Based Camp - The Surprisingly Recent Origins of Wicca and Druidism

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone! Today is going to be a very interesting episode on a topic I should have

00:00:04.700 done a long time ago. It's going to be on how the movement that today purports itself to be

00:00:11.380 witchcraft or Wiccan or Druidic, all of these religious systems are very, very modern. They

00:00:18.220 are some of the youngest religious systems to exist and have literally no ties to any historic

00:00:25.000 pagan faith practices. And even when they were revived, were revised as monotheistic traditions

00:00:32.840 and only became pagan in their later iterations. What? Specifically here, I'm talking about the guy

00:00:39.400 who made up the Druidic faith, not the Wiccan faith. These were both around the 1900s. So we're

00:00:44.720 going to go into these individuals, how they made it up, how they got people to believe them. We're

00:00:49.280 going to go into Aleister Crawley, another interesting figure. He didn't even claim to have connections

00:00:53.040 anything in the past. He was just a wackadoo. I didn't know he was a real guy. I saw him from 0.94

00:00:58.200 the show, right? And I was like, oh, a real guy. No, he was a wacko, but way more fun than the other 1.00

00:01:03.800 guys because at least he owned that he was just making everything up. And the other guys, well,

00:01:07.420 and he stole a bunch from Kabbalah. And we'll go over where... So were the other guys trying...

00:01:11.880 ...practiced as witchcraft today within the Wiccan community, not realizing that what they're

00:01:16.620 practicing doesn't come from ancient witches, but it comes from Jewish mysticism.

00:01:21.840 My God. Do I understand correctly then that the two men who claimed to have either rediscovered

00:01:28.120 or who reignited Druidic practices in Wicca sort of pointed to historical materials that

00:01:35.180 they may have made either misinterpreted or made up, kind of like Joseph Smith using funerary

00:01:39.680 texts from Egypt?

00:01:40.920 No, no. It's, well, maybe not crazier than the Joseph Smith story, but he said he met a

00:01:46.260 cult in the woods that taught him about all of this.

00:01:48.740 Oh, okay.

00:01:49.240 That's the first one we're going to go to.

00:01:50.420 So the first one, and we think we know who some of the figures he was talking about were,

00:01:55.280 so we know that, like, they didn't do this.

00:01:58.420 Because there's been people who have gone through and researched him to learn more about this.

00:02:03.000 So the guy was Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant with a taste for the occult.

00:02:09.200 He returned to England in the 1930s, and he claimed that in 1939, he was initiated into

00:02:16.700 a secret coven in New Forest by a group he called the Wicca, allegedly survivors of an

00:02:23.420 ancient pagan witch cult.

00:02:25.260 His story leaned heavily on the now-debunked theories of anthropologist Margaret Murray,

00:02:30.220 who argued in the 1920s that European witchcraft was a remnant of pre-Christian fertility religions.

00:02:37.240 Scholars later dismantled Murray's hypothesis.

00:02:40.180 There is no solid evidence of a contiguous witch cult surviving the Middle Ages, but Gardner

00:02:45.160 ran with it.

00:02:45.840 So a quick note here, if you're like, well, where did all of these mystical traditions come

00:02:51.600 from if they didn't come from some ancient religion?

00:02:56.340 It turns out that people will invent the same mystical traditions over and over again.

00:03:02.100 For example, when you hear a sports player keeps a lucky sock under their helmet or something

00:03:08.300 to win games, you don't go, oh, he must have picked that up from some ancestral religion.

00:03:14.520 You're like, oh, yes, humans often end up associating fetishes, not like sexual fetishes, but like

00:03:20.800 small token stuff with having magical properties and then build rituals around them.

00:03:26.880 It is a natural and emergent human behavior with the fact that we see today things like chaos magic,

00:03:32.660 which is another group I could go into, where they believe things like McDonald's arches

00:03:36.680 are like abundant signs and stuff like that and can be used like just, or you see pop culture paganism

00:03:42.720 where people will believe that like Loki, not Loki, like the ancient North God,

00:03:48.260 but Loki, like the hot guy from Marvel.

00:03:51.280 Oh my God.

00:03:51.860 Oh no.

00:03:54.720 The one who all the girls get a crush on.

00:03:56.740 I mean, I don't know.

00:03:57.540 I hear that he's supposed to be the hot guy.

00:03:59.060 Not the actual God.

00:04:00.960 No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:04:02.100 The different like Marvel characters.

00:04:03.860 Like look at your Snape wives, right? 1.00

00:04:04.800 Like, yeah.

00:04:05.480 But not, not the-

00:04:06.820 Snape wives. 0.99

00:04:07.640 Yeah, Snape is definitely not, no connection to anything.

00:04:09.860 Not like Harry Potter, Severus, like the actor.

00:04:12.680 So it's not that there was no rituals being practiced in these regions,

00:04:18.480 but these rituals were almost certainly maybe two generations old.

00:04:23.200 They were not, it's very hard to keep rituals running a long time unless they are being practiced

00:04:29.060 publicly and at the community level.

00:04:31.120 When rituals aren't being practiced at the community level or really rigidly within a

00:04:35.800 family structure, like, and we've seen this historically over and over again.

00:04:39.360 It's hard to keep a tradition going without public rituals or, or at least publicly saying

00:04:45.080 that you're a member of it.

00:04:46.120 But we'll get to like other proof we have that he probably wasn't even pulling this

00:04:50.680 from local folklore of the period.

00:04:53.020 Oh God, not even trying, but I, you know what?

00:04:56.220 I like the idea of being a lifelong fan of cults and just making the cult you wish existed,

00:05:03.320 right?

00:05:03.560 Can you imagine a lifetime spent in civil service, your nights and weekends spent, you know,

00:05:08.640 looking, looking to find proof of the thing you wish existed.

00:05:11.620 And you're like, you know what?

00:05:12.720 Screw it.

00:05:13.580 I'm just going to make it up.

00:05:14.820 I'm just going to-

00:05:15.340 No, but-

00:05:15.780 Because then people followed, people, people like actually started doing, like he made

00:05:19.300 it happen.

00:05:19.560 Yeah, all these other people made up their religions.

00:05:20.880 Like Alex Crawley and stuff like that.

00:05:22.260 Yeah, man.

00:05:22.280 Like it starts somewhere.

00:05:23.120 He, you know, they say, you know, dress for the job you want to get, you know, be the

00:05:27.380 person you want to be.

00:05:29.280 Like he did it.

00:05:30.100 He made the cult he wanted.

00:05:31.900 I'm so happy for him.

00:05:33.060 That's nice.

00:05:33.620 So in the 1930s, he got involved, or he says he got involved with the local esoteric scene

00:05:39.560 in Hampshire.

00:05:40.020 He claimed that in September 1939, he was introduced to a hidden group of witches in the New Forest

00:05:45.900 led by a woman who he called Old Dorsey, later identified as Dorsey Clutterbuck.

00:05:51.080 What is so called the very real name of Dorsey Clutterbuck?

00:05:55.520 Right, yes.

00:05:56.300 This is a real person who later people went and investigated the area he was and who he

00:06:00.740 was talking to.

00:06:01.840 And Dorsey Clutterbuck did exist.

00:06:03.740 And he referred to her as like a wealthy older woman who fit Dorsey Clutterbuck at the time.

00:06:09.100 She was a wealthy conservative Christian woman who lived in Highcliffe near New Forest and

00:06:15.080 died in 1951.

00:06:15.520 Oh, so she would have found this very offensive.

00:06:18.900 Oh, yeah.

00:06:19.380 Gardner's associate, Dorsey Valentin, tracked down her diaries via Clutterbuck's housekeeper

00:06:24.740 after her death and confirmed her identities.

00:06:27.640 The diaries mentioned social events and gardening, but nothing about witchcraft or covens.

00:06:32.200 So the person who discovered all of this was a true believer in this guy.

00:06:37.260 Okay, it was his assistant.

00:06:38.560 So she had no motivation to lie or try to deceive us.

00:06:41.740 She found the lady who supposedly taught all of this to this guy.

00:06:45.600 This lady was a devout Anglican and a well-known devout Anglican.

00:06:50.760 Not only that, but they had her private diaries.

00:06:54.300 So it's not like she was practicing one thing in private and then doing another thing in public.

00:06:59.440 She privately was a devout Anglican.

00:07:02.940 And interestingly, what are they going to say here?

00:07:05.440 She was, on the other hand, did know a lot about folklore and was very interested in folklore.

00:07:10.800 So what seems likely is she may have taught him about some local folklore and he built the rest of this character himself.

00:07:21.960 Now, historian Ronald Hutton in Triumphs of the Moon, 1999, argues that Clutterbuck might have been a figurehead used by Gardner to legitimize his story.

00:07:31.600 She was an unlikely witch, devoutly Anglican and socially prominent,

00:07:34.820 but her eccentricity and interest in folklore could have made her a possible cover if Gardner needed one. 0.79

00:07:39.860 Gardner lived in the area in the late 1930s and mingled with occult enthusiasts, including members of the Ruscurian Order Croatan Fellowship, a mystical group with a theater in Christchurch.

00:07:55.680 Some speculate this group or a splinter of it might have inspired his coven story.

00:08:00.140 A member, Edith Woodruff Grimes, nicknamed Daffo, was close to Gardner and more plausibly involved in occult activities, but there's no record of her leading a pagan witch cult.

00:08:12.420 So something important to note here, if somebody's like, is it entirely implausible that a group with old practices was meeting in the woods?

00:08:19.980 Yes, it actually is, because there were so many and widely known other occult traditions of this period, like this one that we're going to go into just a second,

00:08:30.120 that people would have just associated with if they had those inclinations, instead of going to this secret one that met in the woods.

00:08:38.840 You know, why not do what you do today and go with the theater kids, where you know they're all,

00:08:43.680 I love it that it was theater kids back then, theater kids today, but then you're like, okay.

00:08:47.760 This is all very traditional.

00:08:49.420 Yes, maybe this Rokurian Order Crotana Fellowship, maybe they had some ancient tradition.

00:08:56.240 Here's the problem.

00:08:57.120 We know what they believed and we know where they said they got it from.

00:09:00.540 The core beliefs of the ROCF claim to preserve secret knowledge from ancient Egypt and the Renaissance Ruscurians, so not locals.

00:09:10.380 If you're wondering who the Rosicutions were, it was a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in modern Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts,

00:09:18.640 announcing to the world a new esoteric order.

00:09:21.720 Rosicutionism is symbolized by a rose cross or a rosy cross.

00:09:24.820 It was a Christian-tied movement that was interested in things like alchemy.

00:09:28.060 Anyway, a group, okay?

00:09:30.020 Okay.

00:09:30.420 The point being is they said where they got it was from, Egyptians and Rosicutions, Renaissance and Rosicutions.

00:09:35.740 It was not from some sort of local hidden witch cult that preserved some ancestral pre-Roman tradition that was local to Britain, okay?

00:09:46.080 Which is where he said this stuff came from, okay?

00:09:49.240 They believed in a, uh-oh, hidden great white brotherhood of enlightened masters guiding humanity.

00:09:56.220 Oh, dear.

00:09:56.740 Sullivan taught that members could tap into cosmic forces through meditation, ritual, study, think astrology, Kabbalah, and other co-physical ideas about reincarnation.

00:10:08.260 Theatrical flair by the 1930s when Gardner encountered them, R-O-C-F, had their base in Christchurch near the New Forest where they had built Ashram Hall, a tiny theater for mystical plays. 1.00

00:10:18.820 Sullivan wrote and performed these dramas, the Rite of Isis, for example, blending Egyptian mythology with Christian allegory and to enact spiritual truths.

00:10:29.520 Members wore robes, chanted in stage ceremonies, less, quote-unquote, witchy, and more like a cosmic morality play.

00:10:37.860 Practical mysticism, unlike hardcore occult groups like the Golden Dawn, the R-O-C-F, was less about spellcasting and more about self-improvement through esoteric philosophy.

00:10:48.160 They attracted middle-class seekers, doctors, teachers, retirees, looking for meaning in a post-World War I world.

00:10:56.060 Some rituals involved healing vibrations or channeling divine energy, but was pretty tame compared to Gardner's later weakened rites.

00:11:04.140 So keep in mind things like trying to talk to the dead and mystics doing, like, stage performances to scam people was really common in this period.

00:11:12.860 Oh, yeah.

00:11:13.220 We did another episode on Houdini's war against mystics.

00:11:16.120 Yes.

00:11:16.840 Yeah, all these people, like, tapping on seance tables, et cetera.

00:11:20.440 Yes.

00:11:22.260 It's fascinating to learn about.

00:11:23.960 But, yeah.

00:11:24.460 So how did this grow up or go from here?

00:11:28.880 In 1954, after Britain repealed its Witchcraft Act in 1951 specifically, which prevented publishing this stuff, Gardner published Witchcraft Today, laying out his version of this ancient religion.

00:11:40.480 He blended Murray's ideas with bits of ceremonial magic, St. Freemasonry and Alistair Cawley's influence, folklore, and his own imagination.

00:11:48.200 His rituals, like the use of a magical circle, astrums, ritual knives, and a dualistic god-goddess framework.

00:11:55.600 He did believe in, like, a dualistic, singular, monotheistic god that had, like, a feminine and masculine side.

00:12:01.580 Very Kabbalah there. 0.74

00:12:03.880 We're cobbled together from Victorian occultism, not dusty grumwires from antiquity.

00:12:08.560 Gardner's collaborator, Doreen Valentia, this is the one who later identified who the old lady was, joined in the 1950s and polished his work, stripping out some of Crowley's heavier Thelemic vibes to make it more palatable.

00:12:23.160 Valentia herself admitted the rituals were modern, not ancient, though she believed they tapped into the timeless spiritual current.

00:12:30.340 So, basically, the person who inherited the Wiccan tradition and then built on it admits this guy made it all up. 0.50

00:12:38.840 That's, I mean, I feel like even more so, like, okay, this is honest.

00:12:42.460 I think it validates it more so long as you're willing to accept that.

00:12:45.380 It's just, like, understanding this is the culty religion for people who wish there was a culty religion and acknowledge that there just isn't one.

00:12:52.220 Like, that's historical.

00:12:53.720 Yeah, yeah, and I think you're going to like this next guy, Simone.

00:12:56.920 Okay.

00:12:57.400 So, you can be like, who is this Alistair Crawley?

00:12:59.720 You know, I've heard this term before.

00:13:01.540 Yes, yes.

00:13:02.480 What was he about if other people were picking up his ideas?

00:13:06.940 Okay.

00:13:07.160 So, born in 1875 in Workshire, England, to a wealthy, strict Plymouth brethren family, Edward Alexer Crawley rebelled hard against his religious upbringing.

00:13:18.140 After his father's death, he inherited money, ditched Cambridge, where he studied but didn't graduate, and dove into the occult.

00:13:23.980 By his 20s, he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 1898, a secret society blending Kabbalah, tarot, like tarot cards, and ritual magic.

00:13:35.420 Think Victorian England's Hogwarts for mystics. 0.98

00:13:38.360 Okay.

00:13:38.520 He clashed with his leaders, like W.B. Yeats, got kicked out, but it shaped his lifelong obsession with esoteric systems.

00:13:47.280 Oh, I should dig into that secret society more.

00:13:49.540 Yeah.

00:13:49.960 The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, it's a boy. 1.00

00:13:51.520 So, Crowley styled himself a larger-than-life figure.

00:13:55.340 He called himself the Great Beast 666, loved scandalizing polite society, and lived a chaotic life of drugs, sex, and travel.

00:14:03.900 Egypt, India, Mexico, Sicily, and this is traveling in the 1800s, so this is, like, wild travel.

00:14:09.040 In 1904, while in Cairo with his wife, Rose claimed a spirit named Ayahuas dictated the Book of the Law to him over three days, a text that became foundational to his philosophy, which was called Thelema.

00:14:23.120 He spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1947, spreading Thelema, writing prolifically, poetry, novels, occult treatises, and founding groups like AA, well, it's A and then, like, a triangle, and then A and then a triangle, a magical order, and the Ordo Templi Ortanis, O-T-O, which he retooled to fit his vision.

00:14:42.380 His reputation, a mix of genius and infinity, papers dubbed him the wickedest man in the world for his libertine lifestyle, opium, orgies, and rumors of black magic, mostly exaggerated.

00:14:52.300 But he was a serious thinker, blending Eastern mysticism, Western occultism, and his own flair into something unique.

00:14:58.860 Gardner met him in the 1940s through mutual occult circles, and Crowley's influence seeped into Wiccan's rituals, even if toned down later.

00:15:07.160 Despite the ancient veneer, Crowley did not pretend Selimo was a literal hand-me-down from pharaohs or medieval wizards.

00:15:12.920 He was upfront that the Book of the Law was a new revelation dictated to him in 1904, and called it the start of a fresh spiritual epic, not a dusty relic.

00:15:22.300 So, basically, he's so much an egoist, he's like, I don't need any, you know, this is just all new, dictated to me by spirits.

00:15:32.360 Wow. I mean, that's not that much of a deviation from so many historical religious leaders who heard from spirits.

00:15:40.200 But you can also see why old traditions get washed out so quickly.

00:15:46.480 If even this guy who was trying his very best to sort of pick up some form of, like, pure mysticism of England that had any sort of an ancient root,

00:15:55.660 ended up being heavily influenced by this other guy who, not even a full generation before, was like, I made all this up.

00:16:01.900 You know, you're like, okay, I can see how if you add in the third every generation with your next crop of crazy people,

00:16:08.760 it's going to really quickly wipe out any historic stuff if you don't have text to be going off of.

00:16:15.680 I think so, yeah.

00:16:16.660 Now, I wanted to dig more into the Selimic vibes, because remember it said that a lot of Crowleys had this Selimic stuff.

00:16:22.840 And the other guy who made up Wiccanism ended up buying into the Selimic stuff and writing it directly into the religion, 0.86

00:16:33.200 which is one of how we know it's not ancient, because we know the guy who made it all up.

00:16:37.520 But the person after him, Valentin, attempted to remove a lot of the Selimic stuff.

00:16:43.880 Because the idea of, well, this gets back to maybe what is a historic religion a bit more.

00:16:48.420 The Selimic's central tenet is do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, which the Satanists also picked up, 0.93

00:16:56.300 meaning to follow your true will, your deepest purpose above all else.

00:16:59.960 Or as Cartman says, I'm going to do what I want.

00:17:02.460 Yes.

00:17:03.340 Self-liberation, cosmic exploration, and rejecting conventional morality.

00:17:08.060 The vibe, Selimic rituals and writings drip with theatricality and intensity.

00:17:12.460 Think elaborate chants, references to Egyptian gods like Nat, Hadid, etc.

00:17:16.400 A mix of sex, power, and mysticism.

00:17:19.520 Crowley's stuff often feels dense and rebellious with a break-all-the-rules attitude.

00:17:23.280 For example, his Gnostic mass involves a priestess, a priest, and symbolic acts hinting at sacred sexuality,

00:17:29.520 i.e. naked priests and priestess. 1.00

00:17:31.940 Way more esoteric than Wiccan's circle-casting and moon worship.

00:17:36.400 Crowley's influence on Gardner.

00:17:37.860 Gardner borrowed the Malemic phrasing and structure,

00:17:40.240 like Crowley's focus on invoking higher powers or his use of smote-it-bee,

00:17:45.500 a Masonic-Solemic sign-off that Wicca kept. 0.99

00:17:49.620 So, Wicca also took some ideas from Freemasons, okay?

00:17:53.060 Again, just stealing from everywhere, but none of it particularly ancient.

00:17:57.280 Some early Wiccan rites even echoed Crowley's obsession with polarity, male-female, light-dark,

00:18:03.160 though Gardner redirected it towards fertility and nature.

00:18:07.680 Vic, so, what do you think of this guy? Better?

00:18:11.820 I mean, I do like the person who followed up immediately after Gardner.

00:18:15.420 It feels like she adds a lot of validity to the Wiccan tradition

00:18:17.940 by, one, admitting that it was made up,

00:18:20.140 and then, two, trying to remove the parts that are the very most made up

00:18:23.700 and trying to create this sort of, like, nature religion

00:18:28.280 instead of a religion focused on, like, rebellion for rebellion's sake.

00:18:31.820 Yeah, it sort of feels, to me, like a fan community

00:18:35.640 trying to make itself work and to make it itself sustainable.

00:18:41.800 And that's interesting.

00:18:44.080 Let's look at where these communities borrowed from Kabbalah,

00:18:47.660 which is Jewish mysticism, which was largely, by my estimation,

00:18:52.040 just pop philosophy of the year, like, 1000.

00:18:55.680 That's around when it was collated, so it's a fairly...

00:18:58.560 Obviously, Jews are going to be very offended by this,

00:19:00.340 but the ideas in Kabbalah, like, you can track where they came from.

00:19:04.340 They have a lot of mirrors and other things.

00:19:06.840 They come from a school of Jewish mysticism

00:19:10.320 that was popular around that time and had existed,

00:19:13.060 or we have records of it for a few hundred years before that time,

00:19:16.540 Sufi mysticism, and basically pop mysticism of that time period.

00:19:21.120 But it was genuinely ancient from their perspective,

00:19:24.640 because it was about 1,000 years old by the...

00:19:26.900 Well, not 1,000, you know, like 800, 900 years old

00:19:29.220 by the time they were writing.

00:19:30.540 And if you go back to its inspirations,

00:19:32.260 then you're looking at, like, maybe 1,200 years old.

00:19:35.240 And so that's genuinely historic there.

00:19:37.960 But then the idea is, okay, so what from Kabbalah

00:19:41.060 ended up being captured in the Wiccan tradition?

00:19:44.240 If you're like, oh, what parts of Wiccanism come directly from Kabbalah?

00:19:47.100 Well, one, we know Crowley, so it came through Crowley,

00:19:51.020 not through Garner maybe directly,

00:19:53.000 in that Crowley ended up including a lot of Kabbalah in his stuff.

00:19:57.040 He was a huge Kabbalah nerd.

00:19:58.760 He studied it in the Golden Dawn

00:20:00.540 and made it the backbone of Selema,

00:20:02.380 especially his magical order, A triangle, A triangle.

00:20:06.260 Here's what he lifted.

00:20:07.680 Tree of Life as a map.

00:20:09.160 Crowley used the Tree of Life to structure spiritual progress.

00:20:11.500 In his systems, initiates climb the Sephurek like a ladder 1.00

00:20:17.120 from Malkut, the physical world, to Keter, union with the divine.

00:20:22.120 Each grade in the A triangle, A triangle corresponds to a Seraphie 1.00

00:20:26.400 with rituals and meditations to master its energy.

00:20:29.980 For example, his book 777-1909 is a Kabbalistic cheat sheet

00:20:34.600 linking Sephuret to colors, planets, and teret.

00:20:39.140 Numerology and...

00:20:40.520 Tarot.

00:20:41.380 What?

00:20:42.240 Tarot.

00:20:43.200 Tarot?

00:20:43.720 Tarot, I don't know.

00:20:45.060 Numerology and gematria.

00:20:47.460 Crowley was obsessed with Kabbalistic number crunching.

00:20:50.200 He analyzed the book of law using gematria,

00:20:53.220 where Hebrew letters, which doubled as numbers,

00:20:55.920 reveal hidden meanings.

00:20:57.180 For instance, he equated will,

00:20:59.120 thelema in Greek equals 93,

00:21:01.180 with love, agape equals 93.

00:21:04.060 Tying it to his maxim, love is the law,

00:21:06.480 love under will.

00:21:07.300 This numerological play came straight from Kabbalah's playbook.

00:21:11.080 So here I'll note,

00:21:12.560 and this obviously causes a major problem for modern Kabbalists,

00:21:16.400 is that the movement that both Wiccanism is descended from

00:21:20.680 and modern Satanism is descended from

00:21:22.840 borrowed a bunch of stuff from their writings,

00:21:25.620 which of course means that a lot of the symbols and symbolism,

00:21:29.220 when you look at like Kabbalistic symbolism,

00:21:31.020 you'll be like,

00:21:31.580 oh, that looks like Satanic or Wiccan symbolism.

00:21:33.960 And the reason is not that they emerged from the same tradition,

00:21:38.960 but that these other two traditions just directly cropped Kabbalism

00:21:42.780 when they were started.

00:21:43.940 And a lot of them forget that this was,

00:21:46.520 that that's what they were doing.

00:21:47.640 That's really funny.

00:21:48.700 I can see why though.

00:21:49.940 I mean,

00:21:50.160 there's so much to play with there.

00:21:52.380 Yeah.

00:21:52.800 Yeah.

00:21:52.980 No,

00:21:53.300 if you're going to build a mystical tradition,

00:21:54.920 Kabbalism is a great place to start.

00:21:56.520 And,

00:21:56.660 you know,

00:21:57.140 it's,

00:21:57.540 it's,

00:21:57.600 it's got some claims to antiquity.

00:22:00.300 It's of the mystic traditions.

00:22:02.300 One of the older that we,

00:22:04.200 and,

00:22:04.800 and,

00:22:05.080 and I think modern ish,

00:22:07.260 which you'll notice about Kabbalism is that it feels much more like

00:22:11.660 these modern systems of,

00:22:13.580 of mysticism than the ancient systems of mysticism,

00:22:16.960 which come either here,

00:22:18.640 you're looking at like a Greek, 0.99

00:22:19.940 more general policy of them,

00:22:21.300 which has a very different feel to it.

00:22:23.620 Or you're looking at the really interesting one.

00:22:28.020 What were they called?

00:22:28.920 The algebra nerds.

00:22:30.020 The,

00:22:30.460 yeah,

00:22:30.700 I've got to remember what they're called.

00:22:32.500 It was a Greek philosophical tradition based around mathematics.

00:22:37.260 The group I was thinking of here were the Pythagoreans.

00:22:40.900 The Pythagoreans followed strict rules and rituals aimed at achieving purity and

00:22:45.800 spiritual enlightenment.

00:22:47.020 They believed in reincarnation and sought to escape the cycle of rebirth by

00:22:50.920 living an austere life and adhering to their philosophical and mathematical

00:22:54.580 principles.

00:22:55.320 I don't know.

00:22:57.640 And they practiced a really interesting philosophy that may have some

00:23:01.900 relations to the branches of like early Christianity and Judaism.

00:23:06.040 And it was very interesting philosophy,

00:23:07.480 but it feels very different from the older traditions,

00:23:12.300 I guess is what I'd say.

00:23:13.380 And in that respect,

00:23:14.600 Kabbalism did invent a genuinely new way or,

00:23:17.520 or coalesce what was becoming popular in the middle ages,

00:23:20.640 a new way of relating to the mystical.

00:23:22.720 The Thalamic rites,

00:23:23.940 like the lesser banishing rite of the pentagram inherited from the golden

00:23:28.420 dawn uses Kabbalistic names for God.

00:23:30.780 Y H V H Adoni and archangels,

00:23:34.440 Michael and Gabriel tied to the separate Crawley's Gnostic mass invokes divine 0.96

00:23:39.320 polarity.

00:23:39.900 Think Bina and Chokmah, 1.00

00:23:42.500 the feminine and masculine at Seferit to mirror Kabbalah's balance of opposites

00:23:48.160 symbolism.

00:23:49.280 Crawley tied Thalamic deities to the tree,

00:23:52.260 Newt as infinite.

00:23:54.020 I am soft Hadit as the point of consciousness,

00:23:56.880 Keter or Chokman. 0.63

00:23:57.840 And then I don't need to go into all that.

00:24:00.200 The Rockaman as action,

00:24:01.840 Gever or Tiefen.

00:24:03.440 He didn't just copy.

00:24:04.560 He rebranded Kabbalah's abstract energies into his Egyptian pantheon,

00:24:09.940 but the framework's Kabbalistic roots are clear.

00:24:13.720 Oh gosh.

00:24:15.100 So it's almost like he did a control F and then replaced a bunch of like

00:24:19.040 words.

00:24:19.180 Yeah,

00:24:19.340 he basically could use Kabbalistic practices.

00:24:22.080 Oh boy.

00:24:22.800 That's great.

00:24:23.820 If I'm going to be self-reflective here,

00:24:25.640 I think that this is where a large part of my negative bias against Kabbalism

00:24:30.420 comes from is that the first time I would have engaged with this category of

00:24:35.620 mysticism or a branch of mysticism partially descended from this tree would

00:24:41.660 have been when my friends in high school and middle school were getting in to

00:24:47.260 like Wiccanism and I would go through some of their books and be like,

00:24:51.060 is there anything to this?

00:24:52.320 Like what's going on with this or other forms of,

00:24:55.580 you know,

00:24:56.300 hermetics and stuff like that,

00:24:58.380 that,

00:24:58.680 you know,

00:24:58.980 I phase,

00:24:59.800 I think a lot of people go through where they're like,

00:25:02.140 okay,

00:25:02.420 I'm going to research the edgiest of mystical paths because I'm a middle

00:25:08.280 schooler and I want to see what my parents don't want me to see.

00:25:11.480 And so when I re-approached it as an adult,

00:25:16.040 the mental frameworks appeared very similar to ones I was engaging with ideas

00:25:22.400 that were particularly sophomoric or otherwise puerile.

00:25:25.740 It would be a bit like if you grew up in Japan and your first experiences with

00:25:30.340 Christian theology and cosmology were from neon evangelion.

00:25:35.060 And so when you like read the Bible,

00:25:37.260 you're like,

00:25:37.780 oh gosh,

00:25:38.640 yeah,

00:25:38.780 I remember all this stuff from my weird otaku phase when I was really into

00:25:42.500 neon evangelion.

00:25:43.860 Crawley didn't claim that cinema was Kabbalah.

00:25:45.980 He saw it as a new revelation there,

00:25:48.000 but I find that really interesting.

00:25:49.280 And it's,

00:25:49.460 it's kind of a shame for modern,

00:25:50.620 because to some people that would be seen as invalidating of Kabbalah,

00:25:53.020 but I'm like,

00:25:53.460 he also borrowed Christian concepts.

00:25:55.440 You're just,

00:25:56.040 you know,

00:25:56.520 you're going to be more familiar when he talks about angels and Michael.

00:25:59.560 It's kind of,

00:26:00.360 I mean,

00:26:00.560 it really does.

00:26:01.400 Again,

00:26:01.540 it feels a lot like fan fiction and just mixing and remixing and then trying to make it

00:26:07.200 into your own thing that people get excited about independently,

00:26:12.320 which is exactly what happened here.

00:26:14.220 Yeah.

00:26:14.640 Yeah.

00:26:15.460 So when Doreen Valentin,

00:26:17.200 this is the one who took over from him afterwards,

00:26:19.160 Joanne Gardner and the one who discovered the old lady joined the cavern in 1953.

00:26:24.820 She became his right-hand collaborator,

00:26:26.780 helping refine the rituals.

00:26:28.200 This is Gerald Gardner.

00:26:29.560 It's a guy who invented Wiccanisms, 0.99

00:26:31.260 right-hand collaborator,

00:26:33.180 helping refine the rituals and texts that would define gardenian Wiccan.

00:26:38.920 Gardner's early book,

00:26:40.240 the book of shadows,

00:26:41.380 the ritual playbook for Wicca was a mashup of influences,

00:26:44.540 including stuff he'd picked up from Aleister Crowley,

00:26:46.760 as I mentioned there.

00:26:48.920 However,

00:26:49.940 Valentin found some of the material too dark,

00:26:52.480 too intense,

00:26:53.160 or just too Crowley specific for the broader nature,

00:26:55.260 loving pagan vibe Gardner wanted to sell.

00:26:58.180 So she rewrote parts and softened the edges to make Wiccan more accessible.

00:27:02.800 So I asked,

00:27:03.820 well,

00:27:03.940 what did she do? 0.80

00:27:04.580 Again,

00:27:04.840 so fan fiction-y.

00:27:05.820 I'm just going to like,

00:27:06.380 remake this,

00:27:07.200 make it a little more.

00:27:07.700 It is very like an early fan fiction community.

00:27:10.180 Yeah.

00:27:10.900 Valentin specifically targeted chunks of the text Gardner had lifted from Crowley's works,

00:27:15.380 the book of law and the Gnostic mass.

00:27:17.160 For example,

00:27:17.600 Gardner's original rituals included Crowley's dramatic invocations,

00:27:21.320 like calling on quote unquote,

00:27:22.700 the mighty ones with a heavy poetic flair and phrases tied to the limit concepts,

00:27:27.400 more on that below.

00:27:29.660 Valerie replaced these with simpler,

00:27:31.720 more folkloric language,

00:27:33.040 emphasizing the goddess and horned God over Crowley's esoteric ideas.

00:27:37.200 She also toned down some of the sexual undertones and mystical bombasts that Crowley loved,

00:27:42.180 which didn't fit her vision of a gentle earthier witchcraft.

00:27:45.720 One famous tweak,

00:27:46.720 she rewrote the charge of the goddess from a clunky,

00:27:50.020 Crowley heavy draft to the lyrical versions Wiccans still use today.

00:27:54.560 Why she did it.

00:27:55.720 She wasn't anti-Crawley.

00:27:56.840 She respected his intellect,

00:27:57.940 but she worried his reputation as quote,

00:27:59.880 the wickedest man in the world,

00:28:01.080 a type would scare off some newbies and taint Wiccan as a Satanist knockoff. 0.88

00:28:05.420 She also wanted rituals that felt timeless and universal,

00:28:08.460 not tethered to one man's philosophy in her own words from her 1989 book,

00:28:12.160 the rebirth of witchcraft.

00:28:13.140 She saw Gardner's reliance on Crowley as a crutch and pushed for originality if the result was still modern.

00:28:20.420 So keep in mind,

00:28:20.860 she was still writing in 1989.

00:28:22.360 That's how modern her rebranding and recreation of what we think of as Wiccanism today was.

00:28:28.380 Yeah.

00:28:28.720 So now we're going to talk a bit about the Druids,

00:28:32.860 because this was another group from around the same time.

00:28:35.060 And this is so funny,

00:28:36.180 because I grew up definitely with the impression that Wicca was kind of a,

00:28:39.760 like,

00:28:41.460 almost invented,

00:28:43.140 sort of,

00:28:43.400 almost very commercial

00:28:44.200 thing,

00:28:46.380 tradition.

00:28:47.260 It is the hot topic.

00:28:48.500 My mom,

00:28:49.000 I think,

00:28:49.920 misled me to believe that Druidic practices were old and ancient,

00:28:53.620 because there were in the Bay Area a bunch of,

00:28:57.800 like,

00:28:59.540 stone circles and fairy rings and other weird altars in the woods,

00:29:04.500 because we'd go hiking a lot.

00:29:06.600 Then we'd come across.

00:29:08.360 And my mom would be like, 1.00

00:29:09.320 oh,

00:29:09.480 that was probably used for some kind of Druidic ritual.

00:29:11.700 And I'm like,

00:29:12.360 okay,

00:29:12.640 this must be really old.

00:29:14.700 No,

00:29:15.220 it was hippies.

00:29:16.300 That is,

00:29:17.140 that would make sense.

00:29:19.160 This was in California.

00:29:20.520 This was like in the woods around in,

00:29:22.620 in California.

00:29:23.160 So this totally makes sense.

00:29:24.440 Yeah.

00:29:24.880 No,

00:29:25.340 now it's being,

00:29:26.140 okay.

00:29:26.320 So Stuckley,

00:29:27.600 this is another guy from around the 1900s re-imagined.

00:29:30.580 So basically what we,

00:29:32.520 like the Druids, 0.99

00:29:33.540 the people who think they're actually following Druidic practices,

00:29:35.680 were largely seeded by a guy called Stuckley,

00:29:38.600 but he imagined Druids.

00:29:40.240 And this is what's really interesting here.

00:29:42.080 When he recreated their ideas and ideology as noble proto-Christian 0.99

00:29:47.280 philosophers,

00:29:48.320 rather than policyistic ritual figures described by Romans,

00:29:52.060 here's his pitch.

00:29:53.240 So he saw them as monaceous.

00:29:54.440 He argued Druids worshipped a single supreme God foreshadowing Christianity.

00:29:59.000 He saw them as enlightened priests who taught morality and natural law,

00:30:02.540 not pagan sacrificers.

00:30:04.120 We know that human sacrifices were done,

00:30:06.280 by the way,

00:30:06.820 at the,

00:30:07.660 what's it called?

00:30:08.220 Stonehenge.

00:30:09.160 To be buried in that ditch at Stonehenge with the injuries he has suggests we have a sacrificial victory.

00:30:16.520 Oh yes.

00:30:17.380 Like actually back in the real day of there being a religion practice.

00:30:21.120 The ancient Druids were brutal, 1.00

00:30:23.580 evil, 0.99

00:30:24.160 evil people.

00:30:25.060 We know that like they would have a practice where when they make bridges, 0.98

00:30:28.240 they would sacrifice children and bury them under the bridges so the bridges wouldn't fall down.

00:30:31.940 Like that was a practice.

00:30:32.580 Yeah,

00:30:32.720 it's funny.

00:30:33.200 When I've gotten tours of the areas around Stonehenge,

00:30:36.440 I think you were actually there.

00:30:37.480 We did this on our honeymoon.

00:30:38.260 They were like,

00:30:38.980 oh,

00:30:39.460 it was probably just a mistake that there was a child here.

00:30:41.960 Do you remember them saying that?

00:30:43.060 They were like,

00:30:44.160 there's probably an accident.

00:30:45.680 No,

00:30:45.860 no,

00:30:45.960 no,

00:30:46.080 no.

00:30:46.240 We have a,

00:30:46.980 not a child,

00:30:47.520 but an adult who was sacrificed at Stonehenge and we can see where they were hit on their head

00:30:52.100 and everything and tied up.

00:30:53.260 Yeah.

00:30:53.420 So we know that these were done at Stonehenge.

00:30:56.060 These are not good guys.

00:30:57.320 And they certainly weren't monotheists by any understanding we have of the period.

00:31:01.540 This individual who recreated modern Druidism linked it to biblical patriarchs like Abraham,

00:31:08.460 suggesting they inherited primal universal faith from the near East brought to Britain

00:31:13.080 by Phoenician traitors and lost tribes.

00:31:15.700 So keep in mind,

00:31:16.800 he's saying,

00:31:17.080 oh,

00:31:17.220 this is like the lost tribes of Israel and Phoenician traitors. 1.00

00:31:20.040 The early Druids tried desperately to attempt to connect their religion to Christianity

00:31:26.020 and monotheism because they saw that as like an enlightenment ideal.

00:31:30.060 Whereas the more modern ones try to say,

00:31:32.440 oh no,

00:31:32.900 it was the totally disconnected from Christianity, 0.89

00:31:36.460 the ancient religion of this area and polytheistic.

00:31:39.800 So what we know of Druids,

00:31:41.260 they left no written records,

00:31:42.740 but we know from Roman writers,

00:31:44.040 Caesar,

00:31:44.480 Tacitus,

00:31:45.060 Finney,

00:31:45.720 or later Celtic myths.

00:31:48.320 And none of this stuff supports them.

00:31:50.080 We know that they had multiple gods,

00:31:51.960 for example,

00:31:52.680 Lug,

00:31:53.220 Seranos,

00:31:53.960 and they often were tied to bloody rights like the Wicker Man's burnings that Pliny

00:31:59.060 mentioned,

00:31:59.380 Pliny mentions.

00:32:00.920 Sorry,

00:32:01.280 I misspoke here.

00:32:02.040 It was actually Julius Caesar who wrote about the Wicker Man's ceremonies,

00:32:05.140 not Pliny.

00:32:05.700 Pliny mentioned that they had human sacrifices,

00:32:09.060 but Julius Caesar specifically goes into how these sacrifices were done.

00:32:13.120 In his book,

00:32:13.740 Commentary on the Gallic War,

00:32:15.520 he writes that the Gauls would construct large figures made of osiers,

00:32:19.160 a type of willow branch,

00:32:20.620 fill them with living men, 0.95

00:32:21.960 and then set them on fire as part of their sacrificial rituals. 0.98

00:32:25.320 According to Caesar,

00:32:26.080 these sacrifices were performed by the Druids,

00:32:28.680 who believed that the gods required human life in exchange for propitiation.

00:32:33.620 He notes that the Gauls preferred to use criminals for these sacrifices,

00:32:37.180 but if such individuals were scarce,

00:32:39.280 they would use innocent people.

00:32:40.700 And I would also note that this is one of the only Druidic ceremonies that we have a description of.

00:32:46.540 It's not like,

00:32:47.340 oh,

00:32:47.540 we have a description of a bunch of nice ceremonies they did,

00:32:49.980 and then there's this one crazy one.

00:32:51.440 This is like one of the only Druidic ceremonies we have with any degree of historicity to it.

00:32:56.200 What is that?

00:32:57.020 What is that?

00:32:57.580 What is it?

00:32:59.040 Oh,

00:32:59.560 no,

00:32:59.980 not the beast!

00:33:02.000 Stuckley,

00:33:02.460 the guy who did this,

00:33:02.960 had zero artifacts or texts.

00:33:05.280 Just speculation.

00:33:07.020 As I said to where he got this from,

00:33:08.560 it was from the Enlightenment,

00:33:09.920 the 1700s valued reason,

00:33:11.640 order,

00:33:12.060 and a single natural god.

00:33:13.720 Stuckley projected this onto the past,

00:33:15.740 ignoring,

00:33:16.420 he totally misread Stonehenge.

00:33:18.640 He thought it was a temple made by Druids.

00:33:21.500 We now know that,

00:33:22.220 no,

00:33:22.460 it wasn't made by Druids.

00:33:23.580 It was made around 2500 BCE,

00:33:26.300 so the Neolithic period,

00:33:27.740 well before the Druidic religion was ever came to exist.

00:33:32.120 And it would have been old news by the age of the Druids, 0.95

00:33:34.680 who were around C500 BCE to 43 BCE.

00:33:39.980 So it was further from the Druids

00:33:42.640 than we are from the Druids.

00:33:44.920 That's how old Stonehenge is.

00:33:47.660 Archaeologists now see it as a burial and ceremonial site,

00:33:50.100 not a Druidic temple.

00:33:51.480 And keep in mind,

00:33:52.100 all the ideas he got about what the Druids believed,

00:33:54.360 he got from Stonehenge,

00:33:55.560 which didn't even have a connection to the Stonehenge in the Bible.

00:33:59.300 That's where he got it from.

00:34:00.980 A final interesting note here,

00:34:02.820 it's another group that some people see as,

00:34:05.580 oh, well,

00:34:05.860 they restarted the Druids,

00:34:07.200 was Henry Hull in 1781,

00:34:09.200 who founded the ancient order of the Druids.

00:34:11.080 However, this was a fraternity group,

00:34:13.280 much more common to, say, Freemasonry.

00:34:16.140 It didn't itself claim to come from any sort of ancient stuff.

00:34:20.920 It didn't have the same sorts of rituals or anything like that.

00:34:24.700 This is just a misreading of history.

00:34:27.080 It was a secular society,

00:34:29.200 close to the Society of Odd Fellows and stuff like that.

00:34:32.200 And also it had ties to Christianity,

00:34:35.420 again, trying to connect it.

00:34:36.960 So I gotta go too far here,

00:34:38.100 but your thoughts,

00:34:39.200 did this blow your brain given being raised a hippie? 0.74

00:34:43.380 This is wild. 0.80

00:34:45.700 But I'm also starting to realize that

00:34:48.140 the way we've seen super soft religions, 0.99

00:34:52.200 what do they call the religions that people have built around Loki and Snape,

00:34:56.520 for example,

00:34:57.900 did they call them pop paganism?

00:35:00.060 Pop paganism.

00:35:00.820 Yeah, I think pop paganism is the ultimate proof point

00:35:04.220 that people don't need provenance in religion.

00:35:08.180 It's like the placebo effect,

00:35:09.960 where they've shown in studies that if you say,

00:35:13.800 this is a placebo,

00:35:15.260 people have often found placebos to be quite effective,

00:35:17.860 and then they give them the placebo,

00:35:19.400 people are like,

00:35:19.940 wow, I feel so much better from the placebo,

00:35:23.200 which is an interesting meditation.

00:35:24.920 My point here is that

00:35:26.680 people don't need it to be real.

00:35:29.620 They don't need it to be an active medication.

00:35:32.540 They're okay with placebo religions, 0.99

00:35:34.580 that is to say religions without real history, 0.95

00:35:38.500 without real provenance,

00:35:39.840 and the existence of Snape Wives and Loki show that,

00:35:44.840 that we are willing to induce suspended disbelief,

00:35:50.700 because it helps us feel a certain way.

00:35:53.040 I think these people believe it,

00:35:54.240 and I think if you read the writings of Snape Wives

00:35:56.340 and stuff like that,

00:35:57.620 they believe-

00:35:57.940 Because they choose to believe it,

00:35:59.020 that's what I'm saying.

00:35:59.640 They're induced,

00:36:00.500 it's induced suspended disbelief.

00:36:02.960 Right, but these beliefs are convergent,

00:36:05.480 depending on the social context,

00:36:06.760 but you often get the same cluster of beliefs

00:36:09.600 reappearing and reappearing,

00:36:11.740 and I do not think that,

00:36:13.280 like, the Snape Wives genuinely believe that Snape is a real person who,

00:36:17.520 God,

00:36:17.940 who influenced J.K. Rowling to write him,

00:36:20.620 and I think-

00:36:21.080 Yeah, my point is that people are willingly deluding themselves into this.

00:36:24.200 I don't think they are.

00:36:25.980 I don't think they are.

00:36:27.420 I don't think that they go into this saying,

00:36:29.060 oh, I'm going to choose to believe something that's not true.

00:36:31.240 I think that they,

00:36:33.000 you think they do.

00:36:36.140 We'll let the audience-

00:36:37.180 There's not a conscious thought process.

00:36:39.420 It's more like,

00:36:40.440 wow, I like the aesthetics of this.

00:36:42.420 Wouldn't this be kind of cool if it's true?

00:36:44.800 And then you just go into it

00:36:46.800 with a very, very open mind,

00:36:50.560 and you don't look for the evidence to the contrary.

00:36:54.020 You only lean in with full confirmation bias,

00:36:57.260 and before you know it,

00:36:58.640 you are convinced,

00:36:59.580 because you've only seen supporting evidence.

00:37:01.640 You've only seen the lore.

00:37:02.780 You've only had spiritual experiences in this framework,

00:37:07.960 and that'll get you.

00:37:09.660 It'll get you.

00:37:10.280 It's enough.

00:37:10.820 I will say one thing that really,

00:37:13.120 this Valerie woman,

00:37:14.240 you know,

00:37:14.400 as I go through this,

00:37:15.340 who sort of remade Wiccanism,

00:37:17.080 I have to really respect her a lot for a few things.

00:37:19.740 I think she was right in the way that she rebranded Wiccanism.

00:37:23.440 I think it's a better branding for its growth

00:37:26.180 and getting it to grow.

00:37:27.580 I think that,

00:37:29.020 you know,

00:37:30.020 imagine being like the right-hand man to this guy,

00:37:34.680 who then you find out made it all up,

00:37:36.700 and you're still like,

00:37:37.440 well, yeah, he made it all up,

00:37:38.600 so I'm just going to make it cooler.

00:37:40.300 I guess she probably heavily suspected

00:37:42.740 or was like dealing with a, 0.87

00:37:44.360 okay, this guy's crazy, 0.54

00:37:45.520 or, you know, 0.99

00:37:46.540 just likes making things up,

00:37:48.360 which is fine.

00:37:49.260 You know,

00:37:49.760 that is,

00:37:51.500 that level of intellectual honesty,

00:37:53.180 and branding management,

00:37:54.660 I think is why,

00:37:56.480 when contrasted with the other new religions,

00:37:59.800 this one has done particularly good at spreading,

00:38:02.800 and I think casting it as,

00:38:05.240 oh,

00:38:05.440 these were what the ancient witches believed,

00:38:07.840 or this concept of like Puritan witches

00:38:09.360 and stuff like that,

00:38:10.500 like,

00:38:11.600 keep in mind,

00:38:12.500 we have some understanding of like,

00:38:14.060 what the Puritan witches were like,

00:38:16.060 supposed to be doing in the woods,

00:38:17.460 and it's nothing like modern Wiccan stuff.

00:38:21.040 I mean,

00:38:21.440 some modern Wiccans have tried to reinvent this stuff,

00:38:24.140 like dancing naked in the woods and stuff like that,

00:38:26.200 or trying to seduce people or whatever,

00:38:28.620 right?

00:38:29.640 It also doesn't,

00:38:30.620 it'll resemble the old superstitious things that you saw,

00:38:34.840 for example,

00:38:35.440 across Appalachia,

00:38:36.540 where it's like,

00:38:36.940 boil a puppy if you feel this way,

00:38:38.780 or like, 0.86

00:38:39.140 cut off a kitten's tail.

00:38:40.560 Remember those?

00:38:41.500 I think they were described in Albion Seed.

00:38:43.720 That sounds like freaking witchcraft to me. 1.00

00:38:46.920 Yeah,

00:38:47.180 no,

00:38:47.480 I was like,

00:38:48.380 what is actual,

00:38:49.260 and we know about a lot of these rituals from,

00:38:51.480 if you're like,

00:38:51.840 oh,

00:38:51.980 what rituals appeared and then disappeared?

00:38:53.800 Well,

00:38:53.980 like boiling puppies,

00:38:54.960 which was done by my ancestors,

00:38:57.720 the rural Appalachian people.

00:38:59.300 I,

00:38:59.600 no,

00:38:59.840 but that is what is described in Macbeth.

00:39:02.220 You know,

00:39:02.440 this is the,

00:39:03.060 you know,

00:39:03.440 you know,

00:39:03.860 eye of newt and,

00:39:04.980 and toe of frog,

00:39:06.340 but this is,

00:39:07.100 this is the thing.

00:39:08.220 Yeah,

00:39:08.460 this is not.

00:39:09.480 So that,

00:39:09.800 if we're talking about witchcraft as,

00:39:11.760 as seen in like stereotypical Shakespearean works,

00:39:15.300 let's go to Appalachia.

00:39:16.560 Let's see what they're up to,

00:39:17.800 and not necessarily what 90s,

00:39:21.360 well,

00:39:21.700 I guess she was writing in the 70s,

00:39:23.260 but like,

00:39:23.560 yeah,

00:39:23.740 turn of the century.

00:39:24.960 Yeah.

00:39:25.540 And if people are like,

00:39:27.000 well,

00:39:27.520 you know,

00:39:27.800 we don't know anything.

00:39:28.580 So they could have been these various different faces.

00:39:30.760 Like,

00:39:31.000 yeah,

00:39:31.120 we don't know much except for the sacrifice victims.

00:39:33.660 We've got lots of those.

00:39:35.500 So we do know they love sacrificing humans.

00:39:38.860 So if you're like,

00:39:39.620 what do we know about these people?

00:39:41.440 Oh,

00:39:41.900 not the beast.

00:39:43.560 Not the best.

00:39:44.520 I think Christianity had a right to,

00:39:47.400 as it was moving into these regions,

00:39:48.920 be like,

00:39:49.720 Hey,

00:39:49.960 we really need to stamp out these older religious traditions. 0.94

00:39:54.540 Entirely.

00:39:55.380 Now,

00:39:55.620 some people have been like,

00:39:56.500 well,

00:39:56.700 couldn't there have been pockets of these ancient religions that were practiced in regions,

00:40:01.540 right?

00:40:01.760 Like with may poles and stuff like that.

00:40:04.180 And a few festivals,

00:40:05.020 I would guess there probably could have been pockets.

00:40:08.980 But the thing you have to remember is you get a church crackdown on one of these pockets.

00:40:13.560 And if they don't hold the tradition for let's say even 50 or 60 years,

00:40:18.380 it's going to be incredibly hard to recreate it from like local memory.

00:40:23.920 Do you,

00:40:25.040 for example,

00:40:25.660 know the types of rituals that your grandparents got up to or the types of,

00:40:30.140 we should probably do an episode on that.

00:40:31.500 Just for an example,

00:40:32.540 we can look up the common rituals and myths of the 1900s.

00:40:38.000 Like,

00:40:38.780 for example,

00:40:39.160 do you even know if your grandparents ever did a seance?

00:40:43.280 It would be actually,

00:40:44.960 I'm pretty sure none of my grandparents would have done a seance.

00:40:48.600 because,

00:40:50.760 you know,

00:40:51.900 one's in France during the war.

00:40:54.560 One is in,

00:40:55.860 you know,

00:40:56.260 Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and war.

00:40:58.340 Then the other two weren't really born yet until much later,

00:41:02.920 like in the fifties.

00:41:03.660 And they sort of grew up in the affluent growing America in 1950s.

00:41:07.660 So like,

00:41:08.020 totally not.

00:41:09.020 Okay.

00:41:09.420 Great grandparents will say,

00:41:11.380 because that would have been the period of seance.

00:41:13.180 Yeah.

00:41:13.980 I,

00:41:14.120 I,

00:41:14.560 even the ones in the war,

00:41:15.820 no,

00:41:16.120 a French person did at that period during the,

00:41:18.580 during the war.

00:41:19.220 Yeah.

00:41:19.320 But then they were like in Romania and like fleeing Russia.

00:41:22.280 So if your grandparents had lived in the United States,

00:41:25.920 let's say between 1900 and 1950,

00:41:29.140 chances are,

00:41:30.540 I'd say because you have four of them at least,

00:41:33.660 I'd say over 50% that at least one of them participated in a seance.

00:41:38.260 And yet you don't know about this or not know about it because

00:41:41.620 traditions just don't pass down that much.

00:41:43.800 Folklore is pretty bad at passing down.

00:41:46.040 Yeah.

00:41:46.280 That.

00:41:46.580 And like,

00:41:46.880 I think that there's just really poor transmission,

00:41:51.060 even from grandparents.

00:41:51.820 Like I had one grandmother who thought that she was reincarnated from a

00:41:56.160 native American woman.

00:41:57.320 And like,

00:41:57.800 that's all I heard.

00:41:58.480 Cause it kind of like, 0.87

00:41:59.220 she's a little crazy. 1.00

00:42:00.260 And like, 0.95

00:42:00.700 I didn't hear like the belief system behind that.

00:42:02.780 It was just like,

00:42:03.280 yeah,

00:42:03.460 she thinks less.

00:42:04.300 And that's it.

00:42:05.240 You know,

00:42:05.480 it's not like,

00:42:06.020 well,

00:42:06.120 what was that based on?

00:42:06.980 Like,

00:42:07.380 what was her religious framework here?

00:42:09.940 I mean,

00:42:10.160 she took our kids. 1.00

00:42:11.700 Frameworks are forgotten.

00:42:12.560 Like recently we got for our kids,

00:42:14.620 a book of Appalachian folktales.

00:42:16.760 After I was reading one,

00:42:18.940 that's an old Appalachian,

00:42:20.080 like scary story that they've done a book of.

00:42:22.260 I remember it for when I was a kid,

00:42:23.420 because I was like,

00:42:24.320 Oh my God,

00:42:24.920 the guy's dogs die.

00:42:26.640 Like I remember the guy's dogs dying as a kid.

00:42:29.320 It's called taily poo. 0.61

00:42:30.440 If you want to get it,

00:42:31.120 it's a good story.

00:42:32.380 Very visceral for kids.

00:42:33.660 They'll remember it,

00:42:34.640 but I read it to the kids and I've forgotten at the end of the story,

00:42:37.740 the guy dies too.

00:42:39.900 Everyone in this story,

00:42:41.140 the guy and his three dogs are murdered.

00:42:44.380 And this was a children's tale.

00:42:47.120 Slowly and one by one,

00:42:49.300 like the dogs going into the woods and then going quiet,

00:42:51.940 like very horror story.

00:42:54.220 But it feels very often.

00:42:56.540 You're like,

00:42:56.820 yeah,

00:42:56.940 this was definitely an old story.

00:42:58.280 But then we got some called Jack's tales and we started reading them.

00:43:01.760 And I,

00:43:02.200 and I was reading the book and I was like,

00:43:03.520 Oh,

00:43:03.900 Holy Jack and the Beanstalk was not a standalone myth.

00:43:09.960 Jack and the Beanstalk was part of a series of campfire stories about a boy named Jack who got up to crazy.

00:43:17.820 And I was a busy boy.

00:43:19.260 Yeah.

00:43:19.560 Completely lost in the cultural memory that that was the case.

00:43:23.340 And so I can see even was in my own tradition,

00:43:25.720 how quickly these people who want to believe in ancestral traditions being passed down.

00:43:30.540 I would just ask you how many direct ancestral traditions do you have outside of your mainstream religion from your grandparents?

00:43:39.940 You may have a few from one of them,

00:43:42.520 but I would best for most people,

00:43:44.340 it's almost none.

00:43:46.200 And keep in mind,

00:43:47.080 you have four grandparents.

00:43:48.940 If even you can't remember the very things that your grandparents went through,

00:43:53.260 how do you think this passes down for like dozens of times that number?

00:44:00.080 That's fair.

00:44:01.100 Yeah.

00:44:02.680 Anyway,

00:44:03.260 I love you to death,

00:44:04.080 Simone.

00:44:04.360 You are absolutely amazing.

00:44:06.300 And thank you for being my wife.

00:44:09.480 Thank you for being my husband.

00:44:10.900 I love you so much.

00:44:13.300 My non-Druidic husband. 0.80

00:44:15.600 My non-Druidic, 0.99

00:44:16.860 yes.

00:44:17.380 Yeah.

00:44:18.200 This is the important part.

00:44:19.300 By the way,

00:44:19.560 if you want to go into early Christianity versus the religions it was replacing,

00:44:23.160 we released an episode on Christmas Day,

00:44:24.740 so like nobody watched it,

00:44:26.060 called Was Christianity Actually a More Moral Religion?

00:44:28.940 When I asked Grok what his favorite episode of our show was,

00:44:31.280 it picked that episode.

00:44:32.220 So if you guys want to check it out,

00:44:35.180 Grok thinks it's the best.

00:44:37.120 So I'm excited for this.

00:44:38.480 You haven't even talked to me about it.

00:44:40.220 So I'm coming in blank.

00:44:43.600 I don't know what to expect.

00:44:44.920 I mean,

00:44:45.080 do you know anything about this or how the movement started or anything?

00:44:48.960 You know,

00:44:49.400 I know I had my like nineties friends who had their,

00:44:52.940 you know,

00:44:53.440 books from Barnes and McNoble about Wicca,

00:44:56.360 you know,

00:44:56.680 it was like,

00:44:57.280 Oh,

00:44:58.380 Wicca, 0.56

00:44:58.720 that thing, 0.68

00:44:59.340 you got a book at it,

00:45:00.300 Barnes and Noble with a little gold,

00:45:02.220 foil cover that has little spells.

00:45:06.100 That's how you know it's magical.

00:45:07.820 That's how,

00:45:08.380 you know,

00:45:08.940 I mean,

00:45:09.900 if,

00:45:10.120 if not gold,

00:45:10.860 then silver foil.

00:45:11.880 Nothing could disappoint me more than if our kids end up becoming Wicca. 1.00

00:45:17.420 There's like,

00:45:18.020 I don't even think it's Wicca though.

00:45:18.980 They just,

00:45:19.440 I would be more disappointed if they buy spells on Etsy or whatever it is,

00:45:24.520 like,

00:45:24.780 you know,

00:45:25.040 from a TikTok influencer or something.

00:45:27.480 Although,

00:45:27.920 although,

00:45:28.160 I mean,

00:45:28.780 I will tell my sons the truth.

00:45:31.020 You want to,

00:45:32.060 you want to find easy girls? 1.00

00:45:34.000 Look for Wiccans. 1.00

00:45:34.980 Oh my God.

00:45:36.020 That's an easy group.

00:45:37.480 Yeah.

00:45:37.600 But that's also a date.

00:45:38.600 They're like the kind of people that I would expect to cut holes in condoms and stuff.

00:45:41.980 This is a no, 0.61

00:45:42.580 no.

00:45:42.740 It's true.

00:45:43.680 Yeah.

00:45:44.320 So just don't,

00:45:45.240 just don't.

00:45:45.760 Okay.

00:45:45.980 Okay.

00:45:46.640 I'll get to start here.

00:45:47.340 You can't.

00:45:49.280 No.

00:45:49.720 That's not funny.

00:45:51.160 No.

00:45:52.580 That's not funny. 0.99

00:45:54.020 You're going to be sent to the portal of hell. 0.96

00:45:56.480 No. 0.97

00:45:57.280 What? 0.99

00:45:58.820 You're going to be sent to the portal of hell. 0.97

00:46:01.400 Uh oh. 0.98

00:46:02.200 Octavian.

00:46:03.100 Titan's stealing your backpack.

00:46:05.060 No. 0.89

00:46:05.260 I'm going to the portal of hell.

00:46:07.380 No.

00:46:08.700 No.

00:46:10.540 I'm going to the portal of hell.

00:46:12.480 Octavian,

00:46:13.080 Titan's stealing your backpack.

00:46:14.320 Are you going to go get it?

00:46:15.100 No.

00:46:15.380 No.

00:46:15.460 No.

00:46:16.000 No.

00:46:16.400 No.

Based Camp - March 20, 2025

The Surprisingly Recent Origins of Wicca and Druidism

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