Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and we both have antlers on our head and this is stuff you.
Should Just a couple of wooded pagans.
Yeah, I'm excited about this one man.
Yeah, you know, we'll reference some previous episodes. We covered WICCA and our witchcraft up and there's some Alistair Crowley in here, of course. Yeah, for sure, you knew he was going to make an appearance, and it seems like there was something else too. But well, if you want the full picture, you know, go back and listen to all those together. Just for a spooky Why don't I say spooky? This is not even spooky. That's the whole problem.
Yeah, for sure.
Conception.
Yeah, but it's so ingrained that even have to know about it. You know, it's hard not to just shake that.
I was a church kid, I was raised Baptist Pagans. We're spooky, they killed the sacrifice things.
Yeah. I ran across a couple of websites, Christian websites that essentially still think all of the same things that the church originally said about pagan's back. You know, fifteen hundred years ago.
Yeah, so it's still alive and well it's cool to know the story now, having you know, left the Baptist Church many many years ago to finally understand like, oh, at a certain point in history, they were just like this is the religion and everything else is the devil.
Right, Yeah, And in retrospect looking at this now, it's like, gosh, talk about getting your wires crossed.
Yeah, that's funny.
Yeah. So we're talking about paganism everybody, And hats off to Dave two first of all for helping us with this. This is a huge, big lump of a topic that almost every one of the things we're going to talk about could be broken out into its own episode. Yeah, so we're gonna have to summarize in a lot of ways. We're going to get a lot of stuff wrong. So apologies already to all of our pagan listeners out there, and let us know, correct us about what we do
get wrong. But we're going to try our best not to get stuff wrong because it's a really interesting set of religions. We should say, that's what paganism is. It's not a religion, it's a set of typically nature based religions that before the original ancient paganism predated any of what we call the Abrahamic religions, the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And that's my definition of paganism.
Can we stop there.
Yeah, we haven't gotten anything wrong so far.
So yeah, yeah, Well you mentioned those religions, and it's pretty key to mention the Abrahamic religions because basically anything else outside of that was considered pagan. Historically, the word pagan actually was pretty much an insultant firs first, when Christianity was on the rise, and we'll talk a lot
about that here in a second. In the Roman Empire, if you did not convert to Christianity Christianity, you were called paganas, which is Latin for country dweller, which is basically like, hey, if you're not a Christian, you're a bumpkin aka pagan which is interesting.
Oh yeah, it's definitely interesting. It's funny because that means that at some point in time, and we'll talk about when that happened, Christianity suddenly leapt forward as like a sophisticated thing, which is so the tables basically turned because originally some of the Greek or actually Roman pagans were very suspicious of Christianity and said all sorts of libelist things against them, and then as Christianity rose to prominence,
it used that same playbook against pagans. But yeah, it makes sense that it's like you were considered a hick or not up to date if you were still a pagan once Christianity became a thing in the Roman Empire.
I think Bumpkin summed it up nicely.
I thought so too. I like Bumpkin, cause it's like it's an insult, but it's just so round and happy that it's hard to be angered by it if somebody calls you a bumpkin.
Yeah, for some reason, Bumpkin does have just sort of a like, I feel like bumpkins are.
Happy, right, they don't care what you think of them.
All right, So should we talk a little bit about you know, there's kind of two parts of this. There's ancient paganism, which is one thing that we're going to speak about now, and then later we're going to talk a little bit about modern paganism. But the kind of key distinction here is modern paganism isn't like, hey, we just brought back everything they were doing back then because it went away for a long time, and now we're going to do that same stuff. It was, you know,
inspired by some of this stuff. But as you'll see, not a lot of text survived. So modern paganism is basically its own new thing.
Yeah, and we'll talk about where it came from. But there's a lot of well just incorrect facts on the Internet that basically says this tradition has continued uninterrupted. Yeah, in secret. It had to be driven into secret by the rise of Christianity. That just does not seem to be true.
Yeah, but if we're going to go back to ancient paganism, we can talk about some of the different elements of because, like you said, this is a lot of different things that they're wrapped up under the term paganism. But animism is the first one, and that is the belief that every object on the planet basically has a spirit. People do, my dog does, your dog does, which I totally believe, the rivers, trees, everything in nature does, animate or inanimate,
which is why it's called animism. And they thought that nature can be like a great thing, it can help protect us or it can be a dangerous thing. It can cause us harm, and it's up to us to influence that through sacrifice and these rituals that we perform.
Yeah, A good example of this, just real quick, is there's no absolute good and evil. That's one of those Abrahamic religious ideas, and paganism does not believe in that. So, for example, if you are crossing a raging river, that river might kill you and drown you, but it's not like the river is evil and wants to do that. It just can happen. So there's a risk, but it
can also be a neutral thing. You can increase your chances of successfully crossing that river by maybe praying to it the spirit or the god of that river, or maybe offering a sacrifice. But it's not there's no evil rivers in any of the pagan religions except for the river sticks. Yeah. I guess maybe, but I think even then it's not necessarily absolutely evil.
Yeah, We've got shamanism, which is sort of like animism plus animism with a mascot, and that the shaman is the person who steps forward and says, all right, we've got all these objects that have spirits and I'm the person that can communicate with them. I will enter a trance, may take some drugs, maybe a little singing and dancing to get there, don't you worry about that. But I'll get there in that trance state, and I'll be able to communicate with these spirits like go through me.
Yeah, I think the singing and dancing is subsequent to taking the drugs.
Hey, I went to a raver two in my day.
Exactly every single person there was a shaman at that moment.
At this is what it felt like at the time, probably right.
So there's a couple of things just from the ancient pagan religions that are still carried on today. Ancestor worship is another big one, Yeah, especially as we'll see in
the neo pagan Norse traditions. But it's essentially you can see evidence of this and the fact that we buried people in the way that we started burying people as if they're venerated, as if we understand that they need grave goods because there's an afterlife, and so it's not like a hard leap to the idea that those ancestors can help us out now that they're in the spirit world. And so you can worship them. That's a big part of it too.
Yeah, for sure, then we're going to get into this whole idea that and something I found that looking through a lot of these pagan rights and religions is that they looked at women very differently than early Christian and some might even argue late Christian religions do, and that women were worshiped and venerated. The earth Mother was a
big part of the early deities and worshiped. And they found venus figurines, these clay and stone figures from like thirty five thousand years ago that are clearly like probably used in fertility rights because they have you know, exaggerated breasts on these figures and wide hips, and so the whole idea of the earth Mother has been around for a long long time.
Yeah, and then you can pretty clearly demonstrate that the earth Mother eventually evolved into Gaia from the Greek pantheon. Guya is the mom of all the other gods, which brings up to another point polytheism. It's not monotheistic. There is not one single god. Even if there's a head of the gods like say Zeus or Odin or something like that. There's still plenty of other gods who are gods. They're not saints, they're not angels, they're not assistants, they
are gods in and of themselves. And so Polytheism is a huge, huge part of any pagan religion, ancient or modern too.
And I've never looked into this, but I mean, the idea of Mother Nature that probably kind is kind of a trickle down from goddess Mother Earth Mother, right.
I would think so too, Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I'm just taking a stab at that though.
So you gotta be right, you know. I mean, it's not like that was just coincidental. Somebody came up with that in the sixties or something.
Yeah, that's true.
What about sacrifice, the stuff that Pagans don't like to talk about.
Yeah, I mean, this is a can of worms that you know, we can't fully open because there's a lot of debate about how much sacrifice there has been in all religions throughout ancient world history. A lot of times these the people that say, like, oh, they were just killing babies left and right, are written by the enemies of these people, in this case, Christian and Roman accounts about how widespread it would be because they're trying to
paint them in a certain way. But there definitely has been sacrifice, whether it was human or your finest crop or your best sheep.
Yeah, I mean, we know for a fact that Germanic and Celtic tribes sacrificed humans. Just from the presence of bog bodies in the state that they were, the way that they died, they're pretty much proof positive that there was sacrifice. And even outside of Europe. I mean, you know the Inca Maiden, the lu Laya, you know, lou Lailo lu Layelo.
I think you mean Leilani the maiden.
You remember the Inca maiden that has like your knees pulled up her chest and she looks sleeping. But she was sacrificed five hundred years ago. I mean, like it did happen, but the idea that it was widespread, or that they like drank baby's blood or that kind of stuff, that was the exaggeration that really kind of were smears.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I finally watched it the other day. It was about a month ago, I guess, the mel Gibson.
Apocalypto.
Yeah, I'd never seen that. For some reason, I finally watched it.
How was it?
Did you see it?
No, but I've seen the scene that made you think of that.
You know, it was pretty good. You know. I'm not like championing Mel Gibson, of course, but I just hadn't seen that movie. And I had a I guess Emily was clearly not with me, and I was like, oh, I've got a window and it popped up and I was like, you know what, I never saw that. Let me check it out. Very gross in gory in its depictions, but you know it was okay.
Yeah, mel Gibson is basically into snuff porn, like, he loves that stuff. Have you ever seen We Were Soldiers?
I did not see that, But that's supposed to be pretty gory too, right.
It's one of the most violent, yeah, glorious war movies I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah.
Now I've seen The Guns of Navarone.
Yeah. Oh was that Telly Sabalis?
Now he was in the Dirty Dozen, that's what you think.
Yeah, that was a good or forced in from Navarone was seeing that one too.
I don't know if he was one, he was definitely in the Dirty Dozen. That was a great one.
Yeah, all right, We're getting away from off topic here though, because we need to talk about idol worship and tree worship. That's another pretty common element and a lot of different pagan religions. You know, it's right there in the Ten Commandments, do not worship false idols. Idolatry was a big no no to Christians, and that's basically any physical representation of
a God or a spirit. We usually, you know, growing up Baptist thought him of his like statues and stuff from biblical stories, but it can be a rock or something. And then trees. Trees are big in many, many, most pagan religions. They love their trees.
Yeah, they love them for sure. So yeah, those are some high points or basics, I guess is a better way to put it, of ancient pagan religions. And because as we said before, there's not really a lot that survived from the ancients to today, a lot of that stuff has been gleaned by archaeologists anthropologists, and it's from that base of knowledge that modern Pagans draw from to create the newer versions of the pagan religions.
Yeah, it feels like a break time, right, yeah, I guess. So all right, we'll take a break, and we'll come back and talk about when Christianity decided that's it. We're going to change the narrative right after this, all right, So we promised talk of Christianity stamping out Paganism, or trying to at least, and that started with Constantine, who was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity officially.
I think you sort of hinted earlier that Christianity was a pretty smallish persecuted sect of people at first, until Constantine came along and said, actually, I'm Christian now, and all the other Roman elites were like, well, off, Constantine the Emperor's Christian, then maybe we should look into this a little more.
Right, And so the tide turned on Pagans basically right out of the gate. But Constantine himself didn't do anything to persecute He didn't use his official position as emperor to persecute pagans.
Yeah, he did his to in the pool publicly.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So actually I think he was fully immersed in the baptismal font instead. Well yeah, his son, though, went full boar after Pagan's and outlawed Paganism. He passed the first Laws Constantineous Constantius, not Constantinople Constantius. Yes. Yeah, he passed the first laws that made paganism and practices of paganism illegal. It was basically amounted to any public
displays of paganism were outlawed. But not too long after a couple of decades his successor, Theodosius, he said, Christianity's the state religion of the Roman Empire, and if you do anything pagan, including in your own home, like your your toast, don't let us see you go anywhere near chicken, or you're in big trouble.
And they said, what is toast? When your bread gets too close to the fire and it tastes better, that's doped.
I hadn't tried that.
So Christianity is on the rise. And they started to stamp out pagan religions all over the Roman Empire through the laws that you mentioned and through a pretty brilliant plan, which was literally demonizing them. I never really have thought about that word much until this is like, you know that demon is the root there, but that's literally what they did. They were like, you know what everyone that you're have been worshiping, they are the devil in disguise, right, like the literal devil Satan.
Yes, And they actually took some of the existing gods and just basically copy pasted them into the conception of the devil of Satan. And again keep in mind here, these these pagan religions, they don't have anything even approximating Satan. Like gods can be good or protective or dangerous, but there's no like one evil polar foil to God, because there is no one God. It's not dual, it's plural.
That's that's part of pagan religion, right, So it's ironic that they're like, your god is Satan, and they're like which one. They're like, the one with the horns, the one with the antlers, right, And so that's that's basically how the modern conception of Satan came along. And so basically any god would just be equated with evil, with a demon, with Satan himself. And if you were caught practicing this, now you started to risk being killed by the people in charge.
Yeah, they found this one pretty prominent Celtic gods. Yeah yeah, okay, ce r In you in in.
It's like it's a yeah, it's like a mashup of Michael Sarah, John Cena, and John Sanunu.
Yes, Man, I almost said it wrong again. Sir Nunas was, like I said, a prominent Celtic god and had it was the antler god had antlers. And they basically look back now and say between Sir Nunos and the Greek god Pan, like, it's not a far leap to go from antlers to horns. And that was basically the probably the model for the Christian devil that you know, once they decided, hey, we're just going to be binary from.
Now on, right, But the Sir Nunos is wearing antlers because they were They indicated protectiveness, not necessarily of humans, but of the forest and the countryside. And you could be in Sir Nunosi's good graces by taking care of those things, or you could run a foul of Sir Nunos. And if you say, just stepped on a bunch of docks for no good reason. Yeah, but that he became
Satan eventually, or he was one of the ones. I think they went basically local religion by local religion and then identified who could be Satan and then demonized them and all the others.
Yes, that makes sense. Like who do they identify with, Like, who's going to scare them?
Exactly? So, now, because your god, your ancient pagan god, is Satan. If you are caught worshiping that god, or any god or any kind of polytheistic pagan religion, you're now in league with the devil. And again you can be put to death for that kind of thing. And that developed into which trials, the Inquisition, all sorts of terrible stuff that was essentially the Christian Church persecuting in an effort to stamp out it's like any local rival religions.
Yeah, well, stamp out is one thing they did, and you know, with the Christian armies and colonialism and missionaries, that was what they were doing all over the West. And then what they couldn't stamp out or I don't know if it was what they couldn't stamp out, but they were stamping out everything they wanted to. And then they also said, but actually this Halloween and Christmas Easter are pretty fun, and those are pagan you know based, So we're just gonna tweak those and make them our own.
Because who doesn't like Halloween?
Yeah, everybody likes Halloween. Which started out as Sowin as we'll see. I think we've talked about that probably fifteen times. Yeah. You know what I think actually triggered this me thinking of this topic.
What movie?
No, it was Easter I was thinking about. I happened to be up and out around sunrise on Easter and it reminded me, as a kid, being raised Catholic, of going to Sunrise mass in Eastern Yeah, and I was like, dude, you're standing there celebrating a religious service, watching the sun
rise on a specific day in the spring. Like it is so pagan based, and it's like in every single way, I think even Easter is like a shift or an adaptation of like oh Stare, which I believe was one of the Polytheiets pagan gods.
Yeah, like it was.
It's just there out in the open basically, and that made me wonder about the whole thing.
Yeah. You know, growing up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, the most dedicated would hike up Stone Mountain in the in the dead of night to go to the sunrise service on top of Stone Mountain.
Yeah. Pretty cool.
Yeah.
So they were basically stamping with one foot, giving back rubs with the other other with their hands stamp stamp rub rob That's what the Christians did to basically win the pr war of the religions and take over. Essentially.
Yeah, if you're looking at the pagan comeback, which we're going to get into now, you can go back to the Renaissance when they said, Hey, the Greek and Roman philosophers and all those books they were writing, it's like super interesting, we're into that stuff again. And we have the printing press now, so we can really print this stuff up and disseminate it. And there were Renaissance painters painting all these amazing romantic paintings of like mythological creatures
and gods. And then the Enlightenment came along and said Renaissance, hold my meed.
So yeah, the Enlightenment was like, in a couple of strange ways, it was really fertile ground for like an interest in paganism to come along. For one, the Enlightenment thinkers just essentially as a first step, just rejected Christianity and monotheism in particular. And they also were like, I really like the philosophy of these ancient Greeks and ancient Romans. They were polytheistic. Maybe I could be too, So it kind of aroused like an intellectual interest in that.
Yeah.
But it also it created an interest in paganism in a different way too, because the Enlightenment created such rational thinking that some people were kind of repelled by it and they're like, I'm going to go seek answers and purpose in nature instead. And yeah, probably more than anything, is how the Enlightenment led to an interest in paganism.
Yeah. And also I thought it was super interesting how much the arts played into all this. You know, I mentioned the Renaissance painters, but also Romantic poets like you can't read Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley without like wanting to go out into the woods and like be among nature. There were very just very moving poems about the world, the natural world around us, and the sort of unseen magic in nature.
Yeah, you've never wanted to take your clothes off in the woods? Read some Keats, right, See how you feel after that?
Oh, I'm not a big naked in the I'm not a big naked guy period. I think it's been established, but probably because of the Baptist upbringing. But I feel too vulnerable out there in the woods.
Yeah, I know, I get that there's mosquitoes and beetles and those worms that crawl up your pehle.
Yeah, I'll just you can find me in my skivvies at least are you a never nude? Yeah? I shower in a bathing suit in cut off gene. Yeah, to cut off. So man, it's so great.
What else?
Oh?
Oh, there was another thing that kind of created it might it might have grown out of this interest essentially, like kind of scholarship on paganism. Yeah, some was good. Some was the kind of stuff that you would equate with finding on the History Channel today. You know.
That was in the article and we talked about it a little bit offline. I did not know. I don't watch enough History Channel. I thought the History Channel was just like we used to call it the War Channel because it was always just black and white World War Two documentaries. But I know there is another side of the History Channel where with the alien sky, like did they have a lot of that kind of stuff?
I think it's pretty much all Yeah, that is it?
Really okay?
Yeah, pretty much, And I think it has been that way for a really long time. And I mean not to bag on the History Channel. It's interesting, but I guess what I'm equating it to is really interesting unsupported theories that like, if you're an actual scientist and you look into it, you're like, this is just made up.
They're trying to make the entertaining television basically.
Yes, but the problem is is they present it factually and it gets taken factually by a lot of people. So they've caused a lot of problems. They essentially have ruined the world single handedly.
The History Channel has well I'm glad I know this because I'm going to stop saying, well, the History Channel, I said.
Its top that.
Yeah, but yeah. There were a couple of key people that came out of this that you kind of referenced. One was a guy named James Fraser. He was an anthropologist who wrote a book, very influential book in eighteen ninety called The Golden Bow. Bo I'm sorry, yeah, you w jesus, what's going on with me? B o U g H.
I'm going with boo.
It's pronounced bo.
I think that's a History Channel type.
Okay, we're not gonna argue with this because who cares. But that's the way it's spelled. And his argument was that you know, all religions basically go back to this one pagan myth about a king that was sacrificed to bless the land with fertility, and you can kind of trace them all back to this.
Yeah, and so modern historians have said it's a great theory Fraser, but it's not correct. Fraser is not a history channel type. He was a legitimate anthropologist. And one of the reasons the Golden Bow Bow figures in is that he did an amazing amount of exhaustive research that in the book he describes a lot of ancient pagan traditions and beliefs and stuff. So The Golden Bow became kind of like a handbook for the modern pagan movements that followed.
Do you know what I feel like concerning here? What the way that you pronounce the word be? Like? Why did they get count Dracula to Who is that guy?
I don't know? What was this like a book on tape? You heard once? No?
No, no, no, this is the YouTube guy when you look up pronunciations. Oh oh, one, gentleman, that dogs he came from Thrensylvan.
Yeah, he really does, doesn't he? I never thought about it. He's great.
Well, now this is saying bo. But I looked at up earlier and it said bo.
Okay, boo boo.
I don't know if I believe that, lady.
Like when the bow breaks, wouldn't you just sit up and tell your mom that she got it wrong if she's saying when the bow breaks.
I've always said bow, But you know, maybe I'm wrong or maybe the internet's wrong. That'd be a first How about boh, yeah, when the book breaks?
Uh.
And then there is a History Channel type person that we should talk about, the Egyptologist Margaret Murray. She was She's definitely on that side of things, right.
Yeah. She came up in the Bella and the Witch Elm episode because she was saying, like Bella was murdered by a witch right And she's one of the people who argued that the modern European witches trace their lineage unbroken back to fertility feminist cult that's been in the British Isles ever since time immemorial, and that that's one of the things that's been debunked, is that it's just
not true. Like the Christian Church and in their turn, Judaism in Islam as well, did such a thorough job of interrupting the transmission from the ancient world to the modern world that it's just like that's just not really possible. Now, that's not to say that like in certain like super you know, rural local areas, there's like not folk traditions
that actually do date back really far. I mean, everybody's seen wicker Man, right, But the thing is, like, like Wickerman would be actually a bad example because that like is an actual ritual. They knew exactly what they were doing, they were performing rites that kind of stuff. This would be more like, hey, we're dancing around the may pole, but we don't necessarily know every single thing that's going on. We're not performing every single aspect of this ancient ritual.
Even though the ritual in some form or fashion still survive today, it's not the full the full Monty, it's not the full manty of the actual pagan folk religion that they're they're kind of venerating. Still, yeah, does that make sense?
Yeah? Absolutely? Okay, should we take our second break?
Yeah?
All right, we're gonna take that break and we're gonna move into the world of modern paganism right after this.
Well, by the way, Chuck, you, me and I have a friend named Alex Mary who's an artist and she does something called Morris dancing, and a lot of the Morris dances like resemble paganism, like there's sometimes there's antlers and stuff like that. But also, more than anything, reminds me of stuff they would have done in that A twenty four movie Midsommer, and it's basically like folk dancing that dates back to like the fifteenth century and probably before,
but they can definitely trace it back that far. I was asking her about paganism. She's like, Nope, not a pagan I'm a Morris dancer.
That's super cool. Yeah, And not to get off topic, but since you brought up a twenty four I just have to shout out their newest weird comedy from Tim Robinson. Oh yeah, actually not from Tim Robinson, he's in it. But the movie Friendship I can highly recommend. And I went to the opening eleven am screening in Atlanta and my friend, because you love Tim Robinson, you'll be glad to know. At Phipps Plaza at eleven am on a Friday, there were probably twenty five to thirty like Tim Robinson
fans in there. Nice at that first showing.
Was it rowdy?
Yeah, you know, it's been a long time since I've seen a crowded and it was crowded because it was probably a fifty person theater, so it was seventy percent full. A crowded like movie with other people, like a comedy where just a bunch of people are laughing at once, and it was so much fun.
That's awesome, man, it was great. I wish I could have gone.
I wish you could have gone too.
Oh oh yeah, are talking about what modern paganism.
Yeah, so we mentioned, you know, in several different ways that modern paganism is its own thing. One of the reasons why it's its own thing is because they just didn't write down a lot of stuff back then. And stuff that was written down, it wasn't like the literal, detailed handbook of how to do this ritual this right, that's pretty rare. Yeah, So that's one of the reasons,
and it was all stamped out. Some of the stuff that we've gotten modern wise comes from these Icelandic or maybe all of it, these Icelandic texts called the Eda's, Is that right.
Yeah. As far as Norse religions, Norse pagan religions that fall under the umbrella term Heathenism. This is where they get all their stuff. Yeah, I don't know if it's Das or Eda's. I think I agreed too soon. Okay, Okay, maybe as that and then the Viking sagas, and so the Viking sagas aren't like you said, it's not a handbook of how to worship Norse gods, but just mentions
of it, like incidental references to stuff like that. The neo Pagans who worship Norse gods have kind of taken that, glean from that what some of these rituals and thoughts and mythologies were.
Yeah, and we're not going to talk about all modern pagan religions, but we're gonna mention if you know, we're going to highlight a few. We have to talk briefly at least about their medic Order of the Golden Dawn. But again, if you want to hear a lot about that, listen to our Alistair, a really good episode, I think Alistair Crowley episode. Yeah, this was the secret society that Aleister Crowley was a member of. He was never the leader, right or was he just sort of a.
I think he did break off and try to become a leader at some point.
I don't remember. Yeah, maybe I should go back and listen to it.
I don't remember either. But their whole thing, the reason we mentioned them is they were probably the first what you could consider modern pagan religion. They practiced magic and they were into the Egyptian cult stuff. Yeah, so that's why we bring them up there. I don't think there's too many Golden Dawn people running around, but I guarantee there are some.
Yeah, there's got to be.
What about Wicca.
Yeah, we talked about wick and our Witchcraft episode that was from a long time and ago, though, so it may not be our best.
Work, No, I would. That's one that would probably be pretty good to redo someday.
We're not going to read this stuf't fine Modern Witchcraft or wicka Wicca. Originally it was Wica as named by a guy named Gerald Gardner, who was a British customs official who worked in Malaysia then came back to England in nineteen thirty six, wrote a bunch of Golden Dawn stuff, a bunch of Alistair Crowley stuff, a bunch of Margaret
Murray stuff, our History Channel lady. And he said, you know what, one night in nineteen thirty nine, a covin of witches initiated me, and they were members of this ancient fertility cult that I read about from Margaret Murray.
Yeah, so it depends on who you talk to. Gardner might either be described as a huckster who made all this up, or a very gentle man. I saw somebody describe him who knew him as utterly without malice, may
have made all this up. But he was known for writing what's called the Book of Shadows, which has become a big part of the wick and religion, which is essentially a personal recipe book of spells and rituals that has worked for a particular witch or coven, and sometimes it's shared and people can borrow from it and add to it and they create their own Book of Shadows, but having your own basically, you know in those Bugs Bunny cartoons where that witch is like looking through her
book that would technically be a book of shadows that she's looking through to find like the ingredients for her potions or whatever. That's a pretty literally cartoonish depiction of it, but that's, you know, essentially what she was doing.
My favorite part is when she would leave the frame very quickly, and her hairpins would fall out, her hair float in the air.
She was one of the most disturbing cartoon characters of all time if you ask me, man, Yeah, like she was. She had the high pitched voice, and didn't she have like kind of a red cousin it type who wore like tennis shoes. He was a little off putting as well.
I don't remember that, but if I saw it, I'd probably know it.
Yeah, So, yeah, the witch from Bugs Bunny.
That's right. But back to Wickens. They became very popular in the sixties and seventies with the feminist set and the environmentalist set, and there's still the Gerald Gardner focused. They call it gardenerian wicca. But if you're out at the seven eleven and you meet a modern Wickan, she's probably practicing what's called dianic wicca, which is small woman centered. It came around in nineteen seventy one by wicked activist name not Susannah but Susanna Budapest. Great name.
Yeah, And it wasn't until twenty I think fifteen that Susanna Budapest indoctrined her first male clergy member into dianic wicca and other Dianic Wicca temples split off, and so it's it's rare to find a man. And in this religion, like it's all women. And I read that they're anti patriarchy. They actually try to use their magic against the patriarchy.
But they're not anti male. The reason that they exclude males is because their religion is created to celebrate and honor the life cycles, the biological cycles in a lot of cases of a woman as she's born and then ages and then dies, and that essentially there's not a lot of role for men in that religion. But yeah, you know, you guys, go form your own stuff. Go become druids, I think is their motto.
Yeah, And here's a little dinner party factoid. If someone brings up wicking it around the table, you can say, hey, did you know that it was actually first recognized as a true religion in nineteen eighty six in the United States when the Supreme Court ruled and debtmer v. Landen. You don't have to know that part, but you could
really knock their socks off if you do. It was where a prisoner was denied the use of ritual ritual Wiccan objects and they're like, hey, this is my religious stuff and the First Amendment protects this, and the Supreme Court said, you know what, you're right.
Yeah, probably a liberal court.
Right.
One other thing I gotta say, I ran across the UK finally suspended their witchcraft laws. They're bans against practicing witchcraft in nineteen fifty one, which is why Gerald Gardner's books start popping up in the fifties, even though he'd been doing this since the late thirties.
Mile isn't that interesting, Like he.
Could have been arrested and thrown in prison for practicing witchcraft before nineteen fifty one.
Wow. All right, So those were sort of the big heavy hitters that were the first big ones that of modern paganism when it staged its comeback. But there are dozens of other smaller, much smaller modern pagan movements. Wick is definitely the largest, but heathenry is one of them, which is basically a umbrella term for people who, like you mentioned the Norse and Germanic deities. They're really into Marvel, I.
Guess Marvel and Lord of the Rings. Like if you thought led Zeppelin was into Lord of the Rings, may introduce yourself to a heathen like, they are into that stuff. Yeah, and I think the two biggest Germanic Heathen religions actually, I guess I don't even think they're sex but one is true. They worship the Acr gods, who would be the highest of the pantheon of Norse mythology, like Odin and Thor, and so people who are into Asatru are very much into honor and valor and getting into Valhalla.
And then there's the Vanatru, which they're concerned with the Veneer gods, who are the rest of the gods who are more earthy, more nature based. They're into prosperity, that kind of stuff. And I think there's way more Asatru than Vanatru right now. And then one other thing about Heathenism.
There's a really interesting kind of side history that you can go look up about the black metal scene, specifically the Norwegian black metal scene that essentially turned into turned their focus from satanism like traditional metal to heathenry, and so you've got like folk metal, Viking metal, like they essentially just became heathens but metal, and it just got really out of hand in the early nineties. It was really interesting stuff.
Well, yeah, and I don't know if we could get a whole episode out of this. We probably could, or maybe a short stuff. But there was the very famous case of well, there were there were these series of arsons, these church arsens, like twenty of them, these very very old wooden medieval churches in Norway that were burned down.
I think twenty of them were attributed. These arsens were attributed to black metal fans, and a couple of the arsonists were very prominent in the early Norwegian black metal scene. These guys there were bandmates at first in this band Mayhem, but I think Vargu Vicranese, sure he left Mayhem at a certain point, but Uronymous is how this guy's known ostein Arseth no aka Uronymous, I think stayed in this black metal group Mayhem for the run until he was murdered by varg.
Yeah, and they didn't exactly like set paganism's general public image on fire. Well actually they kind of did. Y. Yeah, Arsith was a Satanist. Vickernese is in addition to being a murderer, he's avowed neo Nazi, and the whole scene in particular kind of gets caught up with nationalism a lot. So it's not a very representative make sure of paganism as a whole or neo paganism as a whole, but it's still I mean, it's just ridiculously interesting. What happened there?
Yeah, totally mentioning, I guess, yeah, I remember when this happened, and I just I didn't know much about I still don't know much about that whole music scene, but it's it's super interesting. My cousin is into it.
Yeah, I was checking a lot of it out and some of it's really good. I'm not into folk metal though at all.
What is that? What does it sound like?
It's you know, that kind of like super proud Irish music that's like rock from like Boston. Imagine that is like metal or almost almost yeah or no, I'm the so yes that that Irish like rock does from Boston. This is like the Norwegian metal version of that.
Okay, yeah, I'll listen to something, see see what it does to me.
Okay, just look up folk metal and you'll see. But some of the other stuff was really good, like Mayhem's stuff was pretty interesting.
What if this changed my life and set me on? Of course that one would never have expected, right, here fifty four years old.
He still wearing corpse makeup.
Yeah, maybe get some antlers.
Yeah, why not? Man? Why not, like really ask yourself, why not do that?
I mean, no, no, it's no crazier than any of the rest of them if you ask me. Yeah, uh, you mentioned druids earlier. Kind of been passing. But that is a modern belief system that is tied to pre Christian British Isle sort of religion. That's where the Druids came from.
Right, Yeah, And I saw that Druids are a big difference between them and others is that the nature itself is the divine. It's not like a manifestation of God or the goddesses or anything like. It's nature. And I also saw that the practitioners don't really consider it a religion. They consider it more of philosophy or a way of life.
Yeah, and it's it was modern Druidry was started. I got named Ross Nichols, and I don't know why. I just find it funny that, like the modern Druids and modern Wickens were started by a guys named Ross and Gerald.
Yeah.
Is that a little weird?
Yeah, they sound like a couple of guys who might live in a van together.
They might who knows.
There's also ceremonial magic, which would trace itself to I guess the Golden Dawn. There's neopaganism, which we should talk about because a lot of people use neopaganism as a term incorrectly to describe modern paganism, which is what we've been talking about this whole time. Neopaganism itself is a specific kind of pagan religion. So all neopagans are pagan, but all pagans aren't neopagans. And if you basically want to just come at this by saying I like a
little of this, I like a little of that. Oh, I would like to do a little bit of ritual magic. Yes, I want to go out in the woods and practice all this stuff, then neopaganism is for you. It is wide open. They believe that everybody's beliefs are equal. They're very much opposed to the idea of absolute good and evil. They're very into nature. It's pretty much, I think what people think about when they think about modern pagan religions.
And that's neopaganism.
Yes, all right, And if you want to know more about that, there's a great site called neo paganism dot org. They seem to be pretty authoritative on it.
They should be with that website. That'd be a real shame if they weren't.
Yeah, it's in comic sane. And just one other thing about neopaganism. I think I said that a lot of people that's what they think of, but they might be saying WICKA when they're talking about neopaganism. There's big differences between those two. Wicka is very magical based. The intent is to harness the power of nature to get something done, like get a job successfully, or make someone fall in love with you, whatever. And WICKA is very very much esoteric.
So that means that there's a set amount of knowledge out there. There's hidden mystery knowledge in the universe that if you are an initiate into wika, like you have to be initiated into a coven, and you apply yourself in work and study, and you can have these mysteries of the universe revealed to you. Not at all what neo pagans believe. There's just a ton of differences. But I mean, if any of this has floated your boat and you're like, I really want to check this out.
There's a lot of stuff on the internet that you can go read up on. I would just say use your you're just general common sense to decide what site you're on is, whether it's legitimate or authoritative, or if it's just some dude making stuff up.
You got to have the right font where you know you're in.
Trouble exactly giveaway.
You also mentioned a great band name in there, hidden Mystery Knowledge.
That's a good one. I feel like that's more an album though, Okay, and you better believe they're gonna have some Lord of the Rings character? Was the illustration true? Well, if you want to know more about that stuff, like I said, go out on the internet. And since I said that and Chuck had just said true, that means that it's time for a listener, ma'am.
I'm gonna call this popcorn cooking tip. I'm surprised I haven't thought of. Oh okay, hey, guys, writing because I want to tell you about my favorite way to cook popcorn and bacon grease.
Oh yeah, I've heard of that.
I hadn't heard of it. It's just right there in front of my face too.
You got bacon grease in front of your face.
Yeah, I do. My aunt taught me her tried and true method for cooking popcorn in the soap top. She puts a spoonful of bacon grease in a skillet, pours a popcorn salt over the grease. Oh boy, plops a couple of kernels in there and heats the whole thing up, And when the grease is the right temperature, those kernels are going to pop and alert you you can start cooking for in the rest of the kernels, cover your skillet and let it pop away. The bacon grease gives
a popcorn a little extra flavor. It really makes it even more delicious. You should give it a try sometime. Just don't forget to cover your skillet.
Okay.
Thanks for all the years of podcasting listening pleasure you provided for me. I wish you both the best. That is from Randy with an Eye.
Thanks a lot, Randy with an Eye. Did Randy sign the eye with a little heart instead of a dot, because I'd be fantastic. Yeah, thanks a lot, Randy. That was a great tip. We appreciate it. I'm quite sure everybody who loves popcorn and bacon that's listening appreciated that. If you want to be like Randy and send us a tip that everybody can appreciate, you can send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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