season 1, episode 13 - #SnortAndCackleBookClub book review - "witchcraft in early modern poland 1500-1800" by wanda wyporska

season 1 of snort & cackle is coming to an end, which means it's time for the #snortandcacklebookclub book review! today ash is going over "witchcraft in early modern poland 1500-1800" by wanda wyporska. they'll be taking a deep dive into this very academic look at polish witchcraft history and place it within some context of pre-christian practices within the region. if your hot take of early modern european witchcraft trials is that they were usually highly gendered and influenced by class, economic downturn, conflict, and environmental catastrophe, you're not wrong. but what (if anything) else is under the surface?

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

we’ll be back with season 2 after samhain. happy new year, witches!

seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 1 episode 13 - book review: "witchcraft in early modern poland"

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays in the background.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedge witch, and each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world a better place.

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 by Wanda Wyporska. [Music fades out.]

Hello. We are here with the final episode of season one for Snort and Cackle. I can't believe that we're already here. Thank you so much for joining me for a whole season already! This is really exciting.

We are into spooky season here in the north aka almost Samhain aka witches’ new year and it is delightful. And since this is our 13th episode of season one, it is also our book review episode, which is pretty exciting. I am a total bookworm, always have been. And so I knew I wanted to have the opportunity to share some of my favorite witchcraft books with y'all and also just to be able to share more resources.

I know that is a pretty consistent thing for a lot of modern witches is just not necessarily knowing where to start, what is good useful information, what's less useful information. [Jingling in the background.] Yeah. I was going to share her opinions about things as well.

But yeah I'm hoping that these book review episodes are fun for you too, and that you have been participating in the Snort and Cackle book club. And for this first year of Snort and Cackle, we are focusing on witchcraft traditions around the world. As you may have already picked out from various interviews so far

this year with various witches from different ancestries, the idea of witchcraft is, and what is a witch is certainly not a monolith.

There are many ways of thinking of witchcraft, looking at what is modern witchcraft versus old witchcraft and traditional witchcraft and ancestral witchcraft, what is just traditional indigenous ways of working and what is magic, and what is ritual, and is there any right or wrong way of doing it?

The answer to that is both yes and no. And I think this is an important thing that I'm just realizing generally in life, is acknowledging that there can be multiple truths in a single instant and that two things can be true in the same moment. And that, that is okay.

And sometimes those two truths are extremely far apart. And sometimes we might not acknowledge one as being true. And sometimes, honestly, some things are just straight up not true. But it is possible for there to be multiple truths occurring in the same moment around the same thing.

And the history of witchcraft is certainly an area of that. [Chuckles.] So we are starting off the ... this look at witchcraft traditions around the world with my, one of my own ancestral histories, which is the Polish side of my family. And it was actually quite funny recently I was with some friends and we were looking around our little group and I was like, I think I've the most mixed of all of us bloodlines wise, because while I am European across the board for many generations, at least as far as we're aware, it's both from the east as well as from the ... what is considered the British Isles.

Mostly Scotland, but certainly not only Scottish. And so that was a funny moment to be like I'm the one white person in this room and also the only person who has quite a mixed heritage. And yeah, that was just an interesting thing. And once again, just looking at what are the nuances of things. And I think, especially for white folks in particular, but just generally a lot of folks when we are trying to connect back with other ways of operating, when we're like, you know what, capitalism doesn't work for us, monotheistic religions aren't working for us, it ... the picking and choosing what you like a various things is not necessarily the way to go about it. That is what we call cultural appropriation a lot of the time.

And if you are fortunate enough to be able to know your bloodlines in some way then one of, for me, whenever I have, particularly white witches coming to me ... and by white witches, I actually mean witches who are white racially, not

white witches as in the idea of magic being a black or white AKA bad or good, which is also interesting if we start to unpack that languaging.

Whenever I have a witch come to me and say, “I don't know where to start,” I think particularly because of how much witchcraft resources that are out there right now that are easily accessible are actually very much Wicca-specific resources. I always say, if you know your ancestry or part of your ancestry start there because the chances are really good that something has been passed down to you by your ancestors and that they are speaking through you in some way.

Certainly on both sides of my family that is true, and I am lucky enough to have experienced some of that, whether people acknowledged it as being witchcraft slash magic or not. So anyway I ... if it is a thing that you are looking into, I recommend starting there. Just because it gives you a little bit more insight into what are the specifics of perhaps different rituals that are important or, like finding some affinity ... things that you have always felt a deeper connection with in your bones and blood. And then finding out that, oh, there's perhaps a reason for that, right?

Like for me, with birch trees always being something that's important. And a thing that since childhood I've always found comforting. And then to know that on the Polish side of my family, that birches are the most sacred tree. There's something cool about that, to find those connections later in life. And to know that we are always learning more things and that we are always evolving and always unraveling bits of ourselves. I think that's an exciting thing about being a human and also being a witch.

And so our first book for book club is dealing specifically with traditional, historical Polish witchcraft. And I thought this would be a good place to step in partially because it is my own history and so it is something that I can speak to a little bit better. And later on this year, we always do four seasons in a year, we follow some of the Sabbats within the wheel of the year which is the other side of my ancestry.

And so with these first four seasons, then we're going to visit other parts of the globe. So starting this season with Poland, next season we are going to be looking at West African as well as some Caribbean histories. After that we will move ourselves over to Asia and we will also visit some South American traditions. And I will have some guests hosts with me for those episodes to help

provide a little bit more context and their own experiences and points of view as we approach those other things. Stay tuned for those seasons.

But for this season, our book for Snort and Cackle book club, this season was Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 by Wanda Wyporska. And something that you may not know about me is that I have multiple degrees - university degrees - and one of my favorite courses still to this day had absolutely nothing to do with my actual degrees and was all about ... it also happened to overlap during spooky season. It was a fall semester course that I did, I think in maybe second year or third year of my bachelor's degree. And I went to Dalhousie University in K’jipuktuk.

The one of the sister universities is King's college, which is notorious ... Davis and I, you can go back and listen to my episode with Davis Carr from earlier this season. But Davis and I discussed this because Davis was a Kings student and Kings is notorious for being very ... I'm going to say academic, but very particular about their studies and particularly early modern resources. You go to Kings for journalism often and also for history.

And so I took a witchcraft course and it was history of witchcraft in the early modern period in Europe. And I can't remember the exact title of the class, but that was what we studied. And it was delightful. It was so much fun. But I would like to apologize to everybody who read this book because that's what I threw y'all into this season with this book.

And if you did not have that background studying specifically the early modern witchcraft trials in Europe, then this book would have probably made you want to pull your eyeballs out more than once. So I apologize for that.

I found it useful. This is, like probably over 10 years later that I am now reading this book compared to when I took that course. It's ... I actually, I make a point of going and studying and getting access to witchcraft resources in different countries that I visit. When I went to Iceland the second time, then I made a point of studying the witchcraft histories in Iceland while we were there.

We made a point of visiting old ruins and visiting the witchcraft museum and I grabbed extra books. Just because I find the history of witchcraft in different countries fascinating. And the way that it is handled also fascinating.

Iceland is a country that has very extreme elements and I believe that part of that is why, when you're there, it's hard to not believe so much in magic because

it is literally all around you. You can feel it everywhere. And SJ and I talked about this in our episode as well, but you have to make a relationship with the elements and the things that you can't control, because there's much that you cannot control when you live in those areas of extremes.

And so when we're talking about the ocean in that moment, my experience is that all of Iceland is like that. And they will build highways around fairy hills. Meanwhile, the witchcraft history in that country, among ... over the early modern period was very much focused on male witches, which is an anomaly.

But I think this is a thing that is important to know is that just like witchcraft in general is not a monolith, the early modern period of witchcraft trials, which the early modern period, is that kind of 1500 to 1800 chunk of time, potentially 1400s, depending on which country you're looking at, but that like mid chunk of centuries in the 1000s, that period is also not a monolith. And different countries experienced witchcraft trials in different ways.

The folks who were accused and the way that those accusations rolled out played out differently. And I think it's particularly important for us to know this because here on Turtle Island, which was colonized by the countries that at that time were doing those inquisitions. And then, when you think of witchcraft in Canada and the States, the first thing everybody thinks about is Salem - Salem, Massachusetts - and that was very largely influenced by the witchcraft trials that happened earlier over on the continent, the other continent. And it's important to keep those things in mind because they absolutely have ... play a part.

It also gives us insight into how those colonizing forces looked at traditional and indigenous ways of honoring various things and celebrating various things and speaking to different gods and having relationships with different beings and entities when they were then colonizing other parts of the world. And also when they were colonizing other parts of Europe.

This book I found particularly fascinating because Poland is such a Roman Catholic country now. And as far as I am aware, the half family, half bloodline family that we were able to connect with on my grandma's side identifies as Roman Catholic. We have also connected with them post-war so who knows what happened before the war?

I also don't know really anything about my grandfather Tata’s family, so we don't know what those relationships are. If they're Jewish blood somewhere along those lines, if there were any Protestants, if there was anybody other than

that. I know that my grandma had some pretty serious powers, but that was also taught to her by Roma, not by anybody within the family, as far as we're aware.

It does get trickier when you lack ... especially written connections. And so this is something about this book is that it is limited by the written records. And it very much reads as being somebody's thesis. And I suspect that is what it is, was that somebody's thesis got published.

There are very few references or resources in English related to Polish witchcraft history. So there were ... if you don't speak Polish and if you don't read Polish, then your access into this particular history is going to be quite limited. So this is a useful tool and resource to get started in that, particularly if you were an English speaker.

It also provides some kind of confirmations of, yes, there were a number of ways that Poland overlapped with the rest of Europe in the way that the trials rolled out. Also, there were some specific differences. The one thing that I am sad was not included in this book, although of course there are limitations to what we can look at, while they did make a point of looking at particularly the judicial records and the clerical records slash clergy records, and also they looked at some of the fiction resources and more popular written resources at the time ... They didn't really look at how do the pagan traditions in particular really impact the way that witchcraft was approached.

And so if you are familiar with those things, as I have begun digging into myself, then you can glean a little bit more, but if you were to just take this at face value then it tells you significantly more about particularly the Roman Catholic influence on the witchcraft trials and a bit of the Protestant influence, which of course during the timeline of this, we're looking at Counter-Reformations, all that history as well. But if you're unfamiliar with that and/or if you are interested in something other than specifically the Christian impact of the witchcraft trials ... of course the Christians were the ones who ran that rampant.

But it doesn't give you as much reference points or knowledge into, is this particular person, were they a member of pagan cunning folk or was it the witchcraft craze, like what happened in Salem? It's tricky to separate those things out when we are relying on written records from hundreds of years ago. And particularly written records that are from the court system and the liturgical systems that ... [sneezes] pardon me ... rather than anything else. Yeah.

One thing that is interesting is that at the beginning of the trials, and at the beginning of the period, there are also gaps of several decades at times in the way that the witchcraft trials were happening. And this book primarily looked at Wielkopolska, which was the central area of Poland. Of course, borders have shifted many times since then. And Polish borders have been fucked over on a consistent basis. But with Wielkopolska, then we're looking at a chunk of Poland, not all of what we would recognize as being Poland.

And it was an area of Poland that was close to the German border. So there was influence there which is also then interesting when we want to think about, okay, how do we combine what we know of the German witchcraft trials. The overall themes of the Polish witchcraft trials were that at the beginning of the period, they were almost ... gentler is not the right word, but it was more frequently focused on cunning folk who were still using traditional [audio cuts out.]

And then by the end of the period was very much focused on diabolic and specifically Diablo reasons. It became much more focused on devil worship and it was ... the penalties were much harsher. What we did not see in Wielkopolska were these massive trials where tens or dozens of witches at a time were being accused and killed, murdered, all of that.

But what we do see in the Polish history is that on the one side, the liturgy and the church learneds were very much of the opinion that there are certain ways that you should be going about this. And there were folks who believed in witches, others who did not believe in witches, but the way that one was to handle the witches was a specific kind of a way.

And the folks in the upper classes who were not like ... truly the upper classes, like aristocracy upper classes and the Pope and things like that, they had a specific way of looking at witchcraft and opinions about how one should go about determining whether somebody who was accused actually is a witch or not, which involved limited torture, not all of the torture.

And then what we see in real life from the trial records is that very much did not play out in real life. And from the trial records, what we can glean is that while, and this is consistently the thing that we see throughout history is that the folks who are talking about something in an almost theoretical framework talk about things in one specific way, and then the way that, that actually rolls out in real life is exponentially different. In the same way that when we look at communism and Marxism and socialism, there are specific ways that is spoken

about it within a theoretical framework, and then when we actually try to apply it to the real world it inevitably goes up in flames, sometimes literally, because now you're adding in the pettiness of humans and their interactions with one another.

And so that is what we see what the trial records in Poland is, while there may have been periods of time where it was considered a faux pas to be going after witches or to go after them in ... with any particular vehemence or to be using a certain level of torture or things like that, in reality, what we consistently see is that actual witchcraft trials were most often petty disagreements between neighbors. And in particular, we're looking at a time where you've got a seniorial system where you have serfs serving a master and they are landless and they are being allowed to be on the land because they work the land for this person who is of an upper-class compared to them but is actually low class compared to the aristocracy.

And so the term, the [tries to sound out word] the schl, shlatta is ... I believe szlachta is how you say it. It was the lower szlachta who often ended up actually overseeing everything. And you would have these rural areas with a few people and all you needed was one person who had a gripe against somebody else and if that person had enough power over the other person, then we ended up with a witchcraft trial. And if you listen to some deeper analysis of Salem, that is also a thing that is spoken about and is ... I think frequently becomes something that is identifiable is that we are often looking at interclass conflict.

And also that the increase in witchcraft trials overlaps with anxieties from the upper-class that they are losing their power. And there is a little parallel that can be drawn there. Right now, as we exist in late stage capitalism, that those who are in power do whatever the fuck they need to in order to maintain their power including accusing people of things that result in their death.

And what is also interesting, particularly in the earlier stage of the period is that many of the early trials began as a result of cunning folk whose methods and traditional remedies for various things were used by the upper class that it then, if something didn't turn out the way that somebody wanted it to - and as witches we know spells don't always go the way we want them to - that would then result in a witchcraft trial.

So it was not so much that the action was done to begin with. It was the result of the action. Did it end up serving the desired purpose or did something go

sideways? And there's something really interesting about that just generally where it's less about the ... it's ... the intention matters less than the intent.

And we see that in many ways and sometimes it's for a good thing that we become aware of this and then in other ways we see the way that can become a problem, right? Where you are being hired - literally in these situations, you were being hired by somebody of a certain class to do something for them - and if they were not happy with the end result then you would be punished. And the punishment might mean banishment, which has essentially meant death.

Considering we were dealing with basically subsistence in living at this point in time, banishment from the town and community basically meant you were going to die. It was just potentially a slower death. And maybe you would have a chance depending on your skillset. But that was very different from being burned at the stake at a different point in time, which is what we saw more frequently later on in the period.

So definitely there were these inter-class frictions and when there would be economic strife or climate change or war, all of those saw then an increase in trials. And also the thing that is interesting is that it was not so much about what was happening in the rest of Europe. Whereas the rest of Europe would have these kind of general peaks that happened in some of the larger, more powerful countries, Poland was always a little bit behind that, which was not because Poland ... I think this is an important distinction that needs to be made, which also is made in the book, is that it was not that Poland was behind or was that they were simpler or anything like that. It was literally that Poland had its own shit that it was figuring out and dealing with.

And so whatever was happening in Germany sometimes would feed over but was not as important as the others would like them to think that their influence was. An example of that is that the Malleus Maleficarum, which again, if we are familiar at all with witchcraft history, European witchcraft history, and even if you have just watched The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the Malleus Maleficarum supposedly, which was written in the 1400s, supposedly had this massive influence across Europe in the way that witchcraft was viewed and then attacked.

And what we actually see in Poland is that it likely has minimal if any impact at all. It ... only a portion of it was even translated into Polish. Many of the judges who were actually trying these witchcraft cases and trials were illiterate, so it

wouldn't have mattered if it was translated into Polish anyway s far as they were concerned.

But it did not have the impact that ... across every single country the way that one would think maybe it did. And perhaps yes, when we're looking at England and France and Germany and Spain, those four countries had quite a bit more overlap within themselves. But the smaller countries, they were dealing with their own shit.

And again, from Germany in particular, you would see some influence occasionally, and you might see some kind of roll out following on the heels of a peak in Germany. Perhaps it would then flow over into Poland, but it certainly wasn't in line with that. And it more specifically fell in line with actual issues within Poland itself and within Wielkopolska itself.

And that makes sense, right? Like we're talking about a time that is so very different from ours. There was no internet, there was no phone line, travel was by horse or by foot. And it wasn't as though ... like now you can take a train from Krakow to Berlin and it's going to take you a few hours, but that's it. And in those days, it was a many day journey.

Like you couldn't just travel back and forth willy-nilly and it was incredibly dangerous. You were not necessarily going to make it. There were lots of things to consider. And then, yeah, you had war at different points. You had climate change that was impacting crops.

A thing that is quite interesting about at least the Wielkopolska selection of cases is that it was overwhelmingly women who were who were They accused of being witches. And also that like ... more so than we already know that there's generally a correlation between witchcraft and women, and there's all of the patriarchy and church patriarchy and fear of women and femmes and that power and trying to have this monotheistic male patriarchal father figure as leader and so anything that has a woman or femme having power becomes a threat to that.

All of that can be unpacked and pulled apart, and also the percentage of cases in Wielkopolska that were women accused is abnormal because it was even higher than the majority of the rest of Europe. There are a few countries where there were more men who were accused. We don't even get to know who were our

trans ancestors during this time because those records are not recognized or translated properly.

But yeah, Iceland is an example of one where more men were accused. I believe Germany was also actually a stand out in that regard, if I'm recalling my course correctly. I might be wrong about that. But in Poland it was between 90 to 95%. It was an extremely high amount were women. And also the cases that were being brought forward as witchcraft cases were overwhelmingly in the domestic sphere. And it impacted by the areas where women had power slash control in an extremely patriarchal society that was heavily influenced by the guilt and shame brought down by the Catholic church, which is very good at teaching us shame.

So whether it was men accusing women or other women accusing women, there was this overwhelming sense of ... particularly when we look at the trial records, that the women were blaming themselves for something. And so, the easier thing to do then is to blame somebody else. So overwhelmingly you were looking at cases of fertility issues, whether it was that there were miscarriages or dying babies.

There were also frequently concerns about crop spoilage and beer spoilage, and also in particular cattle are mentioned, but just generally impact on livestock. And this makes sense, right? Because we're, again, we're dealing with a subsistence economy. We are dealing with a world in which ... right now, a lot of us, at least in Canada and the States, there is access to food year round.

And even if you are extremely impoverished, there is still food that is available to steal if you need to. Whereas at this point in time, there was not. Like one of the ... I find really interesting is when we look at what pagan traditions actually did make their way through and got buried within Roman Catholic ritual in order to survive basically.

The ... for example, Matka Boska Zielna was a day in August where ... that was the day that you would get the herbs blessed. And it used to be that a particular goddess would bless the herbs. And then once the Roman Catholic church came in then you were looking at the holy mother being the one who was blessing those herbs. But prior to that date, if you were caught eating food from that year's harvest, you would be in trouble.

And that is because the harvest needed to last until the following year. Like it was literally a matter of, if a crop spoiled, you didn't have other food. There was

not as though you'd be like, ah, shit, I guess we are not going to have rice. We're going to have quinoa instead. Like that ... there was literally no other food if the barley spoiled,

And, if the beer spoiled, the water was not necessarily potable. Like it was incredibly important that the food sources remained okay. And so when we think about for humans, what are our concerns? Our shelter, our concerns are food, our concerns, evolutionary-wise, at least our ... the ability to procreate and continue that theme of humans fucking things up.

Then we're looking at climate change. We're looking at food spoilage. We're looking at infertility issues. All of these, with the exception of climate change to an extent, but whether magic is a thing that, despite not being in the trial records, is a constant theme in many other sources from the time.

Those are all the major sources of anxiety. They also happen to be the areas that are more so the domestic sphere than not. And so it was easier to blame women. And it was also the one area where women had power and so if something went sideways or wrong, then it just, it was ... yeah. Just everything gets tied up in all of that and it is impossible to separate out the gender aspect of that.

I think that's an interesting thing to note. Again, I do wish that there had been a bit more study of what were the traditional pagan things that were still very much believed at that time, and then managed to get brought through that period. [Yawns.] Because it tells us a little bit more about “what is a witch?”

And for me, witches I think are ... we're looking at traditional methods and so the interesting thing as well with, and I think this is why so often we find that the histories of witchcraft and traditions of witchcraft are able to bury themselves into Roman Catholicism in a way that they were unable to bury themselves as easily within Protestantism, is because of the heavy layer of ritual.

And so it was that witches were inverting Christian ... or the, in the trial records, as we shift over into the devil worship being more consistently the theme rather than cunning folk having something go sideways. It's an inversion of Catholic or Christian rituals that becomes the theme. It's the spoiling of the Eucharist and then using that as a tool for the devil.

And overwhelmingly it's also an incredibly sexual story. And the pact with the devil was that you literally had sex with the devil, which is also why, again,

we're looking more consistently at stories of women being involved in this. There was lots of sodomy, but not specifically the sodomy that is specific to gay men and the sex that they may have. That was not the identification or the definition of the word sodomy.

Which I think is also really important when we think about like Sodom and Gomorrah and the way that modern Christians, right-wing Christians, use that as a reason to be against queerness and homosexuality. And sodomy was not traditionally defined as being that. That's another podcast episode for another day.

But it's also for today because when we look at these themes of what are the anxieties around witchcraft and how do they make it seem as terrible as possible, then it's an inversion of Christian ritual. The literally like eating dead babies and that you have to baptize them right from the get-go so that a witch can’t use an unbaptized baby for terrible things because if they're baptized then God will protect them.

And the funny point, there's a nice little point that's made in the book at near the about how on a practical level baptizing when the baby is brand new, it was a great way for the various religious groups who are vying for power to be able to lay claim right from the get-go so that there wasn't a chance for the kid to grow up a little bit and be like, mahh, I don't think I like this, maybe I'll go with this other group instead.

Like you are already baptized into a faith. So that as being like a manipulative power trip tool, I was just like, oh, here we go again. But it, these are themes that we see consistently and the stereotypes of what is a witch are ... have continued all the way through to modern times.

Another year, my plan is actually to look at queerness and sexuality within the realm of witchcraft and the influence that has, but they are rooted in these early modern period slash honestly earlier than that, themes around women with power or femmes with power - I'm going to use the word women, but feel free to separate that out into femmes as well - is that the power comes from not relying on a cis man protector to give them satisfaction, to keep them safe, to provide, money and food and shelter and all of that.

You overwhelmingly saw, and we see in these trial records, that it is frequently women who are past childbearing age potentially being accused, or interestingly doing the accusations where there's like some fertility jealousy that is at play.

Like I think this is also an interesting thing when we look at the history of witchcraft is, who was doing the accusing, and what does that have to say about the way that we internalize power structures? And when we are not measuring up to those power structures, that we take it out on the others around us.

But the witch as the other - which again is a theme that continues through to this day - often foreigners, although there weren't that many foreigners, but foreigners would be accused. The theme of sexuality and debauchery and sex for pleasure being the thing that is an overwhelming theme with the devil. The idea of just pleasure in general and knowledge and having a certain level of knowledge.

And as again, the churches are moving in and trying to maintain this power where you are coming to the church for things like medicine and safety, and if something's going wrong and you need something, that you go to them rather than to the local midwife or you go to the priest instead of going to the local herbalist in the community or the local cunning person.

We see consistently through the Polish traditions as well as then through the rest of European traditions, that it is this desire to take power away from the everyday folk and from the locals and concentrating it, whether that was concentration in the form of the aristocracy or concentration in the form of the church, but it was this desire to take away people's control over their everyday lives and make it so that you become indispensable to them and that anybody who threatens that power needs to be stamped out, and so let's label them as a witch and stamp them out.

And I think that ultimately this podcast episode is perhaps a much larger conversation that needs to be had, and that this book just barely opens the door into ... I apologize as well if my various trains of thought have felt not filled out enough for you. For me, these are things that, again, I took this course over 10 years ago. And it is also things that I was thinking about prior to that. Like the, these are things I've been thinking about and studying on my own and finding different resources for and having conversations about for well over a decade and will continue to be.

And so many of my half thoughts are fuller thoughts in my head and also less full thoughts. So I hope that you found something useful to begin to start thinking about the way that we are looking at witchcraft nowadays and the way that in particular the colonizing forces here on Turtle Island as well as then across Europe, and then also the way that those forces colonized other parts of

the world, how those beliefs have permeated society up through to now and continue to permeate society in the way that we identify witchcraft or magic slash black magic and the way that it is a control mechanism. And also that witchcraft can absolutely ... if you've been listening to conversations we've been having this season, then you already know.

Those of us who identify as witches, openly identify as witches. It's a risky thing to do. It is also something that takes responsibility. And if you are going to take that moniker on for yourself or that identity on for yourself then there is responsibility that comes with it. You absolutely can manipulate these powers for not good things and that ... so be aware of that as you are researching. Don't ever take a single person's word as gospel.

I've also been listening to a lot of cult podcasts lately, just ‘cause I dunno, I feel like that's a thing that is also interesting. And my fear is always in taking any one particular person's word as gospel. I think that is always where we start to run into issues. There are gray areas and nuances in almost everything.

I'm not going to say everything ‘cause I don't actually believe that. But in almost everything there is nuance that can be picked apart and you should be able to take what you need and leave the rest in most situations. Feel free to question the powers of authority around you, decide what feels right for you and what does not.

Perhaps you are a witch who is also very happily a Roman Catholic, perhaps you are Jewish and also a hedgewitch. Perhaps you are Muslim and also a kitchen witch, who knows? Maybe you have many identities.

I think that's a really lovely thing that we can do, is to do our research and find what fits for us and be able to be constantly questioning and evolving and learning and growing. And challenging these stereotypes that somehow have managed to continue on through today.

Like reading this book was so funny at times. Reading “here are the trial record stories of what is a witch to these people,” and also particularly to the clergy, what is a witch, and then watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix and having that literally be what they then choose to have Sabrina and her family be.

And there's obviously a little bit more nuance there, but it's literally that they took it word for word without necessarily always doing their research either. I

don't know about you, but any other witch who was sitting through the episode where they say Sam-hane [Samhain] and cringed, because they said Sam-hane instead of Sow-wen, which is how you actually pronounce it.

Fun fact. Yeah, you're thinking, oh god, I wish they did a little bit better. And then to realize that oh, yeah, you did, you did a fair amount of research because these tropes are ones that we have carried for hundreds of years and continue to carry. And so how do we as modern witches challenge that?

And stepping out of the broom closet, I hope that through the course of this series so far that you have felt potentially comfortable peeking out of the broom closet or maybe fully coming out of the broom closet, and at the very least questioning when folks are going to position themselves as being witchy but are not actually fully willing to take that on and yet are also positioning themselves as being a person in authority.

I think that is where ... I have full compassion for folks who take on woo woo instead of witchiness because it feels like a safer thing for them and it feels like stepping out of the broom closet is not a safe thing to do, in the same way that I fully understand folks who, because of safety choose not to come out as openly in ... perhaps they come out as queer in some areas of their life and not in others. There is absolutely always safety to take into consideration.

And also, if you are going to take on the actual identity fully, that does come with responsibility, and if you are unwilling to take that, then don't position yourself as being a position of authority on it. Because it's like during Pride when all of a sudden all of these different corporations and like the cops and the conservative parties come out and they're like, “Yay, we're here for Pride! Give us your pink dollars!”

And I'm like, cool, where the fuck are we the rest of the year? You don't get to take our money because you've bought a float in a parade or bought an ad in a newspaper, and then the rest of the year hide us away from frontline service positions or harass us on the streets or actively work to take our rights away in policy-making. Like, you don't get to have both.

And so in the same way, if you are somebody who is positioning yourself as a person with authority in any sort of capitalist way or non-capitalist way, but I feel like it usually ends up being capitalist in the end. And yet you're using woo woo instead of witchcraft, fuck off. That's where I'm at.

Which, we're rounding up on the hour. Perhaps that is where I end things for this season. Appropriate that that is where I end things on. But yeah, thank you so much for joining me for season one of Snort and Cackle. We are going to take a break for a couple of weeks and then after and we will be back.

Happy New Year, my fellow witches! In the meantime, we'll be back the week following Samhain with season two and we will have a brand new book for you for the Snort and Cackle book club at that time. And yeah, in the meantime, I hope that you have enjoyed Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland.

And if this particular book felt like it was a little too academic for you, I get it. Feel free to get in touch, I promise that at least next season’s book is a little bit more ... not colloquial, but a little bit less academic and a little bit easier to step into as far as the wording of the material itself is still just as interesting, I think.

But yeah. I hope that you enjoyed this and I hope that this helped provide a little bit of context around witchcraft in general, and also the way that witchcraft for the last several hundred years continues to permeate the way that we see things and that is because the dominant forces continue to be fairly dominant forces. And so welcome to your witches. And if you are interested in learning a little bit more about other witchcraft books at you can join the Creative Coven Community because there are a series of some of my favorite resources within that.

And in particular, you don't need to join the community for this particular resource. I do highly recommend if you're interested in digging a little bit more into the history of witchcraft being overlapped with sexuality, and how, for me, I think that's a beautiful thing and for others it's been a source of attack, then the book Witches, Sluts, Feminists is a fantastic book. It will be something that we read in a later season of Snort and Cackle. It will not be within this first year, but I do plan on having it be part of our Snort and Cackle book club in the future.

And so in the meantime, feel free to read it as well. It's a nice kind of companion book, I think, to this very dense historical record to then see a little bit more how those themes from the early modern period in Europe then were ... have continued to be drawn out in other ways across much of our recent history and particularly here in the west, the way that we view witchcraft and then also view women and femmes and sexuality and the power that comes

from sexuality and particularly sexuality as pleasure source rather than as ... specifically for hetero procreation.

So yeah, fun little end times. I hope that you have a really lovely Samhain season, enjoy spooky season. If you are here in the north like I am, enjoy your pumpkin spice everything. There is nothing wrong with being a little bit of a basic witch. I personally just really enjoy that cinnamon and cloves are in everything right now, and cardamom.

So yeah, happy Samhain sweet peas. And I will chat with you in a couple of weeks. Bye!

[Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com, just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with #SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast via your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.