefs, people are are being questioned and they're

off message, right, they're trying to rein them in. But but where we really differentiate with witchcraft is again that this is stuff that was almost entirely made up. There were no actual witches, not like the ones that that the charges and the trials claimed existed. Okay, So so in order to try to get a bead on how this sort of get this idea of which is sorted to get into the fabric of religion and also education, you have to understand that colleges and universities were largely

under the thumb of religion until you know fairly recently. Um, if you are a degree candidate in theology at the University of Paris in the fourteen hundreds, you would be expected to demonstrate your knowledge of demonology and angelology by commenting publicly on the Four Books of Sentences. Now, this was a standard university textbook used throughout the Middle Ages and into the early Modern period. So already you would

have been steeped in this mythology of demons and angels. Now, not only that you are now training, essentially um an army of clergyman to then go out into villages, into society's all over Western Europe and to spread this word about demons and angels. So you know, some people say, well, how could you know between the years of four and fourteen eighty there have been such a seed change in this idea of which is and there was h there

was something that I read and I can't remember. I apologize, I can't remember who it was who made this point.

But he said, well, if you look at the nineteen sixties, and you look at the civil rights movement, and you look at the sea change between nineteen sixties in present day, and you consider all the modes of communication we have that affected this change, Um, it's it's not inconceivable to say, like, look back at fourteen hundred and realized that this was all bubbling up, all of this sort of doctrine about

which is and evil and demons and angels um. So that when something like this publication of Malius Maleficarium get arrives on the scene in fourteen eighties six, that it's really running with the idea of demons and which is in creating a blueprint really for um, particularly Catholicism, to follow through on what they think is essential to man's nature, in particular when them, Yeah, Mallius malificarum is is a key text when you when you look at the history

of witchcraft, persecution and just the idea of the witchcraft. This was published again the work of Heinrich Kramer, Hammer of the Witches, and it is a guide book to identifying which is, knowing what they're up to and then persecuting them or well, I guess prosecuting them and executing them if you want to use the of the book, because the book is making the the argument that all

of this is real and pressing it really hard. Is a book that we used in part on this episode called Demon Lovers by Walter Stevens, and he's primarily concerned with the accusation that existed in all of these trials that witches were engaged in physical sexual activity with demons. That's his his The whole book is an exploration of that. But he also does a great job of just really

diving into two witchcraft in general. But there's a whole section where he just takes apart Malius malificarum and and analyzes what Heinrich Kramer is doing in each part, Like what is he thinking is he's writing this and he's having to make really strong cases to again press the idea that there are female which is out there, that there are women out there in the world that are actively engaging not only impacts and spell work with the devil and his demons, but in actual physical sexual contact

with demons. Right and knowing that that they can shape shift into animals, they can ride the brooms through the air, the broomsticks, um, they can cause um spontaneous abortions, um, just by that the exterior touch that they affect the weather, they can create hill storms. Yeah, I mean he's not

he's not preaching to the converted here. This is not a book where it came out and was like, oh yeah, I picked up him on Hendrick's book because this is everything I believe in already they would already have bought into some of it, certainly, But again the demonology and anginal angeology craze and post fourteen D the witchcraft thing was already gaining steam. But this comes, and this just pushes it even even further. It was the authoritative text Um.

Let me read a bit from it, Um, And of course it came out in Latin, by the way, and within thirty five years there were twenty different editions, so it was a very popular book among the learned. This is a bit from it. It says, which is offered to devils or otherwise kill the children that they do not otherwise devour, They cause abortion, kill infants in the

mother's womb by a mere exterior touch. Um also said that midwives offered newborns to the devil at birth, and that a woman knows no moderation and goodness or advice. Devils do these things through the medium of women. So again a lot of effort is being made by men like Heinrich Kramer into making this argument, this very strong argument, that women are engaging in witchcraft and engaging in physical

contact with demons. Why that's the that's the big question, right as we look back through the ages, why does this suddenly be I'm such a pressing issue. Why are men wasting their lives and committing and when ultimately either committing or inspiring a horrible atrocities in the name of this ridiculous idea. And this is an important thing to mention. Two, When we look back on witchcraft persecution, we have a

habit to think, oh, that was the Middle Ages. People were stupid, people were crazy religious, and it was just a violent or horrible time. So yeah, of course, horrible, violent stuff like this is gonna happen. But the more you look at when you look at what people were writing in in these days and before and after, and when when you start really analyzing the culture, you see

this wasn't really the case. I mean, it was a different world, uh for sure, but it was it was still an age in which you had reasoned men and women. When you when you had educated men who were not only exposed to a bunch of theological garbage about angels and demons, they were also engaging in older philosophical text They were familiar with the works of Aristotle. They were in touch with individuals who were trying to understand how the observable world works, and not only what was happening

happening in some unobservable spirit world. So bear that in mind as we move forward. So, why was this happening? It wasn't. It's not. So it's not just a case of men deciding, Hey, I bet which is exists. Let's make a case for it. What other energy is involved in this pursuit? Well, again, I think part of it is Christianity trying to assert itself in fallen line under one doctrine. And so throughout history you had different um takes on women and their their part in society. But

here is the dark view of women. Here's this idea that women are weak and therefore they are subject to being vessels of of demons. Um. You also have this idea of women during this time coming into play, this idea that women aren't necessarily companions to say, like their their husbands, their counterparts. Um, there are more just you know, part of what your wealth is, your accumulation of wealth.

And so if you if you begin to objectify this person and and sort of say, okay, there's some distance between me and this other person and not look at them just as another human, then if you can see how the Church sort of runs with this idea of well, let's have the female as this embodiment of evil and not just like you know this, hey, let's this is

our game plan for this century. But um, but you know you have clergy clergyman who have been steeped again in this sort of mythology, this mysticism, because think about this is particularly in Catholicism. This is a religion that that really relies on mysticism. Okay, this idea, um, that there's all these unseen forces. Um. And if a woman can embody that she can be the lightning rod, then not only can she be sort of the scapegoat for for everything, um, she can really play to this idea

of magical thinking which is already going on. Um if you look at, say, for lack of a better word, during this time, the lower classes merchants, peasants who are really attached to magical thinking and panganism. So if the Church can take this and run with it, then they can exercise some sort of control over society. And then there's also the idea that so the Christian world, the medieval world, and to a lart extent, the modern world, is highly matriarchal, but especially in this stage, you have

men at the top of it. You have a religion and governments that are filled with men, and you have a religion that has a male god. So the idea is that if you go back far enough in history, in fact, if you if you actually transition out of recorded history, you find that the old religions are not strictly male religions. They're not completely occupied by masculine gods

that are that are occupied with with with ideas of violence. Right, And I know I want to go deeply into this, but when you say the old religion, there are some accounts of actually Jesus having um. I guess you could say very different things to say than what is documented, and that his relationship with Mary Magdalen was very different, and that there was more of a sort of equals um in play there in terms of their their relationship.

Oh yeah. And then you also have traditions, especially in medieval art, where you see increasingly feminine portrayals of Jesus Christ.

The idea and the idea of being there that people were connecting more with a feminine godhead than they were with this uh, this Old Testament bearded man who liked to destroy cities, and that was something that again when the Church was rooting out heresy and trying to to edit down what they actually were, this is one of the things that they went after and said, guys, let's let's chill with the female Jesus Is because you're you're

bordering on heresy here. The basic idea here is that in our past we had more of a matriarchal view of the universe and of nature and of the gods that ruled over nature, and then over time that is replaced with the patriarchal Godhead, and throughout history then the patriarchal side has to continually reinforce the wall, to reinforce the barriers and keep the matriarchal view from from working its way back into into our thinking. And who is the one human in Catholicism, uh, who would be closest

to God? Well, that would be the Son of God right well? Or living Oh, that would be the Pope right So in four four you have a papal proclamation by Pope Innocent the eight who essentially says, all right, let's let's go after which is and then this results in this continent wide genocide of people. Yeah, so misogyny is a is a definite theory and and certainly there's no denying misogyny plays a role in witchcraft persecution because it's mostly men convicting mostly women on entirely trumped up

charges of supernatural activity. Uh and uh. And people like Heinrich Kramer again are making a case in their books for the inherent evil of women. So I mean, it's it's a no brainer, and it's it's horrible, but but it's it's undeniable that misogyny plays a huge role in

all of this. So again, that's sort of where you see the sea change coming into play, where between fourteen hundred and fourteen eight four six and Mallius Mala Krum comes on the scene, you see in Earnest Christianity sort of going after this idea of witchcraft and really developing the idea of witchcraft and adding to the mythology of it.

So yeah, learned men are developing it, they're publishing it, books like like the Malleus mall of Acram are making its way out there spreading the idea, and it's it's trickling down then to the lay people. The normal people out there in their villages and uh, and this is important to note too, because it's not misogyny is one

of the the the powers in play here. But then also on a local level, you're gonna have people engaging in the same old craft that people always engage in, petty disputes, spite, mistrust of outsiders, mistrust of the crazy lady with all the cats, that kind of thing. So when the the environment for witchcraft persecution takes hold, um, you're gonna see some petty disputes that are going to be taken care of on a local level via the

witchcraft trial system. You're gonna see you can see people on the local level by into it, by into the paranoia that the church and learned the members of society are passing down. So it begins to distill through society. So rather than looking at say some livestock that I lost in you know, say four um as a product of let's say a parasite, I might look to my neighbor and say, ah, they put a spell on me. Yeah, accursed.

We love to blame somebody for for something that happens, you know, be it if something bad happens to our animal, better that we can point a finger at somebody or something and if that somebody and something happens to be that strange guy who lives on the edge of town or that weird looking woman and the devil, so be it right. And likewise, children are dying. All sorts of horrible things are happening because there's death and childbirth. It's

the Middle Ages. Life is tough, just as life is tough today, and people are gonna seek excuses, they're gonna see answers, and if they can find somebody to blame for something like this, all the better, right, Yeah, absolutely, And so what you're starting to see is is a bit of a flavor of the social contract. At that time. We've talked about the social contract and various podcasts about how we all have signed onto it, whether or not

we know it. So what we're seeing here is this script really for what's happening in life, and the script is being provided, uh, usually by the local clergy m. So we're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to talk about the script and how it is used in confessions in torture. All right, we're back. So we've we've discussed what was happening post

fourteen hundred, Essentially this war on women begins. I mean that term is thrown around today, and I'm not saying it's completely pointless to throw that term around today, But in the post four world this there's a lot of truth to the idea. Well. And that's not to say that this happening in the subteen hundreds doesn't somehow inform our idea of what the war on women today is like.

It certainly does. But an important part of this, of course, is that ultimately, if you're you can accuse people witchcraft all day, but ultimately you're you're gonna need them to confess, they have at least enough civility that they need them to confess. You need And it comes down to, if you're gonna make this horrible case and you're ultimately going to do something horrible, you need need the victim of this to buy in, or at least seem to buy

into the idea. You need some sort of acknowledgement that what you're doing is real. Yeah, there are no Miranda rights here and now due process, no guilty or innocent until proven otherwise. Um, you essentially have you know, if you think about This is called the witch craze. And if you have fingered someone and said that you are a witch, then you certainly have an audience that is waiting for you to prove that right. So you have

witch theorist. You have people like Heinrich Kramer who are coming up with all of the ideas of what should be happening and essentially what a witch a convicted which should be telling her interrogator. And then you have an interrogator whose job it is to go talk to the

witch and get this story out of her. Now, I believe you have some of the questions to which would be asked, and we're going to run through those, or at least some of them real quick, just give you a taste of what kind of charges were being leveled and what kind of answers were being sought. And these

are eighteen questions. I'm not gonna go through all of them, obviously, but um and I think try to take the position of the person who is accused of being a witch and having these questions applied to you over and over again, and which you began to see is that you're being told in the script right. And I remember again, there are no witches. Nobody is doing the things that this this question like put the fiction out of your mind, all right, So how long have you been a witch?

Why did you become a witch? Why did you become a witch? And what happened on the occasion? What demon did you choose to be your lover? What was his name? What was the name of your master among the evil demons? What was the oath you were forced to render him? How it starts to get a little bit more involved in more more colored here, Um, how did you make this oath? And what were its conditions? Where did you

consummate your union with your incubus? Because it goes on and on to say, uh, what is the ointments with which you rub your broomstick made of? How are you able to fly through the air? That do all the questions, but it talks about the cyber than quet every little detail of what the church thinks is going on with which craft because the ultimate story here is that the woman is engaging in sexual relations with a demon. Oftentimes this will initially start with oh, there, I saw this

handsome fella, and then we started fooling around fella. Yeah, because that's a that's another important and then if it's a man being accused, it's a woman. But but it's never a male demon and a male um human engaging in sexual activity, because the writers of this is like the idea of of homosexual relations between even a demon and a human was was just too much for them

at the time, And that's a whole separate issue. But the case again would be all right, you you saw somebody attractive, you started messing around with them, and inevitably you end up noticing something unnatural about them. Generally they would have like the feet of a goose. That was actually in a number of accounts. And the argument here is that, well, God would never completely one over allowed

the demons to pull one over you completely. You'd have to have some sort of sign so that the faithful could back out of it. And then only your sinful nature would allow you to keep going with this. Right, so you engage in sexual relations with this demon. You eventually end up traveling via the air or some sort of unnatural steed to go to this sabbath where all the other witches and their demons would gather, and maybe

the Horned One himself would appear before you. But never would you be engaging in actual relationships with the devil. Because even though we're we're we're giving a lot of power to women with these charges of witchcraft, you don't want to give them too much power. Again, the misogyny still has to be in play, and you don't want to imply that, yes, this, uh, this woman on the edge of town is important enough to actually um mess around with the Prince of Darkness himself. So it's not

really her power. It's the Prince of darkness, right right, It's never her power, because heaven forbid, we'd give her too much power. Likewise, a lot of the things she's a tribute with, for instance, making men's penises disappear, which was a big charge along with impotence and various other things of that nature. With the disappearance of the penis, it would be a charge of illusion. They're not actually powerful enough to manipulate physical reality in this instance, but

they can create the illusion of it happening. So you're giving them tremendous attributing with them tremendous power, but it's not their power and there are limits on it, and you can't blame God too much for this happening. So okay, you have the the script, you have the idea of what witchcraft is. No doubt that has been bandied about in pubs and various villages and all sorts of talks about.

Really what we're talking about here is the Boogeyman. So now you have um, you have to have these questions answered. We have to have these questions answered. How do you force someone to answer these questions? Unfortunately, the reality as you put the screws to them literally literally in most cases. Now, it's interesting you look at some of the differences between which for secution in England and which persecution in mainland Europe.

And in mainland Europe they had full use of torture at their disposal, you name it, they could employ it. Now you'll look around and on the internet and you can find any number of lists of horrendous torture devices, and certainly they're there are a number of inventive and

then sometimes um, possibly fictitious items out there. When when you really come down to it, though, and if you really start looking at the history of torture, there are a number of very basic things that people have been doing to each other since time out of mind, they're not that inventive they're not that creative, but they work their ways to inflict pain and ultimately make the the

tortured individual confess to anything you tell them to. Now you start, say, using a thumb screw on somebody, they're gonna scream. They're going to eventually give up on their principles unless they have some sort of as we discussed in our Martyrs episode, some sort of extenuating circumstance going on with their body or their mind, they're gonna they're going to break and so they're going to confess to anything.

They'll confess to running around with the devil himself. And that's why the script is provided, because you don't want them to confess to things that are disagreeable with your world view, such as the idea that they are best buds with the demon with the head devil himself. Again, that doesn't jive with the with the overriding misogyny of of the claim. So you have to use these questions to draw unbelievable, untrue things out of the torture victim.

But again coming back to the UK, they did not have full torture available to them in the persecution of witches. They actually weren't able to burn witches in England. Yeah, and in the persecution they were not able to administer all these different modes of torture. So these stories that they were able to get out of the the women in England were different. They were they were more tame.

So while in mainland Europe you'll find just ridiculous accounts of just all sorts of gory sexual details, you won't see that as much in UK, which is you'll see charges of well, she has a weird cat that is a demonic familiar, and she has a strange nipple on her body that she's probably milking it with that kind of thing, while the mainland European which is flying off and engaging in a demonic orgy, that kind of thing.

But again you're resulting to your physical pain to get these confessions out of out of many of these women, right, So you're talking about thumb tacks versus you know, something like the rack being stretched on the rack um and the types of confessions that that would come out of that situation. UM. I wanted to read a quick excerpt from a letter from accused which Johannes Genius, burgomaster at Bamberg, who detailed his torture and his confession in a goodbye

letter to his daughter Veronica. Yeah, to set this up, this was in the Bavaria, all right, And this was a case where this was no weird outsider in the edge of town. This was a successful and learned man. His wife had been executed on on witchcraft charges previously, and he was an outspoken critic of what was going on, and eventually, uh surprise, surprise, the witchcraft allegations were leveled at him as well. So if he writes many hundred

thousand good nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica, innocent? Have I come into prison? Innocent? Have I been tortured? Innocent? Must I die? He goes on to talk about some of some of the conversations he has with his um torture, and he says, the executioner put the thumb screws on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see

from the writing. Thereafter they first dripped me, bound my hands behind me, and drew me up in this torpado. Then I thought heaven and Earth were at an end. Eight times did they draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible agony, And so I made my confession, but it was all a lie. Now follows, dear child, what I confessed in order to escape the greatest anguish and bitter torture which it was impossible for me longer to bear. And he goes on

and on to discuss it. So what we're talking about with estrapado is essentially tying the victim's arms behind his or her back and then hanging weights to the feet and hoisting that person into their over and over again until that person confessed. And obviously arms would come out of socket. So it is very rough on on the physical body, and um, absolutely a ton of agony would result. Yeah, it's a it's a horrible story that of of poor Johannes.

There's another segment from his his letter where he mentions the executioner leading him back to his prison all right after after he suffered, and but before he's he's completely broken, and the executioner says to him, says, sir, I beg you, for God's sake, confess something, whether it be true or not, invent something for you cannot endure the torture what will be put to you, And even if you bear it all, you will not escape, not even if you were an earl.

But one torture will follow another until you say you were a witch. Not before that, he said, will they let you go? As you may see by all the trials, for one is just like another. So and and that's that's key there too. And Walter Stevens in his book really points out that that I did it. One trial is just like another. This is a factory industry. Here there is a process with a desired result, with a desired confession that that has to be met too to carry out this idea and to make this idea real

in everyone's minds. Well and not you don't have just a Malle's Mouth carum as a text. You also you have many other texts out there there are reinforcing this idea of which is in the hammer and having to to really use brute force. I mean, it's kind of like when you think today about anyone who has a fringe idea, whether it's a belief in Bigfoot or some sort of crazy left or right wing conspiracy theory. They have a shelf of books devoted to that. They have

website sites they can go to. Maybe they even have you know, a TV channel they can they can turn into as well to have those ideas reinforced. And again for the for the witch theorists, the worst witch persecutors, and just the average joe. Even there, there's a lot of material out there to back up this world view.

That's right. So you're exactly right. So if you think about Bigfoot today and all the sort of sort of information that's out there that can try to construct this story for you, um, with absolutely very similitude, the same thing as going on is this confirmation bias, totally completely trying to select texts and ideas that line up with witchcraft.

And I wanted to read this this quick excerpt from text called Strips by Jian Fresco uh Pico della Mirandola, and he says, um, speaking of a hammer, he says, theologians will tell you that these things can be done

by the by the devil. And you can understand many examples from the book of Germans Friar Heinrich and Friar Jacob, excellent theologians of the Dominican order called the hammer, and you can have this hammer if you want to use it against those who are hard headed and do not want to believe the truth, So you can either bend them to believe what they are supposed to or else smash them into a hundred thousand pieces. Yeah, again, this

is this idea that is fueling all these atrocities. So if you look back at this time period and it just seems too ghastly to be true, you have to remember again these texts are informing confirmation bias, but also cognitive dissonance is at play. Yeah, this is really important. You mentioned the texts that people are coming back to because again they're they're having to work really hard, and this was something that did not exist a four fourteen hundred.

They do bring this ridiculous idea into the world that again would have been not just not just talking as a modern observer, this would have been ridiculous pre fourteen hundred. That you have to enforce this idea and make a labored, intensive k for it being true. So they're turning to all of the text they're finding support in the Bible, and obviously there's some places there where you can find some meat for the idea of female which is but

then they're turning inevitably to Aristotle. Aristotle was the most revered of the the the old philosophers, among the learned in medieval times, like this was this was the guy, right, his observations about life and observable reality and speculations on on things beyond that they ring true, and this man was really esteemed for the way that he viewed the world. Well, he was hybeological and very much into categorizing everything and

making sense of the world and cataloging it. Yeah, but it's it's really difficult, if not impossible, I mean, really it's impossible in several places to unify the works of Aristotle with Christian theology. All right, that didn't didn't stop people from trying. But ultimately with Aristotle you find that, i mean, Aristotle did not believe in the immortality of

the human soul. And of course, yeah, a big part problem because most of Christianity is about the fact that when we die there is something else, that there's something immortal in ourselves and in the world. So you see a certain amount of cognitive dissonance there where someone is is saying, hey, Aristotle is great. Christianity is the thing that defines my life. But in between, there's this burning question, these two things. Why don't these two things go together?

What is wrong? But we've talked about cognitive distance before. It's the idea that you have two conflicting opinions going at it in your mind and how do you deal with those? And again, the Middle Ages don't think of it as a completely unenlightened time. It was an age in which you had clever individuals, educated individuals trying to figure out how the world works. And while there wasn't really a huge population of atheists in Europe at the time,

there was still a lot of doubt. There was a lot of trouble to believe, because ultimately, you're born into this story, this religious story of how the world works and what it means and what your places in it, and there's not really an outside to that. There's it's not like today, like if if you're born into Christianity, you grow older and you can say, well, I'm actually maybe not Catholic anymore, maybe I'm Protestant. Alright, fine, you can make that transition. You can say I don't really

feel Protestant anymore. I feel like I want to explore Buddhism or Hinduism, or maybe I'm just completely agnostic. That's fine. They're groups for all of those, and in other words, there's like a meeting you can go to for each of those. It is support group. But within within Catholic Europe of the time, there was Catholicism and there was the outside, which was damnation, so it was harder to wrap your head around. You couldn't just choose the path that agreed with you the most, so a lot of

people were struggling with belief. In fact, French historian Lucien Febre argued that the sixteenth century and the three or four preceding centuries were quote centuries that wanted to believe and despite what we may think, and despite what they even wrote. There might have been a few pure blighted atheists, but there was no shortage of apathy, agnosticism, and doubt. So you talked about cognitive dissonance, and I'm thinking about how you're going to react in one of two ways

if you're met with cognitive dissonance. So if you have one idea about the world and then something comes along and it's the opposite of that, you're either going to have a sea change of opinion, or you're going to somehow try to fit that into your worldview even though

it doesn't really make sense. So I think about Thomas Aquinas in terms of this, because he was very into Aristotle, and the reason why it was so important to a Klinus in the church is because Aristotle gave the kind of order that the church needed, an order to to really formalize what they were trying to put forth to

the public their doctrines. And so only that, but you know, there's a bit of appropriation of the esteem of Aristotle is Oh, so that's why you see this happenings, why you see the convergent of these two different ideas and the need to get some sort of order in place so that you can formalize these ideas and make it

seem authoritative. And one of the ideas, I mean, the the key idea that Walter Stevens pushes in Demon Lovers comes down to the idea that in the midst of this what is essentially a crisis of belief, you have an age where people are born into a religion that they're finding that they're doubting. That doesn't completely jive yet with the world and it's not working the way it should. But there's no outside, there's no legitimate way to establish

a different version of how the world works. They have to make this one work. So what can you do? What can you do to prove to yourself that there is a supernatural that there that there are angels, and that there is a God, and ultimately that your own soul is immortal and not something that dies with your body. So this version of Christianity needs witchcraft, right, and I mean it's uh. And that that's the actual words of

John Wesley, founder of Methodism. In seventy eight, he argued that quote giving up witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible. Now that's how that's after the witchcraft craze finally huffs its last breath. Uh for that period.

But certainly the argument Walter Stevens makes here is that essentially the theorist, the witchcraft theorists, the Hinrich Kramers of the time, they were kind of like not NASA scientist, forming these ideas of how the world beyond our planet works, all right, And then the tortures you can think of them as the astronauts, the individuals that are sent out to gain that proof. And how are you going to

gain proof? How can you possibly gain proof of the supernatural, something that is by its very nature invisible and as an article of faith. Well, you have these witches. And if you can somehow get a witch, especially lots and lots of witches, to testify, to confess that they have had physical sexual relations with a demon, with a supernatural being, with a fall an angel, then she has an expert witness.

She's providing expert testimony to the existence of the supernatural, to the existence of God, to the immortality of the human soul. And so, in a in a twisted, just horrible, just heartbreaking way, you have a half a million women die because a bunch of broken, renegade Christians doubt their own faith. Well, but also appeasing this idea of magical thinking right sating people's thirst for this idea that right can be wronged and that the unexplained can be explained

in this very simple way. As she is a witch. Therefore my leaf stock died. At the same time, you're distracting from political problems, you're distracting from poverty, from a host of issues that should be on the mind of

the average person, but instead their mind is occupied with witchcraft. Well, and I think that what is truly evil about this is that these people, these clergymen, were staring in the faces of innocence as young as seven years old, seven years old, as young as seven year old, convicted of having sexual activity with the demon and then executed for it. And so again you get this idea of cognitive dissonance.

What do you do when you are met with that sort of innocence, You double down on your beliefs, and particularly if you again return to the line of Exodus, Thou shalt not permit a sorceress to live, and you feel as though you are the representative of God on earth, carrying out God's wishes. Yeah, we're shaking our heads. Yeah,

I mean, it's it's horrible stuff. I mean, in Walter Stephen's book, he he makes a very thorough case for the importance of that physical relationship between the witch and the demon in virtually every witchcraft text that came out, including Malie's Malificarum, where it's it's it's not only making the argument that women are are having physical relations with demons, but it's having to create the idea that they could, because prior to four hundred it was also largely thought

that demons did not have physical bodies, so they were purely spirit. So they had to rewrite um metaphysics to to to have that makes sense. They had to figure out what kind of body would a demon have? How would it come to have a body? Would it be composed of air, would it be composed of some different

form of flesh? How would this possibly happen? Because they needed it to happen so badly well, and cast doubt on women in every single enterprise of their life, should including midwiffery, in which then you know, of midwife, we become suspect because it would think you would think that if she were delivering your baby should be offering up to the demon. You know. So there's a lot of

different things that play um. But I think what we find ourselves with today is this legacies of angels and demons and this idea of women as which is um that that continues just to flavor the fabric of our society. Yeah, because I mean, certainly the misogyny still exists, the magical thinking still exists of in not only much of the world, but in everyday life. There's a certain magic of magical thinking. I don't care how steeped in skepticism you are, you're

gonna engage in a little bit of magical thinking. At least when you see somebody draw a smiley face on the wall, you're gonna see a human face there. I mean, it's just on a very basic level, we think magically. But then, just as the post fourteen hundred world was an age of of religious doubt and change and technological innovation, I mean we continue to see that every every day

in our modern lives. Every age has to have to have the same crisises that emerge of where we have to doubt what we've been taught and and somehow come to terms with with what the world is showing us. And you see people that resisted that again double down to that cognitive dissonance. So I mean, just think to your own self, Think to the politics you see on the TV every day, to what depths would would you fall?

What hellish crimes would you commit in order to cling to a faith that deep down, or to a political idea or what have you that you no longer really believe. What would you become in order to maintain that barrier between your worldview and the outside, you know, in order to defeat the steaming of cognitive distance. Yeah, and as Erica Jonging says that witchcraft is, it doesn't. It's not something that just went away. It just sort of re arises, uh,

from time period of time period under a different guys. Um. So I did want to point this out to that if you're interested in in learning more about witchcraft, at least in modern times, um, you can check out an HBO documentary Saving Africa's which is. It's a two thousand and ten documentary and and actually talked about the plight of young Nigerians branded as which is some as young as three months old, and some of some of these ideas that continue to pervade different cultures. Also, be sure

to check out which is by Erica jong Um. It has some incredible illustrations. It is a wonderful history of which is and John also has some great poems in there as well. Um. The illustrations are wonderful as well. But the one in the cover, like Julie brought it to my desk, and that covers a little hippie dippie looking because at first glance you only see this this very sort of flowers and goodness pagan which at the top, but then it becomes a more of a hag at

the bottom. So when I first saw it, I'm like, oh, this is some sort of this is not really necessarily gonna be in keeping with a lot of what we're talking about, but but it's it's really great. And then the illustrations inside the book, Uh, trust me, there are plenty of goat men and naked ladies prancing around for for any reader to find interesting. And the content is excellent.

And again, Walter Stephen's Demon Lover is a great book if you want to a deeper dive into that whole discussion of the importance of physical contact between a witch and a demon. It's a great book, but it's also kind of a it's kind of a heavy read, so

I don't recommend that to everybody. But I would like to close out with a quote from Walter Stevens in the book, where he's he's looking forward from the medieval ages and looking to our own age and again talking about the energy that that perpetrated and and propped up these atrocity and how that energy is still alive in society. Today, He says, the insecurities that produced experiments with witches are

not a thing of the past. Both witchcraft theory and scholastic natural philosophy resemble the creation science of late twentieth century Christian fundamentalist All three attempt to make knowledge of the physical world conform to the most literal possible interpretation of the Bible. This is always an exercise and damage controlled. How much of the Good Book can be salvaged when experience collides with tradition and authority. So there you have it.

If you have anything you would like to share, if you have something something about which culture today, about how we view the idea of a witch, I'm sure we have some wicked listeners out there. We would love to hear from you. Guys and gals. Let us know what you think about the legacy of the witch in human society, and if anyone has anything I would like to share their thoughts on the history of which persecution and what it meant the various things that made these atrocities happen.

We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, and you can find us on tumbler or handle on both of those is stuff to blow your mind, and our Twitter name is blow the Mind and you can also drop us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, Is It How Stuff Works dot com