414 - Dcn. Seraphim Rohlin (Universal History) - American Folk Magic and Christianity: From the Reformation to Mormonism
The Symbolic World
Jonathan Pageau
4.8 • 933 Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2025
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of Universal History Deacon Seraphim Rohlin and I explore the world of magic and folk superstition in American Christianity.
What is magic? Where’s the line between prayer and magic? Why did Protestant reformers ban holy water but keep belief in the devil? How did treasure-hunting rituals lead to the rise of Mormonism?
YouTube version: https://youtu.be/o9rMy6lde0c
Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
00:37 - Intro music
01:01 - Introduction
04:54 - What is magic?
08:46 - The modern & Enlightenment ideas of superstition
11:00 - Prayers and psalms
13:30 - The Reformation's perspective
24:27 - Medieval understanding of superstition
26:53 - Example: the French "Dog-saint"
28:11 - Reformation conclusions
33:37 - You have an embarrassing illness
37:21 - Christian magic hacks
46:29 - Manifestation
52:03 - Scapegoating
54:31 - Categories of magic
56:47 - Divination
04:30 - Water witching
07:30 - Saint Porphyrios
08:51 - Finding water
09:57 - Finding other things
11:44 - Money digging
13:33 - How money digging works
17:34 - The symbolism of the New World
20:54 - Joseph Smith and Mormonism
24:18 - The human need for enchantment
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're used to thinking that magic, bad, and everything that's not scientific is basically |
| 0:07.0 | sorcery and evil. |
| 0:09.0 | And that's the way it's kind of treated as in mainstream Christian thinking. |
| 0:13.0 | But that is not, in the Middle Ages, that is definitely not how it was treated and not during |
| 0:18.0 | the Renaissance and not during the Reformation. It's kind of moving towards that as the aid of enlightenment comes, |
| 0:24.6 | because in some ways, some of the oppositions to all forms of magic |
| 0:28.6 | are actually a conflict between science and religion, |
| 0:32.6 | rather than a conflict between Christianity and some, you know, some of these practices. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. I'm here with Deacon Seraphim, who now properly looks like the true intellectual |
| 1:08.6 | that he is. |
| 1:09.2 | That's right. |
| 1:10.2 | He is getting set up. We're finally seeing all the books intellectual that he is. That's right. He is getting set up. |
| 1:11.5 | We're finally seeing all the books that he talks about. |
| 1:14.2 | We are finally realizing that they exist. |
| 1:16.7 | They're not just, they're not just in his mind. |
| 1:19.5 | That's right. |
| 1:20.1 | You don't really know somebody's a serious intellectual |
| 1:22.7 | unless they have books behind them on YouTube. |
| 1:25.0 | So. |
| 1:25.5 | But it's nice to see your studio kind of coming together and you becoming more and more of a deacon with the hair growing and the cassock and everything. |
| 1:36.3 | It's like a student the ponytail. |
| 1:38.3 | It's wonderful. |
| 1:39.3 | We love it. |
... |
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