@aidanfarnan4683
"Imagine being accused of witchcraft because you gave your friend a Benadryl and they saw the hat man..." is a brilliant quote. Also, as archaeologist fascinated by the period 1400-1600, thank you for pointing out that the Renaissance was far more violent and brutish than the medieval period. The Medieval gets a lot of shit for stuff it’s over-achieving younger brother did.
@danaroth598
The Malleus Maleficarum only exists because Heinrich Kramer was angry that his church superiors correctly pegged him as an unhinged misogynist and intervened on behalf of his would-be victim, which I think tells you a lot about it and him.
@FigburyWitchASMR
I’m a witchcraft historian—and you miss no points here! One of my research areas is how Margaret Murray, as you said, “really didn’t know what she was talking about.” And I’m always so happy when people tackle the hard work of dispelling the burning myth. It’s so hard to escape from 😅
@haileybalmer9722
I think a lot of our ideas about witch trials come from Salem which... look. Imagine the worst religious sect you've ever heard of and the people who are trying to manipulate them. Yeah. That's the whole story in broad strokes. Salem was kind of this weird, outlier event, that's why we all talk so much about it. Even then, when you dig into it, you find familiar stories: old money spiting new money, new money trying to con their way into being old money, poor people getting mowed down in their wake... Salem had it all. My absolute favorite story from that event is the testimony of Tituba. She absolutely knew that she wasn't getting out of it, and she was going to take down every single person who ever pissed her off, so she got up there and said "yep, I'm a witch, so's she and so is that bit over there, the one who was stingy with the wassail at Christmas, yep, she's a witch." At one point they asked her to keep testifying and she said she'd going blind all of a sudden. It's a funny spot in an otherwise horrific series of events. TL:DR, Salem was rich people fighting and not caring how many poor people suffered, we really are just like the people of yesteryear.
@Hanzatre
History of witches here in Finland is its own fascinating thing. Finland being literally nowhere by middle-ages standards so people here were doing their wholly own thing . And here being a "witch" (noita in Finnish) was a legitimate profession, a job, witches were for a long time respected members of their communities, being herbalists, medicine men and ritualists and Finland had practicing witches until the early 20th century. The witch hunts didn't get that big here, it was mostly those pesky Lutherans who were really keen on eradicating everything pagan (the Catholics didn't seem to care or just were really bad at the eradication).
@jakubmakalowski6428
The phrase performing necromancy on the pope, is something that need to get shelved into my memory.
@sammypsychosis1674
As a longtime Wiccan myself, THANK YOU KAZ for actual FACTS. So tired of hearing “my people were burned” none of them were Wiccans, or witches for that matter.
@dane3038
I've been Wiccan most of my 48 years and what you said needed to be said. On your closing statement I also agree. My advice to anyone trying to "wake up" is to remember that it's ok to be fooled. You've been fooled, you're being fooled and you will be fooled again. This doesn't make you a fool. Let go of the need to feel secure in your understanding and peruse the truth like the cruel and elusive mistress she is.
@gota7738
I'd love to see more on this topic! As a welshperson I've always been a bit iffy on how our history often gets divided between this concept of "celtic paganism" vs "invading christianity", which erases like 95% of our actual history in favour of some nature theme park. Like you can look at the charms and spells used by Dynion and Gwragedd Hysbys to see that they're using bible scripture and prayer alongside plants and remedies. Perhaps the local parish authorities might not like it but it wasn't meant to be some middle finger against the heavens.
@jasonblalock4429
What I find odd/interesting about this is that so many false ideas about medieval witchery happened by taking some of the most biased anti-witch sources as gospel, then trying to spin their wild accusations as good things, actually. Like, imagine someone five hundred years from now researching 21st Century queer life... by only reading the rantings of fundie Christians. Of course it would be confused! (Also religious syncretism is totes a thing and really needs to come up more often in these sorts of discussions.)
@LivingBreathingPoet
Thank you SO MUCH for pointing out how "The Burning Times" rhetoric appropriates the Holocaust because you put your finger on the judenhass I have experienced from white witches comparing that directly to Jewish persecution
@megbarwick2872
I decided I wasn't a Wiccan after spending only a week in a Wiccan FB group. The amount of gatekeeping and ego was really off-putting. I know it was only a small percentage of members but it was enough that I backed away slowly 😂
@Basking_Rootwalla56
There’s an Ursula K LeGuin quote I think about a lot when it comes to people talking about the primal and esoteric nature of women’s knowledge: “But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”
@DarkLightHuntress
Hey Kaz, eclectic Wiccan here. I've known for years that Wicca is a relatively modern religion. With my religion/spirituality, the goal for me was always to find a spiritual home, not feel more connected with some supposed witch ancestor, so I never bought into the "I'm the granddaughter of the witches you forgot to burn" mentality. As much as I've learned as a Wiccan, I've also had to do a fair amount of unlearning of misinformation spread by the likes of popular witch authors cough Silver Ravenwolf cough Love your style and your content, as always.
@IndigenousHistoryNow
I love your consistent efforts to debunk Victorian revisionism and the progress narrative! There’s a lot of carry over in studying Indigenous American history. The truth is, painting modern Western Europe as so much more enlightened and developed helped justify imperialism and colonialism. “I have a right to steal your land because you’re stupid and don’t know how to use it” sort of stuff.
@jhudoras
as many others say, thank u for calling out neo-paganism lol. being native american & having to watch a bunch of white women overfarm and endanger sage to appropriate smudging and then act oppressed damages me every day. wish wiccans would realize u can be spiritual and attempt to connect to nature without stomping on other ppl but when so many of them come from christian backgrounds i guess its not surprising that the approach is ... colonial
@egg5256
it’s frustrating to me that people in the past couldn’t understand that folk lore like the green man isn’t inherently “pagan” or even certain practices or beliefs like superstitions or rituals aren’t either. Like you said there were people who identified as a Christian who might’ve believed or done things seen as “pagan” in modern times and would be very confused if you called them a pagan. Folk lore or practices that are seen as “paganism” in modern times didn’t become taboo or disappear or stop overnight just like they didn’t suddenly appear. they were likely slowly combined with Christian beliefs over time or practiced less and less as more people converted to and started practicing Christianity. Which is probably why the green man was in art in churches. Having folk lore in art is such a common thing even these days and the majority of the time it’s just because people think it’s interesting or pretty or part of their culture. Why would people in the past not do similar things?
@selenagomezjaz
Love people who are knowledgeable of the Victorian era have the same love and hate relationship that Psych majors do with Freud “until the Victorians got a whole of it” really just summarizes it all
@addieberg3460
God I'm so grateful for this video- I have to explain all this stuff so many times. "Hey guess what midwives were complicit/the accusers a lot of the time" and "hey this is appropriating language of the Holocaust" and "hey uh this isn't medieval" and most of all "...hey guys you know that European populations had magic traditions besides the ones left over from paganism, right? right? You know you can invent or develop new traditions and it doesn't all have to be ancient roots? You gonna tell me that Kabbalah and using saints' relics is all ~the paganism~?" It's extra frustrating because these same (white, Gentile) modern witches have a nasty habit of appropriating magical and religious traditions from nonwhite cultures. Like they aren't here studying the Sámi drum burnings or the persecution of Indigenous Americans and West Africans, all of which are pretty directly related to the witch hunts and the European wars of religion. Not in a cause and effect way, exactly, more like a whole circle of societal forces that they were coexisting under.
@sunshineonmars-