tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/occult-18588/articlesOccult – The Conversation2023-05-23T16:05:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2034532023-05-23T16:05:02Z2023-05-23T16:05:02ZSatanism, ritual cults and Hollywood: debunking ‘satanic panic’ conspiracy theories<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527519/original/file-20230522-19-gre7me.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C8%2C1985%2C1485&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Satanic panic in the modern era: how conspiracy theories take hold in times of crisis.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Canva</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year the non-binary singer-songwriter, Sam Smith, performed their song Unholy, at the Grammys. Dressed in a red devil-horned top hat and latex costume, the performance drew upon popular occult and gothic aesthetics. And it attracted a huge amount of criticism for the supposed promotion of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sam-smith-unholy-grammys-satanism-panic-gop-1234674687/">satanic imagery</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/sam-smith-grammys-satanic-ritual-conspiracists-b2277108.html">Conspiracy theorists alleged</a> that the performance was, in fact, a real, satanic ritual orchestrated by an elite cult of Hollywood satanists. Its supposed aim? To morally subvert society by brainwashing and indoctrinating young people. </p>
<p>Only a few months prior, a similar mass online panic had taken hold in the form of the <a href="https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/balenciaga-scandal-right-wing-conspiracy-theories">Balenciaga scandal</a> – with conspiracy theorists claiming that <a href="https://theconversation.com/balenciagas-controversial-new-campaign-and-the-long-history-of-shockvertising-195778">the fashion brand</a> was secretly engaging in child trafficking and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/014521349190062I">satanic ritual abuse</a>. </p>
<p>This was after photographs for its latest campaign featured children holding teddy bear bags that appeared to be dressed in bondage fetish-wear.</p>
<p>These are just the latest in a string of <a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/57670/1/satanic-panic-doja-cat-mainstream-4chan-conspiracy-adrenochrome">satanic conspiracy theories</a>, from the 2014 <a href="https://hoaxteadresearch.wordpress.com/">Hampstead hoax</a>, which involved false allegations of a satanic paedophile ring operating out of a north London school, to the rise of the now infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html">QAnon</a> movement, where supporters believe that Satan-worshipping elites are trying to take over society.</p>
<h2>Satanism scares</h2>
<p>In the UK and further afield, there’s a long history of claims that secret, Satan-worshipping cults exist that ritualistically abuse and sacrifice children. Emerging in the form of moral panics known as “<a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100208829;jsessionid=5020CEAC52403001173C45670AA56C96">satanism scares</a>”, it’s possible to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691136295/evil-incarnate">trace these rumours and myths</a> back to second-century Rome. Yet they really rose to prominence during the Middle Ages. </p>
<p>This satanic mythology has often been used as a way to <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-dark-virality-of-a-hollywood-blood-harvesting-conspiracy/">demonise</a> <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9780470719503.ch17?saml_referrer">Jewish communities</a>. In particular, they’ve often involved false allegations that Jewish people use the blood of non-Jewish – usually Christian – children for <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blood-libel">ritual purposes</a>. </p>
<p>The European witch-hunts which happened during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries also incorporated claims of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-invention-of-satanic-witchcraft-by-medieval-authorities-was-initially-met-with-skepticism-140809">devil-worship and child sacrifice</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sam Smith at the 2023 Grammys.</span></figcaption>
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<p>While accusations of satanic abuse have repeatedly been found to be <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/speak-of-the-devil/546C2517E96864DAB1616D35BD56CE00">unsubstantiated</a> and allegations <a href="https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/11871/1/Sa">debunked</a>, these rumours and conspiracy theories can cause very real harm. </p>
<p>False satanic abuse allegations have resulted in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/22/hoaxed-a-podcast-investigation-of-hampsteads-satanic-paedophile-ring-which-doesnt-exist">harassment, death threats and online attacks</a>. In one instance a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58753545">child was kidnapped</a> after a group falsely believed they were the victim of satanic ritual abuse. And there have even been <a href="https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10413&context=etd">death sentences</a> (later overturned), in the case one 1990s murder trial in the US.</p>
<p>Indeed, satanism scares can be considered a form of <a href="https://salemwitchmuseum.com/witch-hunt/">witch-hunt</a>. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a mass satanism scare in the US and UK which became known as the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Satanic_Panic.html?id=abJqF8csPrQC&redir_esc=y">satanic panic</a>”. </p>
<p>This episode saw many people falsely accused, arrested and at times convicted of satanic abuse. To this day, courts are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/18/1170710006/texas-continues-to-exonerate-people-who-were-wrongly-convicted-during-satanic-pa">still working through</a> exonerating those falsely accused.</p>
<p>In one case, a US couple spent 21 years in prison after being found guilty of satanic ritual abuse. Their conviction was eventually <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/05/texas-couple-kellers-released-prison-satanic-abuse">overturned</a> due to the faulty witness testimony. </p>
<p>The most famous case was the <a href="https://famous-trials.com/mcmartin/902-home">McMartin preschool trial</a>, which is still the longest-running and most expensive trial in US history. It followed false allegations that hundreds of children had been sexually abused and involved in satanic rituals at a California preschool. It led to fears that children and wider society were under attack from satanic forces. </p>
<p>The satanic panic gained momentum from religious TV channels, public authorities and perhaps most prominently from <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-83636-8">tabloid media</a>. In both the US and the UK it built upon <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/intimate-enemies-moral-panics-contemporary-great-britain">preexisting societal moral panics</a> relating to cults and child abuse, as well as drawing upon existing homophobic narratives.</p>
<h2>Today’s theories</h2>
<p>Conspiracy theories appear to reemerge at times of crisis, such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9325658/">the COVID pandemic</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001dn64">terror attacks</a>. They are often used as a way to scapegoat specific groups considered responsible for widespread societal anxieties. </p>
<p>Satanic cult conspiracy theories today also integrate themselves within other conspiracy theories. Following the pandemic, anti-vax narratives and COVID-19 conspiracy theories are often incorporated. </p>
<p>Some of these allege that the vaccine is the “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-evangelical-right-pushed-microchip-vaccine-conspiracy-theory-2021-9?r=US&IR=T">mark of the beast</a>”, or an attempt by supposed “satanic elites” to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/17/eva-wiseman-conspirituality-the-dark-side-of-wellness-how-it-all-got-so-toxic">control the masses</a>. </p>
<p>Such claims have also latched onto <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rogan-podcast-peterson-trans-contagion-b2001612.html">homophobic and transphobic narratives</a>, intertwining allegations of satanic ritual abuse with existing right-wing ideas that attempt to associate LGBTQ+ communities with <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/the-groomer-slur/">grooming and paedophilia</a>. </p>
<p>They also incorporate “<a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-term/new-world-order">new world order</a>” conspiracies, which are often explicitly antisemitic. These allege the existence of a powerful network of elites with a hidden, subversive satanic agenda. </p>
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<p>While such allegations may appear far-fetched – and it may be difficult to understand how people can believe in them – at their core, satanism scares centre around two very common enemies: Satan and child abusers. In this sense, they act as a kind of demonology blueprint. </p>
<p>Many people may first become involved with these theories because they have genuine concerns about child abuse or “cults”. But these initial concerns can then be manipulated by conspiracy theory rhetoric and online misinformation.</p>
<p>Beyond simply affecting those falsely accused, these conspiracy theories can also be emotionally damaging for those <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-64758113">caught up in them</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957371294/how-qanon-like-conspiracy-theories-tear-families-apart">their families</a>. </p>
<p>The image of satanism that these theories propose draws on sensationalised occult stereotypes along with horror aesthetics. It lumps them together with notions of witchcraft, satanism, the paranormal and ceremonial occultism to create an amalgamated image of evil. </p>
<p>This is important because ultimately, understanding the ways that “satanic panic” can piggyback off of and weaponise popular political and social issues is crucial in recognising and removing their harmful effects.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203453/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bethan Juliet Oake receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH).</span></em></p>Satanic rituals and Hollywood elites: the myths behind satanism conspiracy theories.Bethan Juliet Oake, PhD Candidate in the School Of Philosophy, Religion And History Of Science, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2050512023-05-09T10:39:49Z2023-05-09T10:39:49ZKenya cult deaths: a new era in the battle against religious extremism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525114/original/file-20230509-19-9sk5c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Worshippers gather at the New Life Prayer Centre and Church. The head of the Church was recently arrested.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by SIMON MAINA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/kenya-cult-deaths-a-new-era-in-the-battle-against-religious-extremism-205051&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>More than a hundred people in Kenya – among them children – have been <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/counties/kilifi/shakahola-cult-number-of-bodies-from-mass-graves-hits-109-4214878">found dead</a> close to a small village in the south-east of the country. Most of the deceased were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/autopsies-missing-organs-kenya-cult-deaths-police">reportedly followers</a> of pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie. While starvation appears to be the main cause of death, some of the victims were strangled, beaten or suffocated, <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/national/article/2001472118/children-in-shakahola-cult-were-strangled-johansen-oduor-says">according</a> to the chief government pathologist.</em></p>
<p><em>Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen, who has studied the drivers of religious extremism, particularly among violent extremist groups in the east African region, talks to The Conversation Africa’s Julius Maina about the cults and religious extremism challenges in Kenya where freedom of religion or belief is protected by the constitution.</em> </p>
<h2>What do we know so far about the cult deaths in Kenya?</h2>
<p>No fewer than 109 men, women and children are known to have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/02/kenyan-cult-leader-accused-of-inciting-children-to-starve-to-death">died</a> after a Kenyan charismatic church pastor encouraged his followers to fast to death to <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/amp/coast/article/2001470894/four-people-starve-to-death-while-fasting-to-meet-jesus">“meet Jesus”</a> in the afterlife. Bodies of the dead were recovered from numerous mass graves on a farm at Shakahola, a village on Kenya’s south-east coast, where Pastor Paul Mackenzie had his Good News International Church. Autopsies revealed that most had starved to death. But a small number, some children, had been strangled or suffocated to death.</p>
<p>Mackenzie now faces charges over the deaths. The victims came from all corners of the country, drawn to a man whose controversial teachings had come under government scrutiny as far back as <a href="https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/88517-ig-koome-how-pastor-mackenzie-countered-police-arrests-2017">2017</a>. Mackenzie’s apocalyptic narratives focused on the end of times, and were against the modern or western <a href="https://www.tuko.co.ke/people/family/503292-the-making-a-cult-rise-pastor-paul-mckenzies-good-news-international-empire/">ways of life</a> such as seeking medical services, education or music. His conspiracy theories emphasised the Catholic Church, the US and the United Nations as “<a href="https://www.tuko.co.ke/people/503407-world-order-pastor-mc-kenzie-taught-catholic-church-usa-agents-satan/">agents of Satan</a>”.</p>
<p>His other brush with the law came in 2019, when he faced counts of incitement to disobedience of the law and <a href="https://www.citizen.digital/news/preacher-paul-mackenzie-freed-re-arrested-in-malindi-n319020">distributing unauthorised films</a> to the public.</p>
<p>That same year, he <a href="https://www.fox44news.com/news/world-news/kenyan-pastors-appear-in-court-over-deaths-of-parishioners/">closed the church</a>, sold his TV station and moved to a ranch in a forested area of Kilifi county, where hundreds of families built houses. The church and TV station were sold to Ezekiel Odero, another televangelist. Odero is well known for his so-called miracle healing crusades, which draw <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRuvtXIN6wA">tens of thousands</a>. He is also under <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/kenyan-pastor-odero-faces-court-over-shakahola-cult-massacre-4222776">investigation</a> for offences associated with the Shakahola mass suicide.</p>
<p>Religious <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002716678986">extremism</a> or religious movements with a <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/commission-on-devil-worship-the-1995-cult-report-that-government-ignored-4217722">cultic flavour</a> are not new in Kenya.</p>
<h2>How will this change the way religious extremism is viewed in Kenya?</h2>
<p>New religious movements or individual preachers in Kenya rarely attract public scrutiny. There is also little public awareness of the social impact of such groups. Public debates in Kenya are more likely to focus on the occult – with <a href="https://www.globalsistersreport.org/column/religious-tackle-devil-worship-recruiting-phenomenon-45856">“devil worship”</a> as the popular catchphrase. </p>
<p>As far as religious extremism is concerned, Kenya’s focus has been on Islamic extremism, including what constitutes “terrorism”. These are highly politicised debates.</p>
<p>The president’s description of the Shakahola incident as “<a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/ruto-speaks-shakahola-cult-paul-mackenzie-belongs-in-jail-4210598">akin to terrorism</a>” opens up a new epoch in which Kenyans can begin to look at all religions as potential incubators of extremism. Preventive measures can therefore be designed to address not just Islamist extremism but all forms of religious extremism.</p>
<h2>In what ways is the cult similar to violent extremism?</h2>
<p>I would place the Shakahola cult deaths within the narrow confines of cultism and religiously inspired violent extremism. A cult is a group of people inspired – or brainwashed – by a charismatic leader to follow extreme religious beliefs or practices at any cost to themselves. Such beliefs and practices rarely resemble those of established faiths or groups.</p>
<p>This is very close to violent extremist groups such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19392206.2021.196392">Al-Shabaab</a>
or <a href="https://www.asjp.cerist.dz/en/downArticlepdf/20/8/23/1326">Daesh</a> who follow rigid religious value systems and beliefs. Such groups may differ in their justification for using violence to achieve political, ideological or social change. But both religiously inspired cults and extremist groups do tend to reimagine or reinterpret traditional scripture.</p>
<p>Both cults and violent extremist movements have similar push and pull factors at the individual level. In the cult death case, followers came from all over Kenya to seek out Mackenzie. Many of those individuals and families abandoned all their comforts to join his church in a remote location without basic amenities. Recruits to extremist networks such as Al-Shabaab show similar tendencies. They pledge to give up their earthly comforts for a higher calling in the name of misinterpreted or imaginary versions of religious texts.</p>
<p>In each case, the victims are exposed to mind control by charismatic religious preachers. The only difference is in the mode and motive for death in the name of the chosen cause. In Shakahola, it was massive casualties through starvation. The alternative might be suicide bombings aimed mainly at political objectives.</p>
<h2>How have Kenya’s constitutional freedoms been misused by religious extremists?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.klrc.go.ke/index.php/constitution-of-kenya/112-chapter-four-the-bill-of-rights/part-2-rights-and-fundamental-freedoms/198-32-freedom-of-conscience-religion-belief-and-opinion#:%7E:text=(1)%20Every%20person%20has%20the,%2C%20thought%2C%20belief%20and%20opinion.">Freedom of religion or belief</a> is guaranteed by the Kenyan constitution: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every person has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief, and opinion. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question that confronts Kenya is whether “fasting to death” falls within constitutional rights to freedom of religion. How does this sit with <a href="https://www.klrc.go.ke/index.php/constitution-of-kenya/112-chapter-four-the-bill-of-rights/part-2-rights-and-fundamental-freedoms/192-26-right-to-life">the right to life</a> in the constitution? </p>
<h2>What needs to be done to prevent this from happening again?</h2>
<p>In Kenya, countermeasures dealing with Islamist extremism have shown us that religious institutions and activities can be scrutinised and regulated to prevent extremism and terrorism.</p>
<p>These can be extended to religious cultism without infringing the constitutional right to freedom of religion or belief. Kenya needs an honest discussion about how regulations can safeguard the right, to prevent fake religious leaders from misusing it. </p>
<p>President Ruto has <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2023-05-05-shakahola-deaths-justice-lessit-to-chair-inquiry-commission/">commissioned a team</a> to investigate the Shakahola deaths. The team has the broader mandate of developing a legal framework for scrutiny and self-regulation of religious institutions. This is a complex task. What we can learn from Kenya’s previous attempts to curb religious radicalisation is that <a href="https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/ear-33.pdf">public participation</a> is key in designing and putting legal frameworks to action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both cults and violent extremist movements have similar push and pull factors at the individual level.Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen, Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences, Technical University of MombasaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1683222021-10-28T10:28:49Z2021-10-28T10:28:49ZWitchTok: the rise of the occult on social media has eerie parallels with the 16th century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427245/original/file-20211019-21-14im19l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/female-fortune-teller-reads-tarot-cards-1818760505">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 1.30am in the morning, and I’m about to watch a duel between magicians. One is a “demonolater”, a word I have never heard before, someone who claims they worship demons and can petition them in return for knowledge or power. The other describes themselves as a “Solomonic magician”, and claims to be able to command demons to do his bidding, as some Jewish and Islamic traditions have believed of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Solomon">King Solomon</a>, who ruled Israel in the 10th century BC.</p>
<p>I first discovered this debate because, in the course of studying 16th century books of magic attributed to Solomon, I had found, to my astonishment, that “Solomonic magic” is still alive and well today, and growing in popularity. Twitter had suggested to me that I might be interested in an account called “Solomonic magic”, and a few clicks later I had found myself immersed in a vast online community of young occultists, tweeting and retweeting the latest theories and controversies, and using TikTok to share their craft.</p>
<p>To my further bemusement, it seemed that the tradition of Solomonic magic had recently faced accusations that its strict and authoritative approach to the command of demons amounted to a form of abuse, akin to domestic violence. As I had made a note in my diary of a public debate that I wanted to attend out of sheer curiosity, it seemed astonishing to be asking myself whether Solomonic magic, the same found in books of necromancy dating back hundreds of years, was on the brink of cancellation in 2021.</p>
<p>At 28, I’m slightly too old to be familiar with the platform Twitch, mostly used for live video streaming, but tonight I’ve managed to get it working for this particular debate. As an atheist, I’m very likely in the minority, though I’m not the only Brit to have turned up in spite of it being such an ungodly hour this side of the pond. The chat box is buzzing as occultists of various stripes arrive to hear the arguments.</p>
<p>My mum would hate this, I can’t help thinking to myself. She didn’t even let me read Harry Potter.</p>
<p>When people ask me what I do, it’s always fun to tell them, “I study magic at Cambridge University.” It’s technically true. I’m researching the representation of magic on the early modern stage, and am interested in the ways in which dangerous, forbidden or “occult” knowledge was theorised by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. My <a href="https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/renaissance/?page_id=71">research</a> combines my fascination with the mechanisms of belief with my love of storytelling and the stage. When I’m not researching plays, I’m writing them: I’m an award-winning playwright, whose <a href="https://www.rebekahkingwriter.com/music">work</a> has been performed across the UK and abroad.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427015/original/file-20211018-21-8gqtef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British painter George Romney was only one of many artists whose imagination was inspired by the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=shakespeare+witches&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suspending disbelief is my forte, but actually believing is something I’ve never been very good at. The history of magic fascinates me because it is a history of people – of human faults and foibles, vanities, hopes and needs – rather than because of any genuine investment in the esoteric. This is why I’m here to listen to articulate and likeable young people across the globe discussing theories of knowledge and the supernatural – beliefs to which I myself cannot subscribe.</p>
<p>Even more astonishingly, these Generation Z occultists, with their substantial followings on Twitter and TikTok, are about to debate a form of magic that lies at the heart of my research into Shakespeare’s England.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
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<h2>The rise of WitchTok</h2>
<p>While the <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/the-year-on-tiktok-top-100">most</a> <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/the-year-on-tiktok-top-100">watched</a> TikTok videos may appear asinine to anyone who doesn’t enjoy teenagers lip syncing to popular songs, some surprising subcultures have <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2018/09/tiktok-app-musically-guide.html">arisen</a> since the platform’s inception in 2017. One of these is the “WitchTok” community. Videos <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/witchtok?lang=en">labelled</a> #WitchTok have so far clocked up an impressive 18.7 billion views.</p>
<p>I accidentally found WitchTok because I had – to my shame, I’ll admit – found it calming to watch compilations of Cottagecore TikTok videos in my breaks during PhD research. <a href="https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/what-exactly-is-cottagecore">Cottagecore</a> is a popular fashion and lifestyle aesthetic that evokes the bucolic idyll of country living. Cottagecore videos are saccharine and safe: jam is preserved, mushrooms are picked, and flowing dresses stream across ripe fields while a girlfriend holds the camera and gentle music plays.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bZAEIAydA74?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cottagecore TikToks are perfect means of escapism, featuring castles, fields, elf ears, and magic flutes, among other elements of wonder.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In short, it is pure escapism, and so is WitchTok; creators of WitchToks often also make Cottagecore videos. Yet, where Cottagecore offers hope for a good, green world that just might be baked and planted into existence, WitchTok audaciously skips past the bounds of possibility, and promises supernatural means of making life more bearable.</p>
<p>The abundance of magic on TikTok piqued my interest, representing as it does a new frontier in popular belief. It has also caught the attention of mainstream media. In April 2021, for example, the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ed8dd8b7-77d2-4c9c-8da8-2fa06230daf4">Financial Times</a> consulted anthropologists and theologians who scrambled to interpret this strange turnout of events. Its author noted with astonishment that #WitchTok had surpassed #Biden by over 2 billion views and is now leading by around 6 billion and counting.</p>
<h2>Practical magic</h2>
<p>TikTok allows its users to make 15-second video clips, or a string of 15-second clips of no more than 60 seconds in total. This format lends itself to fast-paced, visually appealing content, and this has shaped the kind of magic found on WitchTok. Spells using <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@hellgirrl/video/6926387569697574149">candles</a>, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@caspercrafting/video/6908368436359957765">bottles</a>, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@crystal.and.craft/video/6975195104722177285">crystals</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@witchofsouthernlight/video/6981061126108777733?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1">herbs</a> make for snappy and succinct tutorials which can be readily imitated by the viewer.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fH6GiNqBY4A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tarot reading has become a viral trend on WitchTok.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Interactive WitchToks are particularly popular, usually using <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@raysradiance/video/6919569187098660101">tarot cards</a> or <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@elementually/video/6859721092261514501">pendulum boards</a>,
where a crystal is dangled over a set of words, supposedly swinging over the truth when asked a simple question. By urging the viewer to participate, to “think of a question you want an answer for”, creators are conspicuously gaming TikTok’s algorithm, keeping people watching and encouraging engagement, while claiming that it was supernatural power that drew them to a video. </p>
<p>Brevity is the soul of WitchTok, where complex tarot spreads are abandoned for a one or three card message told to an audience of millions in 30 seconds. Carving a magical symbol into a candle upstages convoluted and expensive ritual magic from more formal, structured esoteric systems, where a single spell can take a day or more.</p>
<p>What, then, are TikTok users looking for in their magical clips of 60 seconds or less? The most common functions of a spell seem to be love, money, healing or revenge, particularly vengeance on behalf of a loved one, whether wronged by a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theemuses/video/6903298614047689989">school bully</a> or <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@lante_scary_lives/video/6965873773694258437">abusive husband</a>. Magic appeals because life is unfair, and power is a pleasant fantasy. In this regard, WitchTok is no different from any other magical tradition.</p>
<h2>Witchtok hunters</h2>
<p>The occult subculture is a controversial one, and the witches of TikTok are a particularly powerful magnet for outrage and mockery. They have come under fire from three main types of enemies who appear in turn as caricatures in WitchTok videos. </p>
<p>The first one of these is an interloper who I’ll call “the angry Christian”. When pantomimed in a WitchTok, the angry Christian <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@kawaiite/video/6858422392864247045">blazes</a> with furious indignation, railing against the evils of magic, till they are silenced with a sassy retort or threat of a hex. The angry Christian believes in magic, in Satan and in the occult. They simply think you’ll risk your soul if you engage with it. The Christians I grew up with are cut from precisely this cloth.</p>
<p>Less common than the angry Christian but occupying a similarly villainous role is “the smarmy sceptic”, the unbeliever who has no interest in any kind of faith. WitchTok videos often dramatise fantasy conversations with them, imagining ominous <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@gothictrashpanda/video/6836797381837606149">retorts</a>: “Don’t believe in curses? Sure! Just give me a lock of your hair then … no?” In some ways the smarmy sceptic is worse than the angry Christian, refusing point blank to be “spiritual” at all. I’m afraid this is probably the category into which I would be placed.</p>
<p>Intriguingly, however, a third opponent has arisen from within the occult community itself. This is what I am calling “the learned magician”, a practitioner who takes the occult seriously as a complex and scholarly pursuit, delighting in the theory, the complexity of rituals, and the broader philosophical implications of their beliefs. </p>
<p>Not quite so TikTok-friendly, they tend to make an occasional appearance when the trends of WitchTok deviate from the logic of a particular magical system, stepping in to correct the new “baby witches” and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@daatdarling/video/7006693454294142214?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1">expressing</a> exasperation with controversies that will sound familiar even to those with no interest in the occult. (Is it cultural appropriation to wear an evil eye pendant? Does calling for discipline in magical ritual equate to a form of fascism?)</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z2Vi5ESTJ2I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Learned magicians sometimes take to TikTok to set the record straight for ‘baby witches’.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Some learned magicians are attempting to bridge the gap. Gen-Z occultist Georgina Rose or “Da’at Darling” – who has convened the debate between the demonolater and Solomonic mage to which I am about to listen – puts out a prolific array of content ranging from introductory YouTube lectures to witty tweets and TikToks. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/panmankey/2021/07/why-we-need-to-defendoccultbooks/">Upset</a> by the “rise of anti-intellectualism in Generation-Z heavy online occult spaces”, she responded, appropriately, with a successful TikTok hashtag: <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/defendoccultbooks?lang=en">#DefendOccultBooks</a>. Perhaps not an outright “enemy” of Witchtok, after all – as “Da’at Darling” puts it, “it is important to reach this platform, so new practitioners can have good information on the occult” – the learned magician is still, at best, tolerant of the trends of TikTok spirituality.</p>
<p>Here, then, is a new theatre of ideas where innovative technology has not quelled ancient magical practices but has advanced them, giving rise to new forms of faith and schism. If the unbelieving reader is asking themselves how a new age of occultism has arisen in a supposedly enlightened modern age, when surely the tech-literate young know better than to return to ancient superstition, they need look no further than a parallel series of events in Shakespeare’s England. This was a time when innovations in technology and culture served to reinvent and energise ancient magical beliefs.</p>
<h2>The occult renaissance</h2>
<p>In medieval England, getting your hands on a book of magic was a tricky business. Prior to the invention of the printing press, handwritten texts were passed around in manuscript form between those lucky enough to have been taught how to read. Costly and time-consuming, the production of a book was simply not worth the effort unless the contents truly mattered.</p>
<p>In spite of this, from the mid-13th century onwards, a series of treatises that dealt with occult knowledge were translated into Latin and various European languages, slipping covertly between the personal libraries of wealthy men. If the Renaissance can be characterised more widely as a period of translation of classical wisdom, so too was it an era when occult “wisdom” began to circulate more widely than before.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427202/original/file-20211019-25-mfapou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grimoires, or ‘spellbooks’, had a great influence on science and religion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=grimoire&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Books of magic, or “grimoires”, a word which derives from the French <em>grammaire</em>, promised, like ordinary school grammars, to teach the reader the rudiments of a new language, though this was the language of spell-making and devil-raising. Grimoires were frequently attributed to famous men of esoteric learning, and the wise king Solomon in particular appealed to Christian readers. If Solomon had authored such a text, could not the wise Christian reader likewise practice the occult without endangering his soul?</p>
<p>Rumour of the grimoires and their grim rituals would circulate widely throughout the medieval era while the actual, often comparatively bland contents, remained obscure.</p>
<h2>The occult reformation</h2>
<p>The introduction of printing press technology to Europe in the 15th century revolutionised the speed and scale by which all texts could be produced. It was the printing press which facilitated the Protestant Reformation, and it was also the printing press which was responsible for the introduction of the occult grimoires to a larger audience than ever before.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, this occult reformation was enacted not by magicians themselves, but by a series of sceptics who believed that, by revealing in print the content of infamous esoteric manuscripts, they could expose them to the ridicule that they deserved.</p>
<p>Dutch scholar Johann Weyer’s Latin treatise <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_praestigiis_daemonum"><em>De Praestigiis Daemonum</em></a> or “On the Tricks of Demons” was published in 1563. It was one of the first great sceptical works debunking magic, criticising notorious witch hunting manuals like the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Malleus-maleficarum"><em>Malleus Maleficarum</em></a> and, indeed, successfully curbing some of the continental witch trials. Weyer’s work had a huge influence on one Englishman in particular, Reginald Scot, who borrowed from it in his own book, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/60766/60766-h/60766-h.htm">The Discovery of Witchcraft</a>, first published in 1584.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427206/original/file-20211019-18-uz3867.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Malleus Maleficarum is a manual for hunting witches that would serve as guidance for 15th century witch trials.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=malleus+maleficarum&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scot’s The Discovery is a thrilling exposé of both the folk magic practised by witches and the “learned” magic found in grimoires, particularly those attributed to Solomon. Weyer had included, as an appendix to <em>De Praestigiis Daemonum</em>, a direct translation of a Solomonic grimoire which listed the names and ranks of various demons, and how a magician might go about conjuring and commanding them as, supposedly, could Solomon.</p>
<p>Scot “Englished” much of this appendix for his book, concluding scathingly: “He that can be perswaded that these things are true … may soone be brought to beleeve that the moone is made of green cheese.”</p>
<p>Though by no means an atheist – nobody was, at least not openly, in the 1500s - Scot was certainly a smarmy sceptic, and The Discovery shares the exasperated horror of Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion (2006) at the excesses of superstition and belief. Joined by George Gifford’s <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A01718.0001.001?view=toc">A discourse of the Subtill Practices of Deuilles by Vvitches and Sorcerers by which Men are and Haue Bin Greatly Deluded</a> (1587) and Henry Howard’s <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A03738.0001.001?view=toc">A Defensatiue Against the Poyson of Supposed Prophesies</a> (1583), Scot’s treatise seemed to ride the crest of a new wave of scepticism concerning the whole project of magic in general.</p>
<p>Surely the genie was out of the bottle (or demon out of the brazen bowl, as the Solomonic grimoires would describe it). Now that occult beliefs had been so thoroughly exposed and ridiculed, how could they possibly survive?</p>
<h2>King James and the witches</h2>
<p>In 1597, King James VI of Scotland, who would inherit the English throne in 1603, published an extraordinary treatise: <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/king-james-vi-and-is-demonology-1597"><em>Daemonologie</em></a>. The book was not, as the name might suggest, a grimoire-like guide to the conjuration of demons, but rather a serious study of demonic power and the harm it could inflict. King James did not accept the suggestion that any man, even if he was as wise as Solomon, could seriously practise magic without risk to his soul. Nor did he believe, as the smarmy sceptics did, that there was no real threat whatsoever.</p>
<p>James was an angry Christian, a man who believed, sincerely, in the power of the occult and felt duty-bound to protect his people from it in all its forms. He had nothing but contempt for the likes of Scot, whom he regarded, in much the same way as a modern Christian fundamentalist might regard an unbeliever, as a dangerous mocker who did the Devil’s work for him by dismissing the real threat that magic posed.</p>
<p>Even worse, Scot and his fellows had inadvertently introduced into printed English, for the first time, the detail of dangerous grimoire magic which had formerly reached only limited circulation. While it is a myth that James ordered copies of The Discovery to be burned, extracts from the text were indeed consigned to the fire during the witch trials of the 17th century, when sections were found, freed from their original sceptical context, in the documents of those accused of witchcraft.</p>
<h2>One devil too many</h2>
<p>My PhD looks specifically at the fallout of this fascinating cultural clash in the work of the early modern dramatists, and I am particularly interested in the overlooked presence of Solomon in these debates. Most famously, it was Marlowe’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/779/779-h/779-h.htm">Doctor Faustus</a> which sparked a vogue for plays that dealt with the question of the learned magician. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427210/original/file-20211019-20-pnszw0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Doctor Faustus raised many objections due to its interplay with the demonic realm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=marlowe+faustus&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Written in around 1588, Doctor Faustus drew on Scot’s The Discovery in its representation of magic, yet discarded its dismissive tone. Faustus succeeds in summoning the demon Mephistopheles, and signs away his soul in a contract written with his own blood in return for 24 years of power. After wasting his time on petty vengeances, greed and lust, Faustus is finally sent to hell. </p>
<p>Rumour circulated that an extra devil had been seen on stage during the play, a fact which the Puritan William Prynne would gleefully repeat as proof of the evils of theatre in his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Histrio-Mastix-The-Players-Scourge-or-Actors-tragoedie"><em>Histriomastix</em></a>, 1632. Magicians who both did and did not achieve their hoped-for Solomonic command of occult forces would populate the English stage for decades.</p>
<p>Scot and the sceptics had indeed laid bare the detail of occult belief, and their work was highly influential, but it had precisely the opposite of their desired effect. Advances in technology, accessible English translations and an entertainment industry hungry for a good story had conspired to democratise magic. The process they unwittingly began continues today on TikTok and elsewhere.</p>
<h2>Solomon on trial</h2>
<p>It’s a strange truth that grimoire magic is more widely available in 2021 than ever before, and that it is the internet which has popularised exactly the same material that was hidden in a handful of libraries for the first few hundred years of its presence in Europe.</p>
<p>With the debate about the ethics of Solomonic magic underway on Twitch, I hardly dare imagine Scot’s horror, much less King James’s, to hear phrases like “pro-demon rights” from a young person describing themselves as a “demonolater” and “magic is the scientific study of conversations with spiritual beings” from a self-professed “Solomonic mage”.</p>
<p>The latter has done a good job of persuading the Twitch stream that commanding demons is not inherently disrespectful, though a poorly-judged comparison between the authority of the magician and that of the policeman sparks momentary indignation in the chat.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the debate is civil and ends with discussions of new online editions of the rare grimoires. It seems the magical incarnation of King Solomon will live to exorcise another day, and I can’t say I’m surprised. The historical inability of sceptical dismissals and technological advances to do anything other than encourage belief in magic has persuaded me that the fundamentalists are right in one respect: speak of the devil and he shall appear – and that goes for TikTok too.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebekah King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What’s behind Gen Z’s appetite for tarot and spells? 16th century debates about witchcraft help explain why the occult has become viral on TikTok.Rebekah King, PhD Candidate, Faculty of English, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1532212021-01-22T12:41:55Z2021-01-22T12:41:55ZThe spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379982/original/file-20210121-21-q98tpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8243%2C5499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cheese and witches: a potent combination.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">apolonia via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I was scrolling through Twitter recently, a viral tweet caught my attention. It was an image from a book of spells claiming that: “You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.” The spell comes from Kathryn Paulsen’s 1971 book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2155384.The_Complete_Book_of_Magic_And_Witchcraft">The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft</a> – and, while proffering a lump of cheddar may seem like an unusual way of attracting a possible mate, Paulsen’s book draws on a long history of magic. It’s a history that has quite a lot of cheese in it.</p>
<p>It’s not entirely clear why cheese is seen to have magical properties. It might be to do with the fact it’s made from milk, a powerful substance in itself, with the ability to give life and strength to the young. It might also be because the process by which cheese is made is a little bit magical. The 12th-century mystic, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hildegard">Hildegard von Bingen</a>, compared cheese making to the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/7943846.pdf">miracle of life</a> in the way that it forms curds (or solid matter) from something insubstantial. </p>
<p>In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4266213M/The_cheese_and_the_worms">in terms of cheesemaking</a>: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.” The connection with life and the mysterious way that cheese is made, therefore, puts it in a good position to claim magical properties.</p>
<p>Cheese magic stretches back long before Hildegard and the medieval period. The 2nd-century diviner, Artemidorus, mentions “<a href="https://occult-world.com/tyromancy/">tyromancy</a>” – cheese divination – as a method of discovering the future in his treatise <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/artemidorus-interpretation-of-dreams-review/">Oneirocritica</a>. Ironically, given our later association of cheese with vivid dreams, Artemidorus claims that cheese fortune-telling is among the most unreliable. </p>
<p>This didn’t stop later generations from interpreting cheese dreams, though. The Interpretation of Dreams, a 17th-century English manual, advised that: “[to dream of] cakes without cheese is good; those which have both signifie deceit and treason by a Welshman.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A finger points at a line from a book of spells." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unusual advice for the lovelorn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathryn Paulsen: The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most common uses for magic cheese in the medieval and early modern periods was to identify thieves and murderers. The method could be quite simple. First bless cheese with a prayer. <a href="https://bd.b-ok.com/book/3502484/f3326a?dsource=recommend">For example, you might say</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>May his mouth be cursed and full of bitterness, under his tongue pain and labour. If he is guilty, he will eat in the name of the devil. If he is not guilty, he will eat in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then feed a small piece to each of your suspects. The culprit will be unable to swallow their piece of cheese, thus admitting their guilt. </p>
<h2>Mischievous magic</h2>
<p>Even if you’re not a thief, you should be wary around cheese when there’s a witch in the room. In The Odyssey, the sorceress Circe turns Odysseus’ companions into animals by feeding them a magic potion mixed into a drink made of cheese, barley meal, honey and wine. The fourth century Christian theologian, St Augustine of Hippo, <a href="https://archive.org/details/witchcraftinoldn00kitt_0/page/184/">agreed</a> that such things might be possible, though unlikely. </p>
<p>William of Malmesbury seemed convinced that enchanted cheese was a genuine risk, though, and in his 12th-century writings William explained that female Italian innkeepers were especially prone to using enchanted cheese to turn their customers into beasts of burden.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Medieval depiction of Circe, the witch from Homer's Odyssey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Making Circe angry meant it was ‘hard cheese’ for the companions of Odysseus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creator:Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Malevolent witches were also thought to meddle with milk and cheese: in fact, spoiling milk was one of the most common curses associated with witches in early modern Europe. Around 1650, the dairymaid Isabel Maine was convinced her milk was cursed, as it wouldn’t turn into cheese. Only after a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-medieval-england-magic-was-a-service-industry-used-by-rich-and-poor-alike-124009">service magician</a> named <a href="http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/person.html">Margaret Stothard</a> performed a counter-curse would the milk curdle properly. Margaret advised Isabel to carry a stick of rowan wood when she milked the cows in future, to protect the milk from “evil eyes”.</p>
<p>On a more playful side, though still a serious annoyance for their neighbours, witches were also thought to magically steal milk directly from cows’ udders. A 14th century morality manual tells a story about a woman with an <a href="https://archive.org/details/witchcraftinoldn00kitt_0/page/164/">enchanted leather bag</a>. On her command, the bag would leap up and run to her neighbours’ cattle herd, where it would secretly steal milk and bring it back to her.</p>
<h2>Charming cheese</h2>
<p>The idea that cheese is seductive also has a long history. Writing in the 13th century, the moralist and theologian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2850446">Odo of Cheriton</a> used the alluring smell of grilled cheese to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035100">explain adultery</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cheese is toasted and placed in a trap; when the rat smells it, it enters the trap, seizes the cheese, and is caught by the trap. So it is with all sin. Cheese is toasted when a woman is dressed up and adorned so that she entices and catches the foolish rats: take a woman in adultery and the Devil will catch you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The link between cheese and love magic doesn’t stop at seduction, though. In 14th-century Germany, biting a piece of bread and cheese and throwing it over your shoulder was meant to ensure fertility in a relationship. Cheese could also cure <a href="https://societasmagica.org/userfiles/files/Newsletters/docs/SMN_Fall_2004_Issue_13.pdf">male impotence</a>: if a pesky witch had cursed a man’s genitals, a medieval Italian cure was for the man’s wife to bore a hole in cheese, and feed him the resulting pieces.</p>
<p>Given Europeans’ longstanding attraction to cheese, perhaps it’s no wonder that Kathryn Paulsen’s spell is so short and why it needed no further elaboration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tabitha Stanmore received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for her PhD research.</span></em></p>For hundreds of years, magicians believed cheese could help them foretell the future or identify a criminal.Tabitha Stanmore, Honorary Research Fellow, Early Modern Studies, Department of History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1394482020-06-01T13:43:26Z2020-06-01T13:43:26ZTarot resurgence is less about occult than fun and self-help – just like throughout history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338851/original/file-20200601-95065-lfiag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=110%2C67%2C5550%2C3708&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tarot readers have been cast as swindlers and diviners of the future. The history of the cards suggests they are much more. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/set-old-tarot-cards-lying-scattered-181452113">Photology1971/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Faced with the uncertainties of life under lockdown, is it any surprise that <a href="https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/yelp-coronavirus-economic-impact-report">many people</a> are turning to methods of fortune telling <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/18/people-turning-tarot-readers-shamans-wellness-gurus-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-12575923/">such as tarot cards</a>? Journalists are often tempted to ask whether this is a resurgence of “<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-life-coronavirus-virtual-astrology-tarot-card-readings-tt-0410-20200410-po2x6yw5tncvvnpevstsmdlxca-story.html">pseudoscience</a>”. The history of tarot suggests not.</p>
<p>Tarot cards are decks that include four suits, much like standard playing cards, but with an additional set of trump cards, known as the Major Arcana, which depict mythological figures or archetypes such as Death or The Magician. Different tarot decks, such as the Tarot de Marseille or the Eteilla Tarot, contain different numbers of cards, Major Arcana and different illustrations.</p>
<p>These different forms of tarot have been many things for many people: a system of occult meaning or a dangerous fraud, but also a form of therapy, a source of practical advice and even of entertainment.</p>
<h2>Twin myths</h2>
<p>The history of tarot is overshadowed by two mythologies. The first, and more positive, was popularised by occultists in the 18th and 19th centuries in France. Men such as the pastor Antoine Court de Gébelin and the occultists Jean-Baptiste Alliette and Éliphas Lévi believed the cards were of <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1087220/f464.image.texteImage">ancient Egyptian</a> or <a href="https://archive.org/details/tarotofbohemians00papu/page/n11/mode/2up">Jewish magical traditions</a>. </p>
<p>Such theories are groundless. The <a href="https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/visconti-tarot">earliest Tarot decks</a> date from 15th-century Italy. Yet these myths inspired occultists to argue the cards encoded <a href="https://archive.org/details/transcendentalma00leviuoft/page/164/mode/2up">hidden ancient mysteries</a>, and that understanding these complex meanings would give cartomancers – card readers – powers to tell the future. </p>
<p>At the same time, a negative myth of tarot was developed by the authorities in countries such as France. After the revolution of 1789, <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/french-historical-studies/article-abstract/28/1/131/9479/Fortune-Tellers-in-the-French-Courts">new provisions against fortune telling</a> were introduced. The press, police and politicians agreed that the very use of tarot cards was evidence that an individual was defrauding people.</p>
<p>These twin myths of ancient wisdom and modern fraud still play a large role in how people respond to the cards. But they are not the only stories we can tell about the history of tarot.</p>
<h2>The other sides</h2>
<p>Rather than the writings of occultists or the judgements of the authorities, historians can turn to what cartomancers and their customers said. As part of my research into <a href="https://creativewitchcraft.wordpress.com/about/introducing-creative-histories-of-witchcraft/">witchcraft in France from 1790-1940</a>, I have come across several hundred cases of cartomancy that reveal different sides to the cards.</p>
<p>For a start, tarot never dominated cartomancy. Fortune tellers were as likely to use standard decks of cards that lacked the Major Arcana. Clients often preferred these plainer methods of fortune telling, not least since they were cheaper. </p>
<p>Even when they did use full tarot decks, fortune tellers were unlikely to embrace the complex systems of symbolic meaning proposed by occultists. Instead, they stuck to simpler schemes. Two of the four suits were normally positive, and two were negative. </p>
<p>Fortune tellers might write quick reminders on the cards about their significance. The cards pictured below are from a set <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10537348r?rk=364808;4">said to have been</a> annotated by the famous cartomancer Mademoiselle Lenormand. The Wheel of Fortune signified “a marriage will bring wealth”, while the Tower of Destruction symbolised “too much generosity”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338009/original/file-20200527-20233-1cf90he.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two images from a Tarot de Marseilles deck allegedly annotated by the fortune teller Mademoiselle Lenormand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10537348r?rk=364808;4">Bibliothèque Nationale de France</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fortune tellers also developed their own interpretations of the images from the cards. In a case from Fougères, north-west France from 1889, for instance, the fortune teller pointed to two cards she had drawn and declared to her client: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well now, the Queen of Spades is your wife, and the Ace of Clubs is money… so your wife is stealing from you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other interpretations are harder to make sense of. In Besançon, eastern France in 1834, a fortune teller interpreted a card that looked like a monkey as evidence that the client was bewitched. Was it the monstrous, almost-human associations of the monkey image that connected it to sorcery? Some forms of historic symbolism are impossible to fully recover. </p>
<h2>Entertainment and therapy</h2>
<p>Although most of these examples are drawn from cases where the authorities actively tried to suppress scams, the fraud cases did not always go as the police hoped. Many clients proved reluctant witnesses in court. While the authorities saw them as naive victims, many demonstrated a more flexible understanding of what they were paying for. For instance, a young woman in Rouen in 1888 told a court: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t believe in all that nonsense. I went to the fortune teller just to please my friend. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Above all, clients thought of fortune telling less as a method of predicting the future and more as a way to address problems in their present. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338852/original/file-20200601-95042-h5mv9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People have always looked to the cards to help them with problems in the present rather than the future.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/trivandrum-kerala-india-july-31-2017-688370518">AjayTvm/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In some ways, tarot could work as a form of psychoanalysis. In 1990, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/terrain/2968">the writer Josée Contreras and the ethnologist Jeanne Favret-Saada</a> drew on experiences with a cartomancer to argue that these methods of divining worked in the same way as modern therapy.</p>
<p>Many of the problems that tarot was used to address remain familiar today. Clients sought stolen and lost objects, the causes of mystery illnesses, news on employment prospects, and reassurances on romantic relationships. </p>
<p>There has been no shortage of scammers in tarot’s history who have used fortune telling to dupe clients. However, the cartomancers’ customers are not as naive as the critics of fortune telling have sometimes assumed, and the act of reading the cards has been more practical than mystical.</p>
<p>For the great majority, the cards have never been a misguided attempt to predict the future. They are a creative means of re-interpreting and coming to terms with an uncertain present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William G. Pooley receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>People are turning to tarot while in lockdown as they search for clarity about love, work and life in such uncertain times.William G Pooley, Lecturer in Modern European History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1230522019-09-24T12:58:30Z2019-09-24T12:58:30ZHow traditional beliefs and systems are used to fight crime in parts of Lagos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293576/original/file-20190923-54804-h30qd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, Lagos naturally draws lots of people to it – good and bad. With an estimated population of <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/lagos-population/">21 million</a>, fighting crime in Nigeria’s former capital territory is a tough job. </p>
<p>Violent crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping, rape and gang-related crimes are common in the Lagos megacity. Owing to this, the state government has invested significantly in modern <a href="https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2019/09/05/crime-battle-sanwo-olu-donates-120-patrol-vehicles-35-motorcycles-to-police/">policing capabilities</a>, while also recognising and regulating the traditional crime fighting structures. </p>
<p>But it’s a complicated business. The state has 20 local governments and 37 local council development areas. Coordination is extremely difficult to manage.</p>
<p>Another gap in the system is that the traditional structures of fighting crime in the city remain largely unexplored. They include traditional spiritualists and family courts. These still enjoy considerable patronage in Nigeria, especially among rural communities.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10246029.2015.1023325">our research</a>, we examined the traditional structures of conflict management and crime control in the Iraye community in the Epe local government of the Lagos mega-city. </p>
<p>Our research shows that traditional structures are effective in adjudicating land disputes (land grabbing), rape and theft, among other cases. We believe that integrating structures like this in Nigeria’s modern crime control mechanisms could help strengthen the country’s crime fighting capabilities. </p>
<h2>Traditional structures</h2>
<p>There are four traditional crime and conflict management structures. </p>
<p>The first is the traditional spiritualist called <em>elegboogi</em> (medicine men and women) and <em>babalawo</em> (diviners) whose task is to protect people from being victims of crime. They also assist in demystifying puzzles surrounding theft. </p>
<p>The relevance of the <em>elegboogis</em> in the community should be seen in the context of the cultural belief systems, which hold that everyone is prone to experiencing crime. And, like bad fortune in life, every attempt should be made to guard against crime and by taking physical measures to protect one’s property and self, but others fortify themselves with charms. Various priests of the various deities (<em>Orisa</em>) provide these services.</p>
<p>The second is the family court (<em>Ile-ejo agbo-ile</em>), which is presided over by family chiefs and elders. They mitigate crises, settle rifts among family members, and adjudicate in criminal cases. They handle cases involving wife battery, family inheritance disputes and petty theft. </p>
<p>Land disputes, for instance, are widespread and could assume dangerous criminal dimensions if not quickly handled within the family. People explore this option to escape the cumbersome nature of reporting to the police, and the likely effect for family harmony. </p>
<p>The third is the king’s court, which is superior to the first two, and includes members of the traditional political structure. The court presides over cases such as murder, land disputes between families, adultery and fornication. </p>
<p>The fourth comprises traditional extrajudicial measures. These are carried out by invoking the spirits or the community’s deities with other ancestral deities such as <em>Ayeni</em> and <em>Lenuwa</em>. </p>
<p>People use these deities because they want instant solutions to their problems, which they cannot get from the modern security agencies such as the police.</p>
<p>The priests, or devotees, of these divinities prepare charms made of herbs, some animal parts and alcohol. A spell is then cast over the charm. This rests on the belief in a spiritual universe of the efficacy of the charm, the victim (who has brought the case) and the devotee, priest or diviner never look on the charm as purely material. They believe in the invisible efficacy of the charm, provided that the mixture is made to specification and the correct invocation is rendered.</p>
<p>Other extra-judicial measures include ostracism in the form of isolation from the community or banishment. </p>
<p>Then there’s satirical sanction or shaming. This entails public mockery, where the culprit is drawn or moved to a central place in the community and mocked for his or her anti-social behaviour.</p>
<p>Ostracism and satirical isolation are mostly used where conflicts or criminal injury are deemed to be beyond human understanding. They are also used where the people involved are not satisfied with the judgement received from legal processes. </p>
<p>Another intervention involves traditional oath-taking. Oaths are generally used as a curse when there is doubt or mystery over an issue, and the parties to the issue are unwilling to compromise and there is no clear-cut evidence or proof.</p>
<p>It is believed that the consequences of lying under oath may range from insanity to death. Hence, people of the town do not speak falsely when under oath. According to a female High Chief whose traditional title is lagbariko explains, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>ancestral cults are like spirits, they are dead people. But, they are not considered dead by the community people because of their impact on the community when they were alive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their spirits are also invoked to intercede in the community’s affairs, like cleansing of the community, crime prevention, dispute settlement. </p>
<h2>Case for integration</h2>
<p>The role and efficacy of the traditional crime-prevention measures in Iraye-Oke are widely acknowledged by people who live in the area. </p>
<p>We believe that traditional methods should be harnessed to manage conflicts and crime. This is because it is the way of life that people can relate to and that everyone can understand.</p>
<p>But, the traditional mechanisms of conflict management and crime control should be regulated by the police to prevent human rights violations. </p>
<p>There is a precedent for this: the police invite some ethnic vigilante groups to <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/07/131-badoo-suspects-cultists-nab-ikorodu/">fight crime in Lagos state</a>. Since crime is local, sustaining this partnership with traditional structures in indigenous communities will assist in solving crime problems in the mega-city.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oludayo Tade does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The role and efficacy of the traditional crime-prevention measures in Iraye-Oke are widely acknowledged by people who live in the area.Oludayo Tade, Researcher in criminology, victimology, electronic frauds and cybercrime, University of IbadanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1020882019-02-04T16:03:59Z2019-02-04T16:03:59ZThe science of why so many people believe in psychic powers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242272/original/file-20181025-71011-oqlp4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mind reading and the ability to predict the future are not skills people generally associate with the human race. Yet, research shows many people genuinely believe in the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/16748-americans-beliefs-paranormal-infographic.html">existence of psychic powers</a>.</p>
<p>You would think that instances of proven psychic fraud over the years would weaken the credibility of psychic claims. There have been historical cases, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajos_Pap">Lajos Pap</a>, the Hungarian spiritualist medium, who was found to be faking animal appearances at seances. And then more recently, self described psychic James Hydrick was revealed as a trickster. Hydrick confessed his paranormal demonstrations were <a href="https://boingboing.net/2015/07/21/classic-video-james-randi-exp.html">tricks learned in prison</a>.</p>
<p>Another notable example involved televangelist Peter Popoff. His wife used a wireless transmitter to broadcast information about sermon attendees to Popoff via an earpiece. Popoff claimed to receive this <a href="http://thesplendorofthechurch.com/2017/11/12/born-again-televangelist-peter-popoff-exposed-as-a-fraud/">information by paranormal means</a> and rose to fame hosting a nationally televised programme, during which he performed seemingly miraculous cures on audience members.</p>
<p>But despite such cases, there are still many people who firmly believe in the power of psychic ability. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx">According to a US Gallup survey</a>, for example, more than one-quarter of people believe humans have psychic abilities – such as telepathy and clairvoyance.</p>
<h2>The believers</h2>
<p>A recent report may help to shed some light on why people continue to believe in psychic powers. The study <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13421-015-0563-x">tested believers and sceptics</a> with the same level of education and academic performance and found that people who believe in psychic powers think less analytically. This means that they tend to interpret the world from a subjective personal perspective and fail to consider information critically. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-top-three-scientific-explanations-for-ghost-sightings-58259">The top three scientific explanations for ghost sightings</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Believers also often view <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2016/oct/31/did-a-memory-experiment-really-show-evidence-for-psychic-abilities">psychic claims as confirmatory evidence</a> – regardless of their evidential basis. The case of Chris Robinson, who refers to himself as a “dream detective”, demonstrates this. </p>
<p>Robinson claims to have foreseen terrorist attacks, <a href="https://nypost.com/2016/08/01/meet-the-psychic-who-uses-gift-to-solve-fbi-cold-cases/">disasters and celebrity deaths</a>. His assertions derive from limited and questionable evidence. Tests conducted by Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona provided support for Robinson’s ability, however, other researchers using similar methods <a href="http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread885689/pg1">failed to confirm Schwartz’s conclusion</a>.</p>
<h2>Vague and general</h2>
<p>Psychic claims are often general and vague – such as foretelling a plane crash or celebrity death – and this is in part why so many people believe in the possibility of psychic abilities.</p>
<p>This is known as <a href="http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/barnum_demo.htm">The Barnum effect</a>, a common psychological phenomenon whereby people tend to accept vague, general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242273/original/file-20181025-71011-6l7xhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A psychic medium is someone who is believed to have extrasensory powers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBXRzdzFnHk">Research for example</a>, has shown that individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, that are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. The name references the circus man Phineas Taylor Barnum, who had a reputation as a master psychological manipulator.</p>
<h2>Impossible to validate</h2>
<p>Many psychic claims have also proved impossible to confirm. A classic illustration is Uri Geller’s contention that he “willed” the football to move during a <a href="http://www.urigeller.com/how-i-moved-the-football-during-euro-96/">penalty kick at Euro 96</a>. The ball movement occurred spontaneously in an uncontrolled environment and Geller made the claim retrospectively. </p>
<p>When professed abilities are subject to scientific scrutiny researchers generally discredit them. This was true of Derek Ogilvie in the 2007 TV documentary The Million Dollar Mind Reader. Investigation concluded Ogilvie genuinely believed he possessed powers, but was not actually able to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jun/19/familyandrelationships.tvandradio">read babies’ minds</a>. </p>
<p>And when scientists have endorsed psychic claims, <a href="http://www.urigeller.com/documentaries/summary-of-the-sri-experiments/">criticism has typically followed</a>. This occurred in the 1970s when physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff published a paper in the prestigious journal Nature, which supported the notion that Uri Geller possessed genuine psychic ability.
Psychologists, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=L-SSHIVt30cC&pg=PA443&lpg=PA443&dq=Ray+Hyman+uri+geller+wall&source=bl&ots=pVdBWGUKpX&sig=31jz9cUM6RTOdppBmM-rHaEcVvg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjy4b-zpePfAhWG2KQKHb_0C_YQ6AEwHHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Ray%20Hyman%20uri%20geller%20wall&f=false">such as Ray Hyman</a> refuted this – highlighting major methodological flaws. These included a hole in the laboratory wall that afforded views of drawings that Geller “psychically” reproduced. </p>
<h2>Mixed evidence</h2>
<p>Another factor that facilitates belief in psychic ability is the existence of scientific research that provides positive findings. This reinforces believers’ views that claims are genuine and phenomenon real, but ignores that fact that published studies are often criticised and replication is necessary in order for general acceptance to occur.</p>
<p>One prominent example of this was a paper produced by social psychologist Daryl Bem in the high-quality Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It was said the research showed support for the existence of precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/psyccritiques-spotlight/issue-11.aspx">of a future event</a>. But other researchers <a href="https://www.csicop.org/si/show/failure_to_replicate_results_of_bem_parapsychology_experiments_published_by">failed to reproduce these results</a>.</p>
<h2>Mind set</h2>
<p>So it seems that despite occurrences of fakery, forgery and fraudulence – as well as mixed evidence – people will still continue to believe in psychic phenomena. cIndeed, <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-reports/2017/10/31/1-3-americans-feel-they-have-experienced-psychic-m">research has shown that</a> one in three Americans feel they have experienced a psychic moment – and nearly half of US women claim they have felt the presence of a spirit.</p>
<p>Whether this is down to lack of analytical skills, genuine experiences, or just in a bid to make the world a little bit more interesting, it seems believers will continue to believe – despite science indicating otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Over a quarter of people believe that humans have psychic abilities.Neil Dagnall, Reader in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityKen Drinkwater, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Cognitive and Parapsychology, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/803092017-08-09T00:28:51Z2017-08-09T00:28:51ZEclipsing the occult in early America: Benjamin Franklin and his almanacs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181273/original/file-20170807-2667-6m8q7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C801%2C6501%2C5729&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Franklin's lifelong quest was spreading scientific knowledge to regular people.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003674083/">Mason Chamberlin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By the time he was 20 years old, colonial American Benjamin Franklin had already spent two years working as a printer in London. He returned to Philadelphia in 1726. During the sea voyage home, he kept a journal that included many of his observations of the natural world. Franklin was inquisitive, articulate and <a href="http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_inquiring_weather.html">interested in mastering the universe</a>.</p>
<p>During one afternoon calm on September 14, Franklin wrote,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“as we sat playing Draughts upon deck, we were surprised with a sudden and unusual darkness of the sun, which as we could perceive was only covered with a small thin cloud: when that was passed by, we discovered that that glorious luminary laboured under a very great eclipse. At least ten parts out of twelve of him were hid from our eyes, and we were apprehensive he would have been totally darkened.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Total solar eclipses are not rare phenomena; <a href="https://www.space.com/25644-total-solar-eclipses-frequency-explained.html">every 18 months</a> on average one occurs somewhere on Earth. Franklin and his shipmates likely had seen eclipses before. What was different for Franklin and his generation was a new understanding of the causes of eclipses and the possibility of accurately predicting them.</p>
<p>Earlier generations in Europe relied on magical thinking, interpreting such celestial events through the lens of the occult, as if the universe were sending a message from heaven. By contrast, Franklin came of age at a time when supernatural readings were held in suspicion. He would go on to spread modern scientific views of astronomical events through his popular almanac – and attempt to free people from the realm of the occult and astrological prophecy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181275/original/file-20170807-25556-188qjlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ptolemy’s Earth-centered universe with the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbiting our planet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Planisphaerium_Ptolemaicum_siue_machina_orbium_mundi_ex_hypothesi_Ptolemaica_in_plano_disposita_(2709983277).jpg">Andreas Cellarius</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Beyond divine heavens with modern astronomy</h2>
<p>Ancient people conceived of the heavens as built around human beings. For centuries, people subscribed to the <a href="http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/theories/ptolemaic_system.html">Ptolemaic belief about the solar system</a>: The planets and the sun revolved around the stationary Earth.</p>
<p>The idea that God drove the heavens is very old. Because people thought that their god (or gods) guided all heavenly occurrences, it’s not surprising that many people – <a href="http://idp.bl.uk/4DCGI/education/astronomy/sky.html">ancient Chinese</a>, for example, and <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/solar-eclipse-apocalypse-how-ancient-civilisations-explained-disappearance-sun-1492508">Egyptians and Europeans</a> – believed that what they witnessed in the skies above provided signs of future events. </p>
<p>For this reason, solar eclipses were for many centuries understood to be harbingers of good or evil for humankind. They were attributed <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar-eclipse-history.html">magical or mysterious predictive qualities</a> that could influence human lives. During the first century A.D., people – including astrologers, magicians, alchemists and mystics – who claimed to have mastery over supernatural phenomena held sway over kings, religious leaders and whole populations.</p>
<p>Nicholas Copernicus, whose life straddled the 15th and 16th centuries, used scientific methods to devise a more accurate understanding of the solar system. In his famous book, “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” (published in 1543), Copernicus showed that the planets revolved around the sun. He didn’t get it all right, though: He thought planetary bodies had circular orbits, because the Christian God would have designed perfect circles in the cosmos. That planetary motion is elliptical is a later discovery.</p>
<p>By the time Benjamin Franklin grew up in New England (about 150 years later), few people still believed in the Ptolemaic system. Most had learned from living in an increasingly enlightened culture that the Copernican system was more reliable. Franklin, like many in his generation, believed that knowledge about the scientific causes for changes in the environment could work to reduce human fears about what the skies might portend. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181276/original/file-20170807-25576-1ftk19s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By measuring the height of celestial objects with an astrolabe, a user could predict the position of stars, planets and the sun.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Astrolabe_planisférique.jpg">Pom²</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was an age of wonder, still, but wonder was harnessed to technological advances that could help people understand better the world they lived in. Accurate instruments, such as the astrolabe, allowed people to measure the motion of the planets and thus predict movements in the heavens, particularly phenomena like solar and lunar eclipses and the motions of planets like Venus.</p>
<p>In his earliest printed articles, Franklin criticized the idea that education belonged solely to the elite. He hoped to bring knowledge to common people, so they could rely on expertise outside of what they might hear in churches. Franklin opted to use his own almanacs – along with his satirical pen – to help readers distinguish between astronomical events and astrological predictions.</p>
<h2>Old-fashioned almanacs</h2>
<p>Printing was a major technological innovation during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries that helped foster information-sharing, <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/from-tablet-to-tablet/final-projects/-almanacs-in-17th-and-18th-century-america-michael-myckowiak-14">particularly via almanacs</a>.</p>
<p>These amazing compilations included all kinds of useful information and were relied on by farmers, merchants, traders and general readers in much the same way we rely on smartphones today. Colonial American almanacs provided the estimated times of sunrises and sunsets, high and low tides, periods of the moon and sun, the rise and fall of constellations, solar and lunar eclipses, and the transit of planets in the night skies. More expensive almanacs included local information such as court dates, dates of markets and fairs, and roadway distances between places. Most almanacs also offered standard reference information, including lists of the reigns of monarchs of England and Europe, along with a chronology of important dates in the Christian Era. </p>
<p><a href="https://newenglandquarterly.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/colonial-almanacs/">Almanac culture dominated New England life</a> when Franklin was a youth. They were the most purchased items American printers offered, with many a printer making his chief livelihood by printing almanacs.</p>
<p>Almanacs were money-makers, so <a href="http://www.librarycompany.org/BFWriter/poor.htm">Franklin developed his own version</a> shortly after he opened his own shop in Philadelphia. The city already had almanac-makers – Titan Leeds and John Jerman, among others – but Franklin aimed to gain the major share of the almanac trade.</p>
<p>Franklin considered astrological prediction foolish, especially in light of new scientific discoveries being made about the universe. He thought almanacs should not prognosticate on future events, as if people were still living in the dark ages. So he found a way to <a href="http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/prichard44.html">make fun of his competitors</a> who continued to pretend they could legitimately use eclipses, for instance, to predict future events.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181278/original/file-20170807-28176-k1oa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Franklin dispensed many aphorisms in the guise of ‘Poor Richard,’ such as ‘Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003654338/">Oliver Pelton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Introducing Poor Richard</h2>
<p>In addition to the usual fare, <a href="http://www.benjamin-franklin-history.org/poor-richards-almanac/">Franklin’s almanac provided</a> stories, aphorisms and poems, all ostensibly curated by a homespun character he created: <a href="http://www.librarycompany.org/BFWriter/poor.htm">Richard Saunders, the fictional “author”</a> of Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”</p>
<p>The “Poor Richard” Saunders persona allowed Franklin to satirize almanac makers who still wrote about eclipses as occult phenomena. Satire works because it closely reproduces the object being made fun of, with a slight difference. We’re familiar with this method today from watching skits on “Saturday Night Live” and other parody programs.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1375&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181280/original/file-20170807-20706-16xeqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1375&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Title page of Franklin’s first ‘Poor Richard’ almanac, for 1733.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Franklin’s voice was close enough to his satirical target that “Poor Richard” stole the market. For instance, Poor Richard began his career by predicting the death of Titan Leeds, his competitor. He later would do the same thing to John Jerman. Franklin was determined to mock almanac-makers who pretended to possess occult knowledge. Nobody knows when a person might die, and only astrologers would pretend to think a solar or lunar eclipse might mean something for humans.</p>
<p>Franklin included a wonderfully funny section in his almanac for 1735, making light of his competitors who did offer astrological prognostications. As “Poor Richard,” he wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I shall not say much of the Signification of the Eclipses this Year, for in truth they do not signifie much; only I may observe by the way, that the first Eclipse of the Moon being celebrated in Libra or the Ballance, foreshews a Failure of Justice, where People judge in their own Cases. But in the following Year 1736, there will be six Eclipses, four of the Sun, and two of the Moon, which two Eclipses of the Moon will be both total, and portend great Revolutions in Europe, particularly in Germany….”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Richard Saunders is clear in the opening remark that “Eclipses … do not signifie much.” He nonetheless goes on to base amazing predictions for 1736 on them, in effect lampooning anyone who would rely on the stars to foretell human events. Great revolutions were taking place in Europe, but no one needed to read eclipses in order to figure that out; they needed only to read the day’s newspapers.</p>
<p>The next year, Franklin decided go a step further than just satirizing these occult prognostications. He had Richard Saunders explain his understanding of some of the science behind eclipses. He characterized the “Difference between Eclipses of the Moon and of the Sun” by reporting that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“All Lunar Eclipses are universal, i.e. visible in all Parts of the Globe which have the Moon above their Horizon, and are every where of the same Magnitude: But Eclipses of the Sun do not appear the same in all Parts of the Earth where they are seen; being when total in some Places, only partial in others; and in other Places not seen at all, tho’ neither Clouds nor Horizon prevent the Sight of the Sun it self.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The goal of an explanation like this? To eclipse occult belief. He hoped people would become more confident about the universe and everything in it and would learn to rely on <a href="http://nationaleclipse.com/history.html">scientifically validated knowledge</a> rather than an almanac-maker’s fictions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carla J. Mulford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Franklin advanced a scientific – not supernatural – understanding of astronomical events such as eclipses. His satirical character ‘Poor Richard’ mocked those who bought into astrological predictions.Carla J. Mulford, Professor of English, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437552015-07-13T05:24:50Z2015-07-13T05:24:50ZThe legacy of implanted Satanic abuse ‘memories’ is still causing damage today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88089/original/image-20150710-17462-1s50lvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unhappy memories of a past that never was.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>When 21-year-old nurse Carol Felstead went to her doctor complaining of repeated headaches, she wasn’t just prescribed painkillers. Instead, she was referred for psychotherapy that would ultimately involve hypnosis to “recover” so-called repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Carol subsequently came to believe that her parents were the leaders of a Satanic cult and that her mother murdered another of her children, sat Carol on top of the body and then set fire to the family home.</p>
<p>But these allegations were untrue and the memories they were based upon were incorrect. Today, almost 30 years on, “recovered memory therapy” has been discredited by the scientific and academic community and is known to implant false memories, apparent memories for events that never actually happened. </p>
<p>Experimental psychologists have <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/26/3/291.full">repeatedly demonstrated</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/1ohI2qp">the ease</a> with which false memories <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Coan/publication/246760350_Manufacturing_false_memories_using_bits_of_reality/links/53d259730cf220632f3c932e.pdf">can be implanted</a> in a sizeable proportion of the population under well-controlled laboratory conditions. But it is also undoubtedly the case that such false memories can arise spontaneously as well as in the <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/lof93.htm">context of psychotherapy</a>.</p>
<p>Although we are typically not consciously aware of it, we often have to judge whether an apparent memory is real. Is it based upon mental events that were purely internally generated (for example, by imagination or a dream) or based upon events which really took place in the external world?</p>
<h2>Implanting false memories</h2>
<p>One of the techniques that has been shown to result in false memories is asking people to imagine events that <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/2/186.full">never actually took place</a>. It appears that, eventually and especially in people with good imaginations, the memory of the imagined event is misinterpreted as a memory for a real event. The use of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692104/pdf/9415925.pdf">hypnotic regression</a> is a particularly powerful means to implant false memories.</p>
<p>The correct chronology in Carol Felstead’s case is as follows: there was another daughter who was ill from birth and she died in hospital in 1962 from problems associated with a defective heart. The house fire was a tragic accident that occurred in 1963 and made the front page news of the local newspaper. But Carol was born in 1964. These events happened before she was alive. Carol later falsely claimed to have given birth to six babies who were meant to have been conceived and ritually sacrificed by the Satanic cult. Her medical records show that Carol was never pregnant.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88040/original/image-20150710-17482-12js3qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carol Felstead (later Myers)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Carol <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/dec/11/carole-myers-satanic-child-abuse">cut off contact</a> with her family, changed her name to Carole Myers, and died in 2005, aged 41, in circumstances that are <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/law/article4045170.ece">still unexplained</a>. Prior to receiving psychotherapy, she was a bright and intelligent young woman with her life ahead of her. Her story highlights the inherent dangers associated with unproven psycho-therapeutic techniques which seek to recover putative repressed memories of childhood trauma, in particular childhood sexual abuse.</p>
<p>The latter is an abhorrent crime that can have devastating consequences for victims. Yet, while we must not lose sight of this, it is also important to remember that no one benefits from false allegations. Victims of childhood sexual abuse have <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018020&content=reviews">difficulty forgetting</a> –- not remembering -– what happened. False memory also has serious consequences and can lead to <a href="http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2288">family breakdown</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miscarriage-Memory-Historic-Abuse-Cases/dp/0955518415">miscarriages of justice</a>.</p>
<p>False memories aren’t limited to cases of alleged childhood abuse. The field of anomalistic psychology attempts to propose and, where possible, empirically test explanations for bizarre experiences based purely upon accepted psychological principles. Based upon <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/anomalistic-psychology-christopher-c-french/?K=9781403995711">my own anomalistic psychology research</a> and that of others, there is little doubt in my mind that sincerely held bizarre memories of past lives and alien abductions are best explained as being <a href="https://www.gold.ac.uk/media/2003-french-fantastic.pdf">false memories</a>. Such memories can sometimes be distressing for those that hold them but rarely cause distress for others. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is not true of Satanic abuse claims. For many people, it is all too easy to believe, even in the absence of convincing evidence, that memories of childhood sexual abuse may be repressed and then recovered during psychotherapy. This is partly because it is sadly true that such abuse is a lot more common than was once accepted.</p>
<p>But it is also because Freud’s pseudoscientific influence lingers on. The psychoanalytic notion of repression is that when something extremely traumatic happens an automatic involuntary defence mechanism kicks in that pushes the memory for the trauma into an inaccessible part of the mind. But this is simply <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/Cosmo.html">not supported</a> by the empirical evidence. </p>
<h2>Helping victims</h2>
<p>The only definitive way to tell false memories from real ones is by reference to independent external evidence. Subjectively, false memories can be every bit as detailed and compelling as real ones. The best that can be hoped for is that, by appealing to external evidence, one can convince the victim that their memories do not reflect reality thus converting them into what psychologists refer to as <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/08/04/0956797610379865.full">“non-believed memories”</a>.</p>
<p>In the case of Carol Felstead, it would have been a very easy matter to have checked her claims with the documented historical record and to have established that they were delusions. Instead, those that treated her uncritically accepted her account and fuelled those delusions. </p>
<p>Allegations of childhood abuse should always be listened to and examined carefully. But we must treat stories based on “recovered memories” with the level of scepticism they deserve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher French is a member of the Professional and Scientific Advisory Board of the British False Memory Society.</span></em></p>Historic use of “recovered memory” therapy led to false allegations of abuse that continue to haunt the families involved.Christopher French, Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.