Part One: Witches: Witches Were Pretty Cool Even Though They Didn't Really Exist

Margaret tells you about the history of European witchcraft and the witch trials and how it all came down to a contest between Catholics and Protestants to see who could murder the most people.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff Spooky
Month edition. It's November. You might argue, Spooky Month is over,
you might say in your ignorance, but you know what
they say, It's always October somewhere. This week, it's just me,
your host, Margaret Kildroy, no guest, no producer, just me,

(00:28):
my microphone and you. Why Well, mostly because I'm on
book tour right now, which makes scheduling guests particularly difficult,
but also I want to experiment with this style of
podcasting a bit. See how I like it. If I
want banter, I'll have to write it into the script myself.
This week we're covering something near and dear to my heart.

(00:51):
This week we're covering witches, especially witches in Europe, especially
the witch hunts. There aren't a ton of cool people
in today's episode, but I think witches themselves, as a
reclaimed archetype are cool. I don't know if I've ever
seen a topic so well covered by academic literature with
so little academic consensus about it. What is a witch?

(01:14):
Were they real? As in, did they represent an actual
sort of counter religion during the early modern period? Did
witches gather at black masses, as the great Ozzy Osbourne
once claimed, Well, probably not, at least not in the
way depicted by the witch hunters at the time. Believe me,
if they did, I'd be the first to want to
believe in them. There were most likely strange occult countercultures

(01:37):
here and there, mostly in cities, mostly selling love charms
and poisoning husbands, but they're oddly disconnected from the phenomena
of witch hunting. As for what's spurred on the witch trials,
that's a harder question one with no shortage of potential answers,
and we're going to get into that. So then witches,
pointy hats, animal familiars right now brooms having a bunch

(02:01):
of wild sex in the woods, cursing people cackling, I think,
which is the coolest shit. I wouldn't have written a
book about them if I didn't. What a good time
to plug the fact that the book I'm on tour
with the Sapling Cage is about a young trans witch.
But by and large, the modern conception of a witch
is of course a modern conception. There weren't, as best

(02:24):
as anyone is able to determine people running around in
the fifteen hundreds in Europe declaring themselves witches. This doesn't
mean that there weren't magical practitioners, including practitioners of what
you might want to call black magic, but we'll get
to that. In general, a witch is a bad guy. Definitionally,
one anthropologist Rodney need Him in nineteen seventy eight defined

(02:46):
a witch as quote someone who causes harm to others
by mystical means. This isn't the only definition of witchcraft,
but it's the one most applicable to the medieval and
early modern understanding of them, which then is less a
category of a person or a set of magical practices
or a religious belief system, but instead an accusation of

(03:09):
crime levied at someone. Being a witch historically was more
akin to being a murderer or an arsonist, or more
specifically and legally actionably, in this case, heretic. It was
an accusation to throw around at anyone who practiced religion, magic, healing,
or science that you didn't like. It was also an

(03:30):
accusation to throw around at anyone who slept with someone
that you wish they hadn't, or was too rich and
powerful or too poor and unpowerful. Witchcraft isn't a word
for a type of magic, but instead a moral position
with which we view that magic. Witchcraft is magic I
don't like these days. Of course, a witch is something else.

(03:51):
It's a reclaimed archetype, and it's one of the most
important reclaimed symbols in our pantheon of symbols. Now, a
witch is something people might identify as, either religiously or politically,
the reclamation of folk healing or women's magic, of certain
pagan practices. What have you? I wear all black and
live alone in the woods with a dog. I named

(04:12):
after a mystical figure from literature, So I like witches.
There weren't really self styled witches five hundred years ago,
but there were absolutely people in medieval and early modern
Europe whose role was what we might describe as sorcerer
or magician or whatever, just as there were in more
or less every hitherto existing society. Every society perhaps has

(04:35):
the figure of the magician, the diviner, the healer. In
England these people were often called cunning folk, and this
label was applied whenever an English speaker talked about just
about anyone else in Europe, these were diviners and healers,
and all of that. One of their main jobs was,
in fact, to remove the curses laid on people by witchcraft.

(04:55):
The cunning folk were not witches. They weren't even all
that often accused of witchcraft. When English people met indigenous
North Americans, they called their magicians, medicine men and medicine women.
When English people met Indigenous Africans, they usually called the
magicians witch doctors. The word shaman, currently used as a

(05:16):
sort of catch all for all of these folks, actually
comes from the Siberian indigenous group, the Tungus, from their
word for their magicians. Anthropologist Ronald Hutton, who studies these
various types of magicians, refers to this whole category of
people of shamans and cunning folk and witch doctors and
medicine women and men as service magicians. That's what I'm

(05:38):
going to use here. In service magicians are, of course,
people who perform magic as a service. In quote unquote
simpler societies, they might live in the tribe or village
and offer services to people. In more complex societies, they
might live in towns or cities and well sell their
services to people. You've got service magicians right now, up

(06:00):
to the present day. Of course, you can stop in
and talk to palm readers and astrologers wherever you'd like.
You can subscribe to service magician apps that'll give you
your horoscopes. I'm, by no means attempting to disparage any
of these practices. The line between service magician and healer are,
of course blurry. Are nature paths. Service magicians are chemists.

(06:22):
Allopathic doctors are modern therapists. Specifically any better at making
you feel better than fortune tellers than Catholic confessors. I'm
really honestly not trying to opine on the matter here,
because there's this incorrect belief that the West underwent what
gets called a disenchanting process. Jason josephin Storm, author of

(06:42):
The Myth of Disenchantment, said quote comparing several large scale
sociological surveys suggests that roughly three and four Americans believe
in ghosts, telepathy, which is demonic possession, or something comparable.
Skeptics are in the minority. The sources of practices offered
by service magicians vary from time to time and culture

(07:04):
to culture, but divination is a big one, of course,
as our love potions and charms, protection from curses and evil,
all sorts of things, healing, midwiffery, even brewing beer could
easily be a sort of magic, which makes sense if
you don't like totally get what's happening with the East,
like I mean, come on. One common trait, albeit not

(07:27):
universal across cultures, is that service magicians often work in
conjunction with various spirits who are coordinated with to perform
the actual magic in question, with witches that we're going
to get to you later, it's going to be like demons,
and then eventually the devil himself. A few years ago,
I covered the magical underground of early modern Western European cities,

(07:49):
in which your street diviner could also help you with
an abortion or even help you poison your husband. Before
divorce was legalized, women had to resort to reasonably drastic
measures in order to leave unhappy marriages. See our episode
about Aqua Tafauna for more about that. Of course, the
reality of these magical undergrounds is hard to discern. From

(08:09):
here in the twenty first century, there is ample evidence
of herbalism, alchemy, poisoning, divination, love, charms, curses, and the like.
What's less clear is whether or not some of these
folks met at black Masses performing ostensibly Christian rites with
a nude woman as an altar. There certainly is a
fair amount of writing that a tests that this happened.

(08:30):
Priests might make some money on the side selling magical
ointments that are anointed through some strange rituals, like you can,
like drip oil down the relic of some old dead
saint and then sell it as a love charm or whatever.
What's far less likely, though certainly claimed, is that these
same priests and diviners and herbalists killed children for their rituals.

(08:52):
It's incredibly unlikely that if there were a sort of
specific cult of satanic demonic counter Christians, that it was
multigeneration and lasted through the ages. But it's only these
urban groups, these magical undergrounds that I've found that seem
to have any trace of a legitimate claim to being
some kind of organized force doing what might be considered

(09:13):
black magic or definitionally witchcraft. But you know what is
an organized force doing what might be considered black magic?
The sponsors of this show. That's right, We're brought to
you by divination. Combine it with gambling and you're sure
to do well, and we're back. Mostly there were just

(09:45):
service magicians out there to help their friends and their
customers through white and black magic alike. There have perhaps
always been people willing to cast curses upon others, that is,
to do witchcraft, and there are poisoners and murderers throughout
all of it. But overall, the witch, as he or
she existed in the early modern Christian imagination, lived only

(10:07):
in that self same imagination. The real evil was, of
course caused by the inquisitors, who tried and murdered tens
of thousands of people across Europe, and oddly, even this
evil has been greatly exaggerated by the popular imagination. In
the nineteen seventies or so, as feminists and pagans worked
to reclaim witchcraft, the witch hunts were woefully understudied, and

(10:29):
you'll see claims that hundreds of thousands, or millions, up
to thirty million. I've seen people, almost exclusively women, were
killed in these witch hunts. The reality, while still nothing
to be excited about, is not nearly so dramatic. Current
best estimates hold that about ninety thousand people, a majority
of them women, were accused of witchcraft over the course

(10:51):
of several hundred years, from about fourteen fifty to seventeen fifty,
About half of those people were executed. About twenty percent
of the accused were men, though men were the majority accused.
In some countries. In Iceland, about ninety percent of those
who were accused were men. The idea that a witch
is necessarily a woman is actually a recent one, though,

(11:13):
as we'll talk about in a bit, the seeds for
that were sown by a particular medieval misogynist. During the
witch trials, women were generally perceived to be more prone
to the devil's temptations. Christianity had been around for over
a millennium before the witch trials kicked in, So why
were the witch hunts decidedly not a medieval phenomenon, but

(11:33):
an early modern one. For more than a thousand years,
witchcraft was not seen as a serious problem by the Church.
Witchcraft was, of course magic done to harm people, and
the Church they basically didn't believe in it. Witchcraft wasn't real,
That was superstitious mumbo jumbo. All magic came from God

(11:54):
as they saw it, And of course opinions varied over
time and place, but in general, all that not real.
There were certain types of magic they admitted were true,
potions that caused abortion or impotence, for example, But witchcraft
and the belief in it and the fear of it
was generally a popular phenomenon. It is something believed in

(12:16):
by the people, as it were. The Church saw itself
as the learned authorities not to be swayed by superstition.
We've got statement after statement by various Catholic authorities that
the Church would not investigate witchcraft because witchcraft did not exist. Okay,
but wouldn't it be funny if it was just like
they were in on it and that's why they didn't

(12:38):
investigate it. I bet you have like these like medieval
conspiracy theorists who are like, the reason the Church claims
to not believe in witchcraft is because they're the ones
doing it, which is funny because I mean, they were
doing weird rituals and hurting people and stuff. So maybe
those conspiracy theorists were right anyway. In the eight hundreds,
Saint Agobard wrote a book called Against the fool Fulish

(13:00):
Belief of the Common Sort concerning Hail and Thunder, which
is a sick title which basically said, Hey, witchcraft doesn't real,
you guys. Basically, believing in witchcraft was the actual problem
for the early Catholic Church. Belief in this kind of
magic was a sin. It just like wasn't a very
big deal sin. People accused of witchcraft and devil worship

(13:23):
were generally told to do penance, but it wasn't taken
seriously as a problem. In seven eighty five, the Council
of Paderborn said anyone who burns a witch will themselves
be put to death. Another old code, the Lombard Code
of six forty three, says let nobody presume to kill
a foreign serving maid or a female servant as a witch,

(13:44):
for it is not possible nor ought to be believed
by Christian minds. In eight sixty six, Pope Nicholas the
First ban torture. In twelve fifty eight Pope Alexander the
Fourth so that inquisitors shouldn't really bother investigating wins. Just
over and over again. The Church was clear whiches don't exist,

(14:07):
not really, And then the Church changed course. By the
twelfth century or so, the monopolistic power of the Church
was starting to fall apart, or at least show some cracks.
There were these heresies like the Cathars and the Waldensians,
who I think I'll be covering more in the future,
that were starting to spread. The Catholic Church figured we

(14:30):
should do something about this. We should stamp this out,
force everyone to convert back to the one true faith,
or you know, murder the shit out of them if
they don't. So they formed the Inquisition. Their main targets
in France were these heretical groups that I was talking about,
while in Spain and Portugal they targeted the Jews and
the Muslims who had been forced to convert, suspecting them

(14:52):
of secretly still being Jewish or Muslim. Much like our
main target is you with our inquisitional ads forcing you
to convert to capitalism. Here's ads and we're back and

(15:17):
the Inquisition. Of course, it's like a fucked up thing, right,
It's not a good thing to do, to have an inquisition.
But they weren't just running around setting people on fire.
By and large. People who were convicted were forced to
wear a cross like so across under their clothing or whatever,
or go on a pilgrimage. Though it started to ramp
up in its murderousness over time. I'm sure I'll be

(15:39):
covering resistance to the Inquisition and the heretical groups themselves
at a later time, and I'll come to understand this
better here and there. The Inquisition went after witches, or
at least various local church and secular authorities did. One
of the earliest, most famous cases took place on that
little island of Ireland. Okay, And this is gonna be

(15:59):
really notable because almost none of the witch hunts took
place on Ireland, and yet one of the first ones does.
Ireland is decidedly light on witch trials throughout history for
a bunch of reasons besides just being a decidedly cool place.
But the first witch trial in the British Isles was
in Ireland, in Kilkenny in thirteen twenty four. One source

(16:21):
called this the first witch trial in Europe, but you
know how much I hate the claims of like the
first in history, so I'm just gonna stick with the
first in British Isles. Also even then, like I don't know,
there were probably some before that. This trial went after
a woman who well quite possibly was doing witchcraft, that is,
things understood as magic at the time for ill intent.

(16:44):
There is a really good chance that this lady was
a poisoner. Dame Alice Kiteller was a rich woman who
inherited her father's fortune and then married the Chancellor of
Ireland's brother in twelve ninety nine, then ran an inn
and got even wealthier. Her husband died suspiciously. The story
goes like, I don't know the different husbands that are

(17:05):
all going to die have like, oh, fingernails fell out
and hair got thin or whatever. The full story goes,
according to a write up by Irish identity dot Com,
that this husband found her cupboard in the basement full
of things like entrails of roosters and eyes of ravens,
and jars of night shade, and another more jars full

(17:25):
of weird worms, and of course pieces of unbaptized babies.
How did they know that those babies in the jars
were unbaptized? Who knows? And a pot made from the
skull of a beheaded thief with which they cooked it
all anyway, the husband dies after discovering the mysterious witchcraft thing.

(17:46):
She keeps running the inn and is surrounded by young women.
More husbands show up, more husbands die. Her story is actually,
it really interestingly parallels another story I've told on this show,
the story of Elizabeth Botori. It's people mispronounce it as Bathory,
and there's a metal band called Bathory, but it's pronounced

(18:06):
but Tory, said the pet end who reads history books
for a living, which doesn't actually make me the expert.
It just means that I get lost in this stuff. Anyway.
Her story parallels but Torre's story, who probably was teaching
local women to become healers, but was accused of bathing
in the blood of virgins. She was rich and the

(18:27):
king owed her money, and so she's accused of unspeakable evil.
Alice Kayiteller, she was rich and the king owed her money.
I mean again, all of her husbands are dying mysteriously.
I think this lady's up to no good, although I
don't know, maybe they all deserved it. I'm not like
going to give the benefit of the doubt a random
medieval husband man, although I'm not really going to give

(18:49):
it to Alice here either. Anyway, After her fourth rich
husband dies mysteriously, each husband leaving a bunch of money
to either her or the oldest of her children. I've
read both a London born bishop showed up and accused
her of witchcraft. The accusation is that she goes to
the crossroads every night with her coven and like cuts

(19:09):
up living animals and fucks a demon named Robin, son
of Artisan. I want to know more about Robin's son
of Artisan, but the Internet only provides this story. So
she's found guilty, but she escapes. Most versions of the
story say that her brother in law, the Chancellor of Ireland,
helped secret her way to London. More serious analyzes seem

(19:30):
to say, well, we have no idea how she escaped
or where she went. Her handmaiden, Petronella of Meath was
burned at the stake in her place, confessing to all
sorts of demonic sins because you know, torture. This story
happens like one hundred and fifty years before the witch
trials start really kicking off, and to me, it seems

(19:51):
most likely that Alice was killing her husband's sure and
also that she was too rich and powerful and murdery
and needed to be stopped because of how that threatened
power in the area, and of course because you're not
supposed to murder people. So some of the basic ideas
of witchcraft have been going around for a long time.
Witches fuck demons at midnight sabbaths in the woods or

(20:12):
at the crossroads. They get there by flying on sticks.
The first known drawing of a woman on a broom
is drawn in the margin of a book from fourteen forty,
The Champion de Dame. Sometimes lots of witches rode the
same stick, And again, like the stick is the important part,
not the broom, right, And it seems like the sexual
energy implied by stick writing seems self evident. But I'll

(20:36):
just point it out in case you missed it. These
witches would also turn into animals, or they would ride
strange demon animals to the sabbaths or fuck demons in
animal form. But flying to the sabbaths has been an
important part of the stories for a very long time.
But again, the witch trials didn't kick off for a
long time yet. The soil was the inquisition the seed.

(21:01):
The seed was a guy with real big in cell
energy who wrote a little book called Malleus Maleficarum, The
Hammer of Witches, which we'll talk about on Wednesday. You're
gonna have to wait till Wednesday to hear about The
Hammer of witches. I can totally be trusted to record
episodes by myself. I don't know what you're talking about anyway,

(21:25):
dear guest, what would you like to plug? Well me
the guest. I have a substack. It's called my substack.
It's Margaret kiljoydot substack dot com. And I have been
putting up my tour diaries, and I've been putting up
essays and my reflections on these various things. I'll probably
write a witch thing next week, but who knows. You

(21:49):
might know if you listen in the future where it's spooky,
actually all are going to have bigger problems next week
maybe or maybe next week will be fine. I'm recording
this the day after Halloween, and you know the elections
are coming up, and you in the future know what happened,
or honestly, I suspect you don't. I suspect that people
don't know what happened yet, but I do know that

(22:12):
this episode's done. Bye.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
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Speaker 2 (22:32):
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