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What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil. Heinrich Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum 1487. They called them witches. They were really healers, midwives and wise women, or simply the women who spoke too loud, lived alone, or didn't know their place. Across Europe and colonial America, they were hunted, tortured, drowned, burned, and hanged by the thousands. But behind the hysteria, behind the bonfires and the confessions pulled from broken bodies and broken mouths, lies a deeper story, one of power, fear and control. This wasn't just mass panic. It was weaponized theology. It was the church declaring war on what they claimed were witches. But it was really just women. From the cold stone chambers of medieval inquisitors to the thunderous pulpits of Puritan ministers, the Christian church helped turn folklore into felony and suspicion into execution. Witchcraft, once dismissed as pagan superstition, was rebranded as heresy, a pact with the devil himself. And it was no coincidence that the accused were overwhelmingly women. Misogyny was baked into the doctrine, inked into the law, and shouted from the pulpits. And then, in 1692, a group of small schoolgirls in a Puritan village began to scream, undergoing a psychological fit that was deemed witchcraft. The Salem Witch Trials would become the most infamous witch hunt in American history. A frenzy of paranoia, religious extrem scapegoating that would leave 25 people dead and countless lives shattered. So how did we get here? What did the Church stand to gain? And why, centuries later, do the echoes of these trials still haunt our culture and our politics? Today, we walk through the smoke and ash of history to uncover the truth behind the witch trials, how they started, who fanned the flames, and what it means that so many of the accused were women, punished not for spells, but for surviving in a world that feared their power. Let the hunt begin today on Flipping Tables. Hello and welcome back to Flipping Tables. Welcome to new listeners and subscribers. My name is Monty. I am a former alt right Christian nationalist that talks a lot about American history, politics, and deconstructing religion and just learning. My core value for this podcast and for my entire life is curiosity, asking questions, and learning as much as I can fit into my brain. Thank you for so much of you new listeners who have left a review on the podcast space that is absolutely the most impactful thing that supports me here. I'm deeply grateful. So if you have a minute today and you haven't left a review, I would love if you would do that. I'm so excited for this episode. I have been ramping up for this episode a long time and as fall is right around the corner, as of this recording, Halloween is 86 days away. It seems time to dive in. Couple announcements before I do Certain levels of Patreon supporters are now getting shout outs at the end of each podcast. I am someone who has learned the power of gratitude and I like to be able to thank people by name. But since that's a new benefit, I'm playing a little bit of catch up with those names. So if you don't hear your name right away, be patient. I'm going going to go through the whole list and eventually I have want to start adding some personal stories from you. So as you're going through these episodes and you're learning things and you're growing, or maybe you grew up in a background similar to mine within far right Christian fundamentalism or I've gotten many emails from people who grew up formal cults. And if you want to share those stories or things that you're learning, please feel free to email me at flippingtableswithmmail.com also if you go to my Instagram, our first merchandise drop is here. I am so overwhelmingly excited. We've got some resistance jewelry also coming out this month, but right now we've got the Jezebel Barbie merch that finally came out after my little incident in June and some fight on T shirts that I T shirts and stickers. And I'm hoping that it's just a little reminder that when it's hard and it's overwhelming, you're not in this alone. We're in this journey together. And so when I grew up in far right Christian nationalism, I grew up in the type of family that I was not allowed to trick or treat. I was not allowed to celebrate Halloween. I couldn't watch Harry Potter because the witchcraft in Harry Potter was bad. But my obsession with Lord of the Rings, which has wizardry, was not the same thing. And if you're watching this on video, you can see I really leaned into the look today. I've got dark lipstick on my pentacles. These are pentacles, not pentagrams. It's a different thing, but it was really this very clear line was drawn when I was growing up that anything to do with which symbolism the occult Halloween was strictly forbidden and it was seen as evil, demonic, allowing access to your life to demons. I grew up terrified of things like tarot cards, Ouija boards, even horror movies, afraid that I could let the devil in. And as I deconstructed, I learned about the Witch trials. And it completely changed my view of ancient pagan practices and anti witch propaganda, which I found was historically just anti woman propaganda. And I'm hoping to share some of what I learned with you today. And many of the things that I was taught to fear have a really incredible and often harmless history. For instance, the history of tarot. Tarot originated in 15th century Northern Italy as a card game called tarocci that was played by nobility. And it wasn't until in 18th century France that occultists like Antoine Corte de Ghibelen reinterpreted Tarot as a relic of ancient Egyptian wisdom. And that a lot of what seems to positively impact people using tarot is ritual. When you go through a ritual of sitting down and breathing and lighting candles and thinking of a question, it helps your nervous system re regulate and you come out of your sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight into parasympathetic. And it allows you to work through a problem. That's not to dismiss what many people believe about tarot, but there is actual science as to why it gives people comfort and and often answers. When you sit in silence and you silence the noise, it's amazing what you can come up with when you sit with a problem. And it's the same with Ouija boards, which were originally a board game that was patented in 1891 as a parlor game during the rise of spiritualism within the United States. It was very chic to have seances in your home and invite people over for dinner and see if you could contact the dead. And the concept of spirit communication and automatic writing predates the board itself. But the Ouija board simplified the process. Now, I'm not saying go out and host a seance. You can if you want. But also the psychological effects of the Ouija board are similar to that of tarot meditation and prayer. They all operate in the same pathway. That the practice of ritual and calm and quiet and sitting into your body with a question or with an intention has amazing impact for your nervous system, your heart rate, your blood pressure. So there is science to why these things work as well as we have a lot of stories that maybe there's a little magic because we can't explain it yet. Remember that the divine is what we use to explain what science can't explain yet. And so both truths can exist at the same time. And again, not saying you should go buy a board and hold a seance, but you can if you want. But I get so many questions, especially on Instagram, around where deconstructing Christian fundamentalism, my conversations about the Bible and me wearing black and pentagrams and the Ouija board purse I have fit in. Many people have a really big struggle with either their interest in the occult, feeling guilty about it, or people are afraid of these symbols. So this is why I decided to do an episode on the history of the witch trials. Because that's where many of these beliefs and these fears come from. Plant medicine, for instance. I've talked about this before. I don't know if you've heard of ayahuasca, which is an ancient Peruvian plant known for its medicinal and psychological properties that is transformative for so many people. And I've used it and can say it is an incredible medicine. But these things are so demonized. We know from research that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, has dramatic implications to help cure and treat anxiety and depression. Yet it's considered a drug. It's considered illegal. Why? Where does this conversation come from? It's not just the fact that Big Pharma would lose out on a lot of money from antidepressants if we were to allow plant based medicine to help people get better, but especially if you grew up in the church, some of this history, some of these qualities of these things, and especially the history of the witch trials may surprise you. I don't want to convince you of anything here except two things. Question everything. Particularly if something is demonized without explanation. And also to be curious about everything. The world has so much amazing history and magic in it, and the truth will always hold up to scrutiny. Let's get witchy. If you're a woman, particularly if you've been in the formal workforce and you have ever stood up for yourself or demanded follow through, you've probably been called a or a witch. We see the popular right wing politics, this desperate grasping push to make women softer, skinnier and less visible in the 90s, tied to purity culture, this was the thin white woman aesthetic. And white was not only tied to Christianity, but so was being skinny at all times. It's this idea of making you softer, smaller, more feminine, more subservient. They use the name of God to say that you need to sit down, shut up, serve your husband, cook, clean, feed the kids, and be hot at all times as the Lord hath ordained. Obviously this is not new. Powerful and insecure men have frequently used God to oppress, subjugate and rob women under the guise of righteousness. And I think the witch trials are the most clear historical account of, of that in real time. And fundamentalist religious groups have never broken this habit. The witch trials that swept through Europe and colonial america from the 15th to the 18th century 300 years were not sudden outbreaks of hysteria. They were the culmination of centuries of religious, social and political developments. They were rooted in the Church's evolving doctrine. And these trials reveal how religion was used to consolidate power, enforce social hierarchies and criminalize dissent, especially when that dissent came in the form of a woman. In the early Christian church, magic and folk practices were not initially equated with heresy. Early medieval laws and church writings dismissed witchcraft as silly superstition, arguing that belief in night flying witches because people did believe in that or magical powers, was a sin because it denied God's omnipotence. But it was not a heresy against the Church. However, by the late Middle Ages, church doctrine shifted dramatically. Witchcraft was reimagined not merely as delusion, but as a real organized conspiracy of humans in league with the devil. Illuminati early church leaders such as Augustine of Hippo 354 to 430 CE argued that magical practices were simply illusion, not real power, and that the fear of witches was a form of pagan error. Even believing they exist, entertaining it as having any power whatsoever was sin. In his book the City of God, Augustine wrote that demons could influence the world. But belief in witches magical abilities was a deception. Christians were called to reject both pagan gods and the belief in folk magic, viewing such fears as spiritual immaturity. He wrote, quote, these supposed power of witches do not in fact exist. They are only empty illusions of the devil. Additional. Additionally, the canon episcopy, which was written in 906 CE, a key early church text, explicitly denied the reality of witchcraft. It stated that women who believed they flew at night with Diana or Herodias were being deceived by the devil and those who believed them were guilty of sin by attributing power to Satan over God. That text said, quote it is not lawful for Christians to believe that such transformations occur. All such things are done by the illusion of the devil. This simply meant that the belief in witches was itself considered more heretical than the actual acts that people believed witches could do. And they did believe that witches were flying around at night. Things shifted in the beginning of the 12th and 13th century. Influenced by scholastic theology and growing concerns about heretical movements such as the Cathars, church leaders began to see the world as a battleground. Onward Christian soldiers between the Church of Christ and the counter Church of Satan. Anything that is not us is a war against us. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274 argued in some of Theologica that demons could influence people's bodies and minds so that the magic could have been real and that physical effects when performed with the devil's aid were possible. He helped solidify the idea that humans could form packs with the devil, with demons a key building block in the future witch trials and the ideas around demon possession. Thomas Aquinas wrote, demons can make impressions on the human imagination and they can manipulate physical matter, but only by God's permission. This was a shift in theology where demons were no longer just deceivers, but active physical presences. Opened the door for the belief that witches were not deluded women, but real dangerous enemies of God in league with Satan. And if you're wondering where the heck did this idea about like women specifically being witches come from, there's a reason for that too. Long before Christianity, because Judaism didn't start to arise until 950 CE BCE. Excuse me. Ancient pagan societies across Europe, the Near east and North Africa revered women for their spiritual and magical roles. Prior to that, shamanistic communities had very important female deities. But many of these revered women included priestesses and oracles. An example of this is the Oracle of Delphi. She was also known as Pythia. She was the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, one of the most sacred sites in ancient Greece. She was revered from around the 8th century BCE to the 4th century CE. This was a woman who the the Oracle of Deli changed, but she served in the same position. She served as the mouthpiece as for the God of Apollo, delivering prophetic messages to individuals and city states who were seeking divine guidance. Seated on a tripod above a chasm in the temple's inner sanctum, the Pythia would enter a trance like state, possibly induced by the natural gases rising from the earth, and speak in ecstatic utterances. They would be interpreted by male police priests into poetic oracles. Her advice was considered infallible and played a major role in Greek politics, warfare and colonialization efforts. And the Empire of Greece did pretty well. The Oracle of Delphi represented a powerful female spiritual authority in the ancient world. She was simultaneously mystical, political and deeply influential. The second group included women who were herbalists and healers, particularly in Celtic and Germanic tribes. In the Celtic religion and culture, herbalists and healers, often referred to as Bonfili or Ben Fiesa in Ireland, were seers or druids in broader Celtic regions were central figures in Both spiritual and physical well being. These practitioners combined medicine, magic and religious ritual. Drawing from deep knowledge of nature, plant medicine and ancestral tradition. They used herbs, chants, amulets. Amulets, amulets and rituals to cure illness and protect communities and promote fertility. Healing was intertwined with spirituality and faith, often invoking goddesses such as Brigid, the goddess of healing, poetry and fertility. And again, these were often women, especially in local folk practice that their knowledge was passed down from their grandmothers to their mothers to them via oral tradition. A specific example of this is Bitty early, who lived from 1798 to 1874 through from the post Christian era. Bitty early is one of the most famous folk healers in Irish history and is believed to carry on ancient Celtic traditions of herbalism and divination. Her story offers a tangible link to older pre Christian customs. She's a fairly newer herbalist and ancient practitioner, many of which we lost these practices due to the witch trials and the persecution from the church. She lived in County Clare and was known for her healing potions made from herbs and spring waters. She used a small blue bottle said to be magical or inherited from the fairies. And she was able to see into other realms and diagnose illness. A quote about her says her cures were seen as both medicinal and magical, a blend of the old pagan ways and folk Catholicism. Celtic herbalists were keepers of ancient plant knowledge and often women who were midwives, seers and spiritual advisors filled this role. Which leads me to my third category of women that were held in high regard in spiritual and medicinal guidance, which was midwives and birth attendants. They were the guardians of life and death. In both early modern and Europe. Modern Europe and colonial America, midwives were vital to community health and childbirth. Their intimate knowledge of women's bodies. However, their knowledge of reproductive health and herbal medicine placed them in the crosshairs of church authorities, male physicians and local magistrates. Midwives were often accused of witchcraft, especially if childbirth went wrong, which in these times childbirth went wrong a lot. It was one of the most deadly things you could endure, both as the mother and the incoming child, if they were. If they offered contraceptive herbs, which has been happening as long as we have plant medicine, there have been contraceptive and abortifactant herbs. Or if women failed to conform to patriarchal religious expectations, they were targeted, but especially by the male medical community. When it became more formalized. These women embodied female autonomy in a deeply male dominated spiritual and medical world. The medieval Catholic Church increasingly viewed female reproductive knowledge as dangerous women who they thought could control fertility Childbirth and menstruation were seen as meddling in God's domain, very similar to the conversation we now hear touting bad science about the dangers and evils of birth control, which is safer than most medication we allow to be advertised on public television. Many midwives use herbs to ease labor, which was seen as undermining Genesis 3, 16, which says in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. The men that were in leadership positions, particularly in the church, believed that women should suffer in childbirth and that intervention was a violation of God's order. In Genesis, women were considered they possessed secret knowledge passed orally through generations, and it was seen as a threat to the Church and a threat to the emerging male ob gyn community. They worked outside of the church control and they were sometimes working without male supervision, which the church and male leadership could not have. Barbara Einrich and Deidre English wrote in Witches, Midwives and nurses from 1973. The campaign against the witches is the first instance of modern science's war on women's knowledge. The Inquisition and Protestant reformers alike portrayed midwives as potential agents of Satan, particularly if they were old, poor or unmarried. If you can't or won't serve a man and can't or won't bear him children, you are a threat. An example of this is Walpurga Hausmanen from Germany. In 1587 she was a midwife from Dillingen and was accused of killing babies during childbirth using demonic powers. Keep in mind here that over half of infants died in childbirth or shortly after. She was tortured into confessing that the devil gave her a magic ointment and that she had killed 40 children and several mothers, none of which she did. It was under the coercion of torture. She was burned at the stake. Witches were often burned at the stake in Europe because it was seen as a fitting punishment for heresy, particularly in the context of the belief that witches were in league with the devil and posed a threat to Christianity. The practice was more common in Catholic countries and was often associated with the Inquisition in the Swiss witch trials in 1428-1447. In these early large scale witch trials, many of the accused were women with medical knowledge. Again, midwives accusations often involved murdering infants, casting spells during labor or assisting in abortions. In the US an example of this torture and oppression of midwives was Elizabeth Morse in Newbury, Massachusetts. She was accused of being a witch due to her role as a midwife and a healer. Her reputation as a skilled but independent woman combined with local tragedies. She was blamed for Led to her arrest. And though she was convicted, she was not executed. But she lived under house arrest for the rest of her life. Bridget Bishop in the Salem witch trials is another example. She was thought more of as a tavern owner. She owned her own business. Bishop was rumored to have helped with childbirths and offered herbal medicinal concoctions. She was accused of infant harm, Spectral attacks and causing miscarriages, Reflecting fears around women who interfered with reproduction. She would be hanged for alleged crimes that there was no evidence. And the last group of women that were often targeted by these accusations and by these witch trials Were folk magicians who who use charms, rituals and astrology. Humans throughout history have used the divine and the theological to explain what science can't. Yet when we look at ancient religions, Weather was determined by the gods because we didn't understand how it worked. Yet life birth, also credited to the gods, Fertility came from gods, not biological processes that we couldn't understand. Yet before the scientific revolution, people across Europe and Americas turned to folk magicians, astrologers and what were called cunning folk to solve everyday problems, Illness, infertility, loss, livestock issues, or protection from evil. These practitioners were not viewed as evil in their communities. Many were respected and even depended upon. And in my intro, when we talked a little bit about what we now understand is the psychological effects of things like tarot and Ouija boards, often these people, it was the ritual and having someone to see, speak to that would provide relief to local community members who were struggling during the witch trials. Folk magic and astrology, which was once seen as benign or even helpful, became evidence that you had a pact with the devil. John of Nottingham In England, 1324, one of the few men who was accused of witchcraft is one of the earliest recorded cases tying folk magic and astrology to suddenly treason and witchcraft. John was a professional magician hired by discontented citizens of Coventry to cast spells using wax effigies called poppets to kill corrupt officials and even King Edward ii. This is why he was targeted, is because people who were angry with the mistreatment, abuse and injustice from their leaders would hire him to cast spell on those leaders. So the leaders had him executed. His actions involved ritual, magic, astrological calculations and certain invocations. He was never officially executed. They tried, but his case became part of the witchcraft and treason narrative that was used by English authorities in later centuries. Another example of this is Anna roelofess in Germany, 1663. She was a well known cunning woman, which simply means astrologer, folk magician. And she was a folk healer in Brauschweig Hang on. Braunschweig, Germany. She practiced herbal medicine, divination and astrological reading. She was accused of casting harmful spells, causing illness and working with the devil. Her trial included testimony about magical potions and astrological consultations. She was tortured and burned at the stake. Despite many in her community seeking her out for help and her being a critical part of the healing and spirituality within her community. These women, and a few men, but mostly women, were often revered, sometimes feared, maybe a little bit of both. Their roles were crucial in maintaining community well being, particularly in a pre scientific society where healing, childbirth, fertility and death were deeply spiritual events. In many cultures, magic was gendered. Women were linked to earth based intuitive lunar magic, while men, if they practice any kind of ritual or religious magic, did so in temple or priestly context. So there was roles for both men and women in this practice of spirituality and what was then deemed as magic. Silvia Federici in Caliban and the witch from 2004 said the ancient witch was not only a healer or a midwife, but a spiritual leader. Often marginalized once patriarchal religions took hold, it's important to note here that Christianity used and adopted a lot of pagan rituals, holidays and symbols when it was convenient for them. As Christianity expanded from a persecuted small sect to the dominant religion in the Roman Empire and beyond, it encountered countless indigenous belief systems, Celtic, Roman tribes, Germanic tribes, Egyptian culture and more. Rather than abolish every local tradition outright, which would have caused rebellion, early Christian leaders often absorbed and rebranded pagan customs, giving them Christian meanings while keeping their timing, imagery and symbols familiar. We've talked about this with cults. They often give you similar doctrine, stories and symbols to invite you in by what's already familiar to you, which you already believe in order to assimilate you into their belief. This move was very strategic and helped Christianity spread rapidly while appearing less disruptive to political to populations. It didn't seem seem quite as oppressive. It didn't seem like this group was trying to take over. It almost felt like they were assimilating with local populations. It was a very, very calculated bait and switch. Over time, however, it also obscured the pre Christian roots of many beloved holidays and traditions. One of the biggest examples of this is Christmas and the winter solstice. In pagan traditions, the winter solstice, which is December 21st to 22nd, marked the rebirth of the sun and it was celebrated in numerous pagan cultures. In Roman traditions, Saturnalia, which was December 17th to the 23rd, was a festival honoring Saturn. It involved gift giving, candles, feasting and role Reversals. Mithraism. This word Mithraism. There we go. A mystery religion popular among Roman soldiers celebrated the birth of the God mithras from on December 25. When Christianity took over, often forcefully, they used this important holiday to their advantage first, and we know this now. The Bible never specifies Jesus's birth, but we know now from scholarly research it was most likely sometime in March. By the 4th century CE, however, the church declared December 25th Mithras birthday as Jesus's birthday, likely to coincide and Christianize with Roman sun festivals and the celebration of pagan cultures of winter solstice. Many Christian Christmas customs, such as gift giving, yule logs, evergreen trees, even holly are drawn from pagan solstice traditions. Stephen Nissenbaum from the battle for Christmas in 1996 said, they call it Christmas, but it's not in the Bible. What they have done is Christianize a pagan celebration, which makes the whole political dialogue around the war on Christmas that much more funny, because Jesus was not born in December. That was the celebrations for the sun God Mithras, Saturn. These pagan traditions and all of the traditions that we associate with Christmas also come from pagan celebrations. Next up is Easter. Likely Easter derives from Yoster or Ostera, which is the Anglo Saxon goddess of spring, fertility and dawn. She was honored around the vernal equinox, which happens in the spring. Symbols like eggs, rabbits and blooming flowers were associated with fertility and rebirth in many pagan traditions. The name Easter is not in the Bible. It comes from Yoster and today's Easter customs. The egg hunts, the Easter bunny. Pastel flowers have no biblical basis, but they are strong pagan fertility symbols and my personal favorite holiday to the shock and awe of Absolutely No1 Halloween. So my family is of Scottish descent with deep Celtic roots that span back to Vikings and Nordic countries. Celtic tribes were deeply spiritual, magical and superstitious. Samhain, which was their celebration of October 31st to November 1st, was the Celtic New Year and it was a festival of the dead. It marked what they believed to be a thinning of the veil between worlds, when spirits could cross into the realm of the living. Druids, which were the Celtic equivalent of male priests, lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off spirits. And priestesses, which were the counter to the Druids, would often participate in celebrations as well. The church created to counter Samhain All Saints Day, which became all hallows Day on November 1st and All Souls Day on November 2nd to honor saints and the dead. The night before became All Hallows Eve, later became Halloween. The pagan customs of Costumes, ghost stories, carved gourds, which would later become Jack o' Lanterns, persisted and were gradually absorbed into Christendom. Now we do see the difference here in that many Christian fundamentalist groups do not allow the celebration of Halloween in any form, while some Christian groups do. But many of ancient Christendom had some form of All Hallows Day celebrations that coincided with this pagan tradition. Again, the difference here is that at least some US Fundamentalist groups won't celebrate any form of All Hallows Day because of its inherently darker nature and the symbols. And lastly, many Christian traditions are based in paganism, such as baptism and communion. Baptism with water as a ritual purification has existed since the Egyptian religion and was carried through Greek, Roman and Jewish religious practices. The what was called mystery cults of Isis and Mithras that I mentioned before used water for spiritual cleansing and a symbol of rebirth. Early Christianity adopted water immersion or baptism as a symbolic act of rebirth and spiritual purification. John the Baptist practice mirrored earlier Jewish mikvah traditions and possibly earlier Hellenistic rituals. And then there's communion, a sacred sacrament in which believers consume bread and wine to commemorate the last supper of Jesus. According to scripture, in Luke 22:19 20, this is my body, this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me. In Catholicism and orthodox Christianity, this became literal transformation, an idea known as transubstantiation, where the bread and the wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. And in Protestant traditions, it remains symbolic, but it's still very sacred. This shares many, many themes with pagan and magical rites. The first being the blood was seen as sacred power. Many pre Christian and indigenous indigenous religions even now see blood as the vessel of a life force. And it was used in rituals to communicate, to communicate with or honor deities. It also was the source of the strength of what was called a blood oath, where you would cut your hand or commit a prom with your own blood. The second is that the ritual consumption of the divine. In various ancient mystery practices, including Dionysian and illusion and Mithraic traditions, initiates would symbolically consume their deity through sacred meals, sometimes using wine to represent the blood of the deity. And lastly, sacrifice and rebirth. Pagan rites often featured symbolic or literal sacrifices followed by ritual feasting to ensure divine favor. Fertility, resurrection, all of those practices predate Christianity. We can even see in ancient Judaic practices they had specific sacrifices to honor the deity that would be done in the tabernacle. Now these pagan rituals again predate and were different than early modern European witchcraft. Accusation of blood pacts with the devil or the use of Blood in potions or mock communions. But these ideas were largely theological propaganda rather than evidence of real rituals. The church claimed that these new child sacrifice were happening. It really wasn't. These were not common witch practices. And we look at the satanic panic of the 1980s where it was believed that satanic cults were sacrificing and consuming children. We now know there was no evidence of that. It was theological propaganda to prove a point about the degradation of society, the moral collapse. Many of these people that were accused in the witch trials, again, they were using plants, herbs, teas, charms, meditations that were seen as healing. This the Stuart Clark wrote. Stuart Clark wrote in Thinking with Demons, the image of witches consuming blood or hosting satanic communions was largely the invention of ecclesiastical authorities projecting their own fears. They created a monster, and then they said that monster was there. I think of the. The Qanon conspiracy with the. The pedophile ring in the pizza place, right? And then when they raided this pizza place, there wasn't even a basement. It was supposed to be happening in the basement of this building. There was no basement. There had never been a basement. A basement had never been built. It's this creation of an other creation of an enemy. And then I can use that to attack the enemy for my own theological, financial and political benefit. So while communion itself is not based in a blood ritual per se, it is very, very in tune and in a line with practices involving blood or beliefs around blood or the consumption of a deity that existed a lot longer before Christianity assumed those traditions. So from an anthropological or mythological lens, communion can be interpreted as a form of almost symbolic cannibalism, or what's called ritualized theophagy, which again is eating the divine, not unique to Christianity. We even see this as late as Aztec rituals. They would eat dough, figures of gods. And again, Mithraic rites, which were popular in Roman culture, involved those sacred meals to honor the slain bull God. And the Greek Dionysian cults drank wine in ecstatic rituals symbolizing the gods dismemberment and resurrection. So all of these share a common theme from ancient practices that were taken, rebranded for various religions or indigenous practices. So now that we have a background of these pagan traditions, they're how old they are. I mean, these span back to ancient shamanism. That that was thousands of years before Judaism entered the scene, which would later give birth to Christianity. But now that we have this timeline and we have an understanding of how the European church overtook pagan cultures, assimilated their symbols and traditions, and even the major practices within Christianity being borrowed from pagan traditions such as cleansing with water. Now let's go back to our timeline regarding the witch trials. During the domination of Greek and Roman empires, they began to shape a more dualistic view of magic and gender. Philosophers like Aristotle and Plato portrayed women as passive, emotional and morally weak. Aristotle believed that women were just unfully formed men. They were grotesque, they were a necessary evil and they were irrational, in contrast to the rational and dominant male. These were a deviation from ancient shamanistic and pagan religions that not only had dominant female deities, but held women as healers and spiritual leaders in high regard. And also held in high regard a woman's what they believed supernatural ability to create life. This view contributed to the early association of women with nature, emotion and danger. The view of these new philosophers, these philosophers beliefs made made the belief that women were more likely to be linked to irrational, hidden or supernatural forces. Roman laws often regulated women's control over herbs, potions and again midwifery, fearing they might poison or cast spells. And again, a reminder, there is no documented instance that women were doing this. It was an accusation and a fear because women held these spiritual and medicinal offices. They created famous mythical figures in Rome, such as Medea, who used magic to control and destroy Circe, who turned men into pigs, which I think is hilarious. Hecate, which was the goddess of witchcraft, crossroads and necromancy. To create and culturalize this image of the dangerous magical woman who was both seductive and subversive. These cultures sought to justify the divine right of male dominance and patriarchal society. Christianity inherited and amplified classical misogyny. Because these philosophical ideas originated in the Hellenistic period, after the death of Alexander the Great, which predates Christianity. Christianity inherits the ideas, amplifies it. And women were symbolically tied to sin from the start. We look at first Timothy 2:14, which remember not written by Paul, written by someone who impersonated him, which says, and Adam was not deceived. Oh no, of course not. But the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Eve was blamed for introducing sin into the world. And the early church fathers like Terushalin, Tertullian and Augustine saw women as spiritually and morally inferior. Tertullian in on the apparel of women said, do you not know that you are each and Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age. That was preached from a pulpit in the 2nd century CE. Do you not know that you are each and Eve? How convenient. This theological framing justified excluding women from leadership roles, even though the Apostle Paul himself designated women as deacons and church leaders. That Jesus himself had female apostles and it contributed to the belief that they were more easily corrupted by Satan. By the 5th century, as Christianity spread across Europe and suppressed local pagan religions, women who held spiritual authority in pre Christian communities became targets of suspicion. This suspicion and degradation was amplified in the Middle Ages. The church increasingly saw the female body as a site of danger and temptation. Women were linked with lust and cardinal sin, blood from menstruation and childbirth, and was impurity. They were associated with emotional instability and gossip. Again, none of this is true. It was used to malign female spiritual leadership. Ladies who went to church growing up, how many times did you hear a preacher talk about women who gossip, the sin of gossip versus how many times you ever heard a preacher talk about consent, rape or domestic violence? This type of rhetoric has been going on since the Middle Ages. A refusal to address the sexual sin of men, while blaming female victims for receiving sin against them. Sexually. Women who acted outside of the expected role of silent, obedient wife, particularly widows who refused to get remarried, herbalists or sexually independent women. Sexual independence in women made people very vulnerable, and they were very vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft. Autonomy for women has always been seen as a threat, which is why there was a specific movement within the church to remove women from positions of spiritual power, autonomy, medical knowledge, and to remove them from influence in their communities. Medical knowledge was passed down from women and it was demonized. That's why so much superstition started to arise in the Middle Ages around medical practices, around midwifery. It was considered associated with a relationship with Satan or demons. By the 13th century, ecclesiastical courts had begun treating some forms of folk healing as demonic magic. Normally it was just plants, but especially when it was practiced by women, it was. It was deemed dangerous. The 15th century publication of Malleus Maleficarum, which means the hammer of Witches, by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, marked a turning point. This book, which became the definitive witch hunting manual, explicitly stated that women were more likely to become witches because they were morally weaker, more lustful. Pause. We only need bans. We only need laws banning child marriage to keep one gender from marrying kids, and it's not women. But because of this idea that men stated women are morally weaker, they're more lustful. Even though we can see from sex sex crimes itself that that's not true. But they also claim that they were easily deceived by the devil. Men publishing this and saying this made it true. From Malleus Maleficarum, there's a quote that says all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is, in a woman, insatiable. Again, it's funny because this idea that women are the keepers of all sexual sin and men can't resist their temptation and their wiles, but men should also be the leaders. But also, women don't like sex and are cold and frigid, and they're also insatiable. You get it? It doesn't make any sense. It's clearly a distraction and a grasping for power. This book drew on Christian theology, Aristotelian philosophy and the social bias to argue that witches were disproportionately female and that their crimes included not just magic, but literal sex with Satan. I'm not kidding. This book claimed that these women were having actual intercourse with Satan. This weaponized theology was responsible for the execution of tens of thousands, thousands of women, often widows, midwives, poor women, the mentally ill, or women who refused to marry. If you refused to marry, if you did not have a male protector, you were targeted. Across Europe and colonial America again from the 15th to the 18th century, between 75 and 85% of those accused and executed for witchcraft in early modern Europe were women. Many of the practices condemned as witchcraft again were just these remnants of older pagan traditions. Plant medicine, especially those that were passed down through mothers from oral female lineages, were immediately considered demonic. Seasonal festivals like Samhain, Beltane, Yule, Winter solstice became associated with demonic practices. The Church often again rebranded these pagan survivaling seasons. Excuse me. The Church often rebranded these pagan festivals that had survived and maintained their independence as diabolical, again, especially when performed by women without the oversight of the Church. Fine. When the Church did it, Christmas was fine, which had the same traditions. But if you celebrated solstice, it was demonic. I'm sure you gathered by now that the witch trials were not just spiritual. They were social and political tools used to reinforce patriarchal control and institutionalized the idea that women were inferior and sinful. Women who owned land or businesses were often accused because it allowed for the church and the local government to seize their assets and redistribute their wealth to men. Midwives and healers competed with male doctors in the US Specifically with the rise of the American Medical Association. And they competed with priests for influences over life and death, which is a powerful tool that men wanted a monopoly over. Priests wanted the religious monopoly, and male doctors wanted the power and the influence. Independent women, unmarried widows and women who refused marriage were a threat to patriarchal household economy, which depended on subservience and silence to function. They needed women at home, maintaining the home and working as a servant to men to uphold this patriarchal society, very similar to what the church and patriarchal society stands for today. Women who could simply read were accused. Education was a threat. Does any of this sound familiar? And when we're talking about midwives and doctors wanting a monopoly over medical institutions in the United States, abortion was legal in the 1700s. And it wasn't. It wasn't deemed as some. It was deemed as, like a private medical matter. It was seen often as a necessary evil. If a woman was deeply poor or her husband had just died, it was very accepted to be able to have abortion up until the time of the quickening, which is about 20 to 24 weeks, where the fetus is moving. And it wasn't until the rise of the American Medical association, who wanted to disenfranchise midwifery because women controlled, like what we would deem ob gyn practices of the time. And when the American Medical association was founded by white men, they decided they wanted midwives pushed out. So they started to say that midwife practice was dangerous, it was demonic, it was against the church, and that abortion, which again, performed by midwives was evil. The American Medical association, ran by these male doctors, started writing independently to states to get them to ban abortions. And by the early 1900s, they had gotten them to do so. What did this do? It funneled practices away from midwifery to the new American Medical association. And it forced women in the late 1800s and early 1900s to have more children and made them more financially dependent on men. But these abortion regulations were loosened in the 30s because people understood when there is a depression, people can't find work, they're starving. To have more children, that child's going to starve. It was seen as a mercy. Do you see how this. It's this pattern of control, the desire for dominance, and stripping away female knowledge and autonomy. By branding female autonomy as witchcraft, Christian institutions align themselves with male social and economic dominance. In the 13th century, the Catholic church created a formal system to deal with what they called heresy. This is what we now know as the medieval Inquisition. It was initially focused on doctrinal heresies like the Cathars or the Waldesians. The Inquisition's tools were torture, interrogation, and public punishment. Keep people in line. But it was later applied to witchcraft. Once it was framed as a form of heresy. Again, it used to be like, oh, that's silly superstition. Why would you even pay that Any mind. But then it became a powerful tool. The church began to systemize the legal procedures that would come to define the witch trials. Trials, often forced confessions. They included spectral evidence, which simply means that your accuser or your neighbor could claim they had a dream about you performing witchcraft, and that was considered viable evidence in court. They also allowed certain theological quote, proof of guilt based on your behavior. Oh, she's strange. She lives alone by herself on the edge of the village. She refuses to get married, obviously. Burn the witch. The idea of a female witch forming a secret cult to worship Satan gained a lot of traction in theology and in folklore in the Middle Ages. By the late 14th and 15th century, theologians again began to promote this idea of organized witchcraft. So not this isolated witch who creates herbs in her house, but it was a conspiracy of witches working together across Europe to undermine Christendom. This was influenced by earlier fears of heretical sex and reinforced by widespread social instability, including the several recurrences of the Black Death, famine and war. You have to have someone to blame. Women became the scapegoat. And again in Malleus Maleficarum. This book treated witchcraft as a theological heresy and a social rebellion. It encouraged secular authorities outside of the church to take up the cause of. Of purging witches. We can see this as kind of. This was an early form of religious nationalism to take out this anger and exert this control over the scapegoated group. In Malleus Maleficarum, it says when a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, again, which in a woman is insatiable. Is insatiable. And this quote makes me think of the current attack on intellect and education. You don't have to go far on social media to see how women shouldn't have the right to vote because women liberal voters are ruining the country. How women should be discouraged from education and should be looking for their husbands as soon as they turn 18. Charlie Kirk just released a video saying that women should find their husbands before 25. Joel Webb, who doesn't believe that women should be in public and doesn't believe that women should have the right to vote, has now designed a dating service where Christian parents can arrange a marriage for their daughters and supervise the courtship. And you can submit your daughter for a profile the day she turns 18. All of this, the attack on education right now is because women are kicking ass in it. They're outscoring men. They're out graduating men. They're now finally getting return on their reward. Because as long as we've had educational standards tracked. Women have always outscored men. This idea that that's new is, is not. But what would happen is women could only go to 8th grade or maybe high school. They couldn't go to college, especially for law or medicine. They could maybe go to college for secretarial studies. But now that women are getting rewarded for their work, rewarded for these test scores, rewarded for their diligence, particularly black women are killing it. Oh, my goodness. They, more than any other demographic, are outscoring and out graduating everyone. That's the threat. Education is not the threat. Professors do not have enough time to be indoctrinating. What they're doing is, they're teaching, they're expanding worldviews. And because women are dominating education, education is now a threat. If for Christian nationalists, if white men were dominating education and jobs and weren't falling behind, education would still be praised, if it wasn't benefiting women and giving women more options, more autonomy, they wouldn't be fighting so hard to take it away. Malleus Maleficarum again was published at an ideal time. Europe was dealing with a range of crises. Plague, war, shifting political boundaries, and challenges to the church authorities. And the church, in its own insecurity, needed to apply force and violence to maintain control. Then there were issues with health and economy. People love having someone to blame. When you have a plague ransacking the known earth, killing a third of the population, you want to find someone to blame. Accusations of witchcraft allowed ecclesiastical and secular powers to scapegoat vulnerable women and reassert control over society and deflect blame from institutional failures, deflect blame from the rich who were failing to provide for the constituents in their kingdom. Does it sound familiar? They were a scapegoat. This theological justification allowed men, especially clergy and magistrates, to legitimize the social control of women. They're evil. They must be controlled. They have to be subjugated, Particularly those who don't defied traditional gender roles. The Protestant reformation of the 16th century and the Catholic Counter Reformation exacerbated the witch craze. Both sides sought to purify religious life and local, exert local control, and eliminate perceived spiritual threats. Protestants no longer had inquisitions, but they used local courts, while Catholics continued using inquisitorial procedures. In both camps, witch hunts provided an outlet to project fear of theological corruption and societal instability onto marginalized individuals. Marginalized communities have always been the scapegoat of the wealthy and the powerful, and it shifts based on cultural mindset. When you look at the 60s and the 70s, the scapegoat was black people and the civil rights movement and feminists. When that was no longer working to rally the vote, it became abortion providers and the gay community. And when gay marriage was passed and the sky didn't fall, they had to specifically look at the trans community and immigration. And these immigrants are voting, they're not voting. But that was never an issue until Obama got elected, because how dare the black community rally and come out and vote and elect a black man. It is very important to look at who the scapegoat is. It is always a marginalized community that does not have the wealth, the numbers or the power to defend themselves. But it allows for those in positions of power and those they are subjugating to have someone to blame. It is not left versus right. Your enemy is not the Mexican family working in a restaurant to provide. It is always top versus bottom. And the witch trials were exactly the same thing. But this time the scapegoat was women and anyone who did not fall in line with the church. Witch trials surged in regions where religious authority was fragmented, such as in Germany, Switzerland and Scotland, because competing religious groups sought to prove their orthodoxy, sought to prove their loyalty to the church by purging their communities. And also these regions, the Germanic and Celtic regions in particular, had long histories of these spiritual practices. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, played a huge role in affecting the role of women in the church. And what defined the quote, godly woman. Prior to his changes, a woman's holiest calling was in line with Paul's sexual ethic of avoiding sex and marriage altogether and focusing your energy on serving God instead. Being a single, celibate, childless, unmarried woman was the highest godly calling in Paul's sexual ethic. And in the early Church, it was Martin Luther who redefined godly womanhood as marriage, children and service to her husband, his work and his dreams. And this deeply affected Martin Luther's wife because she was originally successful in her own right prior to her marriage to him. And she died penniless because of his ideologies. He died before her and she died in abject poverty. That hasn't changed. The number one predictor of elder poverty in women is being a stay at home mom and wife. There's nothing wrong with that. It is an inherent risk, though, and these ideologies come from the Protestant Reformation. Behind the theological justifications were very real material and political incentives. Clergy and magistrates gained spiritual and political legitimacy by conducting these trials. They positioned themselves as defenders of the faith, guardians against evil and the enforcers of divine justice. They also pivoted themselves as we're protecting our society and our culture from evil. This reinforced the authority of the church and the state, and it was often intertwined at the time. That's why the separation of church and state is so unbelievably valuable. In many trials, convicted witches had their property confiscated and their wealth redistributed to men. This gave communities and authorities a financial incentive to accuse and execute women. Widows, the elderly, often any woman who did not have a male protector, were especially vulnerable. By the late 17th century, there was the rise of skepticism about witchcraft. The enlightenment rationalism and legal reforms finally shifted theological priorities, which made witch trials less frequent. But the legacy endured. This. This idea that women's autonomy and their bodies and their roles are inherently evil. They're weaker. They need to be subjugated. It's important that they are regulated by religious and patriarchal institutions. Long after the last witch trial, we see that today. That is a major movement in every single fundamentalist religion. We can look at the middle east, Afghanistan, anywhere controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban is executing a theocracy, and it's a different brand than Christian nationalism. But Christian nationalism wants to establish the same thing. What happens in a theocratic state, women's bodies, their roles, everything about a woman has to be strictly regulated. And this comes from patriarchal institutions and has been carried since the witch trials. All of this is connected. The final executions for witchcraft in Europe occurred in the 1700s. In Switzerland, 1782. And in colonial America, the infamous Salem witch trials, which we're going to do a little bit of a focus on before we wrap up today, happened in 1692-1693. These all marked the tail end of the hysteria. I mean, starting from the middle ages, but it left a lasting imprint on patriarchal religious beliefs about women and the American religious and legal consciousness. The Salem witch trials in particular, obviously, are among one of the most infamous moments in American history. It was a terrifying convergence of religious extremism, Patriarchal oppression, and social paranoia. Between February of 1692, in May of 1693, more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. 19 were hanged, one was pressed to death, and at least five died in jail. And no, there was no actual. There was no actual burn the witch in America. We didn't actually have steak burnings here. That was common in Europe. But the Massachusetts bay colony was founded by puritans, English protestants who had fled persecution, religious persecution, but then came and built a Society just as theocratic and rigid as the one that they had escaped. The persecuted became the prosecutor. The same as Christianity did when it being went from being this small ostracized persecuted sect to a global superpower. The Puritan worldview was deeply dualistic. God versus Satan, righteous versus evil, obedience versus rebellion, black versus white. Like it was this very rigid system that there wasn't nuance or gray area in between. Anything perceived as rebellion against the church or authority or gender norms was easily construed as you have made a pact with the devil. In 1692, Salem Village, which is now Danvers, Massachusetts was a fractious and deeply community. And remember, when things are tough, authority is shaky or there's been massive change or instability, scapegoating happens. When the economy's bad, you find somebody to blame. Salem Village had endured smallpox outbreaks, ongoing war with indigenous peoples, which was the Puritans fault for violating treaties and more on that later. Political instability and after the revocation of the colony's charter, bitter rivalry rivalries between Salem Town, which was a wealthier coastal town, and Salem Village which was was poorer and agriculturally based. It was this community looking for scapegoats. And in the eyes of the Puritans, Satan was a great, was always a great scapegoat. Satan didn't have anything to do with this. This was religious men enacting violence. The Puritans believed that the devil actively walked among them, corrupting souls and infiltrating the godly. The Bible was used as a foundation for witch prosecution, specifically from the King James Bible, Exodus 22, verse 20, verse 18, which says thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Fun little tidbit here though is that King Saul consulted a witch or medium when he wanted advice from Samuel in 1st Samuel 28. Even though it was King Saul who had made all forms of witchcraft and mediumship punishable by death, he swore an oath on God himself that no harm would come to this witch in order to get her to do it. She says to him, are you trying to get me killed? King Saul has made this an offense punishable by death. And while Samuel, because this works, she's able to summon Samuel back. Samuel reprimands Saul for disturbing his rest. But God does not condemn this use of mediumship from Saul. It's interesting how the Puritans never brought that story up, but they really did love Exodus. Classic cherry picking ministers, particularly Reverend Cotton Mather, warned of a spiritual war for New England's soul in his 1693 work called the Wonders of the invisible world. Mather defended the witch trials, Insisting that the colony was under siege by Satan's agents and that any leniency towards suspected witches was a step towards atheism. Tolerance is a step towards atheism. Does it sound familiar? He said, quote, we have been advised by some of the very considerable witches that the devil has promised them a day wherein he would be better served by making a descent upon new England. No witches said that. Just to be clear, the clergy helped frame the trials as civil disputes and spiritual warfare. Evidence like dreams, hallucination, hallucinations that spectral evidence claim that a spirit in someone's likeness committed harm were committed in court. So not only could your neighbor or your accuser say they had a dream about you, they could claim that they saw a spiritual version of you committing these acts and that could be used in court against you. It was reflected as the devil's interference. God told me that of those accused in Salem, again, the majority were women, Especially unmarried, educated widows who had inherited property, Poor women, mentally ill, or women who were socially disruptive, Women who did not want to adhere to culture norms, gender norms, or did not want to attend puritan church. In puritan theology, women were seen again, as spiritually and morally weaker, easier prey for Satan's seductions. This is not biblical. Jesus spent time elevating women, had women apostles. Again, this is not biblical. This is men wanting power. An easy carryover from the European witch trials that was reinforced by biblical narratives, again, like Eve's fall in Genesis, in the Genesis myth. So scholar Carol Carlson in the devil in the shape of a woman, noted that many of the accused women owned or stood to inherit land and had no male protections, protectors, or they had reputations for outspokenness or for practicing healing. She said, quote, and this is maybe my favorite quote from this episode. She said the image of the witch was of the image of a woman who could not be governed. And many of the accused, an enslaved woman from African Africa named Tituba, who was an incredible midwife, was accused of witchcraft. They later tortured her into a confession where she described a satanic conspiracy. They also killed Sarah good, who was a destitute pregnant beggar that they executed. Sarah Osborne was accused for not attending church and challenging inheritance norms. She said she was set to inherit a large estate and they accused her of witchcraft, murdered her and took her inheritance. These were not random accusations. They reflected this gendered power struggle. And with the most vulnerable, non conforming women often targeted. And in these institutions, when you don't have women who Rally together. It's easy to pick off the vulnerable. Some of the prominent people in the Salem witch trials, Reverend Colin Mather that we mentioned earlier, played a central role in legitimizing the trials. Judge William Stockton, who was the chief magistrate, aggressively pursued convictions, often bypassing due process. He approves spectral evidence, making the convictions easier. Again, when you have a scapegoat, and especially when evidence is tampered with or due process is skipped, it's a. It's a power grab. Ann Putnam Jr. Was one of the chief accusers of accusing of over 60 people of witchcraft, which we're going to talk more about her later in 1706. She would later publicly apologize for her role, saying she had been misled by the devil. But we'll see who actually misled her and why. There's a little bit of legitimacy to her apology. As we can see, the trials offered real material incentives, especially to wealthy Puritan men. Convicted witches. Property could be confiscated by the state. In many cases, families of the accused were billed for jail fees and execution costs, even the cost of the rope that they hung them with. Accusers often had land disputes with the accused. Convenient. So to be clear, again, your accuser could have a land dispute with you, call you a witch, say they had a dream about it, where God came to them and they could take your land, jail or kill you. And I want to spend a little bit more time on the example of the Putnam family. Anna Putnam Jr. Who I just mentioned. They were prominent accusers. Historian Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum in Salem possessed the social origins of witchcraft, traced how economic and geographic tensions, especially between wealthy merchants and rural farmers, played into who was accused. The Putnam family, which was one of the most prominent and aggressive accusers. The patriarch of the family was involved in several land disputes, including with families of the accused, such as the Porter family, the nurse's family. Rebecca Nurse was hanged after being accused by Anna Putnam Jr. And the Coreys. Giles Corey was one of the few men killed in the Salem witch trials. Refused to enter a plea deal. And because he refused to enter a plea, his land could not legally be seized by the court and instead passed to his children. He intentionally refused to to issue a plea so that his inheritance would go to his children and could not get confiscated by the Putnam family. He was accused by Anna Putnam Jr. And was pressed to death. Yes, he was pressed to death. They piled stones on top of him until it crushed him. And his last words were one more stone, absolute g all the way to the very end. Thomas Putnam was a staunch supporter of Reverend Samuel Paris, the fire and brimstone preacher whose preaching inflamed tensions in the Salem village. Many of the accused were opponents of Paris and thus by extension, opponents of Thomas Putnam. The trials allowed the Putnams to remove or intimidate political and religious dissenters and rivals. But let's get back to Ann Putnam Jr. Who later apologized for her role in accusing 60 individuals. Here's why there's some merit to that. She was 12 years old when she made these accusations and spectral evidence. Her accusations often aligned with her family's land feuds and political grudges. And we now know she was likely coached, coerced and influenced by her parents to be used as a tool for their own wealth and benefit. She was a kid. By October of 1692, public opinion began to turn. Doubts arose when Governor William Phipps own wife was accused of witchcraft. Increase Mather. That's a name. Increase. Increase Mather, who's the father of Cotton Mather, spoke out against spectral evidence, saying it were better that 10 suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. So this father actively comes out against the work of his son. Governor Phipps eventually dissolved the special court. A new Superior court of judicature refused to accept spectral evidence. Thank God. Which ended the executions because people were being killed because of spectral evidence. In 1697, the Massachusetts General court declared a day of fasting and repentance for the late tragedy. Oh, I said I'm sorry. So it's all better now. Good job, gents. In 1702, the trials were formally declared unlawful. And in 1711 the colony passed a bill restoring the rights and good names of some of the accused and offered limited financial compensation to their heirs. The Salem witch trials became a cautionary tale of what happens when fear, religion and power converge without any accountability. Church and state separation has to be in place. Due process has to be in place because this is what happens when you don't gendered persecution, mass hysteria. This is what happens when religious corruption, justice is allowed to run unfettered. And think of how deeply the metaphor of a witch hunt remains embedded in our American political language around unjust persecution, often kind of ironically used by powerful men who are claiming victimhood. Arthur Miller's 1953 play the Crucible famously used the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism, which we've covered here before, reminding how the world. How it's so easy to weaponize these ideologies in a time of fear. The witch trials are a horrific Example of religious extremism and misogyny. The witch trials didn't end in the 1700s because those same ideologies are still impacting us. The witch trials of the early modern era were not simply outbreaks of religious hysteria. They were calculated efforts fueled by propaganda, patriarchal theology and fear to control women's roles, their bodies and their knowledge. Today, many of those same strategies and rhetorical frameworks reappear in modern far right ideologies, Especially in the movements focused on Christian nationalism, white male supremacy and anti feminism. By examining the propaganda used against the accused witches and comparing it to contemporary messaging about women that we hear right now today, we can trace a very clear through line, a deep seated desire to uphold patriarchal dominance through fear, surveillance and moral control. Let's review. Witch trial propaganda took women who held sacred spiritual and medicinal roles and claimed it as heresy. Because of the ideals that women were deemed spiritually weaker and morally corrupt, female sexuality was seen as dangerous and demonic. Every accusation is a confession. Midwives and healers were threatened to male authority and public punishment was a deterrent. To quote ungovernable women, next month I'm making a T shirt that says ungovernable woman. I just love it. We need more of that. Female deities, generals and key women in history were systematically erased. Did you know that the most successful pirate in history was a Chinese woman who owned a brothel? Just gone. It's so hard to find information on women. There were women who conquered swaths of the Greek empire after the death of Alexander the Great. And we don't, we don't hear about them. Witches were accused of consorting with the devil, killing babies, seducing men and causing natural disasters. Because while men are this stronger, more rational, superior side of the race, women apparently completely control them sexually. It doesn't make any sense, but it created this moral panic that justified surveillance, torture and execution. The liberal women are causing the plague. It's the evil wiles of women. The witch trials were driven by a mix of Christian doctrine, emerging state power, both of which sought to suppress female autonomy. The church and courts functioned as gatekeepers of morality and knowledge, framing female independence as heresy and threat. Female healers who had been in place for thousands of years were replaced by male doctors. Women who spoke out were labeled hysterical or demonic. Economic independence or land ownership by women triggered accusations of witchcraft. The witch was not just a figure of fear. She was the embodiment of everything the patriarchal system needs to control, which is Barbara and Ryrich and Deidre English. Today's far right Movements from white nationalists to Christian dominionists employ strikingly similar propaganda to subjugate women. And while no one is being burned at the stake, the mechanisms of shame and moral control and exclusion and the threat of this other woman. Think of how many times you've seen a, a conservative talking head. Talk about blue haired liberals or women like me who have a nose ring. Let's do just a little side by side comparison. I'm gonna talk about a belief from the witch trials from the 1400s to the 1700s and the modern far right movement from the 2000s to the present. I'm not even going to go back to the 90s. I only need to go to the 2000s. So in the witch trials you have women are emotionally unstable and easily deceived by Satan. Well now in modern far right messaging we hear women are too emotional to be president, she's going to paint the White House pink or start a war. Meanwhile, every war in recorded history has been started by men. The witch trial said female sexuality is dangerous and demonic and insatiable. Since the 2000s we get purity, culture, slut, shaming, anti LGBT rhetoric. I need you to understand, especially if you grew up in fundamentalism, that the attack on the gay community is because it disrupts gender norms. They need to survive. Because if a woman can love another woman or a man is not this role as this masculine dominant provider, it changes the gender role. The church cannot survive in its own, in the iteration it exists right now without these gender roles, gender roles that Jesus and Paul never taught, these are not biblical. This came after the Protestant Reformation and the witch trials. Independent women are threats to the social order which demands patriarchal dominance. In the modern far right movement we see this anti feminist backlash. Feminists are the problem. And the revival of the trad wife trend, this is all part of independent women are a threat. And again, there's nothing wrong with being a stay at home wife, being a wife and a mom. These are beautiful, amazing callings to have on your life. But it should be a choice. And when you have a, a culture or a social media movement that says that is depicting this, this is where you'll truly thrive. Some women will, some women won't. But this I, it's this idea that an independent woman, a woman who is not subject to a man, well she's not in her quote, divine feminine bullshit, bullshit. We also see this in the rise of incel culture that the, the fall of society is because of these sexually promiscuous women and they're ruin everything and they Des to be assaulted and murdered. If you look at a social media post about a woman getting murdered because she rejected the advances of a man, you will see comments on there about well she deserved it for leading him on. She probably used him for dinner though. As if her life is of less value than a dinner at Applebee's. Anyways, back to the witch trials. The propaganda of male authority must be absolute. We see that in modern far right theology, male headship theology, patriarchal household structure. You'll hear this the how you'll hear this is it's the destruction of the nuclear family or biblical marriage. What do you mean biblical marriage? The biblical marriage where David and Solomon had multiple wives and concubines. The biblical marriage where Abraham was married to Sarah and then lied about it several times getting her and him in trouble and then assaulted his servant and had a child her his son Ishmael with Hagar. Or the fact that David kidnapped Bathsheba from her home, assaulted her and then murdered her husband. Which biblical marriage are you talking about? Because the biblical marriage they claim is so in the scripture is not upheld by the Old Testament either. And then they point to Matthew where Jesus talks about divorce. He was asked about divorce between a man and a woman. So he answered the question about divorce between a man and a woman in the witch trials. Female knowledge, female healing, female education is suspect and evil. We see that in the modern far right war on women's reproductive rights, on women being included in healthcare and the war on education. Again, you do not have to look far to see how intellectual women, especially liberal women, especially if you have blue hair, are consistently demonized because a woman's intellect is a threat. How many times do we see these in sale male talking heads get on a microphone and talk about we're not impressed by your career or your education or how many degrees you got. Yeah, because they make you insecure. It's a threat. Kristin Cobes Dumez in Jesus and John Wayne, which if you haven't read it, is an amazing book. She says today's Christian right recycles centuries old ideas of women's subservience cloaked in family values and biblical literal literalism, end quote. That often does not exist. Again, those specific examples of purity culture and this trad wife revival. This is an alt right pipeline. Absolutely not. What is natural does not require force, violence, subservience to issue. A woman will find her natural state if you let her. And if men are truly superior, then they don't need to disadvantage everyone else. It's the insecurity that causes you to want to disenfranchise others. Even if we look at. Let's talk about the origin of the word slut, right? How often we have purity culture, we have slut shaming. This idea that women are so promiscuous. Even promiscuous women do not keep up with how much men get around. There's a huge double standard there where either sexual purity is this theological biblical standard or it's not. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. But the origin of the word slut come the earliest recorded mention of that word is 1402. And initially slut had nothing to do with sexuality. It was used to describe a woman of social class who was messy or unkempt or who did not uphold feminine beauty standards. It was a classist slur used to degrade working class women or criticize women who did not meet like the aristocratic ideals of feminine beauty. Purity culture is very, very closely tied in with the thin white woman. This idea of degrading women who do not adhere to an appearance standard, again, like me, I have tattoos and nose piercing and the far right are on me all the time degrading me because of that. Because I do not adhere to what they think the feminine idea is, because I adhere to my feminine ideal. The trad wife movement is just and purity culture are just rebranding of these deeply misogynistic ideals. That's why I have no issue with women taking the word slut and kind of using it as a badge of honor. Because these movements need to get a new word. That word has been around to subjugate and dismiss women since the 1400s. And again, the incel worldview is the secularized version of the same misogyny that we see in the witch trials and that we see in Christian nationalism. It's this idea that women are the broader the manosphere, if you will. The Andrew Tate sphere. It depicts women as manipulative, hypergamous and deserving of punishment if they dare to reject a man. It's. It's the same thing as witches were seen as using sexual power to deceive and destroy. It's just a rebrand. And let's talk about the anti abortion rhetoric. This dates back to the witch trials where women were midwives. An anti abortion rhetoric will frame women who seek reproductive autonomy as murderers, which echoes the witch trials of women who were accused of killing infants or blocking fertility, which they didn't do. Right. Right wing Christian groups like Operation Save America, Personhood USA and the New Apostolic Reformation represent reproductive rights as a as spiritual warfare. When the Old Testament in Scripture clearly delineates value between a fetus and the life of a woman, giving the fetus property value. The Old Testament clearly delineates life as beginning at first breath. And in Hellenistic views they had a lot of different views about when personhood and ensoulment began. The most popular being that ensoulment could not possibly happen until the quickening 20 to 24 weeks. And most elective abortions happen long before that. Again, these are issues that the Bible never specifically discusses that are more Greek philosophy influenced and theologically influenced and patriarchal standard influenced. But it's used and it's been repackaged at spiritual warfare. And we see this in QAnon, the digital age. All of these systems that rely on public shaming, moral panic, and they justify it with religious or ideologies. And then there's state or mob enforcement of the norms. Bring in the state, bring in the government, bring in the church to create the same purpose, which is create a world where women are watched, judged and punished for stepping outside of their prescribed roles. A woman who is self defined is a threat. Accused women that were accused of witch as witches, accused women now who are liberals, feminists, libtards whatever word they choose are othered. We're portrayed as outside the moral fabric of the community. And today's feminists, queer women and anyone who is non conforming are vilified online, doxxed, harassed. It's the same thing. I love history. I love history so much. And in large part because of history like this, because history shows us that no, you aren't crazy, you aren't hysterical, you aren't evil ladies, your bodies and your voice and your sexuality and your brain and your curiosity are not evil. But how many of us, specifically for those of you women who grew up in fundamentalist Christianity or purity culture were taught some version of that? The first time I was sexually ashamed, I was nine years old, I was wearing a tank top and like it was literally like a sleeveless shirt. And I was, I was taught in that moment that my body was evil and sexual and demonic and lustful. And it was my fault, not the adult men who might be lusting after a nine year old. How many of us were taught some version of that? This comes from the witch trials, all of this. And for women who have always had an interest in the occult or in witchcraft and you've kind of been demonized for that or you've questioned it, or maybe you deconstructed religion and kind of fell into that. Specifically. If you are a descendant of these traditions, know that this is part of your history, this is part of your power. It doesn't mean you have to practice it, but understanding it gives you a different understanding that women have. Have always played critical roles in spirituality and knowledge, even though there's been this attempt to erase it. It's so important and to me, so empowering to understand these stories. And when I was visiting family in Nebraska with my niece, I found this store that had this gore. It was like I love witchy stores and Halloween themed everything. And it had this gorgeous oracle deck called Witch. And it was W period, I period T, period. And it stood for women in woman in total control of herself. Which I think is so true. Especially in light of this history. When we see ideologies peddled to us as morality without any justification or as the voice of God usually followed because I said so or because the Bible says so, particularly when that God commands we subjugate or demonize someone. Always look at where that ideology comes from. Again, the truth will always hold up to scrutiny. Chances are you'll find that that ideology is not new at all. Ultimately, all of these arguments almost exclusively come down to money, control and power. And often the group that is deemed as other, the group that is deemed as evil, will change based on cultural norms, based on who they can emotionally invigorate to act out against that group. It will continue to change. We've watched it in our lifetime. And so I hope that you've enjoyed this historical conversation as much as I have. I loved researching this topic. I had this script was originally like way longer and this is still a pretty long episode and I had to cut it down by almost 20 pages. But I hope that this answers a lot of those questions. You know, for the people who have asked me about why I have this interest in these symbols, why I. Part of the reason I dress the way I do, part of my appreciation for. I've always been attracted to these things, to this type of history, horror stories, the interest in the occult. The reason that I love it now is because expression is powerful, but because I understand that the history of this was not about religious purity. It had nothing to do with God or spirituality. And it had something to do everything to do with subjugating women. And especially as someone of Celtic descent, I find this is deeply personal to my own personal history. And for me, it's a small act of defiance and a small act of choosing myself and a small act of showing appreciation for the women who predated me, who unfortunately could not pass this knowledge down to me because it was taken from them. And it's, I think, a clear and very present and real discussion of what we see today both in the demonization and the subjugation of women and how women are treated globally, as well as when we see that demonization happen to other groups. It gives us a chance and a tool to be able to look at these ideologies and evaluate them, study their history, and then also stand against them when religious injustice becomes this lust for unbridled power. And now I'm gonna do our weekly shout outs for my Patreon supporters. Thank you again for making this show possible. All right, I would like to thank the following members. I'm just gonna thank them based on the name they have on Patreon and if they did not include their last name, I will not include it. But I wanna thank you individually for being part of this movement, for making my work possible. Crystal L. Lamar. Lamar Brent, Jenna Becker, Caleb Brandice Senecol, Shelly Norman, Laura Lobrie, Tanya Roberts, RWK Michelle Andres, Elise Zaretsky, Joanna Strange. Sweet Strawberry Jam. Ashley T. Devastacia. That's a great name. Charles Haynes, Jocelyn Yulan Valor, Patty Charles R. Rodriguez, Carla Abraham, Sandy Annamorata, Rachel Musgrove, Michelle Paint Me DAISY M. ANDREWS, Danka42, Miranda Lane, Kathy Markle, Grace Elliott and Jamie Condraki. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for signing up on my Patreon. If you would like to support me, get these episodes always AD and a week early. You can sign up on my Patreon and there are some new tiers where you get gift boxes from me, adventure cards and a little bit more exposure to my art and my upcoming book. Thank you for being here. I hope that you've learned a lot. Please comment and review this episode. I would love to know what you learned, what excited you, your stories around some of these topics and as always, stay curious, question everything and I will see you next week on Flipping Tables.