364 - Did the Witches Win? The Hammer of Witches through a Symbolic Lens
The Symbolic World
Jonathan Pageau
4.8 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a repost of January 2020's patron-only video where I talked about a book called Malleus Maleficarum, translated as The Hammer of Witches, which appeared in the late 15th century. This controversial book has become the central point of our imagination about witches and exemplifies the uneasy transition between the medieval worldview and what would become the modern worldview.
Original YouTube version: https://youtu.be/S75AfTuzLQg
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Mythographer, writer, and storyteller Dr Martin Shaw takes us deep into the heart of what he calls Christian Wonder Tales. Profoundly mythic, these teaching stories range from the early saints through to the grandeur of the Round Table and Arthurian tradition. Shaw emphasises these stories as remerging providentially on time for the perils of modern life. Filled with vocation, sacrifice, and courage, these are an inheritance many of us simply didn’t know we had.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the very late 15th century, a book called the Malleus Malaeficorum was published. |
| 0:06.0 | Translated, it means the hammer of witches. |
| 0:09.0 | And this book was written by some disgraced clergymen. |
| 0:13.0 | It was actually condemned by the Inquisition and the Catholic Church. |
| 0:16.0 | But nonetheless, this book has become the central point of all our imagination about witches, |
| 0:22.5 | how we think of them in terms of writing broomsticks |
| 0:24.8 | with cats and, you know, cavorting with devils. |
| 0:28.1 | All of this comes from this book. |
| 0:31.5 | And so I thought it would be really interesting |
| 0:33.5 | to look at the book, because although it is a very, very wild book, and it actually exemplifies |
| 0:39.9 | the uneasy transition between the medieval worldview and what would become the modern |
| 0:45.7 | worldview, there's a very, there's a very strange difficulty that the people experience |
| 0:50.7 | in trying to bridge a more symbolic worldview with a more, let's say, grounded worldview. |
| 0:59.0 | I thought it would be nonetheless interesting to look at because in it there are some things |
| 1:04.0 | which are really relevant to the modern world and relevant to what's happening around us today. |
| 1:10.0 | And it can help us to understand whether or not the things described in the book are true |
| 1:15.7 | or whether they were rather projections of the imagination. |
| 1:19.0 | It doesn't matter in terms of narrative because it can still help us understand |
| 1:23.6 | why that narrative came about and what it means for us today. |
| 1:27.1 | Ultimately, it can help us see whether or not |
| 1:29.3 | the witch is one in the end. |
| 1:32.3 | This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. |
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