Modern life is stressful.
There's traffic, pollution, the Kardashians, T-Mobile, and now even a full-blown global
pandemic.
Forget all that, you've decided to travel to the east coast of the United States and
join a local community dedicated to living their lives just like their 16th century pilgrim
ancestors.
Except for, you know, all that Indian murder business.
Yeah... everything except Indian murder.
You gotta admit, the simple life is kind of nice after living your whole life in the chaotic,
fast-paced modern world.
Then of course there's that whole business with demons, aliens, Gordon Freeman and 80s
action movie stars you've accidentally wandered into death matches with.
Oh, and multiple ex-girlfriends who... well, you know what, new 16th century life, new
you.
Everything's going honky dory with your new pilgrim life and you've finally started to
get the hang of all those 'thees' and 'thous', when suddenly, a teenage girl runs screaming
into the village.
The baby she was just playing peekaboo with disappeared, like from right in front of her
own eyes.
The townspeople gasp in horror, it must've been a wolf!, many claim, but you narrow your
eyes because you're pretty sure you know better.
That night you stumble across two small children having a full-blown conversation with a black
billy goat and you realize, yep, you definitely do know better.
'Twas no foul wolven that spirited yonder childer away, 'twas a witch!
Or... v-v-itch.
So you decided to leave your stressful modern life behind and seek out the solitude and
honest living of 16th century America, except your past of fighting demons and all matter
of evils has once again caught up with you and now you're facing a witch.
How are you going to defeat her?
To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy, and you've never faced an enemy quite like
this because you're not dealing with one witch, but rather an entire coven.
While one witch is powerful, only a coven could conjure the demonic power necessary
for terrorizing an entire village, and now it's up to you to stop them.
First, forget what you've read on some goth emo punk's livejournal page about witchcraft,
or seen on their youtube channel.
These witches are the real deal, less interested in casting love or good luck spells, and more
interested in grinding unbaptized babies into paste to make flying potions.
Yeah, we told you, these witches are pretty hardcore.
Ancient witches would often be recruited by the devil from amongst the outcasts of a society,
and our ancient societies left a lot of room for women to feel like outcasts.
From not being allowed to own property, work without their husband's approval, choose who
they marry, or have a single independent thought, many women felt ostracized by an overbearingly
patriarchal society.
This led some to turn to the dark master, offering their souls in exchange for the power
to liberate themselves from society or in some cases, seek revenge against it.
Some male witches did in fact exist, but the profession mostly attracted women.
Often, innocent women were accused of being witches, if for instance they happened to
be discovered doing math, or wearing pants.
Math and pants-wearing were sure-fire signs of the devil's influence, and it was the bonfire
for those women.
Meanwhile real witches terrorized the countryside, flying across the moonlit night sky doing
algebra and calculus on the devil's back.
Despite there not being a single mention of the need to hunt down and kill witches by
Jesus, Christians nevertheless decided that the witch problem was something Jesus must
have absentmindedly forgot to mention, and took to the killing and burning of women with
gusto, loudly proclaiming their faith as they did so.
It was believed that one sure-fire way to spot a witch- other than math and pants- was
to have the suspect recite the Lord's Prayer, as it was believed that the devil which resided
in them would not allow them to do so.
Another way of spotting a witch was to simply weigh them against the weight of a bible,
as it was believed witches had no soul and thus would weigh less than a bible- in the
Netherlands you could even be officially weighed and get a certificate proving you were not
a witch.
Yet another popular way of spotting witches was to throw them into water with a rope attached
to them- as the water would reject their wickedness, witches would float while the innocent would
sink.
Literally all of those things are the height of human stupidity, because our ancestors
were such idiots it's a wonder they stuck around long enough to have us.
So forget all of that, because spotting a real witch isn't nearly as easy.
If you want to eliminate the witch haunting your quaint village, you're going to have
to do some old-fashioned detective work.
Establishing an alibi for each villager during any sudden disappearances will start to give
you a clue of which individuals seem to be always missing when something witchy goes
down, and is probably a more reliable method than weighing someone against a book.
But your investigations are no doubt going to make you a target, so you best be ready
to defend yourself from witchy\ attacks.
Protection starts at home, and so should your defenses.
Witches aren't demons or evil apparitions, so while holy water seems like it would do
the trick, it's actually completely useless against a witch- as the witch is still human.
However, holy water might be beneficial to use against some of her evil summons, if she
happens to set loose demons or other terrors against you, so don't throw it out of your
toolkit just yet.
A better way to protect your home though is simple tabletop salt.
Jesus said that believers are the “salt of the earth”, which might sound weird to
a modern audience as most people know that if you salt a patch of earth, it pretty much
destroys its ability to grow crops.
Well, back in Jesus's day, salt was pretty much the most amazing thing in the world,
and absolutely necessary for human civilization.
Salt was used not just to flavor things, but also as medicine, though its single most important
use, and a possible reason why human civilization was even possible in the first place, was
as a preservative.
Salting food allowed you to store it for extremely long amounts of time, and killed any harmful
bacteria or molds that tried to grow on it.
It was the only way humans could survive long winters without resorting to a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle.
Without salt, civilization simply wouldn't have been possible.
Oh, and without salt in your body the electrical signals that keep you alive would fail to
transmit and you'd be dead as a door nail.
Thus, it makes sense why Jesus made a pretty big deal out of salt.
Because of salt's life-giving properties, it makes an excellent tool for warding one
self from the evil magic and influence of witches.
You can create barriers around your house by forming a ring of salt around it, a witch's
magic will fail to penetrate this protective layer of salty goodness.
Yet salt has another use in combating witches, and it's for use against her minions.
Most witches are able to call upon demons, familiars, and even the undead to torment
and attack their victims, and salt can help you destroy these evil aberrations.
Wiping salt on a sword or axe will empower it against evil, causing the wounds it delivers
to be impossible to regenerate.
However, a proper weapon for witch destruction is also vital.
This is the 16th century, so forget about high power weaponry- most muskets back then
were so terrible they were just as likely to blow up in your face as to actually hit
what you were aiming at.
You need something a bit more... personal.
Witches often had the ability to resist damage caused by blades and hammers, empowering their
bodies with devil magic and causing their skin to toughen like a beast's hide.
One thing evil magic cannot protect from though is cold iron.
No, we're not saying stick an iron sword into a refrigerator before you go witch hunting,
cold iron refers to a very specific, and rare way of forging.
In cold forging a metal is never heated until it's glowing red hot and then hammered into
shape, as you've no doubt seen in countless fantasy films.
Instead, metal is beaten into shape while completely unheated, using nothing but raw
human strength- or in the modern world, a mechanical press.
Lacking modern manufacturing equipment, you're going to need to find a piece of iron and
start hammering it into shape- and we hope you're in really good shape because you're
going to be working on that thing for days.
Seriously, it's stupid hard to make a sword out of unheated iron.
But all that sweating and beating on iron is going to pay off in spades when you've
got yourself a weapon no evil can protect from.
Now rub some salt on that bad boy and you're ready to take on hordes of witches.
Well, almost, because you're still vulnerable to a witch's hexes, and if you're trying to
kill a coven of witches you can be sure you're going to get hexed, like a lot.
So it's time to once again turn to cutting edge 16th century science and protect yourself
from witch hexes- with pee.
Find yourself a small bottle, and then fill that bottle with nails, some bent pins, a
pinch or two of hair, and a whole lot of urine, then wear that bad boy around your neck.
We know what you're thinking- ew gross, I'm not wearing a bottle of pee around my neck.
Well, enjoy your new life as a polymorphed pig, because if you don't wear pee around
your neck you're gonna get hexed.
Now, the science of this is simple.
The bottle itself represents the bladder of a witch, and when she attempts to place a
hex on you, then her own bladder will suddenly feel as if it's filled with sharp nails and
bent pins, because science.
Witches have become brides of the devil, and as thus have lost their ability to have children
of their own- which explains why they’re always doing real witchy things like stealing
children.
When they’re not busy grinding them into potions, some witches will steal a child in
order to raise it as a new witch.
However, their inability to have children makes them vulnerable to the blood of women
who can.
Menstrual blood is an effective tool in combating a witch.
We could break it down for you, but the science is pretty solid on this one.
Menstrual blood = bad day for a witch, so find a local woman who’s Aunt Flo is in
town and get her to fill up a jar for you, you know, just for emergencies.
But wait, because you're definitely not dressed for witch battle.
Centuries of witch science have brought humanity the most cutting edge anti-witch technology
and methodology for protecting one's self from their evil attacks.
Before riding of into battle with a coven of witches, there's one thing you need to
do to protect yourself from evil magic, and that's to turn your underwear inside out.
You can wear outer garments inside out as well if you wish, but most witch hunters stick
to the tried and true method of simply wearing their underwear inside out to repel magical
attacks, once more because of science.
Alright, you've got your salted, cold iron forged blade.
You're wearing a jar of pee around your neck, and you've no fool, so you've turned your
underwear inside out.
For emergencies, you have a vial of period blood.
That's it, you're the ultimate witch-killing bad ass, and single witch or coven-full of
witches, you're ready to take on the black heart of hell itself.
Now go forth and do righteous battle, confident in your holy protection of urine jar and inside
out underwear.
Bring peace to the land once more, and remember, if you doubt if someone is a witch or not,
you can always throw them in water and see if they float.
Or just have them do math, if a woman can do math, she's a witch!
Hey, this isn't your first round going up against witches though, so if you need a refresher
check out our episode, You vs The Blair Witch.