During the 15th-century, citizens of Nuremberg, Germany, experienced spectacular Carnival parades highlighted by the appearance of floats known as “hells.” Featuring immense figures, including dragons, ogres, and man-eating giants, these hells were also peopled with costumed performers and enhanced with mechanized effects and pyrotechnics.
In this episode, adapted from a chapter of Mr. Ridenour’s new book, A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival, we examine the Nuremberg parade, the Schembartlauf, as it evolves from costumed dance performances staged by the local Butcher’s Guild in the mid-1 4th-century into a procession of fantastic and elaborately costumed figures, and finally — in 1475 – into a showcase for the rolling hells.
We begin, however, with an examination of a historical anecdotes sometimes presented as forerunners of the Carnival parades, and of the Schembartlauf in particular, including two sometimes put forward to support a “pagan survival” theory. The first involves a ceremonial wagon housing a figure of the putative fertility goddess, Nerthus, hauled about by Germanic peoples in the first century and mentioned in Tacitus’ Germania. The second, also involving a wagon with fertility figure, is described by Gregory of Tours as being hauled through farmers’ fields in the 6th-century.
Period illustration of costumed figure from a Schembartbuch.Period illustration of costumed figure from a Schembartbuch.
A third case involves the mysterious “land-ship,” a full-scale wheeled ship hauled from Germany into Belgium, and the Netherlands in 1135. Mentioned exclusively by the Flemish abbot, composer, and chronicler Rudolf of St. Trond in his Gesta Abbatum Trudonensium (Deeds of the Abbots of Trond), it’s characterized by the abbot as a sort of pagan temple on wheels and locus of orgiastic behavior, the precise purpose and nature of this peculiar incident remains largely a mystery.
We then hear a comic incident imagined in the early 13th-century story of the knight Parzival as told by Wolfram von Eschenbach. By way of analogy to the character’s ludicrous behavior, Carnival is mentioned for the first time, or more specifically von Eschenbach use the German word for Carnival, specifically the Carnival of Germany’s southwest called “Fastnacht.”
Our story of the Schembartlauf concludes the show with a description of its ironic downfall through local intrigues fired by the Protestant Reformation. Worth mentioning also, in our Schembart segment, is the heated scholarly debate around objects depicted in period illustrations, which look for all the world like oversized pyrotechnic artichokes.
New Patreon rewards related to Mr. Ridenour’s Carnival book are also announced in this episode, along with related Carnival-themed merch in our Etsy shop, including our “Party Like it’s 1598” shirts featuring Schembart figures.
Here’s a new book trailer I put together for A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival. This one’s slanted toward who may have been interested in my Krampus book. The book is available in the US at better bookstores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, directly from the publisher, Feral House, and via other online booksellers.
Mr. Ridenour introduces his new book “A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival,” explaining how the project grew out of his research for “The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas.” In this episode, he sketches out chapter themes and topics, from ancient Rome to modern Bulgaria, focusing particularly on cultural hinterlands where festivities still echo the cruel realities of the old, agricultural world and where medieval Christianity intertwines with pagan practice. The Carnival portrayed is at once beautiful, strange, and savage. Spring is welcomed by clowns waving inflated pig bladders. Stalking sheepskin monsters brandish clubs bristling with hedgehog spines, and plows are dragged over cobblestone streets by celebrants wearing masks painted with cow’s blood. Folk horror fans take heart as the Old World welcomes Spring!
Available now for pre-order. US Publication date, May 6, 20205.
A few advance reviews of the book:
“Sumptuously illustrated and written with clarity, eloquence, and wry humor, “A Season of Madness” is one of those rare books that can pass muster as an academic study yet also provide a good read. Al Ridenour’s meticulous research exposes the subtleties and outrageous quirks of a topic you didn’t know you wanted to learn about until you picked up his book. Under his direction, the madness once again reigns, as the neglected history of European Carnival is placed center stage before the reader, in all its seedy, wild, and triumphant glory.”
—Dr. Paul Koudounaris, author and photographer of: “Faithful unto Death,” “Heavenly Bodies,” and “Empire of Death“
“A Season of Madness“ is a fantastic carnival of a book. Equal parts irreverent and erudite, it lovingly captures the depth, complexity, and subversive nature of the carnival, from its ancient roots to modern expression. Gorgeously illustrated, intellectually hefty, and also fun, it is a seductive introduction to the material cultures, legends, and history of this perennially fascinating and slippery subject.”
—Joanna Ebenstein, Founder and Creative Director of Morbid Anatomy
A short extra episode on Befana, the gift-bringing Italian witch associated with Twelfth Night, the end of the Christmas season. Included in the show is material from the book, “The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas,” traditional music of the season, audio from actual celebrations, and a few pop songs associated with la Befana.
Befana on the Piazza Navona, Rome.The Cucibocca of Montescaglioso
Tonight we bring you our sixth annual Christmas ghost story, a tradition particularly beloved in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. First published in 1908, and set in the days before Christmas, the tale is by British writer Algernon Blackwood (from whom we earlier heard “Ancient Lights“) and whom many listeners will know through his other works, particularly, The Wendigo or The Willows. Throw a log on the fire, refill the brandy, and settle back for Mrs. Karswell’s reading of “The Kit Bag.”
Tonight we recreate for you elements of an old-fashioned Halloween party as experienced in the 1920s or ’30s. Foods, games, spooky stories and poems in an extra-long Halloween episode.
For more retro delights of the era, listen to Episode 35 “Vintage Halloween.”
Explore some curious British Customs with us, including those of Midsummer, swan-upping, egg-hopping, St. Bartholomew’s knives, and the violent tradition of St. Michaelmas “ganging.” Our source for this episode is the 1911 volume by T. F. Thistelton Dyer, British Popular Customs Present and Past. Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged according to the Calendar of the Year.
From St. Nicholas Day through Christmas, the Devil figured prominently in medieval plays, embodying a subversive seasonal element also celebrated in the Feast of Fools.
We enter the topic of medieval Christmas plays sideways through German composer Carl Orff’s 1935 composition “O Fortuna,” a piece much beloved in Hollywood soundtracks. The lyric Orff set to music happens to belongs to one of 24 11th-century poems preserved in a Benedictine monastery in the Bavarian town of Beuren, providing the collection with its name, Carmina Burana, a Latinized version of “Songs from Beuren.”
After a brief look at some of the rude and blasphemous poems, for which the collection is notorious, we switch to its poem on the Nativity, a much less scandalous composition which formed the basis of one of Europe’s first Christmas plays. We focus on the prominent role given Satan and his demons in that text as well as the comic portrayal of the Antichrist in Ludus de Antichrist, “Play of Antichrist,” preserved in a collection from a nearby monastery in Tegnersee.
From there we switch over to medieval portrayals of another sort of Antichrist, namely King Herod, whose role in the Christmas story is to order the execution of all infant males in his kingdom, hoping thereby to exterminate a potential rival, the “King of the Jews,” rumored to have been born in his kingdom. We discuss some fantastically grisly portrayals of this event from the medieval stage.
We next have a look at some of the stagecraft employed in portraying the Devil and his minions, discussing the fabrication of “Hellmouths,” a set element, which swallowed sinners and vomited up devils on the medieval stage. Alongside this, we examine costumes and pyrotechnics used to enhance the theatricality of demons and their realm.
From there, we turn to another subversive, sometimes violent, undercurrent in holiday celebrations, namely that of the Boy Bishop. Beginning around the 10th century, the title was given to a youth elected to lead mass either on the Feast Day of St. Nicholas or on December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. On the surface, the tradition may sound innocently charming enough, but as we learn from quite a few contemporaneous accounts of mayhem and violence involved in the festivities, this inversion of the hierarchies could quickly lead into Lord of the Flies territory.
16th-century depiction of the Boy Bishop tradition from Bamburg, Germany
Related to the Boy Bishop tradition, is our next topic, the Feast of Fools. While many listeners will be familiar will be with the carnivalesque street parades, and election of a mock King, Bishop, or Pope of Fools, these chaotic elements were not limited to the secular world. Indeed, the festumfatuorum began within the church itself, consisting of a number of days in which lower clergy assumed roles usually belonging to those above them in the hiearchy (priests for bishops, etc.).
The “Feast” actually constituted of a number of different days during the Christmas season during which such inversions took place, a period sometimes extending all the way to January 14, on which the “Feast of the Ass” took place, a celebration honoring the animal which bore the Blessed Virgin to Bethlehem, and one involving the congregation in a litany of “hee-hawing.” Mrs. Karswell reads for us a number of historical accounts detailing the mayhem involved in these celebrations.
We close with a nod to the most the most famous literary reference to the Feast of Fools, one which novelist Victor Hugo imagined in his 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and in which the titular character is crowned “King of Fools,” (or “pope” in the original French.)
This short off-format episode is intended as a sort of fireside reading to be enjoyed by our overfull American listeners as they struggle to digest their Thanksgiving dinners. It’s from the late 1st-century novel, Satyricon by Petronius and describes what is quite likely Western literature’s most decadent description of a feast.
During the Satanic Panic, the notion of Halloween as a Satanic High Holy Day came to prominence, but the elements necessary to this mythology were set in place much earlier.
This episode focuses particularly on the early years of Wicca, some missteps in disassociating the movement from Satanism, and early evangelical personalities spinning “ex-Satanist” yarns from this material, which is to say, we focus particularly on the 1960s Occult Revival up to and including 1973. To set the mood for the era’s pop occultism, we hear some audio snippets by records released by witches, Louise Huebner, Gundella the Green Witch, Barbara the Gray Witch, and Babetta, the Sexy Witch.
Back of Barbara the Gray Witch 1970 LP
We first have a quick look at Anton Lavey’s creation of The Church of Satan in 1966. While this sketched out cartoonish tropes of the Panic narrative, Lavey’s carnival-barker style and insistence that there was no actual Satan in his school of Satanism, undermined the influence he might have among all but the most credulous and paranoid.
The real roots of the Panic lay not in Lavey’s publicity stunt, which in the wider historical context was a mere flash in the pan, but in a much older idea conceiving witchcraft and Devil worship or traffic with demons, a notion that held sway for more than seven centuries and therefore not to be quickly rooted out by modern Wiccans.
Some of the sticking points here are rooted in 19th and early 20th century writings on witchcraft by the American folklorist Charles Leland and British Egyptologist Margaret Murray, and their “witch-cult” concept regarding witchcraft as an underground survival of ancient pagan religion. Problematic here too were their identification of the deities of this religion as “Lucifer” (Leland) and “The Horned God” (Murray).
We then turn to Gerald Gardner, the British civil servant, who in his retirement got the whole Wiccan ball rolling, declaring in the early 1950s, that he had been initiated into the ancient mysteries of this witch-cult by members of a surviving Coven in the New Forest region. In particular, we examine the way in which Gardner’s emphasis on UK traditions within Wicca, strengthened an association between Halloween and witches (despite virtually no mention of witch gatherings actually occurring on Halloween in earlier historical writings).
Sibyl Leek and her jackdaw “Mr. Hotfoot”
We then have a brief look at Sybil Leek, first acolyte of Gardnerian Wicca in the US, and darling of 1960s journalists. (Leek was profiled in our 2019 Halloween episode, “All of Them Witches.”) As the United States was the birthplace of the modern Halloween, Leek’s insatiable engagement with the press around that time, did much to strengthen the idea of Halloween as a singularly important time for witch gatherings and ritual. She also provides Halloween recipes!
By the 1960s, Wicca had branched into two paths, Gardnerian and Alexandrian, the latter named for the British witch Alex Sanders, who with his wife Maxine, headed a coven in London. Sanders has much to do with continued confusion between Wicca and Devil-worship thanks to his indiscriminate pursuit of media interest inclined to titillate audiences with the old diabolic model. We discuss his involvement with the British band Black Widow and their Satanic sacrifice stage-show, publicity involvement in the film Eye of the Devil (1966) , and his feature role in the documentary Legend of the Witches (1970) and mondo “documentary” Secret Rites(1971).
Sanders in “Secret Rites”
Just as Wicca originated in the UK, only later to be embraced in the US. fraudulent ex-Satanist testimonies were first told in Britain. In 1970 Bristol-born Doreen Irvine began relating stories of her involvement in the occult, tales that took their final form in her 1973 publication From Witchcraft to Christ. We hear a bit of her tale of teenage street-life, drugs, and prostitution leading to Satanism, her claims to curious supernatural abilities, and her crowning as the “Queen of the Black Witches” on the Dartmoor moor. As well as her warnings about celebrating Halloween.
While the ex-Satanist narrative, never really caught on in the UK, it hit the big time with American Mike Warnke’s 1972 book purporting to document his experiences in Satanism, The Satan Seller.
Mike Warnke in his early days.
While Warnke’s fraudulent stories garnered him celebrity in the early days of the modern evangelical movement, by the late 1970s, he had reinvented himself as a popular Christian comedian. He did, however, revisit the theme once the Satanic Panic got rolling, with the 1979 release of the album “A Christian Perspective on Halloween.”
We hear his Satan Seller narrative of a good Midwestern boy corrupted by drugs in a California college, eventual elevation to High Priest within global Satanic underworld, eventual self-destruction through drugs leading to a stint with the Navy, during which he’s saved. Along the way, are some bizarre details about his fingernails, strange ordinations in real-world sects, and eventual exposure and fall within the evangelical community.
Another evangelical making the rounds with ex-Satanist stories in in Warnke’s day was John Todd, who began spinning his yars tales around 1968 in Phoenix. We only briefly discuss Todd as he really hits his stride outside our timeframe, namely, in the late ‘70s when his story of involvement in a Satanic underworld reached its greatest audience via Jack Chick comics.
We wrap up the show with a look at some early collaborators with Warnke in the the occult fear-mongering business — David Balsiger, Morris Cerrullo, and Hershel Smith (AKA “the Skin Eater) as well as their collaboration on the legendary “Witchmobile,” an “anti-occult mobile unit” that roamed the US and Canada from 1972 to 1974.
