The Science of the Witches' Circle

What old rituals knew, and what research shows today

Drumming, circle dances, fire, herbs, the moon: the practices once called witchcraft, and what modern research has actually measured about them. Eight short lessons, each with an archival film, honest about where the evidence is strong and where it isn’t, and each ending with something to try on the dance floor. Made for the Ecstatic Oracle Witches’ Edition in Nijmegen.

Lessons

  1. Before You Begin (free preview): Why a course about witches, why now, and the honesty rule every lesson follows.
  2. She Who Sits on the Hedge (free preview): The witch as a border-walker: Mariken of Nijmegen, the honest scales of Oudewater, and what "witch" may have meant.
  3. The Drum and the Trance (free preview): Why circles drum at about four beats a second, what a brain scanner saw during drum trance, and why rhythm alone is not enough.
  4. The Circle (free preview): The silent-disco experiment: why moving in sync with others raised pain thresholds and made strangers feel close.
  5. The Fire and the Field (free preview): A Spanish fire-walking ritual wired with heart monitors: whose hearts beat together, and whose didn't.
  6. Why Rituals Work (free preview): Harvard experiments where made-up rituals reduced anxiety and grief, even for people who didn't believe in rituals.
  7. The Herb Woman (free preview): Foxglove and a heart drug, willow bark and aspirin, and the "flying ointments" of nightshade: the folk knowledge that turned out to be real chemistry.
  8. What the Moon Really Does (free preview): Two careful studies found people sleep less around full moon. The menstrual-cycle link is real but small and intermittent.
  9. The Cold Winters of the Witch Hunt (free preview): Why witch trials peaked in the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age, the Salem ergot theory and its rebuttal, and who gets weighed today.