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Episode 2: Witchcraft in the Media
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Welcome back Witches! This week we're looking at The Stigma Surrounding Witchcraft and How Witchcraft is Portrayed in the Media. So get in losers, and lets discuss the Stigma Surrounding Witchcraft and How Witchcraft is Portrayed in the Media.
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio- The Witch
- Witchcraft in a modern age: Broken communities and recalcitrant stigma. (10 December 2015). United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/WitchcraftInAModernAge.aspx
- Thiruchittampala, B. (18 February 2019). Totally Witchin’: Unpacking Witchcraft and its surrounding stigma. The Review. https://udreview.com/totally-witchin-unpacking-witchcraft-and-its-surrounding-stigma/
- Rogers, A. S. (2019). Appropriation of the 'witch' stigma as white women's self-empowerment. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. . Retrieved from https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/appropriation-witch-stigma-as-white-womens-self/docview/2318149811/se-2?accountid=12964
- Pfeiffer, E. J., & Maithya, H. M. K. (2018). Bewitching sex workers, blaming wives: HIV/AIDS, stigma, and the gender politics of panic in western Kenya. Global Public Health, 13(2), 234–248. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/10.1080/17441692.2016.1215484
- Unruh, M., Otto, J., Strachan, K., Thompson, R., Hurd, E., Cole, E., . . . Griswold, R. (2016). The Tragedy at Robin Hood Hills: How the Media, Witchcraft, and a False Confession Imprisoned the West Memphis Three and Ultimately Led to Their Freedom.
- Totally Witchin’: Unpacking Witchcraft and its Surrounding Stigma. (2019) Bianca Thiruchittampalam, THE REVIEW. https://udreview.com/totally-witchin-unpacking-witchcraft-and-its-surrounding-stigma/
- 6 Important Facts “We are the Stigma” Podcast Revealed About Witchcraft. (2019) Melissa Kreutz (Interviewing Amy Lea from Venus in Tulle). https://www.readunwritten.com/2019/10/29/6-important-facts-podcast-witchcraft/
- Witchcraft: A Stigma of Natural Science. (2021) S.S. Blake of Earth and Water. https://earthandwater.co/witchcraft-a-stigma-of-natural-science/
- A Real Witch Reviews Sabrina and Other Witches from TV and Movies. (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYNoT8-PRtw
- The Defamation of Witches. Kristen Leo. (2021). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YmzEdya9WM
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Transcript
Introduction to Witchcraft and Society's Stigma
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. So get in witches and join us as we discuss the stigma surrounding witchcraft and how witches are portrayed in the media.
00:00:32
Speaker
We have like 14 drinks there. I really do. I came prepared. I did not. I brought a gin and tonic and it's almost done. So today we're talking about stigma surrounding witchcraft and how witches are portrayed in the media.
00:00:50
Speaker
Just to start off, the Oxford Language Dictionary defines stigma as a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality or person. It relates to shame, disgrace and honor. And some main themes and stigma surrounding witchcraft are rooted in the devil, that witchcraft is evil, that which is only hex or curse.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hyper-sexualized women are girls, they're cannibals, dancing naked in the forest or under the moonlight, flying on broomsticks, having familiars that do their bidding or amplify their magic, and which has been and still is used to label women as deviant in some way.
Historical Portrayals and Racial Misrepresentation
00:01:29
Speaker
So as we discussed in the last episode, there were a lot of negative sanctions for being labeled as a witch to include, you know, being tortured to death,
00:01:37
Speaker
And in most places, the negative sanctions for being liberal as a witch are completely different than what they were in the past.
00:01:47
Speaker
Being labeled as a witch in today's society just means being viewed as wicked or evil. Or sometimes like the outcast, the weirdo. Yes. In the past, the constant was that witches were women who needed to be disempowered and controlled. And what was prominent was this idea that what was considered beautiful was morally good. So there was depictions of princesses as beautiful and pure and
00:02:16
Speaker
witches were morally bad so they were viewed as ugly or villains. So you see this a lot like in children's movies or fairy tales books. Practitioners were often believed to do like human or infant sacrifices and that makes me think like back to the Hansel and Gretel you know the children going through the forest and being like cooked and eaten by this witch that fills them with candy.
00:02:39
Speaker
They were believed to be murderers and, and or practice cannibalism. And the belief was used as a way to scare children and to keep them from like sneaking off or to make them listen to their parents. Even going back to what we discussed last week with the Salem witch trials, there was an inaccurate narrative surrounding Tituba, because throughout history, her race has changed depending on which report you were reading.
00:03:05
Speaker
It was reported as she was Indian, she was half black in some. And then a lot of people and a lot of the research that I did, they have her as being a black woman. But throughout history, she was claimed to have brought witchcraft and voodoo to demoralize young, pure white women and children. And the magic she was supposed to have brought with her actually originated in European traditions, not in Indian or African traditions.
00:03:32
Speaker
But as we did discuss last week with the Salem Witch Trials, Tiffany, I think you were the one who talked about this, how women, because they were so heavily monitored and scrutinized and police, their behaviors were so policed. It was like a way for them to act out, a way to be able to do something and feel more free. Yes. Yeah. And they were, the women were put in these socially constructed, acceptable gender roles. And they were so rigid that, I mean, it's no wonder that
00:04:01
Speaker
all of this shit happened the way that it did. Yeah, and we see that, like you're saying with the Puritans, most of the stigma that surrounds witchcraft even today is rooted in religion and Christianity or Christian beliefs and the use of the term which used to be used to refer to non-Judeo-Christian beliefs like pagans, heathens, Satanists,
00:04:23
Speaker
like Wiccan any, even if they didn't practice witchcraft, if they didn't follow that, that norm, that Christian norm, they were automatically just labeled witch.
Religious Misunderstandings and Modern Stigma
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And when doing research for this episode, I came across this dissertation from this grad student with all of our references for our research will be linked in our show notes, but she did a dissertation where she
00:04:50
Speaker
asked research participants who self-identified as either Pagan or Wiccan. She asked them a series of questions and kind of based her entire dissertation on not just her research regarding the stigma surrounding witchcraft, but also her interviews with these women. And a lot of what she saw was that
00:05:12
Speaker
The participants that she interviewed, they were raised in religious households. And as they were growing up around 11 or 12 years old, they began questioning the authority figures and their religious life. And they began looking elsewhere to explore other beliefs and religions. Yeah. When I know you grew up like your dad raised you Wiccan.
00:05:32
Speaker
Whereas I grew up in a Pentecostal household, my mom used to make us go to Pentecostal church. So I wasn't allowed to watch a lot of the movies that everybody is like, Oh my God, I love, you know, like I told you, I recently went back and watched.
00:05:47
Speaker
what's it called? Practical magic. Practical magic because I wasn't allowed to watch it when it came out because it was about witches. I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter as a kid because that was witchcraft and that was of the devil. So there's like this inherent belief in these religions that kind of push into general society that all witches
00:06:07
Speaker
work with or for the devil himself and the reality is that many witches and many practitioners don't even believe in the Christian devil. They say you know witches work with the devil a lot of times they're confusing that with the the horned god that some people do work with so he's often you know kind of mistaken as that Christian devil when he's not
00:06:28
Speaker
That's true. Yeah. And actually, so growing up, I was raised pagan, but witchcraft, I mean, a lot of, you know, around the same vein, we just weren't in a coven, I guess. Yeah.
00:06:44
Speaker
similar. A lot of witchcraft symbols are tied to Satanism and it can make difficult for practitioners to be open about their beliefs and even something as simple as a pentagram or a pentacle
00:07:00
Speaker
oftentimes has these very negative connotations. My sister got a pentacle tattoo on her chest and people just assumed that she was just this huge Satan worshipper and not even understanding or really knowing anything about this symbol and what it means, they just assumed, oh, well, I've seen that in a movie. And those people who have that in the movie, they worship Satan. So
00:07:26
Speaker
Obviously you're a Satanist, which there's nothing wrong with being a Satanist. It just, it leads to that stigma that which is our evil and that they worship the devil. And that's not the case at all.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and if we're being honest, if you think about like, if anyone even took the time to look at, um, is it the church of Satan? Their beliefs are, they are more moral than most people, like your everyday Christian person. I've had more issues with people from a church, like a natural Christian church, than like a Satanist that I know. Yeah. Their beliefs are like, it's just, don't do, don't do things you shouldn't be doing.
00:08:04
Speaker
Exactly. And I feel like that's one of the, I think for me, one of the biggest hangups that I have with just Christianity and religion in general is the fact that for many Christians, what is keeping, what is making you be morally good? It's because you're wanting to look good in the eyes of God and go to heaven. But
00:08:26
Speaker
at the same time like people who are part of the what is it the church of satan is that what it was i think i know they have like a very specific name i
00:08:38
Speaker
I can't remember. And I don't know, I don't know a ton about it, but just based on a couple documentaries. Yeah. Yeah. But outside of that, I don't know much about it. But what I do know is with sameness and people who even just atheist who don't believe in God, what is keeping them from being evil or being morally bad, quote unquote, nothing like they believe that they're good people and they want to be good people because
00:09:04
Speaker
They want to be good people and they would have put good back into the world. They're not worried about, well, I have to be good or else I'm not going to live in paradise forever when I die. And so I think that's a really good way to look at it because.
00:09:19
Speaker
know, what is the motivation for people to be good people? Yeah. And it's the satanic temple. That's what I was thinking. I don't know if it's the same one. It's not the church of satanic temple.
Media Influence and Misrepresentation
00:09:31
Speaker
And so they also, there's also this like belief that a witch can't be religious and that Christians can't be witches, which there are plenty of people who identify as Christians who also practice
00:09:43
Speaker
witchcraft. And I found in one of the articles that I came across that I was reading on this, I found a quote that said like witchcraft itself is a practice. It's kind of like meditation is a practice and meditation has really strong ties with religion and philosophy, but anyone can do it. So it doesn't matter. Like if you practice, you know, whatever is tied to meditation, you can still meditate just like it doesn't matter.
00:10:10
Speaker
you're a Christian or if you go to the satanic temple or whatever you can still practice witchcraft. Exactly and I feel like too even just meditation in general like I don't know why people try to associate that with being a witch or believing differently everybody can benefit from meditation. I mean there's so many scientific
00:10:30
Speaker
benefits to meditation? Yeah, I mean, think about yoga, you know, a lot of people that practice yoga meditate, meditation is used in some therapies, just, it's not tied to one specific thing. Outside of religious stigma, culture in itself acts like a method of social control. Yeah, we see this a lot in the way that the media often whitewashes other cultures, witchcraft, and which is just in general,
00:10:58
Speaker
Representation of witches that are people of color or part of the LGBTQ plus community is actually very slim in the media. When they are included, they're often associated with dark magics and they're considered like evil or their characters are vilified in movies or TV shows. They often vilify magic that's centered around people of color cultures and those of minority groups.
00:11:20
Speaker
while also appropriating from those groups for those that they deem as like your good witches, like you were saying, like the beautiful, the pure, just morally good. They'll take stuff from another like person of color's magic and use it as their own. And then majority that are portrayed will be white women first and then white men. And while they're often portrayed as evil or dark practitioners, there's a small amount of people of color or minority in portrayal.
00:11:50
Speaker
And it's also important to remember that the media portrayal is not a true reflection of real life which community like the real life every day which community is a super diverse population that includes many people that are part of the LGBTQ plus community and people of color.
00:12:07
Speaker
One of the things that I thought was crazy when I was researching, it was just the fact that there is still witchcraft hysteria in place in parts of Africa. And I didn't even know about this until I started researching for this episode and the central African Republic for women who are accused of witchcraft today, they are abandoned by their family. Their children can oftentimes be abandoned as well.
00:12:32
Speaker
And they could be accused of inheriting the sorcery gene from a parent. And this could be for anything as simple as earning a living that's too decent to be normal. So earning a little bit above their means, they could be considered a witch. And then because of that, they'll be displaced like currently right now in the central African Republic.
00:12:54
Speaker
thousands of women and children are displaced for being quote unquote, witches. And then those that are accused of being witches are victims of mob justice. So cruel and inhuman and degrading methods of essentially torture, including flogging,
00:13:12
Speaker
and forceful ingesting of poisonous substances, sometimes even being buried alive, which is my worst nightmare. So, um, I mean, imagine that happening here though. Imagine, Oh, you're rich. You're clearly a witch that just would not fly in America. No, it wouldn't. That would never happen. Um, like in the past, what's funny is like in the past, it's like, Oh, let's accuse this poor person of being a witch so that I don't get accused of being a witch.
00:13:41
Speaker
But now today, today in Africa, they're like, Oh, you make more money. You're not poor. You're a witch. Exactly. Yeah. Complete opposite. It is. Yeah. And then that's just in one section of Africa and Kenya. There's also a hysteria. I mean, there was multiple countries that would come up, but I was just, I only picked two because it's just kind of depressing. I mean, well, and if you, if you did them all, we'd be here all day.
00:14:04
Speaker
We really would. Yeah, we really would. But I thought it was interesting how in Kenya, there's a huge AIDS and HIV epidemic. And of course, like with everything, there's accusations of witchcraft. And this will lead to social deaths or banishment. And at first, when I was reading this, I was under the impression, I misread like a section of the article. And I thought it was saying that so women who work as prostitutes there,
00:14:33
Speaker
I thought they were claiming that they were witches, but no, apparently like in this area prostitutes who have received HIV or AIDS from a man that they're with accused the male's wife of being a witch. And so like they're accusing them of giving them
00:14:58
Speaker
AIDS because they were mad at their significant other for going to a prostitute. So it's just, I don't know, crazy, but that is crazy. Yeah. It's just another way like to go straight from, okay, I've caught this sickness and I probably got it because I was not participating in safe sex practices.
00:15:20
Speaker
to accusing other people of witchcraft. And of course, this leads to social deaths and banishment within the community, which is not good, especially if you're trying to make a living. You know, you've basically been banished by your entire community. But the dominant narrative in popular culture constructs, which is, as we've mentioned a couple of times so far in this episode, as being evil, satanic, and scary, or as monsters,
00:15:46
Speaker
And I feel like even with teen witches now, it's just seen as a phase. I mean, I know we'll kind of get into this in maybe even the later episode as well. And I think I kind of mentioned it in my research for the next episode, but just how teen witches, because they are coming into themselves and they're learning more about who they are, most people just, oh, it's just a phase. They'll get over that. They don't really believe in this stuff.
00:16:15
Speaker
And so it makes it difficult, especially for people who are trying to come out of the broom closet, essentially they're hiding their witchy identity to avoid the stigma it brings and to avoid social control mechanisms because
00:16:29
Speaker
they're so afraid to be discriminated against. And I can definitely understand that because depending on where you live, especially in America, it can be terrifying to come out of the broom closet. Yeah. And when you see this, not only with teen witches, but this narrative runs so deep that even as adults, if someone asks you, Oh, are you a witch? You're like,
00:16:51
Speaker
um like do I answer or they are they just trying to get to know me and have that conversation or are they is this like a witch hunt like are they gonna go tell all the neighbors hey so and so down the streets a witch by the way stay away from that house.
00:17:06
Speaker
right. And to be honest, I thought, so I live in England right now. And I thought when we moved here, that it would be a little bit more accepting. And then I don't know why I didn't even realize that religion, like Christianity in the Church of England runs so deep here. They even teach Christianity in schools. Which is crazy to me. Yeah, because you don't see that in America unless you're in like a private school, but it's
00:17:31
Speaker
the public schools here, they teach Christianity as a part of their regular classroom routine. And so I just thought there would be a little bit more, I don't know. I feel like it's weird because I think even though the area is more religious, it's not as
00:17:49
Speaker
demonizing, but I feel like it's still not as accepted, or at least I haven't found the spaces where it is accepted really here, if that makes sense. Well, and then just like, like you were saying, like how this narrative, it makes it hard for people to come out and say like, Hey,
00:18:04
Speaker
you know, I'm interested in this. And I think this is what I want to practice or people that have been practicing in secret. It makes it really hard. I found this, I didn't, you know, at first when I saw it, I was like, I'm just going to tell Sam about this, because I didn't think that it really fit into the episode itself. But the more I started like researching and going through the narrative, even though this quote is from 1992, it still is kind of
00:18:31
Speaker
how Christianity or people of religious
Empowerment and Evolving Representations
00:18:35
Speaker
communities like Christianity look at witchcraft and they tie it to anything. So in 1992, in response to the feminist agenda itself, not even like in response to witchcraft, but in the feminist agenda, a TV evangelist named Pat Robertson stated that the agenda was
00:18:54
Speaker
a socialist anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. So like he automatically is like, feminism, clearly, evil, murderer. What is the word I'm looking for? Lustful? Yeah, lustful. Yeah. Yeah. So he looks at it and he's like, feminism, oh my God, you know, murderers, witchcraft.
00:19:22
Speaker
being lustful, leaving their husbands, destroying capitalism, and they're going to become a lesbian. Just the things that like society or religious groups themselves just group witchcraft into. Witches aren't running out there like murdering everybody. Most of us have like gardens and cats.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, not even close. This guy must, I mean, he sounds like he has real fun at a party. Yeah. And he's probably got some issues with his own sexuality. Let's be honest. How, why would you, even if you were just going to focus on the feminist agenda,
00:20:01
Speaker
go to that extreme, like that escalated so much. Destroying families, destroying capitalism. Well, and like, yeah, it is from 1992. So it is very dated, but I still think it's important that 1992 wasn't that long ago. Like when we're looking at like the history of witchcraft, we're looking back into like the 1400s and 1500s. This was literally in the 90s, not that long ago. Most
00:20:25
Speaker
Most people that are probably listening to this podcast were at least children at that point, not that long ago in a historical context. Nope. It really is not that long ago at all. And to think that there are some people out there that still believe this way, it's just scary. It is really scary. It is. And then you wonder why so many people want to stay in the broom closet. This is why.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I was actually talking to one of our friends about this recently. She's a librarian and she was talking about all the recent book banning issues. You know, that's been a really big issue right now because some of the books that are on this list are, you know, like anti-Nazi graphic novels are being banned because how dare you teach my children that Nazis are bad. But she was noting how many of the books that have recently been put on this list
00:21:20
Speaker
were put on for witchcraft. Like Harry Potter has been banned from middle school, like middle school libraries in some places. So something like as simple as a Harry Potter book is being looked at, like absolutely not. That's incredibly sad. And it just, even, I mean, outside of Harry Potter, but even just the Nazi books and stuff. I mean, how do we stop history from repeating itself if we don't educate our children on the terrors of the past?
00:21:49
Speaker
Why is it an issue that your children are learning that, you know, Nazis were a thing and Nazis are bad? Why is that a problem? And why is witchcraft being longed in with that too? Like, we don't want kids to know it's wild. And just goes to show how the term witch has been used in the past and is still being used to label women as deviant in any way possible.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, women who cause mischief and magic are powerful and therefore they're deviant. Whenever I was doing research, what I found to from that dissertation that I was referencing earlier, she had mentioned that when she was talking with participants and
00:22:27
Speaker
say they were open to their parents or their loved ones and friends about who they were and what they believed in. One group that the participants that she interviewed were adamant about not knowing about their personal life, about knowing about their witchy beliefs were their coworkers.
00:22:44
Speaker
And because it's people you see every day and they can interfere with your happiness on a day-to-day basis, they can interfere with your ability to make money. And that's really scary to know that somebody would have that power over you to cause you to be socially banished from a situation because they didn't believe in what you believed in. And so they were going to.
00:23:06
Speaker
hate you essentially for and treat you like shit. When a lot of like witchcraft by just your general public, somebody that has no knowledge of it, they associate it. All witches practice magic spells, potions, curses, hexes. And it's not good that they do things, you know, within league with the devil, they're, you know, worshiping the devil, whatever. But the reality is that witchcraft is about empowerment and connecting with nature and your own inner power and strength. It's about finding harmony between yourself and the universe.
00:23:35
Speaker
and harnessing energies from within and around you. So it's not even, you know, as deeply rooted as they're thinking in evil. It's more about how do I, you know, empower myself and, you know, learn to use my own instincts. And then you see a lot too, tarot. Tarot is always associated with witchcraft by people that don't understand that tarot has been used across many cultures for years.
00:24:01
Speaker
So like practicing tarot doesn't mean that you're practicing magic though it can be used to serve as a tool to help a person gain knowledge from within. For those that don't know tarot has actually also been used in some psychology type settings in therapy to help a person work through their own problems. So they'll associate, they draw their cards with the therapist and the therapist will tell them like, what is something, you know, on your mind that surrounds this card and helps them like work through all these steps.
00:24:31
Speaker
So tarot isn't inherently like magical, but that's the stigma around it is that, Oh, you have tarot cards. You're a bad person. Like you practice evil things. Right. Well, and I see it used in the media so much, like in just in movies and television, they'll use it as a way to further demonize people. It's funny that you mentioned how it's used in psychology.
00:24:56
Speaker
So I'm a social worker and my field instructor that I had in my last semester of my graduate school program, she reads terror. She, you know, uses it as a way to build her own intuition. And I feel like for a therapist, especially because as a therapist, you're seeing a lot of heavy shit. You're hearing a lot of heavy shit. You have to also be able to be strong in and of yourself and
00:25:21
Speaker
be able to trust yourself and your intuition and tarot can help you do that. So outside of the tarot part, the idea that all witchcraft is the same is another like generalized stigma that you see. They think that one specific practice or belief is what all witches practice when really there's just, there's a ton of different practices out there. There's a ton of different beliefs just because someone says they're a witch doesn't mean that, you know,
00:25:46
Speaker
They practice dark magic. And while there are witches out there that might, that doesn't mean that all do. And then there's like the outlandish ideas, all which, you know, they, they picture what the, what is shown in like movies and TV, like somebody's casting a spell and flames are shooting out of their hands or.
00:26:03
Speaker
electricity or whatever, like something visible that wands have visible magic that like Harry Potter, you know, they cast a spell and there's like a stream of light that comes out of it. And then that which is, you know, go around writing on broomsticks.
00:26:19
Speaker
And that actually stems from like a lore that came from the history of witchcraft, that it actually was people using hallucinogens like belladonna and mugwort. So they thought witches were actually flying, but the reality was that they were hallucinating. Would that not be the funniest thing in the world?
Satanic Panic and Portrayal in Media
00:26:42
Speaker
And I think also going back to what you were saying with it all being like rooted in evil, there was a whole period of time in the 80s that people refer to as the satanic panic. So anything that happened, it was all like automatically Satanist or satanic.
00:26:59
Speaker
witchcraft rituals and even like there were new casters in the 80s that reported about, oh, are your children playing Dungeons and Dragons in your basement? They're practicing satanic witchcraft. Yes. And actually satanic panic was a huge thing. It was a huge thing. And this was something I was going to mention later on in the episode, but I think it fits in perfectly here. It's just
00:27:22
Speaker
how it had real life implications back then or in the eighties with what happened with the West Memphis three and the media manipulation surrounding that. I mean, the gruesome murders that happened, but because of satanic panic and because of media fears,
00:27:38
Speaker
There was a huge bias and it led the police to zoning. It led the police to zero in on three innocent teenagers claiming that the deaths of these little boys who, I mean, died horrible, some horrific deaths. They claimed that they were due to satanic rituals.
00:27:58
Speaker
because they had a complete misunderstanding of witchcraft and Wicca. And because the three boys, they wore black and wore trench coats. Like that doesn't make you a murderer and that doesn't make you a sanist. And even if it did make you a sanist, it doesn't make you a murderer. Like, you know, it's just insane. And sadly, like during that time, that was a common theme that surrounded serial killers or murders, like
00:28:24
Speaker
didn't even have to be serial. Any murder that happened, it automatically went to Satanist or witches. That's the reason this is happening. It's just crazy. It's crazy that these things, yeah, the 80s were a while ago, but it wasn't that far ago. We were born in the 80s. Exactly. Depending on when we were born, we could have been in our 30s, in the 80s. Yeah.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah. That sounds terrible. Yeah. There's no way. No. But thankfully since the eighties, there's been kind of a modern shift in popular culture. And as we know, pop culture is kind of the main agent of socialization for everyone. And recent pop culture depicts witches as strong heroines rather than villains. And they draw young women and men into witchy identities due to modern day popular portrayals of witches.
00:29:20
Speaker
And so today there's a newer narrative in popular culture that highlights which is as confident, sexy, breaking traditional gender norms related to sexuality. And they're no longer seen as having warts dressed in black cloaks with green skin and a pointed hat. I mean, they may be riding a broom, but maybe not. And recently they're just portrayed as normal everyday people with normal lives who just happen to be magical.
00:29:50
Speaker
The only issue with a lot of today's pop culture surrounding witches and witchcraft is that it's now portrayed as an aesthetic, something that's cute and trendy or like being of like the dark and goth and everybody just wants to portray this look versus like what it means to be a witch. So they want that look of all things witchcraft without the backlash that might come from being a witch and they by doing this it dismisses
00:30:17
Speaker
that witchcraft is sacred and it's deep rooted and multifaceted. Yes. And this is something that I, I feel like I struggle with a lot is getting to that point where I'm not upset about seeing that aesthetic out there because I feel like some people exploit it and it's frustrating whenever you believe a certain way, but then you see some of the things that you believe in being exploited for the aesthetic. It's really frustrating.
00:30:48
Speaker
I feel like it's a double-edged sword because now that it's out there and it's so popular, it's less harrowing on a person to come out and say like, oh, I'm a witch, I practice witchcraft. Or it's less hiding in the broom closet, but at the same time, it's also taking away from people who they have these deep rooted, multifaceted levels that they've practiced their whole lives.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yes, yeah, I agree. And I mean, I do like that there's that new narrative of the witch and how you can be a strong woman or man who doesn't need a man or woman in their life and that you can embrace the love that you have for yourself. And that sexiness isn't just defined on physical attributes.
00:31:34
Speaker
And so I do like that idea and that the sense that's coming out in this new generation of witches and people being so accepting of the witchy community is that there is this just theme of just loving yourself. And I like that. There is still a statement though on some of the terminology. So the term witchy tends to be more acceptable by the general public because it's seen more as that aesthetic or a vibe, you know?
00:32:03
Speaker
where the terms witch or witchcraft are still often associated with evil because of ignorance that surrounds them. Oh my gosh, that's so right. And that's not even something that I really thought about until just now, but it really is because I don't think the witch or witchcraft is inherently negative or anything, but because I do identify as a witch and I do feel like I practice witchcraft, but I can see how I have used in like on the social media space where say I'm
00:32:33
Speaker
connecting with people from my physical community who may not know that about me, where I mentioned something about, oh yeah, what are you into? I might mention something about enjoying witchy things and just kind of look at that because in my head, yeah, exactly. But they may not accept if I were to say, I am a witch and I practice witchcraft.
00:32:57
Speaker
they're more willing to accept me if I say, oh, I'm into the witchy things because they might just think it's a vibe. And then once they get to know me, they'll realize, oh, she's kind of serious about this. Yeah, she actually meant it. She actually meant it. She didn't mean her aesthetic. Right. I think a lot of this has to go back to like how the media portrays witchcraft. So we're looking at like the good versus bad. So often people who are witches in
00:33:25
Speaker
media tend to be seen as villains. And we have several examples that we'll be talking about throughout pop culture, movie, TV, books even. So it usually what happens is they pen two women. It's usually always two women against each other.
00:33:43
Speaker
One will be beautiful, good, pure, like Sam was saying earlier, and one will be ugly, evil, or envious of the good, pure, beautiful, innocent one. And that's usually a portrayal that is sometimes to be feared. They're the subject of horror or evil in the movie or the show, whatever form of media it is. And it's a common theme that runs through all generations.
00:34:10
Speaker
Up until now, I think now is where we're kind of seeing that positive shift and then often gaining magic is it's in line with a woman reaching puberty.
00:34:21
Speaker
and it's sexualizing it again. Like we talked about it in last week's episode, like hyper sexualized women were considered like witches. If you weren't this pure little, like don't have sex until you're married, they called you a witch in history. So it's going back to the roots of that, like sexualizing witchcraft and young girls. And I think this can be really dangerous because for many witches, they may not know any witches
00:34:49
Speaker
from their daily interactions in their daily lives. There's a lack of positive role models in the witchy community as a whole. And as social media is becoming more prevalent, there's more access to these types of role models. But in the past that hasn't always been the case. And I will say for me, I mean, thankfully growing up in the nineties in the Bible belt,
00:35:12
Speaker
I mean, there wasn't a lot of representation, but thankfully I had my dad there who was pagan and we always went to the same metaphysical shop and the woman who ran it, she was a pagan and they, you know, we had a kind of a community, not that we were super involved in a community, but there was people to look up to and I had access to literature and whatever I wanted in that. But for a lot of people growing up, and I can't even imagine how
00:35:38
Speaker
for somebody that was growing up in the Bible belt the same time that I was who wanted to pursue this path. If all you had was what the media representation of what a witch was, why would anyone want to do that? The media took that historical religious belief that surrounded witchcraft and they just ran with it. So the view has tended to shift more positively in recent years, but we're still getting tons of negative witchy portrayals in any form of media.
00:36:05
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And for example, that is just looking at pretty much any Disney movie that has to do with princesses. I mean, literally every single one of them up until Frozen. Essentially, they just socialize children and reinforce white with beauty and good and pureness and black with ugly and bad and evil and self-centered. Oftentimes with that, they lump
00:36:33
Speaker
the, whatever the witch character is in with that ugly black evil self-centered stereotype. Yeah, it's crazy. And so, and, and now in some of the recent shows that are out, like the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Fumal Empowerment came from Embracing Magic and there's references
00:36:52
Speaker
to witches pledging their loyalty to Satan, I feel
Witchcraft in Pop Culture and Gender Perspectives
00:36:56
Speaker
like comes from the views of witchcraft by Christians. And I remember we had talked about this back whenever the show first came out, because I remember you had told me,
00:37:06
Speaker
should watch this show. It's really good. It's based on a graphic novel. And I remember being like, I don't think I'm going to watch this show because I don't know if I can get behind this. I feel like I would be really upset watching this because she's a witch, but she worships Satan. And I don't like that. It's represented that way.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I had read the graphic novels because I had loved Sabrina as a kid, and I read them when I got older. And I knew that there is a shift, you know, they do move. I'm sorry if you've never watched it, and this is spoiling it, but they do move away from the Satanist point of view. And they move to the, I can't remember what they call it, like the House of Hecate or something. But instead of worshiping Satan, they now, you know, worship Hecate.
00:37:56
Speaker
So I knew that that was coming. But I also try not to watch a lot of media that surrounds witches and take it seriously because there's not a lot out there that is serious. So the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina does portray witchcraft as being rooted in the worship of Satan or the Dark Lord. It later changes to the Order of Hecate, but it still holds many elements of Hell and Satan throughout it.
00:38:22
Speaker
And then a common idea that witchcraft is backed by some masculine evil presence is something that you see in a lot of media that does portray witches. Yet the women are always the ones persecuted, even though they are backed by a male presence. It's the women that are bad and inherently evil.
00:38:41
Speaker
So something that I did, I did come across in research, there was a whole article about how women who write about witches, whether it be books or TV or whatever, versus men who write them, there's very different views and magical concepts. So a lot of the common themes in TV shows, movies, and books that are written by women about witches are empowerment, the use of magic to help others or to fight evil,
00:39:09
Speaker
And then they often have pure intentions. Even if the outcome's bad, the intention was pure. Some examples of this were Sailor Moon, The Love Witch, which I tried to watch this. This is, it came up on like every popular like witchy show or movie list. So I was like, let me go watch this. I could not get through it. And I didn't see her being, I didn't feel she was a
00:39:36
Speaker
proper representation for this category because she essentially is doing magic to make men fall in love with her. It's this whole movie where she is doing these love potions and the men end up dying because she's giving them too much or not doing them right. There was a point in time where she's talking to somebody and they're like, oh, I'm going out of town. And she's like, oh, where are you and your husband going? And she's like, oh, I'm going on a business trip.
00:40:02
Speaker
And there's this weird look and sound that happens every time she like zeros in on a man. So like the wife is like, oh, it's just me going on a town on a business trip. And she's like, like, looks. And she's like, oh, I'm going to steal him. Like she like I didn't feel that anything about her was pure intentions. But she kept getting lumped into this category of being this pure intended witch. It's supposed to be a satirical horror.
00:40:28
Speaker
It looks like it was made in the 60s. It came out in 2016. It was terrible. I'm sorry if that is anyone's favorite witchy movie. I could not do it, but she could not get into that at all. I think I made it like 45 minutes before I was like, I'm turning this off. It's not getting any better because I kept thinking it's got to get better, right? Like it kept getting on these lists of being like,
00:40:50
Speaker
this amazingly self-empowered good witch with good intentions. She did not have good intentions. She was wrecking marriages and killing every man she came in contact with. I just don't understand how that one was written by a woman because that doesn't fit. I feel like no woman would write that.
00:41:08
Speaker
No, it was horrible. So Sailor Moon, The Love Witch was on a lot of these lists, but again, I didn't see that one. There's a comic called Witch, Harry Potter, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Charmed are all examples of empowered witches written by women.
00:41:25
Speaker
And then when you move to the men's view of magic and witchcraft, you get evil, revenge driven, grotesque, or like, you know, the old hag bending over her cauldron that lives in the woods, dark, twisted entity that manifests in a female character.
00:41:42
Speaker
almost always, it's very rarely a male character. And some examples of this are, there's a movie that's just called The Witch, and it's about a girl turning dark and becoming a witch. Is that the one with the girls in the queen's gambit? It's a newer one. I haven't watched it.
00:42:01
Speaker
Like I read about it. I have not watched it. If it's that one, that one's really good, but yes, it definitely fits in that. Yeah. So the witch brand new cherry flavor. I don't know if you watched that. It's really weird and very dark. It was good. I really liked it, but it does portray the witch as being like evil, revenge driven, dark magic.
00:42:24
Speaker
Lords of Salem, Carrie, the Witch of the Woods and the Blair Witch Project were all written by men and they all portray a female dark witch. So it's weird to see that, like that difference of like, if a woman writes that it's usually like fighting evil and being empowered and having good intentions, whereas like the men tend to focus on evil or revenge or just ugly and mean in general.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yes, that is really interesting because I did not know that. I wouldn't even think to research that aspect of it. And the only reason it just popped up, you know, when I was researching some stuff, I was like, wow, I never even thought of this. This is, it was very interesting to me. Yes, that is really interesting.
00:43:11
Speaker
So one of the movies obviously that I wanted to reference in this episode was the Wizard of Oz, because I think that's probably a lot of people's, especially if you're from our generation, one of our first outside of Disney movies, the first movie that we actually saw that had a witch portrayed in it. And for those, I mean, I'm assuming with all of these movies that we're going to be talking about and just shows in general,
00:43:37
Speaker
I would hope that it's not a spoiler warning for anybody because after a certain point in time, it's not a spoiler. Exactly, like, come on. But just FYI, I'm gonna be spoiling a lot of shows and movies. So for the Wizard of Oz, in this, the evil witch, which I didn't even know she had a name to be on, because I've never seen Wicked or Red Wicked or anything. So her name is Elphaba. Is that how you pronounce it?
00:44:03
Speaker
I don't know. I've never heard it. I've only read it. Okay. You know, this is a whole book series. Yes. Yeah. And I'd never read it. So I'm just going off of the Wizard of Oz. Just the movie. Yeah. Yeah. But we're just going to call her El Faba because I'm not sure if that's how to pronounce it, but works for me.
00:44:21
Speaker
works. Yeah. Elphaba is the evil witch. She's seen as ugly with green skin and warts and dressed in black with a pointy hat, just that quintessential definition of the historical quote unquote, witch. And it's, there's also Glenda in this movie. She's seen as a morally good, beautiful, pure,
00:44:44
Speaker
like a princess witch. And in the movie, Elphaba is seen as the tyrant who makes the lives of the munchkin land inhabitants hell. But Glinda, who is the good witch, I didn't even realize as a kid that she was supposed to be a witch. I just thought she was like a princess.
00:45:04
Speaker
She looked like a fairy godmother to me. I like Cinderella, fairy godmother. Right, yeah, but because she's technically a witch in the movie, but I didn't even realize that she was technically a witch because she's not portrayed in that same light as her sister. Yeah, and there's four witches actually in the book series. I can't remember if they mentioned the other two in,
00:45:34
Speaker
The movie, it's been so long since I've seen that. But the North and South witches are your good witches. And then your East and West witches are considered the evil wicked witches, like the wicked witch of the East and the wicked witch of the West. I'll have to read those books. In the books, I feel like I would end up identifying with Elphaba. Does that ever happen in the books? Or is she just terrible?
00:46:00
Speaker
I mean, she's, she's like, she is in the, in the movies. So there's no like a backstory of like, this is how I got to be this way. I mean, it's just, I think, yeah, it's like, you know, you have East and West witches and these are your bad ones and you have North and South and they practice the good magic.
00:46:19
Speaker
Oh, okay. It's that typical portrayal. You got to, I mean, you got to remember these were, God, when did this come out? When did the movie come out? Because the books are even older than that. So we're looking back where the narrative was that there was pure and it's, you know, at this point, they even had pure witches, but they, you know, the most of the narratives, witches are evil. Great. Well, maybe I won't read it then.
00:46:42
Speaker
There's some really pretty folio copies. Folio has some beautiful artwork for Wizard of Oz. And the copy is just really cute in its little locks. So for American Horror Story, Coven, that season of American Horror Story, they challenge norms about witches.
00:46:58
Speaker
and in that season there's more openness about sexuality and in a non-deviant way non-conventional forms of beauty being self-reliant and the characters that they put in the story add to this whole narrative and so like for instance the supreme she's
00:47:18
Speaker
an older witch but she's very powerful and she's beautiful and sexy and she knows what she wants and then Nan who is a witch who's portrayed by an actress who has Down syndrome and so I mean obviously that's challenging the norm of who can be cast in the leading role. She's portrayed as a very strong witch and then another character in the show Queenie is a person of color and she's
00:47:46
Speaker
also represents a non-conventional form of beauty. And she really comes into her own and finds her strengths within the show. And then I think a really good juxtaposition in the show is the fact that Madison, who is the stereotypical attractive quote unquote woman, challenges the narrative that morally good is attractive and she's a fucking bitch. She is, she's horrible. She is horrible.
00:48:11
Speaker
And so I like that they kind of changed it up. They have the old person, the disabled person, the person of color who've been seen as the deviant or the evil and malicious characters that have been portrayed throughout media in the past. They're portrayed as the morally good characters in the show.
00:48:33
Speaker
but then Madison who is usually would be the person that's portrayed as the morally good character and pure and beautiful. She's portrayed as the bully and the bad guy in the show. So. I will say that is my favorite season American horror story. I love that season so much. And then I've tried actually, I think that was like the last good season to be honest. Like I cannot get into any of the other seasons.
00:48:59
Speaker
I liked, was it Roanoke? I did like Roanoke. But all the rest of them, I even tried watching, I think it was Apocalypse. They tried to do like a coven, like they brought in characters from the coven. Apocalypse brought in a bunch of old like characters from the past.
00:49:17
Speaker
And it still wasn't good. It was just terrible. Well, then they had like the purge one, the political one. I was like, come on, we get enough politics. I know. Let me have my TV show. Exactly. And it's just like, even if I identify with some of these characters who were upset about the election, like
00:49:37
Speaker
I don't want to watch it. I was already depressed. I don't need to be depressed again. That's already all over my Facebook feed. Exactly. I don't need to see this again and then also be thinking in the back of my head, could this actually happen? Yeah.
00:49:52
Speaker
Please don't put these on my head. Exactly. Another media representation of witches, which is also one of my favorite movies in the whole world, is The Craft. Witches are portrayed as young, strong, and outspoken. They're portrayed as sexy and using magic as a means to control their world, especially in situations where pretty much all the characters possess little power. This is another movie that
00:50:19
Speaker
Growing up in a Christian household, I was not allowed to watch and I didn't watch this until I was an adult, but I absolutely loved it. It's- Oh my gosh, I can't believe you never watched it as I could. No, my mom went through a period where we weren't even allowed to listen to the radio. We were only allowed to listen to Christian music. So me being, you know, me being me, I pushed those boundaries and I found Christian metal, Christian, Christian rap, anything I could to like drive my mother crazy with.
00:50:46
Speaker
That is terrible. I'm not trying to put anybody down with their religious beliefs, but Christian music is really not that great.
00:50:53
Speaker
No. I mean, you have bands like, I mean, Flyleaf. Flyleaf was great. They were Christian hardcore. I did not know that. Kill It, Flyleaf, MX, PX, Thrice, who is still a popular band in like the rock community, still putting out music. They were a Christian band. Wow. Okay. Well, maybe I need to, I mean, not that- Reliant K, I think was another one. I knew about Reliant K, but
00:51:19
Speaker
I remember I said like in junior high because I went through this whole stage whenever I was in junior high in high school where I would, I didn't want anyone to know about my upbringing and because I lived in Oklahoma and it just, when people start a conversation with you asking, Oh, Hey, when were you baptized? I had to make up back to, I had my whole like baptism day, like.
00:51:42
Speaker
made up obviously because I was never baptized. I had this fake church that I kind of invented. Oh yeah, it's in Oklahoma City somewhere that I would tell people. And so all of my friends were listening to Reliant Kay and there was another band and it was like three girls and they were kind of like rock pop. And I can't even remember what their names were.
00:52:04
Speaker
Barlow girls, I think is what they're all the Barlow girls. I remember like forcing myself to like that music, but then half of the songs, I didn't really understand what they were talking about. And like casting crowns was another one. Like I used to listen to all of these songs or all these bands and discourse myself to like them.
00:52:27
Speaker
Isn't Creed also Christian? I think so. That sounds about right. Yeah. Half the time I didn't know what they were really referencing. It just brings back this time of my life where I was trying so hard to fit in with everybody. Because if they knew that, oh, you actually don't go to church and you weren't baptized and oh, you're pagan, I would have no friends. And see, I was like the opposite. I wasn't allowed to do all of that. I remember one time,
00:52:54
Speaker
I was in middle school, I borrowed a jewel and savage garden CD from one of my friends and my mom found them in my room and grounded me. And I had to find because she hid them, right? And I was like, well, these aren't mine, I had to steal them back. So I had to like, dig through stuff until I found them to give my friend back their savage garden CD that I got grounded for.
00:53:21
Speaker
And it's like, you would think with that sort of reaction that it would have been like an Eminem or Tupac album or something. I don't know. Literally Jewel. Jewel and Savage Garden. I got grounded over those ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. Savage Garden though, they put out some bangers, I will say. Yeah, they really did. I still listen to it really badly deeply. Like it's
00:53:46
Speaker
Me too. And that one song where it's like, like a cherry cola. I don't even know. And it's like 20 years later, I still don't know the words of that song. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:02
Speaker
So there's a random tangent. A random tangent there. And then I know like, so I had a couple of other movies on this list, but I'm going to skip over a couple of them because I mean, it's just us talking about movies. But one of the things that I did want to bring up was recently around Halloween, we're rewatching the Halloween movies. I was cracking up
00:54:27
Speaker
because I never noticed this any other year that I've ever watched Halloween. I guess I just have never paid attention to this part of the movie where Loomis the, is he like a psychologist or something?
00:54:40
Speaker
I can't remember what he actually is, but he's like a therapist. I don't remember, yeah. He explains Samhain, but he pronounces it. He writes it on this chalkboard and he pronounces it Samhain. Yeah. I for the longest time thought it was Samhain because I watched a TV show or a movie where they were like Samhain. So I for the longest time pronounced it that way until someone was like, it's actually Samhain. And I was like, oh.
00:55:09
Speaker
Really? I'm just like, what the hell? I was cracking up and then he's explaining it to him. It just sounded like he's mansplaining Samhain, but he doesn't know how to say it. It's really funny watching it now. But anyway, he claims that Samhain is tied to ritualistic bonfires that the Druids built to sacrifice people.
00:55:33
Speaker
back to human sacrifice, murder. They probably throw cannibalism in there at some point, which is just love to murder and eat people.
00:55:44
Speaker
That's all we do actually. That's how we stay so young looking is meeting people and especially if they're pure children. And then another movie that I wanted to discuss that a lot of people don't necessarily relate back to witchcraft is the skeleton key because most people think of it as like a horror movie, but they do have references to voodoo and hoodoo.
Negative Stereotypes in Horror Films
00:56:06
Speaker
I mean, that's like one of the main parts of the movie is surrounding that. Right. Really just goes to show how deeply rooted white privilege is in the witchcraft community because Voodoo and Hoodoo is incredibly vilified in this movie.
00:56:23
Speaker
and it relates back to the dominant negative stereotypes surrounding witches as evil and showing that people of color are viewed in a negative light because in this movie you have this couple who practice hoodoo and essentially they are stealing the youth of young white people. So it goes back to like
00:56:45
Speaker
vilifying something that's deeply rooted in a people of colors, like upbringing or background history, however you say that. Exactly. And so relating back to the dissertation, among the witches who were interviewed for the dissertation, even though they self identified as witches or pagans,
00:57:07
Speaker
they still viewed voodoo and hoodoo in a negative light all because all they know about it is the negative stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. When you see this and I am no expert in any of these but you don't like just voodoo and hoodoo aren't the only ones like Santeria is another one that
00:57:28
Speaker
often has negative connotations tied to it. I don't know anything about Palomayambe outside of the murder cult that actually brought it to my attention because I'm a true crime junkie and I listen to 80 billion true crime podcasts. But Palomayambe is another
00:57:50
Speaker
witchcraft that is rooted in, I believe Brazil, I could be wrong about that, but I believe it comes from Brazil. So it's, you know, people of colors magic that is taken into a dark context because it's not pure, it's not white, it's not what we see as like every day, like goodness, I guess.
00:58:12
Speaker
So outside of those, we also have the Blair Witch Project, which the witch is depicted as the evil or murderous being that's on a rampage. People avoid the woods. There's one credible source in the movie on the witch that they interview, but they portray her as being a crazy person.
00:58:31
Speaker
Hocus Pocus, the Sanderson sisters, saw their souls to the devil. Carrie, which you know, Sam, I absolutely adore Stephen King and I read everything he puts out, but he wrote Carrie and she is revenge driven. She uses her powers to take down those that hurt her.
00:58:48
Speaker
And it also shows the religious aspect in a mother, like a religious mother trying to save her daughter who has these powers. So it goes back to that witchcraft is bad and I have to fix you and make you good. It's sad to see like just how witches and witchcraft is portrayed in the media, but I think like seeing them as one-off movies, right? Like seeing them as they come out or just wanting to read or watch something around witchcraft
00:59:17
Speaker
You don't really think of how badly they portray them, but when you sit down to research it and you're looking at every single one of these next to each other, there's all these common themes that make it very apparent that culturally and socially witchcraft has been controlled and like, damped down.
00:59:36
Speaker
You can't be a witch and be good. But spoiler alert, you can be a witch and be good. And to tie into that, there are some mundane everyday things people do that they don't realize are witchy.
00:59:52
Speaker
So I wanted to end on that because it makes it a little more apparent that you can be just an everyday person and be a witch and not be evil or rooted in the devil or in league with the devil. We will be doing a full episode on Monday Magic later on, but just a little tidbit here. People that work with herbs, making teas, if you use them in cooking, bath teas, all of that is witchy.
01:00:22
Speaker
inherently blowing out candles and making a wish on your birthday cake.
01:00:27
Speaker
witchcraft straight to jail. Wearing crystals in your jewelry or using crystals in decor. Crystals inherently aren't witchy, but a lot of witches use crystals in their craft because they use the energies from the crystals. And then most holidays that are celebrated today were taken from historical pagan practices. So your Christmas, Pagan Easter, Pagan straight to jail.
01:00:55
Speaker
to jail. Literally. Groundhog. Groundhog. Groundhog. Groundhog day relates back to in bulk, which. Yep. Witchy. Witchy. So a lot of people don't even realize that they are practicing witchcraft in their everyday lives. Yes, exactly. And even just in churches, like if you go into a Catholic church and you see them carrying the
01:01:18
Speaker
incense swinging around. I feel like Catholics are the, what is it? How did they put it? Like three times removed cousin of witchcraft. Yeah. They burn incense. They have rituals. They, uh, what is it like, uh, what is it called when you eat the cracker and drink the wine that's supposed to simplify like the body, the blood, the blood of communion. That's communion. I'm like,
01:01:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then even like, you know, they, I mean, my, my grandpa, my grandma's very Catholic, but, um, even when they do like, send, they go and confess their sons to a priest and then the priest is like, Oh, just do X amount of hail Mary's with your Rosary. I mean, just like kind of like a ritualistic thing in my, in my head. So yeah. And the whole, um,
01:02:11
Speaker
I have been to, so I will say like growing up, we never were a part of really any churches, but I've been to pretty much every denomination of churches at least once just to see what it was like because I wanted to try it out or I went with somebody who
01:02:28
Speaker
was a member of a church just to see. And I remember in Catholic churches, they used to always have like those little bowls of holy water everywhere. And so you'd always have to do the whole thing. That's a whole ritual in and of itself too, right? Yeah. Like Catholics, I really do feel like they're like that three times removed cousin from witchcraft because they do practice a lot of things that
01:02:48
Speaker
would be seen as like ritualistic. They have incantations that they, you know, you know the whole ordeal with my dad dying and his funeral. I know I told you and Alexis about it. Like my grandma wanted him to have a Catholic burial, even though that's not what my dad wanted. And we as his children said no, and she did it anyways. And we had Catholic priests who had my brothers and I sit in the front row, which cool, but then they wanted us to recite their incantations with them.
01:03:18
Speaker
my brothers and I were like, no, we're not Catholic. You know, we're looking at each other like, are you doing this? Because I'm not doing this. This is weird. But they do, they practice a lot of things that to me, it's very like rooted in ritual witchcraft. It just goes to show how everyday magic can be a, you know, a really good one too that works is
01:03:43
Speaker
that I feel like a lot of people do and here recently I've seen it a lot on TikTok and Instagram are people who talk about affirmations and just journaling and being positive and stuff.
01:03:57
Speaker
can be considered mundane magic as well, and people don't realize that. And how- And they have a lot of superstitious practices, like, oh, you still salt, you throw it over your shoulder, or all of that could also be seen as witchy practices. Exactly. Oh, just a way to wrap up the episode, which is in media just in general, historically have been portrayed terribly, but it's getting better and it can only get better from here.
01:04:34
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 will 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.
01:04:59
Speaker
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01:05:22
Speaker
Check us out next week where we will sit down and explore cultural appropriation versus appreciation. Until then, blessed bewitches.