October 25, 2011 • 41 mins
Gather round the cauldron with Julie and Robert as they ladle out hefty servings of magical thinking, medieval psychedelics, feminist history and the power of ritual. Just what was old-school witchery all about? This episode has the answers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. J
What do you like to put in your witches brew?
A little A little frog play, yeah, rosemary, yeah, rusty garlic, yeah,
(00:24):
of course. Um hey, little crystallized ginger. Nice touch. I
highly recommend uh scaled dragon's a wolf which is mummy mind,
gulf off the raven c salt shark, root of himlock
digged in the dark course, liver of a blasheming jew
if you can get it, uh, and goll of goat
slips of you. And of course you want all the
(00:45):
silver in the moon's eclipse. That's just an old recipe
that I picked up. You're such as picked up from
old will there. But seeh I just get my stuff
from Trader Joe's and you're all of the earth the
witches all a Trader Joe's is really good, and I
mean everything for your scale of dragon to uh you know,
the eye of news and Baboon's blood. Yeah, they have
excellent pappoms blood. Uh. You know this, This is what
(01:07):
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 drop?
Oh no, yeah, sure it was just metaphorical. Yeah, sure,
(01:29):
of course there's not a real covenant. That would be weird. No, no, no,
it's metaphorical. All right, Well really, well, I would I
would imagine your your you must be needing 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
(01:50):
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, she
just and have a cauldron. No, no, today we're talking
about the witches that are burned in our memories and
sometimes yes, um who yeah, who have cauldrons, who are
meeting in the dark, who are plotting against Macbeth, that
(02:13):
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 typical
Halloween idea of just cackling old crones. I mean, you
could we could just talk for a long time about
(02:34):
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
(02:55):
behave or that if you're not careful, guys, you might
be seduced by what seems like a beautiful 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
(03:17):
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 I 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 and
(03:39):
there a 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 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 she's us
(04:00):
known of as uh. In her forward of the book,
she says witchcraft in Europe and America is essentially this
hearkening 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
(04:22):
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, and we talk about which is when we
get away from this idea of pointy hats and broomsticks,
even though broomsticks certainly play into it, as we will
(04:42):
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. I'll have to put something on the blocks
about it. But there there's some interesting material in there
about depictions of Jesus Christ in medieval art, and in
(05:02):
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 um with air quotes,
and I figers the heretical ideas or are sometimes they're
just sort of quasi heretical, where individuals end up worshiping
a more female version of Christ. In the same way
(05:24):
that there are female depictions of the Buddha. Okay, so
this is sort of a UM in an effort to
unify right, to 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
(05:46):
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 it's sorry,
I'm gonna be wrong. That's not a big deal. Yeah,
the wound is like, yeah, next time you see an
image of doubting Thomas, think about that. Um. But moving
(06:08):
on side tangent there, But back to which is um
you were saying, Yeah, Erica dong 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
(06:29):
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
(06:52):
bearer which is really powerful, but this person has the
ability to bring death right through potions magic, uh, generall
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,
(07:12):
if something goes off, there's some sort of bacterial 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
(07:35):
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 green, give her a broom, and she
can start collecting candy, right, striped tights. Right there we go.
(07:57):
But I mean it is important to understand that this
really was a prized object at the home. And 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,
(08:22):
And so when you start to think about a which
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 uh, some depictions of which is
uh quite naked on top of a stride, exceedingly naked.
(08:44):
And that's another thing that little Will Shakespeare. Um, well, no,
I don't know if they were naked in the if
there's any reference to the naked in the text, I'm
thinking of Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth, which is certainly naked,
which is awesome and uh and has some really naked
old witches in it, which I thought worked perfectly. But
he calls back to these old engravings and woodcuts where
(09:04):
you see naked women flying around in the middle of
the night talking with goats, riding goats. 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,
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,
(09:26):
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,
(09:50):
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 the broom. Yeah, they're kind of like two
interesting ways of looking at the power of the broom,
(10:12):
one which will discuss even more as the 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 and now we're about to really
sort of dive into the flying the 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,
(10:34):
So there's this idea that which is they're flying around
in broomsticks or they're flying around in 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. So they're usually on a jar of
(10:56):
ointment everything the costume. So they're taking this broom they're
coding 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
(11:16):
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
(11:40):
the skin, basically applying a crazy pharmaceutical ointment to the
genitals with a broomstick. Yes, yes, in fact 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 Kitler in she was
(12:01):
one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft
in Ireland. We have this account quote in rifling the
closet of the 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 the actual
documents that they're pulling some some of this stuff from,
and not that we put tremendous amount of stock in
(12:22):
the prosecutions materials in witchcraft trials. I mean they're no true.
Take that with a whole lot of salt. But who
knows that like the idea that there could be some
shredded truth to this is fascinating. Okay, dig a little deeper.
And this is from the Journal of the American Society
of Anesthesiologists, in 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.
(12:45):
In the paper they describe a tone written by a
sixteenth century Dutch physician, Johann we Are, who concluded that
a plant called henbane was a principal ingredient in which
is brew, along with deadly nightshade and man drake, and
according to where if 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
(13:05):
or general thals. 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
(13:25):
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
(13:47):
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
(14:08):
witches themselves are imaginative and 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
(14:31):
transcendental experiences and not invite them in folk I know. Um,
and this is interesting too. 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 skin from
that um and it's thesiolist journal. Uh. This is an
(14:52):
effective ethnobotanical technique that may be seen with Peruvian cocoa
tours who mix in their mouth the cocaine containing leaves
with alkhaline centers to enhance uptake. And this is and
this is interesting and a topic will probably go into
in Greater Daytona 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
(15:17):
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 by a guy
in the train. I've been 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 vn um
(15:38):
or something. Yeah, yeah, 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 manipulate them. So it's
not weird that someone will come up with an ointment,
and it's not weird that this person, this female in
the family, would um be the person to come up
(16:00):
with these ointments that are 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,
(16:23):
you know, why not just the ointment? Why have the broom.
And I'm just gonna point out that this perhaps was
a a proto sexual aid. So I'm gonna say a
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
(16:44):
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 you're and you're eight and all,
but you've also defiled this object which has um sympathetic
(17:05):
and not sympathetic, oh yes, sympathetic importance in the household
and in the family. And uh and also is a
symbol of of 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
(17:27):
still Yeah, we just did the podcast that they dealt
with the female orgasm. Obviously, we still as scientists are
still figuring out exactly what sexual 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 in the thirteenth century, is
opposed to the sixteenth century. Uh. They were certainly um
(17:50):
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. Uh.
But after this break, we're gonna really get into the
idea of magical thinking and how that enforces all these
things we're talking about. This podcast is brought to you
(18:11):
by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
to life's questions. All right, so we're back. Yeah, we've
solved the broomstick problem here. Yeah, and I want to
(18:33):
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 which or cannibalistic ogress. Uh,
you know with the tusks for for teeth. Yeah, and
she also shows up in uh. There's a movie called
Jack Frost which Mr Sents theater three thousand dead years
ago and it has the Bobbyaga in it. So she's
(18:55):
a really iconic character in Russian myth um. And she's
a witch. And she 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 device for crushing up various herbs and what have
(19:16):
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. Again, here are these these symbols of domesticity,
right that that are being harnessed for for powerful uh
goings on with witches, which I think is really interesting
and really plays into this idea of the law of contagion,
(19:41):
which is one of the two laws of sympathetic magic. Yeah.
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
(20:04):
hands are really disgusting. But but then 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. And
we continue to do this sort of thing today. I mean,
(20:25):
I just dealing with my own stuff. I'm wearing my
dad's watch, um 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 imbued
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 two things, and we think if if I
(20:48):
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 hard water
aired too 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
(21:08):
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
(21:28):
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 painted, objects becoming haunted,
(21:52):
objects made holy through contact with the really important people
the whole. I'll never wash this hand again because his
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
(22:13):
get them. Right, to hide your fingernail 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
(22:35):
place a curse on me, to make a nail clipping
sculpture of me, and then drive pins into me exactly
that that's my fear um and can only take ninety
years with nail clippings, and real quick. Another another idea
that's tied of you mentioned vodoo, and of course that
instantly brings the mind the idea of the voodoo doll
and uh. And you see variations on this theme in
(22:56):
in numerous magical um and and really just 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 burned somebody in effigy,
I am And you know this is something you see
and everything from Guy fox Day to Burning Man. You know,
where an effigy is burned and I'm by burning the effigy,
(23:19):
you're on some level hurting the person or the idea
or feeling or thing that it represents. We see this
in political 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
(23:42):
terms of the ted dot com talk that you sent me.
It's by skeptic Michael Schermer, and he was talking about, Uh,
he's using an examples of how we can't help you
describe meaning or see patterns, and he brought up the
case of the Virgin Mary visage on the grilled cheese
orgin marry grilled cheese. Yeah. Yeah, he's saying that, you know,
we've got this really sort of grainy pattern recognition in
(24:06):
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 than it
(24:26):
does the Virgin 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 at 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 may or may not make sense
(24:47):
in the clouds. Alright, alright, yeah, I mean it is
it depends on the birth of 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 Huper shoops our article
about the dopamine connection, neurobiologists Peter Breger found that people
with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find
(25:07):
significance and coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where
there are none. In one trial which skeptics and paranormal
believers were both given the drug el dopa, of course,
I know it sounds like a street bill. Dopa increases
dopamine levels in the brain. The skeptics began to perform
much more like the believers. You sent me an interesting
(25:27):
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. Or
you could be just talking about a local church coming
together and engaging in song, just like a glee club
(25:50):
engaging in song. 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 are
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
(26:12):
cultures to flourish while others Paris sets 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 brought up the observation that
in modern day military things like um, marching in formation
or muscular bonding, right, muscular bonding. Yeah, and uh, even
(26:37):
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, And I don't know the
rest um The rest varies depending on who's singing it.
I think, yeah, it's something about mamas and boots. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. Clearly, I have a vast knowledge of
military uh songs. But in any case, what they were
(26:58):
saying is that, you know, we still engage in these
rituals even though 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
that old school version of a very regimented forces meeting
on a battlefield and marching into place, basically playing out
(27:21):
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,
It builds this this cohesive feeling that we are we
are one, you know. It's I mean, it's not like
that the idea you see in every boot camp movie ever,
that these guys enter is this rag tag group of miscreants,
(27:42):
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 between 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
(28:06):
thinking give us a margin of control over the randomness
in our lives. Um. This is from the article says
magical thinking is most evident precisely when people feel most helpless.
Geori 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
(28:28):
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 sealed room right foot first. Yeah,
And I think sometimes it can come down to your
(28:48):
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
(29:09):
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 uh,
it's been brought up before to that ritual healing practices
aren't too far away from like the placebo effect, right right, Yeah,
Like if you if you engage in this thing, you
(29:30):
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 uh, this movement and sound
(29:52):
in a communal ritual, um, it really comes down to
economic benefit, with the primary goal of of being to
spot the reloader, 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
(30:13):
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. I think it's fascinating, right,
I mean, is this is particularly uh important back in
the days, you know, obviously when uh people got together
(30:37):
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
(30:59):
you've got other things 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 are 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 John again.
(31:21):
She talks about this in her forward 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 participant,
if not that person is not participating, then they're weakening
what the group effort is. The desire for magic cannot
(31:41):
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. Huh. That reminds
me a little bit of this bit that I ran
across in this book The False Myth, Religion and the
(32:02):
Rise of Representation by David Hawks, 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 of ideas. All right, But by the eighteenth century,
(32:25):
most modern 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 um Hawks points out, and
I'm going to read a quotation here. He says, by
(32:48):
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 us 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
(33:08):
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 unreal thing? I mean,
the internet itself is kind of this. You know, where
(33:30):
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
(33:54):
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 one more thing
about about all this before we close out the podcast,
(34:18):
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 Witches, Sabbath and the Great he Goat,
which is this this lovely image and Gooya's Goya was awesome.
And so it's all these women and they're they're they're
arranged like this big semicircle around this speaker like a
hare um. Yeah, and there's somebody playing the accordion, which
(34:40):
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
(35:00):
to worship and lay with the horned one, and he's
so gross and vile. And but in this image the
Great heat Goat had it seems to inspire some of
the more sympathetic aspects of like of of a goat
for starters, and also this kind of he seems like
a wise old man and these ladies are I can't
really judge him for going on here and what he
has to say that's a goat that looks like has wisdom. Yeah, no,
(35:24):
I think that's interesting take. But I still prefer the
like um, the red hued 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 or Ernest world nine played in The Devil's Reign,
(35:44):
which had a cameo by Anton LaVey of the Church
of Satan. But Ernest borg nine turns into this man
goat creature and it's pretty awesome. I I just can't
imagine Ernest nine as Satan. Yeah, but real quick, this
was a Halloween episode. We didn't you didn't explain your
costume well, because you're supposed to into it what it is?
(36:07):
Your witch? Yes, excellent. Ye should have brought up broom, Yeah, yeah,
would have been good. Yeah. Yeah. And of course I'm
dressed as the great heat Goat, thus the goatee and
the horns, I got that, yeah, and these filthy hands.
But anyway, and you look very wise, by the way,
thank you. I would prefer to be the wise heat
Goat and the just deplorable wretched he goat, yeah, thank
(36:30):
you for not painting your body in red. Oh yeah,
I didn't get up untime this morning. You know how
it is. Well, let me reach into the cauldron of
listeners mail and poke around amongst the gibers and the
wolf teeth and the and the mummy wrappings and see
shark eggs, and let me see what we have to
read from our listener. Ian on Facebook and he was
(36:52):
responding to our recent episode about the orgasm Wars evolution
of the the orchasm, and he says, hey, guys, love
the podcast. Uh, not to get to nippicky, but sexual health. Uh.
This is a subject that I have a great interest
in and I feel it necessary to report on a
couple of airs in this episode. First, and I think
most importantly, you repeatedly stated that the male orgasm is
(37:12):
required for pregnancy. This is an entirely true The pre
siminal fluid that is produced by the male organ for
lubrication also contains enough sperm to cause of pregnancy, thus
the reason that the pullout and method of birth control
is not reliable. Unfortunately, this misconception is all too often repeated,
and in this day and age of team practice, the
people really need to know that male orgasm does not
need to occur to cause pregnancy. And then he initially
(37:34):
forgets his second thing, but then he uh points out
that um clitterus is acceptable pronounced either way. So you
said clitter as, I said claturus. I said, let's call
the whole thing off. I freaked out and thought that
I was saying it wrong and thought that Colaturus sounded
like a wizard's name. Yeah, I didn't realize you coul
say clatorus is to me though, that sounds like a
(37:55):
great antclaturus or something, which I mean like there could
be a great ance tours. But back to Ian's first
point about the presence of sperm and pre siminal fluid um.
Looking around, it looks like there are different studies to
go back and forth. There's some that are saying, yeah,
there's definitely in some cases sperm in this fluid. On
other other instances you peak that see people saying, oh,
(38:15):
that's almost never there. So I don't know. There seems
to be a lot of literature either either way. Certainly
it would behoove one too to be careful, to be yes,
to take caution. In fact, there's a Scrubs episode I
believe that is it called it is his name John,
the main character. Um, he impregnates his girlfriend without actually
(38:36):
having sex that are based on what you just described
her And I'm not going to go into detail, but
no spoiler should okay. And we also heard from our
listener Thoor from sweet would even if he didn't have
anything to say, I would have to. I don't have
to mention that we have a listener in door and
Sweeten just pretty awesome. Yeah, And he says, hey, guys,
So I just listened to the podcast on the Lies,
(38:56):
and IBA struck me when you were talking about the
aliens who couldn't lie, and I think I may have
been referring to China me Elvil's embassy town and that
he says, if you can't lie, are you then all knowing? Example,
someone asks you, what are the first fifteen decimals of pie?
You start by saying, well, three point one, four, one,
(39:17):
five um um. If you can't lie, you have to
keep going. So does the inability to lie make you
know the fifteen decimals? Maybe a bad example that you
get the idea. Another thing, if you were told when
you were a kid that watching TV two clothes makes
your your eyes square and nobody's ever told you that
it isn't true? Is saying it then a lie? Thanks
(39:37):
for a lot of very interesting stuff. Smiley face love
from Sweden thor all right, yeah, I don't think that that.
If you've not been disabused from the idea, then I
don't think that it's lying. Right. What it instantly makes
me think up two is we discussed this in the
False Memory podcast. It's about how you can you can
have a memory that is false and you say saying it,
(40:00):
you think it's true, but on a deeper cognitive level,
brain scans reveal that you might know the brain may
know that you are lying. And I find it and
that's just I just find that an interesting idea, especially
in relation to this, the idea that even as we
if we believe something, it doesn't mean that we believe
it in the deeper levels of the brain. UM. I
(40:22):
also think it's fascinating that in Sweden, perhaps maybe this
is a cultural thing, that the myth is that if
you sit too close to the t V your eyes
will turn into squares, as opposed to in the United States,
if you sit too close to the t v you
will go blind. Oh I didn't notice that. Yeah, I
guess that's the thing. I read this and I was
just instantly thinking about our idea. I think your eyes
square to some square eye? What is square eyed? I
(40:44):
didn't maybe turn your round eyes into like the actual
into actual squares, IRUs into squares. It would be kind
of cool. We may have lost something in translation there,
but anyway, I love getting email that said love from
Sweden thor so hopefully, hopefully we'll get more of that
from other people with even if you don't live in Sweden. Yes, So,
(41:05):
if you would like to share some ideas with us,
if you would like to to provide feedback on a
podcast episode, present ideas for future episodes. You can find
us on Facebook and you can find us on Twitter,
and I'm both of those. We go by the moniker
below the Mind and or also you can just search
for stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook Twitter and you'll
probably find us, and you can always drop us a
(41:26):
line at blow the Mind at how stupporks dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow,
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. J
What do you like to put in your witches brew?
A little A little frog play, yeah, rosemary, yeah, rusty garlic, yeah,
(00:24):
of course. Um hey, little crystallized ginger. Nice touch. I
highly recommend uh scaled dragon's a wolf which is mummy mind,
gulf off the raven c salt shark, root of himlock
digged in the dark course, liver of a blasheming jew
if you can get it, uh, and goll of goat
slips of you. And of course you want all the
(00:45):
silver in the moon's eclipse. That's just an old recipe
that I picked up. You're such as picked up from
old will there. But seeh I just get my stuff
from Trader Joe's and you're all of the earth the
witches all a Trader Joe's is really good, and I
mean everything for your scale of dragon to uh you know,
the eye of news and Baboon's blood. Yeah, they have
excellent pappoms blood. Uh. You know this, This is what
(01:07):
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 drop?
Oh no, yeah, sure it was just metaphorical. Yeah, sure,
(01:29):
of course there's not a real covenant. That would be weird. No, no, no,
it's metaphorical. All right, Well really, well, I would I
would imagine your your you must be needing 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
(01:50):
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, she
just and have a cauldron. No, no, today we're talking
about the witches that are burned in our memories and
sometimes yes, um who yeah, who have cauldrons, who are
meeting in the dark, who are plotting against Macbeth, that
(02:13):
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 typical
Halloween idea of just cackling old crones. I mean, you
could we could just talk for a long time about
(02:34):
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
(02:55):
behave or that if you're not careful, guys, you might
be seduced by what seems like a beautiful 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
(03:17):
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 I 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 and
(03:39):
there a 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 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 she's us
(04:00):
known of as uh. In her forward of the book,
she says witchcraft in Europe and America is essentially this
hearkening 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
(04:22):
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, and we talk about which is when we
get away from this idea of pointy hats and broomsticks,
even though broomsticks certainly play into it, as we will
(04:42):
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. I'll have to put something on the blocks
about it. But there there's some interesting material in there
about depictions of Jesus Christ in medieval art, and in
(05:02):
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 um with air quotes,
and I figers the heretical ideas or are sometimes they're
just sort of quasi heretical, where individuals end up worshiping
a more female version of Christ. In the same way
(05:24):
that there are female depictions of the Buddha. Okay, so
this is sort of a UM in an effort to
unify right, to 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
(05:46):
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 it's sorry,
I'm gonna be wrong. That's not a big deal. Yeah,
the wound is like, yeah, next time you see an
image of doubting Thomas, think about that. Um. But moving
(06:08):
on side tangent there, But back to which is um
you were saying, Yeah, Erica dong 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
(06:29):
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
(06:52):
bearer which is really powerful, but this person has the
ability to bring death right through potions magic, uh, generall
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,
(07:12):
if something goes off, there's some sort of bacterial 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
(07:35):
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 green, give her a broom, and she
can start collecting candy, right, striped tights. Right there we go.
(07:57):
But I mean it is important to understand that this
really was a prized object at the home. And 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,
(08:22):
And so when you start to think about a which
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 uh, some depictions of which is
uh quite naked on top of a stride, exceedingly naked.
(08:44):
And that's another thing that little Will Shakespeare. Um, well, no,
I don't know if they were naked in the if
there's any reference to the naked in the text, I'm
thinking of Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth, which is certainly naked,
which is awesome and uh and has some really naked
old witches in it, which I thought worked perfectly. But
he calls back to these old engravings and woodcuts where
(09:04):
you see naked women flying around in the middle of
the night talking with goats, riding goats. 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,
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,
(09:26):
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,
(09:50):
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 the broom. Yeah, they're kind of like two
interesting ways of looking at the power of the broom,
(10:12):
one which will discuss even more as the 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 and now we're about to really
sort of dive into the flying the 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,
(10:34):
So there's this idea that which is they're flying around
in broomsticks or they're flying around in 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. So they're usually on a jar of
(10:56):
ointment everything the costume. So they're taking this broom they're
coding 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
(11:16):
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
(11:40):
the skin, basically applying a crazy pharmaceutical ointment to the
genitals with a broomstick. Yes, yes, in fact 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 Kitler in she was
(12:01):
one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft
in Ireland. We have this account quote in rifling the
closet of the 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 the actual
documents that they're pulling some some of this stuff from,
and not that we put tremendous amount of stock in
(12:22):
the prosecutions materials in witchcraft trials. I mean they're no true.
Take that with a whole lot of salt. But who
knows that like the idea that there could be some
shredded truth to this is fascinating. Okay, dig a little deeper.
And this is from the Journal of the American Society
of Anesthesiologists, in 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.
(12:45):
In the paper they describe a tone written by a
sixteenth century Dutch physician, Johann we Are, who concluded that
a plant called henbane was a principal ingredient in which
is brew, along with deadly nightshade and man drake, and
according to where if 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
(13:05):
or general thals. 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
(13:25):
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
(13:47):
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
(14:08):
witches themselves are imaginative and 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
(14:31):
transcendental experiences and not invite them in folk I know. Um,
and this is interesting too. 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 skin from
that um and it's thesiolist journal. Uh. This is an
(14:52):
effective ethnobotanical technique that may be seen with Peruvian cocoa
tours who mix in their mouth the cocaine containing leaves
with alkhaline centers to enhance uptake. And this is and
this is interesting and a topic will probably go into
in Greater Daytona 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
(15:17):
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 by a guy
in the train. I've been 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 vn um
(15:38):
or something. Yeah, yeah, 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 manipulate them. So it's
not weird that someone will come up with an ointment,
and it's not weird that this person, this female in
the family, would um be the person to come up
(16:00):
with these ointments that are 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,
(16:23):
you know, why not just the ointment? Why have the broom.
And I'm just gonna point out that this perhaps was
a a proto sexual aid. So I'm gonna say a
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
(16:44):
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 you're and you're eight and all,
but you've also defiled this object which has um sympathetic
(17:05):
and not sympathetic, oh yes, sympathetic importance in the household
and in the family. And uh and also is a
symbol of of 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
(17:27):
still Yeah, we just did the podcast that they dealt
with the female orgasm. Obviously, we still as scientists are
still figuring out exactly what sexual 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 in the thirteenth century, is
opposed to the sixteenth century. Uh. They were certainly um
(17:50):
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. Uh.
But after this break, we're gonna really get into the
idea of magical thinking and how that enforces all these
things we're talking about. This podcast is brought to you
(18:11):
by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
to life's questions. All right, so we're back. Yeah, we've
solved the broomstick problem here. Yeah, and I want to
(18:33):
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 which or cannibalistic ogress. Uh,
you know with the tusks for for teeth. Yeah, and
she also shows up in uh. There's a movie called
Jack Frost which Mr Sents theater three thousand dead years
ago and it has the Bobbyaga in it. So she's
(18:55):
a really iconic character in Russian myth um. And she's
a witch. And she 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 device for crushing up various herbs and what have
(19:16):
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. Again, here are these these symbols of domesticity,
right that that are being harnessed for for powerful uh
goings on with witches, which I think is really interesting
and really plays into this idea of the law of contagion,
(19:41):
which is one of the two laws of sympathetic magic. Yeah.
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
(20:04):
hands are really disgusting. But but then 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. And
we continue to do this sort of thing today. I mean,
(20:25):
I just dealing with my own stuff. I'm wearing my
dad's watch, um 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 imbued
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 two things, and we think if if I
(20:48):
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 hard water
aired too 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
(21:08):
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
(21:28):
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 painted, objects becoming haunted,
(21:52):
objects made holy through contact with the really important people
the whole. I'll never wash this hand again because his
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
(22:13):
get them. Right, to hide your fingernail 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
(22:35):
place a curse on me, to make a nail clipping
sculpture of me, and then drive pins into me exactly
that that's my fear um and can only take ninety
years with nail clippings, and real quick. Another another idea
that's tied of you mentioned vodoo, and of course that
instantly brings the mind the idea of the voodoo doll
and uh. And you see variations on this theme in
(22:56):
in numerous magical um and and really just 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 burned somebody in effigy,
I am And you know this is something you see
and everything from Guy fox Day to Burning Man. You know,
where an effigy is burned and I'm by burning the effigy,
(23:19):
you're on some level hurting the person or the idea
or feeling or thing that it represents. We see this
in political 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
(23:42):
terms of the ted dot com talk that you sent me.
It's by skeptic Michael Schermer, and he was talking about, Uh,
he's using an examples of how we can't help you
describe meaning or see patterns, and he brought up the
case of the Virgin Mary visage on the grilled cheese
orgin marry grilled cheese. Yeah. Yeah, he's saying that, you know,
we've got this really sort of grainy pattern recognition in
(24:06):
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 than it
(24:26):
does the Virgin 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 at 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 may or may not make sense
(24:47):
in the clouds. Alright, alright, yeah, I mean it is
it depends on the birth of 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 Huper shoops our article
about the dopamine connection, neurobiologists Peter Breger found that people
with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find
(25:07):
significance and coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where
there are none. In one trial which skeptics and paranormal
believers were both given the drug el dopa, of course,
I know it sounds like a street bill. Dopa increases
dopamine levels in the brain. The skeptics began to perform
much more like the believers. You sent me an interesting
(25:27):
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. Or
you could be just talking about a local church coming
together and engaging in song, just like a glee club
(25:50):
engaging in song. 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 are
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
(26:12):
cultures to flourish while others Paris sets 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 brought up the observation that
in modern day military things like um, marching in formation
or muscular bonding, right, muscular bonding. Yeah, and uh, even
(26:37):
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, And I don't know the
rest um The rest varies depending on who's singing it.
I think, yeah, it's something about mamas and boots. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. Clearly, I have a vast knowledge of
military uh songs. But in any case, what they were
(26:58):
saying is that, you know, we still engage in these
rituals even though 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
that old school version of a very regimented forces meeting
on a battlefield and marching into place, basically playing out
(27:21):
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,
It builds this this cohesive feeling that we are we
are one, you know. It's I mean, it's not like
that the idea you see in every boot camp movie ever,
that these guys enter is this rag tag group of miscreants,
(27:42):
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 between 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
(28:06):
thinking give us a margin of control over the randomness
in our lives. Um. This is from the article says
magical thinking is most evident precisely when people feel most helpless.
Geori 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
(28:28):
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 sealed room right foot first. Yeah,
And I think sometimes it can come down to your
(28:48):
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
(29:09):
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 uh,
it's been brought up before to that ritual healing practices
aren't too far away from like the placebo effect, right right, Yeah,
Like if you if you engage in this thing, you
(29:30):
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 uh, this movement and sound
(29:52):
in a communal ritual, um, it really comes down to
economic benefit, with the primary goal of of being to
spot the reloader, 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
(30:13):
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. I think it's fascinating, right,
I mean, is this is particularly uh important back in
the days, you know, obviously when uh people got together
(30:37):
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
(30:59):
you've got other things 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 are 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 John again.
(31:21):
She talks about this in her forward 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 participant,
if not that person is not participating, then they're weakening
what the group effort is. The desire for magic cannot
(31:41):
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. Huh. That reminds
me a little bit of this bit that I ran
across in this book The False Myth, Religion and the
(32:02):
Rise of Representation by David Hawks, 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 of ideas. All right, But by the eighteenth century,
(32:25):
most modern 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 um Hawks points out, and
I'm going to read a quotation here. He says, by
(32:48):
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 us 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
(33:08):
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 unreal thing? I mean,
the internet itself is kind of this. You know, where
(33:30):
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
(33:54):
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 one more thing
about about all this before we close out the podcast,
(34:18):
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 Witches, Sabbath and the Great he Goat,
which is this this lovely image and Gooya's Goya was awesome.
And so it's all these women and they're they're they're
arranged like this big semicircle around this speaker like a
hare um. Yeah, and there's somebody playing the accordion, which
(34:40):
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
(35:00):
to worship and lay with the horned one, and he's
so gross and vile. And but in this image the
Great heat Goat had it seems to inspire some of
the more sympathetic aspects of like of of a goat
for starters, and also this kind of he seems like
a wise old man and these ladies are I can't
really judge him for going on here and what he
has to say that's a goat that looks like has wisdom. Yeah, no,
(35:24):
I think that's interesting take. But I still prefer the
like um, the red hued 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 or Ernest world nine played in The Devil's Reign,
(35:44):
which had a cameo by Anton LaVey of the Church
of Satan. But Ernest borg nine turns into this man
goat creature and it's pretty awesome. I I just can't
imagine Ernest nine as Satan. Yeah, but real quick, this
was a Halloween episode. We didn't you didn't explain your
costume well, because you're supposed to into it what it is?
(36:07):
Your witch? Yes, excellent. Ye should have brought up broom, Yeah, yeah,
would have been good. Yeah. Yeah. And of course I'm
dressed as the great heat Goat, thus the goatee and
the horns, I got that, yeah, and these filthy hands.
But anyway, and you look very wise, by the way,
thank you. I would prefer to be the wise heat
Goat and the just deplorable wretched he goat, yeah, thank
(36:30):
you for not painting your body in red. Oh yeah,
I didn't get up untime this morning. You know how
it is. Well, let me reach into the cauldron of
listeners mail and poke around amongst the gibers and the
wolf teeth and the and the mummy wrappings and see
shark eggs, and let me see what we have to
read from our listener. Ian on Facebook and he was
(36:52):
responding to our recent episode about the orgasm Wars evolution
of the the orchasm, and he says, hey, guys, love
the podcast. Uh, not to get to nippicky, but sexual health. Uh.
This is a subject that I have a great interest
in and I feel it necessary to report on a
couple of airs in this episode. First, and I think
most importantly, you repeatedly stated that the male orgasm is
(37:12):
required for pregnancy. This is an entirely true The pre
siminal fluid that is produced by the male organ for
lubrication also contains enough sperm to cause of pregnancy, thus
the reason that the pullout and method of birth control
is not reliable. Unfortunately, this misconception is all too often repeated,
and in this day and age of team practice, the
people really need to know that male orgasm does not
need to occur to cause pregnancy. And then he initially
(37:34):
forgets his second thing, but then he uh points out
that um clitterus is acceptable pronounced either way. So you
said clitter as, I said claturus. I said, let's call
the whole thing off. I freaked out and thought that
I was saying it wrong and thought that Colaturus sounded
like a wizard's name. Yeah, I didn't realize you coul
say clatorus is to me though, that sounds like a
(37:55):
great antclaturus or something, which I mean like there could
be a great ance tours. But back to Ian's first
point about the presence of sperm and pre siminal fluid um.
Looking around, it looks like there are different studies to
go back and forth. There's some that are saying, yeah,
there's definitely in some cases sperm in this fluid. On
other other instances you peak that see people saying, oh,
(38:15):
that's almost never there. So I don't know. There seems
to be a lot of literature either either way. Certainly
it would behoove one too to be careful, to be yes,
to take caution. In fact, there's a Scrubs episode I
believe that is it called it is his name John,
the main character. Um, he impregnates his girlfriend without actually
(38:36):
having sex that are based on what you just described
her And I'm not going to go into detail, but
no spoiler should okay. And we also heard from our
listener Thoor from sweet would even if he didn't have
anything to say, I would have to. I don't have
to mention that we have a listener in door and
Sweeten just pretty awesome. Yeah, And he says, hey, guys,
So I just listened to the podcast on the Lies,
(38:56):
and IBA struck me when you were talking about the
aliens who couldn't lie, and I think I may have
been referring to China me Elvil's embassy town and that
he says, if you can't lie, are you then all knowing? Example,
someone asks you, what are the first fifteen decimals of pie?
You start by saying, well, three point one, four, one,
(39:17):
five um um. If you can't lie, you have to
keep going. So does the inability to lie make you
know the fifteen decimals? Maybe a bad example that you
get the idea. Another thing, if you were told when
you were a kid that watching TV two clothes makes
your your eyes square and nobody's ever told you that
it isn't true? Is saying it then a lie? Thanks
(39:37):
for a lot of very interesting stuff. Smiley face love
from Sweden thor all right, yeah, I don't think that that.
If you've not been disabused from the idea, then I
don't think that it's lying. Right. What it instantly makes
me think up two is we discussed this in the
False Memory podcast. It's about how you can you can
have a memory that is false and you say saying it,
(40:00):
you think it's true, but on a deeper cognitive level,
brain scans reveal that you might know the brain may
know that you are lying. And I find it and
that's just I just find that an interesting idea, especially
in relation to this, the idea that even as we
if we believe something, it doesn't mean that we believe
it in the deeper levels of the brain. UM. I
(40:22):
also think it's fascinating that in Sweden, perhaps maybe this
is a cultural thing, that the myth is that if
you sit too close to the t V your eyes
will turn into squares, as opposed to in the United States,
if you sit too close to the t v you
will go blind. Oh I didn't notice that. Yeah, I
guess that's the thing. I read this and I was
just instantly thinking about our idea. I think your eyes
square to some square eye? What is square eyed? I
(40:44):
didn't maybe turn your round eyes into like the actual
into actual squares, IRUs into squares. It would be kind
of cool. We may have lost something in translation there,
but anyway, I love getting email that said love from
Sweden thor so hopefully, hopefully we'll get more of that
from other people with even if you don't live in Sweden. Yes, So,
(41:05):
if you would like to share some ideas with us,
if you would like to to provide feedback on a
podcast episode, present ideas for future episodes. You can find
us on Facebook and you can find us on Twitter,
and I'm both of those. We go by the moniker
below the Mind and or also you can just search
for stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook Twitter and you'll
probably find us, and you can always drop us a
(41:26):
line at blow the Mind at how stupporks dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
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