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Study 004 - The Chestnut Beads - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2022-07-28 17:05:14
Imported:
2026-06
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Witches take over the world! It's part two of The Chestnut Beads by Jane Roberts.

Special thanks to our reader, Heather Klinke!

Don't forget to vote for Cults of Cthulhu at The ENNIE Awards site!

Next up on our bonus episode, the stop-motion film MAD GOD!

Comments

Thylacine

Hearing about Jane Roberts' childhood in the last episode, Olive's reaction to the bomb made me think of something about people with C-PTSD (which is common in people who were abused as kids): In a crisis, they're often very calm and capable. I can never know if Jane Roberts had C-PTSD, but I wonder if that was her putting a bit of herself into the story.

Abandon Quest

I'm 32, and for me (and I think a lot of people in my generation), the shruggable apocalypse/cold war equivalent is climate change. Maybe it's a little different from a bomb because it's truly inevitable, but we're inundated with news about how catastrophic it's going to be and how little interest there is in stopping it. I work from home and recently shifted to sleeping through most of the day just to avoid the heat! Could these be the early signs of humanity becoming a nocturnal species? No, because climate change will end the world and we have no future, SHRUG

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Gotta say, I recognize shades of reality slipping into the "coven's" description. There have been groups that lay claim to the word "feminism" without engaging with any aspect of the idea or its history, because they're actually peddling a worldview that's Patriarchy with the serial numbers filed off. (TERFs come to mind as a contemporary example.) They rear up a worldview on the belief that gender is not an arbitrary set of social categories. That "maleness" and "femaleness" are immutable traits born of bioessential characteristics. That each group is naturally "better" at certain things than others, and one of them is the essentially better class of human—either morally or pragmatically. This is not feminism...and it's also not matriarchy. Matriarchal societies historical and extant don't work like that. It's what you get from taking Patriarchy (in the sense of the modern, totalizing system of social pressures and relationships predicated on domination) and just switching which gender is the "good one" and which one is the "bad one." And it plays out like that in the tale. Chris suggested that our callous protagonist was regurgitating male hostility to her peers, but that's not what it sounded like to me. It sounded like men's hostility to *men.* Don't be weak. Stop crying. Real men kill. Quit being a pussy. Her order are, functionally, warriors in this new world, killing those who would oppose them. And they're dehumanizing themselves and each other the way men often do *because* of Patriarchal social pressures. I think that may be the reason they're so violent in the tale. Then again, I do also just find the suggested alternative—musings on the consequences of "violence" in resistence and rebellion—distasteful. I always hate when storytellers treat protest as some trancendent expression of morality that must rigidly conform to *their* standards, and not a desperate act of self-defense against the constant ongoing violence the people in question are resisting. Protest, rebellion, revolution, whatever—they're all a different type of war, and different tactics labeled "violent" or "non-violent" by priviledged navel-gazers only succeed when they're each used in the right context. Oh, and following Donny's comment, I have to agree and add that climate change has the added problem of not only being too big to grasp, but too *slow.* If the nukes all flew, it'd be a big sudden catastrophe. But climate change is incremental. Gradual. A little change year by year, too slow to really be felt until it's already hitting the fan. Ironically, global warming is a glacial process. Anywho, that's my first comment under the new show! Err...feedback. You know what I mean.

UltharMeow

I had the same thoughts, only both of you presented them far more coherently. I’ll just say that in this coven’s world, I would be toast because there is absolutely no way I could kill a kitten. Harsh language is the worst I could manage.

Pearce Duncan

If you think Milo & Otis will be an antidote to animal cruelty, I’ve got extremely bad news about the making of that movie.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

It is endlessly fascinating how those in power oppress those out of power. Nearly any cruelty is made acceptable - even rational. Then, when those out of power begin to accrue it through changes in economics or demographics or morality or whatever, the powered begin a new rationalization. We can't let those out of power gain too much power because then they'd go nuts. They'd, you know, oppress us. We're in power, but we deserve to be. It's the natural order of things. Put them in power? That's crazy. They don't know how to wield power. They'd upend civilization. It can't be permitted. I've seen it in countries and companies and families and all over and everywhere. Endlessly fascinating. And terribly sad.

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

I suppose the idea that you have to hate and be violent to survive and create could come from a place of “using the enemy’s own tactics against them”. One could argue that it’s passion that drives people to act, decisively, and both love and hate are extreme ends of the passion spectrum. So it makes sense that a person, or group, would conclude you need to focus on only one, or at least say that you do. (Migma points out that the others, who fear and hate her, will come to love her… either because she will be the agent of their survival or out of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or both.) Obviously, in a survival situation, you have to pull yourself together and be willing to make hard (brutal, honest) decisions… the world these covens will create will not be a nice one. Through violence and blood they will create a world where women are dominant, and then it will be up to future generations to hopefully evolve it into something better. (But probably not or not for a long time.) I don’t think either Olive nor Migma is the “true” self here. Nor do I think “Olive” is fully gone. She’s just not useful for survival in this context from the point of view of Migma and her ilk. It’s a mistake to focus only on one or other end of the passion spectrum to survive and create in a brutal world. You will fight what you hate to protect what you love. Right now these women have lost the people they love. Those that can crush their former, loving, selves were chosen to lead and make sure the rest follow suit because the HAVE to gather up some men so they can have children to propagate the species. What’s going to happen with the male presenting babies exactly? The narrative says that babies will be “cherished”, but does that really include the boys? It would make sense, separating the boys you raise from the men who lived in the patriarchal society, so you can teach them your “new old ways” and they grow up thinking this is normal… but in a society based on hate being the fuel for creation I’m not optimistic that’s what’s meant here.

Iain Hood

This really reminded me of one of the biggest questions from Dracula, IE is Dracula taking over his female victims when he turns them to vampires or is he liberating them to be what they always were?

Robert Curtin

I loved your discussion near the beginning about the threat of nuclear weapons and how that shapes society. I think that each generation has their proverbial Sword of Damocles, (or however the heck you spell it), but also tends to forget that those of the previous generation are still hanging above, waiting to strike. Some of these we can work towards abating as a society, but ultimately there's not much we can do about them. And we can panic and live in fear, or push on and do the best we can with the time we have. Great story and episode, and again, thanks for that brief discussion.

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Oh, another note on generational differences. I could tell neither of you are millenials because, unlike the folk of my generation, you gents didn't have to fight the urge to make a "Migma balls" joke.

Mr. Splitfoot

Hearing Chad and Chris referencing Milo and Otis as a palate cleanser for all the animal violence that occurs in these stories brings me back to a more innocent day, when I hadn't heard all the allegations of animal cruelty on set. I don't know how true they are, and apparently investigators don't either, but I can't rewatch it without a queasy feeling.

Grackles

I like to think that Carolyn and the many, many other women like her met up with a bunch of good and kind men (let's call them Chris and Chad and Andrew and Sean and all their friends), and that they built a utopia all together just over the hill from wherever all the action in this stupid story took place. Eventually, that Olive-thing tried to take over their utopia (of course). But the dogs and the cats and the many other animals that Carolyn and her friends (male AND female) had befriended and taken care of and nursed back to health after the nuclear holocaust tore the Olive-thing into tiny bits and ate it, and then everything was peaceful, at last. The End.

Clint Page

I really liked this one. Not to bring in the tawdriness of the modern world, but did the story element of the sorority/coven in Albany, NY remind anyone else of the NXIVM cult from a few years back?

Joseph Dawson

That's the thing about covens, they are unlikely to be freeing.

Joseph Dawson

Men are the destroyers, the destroyers...I wonder who built the chairs they sit on or the buildings they gather in or any other major amenity of the modern world for that matter and the leisure it affords. I wonder who picks up the garbage at four in the morning...? I'd like to say that most men don't have power, much money and are not working their posteriors into the ground day in and day out so that they can go home and condescend to their wives...but rather the opposite. They work hard to provide for and love their wives and show their devotion and worthiness by going into a world that does more hating on them than not. It would do us well to consider that it is men that do the hardest and worst jobs on the planet with many of them dying while doing them. It's only the hyper competitive 1 percent that don't and only because they score very well where IQ is concerned, and show a greater interest in things and status rather than people and lifestyle. Might I add that a human being, man or woman, being reduced to a unit of utility (reproductive or otherwise) completely undermines the dignity of each. Plainly speaking, a man and a woman are good for each other. Our history together is more cooperative than oppressive. History sans the victim hierarchy lens tells a very different story. Caveat: Of course men do and have done many evil things. Everyone and everything is broken to some extent. Heck, the ladies in this story call men destroyers while thinking to bring about a utopia from their hatred. They sound exactly like the kind of person Dostoevsky warned us about in his book Demons.

Grackles

It's been 24 hours since I listened to this and I TRIED to come to terms with it so hard last night, but I'm still just brutalized today. Here we are, just over a month out from the supreme court (they get no capitals from me) axing a womans right to control her own body, and part of the court saying publicly that it wants to come after our rights to any sort of birth control at all as well as our right to marry, and in fact wants to take us all back to the 1700s as far as any laws are concerned. Less than a month from that, we get this story. I thought I was pretty much dead inside, but this story proved that wrong! Here's a story, written by a woman, for a male audience, that tells us in no uncertain terms that women are evil and not to be trusted with anything, that we're all witches waiting to strike, and that witches are all evil. A trope come up with by the church even further back than our stupid, psychotic supreme court wants to take us, in order to control women and take our power. A fear we now all have, because the trope is so powerful and has been around so long, and this story by a woman for a male audience just takes that trope and uses it to make women disgusted to be women and confirms mens deepest fears about us. WILL THIS NEVER END???? CAN'T WE JUST BE PEOPLE????? God help me, this story messed me up.

Jim Cannon

This is "gazing into the abyss, dig two graves, be careful fighting monsters lest you become a monster" territory. The society these women will build will fail the same way the previous society did, because its starting from the same place. The Patriarchy isn't just the evil that men do, but these women have become men in order to "create" and their civilization will be founded on cruelty too. So yes, a horror story. The conclusion is that no matter who is in the driver's seat, women or men human beings suck.

Jim Cannon

On the subject of animal cruelty and palate cleansing... years ago I suggested to Chad that the show cover Roger Zelazny's <i>A Night in Lonesome October</i>, as its a Mythos story, with all the Universal monsters AND the narrator is a dog. Chad said no, but maybe with the new rules about story selection, we could change that to a "yes"?

Father of Beagles

Oh boy, I don't always buy the stories you read, but this one made me buy the Triple W book on Kindle. I am a sucker for a witch story and really liked this one. What I found most disturbing is how the narrator kept justifying and rationalizing her choices...she kept saying isn't funny or isn't weird. The fact that she ends up crying and not knowing why got me, I would have checked myself into therapy the next day (especially if I was a psych major). Thank you gentleman for giving a decade plus of entertainment, I started listening to you just as I was graduating from law school (in 2010), and not knowing what I should do with my life. You all gave me great stories to listen to as I filled out job applications and did boring document review, and in 2022 I have a career and a wonderful job. So thank you guys for giving me entertainment until my witch programing kicks in. PS I loved Heather reading this, but due to how the narrator justifies all her actions I stared to hear the narrator as Aunt Martha from Sleepaway Camp.

Jason Thompson

What an interesting, cool story. I’m glad it was morally ambiguous and didn’t turn into an uncomplicated hooray-for-witches revenge fantasy or a “if only there was a nuclear war so we could clear the slate and create Utopia” postnuclear fantasy, of which I’m sure there were many even in the 1950s. I wonder if the whole brainwashing/sleeper-cell aspect was inspired by The Manchurian Candidate.

Marc Twinam-Cauchi

what is the music used at the start of this episode?

Christine M

The idea of creating a whole different self that you have no memory of put me in mind of the TV show Severance, which does a lot more with the strangeness and horror that are inherent in that scenario without any need for witchery or apocalypse. Just people working in an office, who have chosen to forget all of that experience when they walk out the door (and vice versa). It's surprisingly disturbing, and the show does a great job exploring it!

ChiveOnOCM

Very serial killer vibe of survival in a Thunder Dome World.

Adam Alexander

Just gotta say Conjure Wife is a the perfect follow up to this story.

Cacodaemoniacal

This reminds me of the short story "Witch War" by Richard Matheson. Giggly, teenaged, bobbysoxer witches wreak horror and destruction.

FB

To me the horror of the story is knowing that they will create just as awful a society as the one that went before. The problem is not xx vs xy, it’s the rest of the chimpanzee-derived behavior package.