Post by Salzmank on Mar 14, 2017 19:18:41 GMT
I'd never seen, or even heard of, "To Switch a Witch" before. It is very good, probably one of the best Scooby Doo episodes I've seen. How I wished I watched it when I was little!
Having just finished it, it really is one of the best Scooby Doo episodes. It truly has a great Hallowe'en vibe, akin to Burton's Sleepy Hollow and, more appropriately, Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost (which it no doubt inspired). The animation ain't all that great, but it's a fun little 20-min. episode. With that said, though, it is fairly strange re: time period. I've been to Salem, and it doesn't look anything like that, let me tell you! Of course, the episode's going for a timely, spooky feel (which, I feel, one can find more in Sleepy Hollow, NY, than anywhere in or around the small city of Salem, MA), but the elements are just too disparate: a squire, government by town meeting and/or Puritan theocracy, everyone dressed in Colonial garb, legal dunking (!) at a witchcraft museum (!), apparently only one woman, in modern clothes, in town (!). Yet, with all that, the witch looks like she's wearing a cheap Hallowe'en costume. I'm probably looking too far into it, but those elements, contrasted with all the good points, did annoy me.
It's by no means "fair-play" in its mystery (very few Scooby Doo episodes are--it's a kids' show, after all!)--the villain was never seen before her unmasking--but there is an interesting fair-play clue, involving the astrological sign "gemini," that I thought very clever for the show. That clue is comparable to a similar one in the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "The Vampire Strikes Back" (which is really one of the best Scooby episodes of any series).
As for your question, Novastar, the dialogue in the episode refers to the symbol as "the Sign of Mormo." Mormo really was, in Greek mythology, a demon and prototype for the vampire myth, as well as a companion of Hecate, the goddess of witches (so, in other words, the writers did their research!), but I failed to find any reference to the symbol, whether connected to Mormo or not. Have you any idea where else you've seen it before?
I've seen that symbol in a lot of places, on T-shirts, on websites, on people's avatars, and I've tried asking what is that, never gotten any answer.
It's called a "Satanic cross," sometimes a "Leviathan cross," and it's actually the alchemical symbol for sulfur, though unfortunately it has become known "Satanic" because the crazy Anton LaVey, the founder of modern Satanism, used it as a symbol first in the '60s.
Someone drawing for Scooby Doo really had to be doing research, eh?