What's in a witches' brew?

the interpretation. I like that at that variegation of the witch we're talking about, which is, of course, because this is the week of Halloween, so we thought what better time than to roll out a couple of our favorite spooky episodes and uh and this one's one of them. This one deals with you've You've got everything in this story, which is psychedelic lubricants, rooms. What more could you want? Right? So we hope that you enjoy the Halloween je What

do you like to put in your witches? Brute? A little a little frog play, rosemary, yeah, rusty garlic, yeah of course, um, little crystallized ginger, nice touch. Yeah, I highly recommend um scale of dragon to the wolf which is mummy man, gulf off the raven c salt shark, root of himlock digged in the dark of course, liver of a blaspheming jew if you can get it, uh, and goll of goat slips of you. And of course you want all the silver in the moon's eclipse. That's

just an old recipe that I picked up. You're such a purist, picked up from old will there. But yeah, I just get myself from Trader Joe's and you're all of the earth the witches. I'll a Trader Joe's is really good. I mean everything from your scale of dragon to uh, you know, the eye of Newt and Baboon's blood. Yeah, they have excellent pepoon's blood. You know this. This is what I love about how stuff works is that we

can discuss these things. We've got our own coven here and it really allows us to exchange ideas about witchcraft. There's a coven at how stuff works. Yeah, like seriously or like literally, there's a covenant how stuff works? Or are you just talking about we throw ideas into a call drof? Oh no, yeah, sure, it was just metaphorical yeah, sure, of course, there's not a real coven. That would be weird. No, no, no, it's metaphorical. Alright, well really well, I would I would

imagine you're you. You must be meeting in a separate space, because, as we know from legends and myth and folk tales, the classic version of the witch, and and by the classic version of which I'm not craning this in on on on Wiccan stuff, like a modern witches, of of whom I know some of My friend Michelle is a practicing Wiccan. And to my knowledge, you just don't have a cauldron. No, no, Today we're talking about the witches that are burned in our memories. And sometimes it's yes,

um who yeah, who have cauldron? Who are meeting in the dark, who are plotting against Macbeth, that are casting spells, that are hanging out with cats that hate Dorothy, that hate Dorothy, that are dying underneath the weight of houses that fall from the sky. Uh. This sort of thing, the idea of the witch, is pretty fascinating, especially when you get past sort of the the the typical Halloween

idea of just cackling old crones. I mean, you could we could just talk for a long time about the about about what the Witch represents, because as I've discussed before, I mean, the Witch is basically a monster, the hag, the hag, especially if you see the Hag as a monster or the ogress, uh, appearing throughout different myth cycles where uh, and some of this is tied to the idea that some sort of cannibalistic, grotesque old woman will come and eat your children if they don't behave, or

that if you're not careful, guys, you might be seduced by what seems like a beautiful woman but turns out to be a grotesque monster, right then sort of the sucky best thing too, exactly exactly. And then when you I mean you also in the Witch you have a situation where it's a woman with power, and of course that is a very interesting idea throughout a predominantly male dominated culture where suddenly here, here are women and they have power. And what does his power mean? Is it

a threat to male dominance? And uh, I mean, I mean make me stop, because well, I was gonna say that. Erica John has at interesting perspective on this from historical context, and she has a book called Witchcraft and some poetry and fiction and some historical data in their few spells in that I don't know, I hope. So I think that she actually sort of approached this book in that manner of like, Wow, could I become a witch myself?

Even though, um, she's someone who I think is grounded in reality and knows that she wasn't necessarily going to start flying around. But anyway, Um, she is the author of fear Flying. That's what she's best known of. As in her forward of the book, she says, witchcraft in Europe and America is essentially this harkening back to female divinity within a patriarchal culture. If you insist long enough that God is the father, a nostalgia for the mother

goddess will be born. If you exclude women from church rights, they will practice their magic in the fields and forests, in their own kitchens. The point is female power cannot be suppressed, It can only be driven underground. So this is how she places which is really in a historical sense of Okay, what's actually happening here when we talk about which is when we get away from this idea of pointy hats and broomsticks. Even though broomsticks certainly planned

to it as we will find out. Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned the the necessary re emergence of the feminine deity because I'm reminded of a series of essays that I read, and have I known that you were going to go in this direction, I would have would have brought that book with me off to put

something on the blocks about it. But there's some interesting material in there about depictions of Jesus Christ in medieval art, and in some of these depictions, Christ becomes more and more feminine, and you you actually have have varying in some cases outright heretical. And I'm doing quotes with air quotes, and I finker, is there heretical ideas or sometimes they're just sort of quasi heretical, where individuals end up worshiping a more female version of Christ in the same way

that there are female depictions of the Buddha. Okay, so this is sort of a uh an effort to unify right right and bring both sides to this right, and to focus more on feminine aspects in this case of of Jesus and then to venerate those aspects as opposed to just bleeding man God on a tree kind of a thing. It's a really fascinating accept because you get into this whole interesting area of the wound of Christ, the spear wound, and how this spear wound is also

kind of like a vagina. I mean, it's sorry, I'm gonna be strong. That's not a big deal. Yeah, the wound is like vagina. Yeah, next time you see an image of doubting Thomas, think about that. Um. But moving on side tangent there, But back to which is um

you were saying? Yeah, Erica doing that, she does. She does explore the reasons why we have vilified, which is throughout the ages, and one of the things that she says really interesting is that women have always been the bearers of life right, and we know historically women have been repressed on all sorts of different fronts. She also says that as women gain power, they began to um

to sort of be tamped down. And if you ascribe witchness to someone, or you put power in the light of negativity, then what you're doing essentially is saying that not only is this person a life bringer, a life bear, which is really powerful, but this person has the ability to bring death right through potions, magic, uh general dark shenanigans, right yeah, and if they're engaged in food preparation too. I mean that's food can be the big life giver.

But if it's if something's wrong with it, that if it becomes toxic in some way, shape or form, if something goes off, there's some sort of bacterial, uh infection, then it's a killer as well. That's right. That's why you should always be kind to your server. Right. You never know what's going on in the kitchen. She might be a witch. Yep, she might be a witch, or

he might be right, yeah, a warlock. So it's gonna sound flipped to say this, but but all of a sudden, you've you've got something like a broom, which is becomes really important, almost like a very high tech object in the thirteenth century, right, which is interesting because I think the broom is something we often discount as that very Halloween idea of a witch. Like you've got a you know,

there's like a kindergartener. Let's put a funny nose on her, paying her face screen, give her a broom, and she can start collecting candy, right, striped tights. Right there we go. But I mean it is important to understand that this

really was a prized object at the home. When we talk about the kitchen and who's preparing your food, we're also talking about the person who has you know, usually elaborately braided broom, a cauldron, right that may have been passed down from generation to generation, and these objects start to really gain importance that they are key feminine cultural artifacts. Yeah. Absolutely, And so when you start to think about a witch,

you start to think about brooms. It would make sense that somehow they would factor into the image of a witch. But now you'll look at early typographs of which is and you'll often see some depictions of which is uh, quite naked on top of a stride, exceedingly naked. And that's another thing that will Shakespeare. Um, well, no, I don't know if they were naked, and that there was

any reference to the naked in the text. I'm thinking of Roman Polanski's version of Matbeth, which is certainly naked, which is awesome and uh and has some really naked

old witches and which I thought worked perfectly. But back to these old engravings and woodcuts where you see naked women flying around in the middle of the night talking with goats, riding goat, um, you know, in engaging with the devil and in various way shapes and form right in terms of there's something to this right where if you scratch the surface a little bit, you'll find out that the broom actually figures pretty prominently and in which

is work. And let's just back up real quick. Um, yes, the broom is the ultimate symbol of domesticity, but in the hands of which it can become this really potent symbol of liberation. Right, And the more disenfranchised a person is, the more that they might turn to magical thinking to gain some sort of mastery over their situations. So let's

look at it this way. Um. You know, maybe someone wasn't necessarily a self proclaimed which, but perhaps they did uh dabble back of the day, you know, when we're talking about this historical which in the thirteenth century in ointments because it was important for healing in ritual and magical spells, because this was a way to gain some sort of control over their lives. Right, But back to

this broom. Yeah, there's kind of like two arresting ways of looking at the power of the broom, one which will discuss even more as of course, the magical thinking side of it. And then there's this whole ointment situation ointment, which you think is a gross word, but I do. And then and now we're about to really sort of dive into the flying ointment here and talk about something

that's very interesting about the broom in the ointment. You want to you want to run with that, Okay, So there's this idea that which is they're flying around in broomsticks or they're flying around in a chair, but in many of these tails and accusations, they are rubbing an ointment on the broom or chair first, which it's often glossed over generally when you it's not a part of the Halloween costume. Um usually on a jar of ointment,

excepting the costume. So they're taking this broom they're coating it with with some sort of mysterious ointment that they've brewed up, and then they're riding this this broomstick naked

and just having a wonderful time doing it. So, I mean, obviously that brings to mind some some various scenarios that could be taking place, and there's actually some real um some people put some real thought into this, and the idea that the ointment is in fact a drug or has has a pharmaceutical or or or psychedelic properties and they are interacting with the ointment on the broom Yeah, there are some pharmacologists who say, you know what, we

think that this is actually what was happening, is that these ointments were being made and applied um through the skin, basically applying a crazy pharmaceutical ointment to the genitals with a broomstick. Yes, yes, they probably said that on the side applied gently to broomstick, then ride broomstick genitals first and gothic font And this is from the investigation of Lady Alice Kepler in she was one of the first

women to be accused of witchcraft in Ireland. We have this account quote in rifling the closet of a lady, they found a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staff upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin. Okay, these are actual documents that they're pulling some some of this stuff from, and not that we put tremendous amount of stock in the prosecutions materials in witchcraft trials. I mean they're no. Take that with a whole lot of salt.

But who knows, like the idea that there could be some shruded truth to this is fascinating. Okay, dig a little deeper. And this is from the Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists and a paper they called the Legacy of a Tropos the fate who cut the thread of Life, which I think is really poetic for for

a journal um. In the paper they describe a tone written by sixteenth century Dutch physician Johan we Are, who concluded that a plant called henbane was a principal ingredient in which is through along with deadly nightshade and man drake, and according to where there were other ointments, but the essential ingredients remained the same in all of them, in all the preparations. When they applied to the upper thighs or general thills, it was said to induce the sensation

of rising into the air and flying. And by the way, by applying this to their skin and rather than taking it orallyy it was much more effective because then they didn't have to digest this and have obviously the sort of stomach ailments that would accompany that. Right, So at some point they figured out that hey, this is this is a pretty good way to get high. Well, it kind of it's similar in a way to the way some medications are applied via suppository rather than taken orally. Yeah.

And one of the dangerous with suppositories if you're taking some sort of illicit substances, of course, that you can't if you take to take it orally, you can get you can become ill and vomited back up. But suppository not so much. Yeah. And the people that were studying in these appointments, they weren't necessarily thinking that that which is at that time we're applying them and then actually you know, taking flight. They understood this to have hallucinatory properties.

Back in the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon even said the witches themselves are imaginative. Believe oftentimes they do that which they do, not transforming themselves into other bodies, not by incantations or ceremonies, but by ointments and anointing themselves all over. So they had sort of an inkling there that yes, they were transcending the experience, but not in physical body, not actually where they get together and have transcendental experiences

and not invite them in folk I know. Um. And this is interesting to the use of soot, which is sort of alkaline would have enhanced the passage of organic basis because a weak alkaline environment would be sufficient to neutralize the positive ironic charge. This is again from that um and it's thesiolist journal. Uh. This is an effective ethnobotanical technique that may be seen with Peruvian cocoa tours who mix in their mouth the cocaine containing leaves with

alkaline centers to enhance uptake. And this is and this is interesting and a topic will probably go into in greater detail in a future podcast. But this is by far not the only, would not be the only situation of individuals taking uh, some sort of psychedelic substance as part of a ritual or or magical practice. Right, and you actually don't you have an article on licking frogs or am I thinking of something else? I have a pamphlet.

It was handed to me on a by a guy in the train, but I've I've been very trepidicious about trying it out. There's some hallucinatory frogs that if you've looked, actually I think it's maybe the the the vom or something that they have that people can actually get high. So obviously, through trial and error, over thousands of thousands of years people have figured out different properties and plants and animals and manipulated them. So it's not weird that

someone would come up with an ointment. And it's not weird that this person, the female and the family would um be the person to come up with these ointments, are mostly healing right and have a sort of power in their household, maybe even in their village, as the go to person that has all these great little recipes that can make you feel a lot better, possibly make you feel as though you are writing a broom. And

let's also talk about that broom. I hate to sort of bring it up, but again, you know, why not just apointment? Why have the broom? And I'm just going to point out that this perhaps was a a proto sexual aid, So I'm gonna say old timey sex toy basically, yeah, now and uh, And I wonder if too, have like a going back vote from the from the side of of women, liberated women engaging in a certain activity and looking instead at um, really grumpy men deciding to crack

down on this and persecute women. Um. I wonder how much with the broom too, there's this idea of you have defiled. And not only have you defiled yourself and your and your faith and all, but you've also defiled this object which has um sympathetic and not sympathetic, oh yeah, sympathetic importance in the household and in the family and uh and also is a symbol of the status. And

you've somehow perverted this artifact. Well. Also, as we know, um, the understanding of female sexuality certainly wasn't that complex or nuanced back in the day, and some would argue that today it's still Yeah, we just did the podcast. I've been dealt with the female orgasm. Obviously, we still scientists are still figuring out exactly what sexually human sexuality and

female sexuality is all about. Yeah, And so for a woman to express sexuality, certainly during uh one period over another, depending on what was happening when the thirteenth century is opposed to the sixteenth century, Uh, they were certainly um iconic images and ideals to live up to. Yeah, I'll put it that way, right, So we discussed the ointment based importance of flying around on broomsticks and so forth.

But after this break, we're gonna really get into the idea of magical thinking and how that enforces all these things we were talking about. All right, so we're back. Yeah, we solved the broomstick problem here. Yeah, and I want to add one more thing about the broomstick. I couldn't help but be reminded of the Bobby the Babba yaga, you know, the old Russian hag or witch or cannibalistic ogress, uh,

you know, with the tusks for for teeth. Yeah, she also shows up in uh, there's a movie called Jack Frost which mry sents theater three thousand dead years ago, and it has the Bobby Yaga in it. So she's a really iconic character in Russian myth um. And she's

the witch. And she in addition to living in a hut that walks around on hin legs, she also flies through the air, sometimes in an iron kettle and sometimes in a mortar and pestle, which of course is the you know, the the device for crushing up various herbs and what have you and making them into powders for use in ointments, for use in uh you know, and you go to the pharmacist today and I mean that's

the symbol of the craft. Yeah, And here are these these symbols of domesticity, right, that that are being harnessed for for powerful goings on with witches, which I think is really interesting and really plays into this idea of the law of contagion, which is one of the two laws of sympathetic magic. Ya. Sympathetic magic is this very old idea, the idea that if something I think we've

discussed this before. Okay, so I have a rubber dinosaur in my hand, all right, it's true, and I have touched this rubber dinosaur, right, and in touching it, I'm probably doing nothing more than getting some of my my skin oil on it or my fingerprints what have you ink? From my hands? My hands are really disgusting. But but then, but then when I when I set it down, the taint of my touch, that that will be the extent

of it. The idea of sympathetic magic is so that there's a there's an even greater taint that is applied to this rubber dinosaur, and that that I have somehow imbued it with a sense of myself. You've transferred yourself to this object. Yeah, And we continue to do this sort of thing today, I mean, just dealing with my own stuff I'm wearing my dad's watch that he died in.

I'm not a logical believer in sympathetic magic, but I am sympathetic towards this object, and I have to a certain extent imbuted it with a sense of him on some level, you know. So, I mean we all do this kind of thing every day. Yeah, And we talked about this a little bit in the Science of Lucky Pants, and you know how we ascribe meaning to things, and we think, if if I do this, or if I take this, then you know something will happen. Or in the case of your father's watch, I mean, that's that

is for you, a part of him. So it's interesting that we're all sort of hardwired to to have this sort of symbolism in our lives, right, And I should mention I explained the watch. I didn't explain why I have a rubber dinosaur in my hand. And it's a like a squeeze toy that I used to keep from fidgeting too much while recording a podcast. Just to explain that, why why I have a rubber dinosaur on my person?

It's true, he squeezes the heck out of it, and that's fine, right, Another idea that arises from from sympathetic magic is like the idea that you can treat a weapon to treat the wound or somehow like if you were to say, cut somebody with a knife, and then you were to heat up that knife, then the person would feel the burning of the wound. Things of that nature, things that almost what we would have what a modern um mind would think of as like a quantum entanglement

exists within the confines of sympathetic magic. Um. You know, things objects becoming tainted, objects becoming haunted, objects made holy through contact with you know, really important people. The whole. I will never wash this hand again because hand is

come into contact with Brad Pitt's face or something. Well, and and if I believed in voodoo or sorcery like that, I would probably take care to deposit my fingernail clippings in a way which I didn't want someone else to get them, right to hiding clippings, hide your hair, because these are parts of you. Well, these are even more like this is an even easier thing to buy, I think,

because these were actually a part of me. These things were once my body and now they are, you know, hidden away in the wall of the house, lest a sorcerer get ahold of it, use it to place a curse on me, which make a nail clipping sculpture of me and then drive pins into me exactly. That's my fear, um and can only take ninety years with nail clippings and real quick. Another another idea this side of you mentioned voodoo, and of course that instantly brings the mind

the idea of the voodoo doll and uh. And you see variations on this theme in numerous magical um and religious practices where you have a semblance of something and if I like, I can hurt the doll to hurt the person that the doll resembles, or if I burn somebody in effigy, I am And you know this is something you see and everything guy Fox day to uh

to burning man. You know where an effigy is burned, and by burning the effigy, you're on some level hurting the person or the idea or feeling or thing that it represents. We see this and flipp colw rallies all the time. Yeah. Yeah, And this comes down to something called the law of similarity, which holds that humans inevitably

link superficial real life resemblances to deep unreal resemblances. Okay, So I think about this in terms of the ted dot com talk that you sent meets by skeptic Michael Schermer, and he was talking about, uh, he's using examples of how we can't help you describe meeting or see patterns. And he brought up the case of the Virgin Mary

visage on the grilled cheese. The Virgin Mary grilled cheese. Yeah, and he was saying that, you know, we've got this really sort of grainy pattern recognition in our brains, and so we really respond well to, like, you know, an image on tree bark or a burnt girl cheese sandwich. All of a sudden, some of those grainy markings start

to take form into an image. And I thought, well, that's really fascinating it, particularly when he pointed out that if you really look at that grilled cheese sandwich, it looks more like Jane Russell it does the version Mary, because she's got very potty lips. Well, it's I mean, it comes down to the same reason we can just stare up into the sky the clouds and just see one object after another. Oh, it's a it's a dragon using a typewriter, it's Lauren Hardy making out on a steamboat.

You know that kind of thing. Yeah, except for that last part. Well, I'm just saying you see random things that they or may not make sense in the clouds. Alright, alright, yeah, I mean it is. It depends on the perceiver, right. And we talked about this a little bit in Science of Lucky Pants, that some people may be more hardwired

than others to see connections. In a Sandra hu Shoop Share article about the dopamine connection, neurobiologists Peter Breuger found that people with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance and coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none. In one trial in which skeptics and paranormal believers were both given the drug al dopa, of course, I know it sounds like a street al dopa increases dopamine levels in the brain, the skeptics began

to perform much more like the believers. You sent me an interesting paper to discuss some of the ideas about like what, how, why ritual is important? Like what is it? What is it accomplished? And when we say ritual, I mean, in one hand, we could be talking about which is going out into the middle of nowhere on the Sabbath and uh and gathering together for dance or whatever. You could be just talking about a local church coming together and engaging in song, just like a glee club engaging

in song. You know, different communal activities, a community service group coming together and picking up trash around a neighborhood. Like I mean, that kind of thing can under certain definitions, be seen as ritual. Yeah, yeah, Actually, uh, they're saying that these synchrony rituals are really powerful, and so much so that they may have endowed certain groups with a competitive advantage over the eon, perhaps even causing some cultures

to flourish while others parish. That's from the article Uh that I thought, well that that makes sense why we would have these rituals that we participate in. And in that article they even uh brought up the observation that in modern day military things like um marching in formation or muscular bonding, right, muscular bonding, Yeah, and even chanting or the songs. I don't know what I've been told. Yeah, that's the name of that one, right, Yeah, I don't

know what I've been told. Yeah, and I don't know the rest, um well, the rest varies depending on who's singing it. I think, yeah, something about Mama's and boots. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Clearly, I have a vast knowledge of military uh songs, but any In any case, what they were saying is that, you know, we still engage in these rituals, even the warfare is not conducted in you know, here's one side in a formation of rows against another

formation of rows that meet on a hilltop. Right, that old school version of a very regimented forces meeting on a battlefield and marching into place, basically playing out like a table top game that just that does not exist anymore, hasn't existed in a while. But a lot of these these activities still exist because it builds this bond, and it builds this uh, this cohesive feeling that we are

we are one. You know. It's I mean, it's like that the idea you see in every boot camp movie ever that these guys enterest this rag tag group of miscreants and then they in the over the course of the boot camp, they become a fighting force together. They become brothers. That's right. Yeah, I mean yet through the experience, uh, they are are They're transformed into the super group, right. So I think that's interesting, particularly in the context of

magical thinking. And this was from an article Do you Believe in Magic? And it was saying that that um rituals and magical thinking give us a margin of control over the randomness in our lives. UM. This is from the article. It says magical thinking is most evident precisely when people feel most helpless. Geo Canon, professor at Tel Aviv University, sent questionnaires to one hundred and seventy four

Israelis after the Iraqi SCUD missile attacks. Of those who reported the highest level of stress were also the most likely to endorse magical beliefs, Like I have the feeling that the chances of being hit during a missile attack are greater if a person whose house was attacked is present in the sealed room, or to be on the safe side, it is best to step into the field

room right foot first. Yeah. And I think sometimes it can come down to your your face with overwhelming odds or some sort of situation that you just cannot control, and it comes down to what can I do. I can't actually stop this thing. Take the instance of death. When death comes, there's like nothing you can do to

bring that person back. But you can go and pray about it, you can go and light a candle about it, you can go and engage in various rituals, even if that ritual is just something as simple as like a meditation type of thing, and it's something you can do. And so there's this feeling of I am doing something

in the face of this uncontrollable force in my life. Well, and it's a it's been brought up before to that ritual healing practices aren't too far away from like the plus ebo effect, right right, Yeah, Like if you if you engage in this thing, you take the sugar pills, then all of a sudden, your body is going to respond as if it's actually being treated very much the

same in a ritual scenario. Another idea that came across one of the links you sent me, and this comes from Stanford University psychologist and graduate students Scott S. Biltmouth, And the idea is that all this, you know, this synchronicity, this this movement and sound in a communal ritual um it really comes down to economic benefit, with the primary goal of of being to spot the freeloader, yes, to ferret out the person who's not really contributing really right, Right,

So it's kind of like, all right, we're all going to do a big giant quare dance, and you can tell that the guy who's totally not into it is totally not into being a part of the group, and therefore you can't you can't trust him as much him or her. You can't trust them, you can't rely on them, you know that in the end, or you can suspect in the end they're going to be looking out for number one rather than the whole group. They're not entering

into the social contract. So I think it's fascinating, right, I mean, is this just particularly uh important back in the days you know, obviously when uh people got together in a more I don't know, how would you say it's just a more formal way or more intentional way, right, Because if you lived two miles five miles from another family, then you really had to make a concerted effort to

get together socially. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us have been in situations where there's like some sort of a group activity that's happening with work, and you maybe don't really want to go to it, or you've got other things that need to be done, but you feel like you should. And and part of that is because, yeah, it's like the people who don't show up, or the people who show up and are really obviously not into it. Can they be trusted? Are they really

a part of the group or they are they freeloaders? Well, and then also they're kind of wearing a little bit of jerk perfume. You know, you don't want to look like a jerk. Okay, So back to Erica jong Um again. She talked about this in her ForWord that ritual intention counts for everything. It must be positive. And the more witches there are sitting in a circle practicing communal intention,

the more potency the magic will have. Okay, So that's the other part of it, right, Like if you participate, if not that person is not participating, then they're weakening what the group effort is. The desire for magic cannot be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to practice magic. In love and war, we simultaneously possessed the most primitive of brain stems, and the most sophisticated of

cortex is the imperatives of each coexist uneasily. That reminds me a little bit of this bit that I ran across in this book The False Myth, Religion and the Rise of Representation by David Hawkes, And he points out that magical thinking first and foremost. It makes perfect sense in to borrow a phrase from William Manchester, a world lit only by fire. If you live in a world with a lot of a lot of magical beliefs, it pays to believe in magic, because that is the currency

um all right. But by the eighteenth century most un Europeans are convinced that magic doesn't exist anymore. And and you see which witches and wizards and warlocks. You see them prosecuted not as a blaspheming monsters or dangerous idea dealers, but rather as charlatan's and frauds, especially in the colonies.

And then m Hawks points out, and I'm going to read a quotation here, he says, by the end of the twentieth century, however, this process of enlightenment had been subjected to such cogent philosophical and political critiques that few people would endorse it unequivocally. We are much more conscious

than our forebears of the complicity between reason and magic. Uh. And many would argue that the postmodern era, with its virtual reality, its faith in the image, it's electronic money, it's new age religions, is witnessing a return to the kinds of overtly magical thinking that imperialism unsuccessfully tried to stomp out in the Southern hemisphere, which I found really interesting because indeed there are all these like electronic money, is this on a real thing? I mean, the internet

itself is kind of this. You know, where is the internet? Right? Well, I guess it depends quite a bit on our ability to think magically, right, to think metaphorically. So perhaps that's the reason why it hasn't been done away with by evolution, right, because there are some people who say, why why do we even have magical thinking anymore? When we have the ability, even as tiny babies too innately understand physics or math

or language and what is real and what is not real. Um. You know, kids by the age of six or seven have a really great idea of what is real and usually uh, let you know, Santa Claus or Easter Bunny or anything else. So all those miss fall away. That being said, why do we keep holding onto it? And perhaps that's a reason why. Well, one more thing about about all this before we close out the podcast, and that's what we were talking about, which is meeting for

these Sabbaths. And I keep running across the image by Francesca Dagoya, the which is Sabbath Great he Goat, which is this this lovely image. Mcgoya's Goya was awesome, And so it's all these women and they're they're they're arranged like this big semicircle around the second like a harem. Yeah, and there's somebody playing the accordion, which I thought was a nice touch there with presumably Satan the Great he Goat,

this sort of goat figure. And and in many of the old woodcuts, I love looking at old woodcuts of witches and warlocks and all that, and the goat is often depicted as really really raunchy and gross, and you know, he's he's really deplorable looking, and it's like, oh, they're these women are gathering to to worship and lay with the horned one, and he's so gross and vile and but in this image the great he Goat has it seems to inspire some of the more sympathetic aspects of

like of of a goat for starters. And also this kind of seems like a wise old man and these ladies are I can't really judge him for going on and hearing what he has to say. That's a goat that looks like has wisdom. Yeah, no, I think that's interesting take, but I still prefer the like um, the red huge beast as depicted in South Park. Oh, and

it was very much in touch with his feelings. Yeah, the way, and you I think you like the one from a legend, right, I'm kind of partial to the one Ernest borlad nine played in The Devil's Reign, which had a cameo by Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan. But Ernest borgnine turns into this man goat creature. It's pretty awesome, all right. So you have it. One of our favorite episodes and definitely one we wanted to resurrect for your Halloween enjoyment. Indeed, do you have any thoughts

on witches on Halloween? You can send them to blow the mind at house Stuff Works Dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com