Transcript
Speaker: Which is in fantasy? Which is in reality? Which which?
Speaker: Welcome to Mythic Mirror, the podcast for lovers of myth and fantasy who want to live meaningful, magical, and fulfilling lives. I'm your host, Mary C. Kehoe. And I'm your co-host, Carolina Carter. And the reason you see, for those who are watching Carolina in glasses, is because I keep forgetting to wear my contacts. So solidarity, she wears glasses as well. Yep. So here we are.
Speaker: You look like a scholar. I look like Hunter S. Thompson. Today we are talking about witches in fantasy, in myth, in history.
Speaker: Yes. And first, let's start with our favorite witches in books. Oh, okay. Books only?
Speaker: No. Our favorite? No. go Okay, well, we'll start with the the trio. Okay, obviously. Nanny Weatherwax. Granny Weatherwax. Nanny Og. And Lil' Magret.
Speaker: Now, my... And I would add Tiffany to that as well. Yeah, sorry, Tiffany. My bad. um And then Man in Blackbeak and The Thirteenth.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't even pretend that you've read it. You haven't read it. I do. I have. Marie hasn't read this. I told her one of my favorite series. Oh, my God. I'm the one who made you read Start of class. Yeah. And you only only know about it because of me.
Speaker: yeah I know more about it. Now, but I also know who you're talking about. I read that far. You looked a little lost. i had to remember. Why won't you read it?
Speaker: We'll get into that later. Okay. um I'm not done with my favorites.
Speaker: Oh, Minerva McGonagall. Oh, yeah. Hermione Granger. i mean, then you can just Tonks. You can just list all of the... Molly Weasley. the mall all Probably Lily Potter.
Speaker: I never met her. um Who else? I mean, i want to say Elphaba. All right. These are your favorites. What's scrunch? Nothing.
Speaker: I'm sorry. Can you use anything like that? No, no, I cannot. All right. Go ahead. What are your favorites? I have less. I have Morwen from Dealing with Dragons. Oh, dang. Yeah, I know. The first, she's probably the first witch, witch in fantasy that I read.
Speaker: Unless, you mean, I'm not counting like kids books. Okay. Um, so she's the first one I'd say. And then, and I picked only one. I picked Granny Weatherwax out of all of Terry Pratchett witches. Yeah, I know. I was really pie jusy picking my absolute favorites.
Speaker: And then, um this would lead into, this can lead into another topic, which we can save for later, but I would say the three the a wrinkle in time, even though they're not witches, they are crones, I would say. And we can bring that up later. But.
Speaker: Well, no, let's bring it up now. What's the difference between a witch and a crone? Well, I don't think they're witches. I don't think in the book they're ever called witches. But they're magical women who appear as old. So the difference? Look it up. What's the difference between a witch and a crone?
Speaker: Okay, okay. I would say the difference is the way in which they use magic. And are they magical beings or are they humans who use magic?
Speaker: So I think Mrs. What's it? Mrs. Which and Mrs. Who? What are their names? i yes mrs You're getting it Something like that. Anyway, I would say they aren't necessarily human.
Speaker: I think they are magical beings rather than humans who do magic. So you think a witch is a human who does magic? Yeah. And I know in like paranormal books nowadays, they kind of separate out witches from humans. But I feel like that's more of a modern take.
Speaker: ah The internet defines a crone as a post-menopausal or older woman, often celebrated as a wise elder or historically dismissed as an ugly old woman, while a witch is a person. There go. Traditionally, a woman believed to possess and use magical powers.
Speaker: That was extremely offensive. I crone energy. Yeah. Why are you asking the internet anyway? For mythic questions?
Speaker: I don't think artificial intelligence knows everything about myth and feeling. you think it might have missed something. Missed the boat?
Speaker: Noah's Ark. That's the boat it missed. New direction for this episode. Okay. We've covered our favorite witches and yeah for some reason your favorite crones.
Speaker: ah Well, I just love them so I wanted to mention them and that the movie did a terrible job. Okay, moving on. I would just like to say that Mary came in here with a chip on her shoulder.
Speaker: cannot get to the bottom of. Meanwhile, I'm the one who's starving to death. ah I said you should get a snack. So. We're getting dinner after this.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. If it's still open. ah Talk faster. Okay. All right. So next, shall we go into. The history? Yeah, let's go into history. I'm so glad you asked. You know I like to start with the prehistorical, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So prehistorically, they have found evidence of ritual, which I see as evidence of which because i do.
Speaker: All right. We got ritual objects, cave art, healing rituals. yeah Okay. So in the prehistorical era, these rituals were mostly formed around sickness and death. Why do we get sick?
Speaker: Why do we die? We're just young humans trying to figure this out. It's a very baffling concept. So, but the reason that is important is because it is the beginning of this connection to the other side. Everything that I'm about to say in the next 28 minutes exactly is boiling down to this concept of what witchery means to me personally.
Speaker: All right. It is a way to engage with the unknown, but not the unknowable. That other side that is not some dark abyss, but is in some ways more real and more alive than this side of the veil.
Speaker: o I like that. That was an original thought that I had. That was very good. I'm glad you wrote it down. Thank you. Me too. Here, so now that we've had your definition of of a witch, which I like a lot. Thank you.
Speaker: My theory on what makes it quote unquote good or bad is whether you are imposing your own will onto the universe or if you are creating with the universe. It's a fine line.
Speaker: It's not, I mean, what's the difference? And I would say a great example of someone who talks about creating with the universe without any religious overlays would be, oh, his name just left me, Joe, Joe Dispenza.
Speaker: Thank you. um Because He talks about, you know, you're you're creating, you you do need to have a will and a desire and and something in your mind that you want to help bring into manifestation, but you leave the opening for how it's done and what it actually looks like because you understand that the universe is wiser than you are and has a greater breadth of understanding of all possibility. So if you are imposing your human will, you don't leave room for that.
Speaker: You don't leave room for yourself to be surprised by something greater. So I would say you also don't leave room for the universe to correct your human will if it is misguided.
Speaker: Which I think is key because there's so many humans, I would say throughout history, who thought they were doing good or doing evil so that good may come, which in the end is just doing evil.
Speaker: Right. So if you leave the space, leave the opening for something wiser than you to steer what you want in a way that is truly helpful for everyone is how you keep on the on the good witch side.
Speaker: Hmm. Okay. I think I'll have more to say about that later, but... Well, what's the one that say now? I don't think ready. Okay. You think about it. Should we jump back into history? Mesopotamia.
Speaker: ah I guess we are. More ritual. Mm-hmm. Especially around healing. Mm. Egypt, very similarly about healing. And Egypt is actually where we first get the word... I didn't write it down. Ha ha ha!
Speaker: No, I did. Okay. Heka, or I don't know how to pronounce it. H-E-K-A. And this is the where the concept of magic first enters into the human psyche.
Speaker: I think, I'm not a historian. This is not a history channel. This not even a history podcast. It's all made up, so don't hold me to this. um This is the world as I see it and understand it, and history as I have come to understand it Mm-hmm.
Speaker: We're just chatting and having tea. I read it. Yeah. And this is how I understand it. Okay. Go. But the source of the source is sometimes not the source you want to be getting your facts from. You want to get it from the source. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Okay. It means, to boil it down, h e k a H-E-K-A, the fundamental force of the universe, which translates loosely as magic. And I like this because this comes through in so many genres. Obviously, in Star Wars, we have the Force. In the Theonite War series, we have the Gia.
Speaker: um But there seems to be this unisor universal concept of this force. Got any more examples? It just reminded me of um years and years and years ago when you and I were doing a philosophy thing and the person leading it asked if you took away the name God because God has so many different meanings to so many different people what word would you use instead?
Speaker: I think I came up with the word essence because it's that very thing. it's It's something that is within all and has created all, but yet is the creator and the creation.
Speaker: It's this essence, this force, this... On the woo-woo side of TikTok, they call it source. Yeah. You hate that. No, I don't. hates it. No, it I don't. don't hate it. She hates it bad. I know. she goes, mm, mm. No, I don't hate it.
Speaker: yeah I am not on the woo side of TikTok. Somehow I'm just on the Irish TikTok. That's just what the algorithm gives me now. That's beautiful. yeah My algorithm thinks I'm a sucker.
Speaker: Because am. ah Okay, then we go to Greece, which is where we get our famous witches. Medea, Circe, he
Speaker: Hecate. Is that how you say it? Nope. I think it's Hecate. Yep. um Again, now this is where it starts to get more into prophecy. Up until now, it's been very much ritual around healing, ritual around death.
Speaker: And then now we're getting into some prophecy, which is exciting. So now do you think seers are witches? Because is that where we're headed? With like... If it's just a woman who possesses magical powers, then yeah.
Speaker: Although it does seem like there does need to be some herbalism involved. Yeah. If you don't touch an herb, you're not a witch. I buy that. Yeah. That's Mary's definition. I think there's a difference between an oracle and a witch.
Speaker: Right. One's an oracle, one's a witch. Yeah. And an oracle and a seer are the same thing. Mm-hmm. So we know. We know our boundaries. Yeah. We've linguistically figured this all out.
Speaker: Medieval Europe. This is where we get the concept that witches are women who have made a deal with the devil. e
Speaker: So that's exciting. um Now, can I pause here for a moment and bring in What I would love to know what, youre so much of what we know of Europe is now post, watch those takeover. post um so So I was just reading it. I am talking about Christianity. But a certain, because there's, you know, like like I mentioned in our, not the last podcast, the one before that, you know, there's different waves of people that came through. There was different waves of Christianity. And Christianity existed in Europe and the UK for a long time before this, the the newer wave that was very controlling and bringing in
Speaker: So in Scotland, not only were women attacked and and like this ancient wisdom, it was also just, it seemed, okay, this is where I get conspiratorial because i'm like, that has to be on purpose. You had to just be trying to destroy a people because they not only turned anything, um the ancient wisdom of the isle, not only did they turn that into evil and connecting it to the devil, they made it sinful to play music, to dance, to sing.
Speaker: ah Men and women could not celebrate together, but you could still you could still drink. oh So now you have a lot of depressed, and angry alcoholics.
Speaker: Like, because what else going to You can't sing. You can't express joy or love in any way. But here, you can still drink. It should be noted that on the local level, witches were still used, but it had to be done on the down low during this time. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. So top down. This wasn't ah so't a natural cultural change. It was someone coming in, imposing their will. Oh, they were the witches. They were the real witches imposing their will in the universe.
Speaker: Like I said, don't get your history here, folks. We're going to take a moment for our Discworld delight.
Speaker: Here we go. Guesses for this week. Yes. Master Alan of Level Up Sabers says, this is my next reread. Monstrous Regiment.
Speaker: and Someone says Pratchett should have invented something called sorcery. Very true. Monstrous regiment, by my oath, I am not a shouty man.
Speaker: hidden It all comes down to socks again, it seems. Monstrous regiment. Clockwork liar. You all make me very happy. And you are all correct.
Speaker: Yay. Okay. This week you will get one line and one line only, minus the character's name. So to prick your ears up. Yeah.
Speaker: Do you remember how to read? o gee, I hope so. i can't quite put my finger on why, but I think it might be a rather good idea to get out of here.
Speaker: Riddle me that. Tic-tac. to 1700s.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. fourteen hundreds to seventeen hundreds This is when we get into the witch hunts. And this is where I'm going to hop back on with your conspiracy theory because what people don't know is that oftentimes the church would go after women who owned property, who were single, and they would hang her for being a witch. And wouldn't you know what the law was that the church would inherit the land a witch.
Speaker: So who was the real witch in that situation? The witch.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Also, witches became a popular people to blame because, again, we're using them to understand this relationship with the other side. So if crops went bad, was a witch's fault. It gives some people something to rally around. You know, we kill the witch because we're all in a bad mood.
Speaker: I get it to some extent. om This is actually horrifically tragic. um um 40,000 between the years 1450 and 1750 they estimate 40,000 to 60,000 women were executed for being a witch and is that across how many across the world yeah I mean that's insane that's that's that's to a level of
Speaker: So just so people have some scale of that, in included in that are the Salem witch trials. However, even in, damn it, I dropped my pointer. Even in Salem, so there was 200 women accused, 19 were hung, five died and jailed, and one was pressed and to death, which I don't even want to know what that means. So 25 women in the Salem witch trials died, which seems like a huge amount, and it is.
Speaker: 40,000 to 60,000 women have been killed for being a witch just between the period of 1450 to 1750. Which brings me to my next question about its survival and why we still love witches to this day.
Speaker: o I think because it is one of the reasons is so much of what got lost in ah European culture, I'd say, is that connection that we are always talking about. The connection to the unknown, the connection to nature.
Speaker: And I've seen this in a, I've seen a couple people from different countries talk about this, of of saying that the people of Europe were the first ones to fall to ah the the control and the imperialism and that it's like the, they're the, the culture and the, and the little people, not the, not the people in charge, not the people going out and then subjugating people in other countries. It's like they, they already subjugated their own people and destroyed their culture. And then they went on to try to conquer the world.
Speaker: And so I think the idea of witches is kind of the,
Speaker: rebellion against that it's like the last strands of something lost that you know if we could if we could catch that and figure out what that was maybe that would lead us to all of the wisdom that was lost I just feel like I need to mention that on TikTok these women have discovered that if they put their monthly blood in moon water it grows a plant no don't what are you grimacing for I'm thinking how does it grow a plant
Speaker: What plant? Is it all the same plant? No. in In what? what Moon water. moon water So like water that was set out under the moon? Any old moon or specifically moon? I think it's full moon energy.
Speaker: That's fascinating. Mm-hmm. Have you tried it? Absolutely not. I do not dabble. I respect, I appreciate, and I fear. Uh-huh. No, I don't fear. I disrespect. I don't yeah enter into things, contracts, that I don't know all the rules. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've talked about this before. And I think this gets into where...
Speaker: I mean, people can be whipped up into a frenzy and turned against women um or, you know, whoever the population is that's getting blamed for something.
Speaker: um It's a lot easier to whip someone into a frenzy if there is an actual evil that people are afraid of. um So I think there are and is, there is we know, we've seen evidence of it at this point of, uh, some very serious, uh, ritualistic abuse, I would say.
Speaker: Um, and if you know that this has been going on you know, since prehistory, um, the,
Speaker: And I think it is usually having to do with power. So if you have someone in power who knows about this kind of abuse that's going on and people are upset because their kids have gone missing, ah okay, we're going to distract them. We're going to blame women and take a lot of women out, steal their property and destroy the wisdom that could actually fight us.
Speaker: um And then continue on with our evil ways. So I would just say I'm just saying there is side to magic or a side to ritual that is that is legitimately evil.
Speaker: Right. So that actually does bring me to my final piece of history and the revival of the witch, which is the 1800s when it was getting romanticized. You know, people were getting together. They were doing Ouija boards. Tarot cards became very popular. And we also have the entrance onto the scene of... sh We don't say his name.
Speaker: Starts with an a ends with a lister. Last name starts with a C, ends with a Rowley. ah Okay. ah ah This person, this is dark magic. This is, he invites demons, talks to them. He's got a nice little drawing he did of a demon he chatted with, which interestingly looks
Speaker: and can't wait for that episode we'll find a way to tie it into mythic mirror um so yeah there is this dark side interestingly that gets i mean not to say it wasn't there before but definitely infused with this dark side as it's coming into popularity and sometimes i feel ah Too dark, but I am a squeam, as I refer to myself. There are much more, and it stayed popular. I mean, there's many witches in pop culture now. American Horror Story, s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the revamp, that was obviously much more gory. um
Speaker: and They're not all good, and in some ways I feel like used and meant to desensitize us to things that are truly evil. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yes, I would agree. and And the things that were called evil or demonized, such as I see you have Baba Yaga in your notes. i do I do.
Speaker: A lot of old folklore that uses witches or fairies in the woods, um that are neither good nor bad, then later became demonized. But what they were was kind of like Europeans version of karma of the way you treat the forest is the way the forest treats you. um Baba Yaga can help and save one person and then destroy another person. And okay, look at what that person's done. it The context. We need context. Yeah, so I think there are there are things that have been demonized and used as scapegoats, and then there is actual evil. Right. there are two different things.
Speaker: Yes. And before we wrap up, I just want to visit the different archetypes of the witch. Now, we've decided oracles and seers are not witches. Mm-hmm. These are the accepted archetypes of the witch. Okay. so As per us. As per us. Okay.
Speaker: According to me. ah The healer. The enchantress. The outsider. The wisecrone. The independent woman. She's a witch.
Speaker: Definitely a witch. Yeah. They dressed me like this. Now is every healer a witch? Yeah. Oh, I don't agree.
Speaker: ah You don't think there's an art to healing? I do. i just think not. Magic, I meant to say. You don't think there's a magic to healing? I do. i think there are different types of magic and not all magic is witchcraft.
Speaker: the So one can use magic and not use witchcraft? Yeah. There's witchcraft and then there's magic. Well, I think there's... Define them.
Speaker: There's all different types of magic. I mean, in fantasy, definitely. In myth, yes. you Because I think it has to do with the source and how you how you are...
Speaker: how you interact with the magic how you use it how you i don't know i think it's different i don't think every every magic wielder is a witch give me an example of a magic wielder not that's not a witch in fantasy or in real life either okay in fantasy i would say people who Okay, let's say in my book they use they have innate gifts to communicate. no
Speaker: But they don't they don't have they none of them use ritual. and none of them use i think witches is a specific type of magic.
Speaker: You've got to use ritual. You've got to use herbs. There must be spells. Mm-hmm. Words of power. Words of great encouragement. ah Okay. We're getting down to it. Yeah.
Speaker: Ancient lore. I think i accept that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Although, okay, now... Oh, God. If we go far enough back in myth, I feel like Baba Yaga is kind of more of a mythic magical being.
Speaker: I am going to you. Not so much a human, so... Well, I didn't actually ever agree with that definition. Yeah, so I might take that back. I'm still winning, to me, one Mary. ah ah Okay, so there's different types of witches.
Speaker: There's the mythic and there's the modern. Which would you be? think Think about it. Which would you be? I'd be mythic, of course. I think I'd be modern. i'd be I'd be Baba Yaga out in the woods.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, you totally would. I'd be Sabrina the teenage bitch. Hey, I don't know if we can say that. You'll bleep it out, right? Oh, sure.
Speaker: You better. Okay, well. Our parents watch this. No, they don't. Actually, they don't. They're like, we'll talk to you in person. So rude. Okay, now, Spark of the Week. Spark of the Week.
Speaker: I asked you first. My spark of the week has been going on walks and looking at the leaves. Oh, lovely. Yes. Go on. My spark of the week is that I got a duck door on my duck house.
Speaker: the Braggart. and go in and out Yeah. And this was possible because of people, family members helping me going out of their way to come over and help me do it. It was amazing. Not me.
Speaker: During this beautiful golden... time of year. And on that note, you beautiful witches, we are so grateful to be spiraling through the universe with all of you.
Speaker: It's not always easy, but no good story ever is.
