Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 80 DR. MORETTI ON & GEMMA CLARK

00:00:00.620 I am Clare Mitchell, Doctor of Laws and King's Council.

00:00:04.200 And I am Zoe Vendetotsi, Doctor of Laws, Teacher and Writer.

00:00:07.860 On the 8th of March 2020, International Women's Day, we launched the Feminist Witches of Scotland campaign.

00:00:14.100 The Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736, saw thousands of people, mostly women,

00:00:22.260 accused and executed as witches in Scotland in the country's biggest and most brutal miscarriage of justice.

00:00:28.580 Our campaign had three aims, to get a formal state apology for those accused of witchcraft,

00:00:34.800 to obtain a pardon for all those convicted,

00:00:37.520 and to get a national memorial to remember those involved in the Witchcraft Act.

00:00:42.020 On International Women's Day 2022, the first of our aims was realised

00:00:46.360 when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal state apology to those accused as witches.

00:00:51.560 The first formal state apology ever.

00:00:53.300 We are currently working with politicians to ensure there is legislation passed to pardon those accused as witches,

00:00:59.140 to change their status from convicted witches to those who ought never to have been prosecuted.

00:01:04.360 We continue our work to obtain a national monument so those who suffered will never be forgotten.

00:01:09.280 Join us as we speak to the experts on the witchcraft trials, both here in Scotland and further abroad,

00:01:14.480 as we explore the history of women in Scotland and continue the cultural conversation of what it means to be a woman.

00:01:21.160 well hello and welcome to this very rapidly released episode i can't i mean don't get

00:01:29.680 excited guys okay we've done three very quick episodes i'd like to say that we're going to

00:01:34.920 carry on with this level of um of of striving um but i can't guarantee it okay so don't get too

00:01:42.600 excited but it's very nice to be with you in this new year isn't it claire it is it's absolutely

00:01:49.900 amazing i'm not going to refer to the bit between christmas and new year that you spoke about before

00:01:54.360 because you described it the most biological way and i'm really not into that then i remembered

00:01:59.660 because somebody else pointed out to me that it's not the perineum it's the merineum and obviously

00:02:07.220 the joke is about the perineum and it being christmas which is a lot more acceptable and

00:02:11.920 because i am a puerile child at heart i forgot the actual jokey part and just went with the biology

00:02:18.200 part so i'm very very sorry to any listeners that i distressed with my biological detail and well

00:02:25.540 less to you i mean that's the so to say the tip of the iceberg with the things i say to you but

00:02:30.560 anyway anyway hello and welcome to 2026 at the witches of scotland podcast 2026 our sixth year

00:02:38.360 and our 80th episode zoe 80 my goodness i mean who would have thought that you and i could keep

00:02:45.980 talking for 80 episodes i mean yeah me and you could keep talking for 80 episodes but who would

00:02:52.280 have thought that we would have managed to get this many folk together to talk i mean i mean let's

00:02:58.780 be under no illusion here claire they're not listening for us they're listening for the guests

00:03:02.560 that's true that's true that's true but tonight today whenever you listen to this the episode

00:03:08.720 you're going to listen to episode 80 as claire said is a good one and the reason that we have

00:03:13.780 decided to release it so quickly after the meronium episode is that um is it's it's very

00:03:21.220 relevant time it doesn't matter if you do listen to this after the day that it comes out but it

00:03:25.820 is something that you will it'll become clear during the episode if you listen to it on the

00:03:29.800 5th why we wanted to get out so quickly so there's been no point in the 10th no not i mean there's

00:03:36.780 it's still worth listening to but there's just stuff that you can't you can't action in the same

00:03:40.440 way this year but i mean it could be the land of podcasts you could be listening to this in

00:03:44.100 2032 in a nuclear bunker and then we'd still have relevance listen to than this

00:03:50.880 i don't know it depends what you've got access to what if we're the only podcast left

00:03:55.540 that's worse than the no never mind right okay so before we go any further we introduce our

00:04:04.280 lovely guests because we have two guests tonight um do we have anything that's been happening

00:04:09.740 in the world, Clare? First of 2026. News! I think we maybe need to professionalise that

00:04:23.300 somewhat. We've got news today from two different parts of the world. Clare, would you like

00:04:31.140 to kick off with your first piece of news? Yeah, I was looking at something which came

00:04:38.120 up on i think it was apple news that i was reading and um when i saw it i thought oh this is quite

00:04:45.440 interesting it was a a report done by a group of people a group of economists in fact which i thought

00:04:54.180 was quite strange um about the issue of witchcraft and how how the economic factors involved and the

00:05:01.940 paper on witchcraft was done by economists Dev Nathan and Govind Keller and they said that and

00:05:08.960 they've put this in quotes because they're not meaning that this is correct they mean this is

00:05:12.800 what people think that secret forms of worship by women have historically been labeled as witchcraft

00:05:19.440 by others and this is talking about particularly the area of India. It says these deeply entrenched

00:05:25.940 historical beliefs that have been carried forward to the present are used to oppress women today

00:05:31.380 said activist and researcher Samar Bozu-Mulnik.

00:05:36.660 Today, stories of people being killed because they are suspected of practising witchcraft

00:05:41.000 appear with disturbing regularity across the country.

00:05:45.900 And in fact, according to the National Crime Record Bureau data,

00:05:50.080 2,000, more than 3,200 people, again mostly women, have been killed.

00:05:56.480 But what they actually say is that those records are probably vastly under-representing the amount of murders, they are murders, that take place because in lots of areas, particularly rural areas, they will not be being reported.

00:06:17.700 and what activists have said is that when women are killed in deep and rural areas communities

00:06:24.380 often keep quiet and word about the crime doesn't reach the police so we talked before in another

00:06:32.460 podcast about how all over the world these things happen time and time again and it was explained 0.63

00:06:39.960 that there was a pattern to who gets accused and this will not surprise you Zoe often it's women

00:06:45.180 who come from a weak family they're old they're economically weak and their husbands if they have

00:06:51.280 them will often be alcoholics i.e somebody that's able to protect them perhaps in the same way

00:07:00.000 it also happens more frequently in areas where social and health facilities are failing so i

00:07:07.300 just read that and i was like it's just exactly the same storybook that plays out time and time

00:07:13.040 again but the good news I suppose for the modern day is that there are a significant number of

00:07:19.200 activists now working to try and address the problem of witchcraft accusations in India and

00:07:24.860 there are a lot of people working on it. The economists that I mentioned earlier Nathan and

00:07:34.340 Keller have got a book Witch Hunts Culture Patriarchy and Structural Transformation and

00:07:41.400 they explain that you can't just get rid of these beliefs by outlawing them the only way of

00:07:48.540 eliminating those beliefs is to replace them with other beliefs or systems of explanation

00:07:54.200 so i thought that was really really interesting you can't just say look don't don't believe that

00:07:59.180 anymore it's stupid because people will hold on to it until you give them another narrative or

00:08:03.660 something else to speak to so i thought it's interesting it'd be great if we could actually

00:08:08.600 get them on the um on the podcast we'll see if we can get in touch them and see if they'll come

00:08:13.760 and speak to us we have got somebody lined up at some point this year to talk to us about so in the

00:08:20.780 book we've we've spoken to leo igway we also spoke to um to experts in ghana so we've looked at a few

00:08:28.300 countries in africa bearing in mind that africa is a continent and there's different things

00:08:32.700 happening in different countries some african countries that this isn't an issue some other

00:08:36.880 countries it is an issue but we have looked because we know people there in africa in particular

00:08:41.240 but i'd like to sort of broaden and have a look first of all in africa about belief systems it's

00:08:46.780 quite interesting what you're talking about there about the idea of magic and unpick a bit more

00:08:50.260 about what leo igway had said to us about anthropologists imposing the word witch onto

00:08:56.420 african thoughts and belief systems so we've got a historian who's going to come on and talk to us

00:09:01.520 about magic in africa should that be quite interesting but then i'd also like we'd also

00:09:06.280 like to have a look at where it's happening in other countries but it's amazing what you're

00:09:11.360 saying there Claire and how that ties up with what we know has happened in Nigeria and Malawi

00:09:17.220 and Ghana and what what happened in Scotland like the similarity between them startling

00:09:23.760 worldwide yeah it's interesting because I think one one thing that people will sometimes say is

00:09:32.880 oh women were were just as bad for accusing other women and I think it's worth having a little bit

00:09:38.020 of a we do talk about this a wee bit in the book but a little bit of a chat about the fact that

00:09:42.360 women will of course accuse other women if that's the system and the system is patriarchal where men

00:09:48.940 are in charge and make the rules but women are often participants in that either because they 0.92

00:09:54.860 they believe it too or because they sense that's the way to protect themselves or they've got a

00:09:59.600 grudge or that they see that's a way to have power i mean these are just all human fallibilities

00:10:04.680 absolutely but actually the most the most understandable i think fallibility is a lot

00:10:11.000 of women named other women because when they were taken in and they were delirious having

00:10:15.940 been kept awake for days yeah they'd name people that they knew yeah and it's often who was this

00:10:23.180 that's often an argument that men will give us that say to us um stop banging on about it that 0.99

00:10:28.720 tends to be the cut of their jib tends to be women were just as bad for accusing other women and like

00:10:33.520 you're saying there Claire it completely neglects the fact well who who said these names and under

00:10:39.540 what circumstances and we do know as you've just said Claire that there was people that were there

00:10:43.940 were being you know tortured into giving up names so I mean it doesn't feel very reliable to me you

00:10:50.000 know in many ways but it'll be interesting to sort of cast the net a bit wider this year and look at

00:10:54.340 what's happening worldwide. So we're staying abroad, we're staying outside of Scotland

00:10:59.980 for the next piece of news, which is something that happened towards the end of November

00:11:05.380 in Italy. So deputies in the Italian parliament voted at the end of November to unanimously

00:11:13.400 voted to introduce the crime of femicide, which is the murder of a woman motivated by gender.

00:11:19.800 and that is going to be a distinct law which will come with a life sentence punishment now what's

00:11:25.220 interesting about this is that there's very few countries that that seem to have femicide on the

00:11:30.580 books so there was a there was a terrible murder in italy of a woman called giulia cachetton i'm

00:11:38.220 sorry italians if i'm pronouncing that incorrectly um her ex-boyfriend killed her and she was she's

00:11:44.280 only 22 and this happened in November of 2023 the murderer the ex-boyfriend Filippo Toretta

00:11:52.240 stabbed her to death and then dumped her body it was just absolutely terrible people were very

00:11:57.640 upset about it quite rightly and it was in the in the news until he was caught and apparently it was

00:12:03.440 the response of Julia's sister Elena that it stayed in people's mind because she discussed

00:12:08.340 and described the murderer as what she called a healthy son

00:12:12.480 in a deeply patriarchal society.

00:12:15.520 And people in Italy took to the streets.

00:12:18.200 And we know that the Italians will absolutely do that

00:12:21.800 if it's something they care strongly about.

00:12:23.400 We've seen that happening of late with what's happening in Gaza.

00:12:27.040 So Italians took to the streets and demanded change.

00:12:30.240 And so two years on, MPs have voted for this law.

00:12:33.480 It's been debated apparently a long time

00:12:35.780 And it's now one of the few places that sees femicide as a crime in and of its own self, which I think is really important.

00:12:43.660 You know, we need to think about, well, why are women being killed and what is the society in which we live that leads some men to do these murders against women?

00:12:53.960 And it doesn't take long to be on the Internet to get a sense of what, you know, what sort of disregard many women are held in.

00:13:00.440 you know it's still it's rape threats it's murder threats you know that kind of thing is really

00:13:05.540 really common you know and at the at the most sort of innocent side of it is men you know this

00:13:10.880 whole idea about judging women and giving them sort of like numbers standings and all that kind

00:13:16.040 of rubbish and it's something that we've talked about a lot over the last few years about what's

00:13:21.700 happening in schools what's happening you know on the internet and what that then means for women

00:13:27.740 And I think that if it's named as femicide, then it means that we're really discussing that rather than just kind of like, oh, it was a it was a murder that happened because they fell out or, you know, it was it was an argument that escalated.

00:13:40.260 You know, the fact is that that you're more likely to get murdered by your intimate partner than by anybody else.

00:13:45.780 Aren't you, Claire?

00:13:46.760 Absolutely. And I often find it strange when the word domestic is used.

00:13:53.760 Yeah.

00:13:54.160 it doesn't it doesn't really sit correctly with what a lot of these are it's like what is it

00:13:59.740 saying when it's domestic is it is tied to the woman's role in a home here is a thing's way

00:14:05.900 remember right back at the very start and I said bear with me a few weeks I've got an idea

00:14:10.120 and you said hear me out hear me out wouldn't it be amazing if we asked our MPs to bring in

00:14:19.660 a law on femicide yeah that is an idea i mean i wonder what the reception to that would actually

00:14:27.000 be in the uk what it would be in scotland well it would have to be scotland because our law

00:14:32.720 is different from that in england and the the bill on misogyny did not go through for various reasons

00:14:40.320 not to do with the merits of it um i think probably more to do with the timing of it

00:14:45.180 but why not why don't we why don't we ask our mps in the new year yeah yeah i mean why isn't there

00:14:52.860 why don't why don't we follow italy's leads because i think it's not just italy it's also

00:14:58.300 cyprus malta and croatia they're all eu member states they've got a legal definition of

00:15:04.500 femicide femicide in their criminal codes and i think you know it would make sense if we

00:15:10.100 obviously had it too the italian law applies to murders which are described as being an act of

00:15:16.100 hatred discrimination domination control or subjugation of a woman as a woman or that occurs

00:15:23.700 when she breaks off a relationship or to quote limit her individual freedoms yeah why not just

00:15:29.900 name it yeah why not just name it i mean yes we have the crime of murder that's a given but it is

00:15:37.780 important that we highlight what's actually happening and murder isn't cutting it yeah

00:15:45.640 you know if it can go down if it doesn't go with the aggravation of misogyny why not why not

00:15:52.160 i mean the rates in the uk um are that and this i think is taken from i can't remember where the

00:16:04.660 scottish women's aid i think has got um a link to the femicide census which i've just looked at

00:16:11.240 i think in the uk one woman is killed every three days by a man and i think the thing is here there's

00:16:19.380 it's great to get on the legal books but more importantly than that it can't be one of these

00:16:23.720 things that's like right we've put it into law that's the job done i mean really the bigger the 1.00

00:16:28.940 bigger issue with this is that we actually try and change the way in which women are viewed in

00:16:33.260 society you know that we talk about well why why do people why do some men you know feel that they

00:16:40.020 can do this with them and why do they feel entitled when a relationship breaks up which

00:16:44.060 is what happened in the case of that poor woman in Italy that they broke up and he killed her

00:16:47.800 because you know she wouldn't carry on the relationship we saw that horrible case I don't

00:16:52.200 know if it was last year maybe or the year before where the ex-boyfriend came back and killed the

00:16:57.400 girl the ex-girlfriend her sister and the mother um you know and there's this sense of entitlement

00:17:02.560 and we really need to be digging down into that with children from when they're tiny about the

00:17:07.660 relationship between the sexes and what relationships are and you know understanding

00:17:12.460 that somebody breaking up with you doesn't mean you've got any kind of an entitlement

00:17:16.400 and some people will be listening to this and they'll go well only a disturbed person would do

00:17:20.260 that but we've got a pretty high percentage of disturbed people looking at the stats you know

00:17:25.900 that's something that really needs to be talked about and really it's about regulation it's about

00:17:29.360 emotional regulation yeah i mean sadly if you go on to look at domestic abuse statistics

00:17:36.580 and they are horrifyingly high and they're also on the rise it's really scary you would have

00:17:45.080 thought by this time and i think i think again like you know there's a parallel to be drawn

00:17:50.500 there with the with the witch trials that you know that people are um are feeling less and

00:17:56.680 less secure at the moment you know and maybe then that gets played out in in intimate relationships

00:18:01.460 where if a man doesn't feel like he's got control in his work life maybe or he feels like he's been

00:18:06.840 demeaned in some way he'll take it out on on his female partner you know and it was ever thus but

00:18:12.240 I just think I wonder how much it's tied into sort of financial insecurity and like social insecurity

00:18:18.160 and you know this whole idea about the male loneliness epidemic which is interesting to me

00:18:24.100 but also like annoying. Hang on I'm reading a red flag because if we start talking about the

00:18:31.500 male loneliness epidemics we will not have enough time for either of our two guests. No it's true

00:18:37.600 let's move on let's move on. So our guests today are very interesting and the reason one of the

00:18:42.920 reasons that I picked that story about what's happening in Italy is obviously naturally it's

00:18:46.160 incredibly interesting but our first guest is an Italian who's going to tell us about some Italian

00:18:51.700 traditions. Hello we are so happy to welcome to our podcast today a guest that we have been

00:18:59.040 literally chasing across the internet for what feels about 10 years now. Every time I get in

00:19:04.000 touch I say how about then and then I forget to follow up and then you're really busy and then

00:19:08.720 it's been it's been a long time but I think it's going to be worth the wait guys. So today I'm

00:19:13.240 delighted to introduce to the show Debra Moretti who's going to talk to us about something that

00:19:18.720 we've never talked about before. So that's very exciting. So Debra, welcome to the podcast.

00:19:24.560 Thank you very much. And thank you for having me here.

00:19:28.300 Oh, we're so happy to get you on here. Can you tell the listeners what it is that your

00:19:34.600 speciality is and what you're talking about rather than me mangle an intro if you tell

00:19:38.580 us what you're talking about today?

00:19:39.840 I am an archaeologist and a social historian so I started as an archaeologist I studied in Italy

00:19:50.420 and then I moved to England and I was an archaeologist I practiced as an archaeologist and

00:19:58.500 then I decided to move my interest which is the evidence of magic and ritual practices in

00:20:06.520 archaeological context into the realm of history therefore I decided to do a PhD on witchcraft

00:20:14.660 and I contacted Professor Ronald Hutton with my proposal and that was that and I was awarded my

00:20:22.720 PhD in history in 2018 and my PhD research is on historical Italian witchcraft and I worked on

00:20:32.260 two archives one is uh the roman inquisition archive so the um the document of the trials

00:20:42.780 for witchcraft in the roman inquisition in tuscany and then and then i'm now uh working

00:20:50.840 with professor owen davies um on a project which is called alternative healers so it's more modern

00:20:58.940 uh but we are dealing with all the all those alternative killers that operated outside of

00:21:05.400 the medical orthodoxy and that includes cunning folk um really all of them uh charmers and and

00:21:14.700 so on astrologers and so on so on oh we'll we'll probably need to get you back on again to talk

00:21:21.640 about that if you'd like to because that'd be so fascinating project it is truly a great project

00:21:27.560 and it's important because it shows you that the witchcraft accusations

00:21:31.420 did not really end with the end of the witch hunt.

00:21:35.000 Oh, wow.

00:21:35.440 They went on into the 19th century and even early 20th century.

00:21:40.960 That's fascinating because I love Owen's work

00:21:43.180 because one of the things that Owen is great for,

00:21:45.380 I've now left Twitter,

00:21:46.720 so I don't know if he's still bravely battling on on Twitter,

00:21:49.420 but he was great on Twitter for saying to people,

00:21:51.440 no, that's not true.

00:21:53.100 No, that's not true.

00:21:54.620 This is the actual facts.

00:21:56.020 and even when people would kind of keep going to him

00:21:58.360 no I think you'll find he was kind of like

00:22:00.180 well I think this is my career

00:22:02.240 and it's my area

00:22:03.320 he's very good

00:22:06.260 you know calmly refuting

00:22:08.680 the tide

00:22:10.440 of rubbish on Twitter 0.99

00:22:11.760 yeah it's absolute nonsense but anyway 0.95

00:22:14.280 that sounds like a really fascinating project

00:22:16.400 but what you're going to talk about tonight

00:22:18.260 is specifically

00:22:19.220 it is the

00:22:22.080 tradition of the Bufana

00:22:24.280 the Bufana is

00:22:25.980 a folk tradition, but it has really ancient roots. So let me give you an idea of how I remember the

00:22:36.840 Befana tradition when I was a child. It's one of my favourite memories. So the Befana tradition

00:22:44.780 is connected to the Epiphany, so that's the 6th of January, but the Befana would fly across the

00:22:52.880 night sky on the night between the 5th and the 6th and if children had been good children she

00:23:01.640 would deliver gifts and usually the gifts were put into socks which were hung on the fireplace

00:23:09.900 or the wood burner stove or the windows and we did have that so me and my brother would go to bed

00:23:19.680 really excited the night of the fifth with our socks hanging from uh the the firework beam and

00:23:26.660 i would pray that i had been a good girl because um sometimes the fan i would leave

00:23:34.600 coal rather than little presents we have that in scotland too mccall angle deborah did you ever

00:23:43.100 get coal or was it always sweets i have but uh it was a sweet coal so

00:23:50.040 it would actually sell it's a trick yeah it would look like coal but it was a sweet so you would uh

00:23:58.500 get that's sweet anyway so can you tell us what the befana was the befana um even now it's an old

00:24:10.940 lady and it's um a witch figure is not a witch but it is a witch figure so even in a modern

00:24:20.540 tradition it's an old lady there is um a beautifying tradition which has nothing to do

00:24:28.260 with the befana so you would see little cards or memes of a pinup befana but that's that's not

00:24:35.760 the tradition the hot witch yeah exactly yeah so let's move away from that it's an old lady and

00:24:44.840 usually it's a quite um weathered um old lady with a long nose uh you know the warts and all that um

00:24:55.720 and and it has been like that uh for for centuries um it comes from as i said from

00:25:07.440 really ancient roots but the tradition that i grew up with is more of a christian tradition

00:25:15.060 right so i'll start with that and then i will take you back in time okay there are two main

00:25:21.540 Christian traditions regarding the Befana.

00:25:25.520 And the first one, it's basically a Christian story

00:25:30.900 that begins at the time of the birth of Christ, of course.

00:25:42.660 It says that the three wise men wandering in Judea somewhere

00:25:49.500 and stopped to ask for water to a lovely elderly woman.

00:25:56.660 She was fetching water from the well near her cottage.

00:26:00.940 She offered them water and they invited her to join them for their quest.

00:26:07.440 So the three wise men were going to see the newborn king.

00:26:13.480 She declined because she was very, very busy.

00:26:17.280 And so they left.

00:26:19.500 out yeah i know she's like the three wise men they are they're guys with nothing better to do

00:26:25.300 at this time of year than go on a quest for the baby this woman was a busy woman she had things

00:26:30.140 to do yeah exactly so she was really busy you know chores so she didn't bother to be fair clear

00:26:36.020 also this is before jesus was known and was famous like so you know i still might know what

00:26:43.020 she's missing out on but i still like that like there's these wise men roaming about with nothing

00:26:48.640 better to do and they come across an old woman she's like look i'm really busy at this time of

00:26:52.900 year it's dark it's also also clear if i could point out to you how many men have we come across 0.77

00:26:58.160 in our lives that would describe themselves as wise men and we would immediately make our excuses

00:27:02.260 because we were too busy just saying sounds like a standard female experience do you think they

00:27:08.740 were king bros yeah yeah if they'd had a podcast they'd have had a podcast yeah so as soon as the

00:27:16.940 she started thinking and she said oh they looked quite regal and of course they had the the star

00:27:23.840 illuminating their path so she stopped and think and she said right I think they were on a real

00:27:31.320 important mission so she decided to follow them so yes so she put in baskets um the toys the clothes

00:27:40.640 from her deceased child she added fruit nuts and other things she put the baskets across

00:27:47.220 the the back of her donkey and then she put more on a sack on top of her shoulders and she tried

00:27:53.340 to follow the the wise men Debra I'm so sorry to interrupt you as a mother of three she's the one 1.00

00:28:01.100 that started this the enormous amount of labor women have to do at Christmas all the food all 0.98

00:28:07.140 the presents the transport everything all done it's the woman that does it all from the get-go 0.99

00:28:13.640 also can i think that the guy that the king bros brought three useless presents for a baby in a

00:28:20.320 manger yes and that in fact that is in the second christian tradition i'm going to tell you oh

00:28:27.080 this first one she tries to reach them she get lost she travels all over the place she cannot

00:28:36.140 find this new baby king and she asked she ends up in a seaside town she asked some sailors how to

00:28:46.820 find it nobody knows what this is and one of the sailors says you should go to Rome because there

00:28:53.620 are many kings in Rome and somehow she ends up in Rome but she cannot find it the tradition says

00:29:00.620 She even spoke to Caesar, but nobody knew about this new newborn baby king.

00:29:12.240 So in despair, a little bit distraught, she decided to go back home.

00:29:17.820 And traveling back, she went across beautiful countries, beautiful lands,

00:29:23.580 but she saw the suffering of some people, especially some poor children.

00:29:28.620 And she decided to gift them those gifts that she wanted to give to Jesus.

00:29:35.980 And that's how one of the tradition tellers how the Befana tradition started.

00:29:45.180 There is another one, a less common Christian origin story of the Befana,

00:29:51.340 which is collected from oral tradition in the Emilia-Romagna area,

00:29:56.720 which is slightly centre-north of Italy.

00:30:00.020 And this story is different because she, the Befana,

00:30:05.940 was there at the birth of Jesus.

00:30:09.040 She was the old lady that would tell him nice stories about humanity.

00:30:17.640 And in receiving many gifts, Jesus decided that those gifts did not interest him.

00:30:25.200 He wanted the gifts from the heart.

00:30:30.500 So it was just the goodness of people that he wanted.

00:30:33.540 So he instructed the Befana to give the gifts given to him to give them to the good children of the world.

00:30:43.400 So in this story, the Befana does not arrive too late to see Jesus.

00:30:52.620 She is there already.

00:30:55.320 She is punctual and she's precise and she's actually helping Jesus in a mission.

00:31:03.700 And in fact, some tales tell us that she was not officially, but she was considered Jesus' grandmother.

00:31:12.140 So you see, so there are two kernels of Christian tradition referring to the Befana.

00:31:20.760 In this tradition, she is good, she is connected to Jesus, and she does good.

00:31:27.760 And this Christian tradition, you find it already completed towards the end of the 19th century and then in the early 20th century.

00:31:36.700 But there is a folklore tradition that is slightly different.

00:31:45.440 So what we have seen is the children's Befana, the one I grew up with.

00:31:52.240 The other Befana I was not aware of.

00:31:56.080 And this one is for adults, really.

00:32:01.880 And it has a darker side.

00:32:04.840 it's sinister

00:32:07.140 sometimes malevolent

00:32:10.420 and affects not just children

00:32:13.320 but also adults

00:32:14.560 and this type of Befana

00:32:18.540 as I said

00:32:19.040 we find it really in the folk tales

00:32:22.320 so they're not tales for children

00:32:24.860 they are tales for everybody 0.99

00:32:27.160 and this malevolent Befana 1.00

00:32:31.220 is most prominently found

00:32:33.100 in not all across Italy but in specific regions so you find her in the northeast in the Veneto

00:32:41.620 region you find her at the opposite end of the boat in Apulia you find her in Sicily and you

00:32:49.780 find her in Tuscany. Now in these areas the Epiphany Eve so when the Befana arrives was not 0.82

00:32:58.840 only a night of celebration

00:33:00.660 but also one of dread

00:33:02.400 in these areas in fact

00:33:05.120 like for example in

00:33:06.720 Cadore which is in the Veltor region

00:33:08.860 near Belluno

00:33:10.480 you find

00:33:12.920 the Befana which is there called

00:33:14.880 Redo Desa

00:33:16.800 she

00:33:18.920 bestows gifts

00:33:20.540 but she also brings 0.61

00:33:22.580 a sort of metaphorical

00:33:25.080 horror

00:33:25.640 fright, death, cruelty

00:33:29.120 fear, nightmares, trickery, betrayals,

00:33:33.140 and according to some accounts, folk accounts,

00:33:35.860 even cannibalism.

00:33:37.400 So you see, it's a completely different side 0.99

00:33:41.720 of the Christian tale. 0.89

00:33:45.020 Red Odeza did not travel alone,

00:33:48.040 and this is a point that is important,

00:33:50.660 and you will see later when I go a little bit further

00:33:54.320 into the roots of it.

00:33:55.700 She was accompanied by a terrifying entourage, the 12 Redo de Zegote, who punished and frightened anyone they encountered as a punishment for not being good people.

00:34:13.280 And in an almanac of 1885, it's described basically her as a woman who announced her presence on the Epiphany Eve with a clanging of chains.

00:34:32.700 And it warned war to anyone who has not removed the chains from the kitchen fire or left the tour in a distaff.

00:34:42.200 and in those in those regions she basically was a punisher for those people who did not

00:34:49.420 clean the houses or did not respect certain rituals and regarding the discuff it's quite

00:34:58.300 this is quite interesting because she would so she would carry a discuff and she would threaten 1.00

00:35:04.400 to spin the entrails of those women 1.00

00:35:08.120 who carried on spinning woolen flaps on the Epiphany Eve

00:35:14.060 and that was not allowed.

00:35:16.720 Oh my God.

00:35:17.780 Yeah. 1.00

00:35:19.220 So this is a woman being used to keep other women in line 1.00

00:35:23.340 for domestic slaughtery and also working 1.00

00:35:25.980 when they shouldn't be working?

00:35:28.440 Bloody hell.

00:35:29.980 You have to stop working and also simultaneously continue working.

00:35:32.700 Claire you would be you'd be done in I'd be done I'd be done I'm not saying about domestic

00:35:41.040 sluttery per se I'm thinking more from the point of view that you don't stop working 0.96

00:35:45.200 so the buffana would come in and also domestic sluttery I mean I'm chaos on legs 0.99

00:35:50.820 true she might bring you in as one of her punishers it's possible I was thinking well

00:35:57.040 do you know what I was thinking all the time that you were um talking to us about it is

00:36:00.960 that when we looked at the witchcraft trials in Scotland

00:36:03.840 and we looked at the Catholic traditions

00:36:05.880 pre the Witchcraft Act,

00:36:09.080 the history of witchcraft

00:36:11.800 and the history of Catholicism

00:36:13.880 was all interlinked.

00:36:16.040 Like there are parts of it that touched other parts

00:36:19.420 and it seems like a lot of the stories

00:36:21.000 got mixed up in translation.

00:36:23.400 Is that how the Bufana,

00:36:27.040 do you think these differences and changes happened?

00:36:30.460 Were parts of it bringing in bits of religious, like the 12 people that she had with her, you know, the disciples?

00:36:37.960 Are those the sort of things that the same sort of ideas that are all getting mixed up together?

00:36:44.520 So, yes, you're right.

00:36:45.840 So, of course, in the witchcraft trials of the Roman Inquisition, in the, you know, the volumes or the guidelines that the Inquisitors followed,

00:37:00.980 You can see that there is an exchange of ideas, myths, folklore, which allowed the exchange of traditions between the inquisitors, the accused and the accusers.

00:37:23.840 So there was like a circle of influencing each other.

00:37:29.220 So, of course, the Inquisitors had, I mean, a demonic witch is absolutely a theological creation.

00:37:42.540 What does that mean?

00:37:43.280 It means that, so the witch that was persecuted and prosecuted by different tribunals, including the Inquisition, was an intellectual creation that was based on theological beliefs.

00:38:02.960 It's the monology that created that witch figure.

00:38:09.560 so just to just to clarify so what what you're saying is that the the witch of the you know that

00:38:17.200 was persecuted during the the witch that was persecuted during the inquisition times that

00:38:21.560 was something that came from like biblical reading and ideas from the bible that would be backed up

00:38:26.540 by the church which was the same in scotland obviously but that this other idea preceded that

00:38:32.420 before Catholicism was in place.

00:38:35.140 So this is a much, much earlier.

00:38:37.820 Not quite.

00:38:38.940 So if you look, for example, I work on Italian materials.

00:38:43.920 So if you look at witchcraft accusations in medieval times,

00:38:49.360 you don't find the demonic witch that you then find from 1450 onwards.

00:38:58.520 Why did that shift then?

00:39:00.640 It's exactly that period. There is an evolution from fear of magic, in fact, fear of ritual magic, which stems from the 12th century and then later on with the Renaissance.

00:39:25.720 so uh the power that be was um fearful of ritual magic ritual magic was not the magical practices

00:39:36.160 of the folk is the ritual magic was practiced by um learned um well-to-do men had not only

00:39:49.240 economic power

00:39:51.680 but also

00:39:52.760 knowledge

00:39:54.280 in fact

00:39:56.100 ritual magic

00:39:58.500 to be able to perform ritual magic you have

00:40:01.680 to be able to read

00:40:03.760 you have to be able to buy

00:40:05.800 certain books

00:40:06.860 whereas folk magic

00:40:08.900 was not learned

00:40:11.600 you didn't

00:40:14.060 have to be able to read

00:40:15.740 so folk magic

00:40:18.660 it was passed down from person to person.

00:40:21.180 Was folk magic used more by women

00:40:24.460 or was it equal men and women that used folk magic? 0.89

00:40:28.640 Good question.

00:40:29.440 So whereas in ritual magic you find men 0.78

00:40:32.620 because women were not educated enough. 0.99

00:40:36.700 Didn't have that. 1.00

00:40:37.320 They were too busy.

00:40:39.140 Yeah.

00:40:40.060 In folk magic it was both men and women. 0.75

00:40:43.280 So that's the difference.

00:40:44.340 So the church in the 13th century,

00:40:47.440 We are in a period, so, you know, we start with the crusades, and then we have the crusades against heresy. So we're talking about the Cathars, the Woldensians, and the Inquisition was originally created to fight these heresies, so the Cathars and the Woldensians. 0.51

00:41:12.520 Once that problem with heretical groups, Christian groups, ended, then there was another fear, and that was the fear of ritual magic. 0.76

00:41:27.060 So the kernel that, let's say, kick-started a century later the witch hunt is heresy.

00:41:40.120 So basically, where before, yes, we had magical practitioners who got in trouble with different tribunals for different reasons,

00:41:48.760 the heretical element was not there where after that the witch was a heretic and not only was a

00:42:00.280 heretic the witch had made a pact with the devil right that's what's gonna ask you don't have that

00:42:08.380 before that right so that's why i say it comes from demonology rather than folk tradition so

00:42:16.380 Just to spool back a wee bit, before we had the heretical angle to it

00:42:20.180 and people got into trouble for folk magic,

00:42:24.340 was the idea of a witch around then?

00:42:28.000 Or did the idea of the actual witch come later?

00:42:31.620 There are traditions of the witch, but it's not the demonic heretical.

00:42:38.060 So not evil witches?

00:42:40.800 No.

00:42:41.300 Did witch have a neutral sort of a reading initially?

00:42:43.900 So if you think of magic from antiquity to the medieval period, magic per se was not considered evil. Magic was a neutral power, if you like. It was the ultimate goal of the magical practitioner to put a spin on what was considered good or bad.

00:43:05.520 in roman times certain magical crimes were persecuted and prosecuted and people were

00:43:13.320 killed for that but the crime had to be real what we mean by a magical crime so if i was a powerful

00:43:22.980 um service magician and i caused a storm and because of my storm people died and that was

00:43:31.680 proved I was a criminal.

00:43:34.380 Okay.

00:43:35.500 So what you're saying

00:43:39.660 is that

00:43:40.460 if it was said that

00:43:43.600 somebody had caused

00:43:45.540 something by witchcraft

00:43:47.120 and that thing that they caused was a crime

00:43:49.860 like the murder of someone

00:43:51.420 then they could be prosecuted.

00:43:54.140 Yes.

00:43:54.760 The belief was

00:43:58.140 that magic was real

00:43:59.820 so that was already a given.

00:44:01.680 you know it was already yes yeah i mean not every not everybody believed in magic if you think of

00:44:09.060 plenty the elder or other uh classic authors they didn't really believe in in the power uh that

00:44:16.580 humans had to make magic but many others did yes cool where did they where did they think they were

00:44:23.660 getting their power from well that's that's the problem so um you know um if you look at the

00:44:33.300 classics uh they uh the power was in nature itself so it was it was the mastering of you know of

00:44:41.900 nature of the natural of natural magic the power that comes from nature but not god is this is this

00:44:49.780 free? No, because then that would bring you into the heretical element. The problem that started at

00:45:00.600 the end of the medieval period was the idea that certain people believed to have powers similar to

00:45:09.440 God. So the church would say, well, no, they're not your powers. It's the devil that gives you

00:45:17.140 the illusion that you have those powers yes and that's when the devil's really starting to get

00:45:23.620 involved in things and as you're saying that that kind of seeds yeah you cannot you cannot um

00:45:29.720 approach the the the onset of the witch hunts so just before the witch hunt started so all that um

00:45:38.440 the creation of

00:45:40.720 of

00:45:43.460 demonology associated with

00:45:45.500 witch hunts

00:45:46.500 without understanding the

00:45:49.360 importance that

00:45:51.040 demonology, so demonology

00:45:53.560 was a thing already existing

00:45:55.720 the importance of demonology

00:45:57.380 the impact that demonology had

00:45:59.820 on

00:46:01.320 witchcraft

00:46:02.980 so basically magical

00:46:05.520 practices became

00:46:07.740 malevolent practices and then became witchcraft practices there is a certain similar similar to

00:46:15.120 here and what sort of time period are we talking about in Italy so um we are looking I mean there

00:46:23.320 are um some I say amazing but they are terrifying really important trials already in uh 14 27

00:46:33.000 um so they are uh quite quite early yeah and then did it did it quiet and down for a bit and then

00:46:42.780 really have a big peak or did these kind of rumble on from that period yeah there are peaks

00:46:50.720 like here change yeah they change it they change depending on where you are um so yeah different

00:46:59.920 different approaches is there an idea now so my understanding of italy it may be wrong but my

00:47:06.120 understanding was that italy up until like not that long ago was like really separate places

00:47:11.980 wasn't it it wasn't like one unified italy which i suppose explains why in some areas that buffana

00:47:18.700 is looked at and in other areas it's not taken the same way they were all kind of like separate

00:47:22.820 countries weren't they essentially so italy came together politically in 1861 so before

00:47:28.340 i think it's so recent really yes so what before were you know different regions

00:47:36.780 that's why um witchcraft studies are so fragmented in italy yeah each um region had its own you know

00:47:47.640 either canonical law or legislation or certain venice cohabited with the roman inquisition but

00:47:59.420 you know they were not the same so you know the legal entity who fought witchcraft in venice for

00:48:05.780 example um it was not only the the roman inquisition there are other tribunals and

00:48:13.300 are they treated then as separate separate areas of research then or do you treat it as

00:48:21.100 right okay so is there an idea of how many there might have been in total or are there

00:48:26.000 absolutely not far too messy i'm trying to finish my book on uh italian witchcraft and it's so

00:48:34.060 difficult because you have you i mean just the roman inquisition so you have the central

00:48:42.780 holy office in rome the palace of the inquisition which is the one that still

00:48:49.660 holds some of the archives and then it had like 30 maybe over 30 tribunals across italy

00:48:59.440 but it's not the roman inquisition only the roman inquisition that had sovereignty over

00:49:04.880 witchcraft accusations you had secular um tribunals as as well and they had their own

00:49:11.160 archives so it's it's incredibly fragmented so i could not give you an idea of how many hundreds

00:49:17.880 people because it's it's impossible some archives have not even been located yet you know so when

00:49:25.900 When we talk about Germany being, you know, having these figures and Scotland being the highest per capita, we don't actually know if Italy would knock them both out of the park with statistics.

00:49:37.500 I don't think you would because, as you know, the Holy Roman Empire, so the Germany area, the Central European area and Scotland, that's where you had the, I would say, most brutal, you know, persecution.

00:49:56.040 I mean, it's not really like a championship title that I'm that keen to hold on to.

00:50:01.180 Like, I wouldn't, you know, it would be pretty terrible.

00:50:05.020 But so when you're looking at Italy then, is there a region in what we now think of as Italy?

00:50:11.620 Was there one particular region that was particularly, you know, focused on witches?

00:50:17.300 Or is there one area that really, like, was Venice?

00:50:19.960 Did Venice not really mind?

00:50:21.460 Were they, like, cooler and a bit more magical generally?

00:50:23.980 So you have to think Italy, if you like, in three or four blocks. So the southern Italy, the Kingdom of Naples, and then Sicily, and Sardinia, they were under the Spanish Inquisition, but they also had separate tribunals.

00:50:47.720 And there, the figure of the demonic witch is less predominant.

00:50:57.840 Okay.

00:50:58.240 Then you have the Alpine region, so the northern of Italy,

00:51:02.500 and that follows with the Central European idea of the demonic witch.

00:51:09.600 And then you have the center, which is milder.

00:51:12.720 milder milder because the tradition of uh the demonic which is less present and what do i mean

00:51:20.280 by that is the idea of uh going to the sabbath going to the nocturnal gathering um you can see

00:51:30.360 where the sabbath tradition took hold more strongly and that's as i said is the northern

00:51:37.280 and alpine region and then it's somehow lost in the central area and then it's very

00:51:42.720 not very present in in the southern part did did the south have more like sort of an influence from

00:51:51.800 like say north africa because of you know because of travel and did that have like a different kind

00:51:59.140 of mythology were there different spoke traditions there yes you find you find that in in sicily for

00:52:06.860 example um you find that also in in in the main part of italy um and it's uh associated with yeah

00:52:16.960 um arabic uh people of arabic culture or uh people of jewish culture yeah so like really

00:52:28.240 different myths that are all blended together because of conquest and travel and it's so

00:52:33.180 interesting it's amazing that i i read don't know whether this is true or not but it's an interesting

00:52:38.000 idea that in every culture there is an idea of a witch which is usually an older type of woman

00:52:45.360 with some kind of magic for good or for bad and also dragons don't know i don't know

00:52:53.620 Can I ask about the Bufana?

00:53:00.940 In modern-day Italy, is the Bufana still observed

00:53:05.640 and are there any cultural events that go on around the Bufana?

00:53:09.940 Oh, good question.

00:53:10.800 Are there things we can do for Bufana?

00:53:13.300 And should we be doing them on the 6th of January?

00:53:16.340 Should we fly to Italy?

00:53:18.240 Yes, we should.

00:53:19.280 Yes.

00:53:19.780 Let's go, Zoe.

00:53:20.580 Let's go to Italy.

00:53:21.420 do you fancy you can take us yeah yeah so i still uh i still have a little ritual um which i i

00:53:29.880 follow uh on the night of the fifth so first and foremost i'll clean my house on the fifth so i

00:53:37.800 take down my christmas decorations yeah the house yeah because that is the 12th night so it's

00:53:44.180 important to take down your christmas decorations and i clean my house and then i prepare a little

00:53:51.220 dish with some food and a little glass of wine or some other spirits because in the

00:53:59.980 tradition of the Befana you would leave some food for her and her donkey.

00:54:08.920 Hang on, hang on, I've heard this story before. You leave a little bit of drink for her and a wee

00:54:13.580 carrot, is that right? Yes. Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny the similarities across stories? 0.69

00:54:20.960 like those funny little points that are sort of echoed through time so you do that on the night

00:54:25.480 of the fifth then yes so all everything's taken down and cleared away and like a new like you're

00:54:31.220 going into the next phase of the year nice and clean and organized okay yeah

00:54:35.700 this is like a private um celebration as i said other private celebrations would be to put the

00:54:45.780 stockings and then you know hope that she will leave you something there are public celebrations

00:54:53.220 as well especially um in my uh region in maremma for example there is a public um tradition that's

00:55:02.680 called befanata and is um actually my parents at some time uh in the past did take part um so the

00:55:13.240 The Befanata is like a procession in which generally a man dresses up as the Befana

00:55:20.220 because the Befana had to be grotesque and ugly. 0.99

00:55:24.200 So, and my dad, for example, would dress up as the Befana 0.99

00:55:27.940 and the Befana would have her husband, the Befano,

00:55:34.320 and a group of people called the Befanotti,

00:55:37.840 which would represent her retinue or her children.

00:55:43.240 And they would carry musical instruments and they would move from house to house or, you know, school to school.

00:55:51.840 And sometimes they did have the donkey. 0.99

00:55:54.160 Sometimes they still have the donkey with the Befana. 0.98

00:55:56.900 And so they would parade themselves through towns and villages, distributing small gifts to children and singing traditional songs.

00:56:06.140 And until very recently, this was largely a rural custom mainly, but you would find it also in towns.

00:56:16.040 And the group traveled from house to house performing in exchange for food or drinks.

00:56:22.000 The collected provisions were later on redistributed, if you like, reflecting the structure of all the itinerant begging rituals.

00:56:33.620 you also have

00:56:36.140 in Britain

00:56:37.880 and the other

00:56:40.080 major public ritual

00:56:42.500 would be the burning 0.98

00:56:44.360 of the old 0.99

00:56:45.800 woman, the burning of the

00:56:48.100 Vetch. Hang on

00:56:50.280 that one here was quite nice up to this point

00:56:52.920 I mean 0.98

00:56:54.220 I was objected to the fact that she had to be 1.00

00:56:56.560 ugly 1.00

00:56:56.920 but it seemed 0.61

00:57:00.560 all relatively

00:57:03.620 yeah you have to see what the befana represent she is the um supernatural entity that represent

00:57:19.080 the uh the deep winter the end of a cycle okay she has to be so not only she is the uh the

00:57:30.600 deliverer of good notions on how to be a good person but she also represents the end of a cycle 0.64

00:57:41.780 so the fact that she gets burnt so her a puppet of her gets burnt and her burning

00:57:50.800 it's divining the good success of the new cycle it's really important and telling

00:57:59.860 so it's not just, as I said

00:58:02.780 we cannot 1.00

00:58:04.040 the Bifana is not a witch 1.00

00:58:06.720 yes, so it's not

00:58:08.260 a witch figure 0.99

00:58:09.840 but she is much much

00:58:12.760 more 0.99

00:58:13.640 no we see that

00:58:15.900 it's not

00:58:18.000 taking a woman who's done

00:58:20.480 who they've said she's a witch 0.99

00:58:22.560 and then burning her, she is a

00:58:24.400 much more nuanced

00:58:26.040 character and

00:58:28.120 we have been doing the 12 nights of of christmas the intentions an intention every night and we

00:58:35.980 burn it um we burn it and that's just to sort of release it to the release it to the world it

00:58:42.860 doesn't it hasn't got a negative connotation by burning something so this is the same idea

00:58:47.620 it's like uh let me for example you know carlo ginsburg okay he has published quite a lot so

00:58:56.940 He has published quite a lot of witchcraft, of course,

00:58:59.660 and his studies have been so, so very important.

00:59:04.320 Now, he has never devoted a single work exclusively to the Befana,

00:59:10.780 but his influential studies of popular religion and folklore

00:59:14.760 offer a very powerful interpretation lens on the Befana.

00:59:20.460 Ginzburg situates this figure, it's like the survival of a pro-Christian agrarian rite.

00:59:31.460 he notes that it could be related to the ancient female divinities connected to fertility

00:59:42.580 connected to the agricultural cycle and the seasonal renewal reimagined over and over

00:59:50.640 through time and for example he observes that in Italy the Befana is what in the Germanic

01:00:00.820 tradition is perchter or holder so they are figures that represent so much more than just

01:00:12.480 a witch figure I don't know if that makes sense and I actually was reading about an Easter festival

01:00:21.880 that takes place where the straw effigy of a woman is burnt is that the bufana they're burning again

01:00:30.320 at easter

01:00:30.880 if

01:00:34.460 not not quite because

01:00:36.440 the befana belongs to a very

01:00:38.700 specific

01:00:39.340 liminal time which is the 12 nights

01:00:42.740 she brings let me

01:00:44.480 what's that saying

01:00:45.520 there is a saying that basically

01:00:48.380 the befana comes at night

01:00:50.920 and brings an end

01:00:52.780 to the 12

01:00:54.560 yeah it's a very

01:00:56.520 it's associated with a very specific

01:00:58.880 um liminal time she could be associated with a wild hunt for example um i don't know if you

01:01:08.020 know much about the wild hunt no so the wild hunt um is a supernatural um how

01:01:18.920 don't know how could i um a nocturnal procession okay and it's pan-european so it's not just

01:01:32.300 italian in fact i think the only um wild hunt element that we have in italy is actually

01:01:39.120 probably the uh the befana the the wild hunt uh was this supernatural procession seen or heard

01:01:47.240 moving across the night sky

01:01:49.920 or the forests or the roads

01:01:51.900 and they would

01:01:53.600 and each

01:01:55.740 procession had a hero

01:01:57.900 or a god

01:01:59.900 or goddess or

01:02:01.140 a heroine

01:02:03.680 taking the lead

01:02:05.400 so you have

01:02:07.960 Arlequin

01:02:09.360 you have

01:02:10.580 Redodesia, you have

01:02:13.280 Percheter, you have Holder

01:02:15.500 who led their retinue across the night sky.

01:02:20.940 And it was a dangerous thing to see them

01:02:24.680 because they would entice humans to join the retinue of the wild hunt.

01:02:30.760 And, I mean, in Germany or the Germany area,

01:02:35.680 you would have a warden leading the hunt.

01:02:40.740 In Scandinavia, you would have Odin leading the hunt.

01:02:44.300 As I said, in France, you would have Alec Queen.

01:02:49.820 So, you know, it's, and this has medieval origins, absolutely.

01:02:55.760 So scholars like Ginzburg or Cardini or Professor Paolo Portone,

01:03:02.980 they think that the Befana is one of these supernatural beings

01:03:10.100 leading the wild hunt.

01:03:13.120 and the wild hunt is specifically associated to the 12 nights period

01:03:17.900 because that is a liminal period where the world of the dead

01:03:24.660 interlocks with the world of the living.

01:03:28.600 So, as I said, it's a liminal period.

01:03:29.820 Bind times. 1.00

01:03:31.940 Our version of that happens around Samhain and they're called slua. 0.99

01:03:38.060 That's the night procession with the fairies. 0.91

01:03:41.280 and and witches actually i think it's fairies um but anyway yeah that's that's the scottish version

01:03:49.540 of it but it's it's this ongoing thing that we've got as um humans isn't it is that we need to

01:03:55.020 explain things and we need to get through dark times with stories and we need to just we need

01:04:00.180 to always you know i think right there has to be some sense to this we have to make sense of this

01:04:05.300 but we also use it so much as a as a social corrector don't we this sort of idea like

01:04:11.360 you must behave like law's not enough and maybe now we rely much more heavily on law but the idea

01:04:17.300 that communities would kind of self-police to an extent you know and and initially before the

01:04:22.200 religion that we think of now the christian religion that's across so much of europe

01:04:25.780 before that it's a it's a much earlier iteration of that you know keep your house clean you know

01:04:31.900 behave yourself give to the poor you know be helpful to a traveler you know all those kind

01:04:37.340 of stories we've got them there but I love the fact that we as humans cannot help ourselves

01:04:42.440 from having this nasty edge this darkness you know like behave yourself otherwise people be

01:04:49.960 crossed with you and maybe some cannibalism you know that there's a there's this thing there's

01:04:54.720 this real because we have a fear as humans you know and it's the fear of death obviously

01:04:58.520 but this idea that there is something bad there and we have to protect against it it's so

01:05:03.680 fascinating you study such an amazing area Debra can we please can we please have you back on then

01:05:09.800 when you're ready to talk about the work you're doing with Owen yeah absolutely I can because I

01:05:15.480 feel like we're just this is just the tip of the iceberg you know we've learned in this time

01:05:20.360 we really appreciate it so I think we'll we'll draw a line onto this just now start thinking

01:05:26.440 about cleaning our houses Claire I think this is this is going to go out we're going to put this

01:05:30.920 out on the 5th of January so that people have time to quickly get organized and get it together

01:05:35.620 on the night between the 5th and the 6th do not listen to your pets or animals because they may

01:05:44.680 tell true stories about yourself you might not want to hear what so what hang on do you keep

01:05:52.800 your pets outside the house do you just not listen to my just listen to enjoy you know but there is

01:05:58.060 this tradition again connected to the befana and epiphany that uh that specific night uh animals

01:06:05.680 and pets will be able to talk and predict the future the future and tells the truth about

01:06:13.260 yourself so the truth oh my god and there is the story of this lady of the house who wanted to go

01:06:21.120 and listen to the animals and the servant said no no lady do not go to listen do not go into the

01:06:27.220 barn and listen to the cow talk because you might not like what you hear she went anyway and she

01:06:33.900 heard the cow predicting her death which was imminent and she died oh my god that tells you

01:06:42.180 of this specific period and also the importance of the night between the fifth and the sixth

01:06:49.160 it's a time where divination is the main thing and that's we have so many rituals across the world

01:06:57.540 at the end of the 12 nights or even during the 12 nights where people do things to predict

01:07:04.160 the future the future yeah you know because again it's the end of a circle so we are there

01:07:10.360 at the end of the circle in the beginning of another one therefore we need to know and as you

01:07:14.840 said Zoe why do we have so many rules and because that's how we harness something we do not understand

01:07:22.600 yeah that's such a great point to end on I love that that's amazing Debra thank you so much for

01:07:29.880 joining us we so greatly appreciate it this has been completely amazing I love it so much to go

01:07:34.620 and do a bit of a deep dive about now Clary absolutely I am I am right on it and this year

01:07:41.420 i'm going to take down my christmas tree it's still up from last year it's probably

01:07:45.280 i mean i've had a really good year though so i don't know if that's down to the tree pal

01:07:51.140 anyway now for the second part of our podcast tonight we are as the modern powerland says

01:07:59.900 leaning in um to the whole issue about what's happening with women politically in the world

01:08:05.800 and we're looking at what's happening in scotland specifically with today's guest

01:08:09.540 what's happening in Scotland isn't in isolation and we'll talk about that a wee bit more

01:08:13.560 we hinted at this in the book or we talked about a little bit in the book but we'd like to look

01:08:18.540 more in depth at this and what this means for us as women today now in I'm going to say this

01:08:24.200 the first time 2026 that's quite weird but anyway so I'd like to welcome our guest for this segment

01:08:31.620 who is Gemma Clark Gemma can you tell us hello by the way sorry first of all straight down to business

01:08:40.380 Can you tell us who you are and what it is you do

01:08:43.940 and why it is that we've asked you to come on this episode?

01:08:47.180 Hi, thanks for having me. I love the podcast.

01:08:49.360 So I'm Gemma Clark. I'm a teacher.

01:08:52.320 And I'm also a bit involved with abortion rights activism

01:08:55.340 and just activism in general.

01:08:58.440 So teacher by trade, spinning a lot of plates just now,

01:09:01.280 trying to do a master's at the same time, so keeping busy.

01:09:03.320 But yeah, abortion rights activism has been quite a big thing for me

01:09:06.920 over the last few years.

01:09:07.780 and it's funny because I I've always been an abortion rights activist you know since since

01:09:13.680 I was in my teens and I you know I understood what that was and I understood that there was

01:09:17.700 some issues with well some issues she says mildly with women accessing their their right to their

01:09:23.980 own health in different ways but I feel like in the last like maybe five to ten years maybe longer

01:09:30.200 women have kind of almost kind of taken it for granted in this country some some women I know

01:09:37.160 that there's some women that have always been on it but I think that people have kind of gone well

01:09:41.220 we don't have an issue with that now it's really easy to get contraception it's easy to get an

01:09:46.060 abortion but that's not actually the case and things are getting a little bit tougher so should

01:09:50.820 we start maybe with a kind of a state of the nation Gemma where we're at with it? Yeah you're

01:09:55.520 right I mean I think it it probably is reasonable to think that we're quite safe in this country

01:10:00.020 and in the UK but when you look into it we're not really. Organisations like BPAS will tell you that

01:10:04.900 there are constant attempts to curtail abortion rights in parliament and it's been a game of

01:10:09.240 whack-a-mole um for decades now um a lot of the amendments that they tried to put through it

01:10:14.640 sort of masquerades as concern for women um for example a lord lord moylan quite recently he

01:10:20.600 wanted abortion to be all kind of monitored and treated separately from other forms of health

01:10:25.600 care just to make sure it's safe you know when we know it's safe we've got decades decades of

01:10:30.940 data on that but lots of kind of under the radar disingenuous attempts to curtail abortion rights

01:10:37.540 come up in parliament all the time it sounds a bit like the trojan horse jemma of um of it's it's

01:10:43.700 all about the safety of women and girls which sounds terribly familiar to tommy robinson et al

01:10:49.380 you know we really care about women exactly um so where we are just now there's been some progress

01:10:57.140 in the UK recently which is good because when you look at what's happening in America

01:11:01.100 the situation is really precarious just so so in the UK there was decriminalisation quite recently

01:11:08.160 but it's nearly done it's got to get through the Lords and it probably will get through the Lords

01:11:11.900 but that's what it is at the moment it passed Westminster and so I played a small part in that

01:11:16.660 I had a petition to decriminalise abortion in the UK it got to over 150,000 signatures which meant

01:11:22.680 there was enough for a debate and there were two MPs who were putting through amendments this year

01:11:26.960 so it probably would have got through anyway but there were two different amendments people had

01:11:30.580 different opinions on what was the right one so it meant that there was an extra few years of

01:11:33.740 parliamentary debate time because of the petition which I think was useful and so that passed and

01:11:39.320 it's still to go through the Lords but hopefully it will. Gemma can I ask you what you mean when

01:11:45.260 you say decriminalisation what that means? Yeah so the anti-abortion lobby will tell you all

01:11:52.380 kinds of horrific things that it means like abortion up to birth and that suddenly we're

01:11:56.180 all going to wait until our due dates and then demand an abortion just for fun and that we'll

01:11:59.900 be allowed to do that. What it just means is if someone is in a desperate situation and they

01:12:04.600 procure their own abortion it means that they don't get sent to prison for the rest of their

01:12:08.060 life. There's been a few women recently who were on trial. There was a woman in England last year 0.95

01:12:14.240 who was on trial and she could have been in prison for life and just when the decriminalisation

01:12:20.060 bill passed there was women who had these charges against them dropped because they knew there was

01:12:23.780 no point in pursuing it but even if you act four weeks pregnant via your own pills online and take

01:12:29.040 them you could technically have gone to prison for the rest of your life that's how severe the

01:12:32.500 penalties are and that's because you haven't gone through the process that you need to go through

01:12:37.620 to make an abortion legal which is the process of getting medical intervention other than your own

01:12:43.840 yeah so it's not technically that it's legal it's more that there's a legal defense against it which

01:12:48.940 doctors can use it's sort of you know technical legal jargon stuff it's not technically legal 0.80

01:12:54.220 it was a legal defense but now women have been removed from the criminal code so if you for

01:12:59.200 some reason go outside of nhs which people do for all kinds of reasons it could be someone

01:13:03.240 very young very vulnerable in a very controlling situation at home that might do that it means that

01:13:08.860 she's not facing life in prison so that that was good that that's passed but scotland's now

01:13:14.240 lagging behind the UK in quite a lot of ways just now so that's the the next thing that we're

01:13:19.760 focusing on at the moment. So what's the what's the position in Scotland just now if a woman 1.00

01:13:24.420 finds herself pregnant and she doesn't want to carry on with the pregnancy what what does she

01:13:29.580 have to do legally to access an abortion? So legally she has to go through the NHS. Scotland's

01:13:36.180 in quite a strange position because Scotland doesn't didn't have the offences against the

01:13:40.380 person act which is law from 1800 in the uk which could send you to prison for life but scotland is

01:13:46.660 under the 1960 abortion act which applies to the offensive against the person act it depends what

01:13:54.180 legal scholar you listen to some will say well women won't be jailed there's other scholars from

01:13:58.740 the same university that will tell you that could happen um and i was researching this for a

01:14:02.880 conference i just phoned police scotland and said so if someone buys their own pills online and takes

01:14:08.120 them would that be a crime so they weren't sure and they got back to me and said yeah if that was

01:14:11.500 reported to us and there was any hint of criminality which that would be we would have to

01:14:16.480 investigate it we said what would then happen they don't know but they would have to investigate the

01:14:19.880 person okay i mean it's so at the moment you have to go through the nhs and is it the case that you

01:14:28.080 have to be seen by two doctors or two doctors have to agree the doctors need to agree to it a lot of

01:14:33.280 people don't realize that because i've spoken to providers and they will say that you know

01:14:37.220 the person you know the person they speak to they'll be a doctor and they'll be running about

01:14:41.540 in the background behind the scenes trying to get that second signature the patient isn't always

01:14:45.400 aware of that they try very hard not to make it the patient's problem so that they're not worrying

01:14:49.480 about it so a lot of people think i'm gonna have to get permission from two doctors but it will

01:14:53.660 have been signed off by two doctors they just won't have you just didn't know and can can doctors

01:14:58.780 refuse to give the green light

01:15:01.140 to it or

01:15:02.260 they don't always and if you're in a rural area

01:15:09.020 or an island where there's not a lot of

01:15:10.680 access anyway that can make life very difficult

01:15:12.940 especially when you're on a time limit

01:15:14.140 yeah so the actual law says

01:15:16.900 subject to the provisions of the act or the

01:15:18.920 section a person shall not

01:15:20.880 be guilty of an offence under the law relating

01:15:22.980 to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated

01:15:25.260 by a registered medical practitioner

01:15:26.940 if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion formed in good faith and then it goes

01:15:33.800 through the time scales and then it says that the termination is necessary to prevent grave

01:15:38.920 permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or the continuance of that

01:15:45.740 pregnancy would involve risk to life or the pregnant woman is greater than if the pregnancy

01:15:51.820 was terminated or if there's substantial risk that the child was born it would suffer physical

01:15:57.460 or mental abnormalities as to be it's described as seriously handicapped now I don't know if those

01:16:04.940 words are still in place Gemma do you know if they are? Yeah that sounds like the wording of it that

01:16:10.060 I'm familiar with so again people think that abortion is a right it's not actually a right

01:16:15.020 you've got to persuade two doctors and it's got to fall within these limits and technically just

01:16:19.280 not wanting to be pregnant isn't really a reason why they should give you one most doctors will

01:16:23.920 apply it quite liberally and say well it's going to affect this person's mental health so i'll agree

01:16:28.140 to it and but it doesn't you don't actually have a right to have one it's gatekept in a way that

01:16:33.340 no other type of health care is well apart from gender affirming care and that's another example

01:16:37.500 that i know of but other than that it's very gatekept in a way that nothing else is um so

01:16:42.300 i mean it's very intimidating for you i mean if you know if you were if you were pregnant and you

01:16:48.040 didn't want to carry on that pregnancy you have to go and talk about this to somebody you probably

01:16:52.940 mean the way that gps are run now you won't know your doctor it's not like you've necessarily got

01:16:56.560 relationship maybe that's good maybe that's bad but you have to talk to somebody and say to them

01:17:00.460 right i am pregnant um i don't want to carry this on and then probably be worrying about how you

01:17:06.840 would be judged and if you have to explain how you got pregnant had you done something you know

01:17:11.720 quote-unquote wrong would you have to say that this was the the result of something that was

01:17:16.380 done against my will you know i think that's really complicated and you're you're really

01:17:20.880 vulnerable in that position and it could be somebody really really young it could be somebody

01:17:25.280 who's maybe not switched on with the internet who maybe doesn't have a community they can talk to

01:17:30.200 that i mean it's it should be something that your doctor is is a help not hindrance yeah exactly

01:17:36.740 it could be somebody young and vulnerable or you know someone that's got some sort of internalized

01:17:41.360 stigma it can be very difficult for them to go and advocate for themselves you know if you don't

01:17:45.280 think oh this is this is my right and i should have this it's putting a lot of dollars in the

01:17:48.840 way for people and and i know i know there are some sort of there are some sneaky ways that um

01:17:55.540 and i know this from personal experience have been sitting in the doctor surgery just for something

01:18:00.420 completely unrelated to this and noticing this is like maybe about 10 years ago noticing that

01:18:05.520 there were leaflets from an organization that i knew what that organization was so i knew that it

01:18:10.620 was for um pregnancy advice so it looks like you're you're having an unwanted pregnancy and

01:18:16.160 they're going to help you to to end the pregnancy but i know that it was one of the organizations

01:18:20.920 that you would go along and it looks like you're being offered counseling but actually you're then

01:18:24.620 going to get heavy you cannot have an abortion don't do that it's wrong and i think that maybe

01:18:29.820 i don't know if gps are more switched on to that now than maybe they were or maybe that particular

01:18:34.360 doctor's surgery they believed in that and thought that was a good thing to have that there

01:18:37.860 but certainly at the time i took the bundle of leaflets and gave it to the reception said do you

01:18:41.700 realize what this is because i don't i don't think that's okay you know i think well i think dr

01:18:47.460 surgery i think medical stuff should be like the law and like politics and i know that it doesn't

01:18:53.320 work like this but i think that there should be no religious intervention at all in those things

01:18:57.620 you know it's not it's a medical matter there's no room yeah it's scientific you know i think

01:19:04.360 that's what it should be so it's actually quite a lot of that the organizations that pretend that

01:19:09.820 they're going to help people they're actually just anti-abortion organizations yeah one of the

01:19:15.180 protesters that was picketing the hospital and said well i'm a young woman what help would you

01:19:19.440 give me if i was if i was pregnant and she just handed her a number that you could you could see

01:19:24.540 the number in the video so i googled it and it was an anti-abortion organization a so-called

01:19:27.600 counseling service so you can imagine that wouldn't that wouldn't be objective they'd be

01:19:30.780 They would have an agenda and they would want to be telling the person what to do or what not to do.

01:19:35.720 Yeah. And I know I know what sort of imagery certainly has been used in the past to to quote unquote convince women that they're doing the quote unquote wrong thing, you know, and it's it's really emotionally manipulative.

01:19:46.060 You know, I mean, it'd be fair enough if these organisations even then it wouldn't be fair enough, but it would be different if these organisations then said, right, we're going to help you financially, you know, because a lot of women can't can't financially manage a pregnancy.

01:19:58.840 and that's why they terminate the pregnancy because they think i can't have another mouth

01:20:02.800 to feed or i'm homeless or you know i've got a problem in this way that's going to affect that

01:20:08.220 and a lot of the time it's financial probably now really more than just about ever in recent years

01:20:13.300 so when when you mentioned there about picketing outside the clinic can you talk a bit about that

01:20:19.080 yeah so um during the pandemic i became aware of these protests going on outside the hospitals

01:20:25.800 the QEUH in Glasgow, the big one in Glasgow, I used to live quite near that so I'd seen them once

01:20:30.240 and I thought that's really strange but they seemed to be there a lot during the pandemic

01:20:34.640 and the rest of us were staying at home to save lives, these so-called pro-life people were

01:20:38.900 ignoring the rules, mixing in ways that they didn't need to be mixing and breaking the rules,

01:20:44.780 putting people at risk of Covid which is killing people. So I started following the Back Off Scotland

01:20:48.780 campaign, they did an amazing job, they got the law passed on buffer zones which means they're

01:20:53.060 say 150 meters away so that law did pass they are now meant to 150 meters away but the problem

01:21:01.240 we're having now is stunt arrests so this woman from glasgow who's got herself arrested a couple

01:21:06.180 of times i mean anybody who's seen that hospital will recognize her she's a permanent picture there

01:21:10.920 quite often she does stay outside the buffer zone but when she wants to be arrested she'll stand

01:21:15.260 inside the buffer zone there will be someone there filming it and she'll get herself arrested and we

01:21:19.820 know that she's being supported by an American

01:21:21.640 organisation called the Alliance Defending Freedom.

01:21:24.480 This is the same organisation

01:21:25.720 who got ruled, be weighed, overturned in America.

01:21:28.500 So there's a lot of people

01:21:29.320 in this, there's American interference, and if they can find

01:21:31.700 people who'll make themselves useful and get arrested

01:21:33.640 on purpose, they'll then use that so that

01:21:35.740 they've got a court case and they can try and

01:21:37.620 pick away at the law, or try and find exceptions

01:21:39.740 to it, and they try and spin it as 1.00

01:21:41.800 oh, this poor little granny from 1.00

01:21:43.680 Glasgow has been arrested just for 1.00

01:21:45.760 silently praying inside of their head.

01:21:47.740 When this is an activist, a well-known

01:21:49.480 activist who is always at a hospital and who chooses sometimes to be arrested on whenever

01:21:55.880 it's convenient and they've got people and you know let's let's be clear about this the people

01:22:00.500 that are protesting out there whilst on the one hand i believe in the freedom of speech

01:22:04.440 i don't think it's okay to intimidate women that are accessing health care and that is what's

01:22:09.940 happening they have to run the gauntlet don't they which is why there's the back off zone

01:22:13.700 so that they yeah it's appalling it's absolutely appalling speech but speech comes with consequences

01:22:21.260 yeah they can still be close to the hospital they can have their horrible signs they can

01:22:28.940 scream and shout as much as they want they're just not allowed to be right at the entrance

01:22:32.440 where vulnerable people are going for health care and also we don't have abortion clinics

01:22:36.260 like in america it's a hospital yeah having stillborns and miscarriages or they've been

01:22:41.520 assaulted or they're going to visit someone who's dying nobody should have to run a gauntlet of

01:22:45.900 protesters to go talk about. Let me ask you Gemma do they have protesters outside the bit of the

01:22:51.500 hospital where men are going for vasectomies because that feels like it's a similar sort of

01:22:56.740 a vibe? How strange to ask that question. Yeah and it's strange that they've worked very hard to try

01:23:04.700 and go after abortion pills again under the guise that it's about concern for women and how safe is

01:23:10.580 it varies but we know how safe it is it's 50 years of data abortion pills are safer than

01:23:15.540 paracetamol they're safer than viagra but nobody's out protesting against that or trying to curtail

01:23:20.280 men's right to control their own bodies and their own their own fertility yeah it's scary because

01:23:25.820 like looking at what's happened in america and there is a tie-in um to to the witch trials um 0.71

01:23:31.820 in the uk as as it is now with what's happened in america so one of the the big red flag warnings

01:23:38.340 about things getting much much tougher for women particularly women that don't have money and don't

01:23:43.000 have status has been what's happened with roe versus wade in the states isn't it yeah so that

01:23:48.900 um matthew hale i think it's pronounced who was a lawmaker in the 1600s he oversaw several witch

01:23:55.260 trials and had women executed and he was mentioned in the dobbs case and it was part of the it was

01:24:01.940 part of the supreme court's argument that abortion wasn't sort of rooted in american law and that it

01:24:07.080 should be a states issue so to quote a real witch pricker who had women murdered in the 1600s as

01:24:13.200 part of this decision really tells you everything that you need to know it to me it is it is a crazy

01:24:22.320 connection that you've got matthew hale the most senior judge in england at the time being relied

01:24:29.400 on in the 21st century yeah i mean it it just shows that you know we've we've had um a couple

01:24:38.680 of reviews of the book recently because i'm still torturing myself by reading reviews on good reads

01:24:43.140 which is insane i know there's other things it's completely bonkers i can't help it but there's

01:24:48.760 been a few reviews recently where where women reviewers it seems going by their name and their

01:24:53.220 their profile picture have said there there's no relevance why are you making this political about 0.51

01:24:58.240 now what's the relevance to women now and i actually i am staggered that any woman that

01:25:03.680 has access the internet which clearly they do on goodreads is is not seeing the link between

01:25:09.160 women being accused of witches then and the way that women are being vilified now and the way in

01:25:15.260 which they're trying to control women you know like one person made this point um that trad wives

01:25:21.520 are are not like and not an issue i think trad wives are a huge huge issue i think anything

01:25:27.900 where we're I mean they're absolutely there there are absolutely a far-right thing they're a thing 0.95

01:25:33.820 where it's fascinating because they link in yeah great replacement racist conspiracy theory 0.86

01:25:39.060 yes that conspiracy theory is that the white race is being annihilated the immigrants are coming in 1.00

01:25:45.380 and feminists are letting them do it and they're going to breed us out and the way to fix that is 1.00

01:25:50.380 to stop white women from having access to abortions and to get them to have lots of white children and 1.00

01:25:54.820 the whole trad wife movement fits into that they're selling it as a as a aesthetic a lifestyle 0.73

01:26:00.360 and a good thing to do and they've got young women on social media promoting this and really

01:26:03.940 feeding this to young women and telling them well feminism's failed you you know yeah and it's

01:26:10.160 it's no different but it's at the cost of your freedom and your autonomy and all and it's no 0.66

01:26:16.980 it's no different to a woman a woman making her living from only fans or making her living from 0.90

01:26:22.640 being a pole dancer they're all they're all using the male gaze as a way of making money right so 0.95

01:26:29.180 it's all there are women who do only fans and pole dancing let's just be straightforward about it

01:26:33.880 that's what they're interested in these males and they want what they want with the women that are

01:26:38.800 trad wives and these guys that you see now who um you know incels whatever you want to call them men 0.94

01:26:44.460 that are suffering from the male loneliness epidemic also known as arseholes they what their 1.00

01:26:49.720 problem is is they're not having access to the sex they want with women so they want virgins 0.99

01:26:56.100 and they're very clear about this they want young virgins who don't have any political views who are 0.70

01:27:01.520 happy to be at home breed cook clean service that's all they want that's the that's the idea 1.00

01:27:08.420 of what womanhood is and those filthy feminists have ruined it for everybody because they're 1.00

01:27:13.900 dating outside their race they're giving up their virginity they're not godly i mean it hello the 1.00

01:27:20.380 can we hear the witch trials like it's meant to me they're wanting jobs they're wanting power

01:27:26.320 it's completely insane so i think for any woman in in the so-called west to say oh this is not a

01:27:33.260 political issue this has got nothing to do with us now really needs their head checked you know 0.60

01:27:37.780 like anybody that has even a passing understanding of history a passing understanding of what's

01:27:43.220 happening in politics just now can see that this is a really dangerous dangerous time where we all

01:27:50.120 need to be rising up knowing who our politicians are knowing what the laws are knowing where we

01:27:55.820 can push to protect where we can push to open up and and have better access to health health care

01:28:02.040 we really really need to mobilize and not just sit back and go well i don't need an abortion

01:28:06.860 so like what do i care you know i you know like i'm i'm perimenopausal i think the likelihood of

01:28:12.860 me having a baby at this stage is slim that would be horrific but i you know i'm still invested in

01:28:18.540 the fact that i want women that can have babies protected yeah as a teacher i think so much

01:28:23.960 responsibility to the next generation i want the girls now to have control over their own bodies

01:28:28.440 when they grow up and i don't know apparently if you're neurodivergent which i am you're good at

01:28:32.860 spotting patterns and i'm a bit frustrated that lots of neurotypicals out there are not spotting

01:28:37.360 the patterns they're not seeing the parallels of history Gemma I think I think they do I think they

01:28:42.900 do spot the pattern but they don't care because it doesn't personally affect them so when people

01:28:48.100 say to you oh I'm not political I always think well you're privileged that you don't need to be

01:28:53.360 at the moment but I'm going to tell you now that's going to swing back that door that you you're not 0.99

01:28:59.420 bothered about and it's going to hit you on the arse I think I do think that that is what happens 0.99

01:29:02.980 you know if people of the rich and it is the rich keep chipping away at our rights there will come a 0.99

01:29:08.740 point where the i'm not politicals will be like well hang on a minute and it's too late by that

01:29:13.020 point as i found it out in america once you've lost rights that you're looking at decades to

01:29:19.060 get them back getting them back again it's so scary yeah so what that's what the danger that's

01:29:25.400 what the danger is that um the abortion rights are only the first of many rights that start getting

01:29:31.820 chipping away we've heard for example about the maybe it's better that we should vote as a family

01:29:37.360 unit and as the man is the head of the family we should vote and now people are looking at that

01:29:44.420 in the modern day and they're laughing they're not going to be laughing in five years time i was 0.93

01:29:50.060 going to say 10 years time but this sort of shit accelerates so what happens is the rights that 0.95

01:29:57.160 people are not inverted commas so bothered about i.e only affect a certain amount of the population 0.95

01:30:04.320 these come in and by the time people actually start taking notice we are all the way on a roll

01:30:12.220 and one of the really important things as a lawyer that i keep trying to tell people is law will not

01:30:18.340 protect your rights if the lawmakers want to take them away there's nothing like the human rights

01:30:25.620 act people are saying get rid of the human rights act the human rights act must stay in this country

01:30:30.080 because it's one of the last bastions of protection we have they find that people want rid of that

01:30:35.860 but even people deserve to have human rights exactly because they've said that they want to

01:30:41.720 get rid of that act fundamentally misunderstands how precarious the situation is if we get rid of

01:30:49.800 it and quite frankly their right our rights are going to keep going downhill if we don't do

01:30:55.480 something about it what can we do Gemma people will be listening to this thinking how can we

01:31:01.760 get involved and try and protect her rights can you tell us what we can do yeah there's lots we

01:31:06.380 can do I think it's important to know that we do have power I mean everyone thinks I'm only just

01:31:12.140 one person we're all just one person but collectively exactly things together and I

01:31:16.320 think one of the most important things is to care about other people whether it affects you or not

01:31:20.440 um and actually the attack on trans health care has been coming for a long time and that has

01:31:24.600 helped to feed into the attack on abortion care because then you can attack things like gillic

01:31:28.440 confidence um and you can take this paternalistic over protecting women and children view so it's

01:31:33.940 all from the same playbook it's all from the american religious right and because they

01:31:38.640 consciously knew several years ago that you know gay people are are quite safe now but they can 0.58

01:31:43.660 shift the Overton window, they're obsessed with the Overton window 0.99

01:31:45.740 they can shift this a bit, they can go after trans

01:31:47.740 people, they can demonise them, that then makes it easier 0.96

01:31:49.740 to go after gay people, it makes it easier to go after 0.75

01:31:51.680 women, so the first thing is you need to 1.00

01:31:53.500 equally give a shit, whether it's you or not 1.00

01:31:55.460 if it's other people, other people still matter 0.99

01:31:57.560 but when it comes to abortion specifically

01:31:59.820 and in Scotland, I've got a petition

01:32:01.920 with the Scottish Parliament just now

01:32:03.460 we still don't have decriminalisation

01:32:05.600 an expert group has recommended that

01:32:07.720 it's probably not going to happen yet because we've got an election

01:32:09.960 coming up so it's going to be once the new Parliament

01:32:11.960 comes in, we need to push for that

01:32:13.440 we still don't have abortion up to the legal limit in scotland under any health board legal limit is

01:32:20.180 24 weeks and that exists for good reason it's very difficult to and you can't really get it

01:32:24.920 anywhere before sorry after 20 weeks in scotland what's happening is that people are having to go

01:32:30.940 to england and get abortion care after 20 weeks so attached to my petition are submissions from

01:32:36.580 vpass and they've spoken to there was a young teenage girl she's about 16 she was suicidal

01:32:42.700 she had to go to England because she was past 20 weeks there was a young woman from a family

01:32:47.580 because of her ethnic and religious background she feared that she might be murdered 0.64

01:32:52.700 if she was pregnant she had to go to England you know there's been really young and there's not a 0.99

01:32:58.000 way you can't hide that if you have to travel like regardless of whether you're 16 or you're 0.99

01:33:03.180 you know 46 if you have to travel to England to do that then it's it's no longer within your

01:33:08.360 control like it's not discreet you know people will know that you're traveling so you can't hide

01:33:13.500 that and then that as you're saying at the furthest end could end up in so-called honor killing but at

01:33:19.040 the other end it could be beaten by your by the partner that got you pregnant it could be being 0.82

01:33:23.520 thrown out by your your parent or whatever these are things that women and girls should have access 0.57

01:33:29.080 to to look after themselves it makes me furious in this year 2026 we're not a point where women

01:33:36.120 can just look after their own bodies it's got not nothing to do with anybody else and that's why 0.98

01:33:41.940 that's why abortion is a is a really clever way of trying to control women's bodies like part

01:33:48.200 from the obvious stuff it's because there are people that find the notion of abortion completely

01:33:53.900 unpalatable they've got the notion of like a full-term baby or they've got the notion of

01:33:58.600 you're killing a child and all that kind of thing that's very very strong rhetoric but we're largely

01:34:04.440 talking about very early stage you know very early stage interventions happen before 10 weeks

01:34:11.160 when it's very easily done with pills and it's like a heavy period that is the vast majority of

01:34:14.780 abortions the very rare late ones and very rare circumstances where it's like really vulnerable

01:34:20.400 young women teenagers children also it tends to be who don't know they're pregnant necessarily

01:34:26.600 children who have been abused that tend to be these late ones are people that have had

01:34:29.920 a medical catastrophe with a pregnancy that they've wanted um yeah what we need to do in

01:34:35.600 scotland is support the petition to provide care in scotland which i've got lodged with the

01:34:40.340 parliament just now um once the new parliament is in start pushing the msps on decriminalization

01:34:46.140 that needs to happen and also don't fall for this anti-buffer zone propaganda that christians are

01:34:51.280 being persecuted and arrested in scotland that's not happening these are anti-abortion extremists

01:34:56.240 who are choosing to be arrested

01:34:57.740 and they're being backed up

01:34:59.100 by evangelical American groups

01:35:00.820 with lots of money.

01:35:01.880 We need to not drink that Kool-Aid,

01:35:03.280 not fall through it.

01:35:04.080 The Telegraph is terrible.

01:35:05.420 They're pushing this propaganda.

01:35:07.000 It's coming into mainstream media now

01:35:08.360 and we need to go see through it.

01:35:09.700 It's always the same people

01:35:10.600 who can recognise them.

01:35:12.620 Yeah.

01:35:13.600 Well, it gives us a lot to think about

01:35:15.520 and I know that this is an uncomfortable

01:35:18.040 and difficult conversation for many.

01:35:20.240 There'll be some people

01:35:20.920 that don't really think about it,

01:35:22.160 haven't really thought about it before

01:35:23.220 because it's not affected them.

01:35:24.820 But it's something that I think

01:35:26.060 that we need to think even if I myself would not access abortion I still don't have the right to

01:35:32.480 try and take that away from other women and I think it's something yourself would you force

01:35:36.720 someone else yeah you don't you don't have to have one if it's legalized it doesn't mean you

01:35:41.520 have to have an abortion it just means other people have got access to it and I think it's

01:35:46.120 important that we're talking here about Scotland but this is something that's an issue across the

01:35:50.200 UK in America possibly in other countries in Europe we'd be interested to hear what your

01:35:54.980 takes are on things but Gemma thank you so much for joining us we really really appreciate it

01:36:00.160 thanks for having me it's been great to talk to you about this because it is a bit of a

01:36:03.620 contemporary manifestation of the misogyny from the witch hunt 100 thanks Gemma thank you okay

01:36:10.600 well that was fascinating really interesting to look at the historical setting in Italy and I

01:36:16.260 think that's something that we're definitely going to have to revisit I think that's that's

01:36:19.220 really fascinating and then to think about what it is in the modern day about being a woman too

01:36:23.440 is really great um claire do you have anything that you'd like to inform our um people that

01:36:30.600 have bought scarves and things from us about yes anybody who has bought tartan so one thing is

01:36:36.140 first of all thank you very much we are still uh by day just unable to believe how much support

01:36:45.400 and interest it has and how much people really get the idea of thinking about our history and

01:36:52.380 wearing it as a sign of remembrance but also resistance for the present time and all the

01:36:57.700 difficult things that are going on it fills my heart with absolute joy and people are so kind

01:37:02.340 about getting in contact letting us know they've got it and about spreading the word

01:37:06.300 one or two things first thing is it's still taking a very long time to make it it will always take a

01:37:13.620 long time we might build up some stock in the future but at the moment we are working still

01:37:19.140 every order that comes in that's a new order and it takes time to make so people are saying i'll

01:37:24.880 wait and i'll order at some point in the future when you've got stock no you have to order it now

01:37:29.840 so that it comes into existence so that you can get it so that's just one thing it does take um

01:37:36.780 a time we don't shy away from that fact and in fact we're not proud of it we'd like to get

01:37:42.600 everyone to just snap our fingers and get it but as we and i have said before we're not witches

01:37:47.280 brackets question mark now after that glasgow witch episode but anyway remind me to come back

01:37:53.320 to that i won't say something about that after this oh okay interesting interesting so um it

01:37:58.400 does take that length of time and there's a couple of videos especially um a video from a young

01:38:03.540 filmmaker eva on the website which shows you why it takes so long so that's the first thing the

01:38:08.820 second thing is the the wooden tags the wooden tags are meant from us to show that they are

01:38:17.220 authentic witches of scotland tartan you do not need to keep them on when you wear the items and

01:38:22.820 in fact i don't i take them off and they unscrew so if you just unscrew it there is a hole um

01:38:30.660 through the uh the piece of wood and you can put it like on your key ring or something of the likes

01:38:36.540 you don't need to keep it on because some people have gotten contacts saying oh no i'm distraught

01:38:40.460 i've lost it we didn't intend for people to keep the tags on we just wanted them to get it so that

01:38:46.820 they knew it's come from us and it's authentic so please don't worry about that um in the future

01:38:52.420 we may consider doing something with tags and getting tags made that's something on our 2026

01:38:58.920 list so bear with us while that's going on um we're surfing the the top of um our tartan business

01:39:06.380 at the moment trying to keep on top of anything so bear with that's truly about that now go back

01:39:11.640 to that glasgow witch what do you want so it wasn't wasn't specifically about that glasgow

01:39:15.540 witch although as a sidebar um i was saying to claire earlier that that was one of the highlights

01:39:19.920 for me of the christmas period was doing the intentions i really like that i really like the

01:39:24.900 idea of having that piece of quiet that's just me and some fire and i was thinking this could go

01:39:31.640 two ways let's not go the criminal route I'm not going to do arson no but it was nice to have that

01:39:38.020 little ritual honestly I really really liked it and it made me it made me laugh because one of

01:39:43.220 the reviews that we had so I'm going to go on about reviews again if you've read the book please do

01:39:48.020 leave a review it means a lot to us and it helps other people find it too but one of the negative

01:39:52.840 reviews we got was it's quite interesting because the the person that reviewed it said I really

01:39:57.240 liked the book but I was left with an uncomfortable feeling because the authors made such a big deal

01:40:04.140 saying that they themselves weren't witches. I would just say to that we absolutely respect,

01:40:11.060 I mean I think we're really really clear about this on the podcast, we really respect people

01:40:15.260 that would identify themselves as being modern day witches. The point we're making with that is

01:40:20.340 that we're saying that the witches of the Scottish witch trials are not the same as what we think of

01:40:26.200 as witches today so the witches is in the legal definition is people that are working with the

01:40:30.760 devil to do the devil's bidding that's a completely separate scenario to people that identifies

01:40:36.180 witches now like you know absolutely i mean no we love it and in fact you know geo geo says you

01:40:43.500 have made a piece of magic you have made a spell she thinks that we are witches yeah i think we're

01:40:49.560 kind of witch adjacent but i think you know being being a woman is you know it's difficult it's a

01:40:56.180 really really complex identity i would never describe myself as a witch because i'm absolutely

01:41:00.660 not a witch but i have absolute respect for people that are witches like why why wouldn't i

01:41:06.660 like you know like this this piece of work is partly about sort of noodling out the definition

01:41:11.780 and saying that a modern day witch is not an evil thing like you know the the idea in law in the

01:41:17.720 scottish witch trials was that it was clearly an evil thing that was happening that's the

01:41:22.800 definition that i'm always making i don't love it when people say oh here come the witches when we

01:41:28.060 when we come into the room i don't love that um partly because i've i've taught the book the

01:41:32.800 witches by royal dial many times and i don't i don't want people thinking that i have got like

01:41:37.700 you know i've got like pointy feet you know that sort of thing yeah i i slightly you know i i don't

01:41:44.300 mind so much people calling us the witches primarily because we did start a campaign

01:41:48.920 called the witches of scotland and i think it's meant in a kind way yeah yeah i also think people

01:41:54.540 don't you know when they meet us sometimes people don't really know how to to react you know it's

01:42:01.340 an easy catch you know catchphrase to you i mean i you know i get that i understand it and i think

01:42:10.000 it's it's you know it's worth explaining again if people have only recently come to us that when we

01:42:15.080 started the podcast you had this idea at the time of calling a witch to scotland and that at some

01:42:19.760 point if they're you know if that everything's changed legally and people get their pardon like

01:42:24.780 maybe renaming the story but if we called it women of scotland nobody would have had the slightest 0.97

01:42:28.880 interest in what we were talking about i have to be like oh fucking women so you know that's that's 0.96

01:42:33.840 why it got named that in the first place but we ourselves not not witches and totally cool with 1.00

01:42:40.900 witches so just wanted to make that clear for that lady in case she listens to this podcast

01:42:44.860 so she understands that we've got absolute respect for people that are witches but i like to be

01:42:48.980 clear we'll tell you i like to be very clear about definitions like that so i just wanted to say that

01:42:55.720 um also i'd like to apologize again to some readers um that we make we make a lot of footnotes

01:43:04.900 really sorry that that's aggravated some people and that they don't they don't find us funny

01:43:10.300 and it's irritating and also i'd like to apologize that we've inserted our own our own views about

01:43:17.660 what it is to be women into the story of the scottish witch trials sorry that it seems irrelevant

01:43:23.620 and that our own political views have been inserted again i'm actually not sorry about that

01:43:29.520 because i think being a woman is political the end zoe i beg you i beg you what was that review

01:43:36.280 what were we described as oh now this is very interesting right so i i'll be so upfront about

01:43:43.820 this i read the reviews all the time i can't help it i know it's not healthy claire is claire's

01:43:50.140 like don't read don't read them can't help it it's a scab that i keep pitching and it's nice to get

01:43:55.420 the good reviews but you'll all understand this it's the negative ones that you actually think

01:44:00.200 about and you ponder and one woman had written well i think it was a woman it was a woman's name

01:44:04.880 certainly had written and said this reads like two bitter old women and i was like how did she

01:44:13.280 not bitter i'm energized energized by anger he said we were two bitter old women the type of

01:44:21.640 bitter old women who clap when somebody swears i was like i mean if i clapped every time some 0.98

01:44:27.360 fucker swore i'd be like a seal at the circus are you joking me i am such a prolific swearer 0.99

01:44:35.360 i would i would have exhausted myself anyway but they gave us one star and then the next day i went 0.98

01:44:41.900 back and i saw it again and they had removed the some might argue misogynistic ageist epithet at

01:44:49.260 the beginning and had given it two stars but it still said that the book was rubbish and that we 0.84

01:44:54.880 We were essentially gobshites. 0.89

01:44:57.860 Yes, we are.

01:44:59.480 We are.

01:45:00.440 We'll take that.

01:45:02.080 Anyway, so please, if you feel like reviewing, please review.

01:45:05.280 Because it gives me something to make myself demented by.

01:45:09.440 So for nothing else, it's that.

01:45:12.640 But thank you very much for those of you who have reviewed.

01:45:14.680 We totally, totally appreciate it.

01:45:16.780 Do you know what, ladies and gentlemen, 0.76

01:45:17.740 is because what Zoe does is she reads out the negative reviews 0.95

01:45:21.800 to the Ravens, whom she's treated with.

01:45:24.880 to go sit in the branches of those people's shoes and just directly into the houses no i've stopped

01:45:31.360 reading out to the ravens because the ravens made it very clear to me they thought what i was doing

01:45:35.120 is pathetic and needy and i needed to get a grip and stop reading reviews because you're awesome

01:45:39.500 stop being a baby so i'm not i've stopped talking to him about it because really i could do without 0.98

01:45:44.080 their judgment you know i mean so i just talked to the raccoons about it because they're very

01:45:49.080 revenge led so that's fully that's what motivates them spite and revenge one thing before we sign

01:45:56.760 off and this is a really really really nice thing so part of what we want to do is is philanthropy

01:46:02.480 with what we do with with the witches and looking at different charities and different ways in which

01:46:07.300 we can use some of the money that we make to do cool things and one of the things that we've done

01:46:12.580 so far we've done several things but one of the things we've done so far is we gave a good chunk

01:46:16.860 of money to the fundraiser that Claire Thomas is doing for Ghana and then we were delighted to see

01:46:23.940 the counter on that tick up and it's now reached her target but she's keeping it open so if you

01:46:28.880 still want to give to that please do but what that means is that the money that's given to that 0.78

01:46:33.560 campaign means the women in that particular witch camp in Ghana are going to get bedding which I

01:46:38.960 just think is a really great practical thing that we can do with our money and Claire and I were so

01:46:43.880 moved and delighted to see so many names that we know from people that interact with us you know

01:46:50.100 by messaging or on Instagram or we know their podcast listeners and we just thought it was

01:46:54.240 totally amazing so a big round of applause to all of you you're wonderful and the GoFundMe is still

01:46:59.140 available if you want to add to it so if you just look Claire Thomas photographer you'll find it

01:47:03.880 Claire Thomas photographer which is Ghana it'll come up immediately I looked on before we done

01:47:09.700 this podcast and it's up at 8 000 something so she's a thousand over that's brilliant when we

01:47:15.400 say mattresses for these women we're not talking about you know these posture pedics exactly we're 1.00

01:47:22.060 talking for for thin plastic mattresses but but being able to get them for lots and lots of women 0.99

01:47:29.220 and she's put a wee note in about the other things that she can help women with if she can get them 0.52

01:47:34.960 some things for example the ability to make candles she can set people up in really tiny 1.00

01:47:41.740 micro micro businesses to help them try and earn some money in these camps because 0.97

01:47:46.840 so able to earn anything so that's an extra thousand pounds she's got for that and we're

01:47:53.080 just going to keep pushing it and keep um uh trying to um encourage people to to um keep

01:48:00.880 giving to it because it's such a fantastic thing it's really cool so yeah so we're looking at

01:48:05.420 things like that that we can get involved with and we can use um we can use some money to actually

01:48:09.400 do effective change in places so one of our listeners got in touch with us and recommended

01:48:13.900 another charity that takes in children that have had witchcraft accusations we'll do a bit more

01:48:18.540 research into that and that might be something that we we look at supporting too but anyway

01:48:23.420 thank you so much for listening to this the 80th episode have a beautiful day and enjoy 2026

01:48:30.880 okay bye

01:48:32.620 bye

01:48:33.400 if you'd like to know more about the witches of scotland

01:48:45.540 please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

01:48:48.180 sign up for our mailing list

01:48:50.260 at www.witchesofscotland.com

01:48:54.280 to keep updated with the campaign

01:48:56.100 on that site you'll be able to find

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01:48:59.560 on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Witches of Scotland - January 05, 2026

EPISODE 80 DR. MORETTI ON & GEMMA CLARK

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Transcript