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Italian Witchcraft & Shamanism with Dr Angela Puca · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen. What? What's going to happen?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: What?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I welcome to the Occult Rejects.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: This episode, we got two fascinating people on the show.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: We somehow was able to bring Teresa back from retirement.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: So we got the spiritual Gangster ourself joining us and
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know how long, but we also have doctor
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Angela Phuka joining us today, which I am extremely excited for.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: This is a topic that I've wanted to cover for
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: a while, and I'll be honest, I haven't found anybody
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: that I thought was worth listening to until I came
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  Speaker 3: across her. So before we introduce her, let me introduce
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: the other the other rejects. And like I said already,
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: we got Teresa back with us for this one. Teresa,
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: please let everybody know what's up with you.
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: Thank you for inviting me back on for this one.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: I'm excited. Yeah, I've been absent in a while, but
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: I'm pumped to come back for this because you know
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  Speaker 4: it's Italian. I'm Italian, so I wanted to learn more
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: about like white cultural heritage, and I'm really curious to
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  Speaker 4: hear from doctor Puka. So yeah, thank you for having
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: me back.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Of course, of course appreciate it. And we got that
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: man himself, the storyteller, Robbie Marx. How are you, sir,
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: doing great?
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  Speaker 5: Doing great? Thanks for having me on, Nick, I'm excited
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: about this one as well. Good to meet you, doctor Pooka.
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  Speaker 5: And yeah, I've studied a bit of witchcraft here and
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: there in regard to Leland with his arradia and kind
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  Speaker 5: of getting into, you know, some of the Etruscan stuff.
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  Speaker 5: So I'm really interested to go down this road and
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  Speaker 5: learn some new things. So thanks for coming on with us.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us, Robby.
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  Speaker 5: And oh yeah, to plug myself, Robbie Marx. You can
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  Speaker 5: go to my link tree r M A r X
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  Speaker 5: and that'll pull up everything I do, my art, my podcast,
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks definitely go check out his art. He's got tons
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: of it and very impressive stuff. And last min not Lis,
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  Speaker 3: we got my man Matt with us again. What is
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  Speaker 3: going on? So I'm so glad you can.
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  Speaker 6: Make it, so glad to be here as well, so
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  Speaker 6: thanks for calling. Also happy to be in this specific conversation.
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  Speaker 6: I'm in Italy right now. Do have Italian heritage as well,
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  Speaker 6: so it's also very nice to learn more about these
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  Speaker 6: kind of things. So yeah, nice to meet you, Angela
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  Speaker 6: and Theresa. If anyone wants to find my work always
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  Speaker 6: at Matt Mora nineteen. That's on X YouTube, TikTok, Twitch,
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  Speaker 6: our YouTube, Instagram, and I think that's a lot of stuff.
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  Speaker 6: Also my website that's Cabala dot com k A A
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  Speaker 6: B A l A h dot com and we have
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  Speaker 6: the spaces on x every Friday with the Gray Lodge.
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  Speaker 6: That's the True Gray with a V instead of you,
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  Speaker 6: so Truththetrue Great Large dot com. You can find our
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  Speaker 6: work there or join our spaces every Friday. That's really
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  Speaker 6: cool as well.
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  Speaker 3: And yeah, that's cool, awesome, thank you very much. I
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  Speaker 3: really appreciate you joining us. And finally, last but not least,
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  Speaker 3: we get to the guest herself. We have doctor Angela
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  Speaker 3: Puka with us today and she is a scholar of
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  Speaker 3: religious studies whose research focuses on magic, witchcraft, paganism, esotericism,
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  Speaker 3: and shamanism. She's been teaching at Laig's Trinity Leeds Trinity
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  Speaker 3: University since twenty sixteen and earned her PhD at the
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  Speaker 3: University of Leeds in twenty twenty one. With research on
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  Speaker 3: Italian witchcraft and shamanism, which we will be talking about today.
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  Speaker 1: And if you don't already know, you better know.
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  Speaker 3: She's got a YouTube channel called Angela's Symposium, and I
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  Speaker 3: honestly think people who listen to this channel will really
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  Speaker 3: like what she has because again she brings the academic
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  Speaker 3: to the occult and that's something that I'm huge on.
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  Speaker 3: So definitely go check out her channel. I'm sure sure
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  Speaker 3: you'll love all her work. Now I'm going to shut
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  Speaker 3: up and I'll let her introduce herself. Please, doctor Angela,
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  Speaker 3: let everybody know you know where they can find you
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  Speaker 3: or anything you'd like to pull it.
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  Speaker 2: Please, yes, So thank you very much for inviting me.
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  Speaker 2: And yeah, as you said, I'm a religious ady scholar
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  Speaker 2: and a university lecturer. I'm a based at a leader
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  Speaker 2: in the university, but I have taught and collaborate with
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  Speaker 2: several universities worldwide. This spring, i was at University of
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  Speaker 2: Rome teaching and I'm also part of a research project
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  Speaker 2: that they have on magic and also their department is fantastic.
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  Speaker 2: I was really impressed. I thought. Also at the University
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  Speaker 2: of Catania in Sicily, so I've given lectures lectures at Harvard,
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  Speaker 2: and so yeah, I'm really committed to bridging the gap
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  Speaker 2: between academy and the community of practitioners. And my project
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  Speaker 2: is called Angela Symposium. So people find me on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram,
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  Speaker 2: pretty much everywhere and alsocial media. And my website is
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  Speaker 2: doctor Angela Pook dot com. Dr Angela Pook dot com
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  Speaker 2: and you find my online courses. If you're interested in witchcraft,
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  Speaker 2: there is one dedicated specifically to that as well as
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  Speaker 2: I have a course on the Left and Path, and
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  Speaker 2: there's the the option also to uh to book tutoring
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  Speaker 2: sessions with me, one to one sessions. And for those
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  Speaker 2: who love my project of delivering free academic scholarships to
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  Speaker 2: the weather public, my patron is also an option to
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  Speaker 2: join my community on a discord with monthly lectures and
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  Speaker 2: monthly calls and so on. And it really helps because
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  Speaker 2: my project is is crowdfunded, so that's that's essential that
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  Speaker 2: people support it. So yeah, thank you for inviting me,
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  Speaker 2: and I look forward to our conversation.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, not very much.
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  Speaker 3: Again, I really really appreciate you coming on and again
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  Speaker 3: just to reiterate it for the people listening. You know,
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  Speaker 3: when I was looking at a YouTube channel. There was
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  Speaker 3: a couple of shows. I was like, God, damn, I
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  Speaker 3: wish I would have thought of that as a as
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  Speaker 3: a topic. And now I can't do it because I
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  Speaker 3: look like I'm copying her. Definitely go check out our channel.
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  Speaker 2: Good you can, you can still, you can still do it,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, reference my video and then you had
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  Speaker 2: your take.
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  Speaker 1: There you go.
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  Speaker 2: I think I mean that that's literally what academics do
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  Speaker 2: all the time.
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  Speaker 1: That is right right.
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  Speaker 2: We reference each other and then we add our own
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  Speaker 2: our own take or our own opinion. So as long
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  Speaker 2: as people reference each other, I don't see a problem
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  Speaker 2: you got.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I'll have to keep that in mind. Maybe
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  Speaker 1: I will do that.
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  Speaker 3: But I guess, just to start it off, what got
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  Speaker 3: you into even studying the stuff? How did this catch
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  Speaker 3: your attention? You're like, this is what I'm going to do.
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  Speaker 2: I think it was a long journey because being born
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  Speaker 2: and raised in Italy, it's Italian is a Italy is
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  Speaker 2: a very strong Catholic country, and there is a reason
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  Speaker 2: why I have to move to the Okay to do
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  Speaker 2: my PhD, because it was impossible to do in Italy.
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  Speaker 2: But I did my bachelors and my masters in Italy
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  Speaker 2: at the University of Naples, because I'm from Napoli, Neapolitan,
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  Speaker 2: so I did my bachelors and masters, and while I
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  Speaker 2: was doing my academic formation, I didn't even think that
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  Speaker 2: it was possible to study Estidicism and witchcraft from, you know,
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  Speaker 2: especially contemporary contemporary forms, because I could see around me
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  Speaker 2: in academia that there were some studies on the witch
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  Speaker 2: trials and the Middle Ages, so there were some historical
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  Speaker 2: studies on witchcraft, but there was really nothing that was contemporary.
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  Speaker 2: There was Arnesso de Martino, who in the twentieth century
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  Speaker 2: has studied a bit of magic in the South, for instance,
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  Speaker 2: but I couldn't see any of that going on in
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  Speaker 2: the Italian academia. So at first I went more into
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Buddhist studies. So I studied Sanskrit and Tibetan, and I
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  Speaker 2: thought initially that I would become a Buddhist studies scholar.
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  Speaker 2: And even in that case, I was more interested in
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  Speaker 2: the magical side. So I was more interested in yoga
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  Speaker 2: and in tantra and in all the subsections of Buddhism
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  Speaker 2: that have more to do with esteticism. Pretty much, so
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  Speaker 2: even when I was when that was what I had
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  Speaker 2: in mind. My core interest has always been magic and studicism.
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  Speaker 2: So and then I came across a YouTube video from
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  Speaker 2: my now friend and colleague, doctor Johnny Butler, who was
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  Speaker 2: giving a presentation about PhD on Irish witchcraft and paganism,
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  Speaker 2: and I thought, wow, is that possible to study that?
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  Speaker 2: Like academically? I didn't even think that there was a possibility,
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  Speaker 2: because you know, you have to think that, you know,
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  Speaker 2: for somebody who is Italian and has never been exposed
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  Speaker 2: to that kind of research before, I didn't even think
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  Speaker 2: that it was possible, to be fair, So that kind
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  Speaker 2: of was a turning point and I thought, Okay, maybe
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  Speaker 2: if it's not possible in Italy, I have to see
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  Speaker 2: whether there's a chance to do this elsewhere. And I Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: A series of let's call them coincidences led me to
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  Speaker 2: apply to do two universities in the UK. I applied
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  Speaker 2: to Chester and two Leads, and I got into both.
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  Speaker 2: And I decided to go to Leads because they also
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  Speaker 2: offered me a teaching contract while I was doing my PhD,
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  Speaker 2: So I started teaching alongside my PhD. So I've been
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  Speaker 2: teaching there for nine years now, and yeah, because my
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  Speaker 2: PhD was in a collaboration between the University of Leeds
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  Speaker 2: and Leads Trenty University, which are two different universities, but
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  Speaker 2: the PhD was awarded by Leads UNI, and I'm teaching
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  Speaker 2: at Leads Trentity. So yeah, that's that's my origin story.
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  Speaker 2: And in the last year of my PhD, I asked
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  Speaker 2: my supervisors to have a sabbatical from teaching so that
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  Speaker 2: I could write up my thesis or dissertation. As you
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  Speaker 2: say in America. In the UK is the opposite. They
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  Speaker 2: called thesis the PhD and dissertation the bachelors and Masters,
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  Speaker 2: so it's always a bit confusing, but yeah, I was
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  Speaker 2: given that I wanted to write up my PhD. I
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: asked for as a article from teaching and they agree
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  Speaker 2: to that. And then I found myself having all these
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  Speaker 2: teaching energy that couldn't go into class and I thought,
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  Speaker 2: you know what, maybe I could start a YouTube channel.
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  Speaker 2: So I started a YouTube channel in the last year
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  Speaker 2: of my PhD. And at first I was just talking
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  Speaker 2: about things that I had research for my PhD but
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: didn't end up in my PhD. Because when you when
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: you're PhD, you have to study all sorts of things
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: that don't end up actually in your tea. So I thought, okay,
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  Speaker 2: it's a bit of a way to have all these
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  Speaker 2: research and you know, not to do anything with it.
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  Speaker 2: So I thought, I'm going to make some YouTube videos
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  Speaker 2: and so that's how it started. It started with material
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: from my research and my PhD, and then as the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: project grow, I started to do dedicated research to you know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: just for my YouTube channel. So now I do dedicated
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  Speaker 2: research even on things that I don't research academically, but
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: given that I do have the method to find the
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: sources and collate them together and and find the data
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  Speaker 2: and analyze the data. So I use all my academic
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: skills to even do dedicated research that I do for
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  Speaker 2: the topics that you see on my YouTube channel. But
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: originally it just started out as me covering the things
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  Speaker 2: that I was already researching for my doctorate.
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  Speaker 3: Well, you know something I had noticed that you did?
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  Speaker 3: I think it was Geodana Bruno. You've covered right, It
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  Speaker 3: could be yes, Yeah, was that somebody that you learned
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  Speaker 3: through your studies or is that something you just you
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  Speaker 3: knew from I guess you know the past school.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Jordano Bruno is somebody you know from school if
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  Speaker 2: you're Italian. Okay, so it's really I think the first
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  Speaker 2: time that we study Jordano Bruno is in high school.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: I did so in Italy. There are different types of
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  Speaker 2: high schools, and what I did is called classic classical
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: lyceum licial classical in Italian for the Italian speakers. So
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: you can go through classical studies or scientific studies, or
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  Speaker 2: there are more technical type of high schools. So I
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: did the classical lysium. So you study Latin, Latin, ancient
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Greek philosophy, literature, history, and obviously there's also chemistry, mathematics
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: and on, but those are a bit more marginal because
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: it's more focused on the classics. So so yeah, I
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: studied Giordano Bruno in high school. There was the first
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: time Bruno, Marcillo, Fici, all the philosophers, the you know,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the philosophers, magicians from the Italian Renaissance. They are pretty famous,
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  Speaker 2: and there's plenty of research in Italian Bruno that I
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: could use for my research. And I know that my
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: audience is not Italian speaking, so I tend to put
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: the references in English. But yeah, I had the chance,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: so look at the sorts in Italian because.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Italians that is awesome.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I forgot he wrote a lot of stuff in Italian, right,
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  Speaker 3: that was like his choice.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well in Vulgate and uh yeah some Vulgate, some
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  Speaker 2: Italian nice.
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  Speaker 1: That is awesome.
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  Speaker 3: Now I just happened to notice that, and uh, you know,
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  Speaker 3: I've covered them recently too, So I was like wondering
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  Speaker 3: if that was something you picked up through academic studies.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I guess one question, does anybody have a question?
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Before I go? Does anybody want to ask anything? Okay, yeah,
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I go ahead, go ahead.
• 13:43
  Speaker 6: So so, yeah, I find it extremely intriguing, Like you
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  Speaker 6: said that in Italy nowadays, at least you have this
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  Speaker 6: kind of it's hard to find people that openly will
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  Speaker 6: study these kind of things or even know, like you said,
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  Speaker 6: like you only discovered some stuff like when you went
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: out in the UK and so and so on, but
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: then now that you studied it academically even can like
• 14:10
  Speaker 6: from your point of view, do you see where this
• 14:12
  Speaker 6: started to change like that much? Because for example, I
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: can give a comparison an action from Brazil, and in
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: Brazil we also have a lot of Catholicism, Christianism and
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: Swan but what happened there was that it mixed with
• 14:24
  Speaker 6: like the African religions as well and the like native religions,
• 14:29
  Speaker 6: and it kind of became like syncretic. So even though
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: Catholicism is strong there, it's like the magical Catholicism. Let's
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: say that, so like people know or are they know
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  Speaker 6: a ware about the other stuff like let's say that
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  Speaker 6: Africans used to practice or that the Natives use to
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: practice as one. So it's kind of more even if
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: people don't agree or use the about it, so you
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: can even talk and it. Or you're going to be
• 14:54
  Speaker 6: in the street and you're going to find like a
• 14:55
  Speaker 6: poster saying like get the love of your life back
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  Speaker 6: called this number, and it's going to be like some
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: love magic whatever. But this is something I never see
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: at least anything. Maybe I'm skewed Roban. What I what
• 15:07
  Speaker 6: I do find here is like more like orders, like
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: mystical orders. Maybe this is what you can find nowadays, but.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: Maybe from your academic point of view, if you if
• 15:20
  Speaker 6: you found that when that started to change.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Do you speak Italian?
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Do you speak Italian? Okay? That gives you an advantage
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: because so how can I answer that. I think that
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: on the surface, I think probably in Brazil it's it's
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: a bit more open. You know, the syncretism between magic
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: and Catholicism in Italy is a bit more hidden. So
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the Italian folk magic definitely syncretizes Catholicism, and you know,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: an Italian autoctous or indigenous as I call them practices.
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  Speaker 2: So it is something that is present, but it's more underground.
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  Speaker 2: It's not obvious. It's not something that she would easily
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: find unless you have the right connections or you're from
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: the place and so you know, you know, you know
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the woman in the town that removes the malocchio, and
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: then she will give you another contact and then the
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: other one. So when you are part of the community,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: it's very easy to find that. So when I started
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: doing my PhD, I was talking with the Italians everybody.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, there wasn't a single Italian that I spoke
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: to that didn't say, oh yeah, my my aunt or
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: my cousin or my my you know whatever. You know,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: they went to one of these people. So either they
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: had direct experience or any indirect experience through you know
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: that somebody in their family had been to one of
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: these healers or which is so I haven't come across
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  Speaker 2: a single Italian that you know, had never heard of it.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So everybody had heard of it in one way or another.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: So it's a it's a bit like there's an expression
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  Speaker 2: Italian that I never know how to translate. It's a
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  Speaker 2: bit of a secret in plain sight, so it's not
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: very obvious. It's a bit underground. But then when you
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: ask the right question, you know everybody knows about it.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So in Italian, for the Italian speakers, a good expression
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: would be it's gretella. It's a typical expression also from Naples,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: which is a secret that you know that everybody knows about,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: but everybody pretends that they don't know. So so yeah,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: it is definitely something that's quite pervasive. But so there
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: is that kind of syncretism, but it's not as overt
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and as obvious or in you know, in plain sight
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: as it is in Brazil.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Perhaps do you think part of that could be literally
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: just because like the Vatican? Oh sorry about that, man,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: I was wondering, like, do you think that literally could
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: just be because of like the Vatican?
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Right there?
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: It's like, oh, we got to act like you know,
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: we can't be too open about it the state.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Bruno.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Do you think that's reasons why sometimes it's a little
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: bit more occulted than, like you're saying, than opposed to Brazil.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And also because I think there are two types
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: of stigma on these practices. One is the Catholic stigma
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: and the other one is the superstition stigma. So either
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: they may face the thing, oh, this is just silly superstition,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: or that it goes against the Catholic Church, even though
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: if you talk with these healers and witches, they actually
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: believe that they are very devout Catholics, especially the old
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: generation of Senator Ori and sennat Rici, they believe they
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: are very devout Catholics, so they don't see a clash.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: And also a lot of my informants have a very
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: good relationship with the local church. So the official stance
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: of the Catholic Church is against the kind of practices.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: But in reality I have seen in my field work
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: many of these healers and which is that cooperate you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: very nicely with the you know, with the local parochia
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: or the local priests. So you know, as always there's
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: actually have a video on my channel, an old video
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: on institutionalized versus lived religions that covers a little bit
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: of research on that. But there's always discrepancy between what's
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: on paper, you know, the institutionalized religion and what actually happens,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: you know, what people actually do. And even though this
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: is the discrepancies is bigger for well, obviously, maybe discrepancy
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: is not even there for religions like paganism, where you're
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: don't have a central dogma, maybe the discrepancy doesn't even
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: have a reason to exist. But for the monotheistic religions
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: you definitely have that. You know that there is this,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: especially with Christianity, there's a massive discrepancy between what you know,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the official theology and what people actually do in their lives.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, actually that kind of leads me to a question
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: I had. I was going to maybe bring it up later,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: but I feel like it's a good time now. Is
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: in your opinion Angela, like how does Italian witchcraft influence
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: how Catholicism is practiced in the country, You know, because
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: you're saying, yes, there's the syncretism of both, but like,
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: how I'm sure Catholicism influenced the witchcraft, But how is
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: the witchcraft influenced the Catholic practice in your opinion?
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: So in my research I distinguish between so I systematize
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the the vernacular healing tradition of Italy as the traditional
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: singer to them. And there are free papers that are
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: accessible online that people can download if they're interested, and
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: you find them in the info box of my VD
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: on Italian witchcraft. So in my research I distinguished between
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the old generation of senatory and the new generation of SENATORI,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: which is not necessarily linked to age, but it's more
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: linked to where they live, if they live in secluded areas,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: and how willing they are to share their practices. Now
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: with the old tradition of SENATORI, I would say that
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: their practice in a way was reinforcing their Catholicism because
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: they believe they were. I mean this senatory read is
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: magical practices very often involve the Trinity, the Madonna, the saints.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: There's an informant of mine from Sicily who's now passed
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: away unfortunately, but she said, I'm always in contact with
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: the spirit, with the spirit. And I said, who is
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: the spirit? And she said, oh, it's a saint. But
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: it wasn't a specific saint. It's just that there was
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: the vocabulary that she had. I mean because especially for
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: the generation, they don't have the concept, and especially when
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: they haven't been influenced by the New Age or Paganism,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: they don't have a concept of talking with the spirit,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: so they would just call it a saint, even if
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: it is just a generic saint. The new generations of
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: SENATORI are more open to talk about these practices, are
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: more open to syncretism, and they synchrotize less with Catholicism
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: and more with Paganism, and also with New Age practices
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: with other forms of spirituality. So for them sometimes the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: signature can be a way to depart or slightly depart
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: from the official Catholicism, so it varies. I think that
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: that's why I create the typology of the two different generations,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: because I think their approach to the practice is very
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: different to the point where a typology needed to be
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: to be there, Otherwise it would be too confusing to
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: explain it. But I've definitely noticed that patterns of behavior
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: are very different between these two people. So the old
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: generation are people that live in secluded, insecluded areas in
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: the towns, and they don't really communicate with other practitioners.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: They are just like the town healer, and that's it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: They wouldn't call themselves which is either they would just
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: call themselves the person who repairs the bones or the
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: person who removes the san antonis fire, which is the shingles.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: By the way, there are also specific names for different
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: types of illnesses, so they wouldn't define themselves anything other
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: than the person who does this or the person who
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: does that. Whereas the new generation is a bit more connected.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: They started to call to talk about signe turrem trans
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: regionally because originally the term comes from the region Emilia Romagna,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: and that's the only region that had an actual name
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: to describe these practices, and that's why the name. When
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: people started to talk about it on social media, the
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: name started to spread and people from other regions also
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: started to use the term and uh and it's become
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: more widely known nationwide now whereas originally the term comes
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: from Emilia Romania. There's also an interesting PhD research which
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: was done in the university in France, if I remember
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: the University of Toulouse by the Bernardi and the diseases
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: in Italian and it focuses more on a million Romania
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: and it's from a few years back, you know, before
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: my my own research, but it was quite interesting because
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: it focuses on the area specifically. Uh yeah, the answer
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: to your question.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, thank you.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: One question I wanted to get into because I know
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: you do cover, like you know, shamanism before we and
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: start getting into that stuff, and I hate to ask
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: you to do it. I think I saw you doing
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: on an IVY show and I thought it was amazing.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Could you maybe give a little.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Bit of an idea of what shamanism means from the
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: academic and where that even comes from.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I found that very interesting.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Oh gods, I could go on that for two hours. Okay,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: focus and try and give it very very succeed answer
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: to that. Okay. So, because this is a question that
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I get asked a lot, especially, I've been asked in
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: academic conferences by colleagues when I was trying to defend
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: my own thesis, which has been now defended plenty and
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: has been published by Brill. So yeah, so there are
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: people that would say, oh, why do you use the
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: term shamanism? Isn't shamanism just in Siberia. Isn't shamanism just
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: in South America? Isn't shamanism just that? Is it a
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: misappropriation to use it somewhere else? It's okay, setback, Let's
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: understand what the term shamanism actually is, what it means,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: and where it comes from. The term shamanism is a
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: scholarly invention. Let's start with that. So it's an invention
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: by Russian ethnographers in the nineteenth century that went to
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Siberia and they were studying different regions of Siberia. And
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: there is one region, only one very small area, the
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Tungusik area, where they had as a term for their
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: local shamans shaman. And so given that it was one
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: of the first ones they came across, they said, oh, okay.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Then when they came across neighboring regions that had their
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: own local names for their local healers, they would just
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: overlap the term shaman and the term shamanism. So, based
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: on this one only case, they said, okay, given that
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: we see that what they're doing is the same, we're
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: going to use the same term. So they created the
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: label shamanism to describe practices that presented certain characteristics like
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: the you know, entering older state of consciousness and having
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: a contact with the spirit word and helping the community,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: you know, being able to heal or do other magical endeavors.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: So the term shamanism is not Siberian. Shamanism is a
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Western category. It's an ethnographic category that it was first
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: applied to Siberia, but not exclusively to Siberia, and then
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: desided to be applied to other regions in South America
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: and in Asia. And the reason why I argue, along
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: with other colleagues of mine, other regious salist colleagues, that
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: the term shamanism, when obviously it presents you know, the
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: traits are present, should also be used in Western countries
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: is because shamanism has become an exoticizing category, which is
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: very problematic. You cannot just because then you create this exotic,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: magical other which are at the same time, you know,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: sort of creates this mystique around these people, but at
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: the same time it makes them into into characters and
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: that doesn't really see what is there. And it also
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: creates distinguished a distinction separation between us, the rationals, the Westerners,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: and then them the mystical, others, the mystically irrational. It's
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: very problematic. So the fact that the you know, the
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: term itself has always worked by overlapping over local specific categories,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: because in every region of the world where shamanism was present,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: they would have their own local names to defunder shamans.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I'm also familiar with the shamanism, the Mapucha shamanism for
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: instance in now Argentina and Chile, and they have their
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: own terms as well, machi for instance for the female shamans.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: But now, but when I went there, they would say
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: shaman because they know that it's understandable, but they had
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: their own local terms, and the same in Italy. There
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: were their own local terms to define practices, to define
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: the people that practice them. But shamanism in and of
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: itself is, you know, is a scholarly category. Is a
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: scholarly category that has been exoticized for too long and
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: now needs to be exoticized because it is very problematic
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: to do otherwise. And then what is shamanism? You know
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the characteristics of shamanism Because in my PhD and in
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: the book that I published with real now because it's
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: been published, I argue that the traditional seneture is the uh,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the indigenous Italian shamanism. So I use the term indigenous
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: and I use the term shamanism. Shannoa is a com
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: hated but I had chapters to explain that. So the
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: reason also because the reason I use the term indigenous
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: is because, first of all, there's a difference which is
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: very well established in academic literature and perhaps not so
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: established in the general public, but there is a difference
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: between indigenous religion and indigenous people. Indigenous people is a
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: political category and belongs to specific areas of the world
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: where there's been mass colonization and the minority still lives
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: with people that you know, were the original settlers. But
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: an indigenous religion is something different than indigenous people. And
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: indigenous people may have indigenous religions, but they may also not.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, if an Indigenous person is a Catholic, doesn't
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: make Catholicism an indigenous religion, of course not So. Indigenous
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: religions and indigenous people are two different categories that need
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: to be first of all distinguished. Indigenous people is a
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: political category that is very important to preserve because it
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: helps people to, you know, to to retain certain rights
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: and to acknowledge, you know, the problems that certain minorities have.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Indigenous religion are religions that present certain characteristics, which are
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: characteristics related to the land, to the culture, to the
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: bloodline to you know, and they are very different from
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: religions that are not indigenous. For instance, Christianity is not
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: an indigenous religion because Christianity is now a religion that's
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: trans cultural. Regardless of whether you practice it in Italy
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: or in the US or in the UK. You know,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: it is it's supposed, You're supposed to do the same thing,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: the same ritual, the same results. Whereas an indigenous religion
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: is based on kingship, it's based on the contact with
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: the land, it's based on the culture. It's completely immersed
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: with the place where it comes from. And it is
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: not the same to do it in Italy or in
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: the UK. It's going to make a difference because it
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: is completely entrenched in the land and in the culture.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: So that is why I argue that the tu trition
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: of senetority is an indigenous practice. And how do I
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: use the term shamanism in my own research? So shamanism,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: as we have established, is a scholarly category, so it
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: doesn't come from Siberia. It's a scholarly category that has
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: always worked by overlapping over local specific terms. Now there
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: is no agreed upon definition of shamanism because it presents
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: in slightly different ways in different Places's a bit like paganism.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: There are certain religious practices and religious movements that just have,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: by their nature a certain fluidity. So this presents a
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: lot of challenges for our scholars to try and understand them.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: But the fact that these terms are difficult to understand
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean that we should disregard them, because these are
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: terms that exist in the world, that people use, and
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: perhaps they are useful. So it's important for us scholars
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: to take up the challenge and say, Okay, how do
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: I understand what shamanism is. So my response to that
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: is that I use a double methodology to define shamanism
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: in the context of my specific research. The first is
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: that I use shamanism as a dictic term. So THEICITI
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: comes from Latin they exists, which refers to terms that
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: only have a meaning in reference to something. So, for instance,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: terms like here and there, here and there are terms
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: that have very specific meanings. But if I just say
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: here or there, it doesn't mean anything. It's a term
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that only assumes meaning when I put it into context,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: and I think that shamanism is the same. It's a
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: term that a category, a spiritual religious category, the only
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: assumes meaning in a specific context. The second part of
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: my mythology for defending shamanism is using discersonalities, which comes
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: from com Michelle Fucon who has developed this methodology, and
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: it means analyzing the patterns of meaning that emerge from
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the discourse created around the term in a specific area.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: So I use these personalities analyzing a huge amount of
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: data and the patterns of meaning that emerge in all
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: the discourses that Italians created around shamanism. So this gave
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: me a localized and culturally specific understanding of what shamanism
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: was and allowed me to apply to the to the
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Italian context doesn't make sense. I hope it wasn't to academic.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Y, but that was that was great.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: I do like how you did say, yeah, just from
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: my ignorance, I guess obviously that has been You know,
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: whenever somebody says something about shamanism, I automatically think of
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: South America or Indian drive Native American.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: A white person does not pop up in my head
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: at all.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: I don't even know it's Virginia and Siberia.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: But I was like, what, that's crazy.
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm always related to Siberia, so oh see, I
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: just I'm just.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: Ignorant to that.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm here to learn.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Is there any other questions you guys want to ask?
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Before I started asking more?
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: Well, I kind of want to get into some of
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: the early mythology and like the rising scope of how
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: the term came about, the practice came about, kind of
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: going back to the etruscan Ton of going into Diana
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: looking at the moon.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Oh my god. So if you're talking about Leland, I
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: have bad news for you.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I was also going to do you want the bad
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: news is not Italian witchcraft? Okay?
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I was going to say how much stock
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: can we put into this Gospel of the witches?
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: That he that the Gospel of the Witches is a
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: complete fabrication by Leland and it has nothing to do
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: with all that happens in Italy. There are some elements
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: of Italian folklore that he has mixed into into his work,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: but the as a whole, Yeah, it's not something that
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: happens in Italy. And I know that when I say this,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: it's sets a lot of people, because a lot of
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: people really find value in Leland and the Gospel of
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: the Witches. But I'm sorry. I actually got recently an
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: email from somebody asking me to write the foreword to
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: the new edition of the Gospel of the Witches, and
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I thought, okay, is it okay if in the world
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: forward I say this is a work of fiction. If
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: that is okay with you, then I'm okay writing the foreword. Yeah,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: so Leland has been I mean, let's let's be clear.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to diminish the importance that Leland has had,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: because Land has had a massive impact on the birth
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: of Wicca of contemporary paganism, and it's been very important
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: for many practitioners. So I don't want to dismiss that
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: in the slightest. And I realized it from a mythical
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: point of view, from you know, really, for what it created,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: the new pact that he had, it is very important.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: It's very important for us to study. However, it is
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: also important to distinguish between what is important from a
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: mythical point of view and what is factual history. And
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Leland is not factual history history, so there is no
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: evidence of the cult of Diana and Lucifer at all.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I have a dedicated video on Aradia specifically if people
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: are interested, on my YouTube channel. But yeah, also if
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: you read the if you are an Italian speaker and
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: you read the Diaries of Madalena, it's so clearly written
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: by an English speaker. I mean, there are grammatical mistakes
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: the only an English speaker would do. Obviously, there are
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: grammatical mistakes that an Italian would do. We do lots
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: of mistakes, like the conjunctivo, which a lot of Italians
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: don't use properly, but there are very specific grammatical mystics
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: the only an English speaker would do, like, for instance,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: because Italian is a gendered language and English is not gendered,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: so you would have things like you have the article
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: in one gender and then the term the noun in
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: another gender, and that's something that an Italian would never
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: do because it's just mistake. Yeah, so it's very obvious,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: and yeah, exactly, so I think that at the time
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: that there weren't perhaps, but even in his own time,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: he was not very well regarded by you know, the
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: ethnographical scholars. Of his own time. So even in his
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: own time he was not particularly regarded by the scholarly crowd.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: It was more regarded by the practitioners, who I mean
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: they had good reasons, of course, because at the time
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: there wasn't scholarship around, especially in English, together whether what
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: he was saying was correct or not. There were ethnographers
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: writing in Italian, but those wouldn't really appear in English.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: There are still there's a lot of ethnography on Italian
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: folk magic from the same time of Leland, but it's
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: only in Italian and English native speakers don't speak Italian,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: so they would go to Leland. But no, it's definitely
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: not It doesn't reflect factual history. And the same goes
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: for his works on the Etruscans. I suppose there are
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: some kernels of historical truth, and there are some elements
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: in Aradia that come from the folklore, like the spell
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: with the lemon is a very common one that you
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: find in Italian folklore. So there are some bits that
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: there are some bits of folklore that then he mixed
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: with a completely different thing. Like in my online course
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: on Italian witchcraft, I also talk about how different Aradia
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: is from the actual folk, which is because Aradia is
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: this rebellious figure that you know, wants to go against
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: the Catholic Church and uh and is really a rebel
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: and Italian, which is are the exact opposite. They try
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: to comply as much as possible and assimilate as much
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: as possible with the Catholic Church. So it's the complete
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: opposite or what's what's going on in Italy at the time.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: So it's a yeah, it's it's just not it's not.
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: Here can you give us some of the origins of
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: the practice and how it came about out as far
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: as the mythology in the actual vein of culture.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: So there isn't one clear mythology. And this is another element.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: That's because we want things nice and neat. But in reality,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: especially when it comes to folk quitchcraft, you don't have
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: one unified mythology. You don't have this grand thing of Radia,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Lucifer and Diana, you don't have any of that. Italian
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: folk magic is very messy. It is messy, is raw,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: and it's quotidian, and it doesn't have this grand narrative
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: around it. It is really just about helping people around.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: And there are different types of syncretism in the practices.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: There are also elements. There are pagan elements as well.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: There are even Phoenician Phoenician entities. There are salmon, there
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: are some that contain elements. There are also pressed and
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: in the Greek magical papyary, for instance, there's a that
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I was able to gather in my field work that
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: had a coptic that is the same present in one
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: of the Greek magical papriarty. So it is it is fascinating,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: but it's not It doesn't have a neat mythology.
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: Especially people would like further into the myths than we can.
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: It's kind of just a natural practice that's subsided as
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: part of culture.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: So in terms of the history of the Senatura, this
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: is quite interesting because it's something that I've been working on.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I've done historical research lately, and I was just I
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: was invited at the Witch First in London just this
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: weekend and I had the chance to talk with Professor
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Ronald Hutton, and I'm talking with other historians because i'm
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: religious aty scholar and I'm primarily an anthropologist, and now
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: I've gone into doing some historical research into the sena
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: and I wanted to make sure that my data was
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: you know, that my methodology was was all right, you know,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: for me to claim certain things. So when I went
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: into I didn't do historical research for my PhD because
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: my PhD was anthropology, anthropological and academia. You've got to
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: stick into your field. You cannot you know, jump between fields.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Given that now I'm writing a new book on Italian
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: witchcraft that's more practical, I thought, you know, I want
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: to solve this puzzle of the historicity of the Senna tour.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: And because a lot of people ask me how old
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: are the and I didn't. I just didn't have an answer,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: so I just said, it's not something that I have researched.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: So I thought, let's actually do that, and let's let's
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: look at what's out there. And I was really surprised
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: to find because I thought, oh, this is going to
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: be another thing, because all practitioners want everything to be
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: the oldest of the old. And then it's actually like
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: a centuries old. So that's kind of what I was expecting.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: But then the evident surprised me because I actually found
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: evidence of the practice being quite old. So I found
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: evidence stretching back to the eleventh century. If there is
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: anything before the eleventh century, we need further research because
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: I personally couldn't find it, but I would need to
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: do more archival research to assess that. But I can
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: at least say that from the eleventh century we have
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: evidence of practices that we still have today. The first
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: occurrence of the term senatura in relation to the practice,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: because we have to be very careful when we make it.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: When we make historical claims of continuity, it's not sufficient
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: to just see the term randomly appear somewhere. The term
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: needs to be in reference to the thing that you
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: are trying to claim the continuity from. So the first
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: time that term satura occurs in relation to a practice
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: that still is present today is in a sixteenth century
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: court case where a woman is accused to draw the
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: signs and use senatura, and it's pretty much the same
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: intura that I you know, I looked at that and
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I thought, oh wow, I was really shocked because it's
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: it's literally a practice that is still going on today.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: So that was a surprise, but very unsurprised. So I'm
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: collating all these material and this will be part of
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: my my upcoming upcoming book, which has a specific chapter
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: dedicated to to history. And yeah, I'm and as I said,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: because I want to make sure that everything is correct,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: and also in dialogue with the historians that have studied
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: either the history of folk magic practices, so that I
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: can have a reference point in terms of the methodology
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: that they use, or that they have actually studied Italian
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: witchcraft in historical period, so that I can cross reference
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: my findings with their findings and see whether there's any
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: blind spot, anything that I missed, anything that I can
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: learn from them. So it's always important to you not
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: working isolation. That's one other things that I like about
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: academia is and I wish the general public knew more
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: about science and academia because sometimes you see journal articles,
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: you know, magazine articles that say study finds and there's
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: this new discovery coming from one study only. But that's
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: not how science works. Science works via the body of
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: knowledge that you know, by the consensus that is created
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: by different studies, not just one study. One study alone
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean much, so you need to collate a lot
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: of studies together. So even those small scale studies are
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: very important because they're all part of the puzzle, so
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: they need to be done. But the problem is when
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: general public misunderstands as small scale study as the response
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: and the end all be all about that specific thing,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: which is something we have unforcedate at least seen a
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: lot during twenty twenty twenty twenty one. But it's really
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: important to understand how science works. It works via the
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: whole body of knowledge, and then you know, when you
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: have a lot of data you have you can get
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: a proper assessment of what's going on.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: Right, broader agreement, Yeah, yeah, I find that really interesting. Angela.
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: In your answer about like the signature only being like
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: sourced to the eleventh century, you said.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Right, that's where I could find the first evidence myself.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: But I don't exclude. But at the same time, I
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: cannot prove that it goes.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: I just found it interesting because I assumed that it
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: might be more influenced by like the Greco Roman pagan culture,
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: but like, maybe that's not the case.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: I don't have any evidence at the moment to support that.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: As I said, I have in four months who claimed
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: that there there's a coptic in the Sennetita that's the
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: same as the Greek magical Papriarty, and I've had informants
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: saying that contained phinician elements. But two is not sufficient,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: you know, to prove historical continuity is not sufficient to
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: say that, because what if somebody two generations ago read
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: the Greek magical papyriarty and came up with the senatura uh,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: you know, containing that you have to account for all
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: the variables. Though for me to claim a continuity that
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: stretches back to that, I would need to have solid data,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: you know, documents that reports the practice. And I was
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: able to find evidence of the practice starting from the
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: eleventh century and evidence of the term associated with the
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: practice from the sixteenth century. If there is anything stretching back,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: it is possible. I don't know. I don't have the
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: data to say that, you know that there is evidence
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: or not. Maybe in the future, either I will have
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: the funding to do that kind of research or somebody
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: I will take that up as a PhD. I'd be
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: very happy to help them with that. But at the moment,
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: I don't have evidence to you to claim that it's
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: it's older than that. But even even that is a yeah.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: But even then it's still like we are talking about
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: a millennium. I think that almost a millennium. So that
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: was quite shocking because most of the practices that we
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: find today are are really not that that old. They
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: claim to be that old, but they are not that old.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank oh yeah, journey questions again.
• 49:40
  Speaker 6: And when you prove that they're not that old, some
• 49:43
  Speaker 6: people will be really mant.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 49:49
  Speaker 6: I had one quick question to Angela. I don't know
• 49:51
  Speaker 6: if you ever heard about the book called the ar
• 49:54
  Speaker 6: Kilometer the Arkometer from Saint Eve's. I'll try to hook
• 49:59
  Speaker 6: you up it if you never heard, because if I
• 50:02
  Speaker 6: remember correctly, like the book had a bunch of other things,
• 50:04
  Speaker 6: like the guy was French, but he didn't actually finish
• 50:07
  Speaker 6: the book like his supposedly his like students finished it
• 50:12
  Speaker 6: for him after he died. And I remember there was
• 50:15
  Speaker 6: a section where they claimed a bunch of this historical
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: like the Phoenicians, like you mentioned the Phoenicians and Ionians
• 50:21
  Speaker 6: came and did some stuff in Italy and Greece, and
• 50:23
  Speaker 6: then it kind of started changing some of the codes
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: there and so on. So maybe it would be it
• 50:28
  Speaker 6: could be an interesting read as well as this kind
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: of historical because he claims a lot of stuff. So
• 50:35
  Speaker 6: if that can be proven to be true, it would
• 50:38
  Speaker 6: be very interesting how he shifts things. But if you've
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: never heard, yeah, I still try to email you afterwards.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, send me an email. By the way, for
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: those of you are Italian speakers who have the patients
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: to read sub titles. I have an interview with the
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: friend of mine who talks about the Roman the Roman
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: religion in Italy, so in case people are interested to
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: know what actually was happening in the Roman times in Italy.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: But the interview is in Italian because he couldn't speak English.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: I was hoping that because I interviewed him because it
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: was the time when YouTube started to implement the auto dubbing,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: and I thought that just as it does auto dubbing
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: from English to other languages, that it would do the
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: same with Italian to English. And it didn't, and I
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: was very disappointed. So I just put subtitles.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Very nice if you don't mind it. Do you have
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: a question from the chat It says, do we have
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: any ancient sources that document endemic magic to the Italian
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: peninsula outside of the state religion, imperial cult? And then
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: he says media and other foreigners seem to have been
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: viewed as, which is by folks in the Greco Roman world,
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: for example.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I understand that question.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure I understand the question if it is
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: about whether magic was present. Course, magic has always been present,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: will always be present, So it's not a matter of
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: whether magic was present. It's more whether it is the
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: same tradition. Because there are so many different magical traditions
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: and magical practices that you cannot say that there is
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: a continuity just because one is magic and another is magic.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: It's a bit like saying, oh, Christianity is a religion
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: and I don't know, and other things a religion, so
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: they are the same. They're not the same. So magic
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: was definitely present, you know, since I can't think of
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: a time in history where magic was not there or
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: some form of staticism. But it's a different matter than
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: claiming that it was the same tradition of Streda. It
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: is practice today.
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: We have this Well, I was going to say, I
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: think when you're looking at magical traditions throughout the world,
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: it always dependent upon what works in the region and
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: how those people participate with the land and bring forth
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: these ideas, and it becomes ingrained then and then culturated
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: to the course of finding out what actually you know
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: works in.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: A mm hmm, Carl. I think that Carl also follows
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: my channel because I remember him. So was there ever
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: an Italian inquisition to seek out magic users like in
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: Northern Europe and New England, so which, yes, of course
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: there was. So yeah, Giordano Bruno is an example.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: So if you don't know who, there was, definitely.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: But one thing that's that's interesting about the inquisition is
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: that so it was. I think it was a very
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: interesting time in history of magic, just because of all
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: the mental gymnastics that people were making to to make
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: a magic acceptable. Because people think all magic was unacceptable.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: That's not true. There's always been some form of magic
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: that was acceptable. It was just a matter of what
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: it was. So for instance, in the Renaissance and during
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: the time of the Witch Trials, one thing that you
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: find a lot in Italy is the distinction between natural
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: magic and demonic magic. So natural magic was accepted and
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: the Vatican was okay with it. For instance, we have
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: a Juan Battista de la Porta, who I did my
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: master's degree is on the Yeah, he wrote the magiaturalis
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: see the miraculum Um Naturalum. That's the title in Latin.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: So I worked on the Latin test text from Juan
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: Baptistala Juan Battista de Laborta, and and yeah, basically he
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: wasn't really persecuted at all because he was working on
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: natural magic. So they made a distinction between using the
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: magic of nature and communing with spirits. So if you
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: were communing with spirits, then it was a no no,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: you know, burned, done, you're gone. Whereas if it was
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: working with nature, and they said, oh, because you're just
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: using what God gave you, and they were reframing it
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: as actually just dwelling into the creation of God. So
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: it really depended on how you framed it. So if
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: you was framed as natural magic, then it was fine,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: and if it was if it involved some communing with spirits,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: then it was an honor. So you always have forms
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: of magic that have been acceptable and acceptable. I got
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: a bunch of Christians doing video reactions to a video
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: that I made a while ago, and they just flooded
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: my comments section, insulting me because I made a video
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: called these witchcraft forbidden in the Bible. And the answer
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: is no, because you know, at the time, you didn't
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: even have a term for witchcraft. But a lot of
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Christians really got angry with me about.
• 55:52
  Speaker 6: Even the Psalms, right, like all the cabbalistic kindreds and stuff.
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: It's based on the Psalms, on everything they are calling
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: the God to do whatever, or even a lot of
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: remors were written by people there inside the church. So
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: it's like, how can you claim, like exactly like you mentioned,
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: how can you claim they don't use it.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: It's just like, yeah, the question, the question in my
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: case was more about what is actually written in the
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Bible and uh, you know in the Bible and at
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: the time when the Hebrew Bible was written, you didn't
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: have a term like witchcraft, which which is like an
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: overashing term that encompasses divination and uh, healing and this.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: And that's now we have one term or more than one.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: We have witchcraft, we have magic. These are terms that
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: are overasching and encompassed a lot of practices, whereas at
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: the time they didn't have that. They just had specific names.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: They had to sayer, they had uh you know, the divination,
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: the necromancy, so all these things were completely different. And
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: so what is really forbidden in the Hebrew Bible is
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: the the practice of the others pretty much. So they
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: had some practice that we would now in you know,
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: with the categories of today, that they didn't have the
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: time that we would now define its magic. And they
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: were acceptable, like the divination with the umim and tumim.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: But there were other practices which generally were the practices
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: of the others, which were not acceptable. Fundamentally, the Hebrew
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Bible is really a testament to the Israelites trying to
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: solidify their identities in their difficult situations. So everything that
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: belonged to the others, like the gods of the others,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: were demons. The practices of the others were evil practices
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: or witchcraft as we would say today. So it was
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: really about forbidding the practices of the other and establishing
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: their own identity culturally and religiously. So witchcraft the way
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: that we understand it today is not forbidden. But but
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: the Christians didn't like that. This one is wrong because
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: the Bible sass.
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: The Old Testament is fallen. This Jewish mystical tradition.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: The whole thing.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: Me and Drake group bringing forth the twelve tribes. How
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: much do you think Sabianism and the worship of the
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: stars in it relates with the witchcraft in the.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Strug I'm not sure. I haven't come across that at
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: all in my research on Italian witchcraft, so I'm guessing
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: not much.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: That kind of leads me to a question I did
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: want to ask you.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: When it comes to this stuff, have you ever noticed well,
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: I'm assuming it also, I mean things probably change depending
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: on where you even are in Italy, I'm assuming, but
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: have you ever seen like maybe them pull from like
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: this seems like that might be influenced by the kabbala,
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: or this might be influenced like you know, all of
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: a sudden you start getting magic squares or sigils being
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: made in this. You don't see any it's all.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: In Italian folk magic. No, it's something that you find
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: more in ceremonial practices. In ceremonial magic practices, you know,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: or there's but not in Italian folk magic. No timefolk
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: magic is very raw and cotidion. It doesn't have these
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: you know, these overstructures.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: Gotcha something I was just wondering about. Is there anything
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: anybody else wanted to ask?
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: There was another question by the same guy, and I
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: didn't save it. So sorry.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: If I get back to it, I'll ask again one
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: thing when I guess when it comes to uh, when
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: you came to study, I guess like witchcraft and shamanism
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: and stuff. Was there like was there common misconceptions that
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: you think like the public has, and was there even
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: times when you got into it you're even like, wow,
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: this isn't what I thought it was.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Did that ever happen for you?
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: So the typical misconception, but this comes more from America.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: Canci is the It'salian witchcraft is a strageria or the
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: it's Leland. That's like the most common misconception that I
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: come across, So associating with Gramaci or with Gramaci's trageria
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: or Leland, that's the most typical misconceptions from Americans. And
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: in did you ask about my own misconceptions?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like not even meaning even in a negative sense.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: It might even be like oh this' even makes it
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: more interesting. But was there even things where you're like, oh,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: I had no idea, like I'd find myself looking at
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: this or it was this.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it was. It was really encounter
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: with Italian shamanism. That was really, in a way surprising
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: to me because it's not how my research started. I
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: didn't even think that that's what I would be. So
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: the way the my research started it wasn't to look
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: at Italian shamanism or the indigenous shamanism. It was to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: look at the transcultural forms of shamanism. So originally my
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: such studied that I wanted to look at all the
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: important forms of shamanism, which I define as trans cultural
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: shamanism because they are imported and reinterpreted in the cultural
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: fabric of the place, or they are practices that are
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: just based on techniques and technologies, and like course shamanism
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: for instance, that can be applicable everywhere by everybody, regardless
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: of the culture. So my research started looking at court
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: shamanism in Italy and the and shamanism in Italy, you know,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: all these important forms, all these important forms of shamanism
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: and how they were interpreted and practice in the Italian contexts.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: And then I came across a woman who claimed to
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: be the last Italian shaman of the hereditary tradition, and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: that's where it was the turning point of my research
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: because I thought, okay, Italian shaman I never thought of that,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: so I asked you to meet up, and I spent
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: a few day hers and did the rituals with her,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: collected tens of hours of interviews and so on so
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: that I could understand her tradition of Italian shamanism. And
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: then the more she was talking about her tradition, the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: more it sounded very familiar for me as somebody who
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: grew up in Italy. And I thought, what is the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: difference between your tradition that you call it and shamanism
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: and Italian folk magic? Then? And she said, oh, and
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: you know, she thought about it, and she said that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: her tradition had not been syncretized with Catholicism, whereas Italian
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: folk magic had been syncretized, and so she thought that
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: hers was more pure because of that. Now then, but
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: that kind of opened, you know, my research the area.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: You know, that was the first time that I thought,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: can there actually be Italian shamanism. Then I found other
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: people that who there's another woman from Sardinia. And then
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: ever since then there have been more who also claimed
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: to be part of of Sardinian shamanism. And then I
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: found others who claimed to be Italian shamans as well,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: and so I interviewed all of them and I tried
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: to understand why they were using the term, and then
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: just opened up my research and I said, Okay, my
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: research cannot just be about transcultural shamanism. It needs to
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: include Italian shamanism and even in a way check whether
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: this is a thing. But yeah, there is something that
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: surprised me because my starting misconception was that there was
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: an Italian shamanism because I was operating by the same
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: bias that everybody does. That's one of the things that
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: I like about academic research is that I find not
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: all practitioners are like that, of course, but I find
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: that very often practitioners are very defensive about what they believe,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: and you know, when they are convinced of something, even
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: faced with evidence, they just are to attach to their
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: beliefs and they still claim them to be, you know,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: the truth or facts. Whereas for me, as a scholar,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I feel that I have the freedom to always change
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: my mind based on the evidence that I'm presented with,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: and I think this is a beautiful freedom that I
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: would encourage everybody to entertain, because I think that we
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: all should. I think The healthy way to approach even
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: your beliefs is to always have a little part of
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: you that says I might be wrong, you know, and
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: always be willing to challenge yourself and look at the evidence.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: So I think that's what happened to me, because I
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: started thinking that there was an Italian Shamanism, that the
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: only Shamanism that I could find in Italy was important
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: and transformed in the Italian context, and then I found
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: that it was actually different. There was a form of
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Italian shamanism under my eyes, as you know, as I
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: was growing up. It just I didn't use that term,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: and at the time the town was not even known
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: in Italy. What was now Another reason why a lot
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: of my informants preferred that shaman which is something ready
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: I've rather dedicated paper to. There are Italians who prefer
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: the term shaman as opposed to the term Strega, which
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: is which in Italian is that Strega has a history
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: of antagonism with the Catholic Church, and people feel uncomfortable
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: using it because given that people are very different practitioners
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: are very different from Aradia. They don't want to be
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: the rebellious opposer to the Church. They want to you know,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: not be ostracized by their communities, so they are not
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: willing to use the term which but they are more
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: willing to use the term shaman because shaman doesn't have
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: a history of antagonism with the Catholic Church and has
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: a more positive connotation for Italians. And also the previous
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: pope he also had during the pan Synodic event in
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: the in the Vatican, he also welcomed the statuettes of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: the Pachamama and invited people from you know, from shamanic backgrounds,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: and that kind of solidified for Italians the fact that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: shamanism was okay. Witchcraft is bad, Shamanism is okay because
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: shamanism is good, and shamanism is something that can even
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: the Pope things that can be you know, can have
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: a link with with Catholicism. So that's why, that's another
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: reason why in the and that's why it's so important
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: to understand shamanism in context, you know, when I was
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: talking about the tech terms, because the way that shamanism,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: what shamanism means to Italians is different from what it
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: can mean to somebody else who doesn't have the same
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: history of antagonism with the Catholic Church when it comes
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: to magical practices. So shamanism becomes, in a way a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: term that allows these people to have a voice back,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: because if you call it witchcraft, then it becomes problematic.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: If you call it shamanism, then it becomes more acceptable.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: And this I mean, I have such an admiration for
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: these local healers who literally help their community for free.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: They don't take money, they don't take anything. They just
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: literally are there to help their town and their community.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: And they are continuously either disregarded as backwardly superstitious people
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: or as evil, which is that oppose the Catholic Church.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: So I think that it's also extending them a little
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: bit of grace to allow them to use the term
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: that doesn't have either of those connotations and allow them
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: to have their voice back.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: Yes, that they will be considered like even Charlatan's or
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 6: whatever until the point that people need them, Like in Brasilt,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 6: it happens so often that they will have like an
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: evangelical I think it would be Protestant in English, and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 6: they like Catholics and whatever, and they have a problem
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: in their church and they'll ask for the liked or
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: kind of black people to come and do some stuff.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 6: It's like because they cannot do it or will know
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 6: how to do it.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder too those interesting you said, Angela, if
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: like shamanism is more acceptable to the Catholic Church at
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: large almost because it made me think of like our
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: Lady of Guadaloupe when she like appeared in Mexico, right,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: And it's almost like she was incorporating that indigenous culture
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: and trying to bring that indigenous culture into Catholicism like
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: underneath that like sort of like merging the two cultures.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: So I wonder if that's where like the comfortability even
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: sort of comes from with like these apparitions of like
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: the Virgin Mary in these cultures as opposed to like
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: witchcraft specifically, I guess. And also I know just from
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: studying some of the Marian aperitions that often the message
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: is related to herbs or like using certain plants for
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: I know that was happening like during COVID specifically, like
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: supposedly some seers and mystics who claim to like have
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: messages from the Virgin Mary. She was giving advice apparently
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: on you know, using wormwood to combat like the virus
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: or heal yourself. So I don't know if that's maybe
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: where the merging kind of comes from, a more like
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: comfort level that the Vatican would have.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes it can happen, Yeah, and then it makes
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: you wonder, like what makes an operation non magical? For instance?
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: I asked that all myself, that all the time, Like
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: what what defines the difference between say someone who is
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: a medium for example, or or a witch or whatever,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: and then that's not okay, But then it's okay to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: claim to have messages from like an angel or Saint
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: Michael the Bosted Mother, Like why is one bad? And
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: then one is good? Like why is one it not acceptable?
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: And then one is acceptable. I always found that very interesting.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I find religious studies so fascinating, because
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: you know, you look at all the mental belief gymnastics
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: people have. But I mean it's actually really important because
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: I mean I'm fascinated by religion and spirituality because that's
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: how people make sense of the word, and it is
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: a way of making meaning. It is a form of
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: meaning making, you know, and belief making. So it's very
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: fascinating to see how people see, you know, create these
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: kind of differences in the discourse that they create around them.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: I just wanted to also ask real quick if you
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: can give us sort of like just a general opinion.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: I know, like myself being of Italian heritage, like my
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: families have Sicilian have about so, like, I know there's
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: differences between like North central and Southern Italians culturally in general,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: Like it's not all one blanket like culture.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: By any means, No, it's not. No.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: So is there a difference in generality of the practice
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: of signature from north to south?
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there used to be more of a difference
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: in the past, and now it's a bit more located
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: so between the different regions. So in the past, I
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: could say that evil eye and evil ie removal was
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: more prevalent in the south, and in the south there
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: was more of a prevalence of women. In the North,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: you'd have more well, I think that probably the majority
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: would still be women, but you would have more men practicing,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: and you would have more rituals like to fix bones
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: for instance, fixed bones, and they would use more specific
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: oils for there on the on the affected areas. But yeah,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: it depends. I would say a general distinction, at least
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: in the past is not so prevalent now was that
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: the South was more there was more evil eyed stuff
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: going on, and in the North there were more men
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: and more healing practices that had to do with with
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: fixing bones and things that you wouldn't find so physical.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you also have physical rituals in the south
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: as well. It's not like you don't have them at all.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: There were some specific ones that seem to be more
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: prevalent in the North, but yeah, there are also some
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: rituals that would be are very similar to the Shamani
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: critures of soul retrieval, which is the rituals for the fright.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I suppose that now you find really this
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: kind the rituals throughout Italy, so it's not I wouldn't
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: say that there is much of a North South divide anymore,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: but yeah, you have all sorts of rituals. Also. The
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: one for the fright is a bit like a soul
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: retrieval because it's based on the idea that if you
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: have a traumatic event, So if you experience a strong fright,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: then part of you, you know, is missing from that
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: point and that will lead to illnesses and ailments, so
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: you need to sort of recuperate that part of you.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I've had informants from Fidance, but also from
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: other regions, from Tuscany. Tuscan is the region where finance is,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: or Florence as you'd say in English.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 6: Yes, interesting, I had a question I don't know, like
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: nursing on I think it was Instagram or something, and
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 6: if I'm not mistaken, it wasn't. In Sardinia, there was
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 6: like now I don't remember it. It was like a specific
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 6: I think it's like a carnival.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: They call it.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 6: The guys with like some masks. It reminds me a
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 6: lot of in Germany they had the Crampus or trampus
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 6: or whatever. It's very similar, like a kind of monster
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 6: light thing. And so there's this spirtual and I remember
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 6: seeing very quickly on Instagram. I'm not sure though, how
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 6: much of that is an actual like, let's say, thing
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: they used to do before and just got continued, or
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 6: if it's just like.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: No, no, it is still going on. Yeah, it is
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: still a practices they do in Sardinia. Yes, Like I
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: can't remember the exact name now the top of my
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: head because it is in Sardinian, but I can. I can,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: let you know.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: I can I can also search it up. Okay, but
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: it's an actual thing.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: It's not like a.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no it is. It is an actual thing.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, cool.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: Uh, nobody else has any questions? I was going to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: ask something, aybody else now this also, you know, this
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: question maybe dude to unfortunately my understanding of shamanism. Again,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: I always think of Native Americans or you know, South Americans,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: and from experiences that I've had when it comes to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: like shamanism or hearing that, it seems for me to
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: be synonymous with somebody undergoing some sort of like almost
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: pushing themselves to an nde sometimes even with like ingesting
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: certain things to either like be more of a hallucinogenic
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: or an actual poison that may not totally take you out,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: but you know, bring you pretty close. And then how
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: I see that kind of redone in oh use one example,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: Skull and cross Bones. They put you in a coffin
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: and make you seem like you're getting buried or whatever,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: you know, nailed shut. I've experienced that myself and the
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: OTO and initiations getting in something like that. So I
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: do even see like even the white people maybe referencing
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: to that same idea and now long story short, unless
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: I'm completely again because my misconception of shamanism. Is there
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: any practices like that that you have seen in Italy
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: or an Italian where they may be kind of like
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: putting themselves onder certain stress to have certain experiences.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. You mean in terms of some esthetic dances
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: and things like that, Yeah, or like you have the taranta.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: The toronto would be probably an example of that. I
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: have a chapter on that as welling me in my
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: upcoming book. So yeah, the taranta would be an example
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: of an ecstatic dance that you would have.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: Two.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, where you know there's a there was a belief
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: that the person was somewhat beaten by by a spider
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: and they went into the dance. But it was a
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: whole community ritual of an ectotic experience. Uh, would also
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: promote ritual. Yeah, the tarentella. The tarantella is the one.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: That comes from that's the origin of the dance.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the tarantella. Yes, that's amazing. Yeah, the taranta is yeah,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: is the one from Salento. There's actually a new book
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: from a colleague of mine who's who she is at
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: University of Harvard. It's called The Spider Dance by Johanna
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: Parmi Johnny. She's also Italian and yeah, she and she
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: focuses also on the contemporary practices of the Toronto in
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: the Salenta region. So that's for those who are interested
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: in that specific type of practice, that would be that
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: would be a good a good read. And I also
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: reference her in my in my chapter where I talk
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: about the Toronto and the Tarantella. So that would be
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: the the closest to to what you described as a
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: next static dance or.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: Or maybe even maybe earning it this way almost like
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: is there like a hero's journey journey that these people
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: go through on their own? You know what I'm saying,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: like something along that line. Is there anything like that
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: that kind of comes comes about within.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Your you've looked at what do you mean?
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: Like I would even say like kind of going off
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: on your own and like you know ingesting certain things
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: or putting yourself through again like you.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: Mean, like going to the niche, this kind of initiatory.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but doing it like yourself, like self initiatory to
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: have an experience.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: So there's the informant that I was talking about before,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: the one who defines herself as the last Italian shaman
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: of the hereditary tradition. She told me that she went
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: through this very tough initiation with their grandmother where she
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: was tied to a tree and and had to stay
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: in the woods for for weeks and had to use
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: something may straight on herself and defecate on herself and
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: had to face the wildlife. And it was part of
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: the humanizing experience that she thought was important for her
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: to be, you know, reborn as as a shaman. And
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: she felt very strongly against course shamanism and where you
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: visualize to go into a cave, because she says you
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: have to be in a cave physically to understand that.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: I think that both practices have value personally, but yeah,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: that was the experience that she told me, and another
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: Sabdinian shamanism shaman.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: These case studies are actually present in my book and
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: I wrote about them in my real book, which is
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: pretty much the book version of my PhD. And there's
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: also the Sardinian shaman, the one that did the second
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: case study on and she also talked about having to
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: go through an illness that nobody would understand what it
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: was about, and she had to be able to heal herself,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: so you don't have cases like that. You also have
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: cases where the initiation just happens on Christmas Eve and
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: your grandmother or grandfather initiates you and gives you and
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: the words of power and that's it. So you find
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: both examples, you know, examples of people that go through
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: this a very difficult in street journey and those who don't.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: That's also that's exactly what I was looking for. Thank
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: you totally answered my question that time.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: Awesome stuff.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 5: And in that same one, do you find any cases
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 5: of ecstatic states for divinatory or revelatory kind of understanding.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Within?
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: So you mean in the sense where they enter an
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: alter state of consciousness?
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: Right right?
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, it's it's not always that obvious.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: So there are you know, there are some of the
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: practices in folk magic that where people just really practice
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: these things as part of their daily life, and there
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: are other practices where there is a more obvious state
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: of trans or altered state of consciousness. But yeah, even
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: the ones that you know, they incorporate them in their
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: in their daily life seem to sort of move between
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: the ordinary and non ordinary world quite you know, quite smoothly.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 5: In a way just natural function per se.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, uh, you know, mammy asking maybe also and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: then maybe we'll start to wrap it up soon. When
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: you had stayed with that lady and I guess, you know,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: watched her and studied her. I guess what I'm looking
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: for is just like maybe a little bit of an
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: example of like, you know, what would be like a practice,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: you know, like you know, I'm just keeping a real
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: because I guess my idea of what practices and I'm like,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: you know, more of a ceremonial person, you know, I
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: automatically think of like sigils and topas or talismans and
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: stuff like that, Like do they have like certain things
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: where they might actually make like a satchel? Like if
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: somebody was to practice, can you give us like a
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: picture of what they would be doing or what it
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: incorporates or what it entails?
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Is it just prayers?
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: There being the experience with this particular woman or in general.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: Whichever is easier for you to actually explain, you know
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: If it's easier for you to just give us a
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: lowdown of what that lady's experience was, like, that's fine too.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: If you want to give us a different answer.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: So generally speaking, that is a mixed of gestures and
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: the words of power that are passed down to you
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: for initiation and are generally secret, and the way that
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: people pronounce them is very often inward. So that's one
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: of the things that that woman that Sumon taught me
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: how to pronounce things inwards as opposed to outward. There
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: are practices with the thread. There are practices. There are
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: rituals with you know, using certain threads in a specific way.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: There are rituals that use hair. One ritual actually we
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: did in person, and it was for a specific purpose
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: because at the time I was particularly stressed by a
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: situation that it's better that I don't talk about publicly,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: but it was work related. But yeah, it was a
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: specific difficult situation that I was dealing with, and and
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: she taught me a ritual using my hair and my
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: tongue on the hair to pronounce things in worldly you know,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to achieve, and and it did happen,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: so my problem was solved less for it that way,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: without giving too much details. So yeah, these are examples
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: of practice, but there are many. Really, There are somes
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: that would use herbs. There are some that would use salt.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: So there are really numerous rituals. Yeah, even the pins
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: in the in the lemon, which is probably one that
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: even Americans know. So yeah, there are really lots of rituals.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: That's why I decided to collect them in my upcoming book,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: because I just created like this large collection of all
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: the rituals that I could find.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was something I was actually going to ask
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: and totally forgot, like would they be incorporating herbs or
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: candle burning and you know, like maybe you know, crystals
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: and stuff. So I guess like you kind of answered
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: that it was something I was going to ask. Yeah,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: I was just wondering, like, you know what, what that
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: would incorporate.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 6: Maybe maybe even more recently. I don't know how much
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 6: of it is. It's like actually, I mean obviously it's
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 6: going to be more recent. But like the cards, I
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 6: think it's like similar. The similar cards I think also
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 6: are similia. Yeah, in today's they do. People who use
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 6: it like together with these practices are not necessarily like
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: depends on that.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: I think the cards of the Cibil are more used
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: also by people that are generally interested in witchcraft and paganism.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen many of the using them, but I
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: wouldn't exclude them. I think that the play cards are
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: used more, especially like the Neapolitan cards are the ones
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: that are very that are used.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: Oh I have those, Yeah, those are the most common
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: ones here in North America.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, want to roll over Italy.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I saw a pack of those. I was like, I
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: gotta buy the one here.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: I have like five packs in my house.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: Another reason why I wanted to even ask about I guess, uh,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: you know, the herbs and stuff specifically believe or not,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: is you know, going back to I think I'm kind
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: of practicing, like what's local in your area? I would
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: assume then, like Italian. I mean, listen, this is probably
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: a bad way to get my point across, but like
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: I'm sure egg plants and tomatoes are more abundant naturally
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: in Italy than in North Carolina, you know.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: So like maybe there's just certain things that would be
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: more natural for you to be working with because.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: Of the energetic stuff in your area. So I would.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let me just yeah exactly, Like so I'm
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: wander you know, I'm assuming then like there's probably things
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: very specific to that just because of what was abundant
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: in the area and works for them.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, I think extraordinally boil is one of
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: those for sure.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, was there anything else anybody wanted to ask before
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: we start to wrap it up?
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I know we did tell about an hour and a half,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: so I to keep it here too long. I thought
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: that was.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: Really great, Doctor Angela again like a really excited I
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: got you to come on to talk about this topic
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: because it's something that I have thought about and heard
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: about for a long time, and you always hear like
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: kind of like what you even said. It's a lot
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: of it's word of mouth, but there's a lot of
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: things I've even been told or came across when I was,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: you know, just starting to practice that I realized kind
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: of like wasn't correct, and then I came across your
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: stuff and you seem to validate it.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: So I appreciate that.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: Is there anything, of course, of course, is there anything
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: you would like to leave us with, or anything you
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: want to say that you feel like maybe you just
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: want to even promote, or just that you didn't get
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: out while you're on the show.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you like to say right now.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just remind people to check out my website
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: Doctor and Puka dot com dr and dot com so
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: that you can check out my courses and my services
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: if you're interested in it. Time Witchcraft is dedicated course
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: on that, and also to follow me on my social
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: media as Angela Symposium or doctor Angela Puka and consider
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: uh to you supporting my work with patron or any
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: other of the forms of support that you will find
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: on my channel Linda Biofection in the comments and everywhere.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: All right, awesome, thank you very much, and like I
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: really mean it, I think people who listen to this
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: show are especially of the YouTube people in the chat.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: If you're really into this channel, I really think you
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: will find her channel totally amazing and very interesting, So
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: go check it out for real. Thank you again so
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: much for coming on again. It was it was amazing
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: and it was an honor to have you on. And
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: before we wrap it up, I'll let the other people
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: remind everybody where you can find this stuff real quick
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: to resea if I guess if you want to plug
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: the Spiritual Gangsters, which has been dead for like a year.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: You can yeah, well, thank you, yeah, no, you know,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 4: I still have my content up there if anyone's interested.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: You know, there's some really good interviews, and we did
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: a whole series on like Mary and apparitions, eucharistic miracles,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: those really cool stuff. So there's that on the Spiritual
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: Gangster's YouTube. But yeah, otherwise, Occult Research Institute. You know,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: don't forget it, don't sleep on it.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: Check it out.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: You always forget to plug it, so I'll plug it
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: for you. But thank you for having me back, doctor Angel.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: I learned so much and I really appreciate you know,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: shedding some light on my heritage is very interesting to
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: learn about.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: So thank you, thank you, Yeah, thank you. If I
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: can call you the way that I would pronounce your yes,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: please thank you, we would say today. So yes, exactly,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: thank you so much.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say, honestly, she really hasn't podcasted
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: and now how long like you and and then I
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: had attempted with Robbie Marx were able to pull her
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: out of retirement.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: So and then just meeting Matt. So it's nice to
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: meet you, Matt. Time I've seen you on, I just
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: haven't been on with you.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 6: So yeah, nice to be true.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, So thank you very much, Teresa, and uh Robbie
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: Marx real quick. Let everybody know where they can find
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: yourself and.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: All your art.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 5: Yes, this is a great show. Thank you for everything,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 5: doctor Pooka. I really enjoyed your analysis and breaking down
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 5: some of these things. As far as my stuff, if
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 5: anybody wants to check out anything I do, you can
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 5: just go to my link tree which is link tree
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 5: r m ar X and that'll pull up my art,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: my Patreon, my podcast, et cetera, et cetera. And thanks again, Nick,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 5: I appreciate it, of.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: Course, of course. And last Matt.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 6: Sir, Yes, also thank you very much doctor Pooka. Really interesting,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 6: like made me see things that I couldn't see before
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 6: in the Italian scene. Let's say I'll try to have
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 6: the eyes for it now when I'm walking around here.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 6: And thanks a lot for that, very very cool stuff.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 6: And yeah, you can find me always as at Matt
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 6: Moore nineteen. That's on x, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, maybe
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 6: some other place I missed, but all those places, and
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 6: there's also my website Kabala dot com k A A
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 6: b A l a h dot com and the Twitter
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 6: spaces which will stop a little bit the end of
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 6: the year, just have some pauses here in there. But
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 6: I mean we have all the catalog at the True
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 6: Relaunche with the v so the True Relaunche dot com
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 6: and on YouTube as well. So yeah, thanks very much.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: Oh thank you, Matt. I appreciate you making it on.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: And again doctor Angela Puka, we really really appreciate you
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: coming on. It was it was an amazing time. We
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: got to got to hear a lot, and I'm really
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: proud to be able to present this information to the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: people that listen to this show, and hopefully maybe in
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: the future we'll get you on again for something else.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: Definitely go check out her podcast again, her show on YouTube.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: I cannot stress that enough. I really do think people
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: listen to this show will really dig that. You might
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: even start listening to her more than me unfortunately.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: But yeah, go check it out.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: And uh, that's the end of the Occult Rejects and
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: until the next one, everybody be well later.