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Episode 102: Female Occultist pt.4
436 Plays1 year ago
Welcome back, witches! In today's episode we dive further into the fascinating world of female practitioners of the occult. Join us as we explore their mysterious practices and delve into the profound wisdom they offer. So get in losers, as we embark on a captivating journey through the realms of ancient magic and divine feminine power.
We would be forever thankful if you left our podcast a 5-Star review. If you really loved the show and want more Get in Loser content, check out our Supercast & Buy Me a Coffee links below. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @GetinWitches, on TikTok @weredoingwitchcraft, or email us at weredoingwitchcraft@gmail.com. You can support our show through our links below.
Supercast: https://getinloserweredoingwitchcraft.supercast.com
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio- The Witch
References:
- Brain, Jessica. Mother Shipton & Her Prophecies. (2022) Historic UK. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Mother-Shipton-Prophesies/
- Yorkshire’s Nostradamus: The Life and Prophecies of Mother Shipton. Sky History. https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-life-and-prophecies-of-mother-shipton
- https://www.mothershipton.co.uk/the-story/
- Vere Chappell (1999). Ida Craddock: Sexual Mystic and Matyr for Freedom. Grand Treasurer General U.S. Grand Lodge O.T.O. https://www.idacraddock.org/intro.html
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you feel drawn to learn more about witchcraft and the occult, but feel lost on where to start? Then welcome to Get In, Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft, a podcast all about what it means to be a witch and where to get started on your journey. Join us as we navigate through various witchy topics and share what we have learned about the craft.
Technical Glitches and Humor
00:00:16
Speaker
So get in witches as we discuss more badass female occultists.
00:00:47
Speaker
Side note, when I was downloading and uploading Book Club to YouTube, I was checking it. There were spots in the Book Club video where we were just on our phones typing because for us, one or the other is frozen. But for Book Club, neither one of us are because it records us separately and then merges it together.
00:01:08
Speaker
So it'll freeze on our end, but for the system, it's not frozen at all. That's hilarious. Or it's me being like, oh no. And you're being like, I'm frozen, or you're frozen. And we're talking at the same time because we can't see or hear each other. It was really funny. You'll have to go watch it. Yeah, that's hilarious.
00:01:34
Speaker
Oh well. Oh well. It is what it is. Yeah. Well, and it was like at one point you were like, Oh my God, you're frozen again. And I was like, well, we said this might happen guys. And we're just like talking at the same time. Yeah. They're going to be like, what the fuck is going on? Neither one of you are frozen. Okay. Yeah. I promise we were.
00:01:57
Speaker
That's really funny. Yeah, yeah. So every time we freeze like during a recording that like a video recording, I guess we just need to keep it in our minds that it's not actually frozen on the system side. Yeah, so we can be like, Oh, well,
00:02:15
Speaker
We'll wait until we can talk to each other. We'll just assume it's fine. We'll just put in fill in the blanks for what you think you said. Yeah, it was so funny. Yeah. Oh my god, that's really funny. Yeah, it cracks me up. Yeah. But anyway, what are we talking about today?
Researching Female Occultists
00:02:34
Speaker
Female occultist. I love these episodes.
00:02:38
Speaker
I love them so much because not only is it just badass women doing their thing, but I feel like every time we've done these episodes, we just randomly pick someone. This time, I messaged you yesterday being like, oh my God, I didn't realize this is the episode we were doing this week and I'm trying to do my research because we both have crazy weeks. Yours has been insane.
00:03:02
Speaker
I was just like, let me just randomly look at the list, pick a name. And I was like, I've heard of this one before. I don't know anything about it. Plug it in, do the notes. And I was like, oh, this is the like.
00:03:13
Speaker
She's great. I love her. Every time we've done these, it's been like that. Yes, and I'm curious to see if there's any sort of similarities because it seems like oftentimes whenever we choose, whether it be a deity episode or a female occultist episode or just a cultist in general, we end up choosing
00:03:35
Speaker
Similar people. Yeah, they have a lot of similarities. And so I'm curious to see if there's, I'm assuming probably not, because I'm just looking at the times that this person, that your person was alive and I don't think so, but it will be cool if there was something. Yeah. Well, and like for listeners, there's no science to how we pick our deity episodes over.
00:03:55
Speaker
our female occultists. We are like chaotic trash pandas and we're just like, let's just do these ones. And then they end up having like all these similarities and it's always crazy or they compliment each other very well. So yeah, there's no formula. It's just chaos. That should be our tagline for butt fest.
00:04:20
Speaker
No formula, just chaos. Just chaos. Yeah. Put it on your shirt. Yeah.
Who is Mother Shipton?
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm starting off our episode with Mother Shipton, which I'd heard her name.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I don't know where I heard it. I don't know if it was in looking at trips that we wanted to go on or something last time we were out here in Germany, because she's from England and we did a few trips over there. Or if it was just reading something and her name was in it. Or sometimes they'll plug these people into fictional books. If you read an old witchy fictional book and her name was, I have no idea. But I knew her name and just nothing else. So I really loved researching her.
00:05:03
Speaker
So Mother Shipton is considered England's most famous prophet, who foretold the fates of several rulers during her time, as well as a few that came after her passing. She also foretold some of the largest historical events to have taken place in England, including the invention of iron ships, the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
00:05:24
Speaker
So Mother Shipton was born in 1488 as Ursula Southale in North Yorkshire in a small river woodland known as Narrowsboro, which if I'm saying that wrong, I'm sorry. There were different pronunciations and I just went with the one that seemed the most
00:05:40
Speaker
Correct, based on how it's spelled. I think that's... I've heard it being said before. I think it is Narrowsboro. Okay. One of them pronounced the K in the pronunciation, so they called it Canarsboro, which, that's a very Dutch thing. Like, my grandfather was from Holland. His last name was Canoflic, K-N-O-F-L-O-O-K, so they pronounced the K-N together.
00:06:02
Speaker
So I was like, I don't know if that's right, but maybe. So however it's pronounced, I don't know, but I'm going to say Narsborough. So there's some mystery surrounding her conception that brought scrutiny to Ursula before she was even born.
Ursula's Birth and Accusations
00:06:16
Speaker
Ursula's mother was a 15-year-old girl named Agatha,
00:06:19
Speaker
Though she was asked repeatedly who the father of her unborn child was, Agatha refused to name him. She was hauled before the local magistrate where he also pressured her to name the father, but she still refused. This made Ursula's existence a major controversy for this small town because this is also in the 1400s.
00:06:40
Speaker
So because people just can't help themselves, there was immediate speculation circulating that this mysterious unborn child and her conception was the work of the devil, and that Agatha must have conceived the child with Satan himself. This led many to accuse Agatha of being a witch, because like, what else could this be? You know, a young orphaned girl, unwed, becoming pregnant, giving birth without a father in sight, clearly the devil's work.
00:07:07
Speaker
So as the rumors continued, it spread that once born, Ursula was ugly, deformed, and witch-like from birth. Which I don't know how you can be witch-like from birth, but... Right. She probably had like a birthmark and they were like, Oh, witch's mother. So she did have some like deformities. So apparently I guess maybe that's what they were like saying was witch-like. That's bad. Yeah.
Isolation and Growth in a Cave
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:30
Speaker
Well, and I don't even know how accurate the descriptions of her are because you're going to see as the story goes on, like the rumors and the stories about her get more outrageous as time goes by because this town that she lived in was fucking shit. So Agatha was thought to have been an orphan and it was apparent that she lacked the ability to support her child.
00:07:52
Speaker
But instead of lending her support, she became ostracized from the local community, who shunned both Agatha and her unborn baby to the forest as pariahs. Agatha found a cave to provide her shelter, and it's within this cave that Ursula was born and then raised for the next two years on the banks of the River Ned, which how awful, right?
00:08:12
Speaker
Like you're a 15 year old girl, you're orphaned, you have no one. They shun you out into the forest. You're like a pariah from this town. You find a cave and then you have to give birth by yourself in this cave. Like how awful. So after living in the cave for two years, the abbot of Beverly noticed Agatha basically just like doing the best with what she had been given. And he showed her empathy in the form of finding a local family to take Ursula in
00:08:40
Speaker
and care for her while also offering Agatha a place at a distant nunnery in Nottinghamshire. So Agatha took the assistance and she passed away a few years later, having never seen her daughter again, which was just fucking sad. Yeah, that is really sad, especially considering she probably was fucking raped. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
00:09:01
Speaker
So Ursula remained in the local area with the family that took her in, but as we all probably assumed by this point, the gossip continued and she was said to have a twisted body, a bent back, twisted legs, and a large crooked nose. So she was teased relentlessly. And the more she was teased, the more outrageous the stories about her became. Some of the earlier ones included that as a toddler, she was basically apparently found cackling in her foster mother's kitchen alone with pots and pans.
00:09:31
Speaker
which I don't know if they're saying like, right? To me, I was like, don't kids normally just play with, I don't have them, but I mean, I've seen kids in kitchens playing with pots and pans and just laughing and giggling. So that seemed normal to me, but I don't know if they were trying to like make the connection like it was a cauldron or something.
00:09:47
Speaker
And then when she was like, I can't remember exactly what age and I didn't put it in the notes. I think it was like eight or nine or something. So there was this like parish meeting that was held and it was said to be disrupted by her because she was playing tricks on men through a window. And all of the men that she supposedly was playing tricks on had been men that mocked her like publicly.
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. And so they were like, Oh, mocking a little girl, literally a baby, like from the time she was a baby, literally, the child was mocked and ridiculed and tormented. And then every little event that happens in this town basically gets blamed on her as retaliation for mocking her. And the townspeople would go as far to say that, and this is a direct quote, if you dared publicly mock Ursula, you could soon expect to be on the receiving end of her wrath.
00:10:38
Speaker
So this is basically her childhood, right? She's not even an adult yet, and this has been her life.
Ursula's Herbal Skills
00:10:44
Speaker
So Ursula's way of dealing with the teasing and the tormenting was simply just to keep to herself and spend time out in the woods and in the cave that she lived in with her mother.
00:10:52
Speaker
She spent time studying the local plants and wildlife, learning to create potions, remedies, and concoctions from the local flora. Being the gossip mongers that this village was, of course, word quickly spread about Ursula's abilities and her knowledge as an herbalist, and they soon began calling on her for help to cure people's ailments within the community. Like, that could not have been me. Hi, Ursula. We heard you're really smart with plants. Can you help my sick father? Oh, you mean your father that fucking mocked me in the streets? No.
00:11:22
Speaker
that's called karma, have a nice life. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But Ursula was super nice and she did it anyways. So as an adult, because she was such a skilled herbalist, Ursula was reintegrated into the community. Within a very short timeframe, she met a carpenter from York named Tobias Shipton. At the age of 24, Ursula and Tobias married.
00:11:46
Speaker
This of course led to rumors that she put a spell on him to make him want to marry her because obviously no one would want to marry her. Like this community is legit shit. Every time something like good happens, they're fucking trash. Doing this research made me love her and made me hate these people that I don't even know so much.
00:12:05
Speaker
One month after they were married, Ursula began giving prophecies and predictions. Sadly, two years after their marriage, Tobias Shipton passed away, leaving Ursula to once again become a social outcast since many believe she was responsible for his death.
Mother Shipton's Recognized Predictions
00:12:20
Speaker
Though, of course, this was just rumor and gossip because these people were just absolute trash. These rumors forced Ursula to once again flee the village and live in the woods alone in her cave. And it was at this point that she was referred to as Mother Shipton when people would go to her or if they would like need predictions or like an herbalist, they would be like, go to Mother Shipton. I don't know why they named her Mother Shipton. There was no like explanation to it.
00:12:46
Speaker
So, but also like how fucking awful, right? Like she's born in this cave as a social pariah. She's, you know, given to another family. Her mother dies. She never sees her mother again. She is tormented and basically is forced to spend time alone in the woods. And through this becomes an herbalist because she's like, has nothing else to do than like learn about plants and practice with plants. And then like she gets to come back into society. She gets married.
00:13:16
Speaker
She's married for two years. Her husband dies. And then they're like, well, obviously you did it. Like you made him fall in love with you because you're a witch. And then now he's dead. So it's your fault. And so she has to like, she like gets a little like taste of community and then like shunned and then a taste of community and then shunned. I felt so bad for her doing this research.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah. So though isolated, Ursula came into her own living out in the woods. She continued to practice herbal remedies and started working on her premonitions. People began seeking her out again for cures and answers to their questions through her skills and predictions. And her predictions started out small where she would note minor occurrences happening locally, but they quickly moved on to like larger predictions that had greater impacts.
00:14:04
Speaker
The accuracy of her predictions once again increased her public profile, because again, the people of this village are trash, and they only treated her like a human when they were benefiting from her. Her knowledge and abilities began to extend far beyond her small village, where even King Henry VIII referenced Mother Shipton in a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, calling her a witch of York.
00:14:24
Speaker
Her reputation and the belief in her abilities grew immensely, which enabled her to make a living out of her prophecies. Her predictions extended to some of the most important people in the land, which later includes King Henry VIII and Thomas Woolsey, which was his right-hand man. And this one made me laugh, so I had to include it.
00:14:45
Speaker
In one of her predictions, Mother Shipton referred to Wolsey as the mitered peacock, lofty cry, shall to his master be a guide, alluding to his lower class background as the son of a butcher before rising to become the chief advisor to King Henry and guiding his policymaking. I was cracking up. She called him a mitered peacock. And also he was an asshole anyway, so perfect description. Yeah.
00:15:14
Speaker
like several prophecies throughout history. And some of these are even documented in later publishings, which is kind of cool, I think. But one day, one of Ursula's neighbors called on her for help, stating that someone had stolen some items of clothing from her. And this one, I don't know how we got from point A to point B because there's no explanation of
00:15:37
Speaker
anything she did or like, there wasn't like she cast a spell or she did a ritual or, you know, she looked into the abyss or a dream or whatever. It was literally nothing. It was like, this person was like, Hey, I'm your neighbor. Someone stole some clothes for me. And then the next day, apparently some woman goes like parading through the whole town singing. I stole my neighbor's smock and coat. I am a thief.
00:16:00
Speaker
and then she hands it over to Mother Shipton and leaves with a curtsy. And so, like, everyone knows who stole the items, the items were given back, but there's no, like, the meat to the sandwich isn't there. Like, you have the two bread ends, but nothing from the middle, so I don't know, like, how we got from point A to point B, but apparently we did. Her first prediction that was on a larger scale was one where she said that
00:16:26
Speaker
And again, this is a quote that apparently she said that confused everyone. The water would come over Owl's Bridge and reach the windmill that would be set on a tower. And while this didn't make sense at first, a water system was later introduced that would bring water across the Owl's Bridge in pipes that reached a windmill that was on a tower, making this prophecy like less cryptic. Like this finally happened. The people were like, oh, that's what she meant.
00:16:50
Speaker
So, Mother Shipton prophesied that the Trinity Church would fall in the night till the highest stone in the church be the lowest stone of the bridge. Not long after her statement, a bad storm hit Yorkshire, destroying the steeple of the church, causing it to land on the bridge.
00:17:07
Speaker
And then Samuel Pepis, who was a famous diarist, included details of hearing the royal family discuss Mother Shipton's predictions of the Great Fire of London. And the earliest surviving record of her predictions can be found in a pamphlet dated 1641, and it tells of a prophecy where she foresees Thomas Woolsey's fate at the time of his demise, stating that Woolsey would never reach his destination.
00:17:33
Speaker
He had fallen out of favor after failing to secure Henry VIII's marriage annulment from Catherine of Aragon, and Wolsey died on a journey between London and York of natural causes, never reaching his destination alive. Mother Shipton remained an elusive figure despite her surge in popularity, and she continued to intrigue anyone that came into contact with her.
00:17:54
Speaker
She passed away in 1561 at the age of 73, but she has remained an important local phenomenon within her hometown of Narsborough, and the cave in which she lived is even a popular tourist spot today. Wow, I love that. Right? I hate everyone. I hate her early life, but... Yeah, one I hate everyone from that village. Yeah, that village fucking stops. Yeah, it's like, oh, look at this little gnarled witch baby.
00:18:21
Speaker
Obviously Satan is the father. Oh, but you can help us. So come on. Come on. Come on. Yeah. So no, we think you're a witch again. Get out. Get out. Oh, but you can help us. Come on. Come on. Like it was like a yo-yo back and forth and back and forth.
00:18:34
Speaker
I'm glad that later she got enough recognition for her prophecies that she was able to actually make a living out of it and earn money from it. Because even when she was helping the people of her village, it wasn't like payment. It wasn't money. It was more like, oh, we brought you back in a social status versus payment. But then she gets noticed by bigger people like King Henry. And now it's like, oh.
00:19:04
Speaker
No, we'll pay you. Right. Yeah. She should have gotten money in the bag before then. Like people are great. Right. That village of trash. They made me so mad every time I would read a new thing about them, like asking her for things or like shunning her again. I was like, Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. They would. Yeah. Only makes sense. That is mother shipped in. Maybe one day I'll go to the escape now.
00:19:30
Speaker
I'm over here. If you've been to the cave, let us know. I'd love to know about it. Yeah, absolutely. All right, shifting gears. We're going to America for the mine. Also, our podcast is listed as explicit. I really hope that you are not listening to it around kids, but also this part of the episode is very explicit.
Ida Craddock's Early Life
00:19:52
Speaker
I'm going to be talking about things related to sex.
00:19:55
Speaker
with that in mind. If there's little ears around, maybe put some headphones in or pause and come back later because there's going to be some sexy bits. So I am covering Idocratic. And if you can hear my dog in the background,
00:20:11
Speaker
He's our HOA. It's fine. He's just a bird. I feel like at this point in time in the podcast, we are 102 episodes in. You guys should just know that we have guest stars on the podcast in the form of cats and dogs. He's just letting everybody know. There's kids outside. Oh, hey, there's kids outside. I'm going to bark at them until they get away from my yard because he's a Chihuahua and he can't fit himself. Oh, and the new edition of the occasional rooster.
00:20:39
Speaker
always, we got to keep it spicy. So let's talk about Ida Kreff. Ida was born in Philadelphia on August 1st, 1857. Her father passed away when she was about four months old. And before he passed, Ida's mother was very interested in spiritualism and the occult. But when her father died, Ida's mother turned to Christianity and became a fucking fundamentalist and that's never good. So
00:21:09
Speaker
She raised Ida in a very strict and extremely puritanically disciplined home, which included very intense, right? You're like so gross. Very intense religious training, reading the Bible at a very young age, and obviously,
00:21:26
Speaker
it turned into having the opposite effect that her mother wanted it to happen. So essentially, because she was so oppressed and repressed from things growing up, that it just forced her more into wanting to learn about those
Contributions to Women's Education
00:21:41
Speaker
things.
00:21:41
Speaker
And so, and then that's just human nature, right? Like when we're repressed and we're, you know, told that this and this and this is forbidden, we want to learn more about it. When something's forbidden, we just have to. So because of this, Ida was intensely interested in topics that were forbidden to her in childhood, like sexuality, occultism, and the concept of just freedom itself. We have a freedom fighting queen here before us, just FY. As a child, Ida was very intelligent and ambitious,
00:22:10
Speaker
which made her stand out because during this time, ambition and intelligence were not often qualities that were admired in young women. She campaigned to allow for women to be admitted to the University of Philadelphia and would have actually been the first female graduate of the university if the decision to allow women to attend hadn't been reversed. And that made me so mad reading about that part.
00:22:32
Speaker
She taught stenography to women at Gerard College, and she wrote a textbook on stenography, which was published when she was only 18 years old. And because of this, and because of her teaching, she was able to allow women to have the chance to be employed, which was not common at all during this time. So she's working from a young age to
00:22:53
Speaker
spread this concept of freedom and you know just equal rights and we just love this. So moving into some occultism things and her ties with occultism, Ida became involved in occultism around 1887 when she was about 30 years old. We discussed the Theosophical Society before on the podcast but just as a little refresher, the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875
00:23:19
Speaker
And it was the first place where occult teachings were really promoted, especially in the United States. Aida started teaching classes on Theosophy.
00:23:27
Speaker
at a Unitarian church. And during this time, she began studying a lot of occult topics and subjects. And she also had some ongoing, illicit, quote unquote, sexual relations with two different men. And I only say illicit, quote unquote, because during this time, obviously, if a woman is having sex, it's because she's married. And the fact that she was having sex and not being married and having sex with multiple partners made this scandal. Right?
00:23:56
Speaker
So the first man that she was having illicit sexual relations with was a younger man that she didn't think was a very satisfying lover. I love that that was pointed out too. She was like, no. No, this is not for me. It's not good.
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah. And the second was a bit older than Ida, an ex-clergy man and a heretical mystic who was well versed in the technique of, I should have looked up how to say this, and I didn't. But also, did I want to look this up? Probably not. No.
00:24:32
Speaker
The technique is called Caressa, maybe. We're just going to leave it at that. It's the ability to withhold sexual ejaculation. Just FYI, if you ever wanted to know what that is, I guess part of edging, that is what it's called. I was going to say like 1800s edging. Yeah, hardcore 1800s edging.
00:24:55
Speaker
So this relationship with this ex clergyman lover really sparked something in her because this whole world was new to her.
Interest in Esoteric Sexuality
00:25:04
Speaker
And because of her very repressed childhood, she really became really interested in learning about esoteric sexuality and delving into folklore mythology and other sources surrounding
00:25:16
Speaker
sex and the act of sex and pleasure. So isn't it funny how like, and this is still, I feel like it's still true today, right? When you have a parent who is like, no, we're going to have this strict religious upbringing, you're going to read your Bible, you're going to go to church, you're going to do all these things. Like as a child or like even young adult, you're like, I think I'm going to do the complete opposite of that. Like it's so bad that you go to the full extreme of it. You're like, I don't like this anymore.
00:25:47
Speaker
I'm going to learn about edging and all this other sexual things. All this sexual awareness. I sleep with several men. Yes. It never surprises me because you see this all the time.
00:26:05
Speaker
But around this time when she was getting into like esoteric sexuality and whatnot, it was a perfect time for her to be interested in these topics and to learn about these topics because other occultists were also researching and exploring these topics. And there was a growing trend just in general of increased open sexual discourse in society, not like how it is today by any means, but there was a space for it during this time.
00:26:33
Speaker
And so like some examples of this was Burton brought back translations of the Karmasutra and the Ananga Ranga. I could be saying that wrong. It could be Ananga Ranga, but I'm sure it's probably not. I should have looked it up again. We're just going with it from India. And then Havelock Ellis
00:26:55
Speaker
began applying scientific principles to sexuality. So during this time that she was really researching this, you saw other big names also bringing back and learning about different things related to sexuality all over the world.
00:27:11
Speaker
So Ida herself wrote a study of religious sexuality called Lunar and Sex Worship. And in this book she cited many sources from Babylonian times, Hindu, Irish, Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Jewish mythology and lore, Christians, Islamic, Chinese, Egyptian, African, etc. She cited so many sources. She did so much research on this. And one of the main arguments of this book was that
00:27:37
Speaker
The moon is a deity that is older than the sun and is recognized as the superior of the sun god, who could only triumph after she gives approval.
00:27:47
Speaker
And I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. I think that kind of ties into, though, when we were talking about the underworld deities, not necessarily the sun and the moon, but when I was talking about Nyx, they a lot of times refer to her as the original creator god. She was the goddess that created the gods. And
00:28:08
Speaker
I think I referenced it. If not, I definitely like read about it, but it talked about like how darkness was the first thing there. So it would make sense like with the moon being part of the night and the darkness being the first thing there kind of thing. Yeah. It's interesting when we see these like pieces that we've researched in other topics or other episodes come into like things that we research in the future or like, yes, not the future, but like today. You know what I mean? I love that. I love when everything ties together.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. It just shows how interconnected we all are. Yep.
00:28:39
Speaker
So in another book she wrote called Sex Worship, she says that the symbol of the cross, not just found in Christianity, but also seen throughout many other cultures and religions throughout the world, is a symbol of sexual union. And the worship of the cross is a universal worship of the sex instinct that is underlying within all religions. And could you imagine saying that to somebody? Oh my God, they wouldn't
00:29:06
Speaker
Who is it? Yeah, so you see that cross you're wearing around your neck? You're a freak. That sucks at all. Yeah. Look at those two pieces of wood just getting it on. Yeah, rubbing it back and forth. If only you could see the hand movements I was just making guys.
00:29:26
Speaker
So Miss Ida was also a big proponent of women's sexual rights.
Advocacy for Women's Rights
00:29:32
Speaker
And I loved reading about this. So Ida's ex-clergy lover, you know, the heretical mystic, also happened to be the head of the National Liberal League, which was an organization that associated with the Free Thought Movement around the turn of the century. And because of his connections, Ida was able to secure a job as the league secretary.
00:29:52
Speaker
Also, I'm sure this had to do with the fact that she was very fucking smart too and very ambitious, but on her website. Historically, we have to say that it was a man. Yeah. That's how it was worded on the website, so unfortunately.
00:30:07
Speaker
I want to stay true to the source. This position allowed her a platform to really look into promoting social reform through freedom of oppressive moral codes. And most importantly, she wanted to address the plight of American married women. What she knew of married women at the time was that they were not achieving their full potential of wedded bliss when it comes to sex, or they were suffering at the hands of their husbands who didn't give a shit about their feelings or their needs, especially when it came to the bedroom.
00:30:36
Speaker
Ida believed that this ignorance of basic sexual facts was the cause of the ills of much of society, and she even traveled to places like Washington, Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago, and New York, giving lectures on how Christianity has shaped marital relations.
00:30:52
Speaker
During this time, she also provided sexual counseling to those who were interested. And she even wrote a series of marriage manuals that emphasize self-control. And she said that force intercourse on one's wife without consent is rape, which as we know now, obviously, but at the time, this was a very wild notion when women were merely looked at as property.
00:31:17
Speaker
She also stressed that intercourse should last at least a half hour to an hour long to allow enough time for the female orgasm. She was a woman before her time. She really fucking was, wasn't she? She really was. Yes, and you know during this time obviously
00:31:36
Speaker
She faced some criticism because she's writing about marital relations and teaching married couples how to have a more fruitful and fulfilling relationships in the bedroom, but she was never herself married. And so during this time, most people assume that if you were not married, you were not sexually experienced.
00:31:55
Speaker
However, in her book, Heavenly Bridegrooms, she says that she is sexually experienced and that she is married, just not to a living person. She stated that her husband is actually an angel named Soph, who visits her at night and teaches her enlightenment through a divinely inspired system of sexual initiation. Wow. Yeah, a little bit different. I got to that. I was like, I'm sorry, born. We may be how giants were born in the Bible.
00:32:25
Speaker
And then they had Noah build his ship and then wipe out the earth with a flood because they had to get rid of giants. Could be. I don't remember that part. I feel like I read that as a child. Sometimes little stories like that will pop in my mind. Yeah. When I'm reading other stuff or hearing other things, I'm like, yeah. So, you know, yeah, kind of weird. Wasn't sure how to take that.
00:32:52
Speaker
But in her book, psychic wedlock, Ida created an entire system of sexual magic. And it was known as like a three degree initiation system. And so the first degree is called alphaism. And this calls for the development of self control and where a sex union is forbidden except for to create a child.
00:33:14
Speaker
In the second degree, or dianism, a sexy union is enjoined in absolute self-control and aspiration to the highest, which calls for the ability to delay ejaculation and to even go through the ecstasy of an orgasm without ejaculation. And I just can't picture that one to see. I don't like how. If you are somebody who follows this, please let us know. Enlighten me. Yeah, because I'm a little confused on that. And in the third degree,
00:33:44
Speaker
is communion with deity as the partner in marital union. So this phase also has two phases just like the second degree. The first phase is to be able to aspire to communicate with the great thinker during sexual ecstasy and the second is to be able to attain the state of joy that applies to both partners and the great thinker through
00:34:06
Speaker
such communion with the deity. So it's basically it's involving like a God in your marital bed and you all getting off together. So interesting. Yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
Of course, because of this time period, shit started hitting the fan because you can't have a woman who's educated, who's ambitious, who knows what she wants with her body and doesn't take no for an answer.
Backlash and Persecution
00:34:32
Speaker
You can't have that without people getting angry. You have that now with people getting angry. She had a lot of run-ins with the Puritanical Society, unfortunately, and I hate this for her.
00:34:45
Speaker
As you can imagine, her work really pissed a lot of people off, especially Puritanical Christians. And Ida's mother actually attempted to have her committed to an insane asylum. And at one point in her life, she was actually admitted to an insane asylum for about three months, but she was released when there was no evidence of her being insane. And
00:35:06
Speaker
Thankfully though, before she was admitted, she knew this was about to happen, she sent all of her journals and notes and shit off to a friend in England. All of that stuff was preserved. But she had an enemy in Anthony Comstock who was the founder of the self-ordained moral police squad called the Society for the Suppression of Vice. He sounds
00:35:30
Speaker
like the most boring motherfucker ever. So this whole like fucking beef started when a belly dancing show called Dans du Ventre was performed at the world's Colombian exposition in Chicago. Comstock called for the show to be shut down, which in turn prompted Ida to go see the show.
00:35:51
Speaker
She wanted to see what the fucking fuss was about. And she saw the show and she said that the women were expressing their sexual control with the dances, and she encouraged women to use these techniques to enhance their sex lives. She even said that she incorporates some of these moves in her lovemaking with her angel husband, Soph. And she also wrote her opinions about this in a journal called The World, which Comstock labeled as obscene and banned its dissemination throughout the US mil.
00:36:20
Speaker
How does that work when you're a Christian and her husband is an angel and you're like, no, this is satanic.
00:36:29
Speaker
Right. And she's like, I'm literally married to an angel. I'm married to an angel. You must be insane. Yeah. Yeah. Psycho. Okay. All right. But then Jesus' mom was impregnated by an angel or something, right? Or by God? By God. Impregnated a child. Yeah, a child. But that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. Obviously, God. But I can't get off with this angel. Got it. No. Yeah.
00:36:58
Speaker
So, you know, Comstock, he wasn't successful in getting the dans du vants plus shut down. And this embarrassment about it, like not getting start not getting shut down started a vendetta against Ida. And he even had her fault.
00:37:15
Speaker
Right. Of course. Yeah. It's her fault. Yeah. Yeah. He had her arrested in 1899 for sending copies of her right marital living pamphlet through the mail. And thankfully for her, she didn't actually go to jail because Clarence Darrow, he was a criminal lawyer and free speech advocate, most known for the scopes monkey trial, which outlawed Darwinism in public schools. That guy, um, I'm glad that they had in there, like why he was saying this because I knew I remembered the name, but I couldn't remember the name.
00:37:45
Speaker
But he posted her bail, which is amazing. She eventually, though, this is kind of her downfall, and I wish she never would have done this, but she eventually moved to New York City where Comstock lived. And she even wrote that she was called to move to New York City to face Comstock in open court. It's like she was like she knew this was going to have to happen. Yeah.
00:38:07
Speaker
So eventually she was arrested in 1902 for mailing out copies of one of her marital journals called The Wedding Night. And the judge sentenced her to three months in the city workhouse. And what's crazy about this trial too is he didn't even let the jury look at this pamphlet. The judge literally was just like, this is too obscene. I'm just going to fucking send you to the fucking workhouse for three months.
00:38:35
Speaker
And so, and as you can imagine, workhouses at the turn of the century were awful, and inhumane, and very harsh conditions, and she had an awful time. And so, and like, and during this time too, so many people were, you know, trying to get her released, were putting a lot of publicity on it. And, you know,
00:38:54
Speaker
they could never get her released. So she had to serve all three months. And when she was released from the workhouse, she was immediately rearrested under the federal Comstock law. And it was basically like this, I didn't even look up with the law, but assuming he had this whole fucking government believing that all these vices and shit should be condemned,
00:39:17
Speaker
And so just trying to censor anybody who's not saying what you want to say. So regardless, she was given a chance to escape jail if she would just plead to insanity, which of course she wouldn't do because she's not fucking insane. She's not insane. She's a smart woman. Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
and they were just threatened by her. And on the morning she was to be sentenced, unfortunately she died by suicide.
Ida Craddock's Tragic End
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah, but before she died, she left a letter to the public and I'm just going to read what the letter said because I think this is important to read her writing. She said, I am taking my life because a judge at the instigation of Anthony Comstock
00:39:59
Speaker
has declared me guilty of a crime I did not commit, the circulation of obscene literature. Perhaps it may be that in my death, more than in my life, the American people may be shocked into investigating the dreadful state of affairs which permits the unctuous sexual hypocrite Anthony Comstock to wax fat and arrogant and to trample upon the liberties of the people invading in my own case, both my right to freedom of religion and to freedom of the press.
00:40:29
Speaker
And a long note to her mother, she also wrote, I maintain my right to die as I have lived, a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being. That's awful. Fucking love that for her. I hate that she was put through all of this shit, but the fact that all of the work that she did
00:40:51
Speaker
It was all for freedom and for women. So sad. So after her death though, Comstock really got that karma come back to him. He received a lot of negative publicity for essentially hounding Ida to her death. And because of that, it marked the beginning of the end for Anthony Comstock and his influence over society. And about 10 years after her death,
00:41:16
Speaker
A free speech writer named Theodore Schroeder began researching her life, and he was able to locate a large collection of her letters and diaries, manuscripts, all of her work. And he also, around this time, he was introduced to Alistair Crowley, who I believe obtained much of her works. And he also circulated some of her works within his own printing release. I can't remember what the journal was that he had. Yeah.
00:41:44
Speaker
published some of her stuff as well so thankfully it was able to still get out there and I think there's even places online that you can buy some of her work or read it but you're just a woman before her time like she really definitely like had you know at the time very radical views on society women and pleasure and we love that for her I think that how I ended that ending but yeah not only the ending I hate like all the the
00:42:12
Speaker
super puritanical religious type run-ins that she had where people were awful to her for just being a human, being a free woman. Right. During the time, that just wasn't a thing. Yeah, and she was trying to call a lot of attention too. She had many examples in her writings where she would talk to women and say, for instance, one of the
00:42:40
Speaker
things that she referenced was like a story where a woman was at the hospital giving birth to a baby and the husband came in immediately after the baby was born and was like, nurse, get out of here, take the baby and go. And the wife was like, please don't leave me, please don't leave me. And the nurse left because she listened to the husband and the husband ended up, the nurse came back in there because husband was raping the woman who just fucking had a baby.
00:43:09
Speaker
I mean, things like that and calling attention to that and calling that shit out for what it is, which is rape. She was a fucking angel and a woman who cared about other women and sexual health, and we love that. Yep, yep, yep. That is Ida. And mother Shipton. I love both of these. I love this episode. This is a great one.
00:43:36
Speaker
It really was. And I hope you guys love this episode too.
00:43:46
Speaker
That's it for this episode of Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft. You can find our source material for this episode linked in the show notes. If you love this episode, we would be forever thankful if you leave us a five-star review on wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you really love the show and want more Get In Loser content, check out our Supercast link provided in the show notes or search the Supercast website for Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft.
00:44:08
Speaker
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