History of Witches, Witchcraft, and Folklore

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Witches Are More Complicated Than Popular Culture Suggests

When most people think about witches, they imagine pointed hats, broomsticks, cauldrons, black cats, and evil curses. Modern entertainment has created a very recognizable image of the witch, but the reality behind witch folklore is far stranger and far more complicated. In this episode of Wondering Monsters Podcast, the hosts dive deep into the history of witches, tracing the idea across ancient mythology, medieval superstition, religious fear, and modern spiritual movements. The conversation begins with a discussion about how difficult it is to define what a witch actually is. Historically, the term has been used in wildly different ways depending on the culture and time period. Sometimes witches were believed to be supernatural monsters. Other times they were accused healers, widows, outsiders, or simply people who frightened society. The hosts point out that the concept of the witch has evolved continuously for thousands of years, absorbing elements from folklore, religion, social panic, and politics. One interesting point raised during the episode is that witches were not always viewed as human beings. In ancient traditions, witches often resembled monstrous creatures more than magical people. This distinction becomes important when examining some of the earliest origins of witch mythology.

The Ancient Origins of Witch Folklore

The hosts explore the ancient Roman and Italian figure known as the Strix or Striga, a terrifying nocturnal being associated with blood drinking and attacks on infants. These creatures resembled bird-like female monsters and are considered by some historians to be among the earliest prototypes for later witch legends. Over time, the Striga evolved from a supernatural monster into something closer to a human magical practitioner. This evolution demonstrates how mythology and folklore blend together across centuries. Ancient fears of monsters gradually merged with fears surrounding magic, outsiders, and forbidden knowledge. The episode repeatedly emphasizes that witch folklore is not one single tradition. Instead, it is an enormous mixture of ancient myths, social fears, folk healing practices, religious conflicts, and supernatural beliefs that changed from region to region. The discussion also touches on the “evil eye,” a belief found across many cultures. The evil eye involves the idea that envy or jealousy can cause harm through supernatural influence. Although not strictly witchcraft, it shares themes commonly associated with magical harm and curses.

Baba Yaga and the Fear of the Wilderness

One of the most fascinating parts of the episode centers on Baba Yaga, the legendary witch-like figure from Slavic folklore. Baba Yaga lives deep within the forest inside a hut that stands on giant chicken legs. She flies through the air using a mortar and pestle and occupies a strange space between monster, spirit, and wise woman. The hosts discuss theories suggesting Baba Yaga may represent a connection between the living and the dead. Her unusual hut may even symbolize ancient burial practices involving raised coffins. This interpretation transforms Baba Yaga from a simple fairy tale villain into a symbolic guardian of liminal spaces and death rituals. The wilderness itself becomes a recurring theme throughout the episode. Forests, isolated places, and untamed lands were historically associated with danger and witchcraft. People who lived outside normal social structures often became targets of suspicion. The hosts suggest that witches frequently symbolized society’s fear of the wild, the unknown, and those who refused to conform.

The Salem Witch Trials and Moral Panic

No discussion of witches would be complete without the Salem Witch Trials. The hosts examine how the famous events in colonial Massachusetts were likely driven more by social fear, paranoia, and scapegoating than by actual magical practices. They explain how accusations of witchcraft were often connected to property disputes, religious extremism, and community tensions. Vulnerable individuals such as widows, outsiders, and marginalized people frequently became targets. The conversation highlights how accusations of witchcraft allowed communities to blame someone for unexplained tragedies like illness, crop failure, or death. The hosts also discuss Tituba, the enslaved woman connected to the Salem trials, and how fears of foreign practices and unfamiliar beliefs contributed to the hysteria. Throughout the discussion, the podcast explores how societies create “witches” by projecting fears onto others.

Witch Hunts, Power, and Social Control

A major theme of the episode is that witch hunts were often less about magic and more about social control. The hosts repeatedly point out that accusations frequently benefited powerful individuals or institutions. Wealthy widows, independent women, healers, and outsiders were especially vulnerable. The podcast examines historical cases like Alice Kyteler in Ireland and the infamous “Affair of the Poisons” in France. These stories involved allegations of poisoning, black magic, demonic rituals, and murder. Whether every accusation was true is impossible to know, but the cases reveal how fear and fascination surrounding witchcraft became deeply intertwined with politics and power. The hosts argue that the true horror behind witchcraft history may not be witches themselves, but rather societies willing to torture and execute people based on suspicion and superstition.

Modern Witches and Wicca

The episode concludes by discussing the rise of modern witchcraft movements such as Wicca. Unlike historical accusations of witchcraft, many contemporary practitioners openly identify as witches. The hosts reference Gerald Gardner and the emergence of Wicca in the mid-20th century, which helped reshape public perceptions of witches from evil figures into spiritual practitioners. Modern witchcraft often focuses on nature spirituality, ritual practices, symbolism, meditation, and personal empowerment rather than the sinister imagery traditionally associated with witches. However, the hosts acknowledge that the debate surrounding the origins and authenticity of modern witchcraft traditions remains controversial. Ultimately, the episode portrays witches as cultural mirrors reflecting humanity’s fears, anxieties, spiritual beliefs, and social conflicts across history.

A Fascinating Exploration of Witch Lore

This episode of Wondering Monsters Podcast offers a thoughtful and entertaining exploration of witches across mythology, folklore, religion, and history. From ancient blood-drinking monsters and Slavic legends to Salem hysteria and modern Wicca, the discussion reveals how the image of the witch has constantly evolved. More importantly, the episode challenges listeners to consider why societies create witches in the first place. Are witches supernatural beings, misunderstood healers, social scapegoats, or symbols of rebellion against authority? The answer, much like witch folklore itself, is complicated. For fans of folklore, paranormal history, mythology, occult traditions, and strange cultural mysteries, this deep dive into witchcraft offers plenty to think about long after the episode ends.

Links from the Show

• Leprechauns: Real History of Irish Folklore, Fairy Law, and Hidden Treasure
• Necronomicon & Cursed Books Explained
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and the Wild Man Tradition
• Curses, Haunted Dolls, and Cursed Treasure
• Hellhounds in Mythology & Folklore
• Are Real Psychics Actually Able To Predict The Future?

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Licensing Information

• Title: Entry of the Gladiators
• Composer: Julius Fučík
• Library of Congress (Public Domain)
• Podcast theme song version edited/arranged/mixed by Dan Swift

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Transcription

*Transcription was automatically generated and may contain errors.

(Music)

Baba: So what happens when you record a witch conversation to the cloud in the middle of the nasty mercury retrograde? We're going to find out. (Laughter) This is so much more. Yes, it's so much more on today's Wondering Monsters. One of the many things we're wondering about, like Bigfoot, which of course we'll talk about, witches have a wide net. We tend to think of them now as either wiccans or as devil-worshipping women or something like that. Not all witches are women, either contemporary or historically. They're not all human, which is probably a great place to start. I think wiccans are all human, I think. I'm not an expert. Wiccans, leave it in the comments. The comments, they better be more than one. There's not toilet trouble upon you.

Danny C: Growing up, I used to think, witches, women, warlocks, men, same thing though, but that is not the case. Two completely different things.

Baba: Like many things, the answer is it depends. It depends. So among modern practicing witches, pagan and neo-pagan witches, the tradition has been since the 1950s or so that a lot of male practitioners will still call themselves witches. And historically, that was also largely the case. There was a claim that the word "warlock" was ahistoric and it was more of a slur than anything. But actually, there's been a bit of pushback on that lately with some male practitioners saying, "No, there's legitimate reasons for me to be able to call myself a warlock," and they defend it. And I've got too much going on then to get into that. You can call yourself whatever you want, and we're probably still cool too. It's a bit of a conversation anyway. I personally like the... I like witch. And actually, I like the ambiguity of it. As we'll get into, because they haven't always been considered human. And sometimes they're in this in-between kind of place where it's not clear they're humanoid, but not necessarily human. They appear... You'll find echoes to the fey discussions we've had and to the leprechaun and why its clothes are kind of like people's clothes, but not the right size or not quite... Something's a little bit off. They could only afford things three sizes up because they had to rush it to show up in the edge of the woods.

WDG: Here's a question. There's no real... All of the stuff that we have that's the modern look and modern folklore stuff, there was no real singular point. It's all just an amalgam of stuff. It's not really like there's no real... I couldn't come up with any... There's people that practice magic. Maybe we'll call them witchcrafts or whatever, specifically evil magic. But that's more just people being accused of doing something it wasn't like. But then the whole covens and flying around on broomsticks and all that. That's just instances of different things culturally. But there's no leprechauns. It's like, "Well, there is a thing. Here it is. "Leprechauns are from here. This is what they're based on. "They come from this thing." There's nothing really like that. For as popular as an icon that it is. Right. Right.

Baba: That's the thing. A witch is a being that has a particular shape. Yet that's snowballed over time. As cultures pour into each other and influence each other and things like that, these kinds of things spread. The idea is of... Okay. The proto witch was known as the Strix or Stryga. This is a Roman slash Italian kind of thing. The reason I say slash Italian kind of thing is because it does actually... The Stryga is not exactly human. It's humanoid. It reminds me a little bit of like a... Is it a harpy? That's sort of like the bust and head of a woman with wings and things like that. And they're like a posture kind of thing. They're very similar to that in some ways. The Stryga, where they flew at night, they often would attack babies. Because babies are annoying. Because they're evil and only evil things would attack babies. They were associated with drinking blood.

WDG: Of course. You got to do that, right?

Baba: It's kind of like if you want to fit in with the other creatures of the night, you kind of got to do what they do. Chippacabra and the vampire. Yeah.

WDG: And kind of like... You want to hang out at this club.

Baba: Who the hell's up at that time? Electric isn't around yet. So you got to fit in. And it's like if they're serving blood, then babies... What's on the menu? You know, these slow moving fat things called babies. Yeah, so anyway. If we weren't banned yet... I'm going to get us there. I'll get us it by the end of this. Gotta mention the devil and everything. How fast can you ban your channel? How fast? How fast?

WDG: I challenge all you other... Don't try to ban our channel. It's just a flirting witch hunt, you know?

Baba: You know, to ban a channel, you got to know about it first. So we're flying under the radar. Flying. Witches under the radar, which can go... We're getting invisible. If I'm not on the next show, it's either because these two just had enough of me or witch hunt, you know?

Danny C: So we're out at night. They're serving blood.

Baba: Serving blood, you know? Playing records backwards. And the kind of things. All right, so that's the strig. The striga or the strix. Now, there's a tradition, an Italian tradition of witchcraft, that actually is... Okay, so I'm gonna go a-historic here. So if you fly forward in time, you have a thing, a tradition known as, or a group of people known as the striga. Okay? You can clearly see the... I mean, there are a lot of romance languages, you know? A lot of Western culture comes from Rome, but I mean, we're talking the same spot, you know? It's Italy now, you know? We've got the striga. And the striga is largely a... What seems to be something of a family tradition. Of... Of what we might now call witchcraft. Or magic, you know? But again, there's gonna be a big smear here. Associated with this old monster, are these now contemporary practitioners that are human. And there are some traditions that go back, at least a few generations, of striga. The... I say striga. There's actually an Italian word for the actual practice, that I don't know. So, lucky Italians, I am not mispronouncing it today, because I don't know it. So you escaped. You escaped like a witch in the night.

WDG: So is this also where the evil eye comes in, and stuff like that too, if we're talking about Italian stuff? And

Baba: you see, the evil eye is something that actually is a little cross-cultural. In fact, I was going to wear my evil eye, I have a little evil eye bracelet that I was going to wear today, and I didn't. I should have. Because if people are jealous... So the idea with the evil eye, just to go a little over the line here, is that actually oftentimes the evil eye is thought to be something that's accidentally cast. It's when somebody looks at you with envy, and wants your stuff, and probably also wants you out of the picture, so they can have your stuff. He doesn't like you. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't like... Anyway, it doesn't take much. It doesn't take much. Yeah, so that's kind of a cross-cultural thing. But not unrelated, because witches, as we'll get into as we go a little further, they're associated with what we could call malefica, or bad magic, curses, magic cast to hurt people, and things like that. So yeah, so the evil eye is associated. I should have worn it, because if people are jealous of the success of our podcast, I'd like to protect us. But you guys are wrong. You didn't wear your bracelets though. So I think we're all going to take the hit here. We're all going to... So we move on a little bit. We'll move further to the east. To maybe one of the most famous witches of all time, Baba Yaga, who not accidentally is related to my nickname's sake. Baba Yaga, she's this liminal being. She lives out in the forest. And she lives in a... We were all first introduced to her with Dungeons and Dragons, actually. And she lives out in the woods. And she lives in a hut that has the legs of a chicken. And she can fly through the air in a mortar and pestle, which itself is associated with medicine and mixing up blends of things, which you'll find through history. There's an association with mixing poisons, gathering herbs and being in the woods, healing arts that are out of step... The convention of the time and witches. Those things often get bundled together. So you've got Baba Yaga, who lives in this hut. And we'll have to probably do a whole thing on Baba Yaga. But there's that...

WDG: Why does that hut have chicken legs?

Baba: Why does it have chicken legs? No, there actually is a reason. So there's a Slavic tradition, an old Slavic tradition. Okay, let me back up first. There's this curious thing about Baba Yaga has a long nose. And she'll be described as her nose being to the ceiling of her hut. And people think, well, that's a description of a really long nose. But Baba Yaga herself, in reference to that, in art, doesn't have an overly disproportionate size nose. And she's not really described as being very large either. So it's like, well, what's with this? Is the hut very small? Actually, yes. And one of the reasons for it may well be an old Slavic tradition of burying the dead in coffins above the ground. And they would often be on these feet type things, like chicken feet or animal feet and things. So Baba Yaga may be dead. It may not be that she's a monster at all. She may be a dead person, a dead, maybe an intermediary between the living and the dead at that liminal place. So but the idea that her hut may well be a coffin and not a structure out in the woods.

WDG: I guess if we can use it like the drinking blood, in fact, we're getting into vampire. And

Baba: I did not get heavily into vampire lore because, well, frankly, it's a different topic.

WDG: That's a different episode. Something that I was like, that I came across just like when talking about like the more like common stereotypical symbols was like basically like the ale wives in England and other parts of Europe. And they're supposedly like, that's where the cauldron comes from because they like mixed, used cauldrons to brew ale. They had pointy hats that they wore so you can see them in the market. They had cats to keep the mice out of the way from the floor. They were brewing stuff. And it's like, so there's like some elements of like having the whatever it was that was like hanging out, the herbs and stuff hanging outside their places to dry. So it's this kind of like sort of herbal thing, but it's more for making beer essentially, because everyone had to drink beer because the water sucked. Yeah, yeah. So it's a yeah, but the, that's like, but it doesn't seem like that they were like, there wasn't like a big persecution event. It was more just like over time, it was like, oh, well, women doing like men's work, we wanna, this should be like instead of it. Because like, I guess like brewing ale was typically like a, initially it was like a household chore type thing. And then someone turned into a business and then, you have like ale houses and then that stuff gets associated with other things that happened in taverns like gambling and sex and things. And then once any type of religion gets involved, all the fun things goes out the window. You know, it's like, somebody has to get blamed for it.

Baba: And gambling, not to go off too much, but gambling is kind of a big deal, because like the playing of cards, playing of games, trying to influence fate. And you see like, it's like, that's not allowed to do that. That's God's stuff. You're not allowed to try to influence fate. You know, you're not, and so yeah.

WDG: At least it's butter and God's stuff. You know, ancient gods sometimes, depending on who you are.

Baba: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you might be like, yeah, he's the god that-- I mean, God with the capital G, common era Christian god. The one that's most interested in killing witches, apparently.

WDG: Yeah. The fun police, you know.

Baba: Exactly. See, you know who I'm talking about. Might be getting a bad rap, but at least the people, the people carrying out things for that guy, seems to be a guy. Yeah, so anyway. So monsters, yeah. So witches in the, might as well do it, the Bigfoot thing. Witches are associated with being hairy. So you've got the hairy witch motif, goes back a little ways. And that's, again, it's kind of like, probably around the time we're actually getting into like the witch as a human sorcerer, might be a little like pre-Christian and inter-Christian. Particularly like when you've got, the witch borrow a line from a guy called Peter Gray, who's a contemporary magic person, that says that the witch is always at the end of the pointed finger. Meaning like, witchcraft is like other people's magic, not our magic. It's them over there, that's witchcraft, that's bad stuff. Our stuffs, this is just prayer. This is just these Psalms that are there for specific reasons, like winning battles and things. Well, chanting them is in witchcraft. That's prayer, but if someone else does something over there, that's witchcraft. You've got the same idea with, you've got the Urim and Thumim, which are sort of these divinatory devices that were part of the breastplate of the temple priest. It's throwing dice, it's geomancy, it's casting lots. It's the same kind of thing of sortilage, yiqing, the idea of throwing objects and interpreting them. But it's okay if it's within this certain practice, but not in this other practice. There's this idea, this mistrust of other people's stuff, but also like the stealing of other people's stuff. Actually, so when you get into the early, sort of like the early Christian era and the early formation of witches, you've got this idea of this, often these women, evil women, although some of the earliest ones were not necessarily women, but this idea that they can make pacts with the devil and cause bad things to happen. So you probably have the rise of this with agrarian society and the failure of crops or the unexplained death of cattle. And it's kind of like, well, somebody's got to be responsible for it. Chip Topper.

WDG: Probably that

Baba: weird lady, the one that his husband died and his land we want, probably her. But there's this grouping in with all these things you're not supposed to do, like dancing. And depending on which particular Christian branch you're in, the drinking of alcohol. The idea of, yeah, again, it's kind of like this scapegoat kind of thing. And you've got the idea of the women killing children and stuff like that. So you've got along with that, you do have the practice of magic and things going on and things that aren't clearly magic or medicine at any particular point. So you've got the cunning folk tradition in Great Britain, what we would call Great Britain now. I think it might have been more specifically what we would call English. But it's a smear, it's a borrowing of things from different cultures. It's part of the grimoire tradition and kind of stealing things and moving them around. There's using prayers for various purposes. And for the most part, the cunning folk were able to get away with it unless something went wrong. In which case, they would then use of doing bad magic or witchcraft and largely meet a very fast and unpleasant end.

WDG: Yeah, it does seem to be like the, what we think of as like the, I guess when we're into like, like you said, like historic, which is really more just like, those are just moral panics. They have nothing really to do with actual people doing actual, like the Salem witch trials, right? We always have like, that's our thing here in the States. But really that was just accusing a bunch of people. It was just accusing a bunch of people of doing things. I had nothing, like they weren't, there was no actual magic. There was no witchcraft. There wasn't anything actually going on. And then people didn't look like, but it was just like, well, like they use that. We want their land or there's just like a moral panic going on in the community. And these are easy scapegoats to, you know, to point out. And it's like, it's like, it doesn't really have anything to do with like, actual like witches or, you know, like witchcraft or even like these, like, what we think of as in this iconography, like the like, you know, person flying around or brooms or, you know, it's like, it's just all this kind of like, sort of more like nonsense than anything, you know, moral panics, I guess.

Baba: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so I think it'd be easier and maybe more correct to say that, like, there's no evidence that there was witchcraft being practiced in that instance. We don't know that it wasn't. We just don't really have evidence to support that it was.

WDG: Yeah. Given like the isolated nature of the, you know, say like, kind of colonies and stuff at the time, not like a super, not that they didn't have trade or something, but like, you know, this kind of like, but and the extremely, you know, version of the religion being practiced, like even compared to other like, I mean, the fact that we call them like Puritans and stuff like that, like it's probably unlikely that anyone actually did anything like really that like maybe they might not even have access to those type of things like, you know, like the other, like, you know, like you're saying, like grimoire traditions and things like that. Yeah. That would have been happening in Europe at the time. Like, this is not,

Baba: you know, I mean, and even literacy was not very well, widespread, you know, to be reading grimoires, let alone owning.

WDG: Owning books at the time is still is still a pretty like, you know, yes, we do have the printing press, so we do have these things, but like, not a lot of people had like, unless you're wealthy, had like libraries, you know, books and things like that, you know. Yeah.

Baba: And depending where you are, because they're like kind of sort of like trends when it comes to the publication of magic books and the availability of them. And at some point, just having one can get you killed. And, and at other points, it's just kind of, I don't know, it's a curiosity. So yeah, but, but the story with the Salem Witch Trials, actually, but it's, it's not that the children had access to grimoires so much as it's blamed on Tituba, the, the African slave. And the idea was that she had this, what we would call witchcraft, you know, and taught certain things to the children. And that so she was the corrupting influence, you know, again, the scapegoating thing, you know, but it's like, but the idea, some of the things that came up were kind of like the use of puppets or effigies to curse somebody and things like that. That's got a long established tradition. I mean, puppet magic is a thing, you know, but how much of it is magic, which is, which, don't be so sure.

Danny C: The magic is best. Is that same in concept to, you know, what we think of as like a voodoo doll? Yeah, like we would call it a voodoo doll.

Baba: Yeah. Okay. There. And I mean, like that, there's a long tradition of it. If you look at, I mean, if you look at old Roman magic, you know, you'll have things like a casting a wax figure into a boiling pot kind of stuff, you know, like it's, it's, it's there, you know, and a lot of this stuff is, it just goes back because I, because I think because humans are magical animals, we, that's what we've done this stuff all the time. And then we, certain authorities get upset that we're doing it. And that seems to kind of be the thing. I mean, for a long time, I mean, if you go back to times when magic was really flourishing, it was, it was just kind of all over the place. Like it was just, you know, you might go to a specialist, but you probably know a bunch of little things that you do yourself. It's just not thought of as being weird. And so yeah, you've got, but, but the idea like that of like, well, how do these puritan girls know about puppet magic? I don't know, I don't know. Maybe, maybe this kind of stuff was just around, like how do little kids find out about Bloody Mary and stuff like that, you know, it's just, maybe it's just stuff that's being pushed around in.

WDG: Or it's not, it's not something that they did go and like, it's just something that was, you know, like most, again, like most weird moral panics, like people pushing their, like adults pushing their interpretation onto what it must be. Like it could just be like kids making figures out of sticks and it's like, oh, that must be some evil magic thing or something like that. They're like, oh, like, like people playing Dungeons and Dragons, turned to make you into Satan worship.

Baba: It's like, it's like this kind of stuff seems to come up in the confessions more so than the, I mean, and it's, it is the question of, you know, like, they'll ask the other people, oh, did you make a puppet dude? You know, this kind of thing. But it's like, why the heck would those guys know about it? You know what I mean? Like, without, but yeah, so it's curious, it's curious, you know, but it's, but yeah, there's no real evidence to suggest that, well, yeah, that's what was really going on. What seems to be the case is that something bad happened. And then moral panic took over and, and a bunch of people died for no good reason, you know, and not that using witchcraft is a good reason, either, you know, I'm just saying like, it wasn't even that. So, so yeah, so, but like that, you've got the tradition of the cunning folk. Now, that might be why they know about the puppet stuff, right? You know, that that cunning folk were doing this kind of thing. So maybe this was the reason that people knew about it, you know, but, but yeah, so then, so yeah, then you get into this. So after like the cunning folk time, you medieval, early modern Europe kind of thing, you've got this idea of the, we'll call like the diabolical witch. This is the made a pact with the devil there to undermine society. There are these evil women. And I think about this time, you start to also get the whole like, almost like the association with the of the witch with the, it's almost like a smear with the, the succubus, you know, like the, the seductive woman that leads men astray, like that kind of thing starts to be a little more kind of coming up in that time. But you've got this idea of the, these flying witches, which is flying to, to meet with, with the devil. One of the most famous versions of this is that of Valpergusnacht, or Walpurgus Knight, which is the known as St. Walpurga, or Valpurga. So you're talking about, we would call Germany. And again, I don't know when all these lines were drawn, and when things were considered what territory, you know, but, but you've got this, this, this abbess, it's basically you've got this, you have an abbey, that was a bunch of monks living in this place, the abbot dies, and his sister, Walpurga, takes over. So she is the abbess of this area. And this area, for various reasons, was associated with witchcraft. And so St. Walpurga becomes associated sort of accidentally with witchcraft. And then also there are certain like weird magical traditions associated with these oils and things that you can do on, that you can extract from. Hey, I won't get through into the Valpurga thing. But the, you've got, so you've got Valpergusnacht, the night before. So this is April 30. It's the night before May Day. So May Day is this, like happy celebration, kind of everything is good. But like, like you've also got the other side of the year, you've got All Saints Day, right on November 1st. And the night before you've got All Hallows Eve or Halloween. The night before All Saints Day is a scary, evil night. Well, the night before May Day is a scary, evil night. And it's actually celebrated in Europe. Valpergusnacht, in some parts of Europe, is still celebrated as witch's night. And it's like a Halloween. It's like another, it's another Halloween. So, but this idea is that these witches on Valpergusnacht will travel by brooms to the Broccan, to this mountain to dance with the devil and engage in all kinds of debauchery, like dancing. And, and engage in this stuff. This is where people dance. Yeah. And they're witches out on this particular night. And so it's a scary, scary night. And so, so yeah, so you've got this, this Valpergusnacht thing. But that, that kind of association of witches flying on their brooms and, and throughout the witch hunts, you've got this notion of flying ointments, like special ointments people have to be able to fly. And they're made from the fat of babies and things like that, you know, and, and all these forbidden herbs you're not allowed to have because you're in the woods. What are you doing in the woods? There's this problem of the witch associated with being this feral kind of person, this person that doesn't follow the rules of society that goes off and does their own thing.

WDG: Kind of like a part of time though, where like everyone who didn't like live on a farm probably lives in the woods. Especially like in parts of Europe, where it's just like, what's there? I don't know, woods, like everything.

Baba: Yeah.

WDG: And then like, they come over here to like this, European settlers coming here. Forest people are harder to domesticate. It's like, there's just a lot of woods everywhere.

Baba: You can't convince them to leave what's working perfectly well to come and live on less land with closer neighbors and a bunch of rules, you know. I don't blame them. But yeah, so, but this idea of these sort of wild folk, and you've got associations with it in folklore too. I mean, you've got Merlin in some tellings is this sort of feral magician type. He just goes out to the, he's in the woods a lot. He's doing all this stuff. What's he doing out there? The lumberjack. Maybe, hunting witches, because...

WDG: That's really... Build a bridge out of them. (Laughter)

Baba: Yeah, so, but as you've got this sort of the domestication of people and the force them to follow all these rules, you've got the idea of the witch as the outsider or the heretic. Again, you've got the association with the widow with property. Why would anyone go after them? Why do you think? You've got the people that sort of question the official religious teachings, or do things their own way, or, you know, and the scapegoat when it comes to plague or or crop failure and the cattle, you know, cattle going going to the to hell. You know, it must have been a witch. Or chupacabra. You see now, and you start to get into the space where it's like a lot of these things on the edge kill your cattle, you know. Bigfoot is associated with cattle issues. The fae are associated with cattle issues. Witches are associated with cattle issues. Aliens? Aliens, yeah.

WDG: Wolves, I guess, probably makes the most sense of...

Baba: Witches are associated with, I've gone back into the Bigfoot thing again now, sorry, with witch lights, with little lights out in the forest. Like will-o-wisps. Like will-o-wisps. UFOs are associated with with lights out in the forest. The fae folk are associated with lights out in the forest. And we all know why. I talked about the clubs earlier. Who else is up at that time? You know, so yeah, they're all doing it. They need to find their way to the club.

WDG: It's just like, I think it's just stay out of the woods. Anything that's out in the woods is bad. It's like, it's like, but that's where everything is. It's all the stuff is out.

Baba: You know, like, I think a lot of the... Stay out of the woods. Like all joking aside, I think you're kind of on it. Like it's the fear of the wild. It's the fear of the untamed. It's the fear of the feral, you know? Things that were domesticated that went back again.

WDG: The fear of people owning property that you wanted for yourself.

Baba: Yeah, yeah. But the idea that people aren't supposed to go out and do that stuff. You know, you're supposed to stay inside the city walls. Stay put. Follow the rules. Go to church. And when you stop doing those things, you're a problem. You might not be a problem immediately for your neighbor, but you're definitely a problem with people trying to keep their grip on a loosely held leash that they want to grip tightly, but it's kind of hard to control people sometimes. And so you scare them. You scare them, you know, if people step out of line, you crush dissent quickly and brutally. And so, you know, it's... And it's not necessarily that all the people that hunted witches didn't believe in witches. Some of them really believed in witches. It wasn't just that they were profiteers. The accusations of witchcraft were often profit seeking, but also not always. Sometimes you just had weird things going on, you know, and someone needed to... So sometimes it is superstition. Sometimes it was probably actually witchcraft. But yeah, so you got a lot of things that get blamed for. I mean, now we tend to assume it's either total nonsense and stupidity on the part of the people that we're doing it, or just greed and shady intentions, but not that something weird is going on. We tend to just think... I mean, even the term annoying as it gets... The term witch hunt, you know, is the idea that there's nothing really there because witches are fake. And therefore, like a witch hunt is just people being scapegoated or blamed and unfairly blamed at that. But that's not always the case. I'll give you an example. I'll give you a historic example, actually. The affair of the poisons. Okay, so if there is... If black magic were occurring for real, okay, the place to look would definitely be France. Sorry, it's true.

Danny C: Do your black magic and your great food in France.

Baba: French diabolism is a real thing. It's a real thing. And when you have the idea of like, sort of affluent people socializing around these dark kind of things. Yeah, France. That's where it happened. So I'm going to reference a thing called the affair of the poisons. And there's a this central figure known as, and I am sorry for this part, our French listeners. La vos ais. La vos ais.

Danny C: All right. Real quick. Do you have a general year for this or time period?

Baba: Yes. Okay, 17th century. Good enough. Okay. All right. And the real name of the person whose name I just mispronounced was Catherine Monvosain. If I were reading it and didn't take French in college, yeah, yeah, I did. I didn't do well, clearly. But I had to take a language and American language teaching on every level.

WDG: As long as you mispronounce something in a foreign language, or talk about Bigfoot. It's not really a wandering monsters. That's true.

Baba: That's true. I mean, we have to those things have to be present. So if I were to say it before, I would have said man voice in but that's not how it's said either. And so I'll do it without my overdone accent. It's something like Catherine mombo mombo song or something. Okay, please put a phonetic spelling in the in the I'm never going to get better at this. I'm never going to get better at this without your help. I'm getting worse.

WDG: Do you need foreign language help, please? intervention.

Baba: She allegedly provided and by allegedly provided, I mean, most likely did provide these things. Fortune telling, love potions, abortion services, poison itself, and did black masses. Was she really involved in that last part? I don't know. You know, do you think we know anything? Do you think I know anything? Come on. All right. So, but and was a central figure in this affair of the poisons, which were these a bunch of people here, I'll go misrepresent it. People that were murdered by poison, probably some babies along these lines because abortion services and things like that. The idea of the black mass, which some of the early versions of this, which might only be truly revived when we get Anton Leveille in the 1960s. So a nude woman who acted as an altar, a priest that was invoking demonic forces, prayers that were inverted, see 1980s, and I guess really actually goes back before then. The idea of like the movies of bet with the black, our father being said backwards and things. And clients that were seeking revenge and power and things like that. Killing infants during ritual, because you might as well stack functions. You know, if you're getting together to do crime, you might as well do it at once. They were the forerunners of the QAnon. Of the QAnon. They say I just got a band. They don't have adrenochrome yet. In other news, you could just order that out of a catalog, people. Catalog?

Danny C: What is this, the 1980s?

Baba: And burning bodies to destroy the evidence.

WDG: The witch catalog. The witch catalog. Yeah, which catalog.

Danny C: Yeah, which catalog.

Baba: Yeah, which which catalog are we speaking of, though? So, so, yes, we've got that was somebody that was almost definitely really involved in at least some of that stuff. It might have just been a cover to make poisons and run these abortion situations.

WDG: Somebody has to be running those things at some point in time. But if

Baba: those things are around, you're better off running them rather than letting them run themselves, because that's where the demons really get involved. Going back a little ways before that, we've got a famous famous case of Isabel Goudy in Scotland, 1662, who had these elaborate confessions involving the renouncing of Christianity and kissing the devil, probably in the shape of a goat on the hindquarters. I think that's the that's the tradition. These are the tradition I'm involved in, you know, they said everyone's been doing it. I don't know. Receiving a new name. That's an old tradition. The idea of renaming things is an old established magical tradition. Attending elaborate Sabbaths once again, see previous comment on Valpergus knocked.

WDG: You mean specifically black Sabbath?

Baba: Before the electric guitar. Yes. This was the analog version. Which did involve eating bats and killing chickens and things and, you know, guinea hens.

Danny C: Was that typically done on stage?

Baba: In front of people with wearing makeup and nail polish and stuff. Uh, casting curses using ritual rhymes. You know, a lot of the things that we the idea of the rhyming. The rhyming curse. Now, again, not all of this is completely made up. Like the idea of having charms and things that were we're rhyming in the language that you were speaking them in, which is almost definitely not anyway. That's around. I mean, that that's a thing. And actually, if we look at other other forms of what I'll just call folk magic, like if you look at the the magic contained in stuff like a book called. Pow Wow's or Long Lost Friend. That's often how it's and it's a it's a Pennsylvania Dutch um book on the dramatic folk magic of Pennsylvania Dutch. Well, I mean, Germanic folk magic would later be Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic. And if you still go out to like a Lancaster area and you'll see like these hex signs, they call them. And they're these star type things and these things people hang on barns. That's a that's an old pow wow tradition. Pow wow still practiced in some by certain practitioners and things. They're still Hacks and Meisters. And you know, but but that idea of the. I don't know which I was even referencing. Renaming things and stuff like that. I mean, there are these old traditions that that are that sort of preserve this stuff and yeah, so so this kind of stuff is a belgality gives these very it's very elaborate. Oh, the rhyming charm. That's what I was talking about. The rhyming charm. She gives one. Here you go. You will turn into a rabbit. All right, which granted she has a she said she could transform into a rabbit by set. Now guys, if I go if I dispute, someone has my address, come get me. I guess you say it backwards. I shall go into a hair with sorrow and sighing and mickle care. If you're being pursued by police, I would try that. Being pursued because of witchcraft might have the backing you need to make that and say it theatrically. Apparently she was she was very theatrical as well. Now she also mentions that she spoke of meeting the devil and a fairy queen. Right. Fairy queen. So there's this blending of fairy belief and and these beliefs around a demonology and things that are getting kind of mixed into the whole Christian witch motif. We already talked about our friend Catherine and the affair of the poisons. Oh, this is a good one. I never knew about this. This was this was a good one. Alice Keiteler, Keiteler, Keiteler, I guess. Irish Irish woman. She was a wealthy Anglo Irish noblewoman in Kilkenny. She was married four times and each husband died leaving her wealthier. Good girl. Well done. Well done. Well done. No, seriously. I hand it to you, Alice. Good girl. Okay, so accusations against her poisoning her husbands. Why just cause four of them died? It's coincidence. Yeah, I blame them. She just knew she I think she just knew how to pick them. She just knew how to pick them. Sorcery, demon worship and animal sacrifice. You know, because you got to do all these things. This is the be with it. What do you got to talk about at the club? And having a familiar spirit named Robin Artisan. Interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, very, just like a full on name. So this was in 1324. Okay, so we're going going backaways now because and and which was pretty early for like the compared to these large scale witchcraft accusations that would would we come to know. Okay, so the charges were driven by her stepchildren. See, here we go again. The stepfather thing, you know, and a powerful Bishop, a powerful Bishop, which you almost don't need to say powerful and Bishop together, but powerful Bishop, Richard. Oh, man, it's another French. In Ireland. I'm just going to say, De Le Drede. The

WDG: Bishop of Drede.

Baba: So she had money and connections. And when the Bishop tried to arrest her, this is why I love her. She fled Ireland and was never captured.

WDG: Nice. I was gonna say I was hoping she was going to kill the Bishop or something. Check out how much this sucks.

Baba: Ready? You ready for this part? Her servant, Petronella Demith, once again, probably not the right pronunciation, was tortured and executed instead. I mean, I guess they already had the stuff set up. I mean, like they killed her servant instead. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah. So this show. This is yeah. So you've got witchcraft as a weapon in property disputes. So probably a lot of people called witches. I mean, I pushed back a little bit earlier, but a lot of them were really because people were stealing their land and their husbands died first in a society that stopped me. If you heard this one, men were in charge and they didn't like rich women or women just even living on their own. Just living on their own with enough land to grow some whatever was being grown.

WDG: All your money, I guess. Yeah.

Baba: And if you had some other reason to blame somebody, there you go. That's all those things you need. You only need one or two of those things. Actually, you only need one, apparently. I'm curious.

Danny C: So with witches and witchcraft, you know, it's always evil, bad. It's always associated with them seemingly. Are there because it obviously makes a great story, obviously. Are there instances where you have like the good witches or something like that? Or is that no, that's like the good news on like the good news.

Baba: You know, like we don't get good witches until post 1950 when Gerald Gardner, um, oh, we'll say when Gerald Gardner shares a tradition of witchcraft that we call Wicca, it is hotly contested. The historicity of Wicca itself. I'm not going to contest it. I'm just going to say it's hotly contested, whether this was a historic tradition. It bears a lot of resemblance to the Hermetic magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and other things which preceded the revelation of this witch tradition. But that's where we really start to get people, except for maybe the French, which probably would not have used the word witch, but probably some other word. Something cooler and mispronounced. And it would be so you don't really have people self describing themselves as witches until around then with probably a couple exceptions, which I don't know.

WDG: You said it's mostly an accusation thing. It's at the end of a pointed finger. Yeah. And the witch, like in like the Halloween witch type thing is like really not even like, you know, that's mostly like a probably like most things that come in that stuff is like Victorian era, you know. Yeah, I mean, I guess that gets that gets put into like, you know, cards and things and around that stuff. You know, it's like we

Baba: get the pointed hat, for instance, probably from Quakers, actually. So because I'm going to jump all back and forth.

WDG: I already say, like, I think there's like, it's like hard to pin down the I thought it was like, there's a pretty good argument. I thought I thought like there's also like, a lot of times people practicing magic in like medieval art or something often have put hats on, you know, like like, and the cone hats were like something that there was like, Jews were forced to wear, like, you know, it was like anti-Semitic, like, you know, the thing in Europe at the time, anti-Semitic thing. And then there was like, I know, with Victoria things, there was like, Welsh people, like women at the time wore these pointed hats. And it was like, I heard like, at least for the art,

Baba: specifically, the flat brimmed pointed hat worn by an uppity woman is associated with the Quaker. Because Quaker women were allowed to preach. It wasn't just then. And that was seen as being a little loud. And Quakers themselves had some, like, ritual, I would just call it ritual type stuff that they were doing that was seen as strange from the outside. So they were actually often suspected of something weird going on. So when you've got these uppity women in society that doesn't really care for that, stop me if you heard this one. Also, while brimmed pointed hats, that's really weird. And I'm pretty sure with like the little buckle on there that we often...

WDG: Oh, yeah, it would be the buckles on shoes, the buckles. That's a very Quaker thing. It's like, also, contrary to a lot of seemingly popular ideas thrown around about like, you know, America being a Christian country, a lot of these Christian traditions that came here and settled did not like each other, did not care for the others. I mean, there was entire, you know, civil wars fought in England by a lot of these groups would be offshoots of those. And they were often fought, you know, I mean, like, you know, over like, yeah, it's not like there's no cut and dry. You got to leave the country. So like the Puritans are like Calvinists did not really care for the Quakers and the same, you know, even though it's like, it gets kind of grouped into that. Yeah, stuff. But yeah, yeah, it's so it's not like, so yeah, so there's probably, yeah, taking other people's iconography and demonizing it in your thing that you don't like is is a well-established practice.

Baba: Yeah, I mean, I mean, more established than which? Post Protestant Reformation Catholics were really looked at as being kind of weird and crazy and witchy.

WDG: Stuff going on, going back to Ireland, that stuff wouldn't even get, I'm still not quite wrapped up in a lot of ways.

Baba: You know, I shake my head at society and that it accuses me of being a feral witch. Go back to the woods. I keep going out there and they're like, don't buy an electric company. You can't just see the side. But what does that tell us?

WDG: But yeah, so don't you see that horizon building there? It's run by witches.

Baba: Electric witches. Yeah, so we do get into, so I mean, as you get in, move forward in time, you do have people practicing magic that are thrown in jail for witchcraft. John Dee is a famous one. And John Dee is him and Edward Kelly, am I saying that? Remember his name right? Were involved in the the Unokian Magic operation, which was this weird staring into a scrying operation where you've got one guy staring into a crystal or a dark mirror and one person writing stuff down and they're questioning angels and writing down alphabets. And it's really, really weird. It's its own little operation. But before this, he does an astrological reading for member of the court, Mary the First, also known as Bloody Mary. And he was recommended by Bigfoot. No, so he's just an astrologer and he does. He was Bigfoot. Yeah, he was. He does. He does this astrological reading for her. And it doesn't turn out well, because it foretells her death, according to lore. And so she does what any any good patron would do and throws them into jail waiting execution. You're not allowed to do that. And as as Lon Milo Duquette stated it, he's just kind of waits his time and reorganizes his role at X and thins it out. But he waits for Mary to die, which he does. And then Elizabeth, who had an affinity for John Dee, springs them and gives them a bunch of money to do these this angel summoning stuff. Um, an angel magic is really weird. It's it's not. Biblical angels are not what you think they are. And the Naki and angels are even weirder. Anoki and anaki and Hana.

WDG: I'm so different. We got we got a right. We got a wrap up. Let's see. I think we're pretty soon.

Baba: This is the entire world history of witches. All right. So then we move into. So we've the contemporary witches. We've also got the traditional witches. So this is like so traditional witchcraft is like Cornish witchcraft and things. So this winds up being family traditions that go back to who knows when maybe to cutting folk and then just kind of carried on by the family. But that's got a lot more of the the weirder witchy stuff we think of. But it's probably a post-Christian tradition, which in a certain respect could be seen as a sort of a reaction to Christianity. So like almost like Christianity accidentally created different forms of witchcraft. And and that stuff's actually pretty interesting. And there are like weird Vermaar type books and things out there on it. And then you've got the Robert Cochran version of traditional witchcraft, which is like all folkloric. And that is all around this figure called Tubal Cane, which is based on some I don't know that it's actually based on Cane as in Cane and Abel. But but yeah, this other figure that that is the the deity of of that version of traditional witchcraft. So yeah, it really splinters out and gets weird. And and now you've got all kinds of witches. So for the first time in history that we have people calling themselves witches, myself included, that wouldn't have called themselves witches in the past because they would have gotten killed. And maybe some of us will decide that actually wasn't such a good idea to do that because we don't know where all this nonsense is going. But but yeah, so we barely dipped our toe into witches people. But but now

WDG: 102 of which

Baba: we'll have to if it turns out this is worth publishing, then we'll do a 102 or we'll do a reboot. And we'll just have to keep things a little less tangent.

Danny C: So last time on witches.

WDG: So how do we how do we want to do the the rainy on this one? So it's like, because we're gonna like, it's like, right, like, like the scary witch, right? The idea of like, right, is that where we're like, it's, you know, because it can't really be like Baba Yaga. That's a whole different thing. Or it can't be like, you know, the, you know, like, like the wicked witch, like, you know, he has to be like, right, like this kind of, you know, what it seems to be the case of like, these, you know, I guess, people practicing magic. I don't know. You know, it's like, I guess, like, I don't know, how do we how do we want to how do we want to do that? What's the thoughts?

Baba: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's what we're gonna that's what we're what the people have been afraid of at the time, right? That they're gonna someone's gonna cast dark magic on them. So it's kind of actually going back to curses again. But but that's gotten what it is. It's so I'll start since I've been talking this whole time. Yeah, yeah, I think it could be scary. I think there's do I guess it's kind of comes back to do you think that magic is real or could be where that people's ill intentions towards you can cause harm? I do. But I'm actually I don't go through a lot of my life being scared of witches. So I'm gonna actually give this I will give this a two. Yeah, not that scary. And actually, like a lot of people that call themselves witches don't practice Malefica. And if they do, they're not good at it. So yeah, I'm gonna give it a two. I find it fascinating, but not very scary.

Danny C: I don't know where I want to start with this. So many ideas are going on in my head. So my one first thought was that it almost reminds me of my rating for hellhounds. And that was, you know, I'm more I'm more concerned over a regular stray dog as opposed to a hellhound. And I think which is kind of fall in that same category for me, I feel like, you know, a quote unquote average person that's out to get me, they're going to get me, you know, which doesn't really make that it doesn't up the ante any so it's like

WDG: average person is it's like having to get you they might have extra stuff.

Danny C: A gang of witches. What does that call it? Is that a cackle? Is that right? A cackle of witches?

Baba: Am I making that up? A coven, but I kind of like cackle better. Yeah.

Danny C: Cackle. It's a cackle of witches. It's a what a cackle is. It's a coven of witches that are all laughing, I guess that's what it is. But I think it'd be different if we were having this conversation around the time of the Salem witch trials. I think that'd be a little different. But but here in 2026, you know, I don't I don't find the idea that scary. Is it real? Is it not real? Yeah, it could be, you know, or it could just be someone that's, you know, out to get someone else and they're using, you know, their cooking skills to do what they want to do. So all said and done, I would also rate this a two.

WDG: I think I'm gonna rain it. I'm gonna go even there down on say it. I think it's like I think a one because I don't like you said like, like, there's a lot easier ways to get people than dark magic, you know, it's like witches don't seem like the all at all, people accused of witchcraft and stuff probably weren't really didn't really seem like they were bad. It's even like the thing that's really scary. It's like systems that allow people to blame other people for their problems and then kill them for those seem like scary things. And I think we still have a good friend of those. They don't exist. Those are real. That's that's a myth. So I so I think like, which is like, I think like, you know, both of them that people, if they weren't doing something that is similar to magic, it often seems like it was probably the stuff for that poisoning stuff in France. But, you know, I guess somebody's got to make the poison that someone's got to use to kill people in, you know, high society or whatever. There's a risk that rats aren't going to poison themselves. Yeah, exactly. But but otherwise, they were like, you know, I don't know, delivering babies, you know, like probably making medicine for people or brewing beer or doing like just living in the woods. So I kind of feel like, yeah, that's they don't seem like bad or like doing things that like, you know, that are more the edges of society that like, all of a sudden, sometimes we get like, you know, stuff up like, you know, being our bonnet or whatever they say about, you know, you know, you're under which like, you know, about this stuff. But yeah, so I think, yeah, I think a one is definitely where I'm actually I don't think it's which is really that scary.

Baba: How scared are you of men willing to burn women alive? Because they think they're witches.

WDG: I give that a five. I give that a five. I think that's a scary thing. I think any kind of any society that wants to execute people for not really doing it is usually bad.

Baba: Let's let's let's do a quick light lightning around here. Tell me your two favorite versions, if you want of of movie, which is I'm going to say the chicks in the craft and beastmaster. Oh, favorite witches. What you guys got?

Danny C: I got the witches in class the Titans.

Baba: That's our original. The original. Yeah, yeah. I almost have to revise, but I can't because we're all out of time.

WDG: Yeah. Wicked Witch. Wicked. Just reinterpretation of that. It's like, yeah, that's good.

Baba: Anyone that for some reason continued all the way to the end, please tell us your favorite witches down in the comments.