In a recent episode of the JK Podcast, the hosts delved into the topic of witch hunts throughout history. The podcast aimed to provide a deeper understanding of this dark chapter in human history and shed light on the motivations and consequences surrounding witch hunts. The hosts began by giving a brief overview of what a witch hunt entails. Historically, witch hunts occurred during periods of societal unrest and fear, often fueled by religious ideologies and superstitions. **The main idea behind witch hunts was the hunt for individuals believed to possess supernatural powers and engage in malevolent practices.** The podcast explored various infamous witch hunts throughout history, with a focus on the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, that took place in the late 17th century.
Some twenty years before the Salem witch-hunt, a young woman living in the household of the minister of Groton, Massachusetts, began to “carry herself in a strange and unwonted manner.” According to the minister, Samuel Willard, 16-year-old Elizabeth Knapp saw apparitions and experienced violent “fits” over a period of three months.
In 2018, I spoke about Spring-Heeled Jack and the Devil s Footprints in Devon, but most of my other Halloween episodes have really focused on moral panics having to do with accusations of monstrous behavior, and these episodes really culminate, I feel, with this series. After the trial had been vacated, Kramer went home and stewed over it, and ended up, as a defense of his actions and a rebuttal to his critics, writing what turned out to be the most infamous witch-hunting manual of the era, the Malleus Maleficarum , or Hammer of the Witches.
** The podcast explored various infamous witch hunts throughout history, with a focus on the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, that took place in the late 17th century. The hosts discussed how the Salem witch trials were influenced by a combination of religious hysteria, social tensions, and personal vendettas. **Highlighting the main idea, the hosts emphasized that witch hunts are intricately intertwined with societal dynamics and power struggles.
A Rediscovery of Witches, Part One: The Hammer and the Horned God
Last October I explored the origins of the legend of werewolves, and during the course of that exploration, I was obliged to speak about accusations of witchcraft, as the two were intimately connected. Among all the iconic monsters that appear this time of year on dollar-store decorations, the vampire, the werewolf, and witches, it is the witch that people generally know has some basis in history and truth, as it is common knowledge that large numbers of accused witches were put to death, both here in America in New England and across Europe in the early modern period. But what do we really know about the women, and men, accused of witchcraft and what led to their trials? Is there any historical evidence to suggest that these people had actually done anything we might today think of as witchy? Or was it a moral panic that claimed the lives of many who were completely innocent? If so, what touched off this panic? Who and what were these accused witches, really, and why did they end up burned and hanged? You probably think you know the answers to these questions, but you may be surprised. For example, belief in witches may go all the way back to antiquity, when those believed to practice sorcery, incantations, and poisoning were punished under the law in many lands. However, it seems lesser known that during the Middle Ages, with the Christianization of Europe, authorities both divine and secular passed laws against persecuting others for witchcraft and even denied its existence. Medieval canon law declared that any who believed they did such things as witches were commonly accused of doing, such as riding on beasts by night in the train of the pagan goddess Diana, had simply been deluded by the devil to believe their dreams were real. A number of Catholic Popes expressly forbade the torturing and executing of those accused of witchcraft, such as Pope Nicholas I and Pope Gregory VII. However, by the 13th century, the Catholic Church’s Holy Inquisition was involved in crusades against heretics in France, the Cathars and Waldensians, and the accusations of devil worship leveled against them as well as their brutal extirpation hearkened back to witch purges of the past and presaged the witch-hunts to come. Even so, as late as 1258, Pope Alexander IV declared a bull that prohibited Inquisitors from investigating sorcery. A couple hundred years later, though, the Catholic Church essentially invented the idea of the witch as we know it today, not as a simple sorcerer or diviner or a pagan worshipper but as a servant of Satan, when they combined witchcraft accusations with accusations of heresy. Many see its beginnings in the late 15th century, when Pope Innocent VIII issued an infamous bull that acknowledged the existence of real witchcraft—not just dreams or visions but real sorcery—and empowered the Inquisition to prosecute its practitioners. We don’t know for certain the exact number of people tried and executed for witchcraft by the Holy Inquisition in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, but surviving records indicate that around 40,000 were killed. Who were the accused? And what led to the accusations made against them?
I have always covered something a bit spooky around Halloween. In 2018, I spoke about Spring-Heeled Jack and the Devil’s Footprints in Devon, but most of my other Halloween episodes have really focused on moral panics having to do with accusations of monstrous behavior, and these episodes really culminate, I feel, with this series. At the end of my first year of podcasting, I did a 2-part series on the history of false accusations of devil worship, and last year, I did another 2-part series on werewolf trials. I’m proud of both of those and encourage you to listen to them this October if you’ve never heard them. The topic also flows well from episodes I’ve done this year. Starting with the patron exclusive I did on the suppression of the Knights Templar, and through my discussion of the supposed origin of magic and my look at heresy and heterodoxy in the Apocrypha, I can see a thread. My discussion of anti-Semitism through the ages certainly serves as a parallel to the witch-hunts I will be discussing, and even my series on Mary, Queen of Scots connects, for her son, James, as king, wrote his own book on witchcraft justifying the prosecution of witches under canon law. I even see a direct connection to my last episode, in which I drew a connection between Qanon conspiracy theories and longstanding conspiracy theories about the Illuminati. To clarify, the accusations made by Qanon believers owe a lot to witchcraft accusations, for they claim that the deep state is run by devil-worshipers who torture and kill children in order to harvest from them adrenochrome, a drug they enjoy, or simply to eat them. Anyone who has studied witchcraft accusations recognizes these claims. Witches were also accused of being devil-worshipers who ate children or sacrificed them or harvested fat from them to make their hallucinogenic flying ointment. One could argue in fact that Qanon is just another witch-hunt. But despite the progression from topics I’ve covered this year and throughout the lifetime of the show, I have found the witch-hunts of early modern Europe very difficult to parse and wrap my mind around. First of all, it feels wrong, somehow, to question what these women’s lives were like, what they might have done, for neighbors or authorities to target them for prosecution as witches, as if I’m engaging in victim-blaming, yet the more I look into this topic, the more a cut-and-dry claim that all accusations had sprung from the fevered imaginations of Inquisitors seems untenable. Yet neither can I entertain the notion that witch-hunters were justified in their prosecutions. So we must consider all sides… what did the Inquisitors believe of the accused, and what different views of them have historians taken, and what theories are there for why the witch purges of early modern Europe happened.
The 1669 edition of the Malleus Maleficarum. Public Domain image, via Wikimedia Commons.
To understand how witches were defined in early modern Europe and made into the perennial horror icons we know today, we must look to the writings of one true believer, Dominican monk and Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer. Early in his career, this Inquisitor undertook a witch-hunt at Innsbruck, where a certain woman suspected of witchcraft challenged his authority, spitting on him in the street, calling him a “bad monk,” refusing to attend his sermons and suggesting that, because of his own rabid belief in literal witchcraft, he was the one in league with Satan. This set Kramer off on a rampage of a witch purge, putting this woman and others on trial not so much for practicing sorcery, although there were rumors of this, but rather for their sexual behavior, which he asserted proved that they worshipped and engaged in sexual contact with the devil. The local Bishop, however, disagreed, finding that Kramer asked leading questions, “presumed much that had not been proved,” and “clearly demonstrated his foolishness.” After the trial had been vacated, Kramer went home and stewed over it, and ended up, as a defense of his actions and a rebuttal to his critics, writing what turned out to be the most infamous witch-hunting manual of the era, the Malleus Maleficarum, or “Hammer of the Witches.” Kramer’s was not the only witch-hunting manual used during the early modern witch-hunts, but it was the most influential in German-speaking regions, and this was the heart of the witch purges that followed, with a majority of the prosecutions taking place within 300 miles of the Rhineland city of Strasbourg (Leeson and Russ 2067). The Malleus Maleficarum serves as the perfect source for understanding the conception of witchcraft that became dominant during the ensuing witch craze. Although witchcraft had long been thought of as a practice of both men and women, and indeed, during the early modern panic, men too were accused and executed for it, for Kramer, witches were women. As at Innsbruck, Kramer blamed what he perceived as their lustful nature, as well as their supposed intellectual weakness, for their susceptibility to the devil’s charms. A witch, he argued, was not simply a woman who performs magic. To be considered a witch, they have to “deny the Catholic faith in whole or in part through verbal sacrilege, to devote themselves body and soul [to the devil], to offer up to the Evil One himself infants not yet baptized, and to persist in diabolic filthiness through carnal acts with incubus and succubus demons.” So we see these motifs, of sex with demons and the sacrifice of babies, not entering the discourse for the first time, but here cemented in a definition with criteria. And since, according to this definition, they were essentially heretics, he recommended torture in their prosecution and encouraged that they be burned at the stake, both standard Inquisitorial practices for rooting out heresy.
To think of Kramer’s understanding of witches as an artifact of a dark age of ignorance that disappeared with the Enlightenment would be erroneous, though, for even in the 20th century, at least one erudite and scholarly writer was giving them credence. The first English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1928 by Montague Summers, a Catholic writer who perpetuated the witch-hunting manual’s notions as legitimate and true. In his books on witches, werewolves, and vampires, he presented the accusations of Inquisitors as completely reliable, even the supernatural parts. But more than this, he painted the picture of witchcraft practitioners as a vast conspiracy like unto the Illuminati, describing the witch as
Also like believers in an Illuminati conspiracy, he saw the Bolsheviks as a parallel, and even suggested that the actions of Inquisitors against such a conspiracy were justified, writing, “who can be surprised if, when faced with so vast a conspiracy, the methods employed by the Holy Office may not seem – if the terrible conditions are conveniently forgotten – a little drastic, a little severe?” And while acknowledging the misogyny of Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum, he makes the loathsome suggestion that such persecution might be just what was needed for the women of his own day, stating, “I am not altogether certain that they will not prove a wholesome and needful antidote in this feministic age, when the sexes seem confounded, and it appears to be the chief object of many females to ape the man, an indecorum by which they…divest themselves of such charm as they might boast.”
Photo of Montague Summers, attributed to DiscipulusMundi on WIkimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
** Furthermore, the hosts examined the role of gender in witch hunts, noting that the majority of accused witches were women. They explored the misogynistic beliefs and oppressive gender norms prevalent during these periods, arguing that this played a significant role in targeting women as scapegoats for society's problems. **The main idea here is that witch hunts were often driven by patriarchal and sexist ideologies, further highlighting the complex underlying issues surrounding these events.** In addition to historical perspectives, the podcast delved into the psychological and sociological factors that contributed to the mass hysteria and fervor during witch hunts. They discussed the concept of groupthink, where individuals within a community conform to the prevailing beliefs and actions, leading to a snowball effect in accusations and persecutions. **The main idea is that the psychological and social dynamics within communities played a pivotal role in perpetuating witch hunts.** Overall, the JK Podcast provided a thought-provoking exploration of witch hunts, shedding light on the motivations, consequences, and societal factors at play. By highlighting the main ideas discussed during the episode, the podcast aimed to foster a better understanding of this dark aspect of human history and encourage critical thinking about the dangers of scapegoating and mass hysteria..
Reviews for "How Witch Hunts Shaped Societies: JK Podcast Analysis"
1. Emily - 1 star
I found the "Witch hunts explored in the jk podcast" to be extremely disappointing. The host seemed to lack any real knowledge or insight on the topic and instead spent the majority of the time talking about unrelated things. The conversations were often disjointed and lacked any clear structure. I was really hoping for a deep dive into the history and cultural impact of witch hunts, but instead, I was left with a jumbled mess of anecdotes and tangents. Overall, I would not recommend this podcast to anyone looking for a thoughtful exploration of witch hunts.
2. David - 2 stars
As someone who is very interested in the history of witch hunts, I was excited to listen to the "Witch hunts explored in the jk podcast". However, I was left sorely disappointed. The host focused more on their own opinions and personal experiences rather than delving into the facts and analysis of witch hunts. The episodes felt rushed and lacked any in-depth research. It felt like the host was simply regurgitating basic information found through a quick Google search. I was hoping for a more scholarly approach to the topic, but unfortunately, this podcast fell short.
3. Sarah - 2 stars
I had high hopes for the "Witch hunts explored in the jk podcast" but ultimately found it to be underwhelming. The host seemed more interested in sensationalizing the topic rather than providing a well-rounded analysis. Additionally, the production quality was subpar, with frequent audio glitches and abrupt transitions. While there were a few interesting points raised throughout the episodes, overall, I felt like I didn't gain much insight into the history or complexities of witch hunts. I would recommend looking for a different podcast if you're truly interested in learning more about this dark period in history.