Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP10 - The Mycorrhizal Network And The Web Of Wyrd (feat. Leif Hamilton)

Transcript

Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP10 - The Mycorrhizal Network And The Web Of Wyrd (feat. Leif Hamilton) · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:01
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:04
  podcast, where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
• 0:07
  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse and I'm your
• 0:09
  host. Let's get into it.
• 0:32
  The old eight-year workshop is dedicated to the old ways,
• 0:35
  offering a wide selection of animus, ritual supplies,
• 0:38
  divination tools, altered goods and home decor, including
• 0:42
  premium reindeer hides imported from traditional herders in
• 0:45
  Northern Finland. Whether you're just starting
• 0:48
  your spiritual journey or looking to expand your
• 0:51
  collection with a custom drum, we have everything you need.
• 0:54
  Visit our online store at the old eightyear.com and discover
• 0:58
  the beauty of mountain spirit. Well Halen, Hello there
• 1:05
  everyone. Thanks for tuning back in here
• 1:06
  to this week's episode of the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 1:09
  podcast. We are going way off the grid.
• 1:13
  The typical grid. The virtual grid, as it were
• 1:16
  here on this week's episode. I've had many guests on this
• 1:19
  show as you guys have come to to find out.
• 1:22
  We are vastly growing our our guest list with each new
• 1:27
  episode. I think the farthest I've had
• 1:29
  someone appear on this show in the past has been from
• 1:32
  Australia. We're not going quite that far,
• 1:35
  but almost about halfway ish, maybe maybe a little bit less.
• 1:40
  But we're staying within the, as it were, United States of
• 1:43
  America. With this week's guest, we have
• 1:45
  got a guest. His name is Leif Hamilton and he
• 1:49
  lives on the Big Island in Hawaii.
• 1:52
  He's been there for for some time.
• 1:53
  He was born on Oahu, I believe, or he's going to help clarify
• 1:59
  that in case I was wrong, but he was born there.
• 2:00
  He's lived in the United States, in the state of Georgia for a
• 2:03
  bit now. He's been back on, been back on
• 2:06
  the island, the Big Island as he calls it now for quite some
• 2:10
  time. And he is a heathen as he
• 2:12
  identifies. And he's going to be talking a
• 2:14
  bit about this, some studies and some some some research that
• 2:18
  he's been getting into with regards to the mycorrhizal
• 2:21
  network, talking about living plants, fungi, things and their
• 2:26
  interconnectedness with other living things us as well.
• 2:33
  And how we can find, you know, connectivity with one another,
• 2:38
  with with nature, the dynamic as it were with the web of weird
• 2:44
  and all that kind of stuff. So I don't want to get too far
• 2:46
  into that. Before we do however, I would
• 2:48
  like to make sure if you are listening to this on the on the
• 2:52
  airwaves, on the podcast waves, whatever audio platform you're
• 2:54
  listening to this on, go ahead and favorite this or subscribe
• 2:58
  or follow me and share it around if that's your thing.
• 3:01
  Get some other folks interest in here as well.
• 3:05
  But don't forget also just like the folks that are already my
• 3:08
  patrons on Patreon, you can watch this version of the
• 3:11
  podcast and all versions of the podcast of season 5IN video
• 3:16
  format on my Patreon. The links for that are going to
• 3:18
  be in the link tree link that is in the show.
• 3:21
  Show notes of this podcast link down below for all you Patreon
• 3:26
  Watchers which I want to extend a special thanks to because you
• 3:29
  guys helped make the video versions of the podcast a thing.
• 3:33
  Your constant support in this way is is greatly appreciated
• 3:37
  and I I thank you for that. So the links for that are going
• 3:40
  to be down there and anything else that comes across the way
• 3:44
  here where people if you're interested or or you don't want
• 3:46
  to get in touch with our guest today again, his name is Leif
• 3:49
  Hamilton. We'll see what he's got to offer
• 3:52
  for us. So he is again a heathen down in
• 3:55
  the Big Island of Hawaii and he's going to be talking with us
• 3:59
  about some fungi type stuff some some plant related stuff, I'm
• 4:03
  sure. And so, yeah, let's let's
• 4:06
  welcome him in to this week's episode.
• 4:12
  What's up there? Hey.
• 4:13
  Hey, hey, hey. How's it going, Jesse?
• 4:16
  Good, good. How's it going with you down in
• 4:18
  the what? Kona, Big Island.
• 4:21
  Yep, Yep. I'm I'm in Kona.
• 4:23
  It's been a little cooler the past couple days which has been
• 4:26
  kind of nice. Cooler for us is like to the
• 4:29
  tune of 6469° somewhere in there and and only getting up around
• 4:35
  80° for the past two days which was nice.
• 4:38
  I I work outside I do window installations so sometimes it
• 4:42
  can be a bit of a challenge. It's it's very reminiscent of
• 4:45
  the hot soup that is Georgia as well.
• 4:48
  So if anybody's listening from there, it's not quite as bad as
• 4:52
  that but the the humidity definitely gets up and and it
• 4:55
  it's quite choking. So at least me, I'm I'm grateful
• 4:58
  for the cooler weather. And it's been a beautiful
• 5:02
  couple. Days.
• 5:03
  The last time, Well, the only time that I was ever in Hawaii,
• 5:08
  it was I think during November and it was so nice like back in
• 5:14
  in the sea and everywhere, you know, like because that's where
• 5:16
  I live now. But I'm originally from New
• 5:17
  York, you know, So everybody back on on the on the mainland
• 5:22
  as you guys say is was was freezing their nuts off.
• 5:24
  And I'm over here like just chilling on the beach and
• 5:27
  walking barefoot and I'm like, this is nuts, you know, just
• 5:30
  like 7580° in November or something.
• 5:33
  And it was pleasant. It wasn't, It wasn't an
• 5:35
  unpleasant type of warmth, you know, like Georgia and and like
• 5:40
  this, this area of the South part of the United States.
• 5:43
  How humid. The humidity can really amplify
• 5:46
  the heat. So even if it's if it's 85° but
• 5:49
  the humidity is like 90% it it feels like it's 115, you know?
• 5:54
  For sure. Yeah, I I'm again, I'm
• 5:58
  originally from New York and I don't.
• 6:00
  I've been living in Tennessee for almost 20 years.
• 6:02
  But every time summer comes around, I'm just like this
• 6:05
  northern ass boy over here. I'm just like, I hate it.
• 6:10
  Yeah, yeah, I definitely feel that.
• 6:13
  You are. You were born in Hawaii as I
• 6:16
  was. We talked it offline, right?
• 6:18
  And then you relocated here to this, you know, to the mainland,
• 6:22
  back in Georgia, and then found yourself back where you are now,
• 6:26
  right? Yeah, so my my dad was in the
• 6:29
  Air Force. He was a career Air Force man.
• 6:31
  Did 26 years and so he was stationed in Honolulu on on Oahu
• 6:37
  and and that's where I was born. Anybody that's from there or
• 6:41
  been there knows the the big pink hospital up on the hill.
• 6:44
  It's called Tripler and it's the I I believe it's an army
• 6:47
  hospital even though like IT services the Air Force as well.
• 6:52
  So that's kind of kind of been sort of the the touchstone for
• 6:55
  my birth and the family is like, yeah, you were born in the big
• 6:58
  pink hospital. It's it's kind of a landmark.
• 7:02
  One of my wife's friends that she's been good friends with for
• 7:05
  for years now was was also born in Honolulu.
• 7:09
  I think he's he lives over here now and and I don't know the
• 7:14
  last time he's been back over there but yeah he's he was he
• 7:18
  was originally born that same kind of thing I think to
• 7:20
  military. I think his dad was maybe Marine
• 7:22
  or something you know. But that's usually what we hear
• 7:25
  about is like, you know, some of these places like either there
• 7:29
  or it's like another country that they were born.
• 7:31
  It's like really, you don't sound like you're from, you
• 7:33
  know, Kuwait or you know, Berlin, wherever, you know, like
• 7:37
  now my dad was in the whatever the military, my mom was in the
• 7:39
  military, that sort of thing. So.
• 7:41
  Absolutely. You move around a lot as a kid
• 7:44
  because of that or. Not really a ton.
• 7:48
  So my dad's next assignment after Oahu was in Warner Robins,
• 7:53
  GA and then he did I think one more assignment after that which
• 7:59
  was in Fayetteville, NC and he was planning on retiring and he
• 8:05
  only had like a few years left at that point.
• 8:08
  So we didn't end up relocating with him.
• 8:10
  He was up there for like 2 years and then basically came back
• 8:15
  because you know, my parents had already bought a house.
• 8:18
  They had land. They didn't want to uproot
• 8:21
  everything and relocate just for him to retire a couple of years
• 8:25
  later, because it was either like he had, he had some, I
• 8:29
  don't really remember the details of it, but he had some
• 8:31
  kind of window where he could either retire in a certain
• 8:35
  window, but if he didn't retire, then he was going to have to put
• 8:38
  in like an additional 10 years to make the next promotion.
• 8:44
  And so he didn't want to sign on for that deal, 'cause he was
• 8:47
  like, you know, I don't, you know, it's not, it's not worth
• 8:50
  it to me, just just to make one more rank to do an additional 10
• 8:54
  years. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:56
  After, yeah. I mean 20 somewhat a couple of
• 8:58
  decades. I mean, that is a.
• 9:00
  That's a. That's a long time to be doing
• 9:01
  something. Absolutely.
• 9:04
  So you like the you like the lifestyle in in Hawaii?
• 9:10
  Yeah, a. While now right so.
• 9:12
  I have, yeah. I've been here for about 6
• 9:14
  years. You know, honestly, like every
• 9:16
  time I go back to the mainland, I I toy around with the idea of
• 9:19
  just questioning how long I'm going to be out here and that,
• 9:24
  you know, honestly, we could do probably a a whole episode just
• 9:28
  on living in Hawaii. I know that's not the topic of
• 9:31
  your show or what we're going to get into, but it's it's
• 9:34
  complicated to live here for a variety of of different reasons
• 9:37
  and it's it's difficult to under to really comprehend until
• 9:42
  you've experienced it first hand.
• 9:44
  You know, I'd I'd heard that from a few people before I moved
• 9:48
  here, but the the area of the island that I moved to was so
• 9:52
  remote and so jungly that it was functionally like living in a
• 9:57
  third world country. You know, I had to, I had to
• 10:00
  like go into town to get water. There was like no running water
• 10:04
  like in the place that I was living and it was all off grid
• 10:09
  solar propane water heater and like a a mile and a half pitted
• 10:17
  out dirt Rd. That was hell on my car, 'cause
• 10:20
  I have this tiny little Hyundai hatchback and I'm going down
• 10:24
  this literal Jurassic Park type Rd.
• 10:28
  Yeah. And yeah, there was, there was
• 10:30
  this one particular pothole that was so deep and always full of
• 10:33
  water that when whenever I would drive into it, it would
• 10:35
  literally wash over like the hood and the windshield and I
• 10:38
  would just see this like, wall of water.
• 10:40
  It was. It was intense.
• 10:42
  Yeah, I need a pothole. That's like a small caveman,
• 10:45
  yeah. The the pond in the middle of
• 10:48
  the road. He just drove through part of
• 10:51
  the Pacific, you know? Yeah.
• 10:55
  One thing, one thing that is interesting to me and you know
• 10:58
  like having having lived in the South, you know I I know a lot
• 11:03
  of the the issues and the problems that come along with
• 11:06
  that specifically. You know thinking about just our
• 11:10
  freedom to practice the beliefs that we hold and how it's kind
• 11:15
  of it's kind of concerning to me sort of the the regressive
• 11:23
  narrative that we're seeing kind of play out almost as this like
• 11:26
  Satanic panic two point O. And it it makes me kind of
• 11:30
  concerned for people who are in our community who do openly
• 11:34
  identify as Pagan, especially in in those places that are so
• 11:37
  heavily Christian, just because like it.
• 11:42
  I yeah, I would just hate to see, you know, people's
• 11:48
  religious freedoms infringed like that.
• 11:51
  So I I understand that side of things.
• 11:53
  But the other the other side of things that I think about every
• 11:56
  time I go back to the mainland is I know so many more heathens
• 12:01
  on the mainland than I do here. I honestly don't know that I've
• 12:07
  encountered another heat on this island at this point.
• 12:11
  So it does. It does sort of tend to feel
• 12:16
  isolated at times. I I enjoy certain aspects of
• 12:21
  that, like I've been a I've been a solo practitioner the whole
• 12:23
  time that I've been Heathen, so I don't really know anything
• 12:27
  different. I have.
• 12:29
  I have had some opportunities to do bloat with some different
• 12:32
  people and was able to do a Yule celebration this year which was
• 12:37
  really cool. But typically like all of those
• 12:40
  experiences for me have been in the South where I know a lot of
• 12:45
  people who are practicing and and like weirdly that was
• 12:51
  something that kind of kept me out of Heathenry for longer than
• 12:58
  I've been interested in it. I would say is that like I would
• 13:01
  encounter you know people that would wear the symbolism or talk
• 13:06
  about the Ruins and then I would hang out with them.
• 13:09
  And it was it was purely aesthetic it it had nothing to
• 13:13
  do with anything spiritual at all.
• 13:18
  And so it wasn't really until 2020 that I had ever encountered
• 13:25
  people who were actually practicing the old ways and and
• 13:28
  reconstructing and bringing these kind of things back to
• 13:31
  life. And so it's it was something
• 13:34
  that I've kind of always had a draw towards but never knew was
• 13:38
  like a of functioning in a live religion.
• 13:43
  I just live in the way of that, yeah.
• 13:47
  Yeah, I can imagine that. You know a lot of things about
• 13:52
  probably living in Hawaii on any of the islands really it is an
• 13:56
  isolated place. I mean, you're so you're in the
• 13:59
  middle of the Pacific more or less, you know, So like just
• 14:04
  nobody comes there for like any big like social things.
• 14:07
  I'm talking like just concerts. Or like you and I were talking
• 14:11
  offline earlier and you were like, we were talking about high
• 14:14
  lung in an episode that I was talking about high lung.
• 14:17
  And they're playing, you know, their last show in the United
• 14:20
  States for the foreseeable future.
• 14:22
  And you went and you pulled the trigger on getting a ticket to
• 14:25
  the Red Rocks, Colorado show. Now, there's people that are
• 14:29
  living here in the United States that are griping about the fact
• 14:31
  that they're not coming within 200 miles of their city.
• 14:36
  And you're over here in the middle of the Pacific flying,
• 14:38
  you know, 2003 thousand, whatever it is, miles probably
• 14:43
  spending a good, I don't know what the flight is like 810
• 14:45
  hours on the plane. Something like that, yeah.
• 14:49
  Yeah dropping I don't even want to know how much money but
• 14:54
  anyway point of the matter is you know you you're you're the
• 14:57
  so for any of you guys listening out here and or or watching us
• 15:00
  on Patreon that are that are that are complaining about you
• 15:02
  know you can't you can't make the four hour drive to to red
• 15:05
  rocks look at this guy you know I mean and sit down and shut up.
• 15:13
  It's it's it's going to be in a oh, sorry.
• 15:18
  No, I'm saying so go ahead about the the thing you want to say.
• 15:21
  Yeah, I was. I was just going to say it's
• 15:22
  it's going to be an ordeal. It's an ordeal every time I go
• 15:25
  back to the mainland for anything.
• 15:27
  I was. I was there for a little while
• 15:30
  over the over the Yule season which was nice and got together
• 15:33
  with some folks over there and made a Yule log and and sort of
• 15:37
  did did the thing this year which was cool and it was nice
• 15:41
  to it was nice to share that with other people and to be in a
• 15:45
  collective space for a change. I can.
• 15:48
  I can. I can tell you what that with if
• 15:50
  you know I've I've seen Highland one time and it was it was a
• 15:55
  life changing experience. I don't know how many concerts
• 15:58
  like music events and stuff you've gone to but this is
• 16:01
  unlike any other concert I've ever attended.
• 16:04
  It was more like going to church if you want to call it that.
• 16:06
  It was more of a ritual type thing.
• 16:10
  So you're really going to and everybody that I know who's been
• 16:13
  to the Red Rocks venue there as it's like that is the perfect
• 16:17
  place for them to go here in the US Like it the the stage, the
• 16:20
  the whole being out there, just the the aesthetic, the ambiance
• 16:24
  it it fits what they do perfectly.
• 16:28
  So you're in for a treat. Yeah, I'm I'm very excited about
• 16:32
  it. It's it's, I know it's going to
• 16:34
  be a powerful spiritual experience and I'm.
• 16:37
  I'm so ready for it. It's been a dream for a long
• 16:41
  time, specifically at that venue.
• 16:42
  I've I've never been to Red Rocks and I've always just been
• 16:46
  enamored with it and just think it's the most beautiful looking
• 16:49
  venue I've ever seen. And I can't wait to experience
• 16:52
  it, especially especially with Hailong and especially to have
• 16:55
  it be the first time I've ever seen Hailong.
• 16:57
  I'm just like yes. Or the bar has been set man the
• 17:03
  bar has been set and you're gonna be hard pressed to to be
• 17:07
  to be finding another experience like that's gonna top it.
• 17:11
  I think so I'm I'm happy for you that you're you know that you're
• 17:14
  you're taking that step and making you know going like you
• 17:18
  say it's it'll be an ordeal. But one of the things I've said
• 17:20
  for a long time is is that adversity and ordeal these types
• 17:23
  of things breeds worth within us and and amongst people.
• 17:27
  You know, like if we're willing to go through hardships and and
• 17:31
  not let those things wear us down or or or kick our butts and
• 17:36
  and make us useless, it allows us, you know, condition us, Then
• 17:40
  our worth is proven not just to ourselves but to others.
• 17:43
  And so it's All in all just a a a good and wholesome thing.
• 17:49
  Absolutely. Which honestly is like a perfect
• 17:54
  segue into talking about mushrooms.
• 17:57
  Because one of the first things I would, I would say that, yeah,
• 18:02
  absolutely, they're wonderful creatures, but one of one of the
• 18:07
  things that sticks out to me, especially in moving towards
• 18:10
  seeing mushrooms as a mythic element.
• 18:14
  So I like, I like putting myth, like living myth into the
• 18:22
  natural world. And that's kind of the the sort
• 18:25
  of theme of what I want to talk about today with with bringing
• 18:28
  mushrooms into it. But talking about adversity, you
• 18:32
  know, mushrooms are decomposers. They literally eat the the shit
• 18:39
  that's leftover, and in some cases quite literally.
• 18:44
  And then there's all of this action that takes place on a on
• 18:50
  a subterranean level. So you can't even really see
• 18:55
  mushrooms begin to form until they're in their fruiting stage,
• 18:57
  which is actually the the last part of their life cycle.
• 19:01
  So when you see a mushroom on the ground, basically it's
• 19:04
  reached that that pinnacle, that peak of its life cycle, and it's
• 19:09
  about to transition into a different form, and then it
• 19:14
  itself decomposes, and then the mushroom actually feeds on its
• 19:18
  own flesh in order to strengthen.
• 19:22
  They're called hyphy. So hyphy are are kind of the the
• 19:27
  individual strands that together form the mycelium and so you can
• 19:32
  you can sort of think of mycelium as a they they call it
• 19:36
  a hyphal mat. So essentially it's a, it's a
• 19:38
  interconnected web of all of these different individual
• 19:42
  little hyphy threads and that forms the mycelium.
• 19:47
  And in like this, this is, this is one of the facts about
• 19:51
  mushrooms that I I've known for a while.
• 19:54
  But like every time I think about it or say it, I have to
• 19:57
  sort of visualize just how insane this is.
• 20:00
  Because in every about cubic centimeter of soil there's
• 20:07
  around 8 miles worth of mycelium.
• 20:12
  So it. It's around that.
• 20:15
  It, ah, it hurts my brain to think about.
• 20:19
  Yeah, like have you ever walked eight miles?
• 20:22
  I mean, it just, you know, like a an 8 mile walk takes, you
• 20:26
  know, a few hours if you're casual about it.
• 20:32
  That's incredible within such a small cubic space.
• 20:36
  But that many miles is covered. Yeah.
• 20:40
  And and it's, it's all like sort of interwoven.
• 20:43
  And so there's this, there's this beautiful, it's kind of by
• 20:48
  armed process where things are both in symbiosis.
• 20:52
  So things are cooperating and benefiting from one another.
• 20:56
  And there's also a great amount of competition happening, but
• 20:59
  both are happening simultaneously in the same
• 21:03
  container. And so this isn't really a a
• 21:09
  fully fleshed out thought, but that's kind of where my mind
• 21:13
  goes to well, can we think about using mycelium as a as a mythic
• 21:20
  metaphor to help us understand the interconnectedness of weird
• 21:24
  and or log? Because I feel like kind of
• 21:27
  having all of these different complex, sometimes antagonistic
• 21:34
  relationships, especially when I was in my very earliest days of
• 21:39
  being a Hedon, I really struggled with.
• 21:41
  So kind of going to the lore and trying to understand, thinking
• 21:47
  of mythic time and thinking of the stories as what's the best
• 21:55
  way that I want to put it as, as not being bound to like a an
• 22:01
  event as we would think of like an event in in terms of like
• 22:05
  human history where it's something.
• 22:08
  Literal for for. Yeah, like not a literal event,
• 22:13
  but maybe like metaphysical or you know, something.
• 22:17
  Yeah, yeah. Like, like like interdimensional
• 22:19
  almost, you know? And and some ways that I ponder
• 22:23
  kind of bringing that into more of a tangible level that this is
• 22:27
  actually a new one. And I I just sort of had this
• 22:29
  thought when I was sitting around the fire, just kind of
• 22:31
  talking shit with a friend the other night.
• 22:33
  And I started thinking about Emir's bones and how that's what
• 22:40
  the gods fashioned the world, the world in the cosmos, out of,
• 22:43
  depending on your interpretation of the myth.
• 22:47
  And so I sort of started correlating that to the idea of,
• 22:52
  well, we, we know that basically all of the elements that exist
• 22:56
  on Earth at one point or another existed at the heart of a star.
• 23:00
  Like it's all of the same things that come from these cosmic
• 23:05
  explosions deep in space. And then these particles drift
• 23:08
  throughout space and and basically, you know, with heat
• 23:11
  and pressure become transmuted into something, into something
• 23:16
  different. And so I I started just as a
• 23:19
  thought exercise, kind of pondering, well, what if, what
• 23:21
  if we saw Emir as a universe? And what if his, his death was
• 23:29
  the destruction of a universe, which then our universe was made
• 23:34
  out of his bones. And it was just this really cool
• 23:36
  way to kind of bring that myth to life for myself.
• 23:42
  And and that kind of leads me to this way that I've been thinking
• 23:45
  about my spirituality and how I explain it to other people.
• 23:51
  And I had, I had this distinction the other night when
• 23:53
  I was thinking about that, where I think my spiritual practice
• 23:57
  has moved into a phase of looking for meaning more than
• 24:03
  I'm looking for truth. And I think that was something
• 24:07
  that I really struggled when I was transitioning out of an old
• 24:11
  paradigm into being heathen. I sort of took a lot of the same
• 24:18
  things I learned as being raised as a fundamentalist Christian
• 24:21
  into my heathen practice. And so I kind of look at that
• 24:26
  early time as kind of this, this liminal space, right?
• 24:30
  Like, it's kind of not quite out of one thing and not quite this
• 24:35
  new thing, but somewhere in the middle and and kind of finding
• 24:40
  my own truth and what speaks to me versus things that I've been
• 24:45
  taught or true or taught that I had to believe in some certain
• 24:49
  way. And I think for me like that
• 24:53
  helps just keep me moving forward on my practice because I
• 24:56
  don't have to waste time with doubts as much anymore.
• 25:01
  Because that that thing being like a big T truth doesn't
• 25:07
  really matter to me as much anymore.
• 25:08
  I don't. I don't really feel this need
• 25:10
  and this pressure to fully understand everything.
• 25:16
  I'm I'm able to actually just walk my path knowing that what
• 25:21
  I'm doing is enriching my life and bringing fulfillment.
• 25:24
  Yeah. Do you think that the that like
• 25:26
  you say the big T truth. Right these and and and I think
• 25:29
  that comes from this indoctrination modality that we
• 25:33
  find across fundamental religions or or or or big
• 25:38
  religions. You know, I mean Christianity,
• 25:40
  Islam, even Judaism for instance has some of these really like
• 25:44
  everybody has this book of instructions that you're
• 25:47
  supposed to follow and that is the big truth right there.
• 25:51
  Truth. Whatever religion you're a part
• 25:53
  of like that's it. And and everything else is is
• 25:56
  wrong. You've got to follow this, this
• 25:58
  thing. Does that does that seem a bit
• 26:00
  limiting? You know as you've kind of
• 26:02
  advanced and grown in in your path and now you're finding, you
• 26:06
  know it's it's more important to find meaning than truth.
• 26:08
  You think that this this idea of this big truth is is is more
• 26:15
  limiting than than it is freeing?
• 26:18
  I think it's super limiting and and one of the one of the
• 26:22
  interesting things that I've seen as I've grown in in my
• 26:25
  development of my own heathen worldview is becoming more of a
• 26:29
  pluralist. So things don't necessarily need
• 26:32
  to be antagonistic all the time. And someone can have a very
• 26:36
  meaningful religious experience that looks very different than
• 26:40
  mine. And as long as there's mutual
• 26:44
  respect and mutual understanding, we can, we can
• 26:47
  have Frith and we can connect on a certain level because there's
• 26:53
  there's boundaries in place. There's not, there's not a push
• 26:56
  and pull. There's not a need to dim
• 26:59
  someone else's light because it's threatening to you.
• 27:02
  You find it beautiful that that's meaningful to them
• 27:06
  because it's over here and their sphere and it's enriching their
• 27:09
  life. And they're not putting that on
• 27:11
  anyone else. They're not pushing a narrative
• 27:14
  of conformity and and needing everything to be homogeneous all
• 27:18
  the time. There's there's a lot more room
• 27:20
  for diversity of expression, diversity of paths, diversity of
• 27:25
  gods, you know, even even amongst polytheists of various
• 27:31
  traditions. You know there can, there can be
• 27:33
  some tension there, I think sometimes because we want to
• 27:37
  hold on to to that to that limitation somehow.
• 27:40
  It brings us comfort, I think. Yeah, I've even seen it.
• 27:44
  I've even seen that sort of that sort of thing you're describing
• 27:48
  within Heathenry itself. There's so many different
• 27:52
  variants of of Heathenry. You know you can be a, you can
• 27:55
  be a a reconstructionist sort of historically based heathen.
• 27:59
  You can, you know, you can you can model your Heathenry after a
• 28:03
  a a Northern Scandinavian model. Others find themselves at home
• 28:08
  amongst a more continental Saxon style of of of of Heathenry
• 28:13
  right where things kind of sort of started for the for the like
• 28:17
  the the Scandinavian models that we that we see a very
• 28:21
  popularized right the Norse, old Nordic stuff.
• 28:24
  And even in inside of Heathenry, like there's all this infighting
• 28:27
  that goes on. It's tiresome.
• 28:31
  It doesn't seem to really benefit anyone in the long run
• 28:36
  unless you consider people being like, see, I told you so like
• 28:41
  that doesn't do anything instructive.
• 28:43
  Like, yeah, you know, I I showed you, right.
• 28:46
  I found my source. I mean what, what good is it
• 28:50
  really doing us in, in the sense of our spirituality, of our
• 28:53
  growth to to be so toxic with it, You know, and I've, I've
• 28:59
  been there. I've, I've, I've experienced it
• 29:01
  with others, you know, like I've been that person who experienced
• 29:04
  that sort of toxicity where I've been kicked out of groups or
• 29:08
  I've been told, you know, you can't say that to people because
• 29:12
  that's not their belief. And I'm like I'm not trying to
• 29:14
  point them in any direction. I'm just trying to share
• 29:18
  knowledge, you know, or or or share information of what we
• 29:21
  know is documented facts or this or that.
• 29:24
  And when I see the reactions of it, I'm like, all right, then I
• 29:28
  guess I'm just going to, you know, back off a bit.
• 29:30
  Because what good is it doing us if we're just trying to push our
• 29:34
  own narrative or push our own point when it comes to this
• 29:36
  stuff, you know? Yeah, yeah.
• 29:40
  And I I think, I think for me a a big part of my Heathenry and
• 29:47
  also kind of thinking about that question of how we can sort of
• 29:51
  smooth those edges, bridge those gaps comes down to to
• 29:56
  hospitality. And and hospitality for me
• 30:00
  starts with the self. So am I taking care of myself,
• 30:03
  am I feeling threatened? So I always, I always check that
• 30:07
  first, whether or not I've sort of, yeah, I just always try to
• 30:15
  take that, look at myself and make sure that I'm not being
• 30:18
  pushy or threatening or, you know, disrespectful of of
• 30:25
  someone else's beliefs. And then, you know, once, once
• 30:29
  I've checked and I've made sure that everything in my house is
• 30:32
  good, then I want to look at the actual interaction.
• 30:35
  And then I want to say, you know, is this, is this something
• 30:39
  that is worth my my time and my energy?
• 30:43
  Is this, Is this something that we can fix?
• 30:48
  Or is this, you know, a person that I can no longer have Frith
• 30:52
  with because those boundaries have been crossed and I think
• 30:55
  that can be a really tricky thing to navigate.
• 30:59
  It can be. I mean if you if you spend
• 31:03
  enough time around people and you've established a bond with
• 31:06
  Frith comes obligation to one another, right.
• 31:09
  There's a shared and a mutual like it's a it's a contract in a
• 31:14
  way you know it's it's I can rely on you, you can rely on me
• 31:17
  we can rely on each other there's it's it's symbiotic you
• 31:23
  know. So going back to kind of your,
• 31:26
  your area of focus with your studies with the the micro
• 31:30
  Rizal, am I saying that right? Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's a
• 31:33
  really complicated word. Yeah.
• 31:36
  The Microrizal network. So basically like what you were
• 31:39
  saying earlier, right. All of these intricate threads
• 31:43
  that are everything's going on beneath our feet without us even
• 31:47
  seeing it and it's it's sharing nutrients it's sharing it's
• 31:52
  communicating it's a it's a it's a means of communication, right.
• 31:55
  It's all everything's happening in that way and and so anyway to
• 31:59
  go back to like what I was saying with Frith and and and
• 32:01
  how things sometimes those you know sometimes those threads get
• 32:06
  get damaged and it it either you know depending on how strong
• 32:11
  that Frith bond was to begin with it's it's it's something
• 32:13
  that can be repaired or it's something that needs to be like
• 32:15
  you know what we need to start over.
• 32:18
  We need to scratch this idea we need to move past it and it is a
• 32:22
  tricky thing to navigate through it absolutely is.
• 32:26
  But yeah, so how long have you been like into this path of of,
• 32:33
  you know, trying to to to find the the connection between
• 32:37
  what's going on beneath our feet with the mushrooms and you know,
• 32:41
  mycelium and and all of that and and and correlating it to the
• 32:46
  web of Weir, which I find very fascinating and it makes a lot
• 32:49
  of sense to me for my own reasons, which I can get into
• 32:52
  later. But how long have you been
• 32:54
  exploring this and and coming into this sort of thing?
• 32:57
  So I want to say that the idea first occurred to me probably
• 33:01
  around October of this past year.
• 33:05
  It's, it was one of those kind of things.
• 33:07
  You go on a you go on a camping trip and you're you're walking
• 33:10
  through the forest, you're communing with the nature
• 33:12
  spirits, you're having a grand old time.
• 33:14
  And at least at least for me, that always brings me into
• 33:18
  looking for mushrooms because there's there's so many of them,
• 33:21
  especially in the places that I like to go camping.
• 33:24
  I like to go up to higher elevation and there's some old
• 33:27
  growth forests and different species of mushrooms that I
• 33:30
  never really get to see on this, this side of the island because
• 33:33
  it tends to be a lot drier. So you know, I'm, I'm a big kid.
• 33:38
  I've always got my hands in the dirt and I'm always looking for
• 33:41
  mushrooms and pulling apart logs and collecting bones and you
• 33:46
  know doing doing the various things that we all do and and
• 33:52
  yeah like the the the thought of just how connected everything is
• 33:59
  in the forest has been with me for a long time.
• 34:02
  You know I can remember having very similar ponderings and and
• 34:06
  just awe and wonder as a kid just looking at all these
• 34:09
  different things that I didn't know what they were and and just
• 34:11
  the the joy of of learning and that and you know I don't know
• 34:17
  exactly how the idea of correlating that to the web of
• 34:23
  Weird was except for just sort of seeing how the Haifa grow
• 34:29
  together and they become they become so dense that it it
• 34:32
  literally looks like all one Organism.
• 34:36
  But it's it's really all of these different billions and
• 34:40
  billions and billions of different you know tiny
• 34:43
  microorganisms that we can't even perceive.
• 34:46
  So it's it's connecting on even a a different level and and that
• 34:52
  just really made me think of of weird right where you know we
• 34:55
  can see these different threads and tendrils and things that are
• 34:58
  very obvious that connect all of us.
• 35:01
  But there's also so much going on under the surface and so I
• 35:07
  just started pondering it as an idea.
• 35:10
  I'm definitely still in the idea stage right now and I'm not as
• 35:16
  super studied on on a lot of that stuff as I would like to
• 35:19
  be. I I've kind of made it my goal
• 35:22
  for this year to get a little bit more into the lore.
• 35:26
  I've only been a practicing heathen for about four years, so
• 35:30
  I'm still pretty new on my path and I've just come to a place
• 35:37
  where I'm allowing that to be OK.
• 35:39
  And I think when I first became he then kind of like when I was
• 35:44
  talking earlier I I brought a lot of this baggage with me.
• 35:46
  And I felt a lot of this pressure to you know memorize
• 35:51
  all the names of the runes and and have a basis in the lore and
• 35:56
  be able to to to talk about this stuff in a way that wasn't like
• 36:00
  oh I don't know, you know. And and I I had the I had the
• 36:04
  good fortune of becoming really connected to a couple of really
• 36:08
  great heathen discords that helped me a lot in my in my
• 36:13
  early days. But it was the IT was the kind
• 36:14
  of thing that I would. I would pop into a room and
• 36:17
  there was so much that I didn't know that.
• 36:19
  I didn't know that I'm like I this is so on a different level.
• 36:24
  I can't even engage with this because I don't even know where
• 36:27
  to begin. Kind of like, you know, being
• 36:31
  feeling a bit intimidated maybe. For sure.
• 36:33
  Like some of the stuff that yeah I get that I'm I I'm good
• 36:38
  friends with a guy who like we met initially because of my
• 36:42
  YouTube channel years ago. Right shortly after I started it
• 36:47
  we established an online friendship over Facebook And
• 36:51
  then you know that friendship has become where like he stayed
• 36:54
  in my house a few times. He lives about 5 hours away but
• 36:58
  we've gone you know he's he's visited me we've gone on last
• 37:03
  year we went on to a men's retreat in North Carolina that I
• 37:06
  helped Co found call fire on the mountain.
• 37:10
  Like we've done things physically together to really
• 37:13
  secure our bond as friends and and it has become more of like a
• 37:17
  a kinship like where we would consider one another brothers
• 37:22
  but he's another type of person who has his way of viewing the
• 37:26
  world. He has his way.
• 37:27
  He's definitely a heathen but like when it comes to like the
• 37:29
  lore and and stuff you know he's not as versed about it and he's
• 37:34
  he'd be the first one if he were here to say you know like yeah
• 37:37
  it is. It's like sometimes he gets into
• 37:39
  a a conversation or or a group chatter or a post about
• 37:43
  something and it's like I'm just going to go ahead and leave now
• 37:48
  because I don't know what to offer to this, you know,
• 37:51
  conversation of that that you guys are talking about.
• 37:53
  And I'm like, no, no, stay. Because first of all, you're
• 37:57
  going to be learning right about things that you didn't know
• 37:59
  before. And then you might say something
• 38:02
  that is going to trigger a response to for somebody else
• 38:06
  that could be like, Oh yeah, Oh yeah.
• 38:07
  And by the way, like there's this verse in the stands of a
• 38:09
  blah, blah, blah, whatever. You know, like it could be
• 38:12
  different possibilities of learning.
• 38:16
  And as we're talking about the topic that we're talking about,
• 38:20
  to me that is how we tie our weird together.
• 38:26
  We're doing things we're we're weaving weird, as it were,
• 38:30
  right? I've, I've, I've said this in
• 38:32
  the past two we are shapers ourselves.
• 38:36
  We are shapers of weird. We're the ones that are tying
• 38:39
  these threads and weaving these things to connect and
• 38:42
  interconnect. So it's adding the layer, right?
• 38:47
  Everybody has their own web that they're weaving and then we get
• 38:50
  into stuff like even this, right?
• 38:53
  This is a way of tying weird because we're we're we're
• 38:56
  weaving words where we're talking.
• 38:58
  And while it may not be person to person, face to face in the
• 39:00
  same room, we're afforded the luxury of being able to talk and
• 39:04
  have a conversation over long distance like this.
• 39:07
  And this is planting seeds for you.
• 39:09
  You're planting seeds for me. The listeners, the viewers are
• 39:12
  having seeds planted for them. They're going to start thinking
• 39:14
  and and exploring things too. So it's it's this ongoing and
• 39:18
  then who knows what happens from those seeds that get planted,
• 39:21
  right? Who knows what then we go and do
• 39:24
  with the things that come into our minds or escape from our
• 39:27
  mouths that are coming from our hearts.
• 39:29
  It's it's all that subterranean stuff, right?
• 39:33
  It's all happening in that under the surface type of thing, you
• 39:39
  know and then it manifests, it blooms, it fruits like you
• 39:44
  talked about into the works of things that happen, right.
• 39:47
  You get connected with somebody in your area maybe or you know
• 39:51
  you you end up meeting some people in Colorado when you go
• 39:54
  to Hilong and you become friends.
• 39:56
  And then that friendship becomes who knows, right?
• 39:58
  Like it's again, it's it's it's all about that
• 40:02
  interconnectedness that we, we we know about it because science
• 40:06
  has proven that it's literally happening all the time, has been
• 40:11
  happening since the dawn of time.
• 40:14
  And now there's more people like yourselves and others that are
• 40:17
  that are starting to, oh, wow, like focus on it.
• 40:21
  Like take note of it and be a part of it.
• 40:22
  Like, let me get my bare feet on the ground.
• 40:25
  Let me let me absorb some of those things that are happening
• 40:29
  beneath my feet and charge my own self with this type of life,
• 40:36
  with this type of activity. You know, I think that's why we
• 40:39
  feel so well, so, so, so wholesome, so healthy after
• 40:43
  being barefoot connected to the ground like that.
• 40:46
  It's it's a it's it's a part of our makeup.
• 40:49
  It's a part of our physical makeup.
• 40:50
  It's a part of our spiritual makeup.
• 40:52
  No matter what label or what name you want to put to it, it's
• 40:56
  it's primal. It's kind of just who we are.
• 41:02
  Absolutely, Yeah. So to to talk a little bit more
• 41:06
  about the mycorrhizal network. So essentially what what that
• 41:09
  is, is it's the interplay between the root structures of
• 41:14
  plants and the mycelium network. So it's a symbiotic relationship
• 41:19
  between two fairly dissimilar types of of of creatures really.
• 41:26
  So a lot of people kind of lump fungi and plants together if
• 41:32
  they're not really familiar with with those distinctions.
• 41:37
  But another another mind blowing thing about mushrooms is we
• 41:40
  actually share anywhere from 30 to 50% of our DNA with fungi.
• 41:45
  So mushrooms are. Actually, Fungi, have you seen
• 41:48
  that documentary? I have, yeah.
• 41:50
  How many times have you seen it? I think 3.
• 41:54
  Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say you can't just watch it one time.
• 41:57
  No, no, it's it's it's so good. You know, I've I've been, I've
• 42:01
  been fascinated by mushrooms my whole life and there's so many
• 42:04
  different really cool life lessons I think we can take just
• 42:08
  from just from looking at their life cycle And then this
• 42:12
  beautiful interplay between mushrooms and plants has always
• 42:16
  fascinated me. Because, I mean, mushrooms are,
• 42:20
  we're actually closer to being mushrooms than mushrooms are to
• 42:23
  being plants. But yet, but yet you have these
• 42:29
  things that across, across the bounds of being a different type
• 42:33
  of thing. It would be like a human being
• 42:35
  able to communicate with an animal.
• 42:36
  And of course, like we can communicate with animals, but it
• 42:40
  would be like if we could speak in a language that they would
• 42:43
  actually understand. So we we communicate through
• 42:46
  body language, through emotion, through these different signs
• 42:50
  that we then interpret and we can learn that behavior and that
• 42:53
  allows us to communicate with them.
• 42:57
  But in the mycorrhizal network, the these mushrooms and plants
• 43:00
  can literally send information and nutrients back and forth.
• 43:04
  And there's even been documented instances of fungi kind of
• 43:11
  directing tree roots to grow in a certain way so that they
• 43:14
  canmore more readily find water. And so it's kind of this
• 43:20
  orchestral, it's like orchestrating kind of the growth
• 43:24
  of the forest and so that mycelium is what kind of moves
• 43:29
  and and mats and blankets everything and interconnects
• 43:33
  everything. And I I sort of visualize that
• 43:36
  as just constantly weaving weird.
• 43:38
  It's constantly just pulling more, more things to these
• 43:42
  different choices and these avenues and these encounters
• 43:45
  with other things. And it's just encompassing a
• 43:48
  larger and larger area as more and more beings are added into
• 43:53
  that. And I think it's a beautiful
• 43:55
  representation of of the path of life itself because it it's it's
• 43:59
  all different parts of the process.
• 44:01
  It's it's decomposing. So it's literally turning death
• 44:05
  into life. And then when you get to that
• 44:07
  fruiting stage, it's literally making a sacrifice.
• 44:11
  It's giving an offering of itself back to itself in order
• 44:16
  to strengthen those heifel knots.
• 44:18
  And so you know, if we wanted to to draw a mythic comparison to
• 44:23
  that, you could even see archetypes from the story of
• 44:25
  Odin hanging on the tree to receive the ruins.
• 44:28
  You know, he sacrificed himself to himself in order to attain
• 44:32
  that knowledge. And and there's there's a mythic
• 44:34
  element to that which is, which is cool.
• 44:39
  I, I, I sort of love the idea of just kind of thinking of this
• 44:46
  web of weird existing existing under Grass Hill and just
• 44:51
  interconnecting all of the things.
• 44:53
  And yeah, I I I don't know it's it's cool and it's been
• 44:56
  fascinating to play with and I'm I'm excited to get deeper into
• 45:00
  the research and and hopefully actually be able to write
• 45:02
  something on it eventually. Oh.
• 45:05
  Yeah, man, I think you can even like take it out.
• 45:08
  You know one of the one of the ways that I've kind of gone in
• 45:13
  my in my spirituality has been very similar to maybe not quite
• 45:17
  as so like I mean maybe more academic to what you're doing
• 45:23
  is, is is like studying the the whole science behind it.
• 45:27
  I wouldn't say I've gone quite so far as that.
• 45:29
  But the more animistic side, you know, really finding a
• 45:32
  connection with the land and knowing that there is spirit in
• 45:39
  everything and not just knowing that there is spirit.
• 45:42
  Not just thinking that, yeah, I think I believe that, you know,
• 45:45
  the rocks, the trees, the water, that everything has spirit, but
• 45:49
  actually going out and becoming a part of that existence.
• 45:55
  You know, feeling what it's like to be a part of of that for even
• 46:01
  just a moment. You know, whether it's through,
• 46:05
  you know, walking barefoot, sitting in, you know river walks
• 46:09
  or cold water immersions in the river or doing the various
• 46:13
  things that I've done to connect, you know, with nature,
• 46:16
  going on hikes and you know in the woods and and just all the
• 46:19
  various ways of of getting back to that, that's that's really
• 46:24
  where my path has taken me. That's where those signals have
• 46:29
  kind of fed me in the direction of if you will, you know.
• 46:34
  And we we see very, very readily in like modern imagery the web
• 46:39
  of weird as being this very linear triangular kind of, you
• 46:42
  know, it looks almost like latticework symbol.
• 46:47
  You've probably seen it they called the web of weird right.
• 46:50
  I don't know where it initially came from and and who initially
• 46:53
  came up with it but I gotta imagine it's it's it's a
• 46:55
  relatively new symbol. But more I, the more I go down
• 47:01
  the path that I'm going it's you know the web of weird to me is
• 47:03
  is is more intricate than that of a spider.
• 47:05
  It's more like a like a like a cocoon almost, in a way.
• 47:09
  Like everything's it's not tight like a cocoon.
• 47:11
  But you know what I'm saying? Like the threads are more
• 47:13
  intricate and they're more finite.
• 47:15
  Like you you can barely see some of them.
• 47:17
  They're they're they're some of them really, really quick, like
• 47:20
  almost like a root. Some of them are really
• 47:22
  prominent and others are more like as fine as a hair.
• 47:26
  Still they're still doing what they're supposed to be doing.
• 47:30
  They're still serving their purpose, but you barely notice
• 47:33
  them or maybe not even at all. And and like connected with that
• 47:37
  and be, you know, feeling a part of all that and seeing what
• 47:40
  that's like through, you know, whether it's again, whether it's
• 47:44
  through just nature walks or or connecting physically or whether
• 47:48
  it's through other means of connectivity, maybe, you know,
• 47:52
  practices of a more shamanic nature, you know, plant
• 47:55
  medicine, that sort of thing. I think it becomes a part of
• 47:59
  certain people's practices when we're talk about stuff like
• 48:02
  this. It almost is like a natural
• 48:04
  progression. Yeah, a a lot of, a lot of my
• 48:08
  practice is informed by that stuff for sure.
• 48:11
  I've had had a lot of experiences with plant medicine
• 48:14
  and and fungal medicine as well. And I think I think that man, if
• 48:20
  I, if I could say that anything, is a more readily available and
• 48:27
  powerful Ave. into experiencing the spirit world in a very
• 48:32
  tangible way. It's psilocybin mushrooms.
• 48:34
  Like they they consistently will reveal entities to you and will
• 48:40
  communicate with you. And it was it was interesting.
• 48:43
  In my sort of early days of having those experiences, I
• 48:46
  couldn't quite explain how I could be interfacing with the
• 48:53
  spirit of the mushroom and also like the spirit of the the
• 48:58
  literal mushroom that I like. They were, they were distinct
• 49:04
  entities and I didn't have any language or ability to really
• 49:08
  comprehend what I was experiencing.
• 49:10
  But I was, I was both sort of tapped into this larger, larger
• 49:16
  spirit or weitere or however you want to think of it.
• 49:19
  And I was also interfacing with the spirit of the individual
• 49:22
  mushroom that I had consumed. And I it was, it was fascinating
• 49:26
  because it it's sort of took me on this roller coaster of
• 49:32
  emotions and I could tell that it wasn't coming from me.
• 49:37
  But I had. I had no, like at at that time
• 49:41
  in my life, I had sort of just transitioned out of
• 49:45
  Christianity. I had no idea what was even out
• 49:49
  there because I grew up really, really sheltered.
• 49:52
  And so I had all these really early shamanic and powerful
• 49:59
  nature spirit experiences that I just absolutely did not know
• 50:03
  what to do with. And it's it's been cool because
• 50:07
  now my my Pagan practice really informs a lot of that.
• 50:10
  And I can look back on those experiences and I can integrate
• 50:13
  a lot more of that and at least sort of understand what I was
• 50:18
  experiencing and what I was going through and and forming
• 50:21
  more of a more of a language to interpret that almost like a
• 50:26
  almost like a practice of writing my own myth for myself
• 50:31
  out of my life. So I'm taking these sort of like
• 50:36
  one off experiences and turning them into a way to to learn and
• 50:42
  to grow and to continue myself on my path.
• 50:49
  Yep, and it does it. It does inform a lot of my
• 50:52
  practice too. Talking about, you know, the the
• 50:56
  plant medicine psilocybin is I, I I wish, I, I hope to, you know
• 51:02
  exist long enough to see in my in my timeline that stuff like
• 51:09
  this is advocated to the point where it's not so stigmatized.
• 51:13
  Same year and same year. Because I've seen so many I've
• 51:19
  seen so many things happen for good for people and myself
• 51:24
  included, you know I'm I'm one of the people who is you know
• 51:30
  dosed enough times and and and gone on trips and done things
• 51:34
  that are I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for that and I'm
• 51:39
  thankful for those experiences and and it's constantly you know
• 51:43
  it's like one of those things where that first time was like a
• 51:48
  big huge what the F do I do with this.
• 51:53
  Right, like. Being like holy shit, like out
• 51:56
  of do I do I process all this and it took time after the fact
• 52:00
  to get to to that point where I'm like, I think I know what I
• 52:05
  need to do with this, right? Like you kind of it's like
• 52:08
  almost almost like being reborn. You know having to relearn
• 52:11
  things or or learn things from from, from from start even.
• 52:16
  So now every time that since then, right.
• 52:18
  It's almost like going back and speaking with an old friend, but
• 52:21
  there's still new things that happen each and every time that.
• 52:26
  It's like, you know, you can take a substance and a lot of
• 52:33
  substances are going to give you a lot of the same results each
• 52:37
  and every time. Mushrooms ain't one of them.
• 52:42
  Experience is going to be, experience is going to be
• 52:46
  different. Those little guys know, know
• 52:49
  what needs to happen, knows, know, knows how.
• 52:52
  You need to be kind of, you know caught in a way you know kind of
• 52:57
  knows what you need to go through.
• 52:58
  And even if you're petrified in the process, it's like well this
• 53:02
  is what you needed to go through.
• 53:04
  I mean it's it's just a necessary part of it and it's a
• 53:06
  beautiful. I think it goes back to what you
• 53:09
  were talking about, how those those things that are happening
• 53:13
  underneath, they are some some of them are feeding some of them
• 53:17
  are are, are, are destroying. Like there's there's only
• 53:19
  there's so many things happening that are necessary to make the
• 53:23
  whole work function, live, thrive.
• 53:27
  But some of it's not so savory. You know.
• 53:31
  Times we got to direct things over here and let this part over
• 53:34
  there suffer for it or die out or or whatever.
• 53:38
  You know what I mean? Because well, we got it.
• 53:40
  We got to focus on this new new new spot that we're you know,
• 53:44
  need to put our attention to. It's it's like it's a
• 53:46
  manifestation of what is happening.
• 53:49
  We we we get a glimpse into that.
• 53:52
  I think when we're experiencing those, those substances, I don't
• 53:56
  know what you think about it, but that's kind of what I think
• 53:59
  it's like we're we're a part of that system for a brief time.
• 54:04
  Totally. I I remember clearly the first
• 54:07
  time that I ever had an experience that could be
• 54:10
  considered an ego death or just the loss of body of separate
• 54:15
  self. And when I came back from that,
• 54:19
  I had this very distinct sense that what I had just experienced
• 54:24
  was the full life of the mushroom.
• 54:27
  So I experienced kind of the conception, consciousness, death
• 54:35
  and then rebirth of the mushroom itself.
• 54:39
  And I got to sort of, I got to sort of like ride that almost
• 54:44
  like in a space suit from from the inside, you know, like it
• 54:47
  was, it was sort of this miniaturization of experiencing
• 54:52
  my own life, right. And and that's that's where you
• 54:55
  can kind of tie that that fractal reality into it where
• 55:00
  everything kind of becomes a mirror in that space and you're
• 55:03
  having a, you're having a synchronized experience with
• 55:07
  another spirit with another entity and you're you're sharing
• 55:12
  something that's unique to that moment.
• 55:14
  And that's why I think those those experiences are so
• 55:17
  profound. They shape the way that we view
• 55:20
  everything, you know, both both during and after for for a lot
• 55:25
  of people. And they, they become very, very
• 55:28
  meaningful experiences. And God, yeah, they're just,
• 55:33
  they're absolutely wonderful creatures.
• 55:37
  Mm hmm. I don't know if you, you know,
• 55:40
  have experienced that. So I've done, you know, I've had
• 55:44
  experiences that I've shared with other people, trusted
• 55:48
  people. Those experience have been
• 55:50
  great. And then only recently did I
• 55:52
  actually go and do a solo experience where it was just me
• 55:56
  and nature. And that was like super
• 56:02
  revelatory in ways that my other experiences in the past with
• 56:07
  others were not. You know, every other past
• 56:10
  experience were great and they were wonderful in their own
• 56:15
  ways. And this, this one most recent
• 56:18
  where it was just me and nature and the gods and that was it.
• 56:22
  There was no other. There was no other person like
• 56:25
  me there that I could share in the experience with.
• 56:28
  It was, it was very intimate, you know, And it was, it was
• 56:36
  like there wasn't any of this other, I don't want to say
• 56:39
  distractions, but you know what I'm trying to say?
• 56:41
  Like when you're with other people, you know, there's just a
• 56:43
  lot going on. You know, you're doing your
• 56:46
  stuff, they're dealing with their stuff and we're all
• 56:48
  dealing with each other's stuff together.
• 56:50
  Absolutely. You can become this really, like
• 56:53
  you say, like a roller coaster ride of things.
• 56:56
  You know? There were times that I remember
• 56:58
  being angry. There were times I remember
• 57:00
  being sad. There were times I remember
• 57:02
  being afraid just and super happy, right.
• 57:07
  Just kind of going through that gamut of the human experience,
• 57:10
  you know, feeling so many things at once and trying to figure
• 57:14
  out, well, when am I supposed to feel it?
• 57:16
  And it doesn't matter. The wind doesn't matter.
• 57:19
  Like the time what what the hell is even that?
• 57:22
  You know, like. Right.
• 57:24
  Oh yeah, forget about it. No.
• 57:29
  And I think that's another part of when we talk about like weird
• 57:34
  and the shaping of it, you know, it's happening in in in our
• 57:39
  sense of time, right. The things that we're
• 57:42
  experiencing and and maybe wanting to focus our our efforts
• 57:46
  and all that on, right. This is happening in the profane
• 57:49
  space and time that we all are confined to in our day-to-day
• 57:52
  lives. Everything else is happening.
• 57:55
  You know, there's their sacred space and time, things that are
• 57:57
  happening in their own way. And so it's like time is
• 58:00
  relative. You know when we're doing things
• 58:03
  how we're doing it it's all relative to you know just what
• 58:07
  we're confined to and tying that the the science back to the myth
• 58:12
  or or or you know you say creating your own myth to it.
• 58:16
  It really helps I think connect us better to the to the
• 58:20
  religiosity that or the spirituality sides of things.
• 58:23
  You know you can really see how you know thousands or however
• 58:28
  many years ago it was when the, you know Germanic people came up
• 58:31
  with this idea that you know Emir, you know his bones were
• 58:35
  the were the what made-up. You know the Realms and and and
• 58:40
  all of this like you were talking about earlier, like you
• 58:43
  can kind of see where maybe not literal bones, but that's what
• 58:48
  it's translated into it now. It was more like this, just
• 58:53
  sinew and and and threads of of our existence that became
• 58:58
  everything. Because you look at like you
• 59:01
  look at like microscopic images of the known universe and and
• 59:05
  when you like zoom in like a million times or whatever, it
• 59:08
  becomes more fibrous. Yeah.
• 59:11
  The same as us, like our DNA, like we we become more fibrous.
• 59:14
  And then you look at the mycelial network and you look at
• 59:16
  mushrooms and oh, wow, big, big, big surprise, right?
• 59:20
  It's all all these, all these fibers, you know?
• 59:23
  Yeah, that, that, that point, that point that you just made
• 59:27
  right there is what initially just sparked my absolute
• 59:30
  fascination with mushrooms. Because if you look at,
• 59:33
  especially if you if you grow mushrooms on something like say
• 59:36
  you take a a wood loving mushroom, you can grow wood
• 59:39
  loving mushrooms on cardboard. They don't really need a lot
• 59:43
  else. It helps if you stuff it with
• 59:45
  something if you want to actually get fruit.
• 59:47
  But I've successfully grown oyster mushrooms like on a
• 59:51
  cardboard box stuffed full of straw, and then I just put the
• 59:54
  oyster mushrooms in there and it eventually just eats the whole
• 59:58
  box, so it colonizes from the inside out.
• 1:00:01
  And then eventually the threads will connect to the box and it
• 1:00:03
  will actually consume the box itself.
• 1:00:06
  What I learned from that first experience is if you're gonna do
• 1:00:08
  this, it's best to take some cellophane tape and wrap the
• 1:00:13
  whole outside of your box and then cut a couple of holes where
• 1:00:17
  you want mushrooms to pop out. Because I didn't do that the
• 1:00:19
  first time. And I had this incredible pin
• 1:00:22
  set. They were like probably 500
• 1:00:25
  mushrooms on this little tiny box.
• 1:00:27
  And I was blown away. I was like, Oh my God, I I have
• 1:00:30
  the mother lode. I got all the mushrooms, but it
• 1:00:34
  ran out of it, ran out of stuff to eat.
• 1:00:37
  So none of them really matured. So they kind of, like, grew a
• 1:00:40
  little bit and then fizzled out because there wasn't enough
• 1:00:42
  nutrients to sustain that heavy of a pin set.
• 1:00:45
  So you want to limit your your spots that you can get mushrooms
• 1:00:49
  if you're if you're growing that way.
• 1:00:51
  Sorry for the ADHD tangent. I said all that to say that when
• 1:00:54
  you first see when you first see mycelium growing on cardboard,
• 1:01:00
  it looks like a tree. It looks like this tiny little
• 1:01:03
  tree, and it also looks like this, the inside of our of our
• 1:01:08
  lungs, and it looks like the universe itself.
• 1:01:11
  And it's this beautiful representation of just how like
• 1:01:15
  everything is made out of the same stuff.
• 1:01:18
  We're we're all sort of in these different processes together,
• 1:01:23
  but we're all, we're all this mirrored reflection of a very,
• 1:01:27
  very similar yet yet distinct experience.
• 1:01:30
  And I just find that fascinating.
• 1:01:33
  It is fascinating. I was talking to, I think it was
• 1:01:36
  a couple of podcasts ago. Maybe like maybe a week or two.
• 1:01:39
  Yeah, I think it was 2 weeks ago where like one of the things
• 1:01:43
  that came up is that you know we're not, we're not part of
• 1:01:46
  this, this meaning just all of it like we're not part of this.
• 1:01:51
  We are it like we are this and yeah like to be like so.
• 1:01:58
  And I think the reason we, we, we focused on the separation of
• 1:02:04
  being part of it versus being it is, you know, if like if I'm
• 1:02:10
  part of a group or if I'm part of, you know, a company, there's
• 1:02:16
  there's a sense of connectivity. But there's also a bigger sense
• 1:02:19
  sometimes of disassociation like, oh, I'm just a number on
• 1:02:22
  a, you know, in a hat or I'm just a, you know, a name on a
• 1:02:26
  roster. You know, I'm not really doing
• 1:02:30
  anything. Well, when you change the
• 1:02:32
  mindset and you go, well, I am that well, then everything you
• 1:02:35
  do is affecting or affecting the rest of it.
• 1:02:41
  It's the web of weird, right? What we do now, right?
• 1:02:47
  The vibration, the work that is being put into this thread is
• 1:02:51
  going to vibrate and travel however long.
• 1:02:55
  However far, maybe not very far, maybe far, just depends on the
• 1:02:59
  how much we're putting into it. To the rest of it, it's going to
• 1:03:02
  impact it it it has this ripple effect, this this trickling of
• 1:03:06
  down of of of impact. So when you take that mindset
• 1:03:11
  or, you know, when when we were talking about that on that show,
• 1:03:13
  it was like, yeah, take you, put yourself into it, make yourself,
• 1:03:19
  you know you are it and it is you and we are.
• 1:03:23
  It is I and I am. We and we're all together.
• 1:03:30
  And you're getting through some real deep and I think it's an
• 1:03:35
  interesting thing too, especially given the fact that
• 1:03:38
  you know, you are on and isolated for all intents and
• 1:03:42
  purposes. You know you are isolated from
• 1:03:44
  the bigger part of the world. You know, even though Hawaii is
• 1:03:48
  has, you know, forgive me, I'm rusty on my geography.
• 1:03:51
  So is it nine islands, 11 islands?
• 1:03:53
  How many islands make up Hawaii? There's like.
• 1:03:56
  There's nine major ones. Nine major islands, right spread
• 1:04:00
  out but you know in in respect to the, you know the world and
• 1:04:05
  all that like you guys are kind of you're kind of out there.
• 1:04:08
  Oh yeah, yeah. Halfway across the Pacific
• 1:04:12
  Ocean, right in the middle. Exactly.
• 1:04:14
  You know, you go one way, you're in Asia.
• 1:04:16
  You go the other way. You're on.
• 1:04:17
  You're in California, you know. And you're you're, you're you're
• 1:04:20
  again. You're kind of smack down in the
• 1:04:21
  middle of nowhere and yet connecting, you know, being
• 1:04:27
  connected to nature. Finding this association's
• 1:04:30
  affiliation with weird. It's it's distance doesn't make
• 1:04:34
  a difference. You know, like in our limited
• 1:04:40
  sense of it, it does because you think, oh, damn, I'm, you know,
• 1:04:43
  2000 miles away from the nearest, you know, in and out or
• 1:04:47
  whatever. You know, like, you know, like
• 1:04:51
  that or, you know, whatever. It's like, yeah, within our
• 1:04:54
  limited scope of of perception, it it, it does make a
• 1:04:58
  difference. But when it comes down to what
• 1:05:00
  really matters, we're still connected.
• 1:05:03
  We're still close. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing.
• 1:05:08
  It is a beautiful thing and sometimes, sometimes I forget
• 1:05:12
  because like like I said, I've I've only been identifying as
• 1:05:17
  Heathen for around the last four years and before that I was sort
• 1:05:21
  of this amorphous new Age Ish kind of pseudo spirituality
• 1:05:29
  thing. It was sort of was just, it just
• 1:05:31
  kind of came along with the territory of sort of the other
• 1:05:35
  things that I was into and and. Was that on the island or was
• 1:05:39
  that in the States if you don't like or yeah, I mean the States,
• 1:05:42
  but like, was that on the mainland or was it on the island
• 1:05:45
  that you were? A little of both, a little of
• 1:05:47
  both. So it it started for me before I
• 1:05:49
  left the mainland, but it definitely continued here, kind
• 1:05:53
  of like doing the whole the whole hippie new age thing for a
• 1:05:56
  while And after after a bit and now I look back on it even more
• 1:06:02
  so now I look back on it and I'm like, you know, I wasn't really
• 1:06:05
  doing anything that different than I was when I was a
• 1:06:09
  Christian. Like, you know, on the, on the
• 1:06:12
  face of it, they had all these different teachings and beliefs
• 1:06:18
  and and whatnot. But when I really got down to
• 1:06:21
  the core philosophies, a lot of them were the same.
• 1:06:25
  They they sort of teach you that you're a piece of shit, that
• 1:06:29
  there's nothing redeemable about you until you go through some
• 1:06:33
  magical process and you know, suddenly you're you're redeemed
• 1:06:37
  or you're or you're saved from what your God is going to do to
• 1:06:40
  you anyway. And it's just like, I sort of
• 1:06:43
  started to have the same kind of like wait a minute, thoughts
• 1:06:47
  about that stuff that I did about Christianity.
• 1:06:49
  Because I started to see all these people talking about
• 1:06:52
  ascending to 5D and escaping the Matrix and and yadda yadda
• 1:06:57
  yadda, and it was all this escapism.
• 1:07:00
  It was looking to the future. It was looking to what happens
• 1:07:03
  when we die. And it had very little to do
• 1:07:06
  with with nature or with this lived experience that we have
• 1:07:11
  now. And I started to find that
• 1:07:12
  really unfortunate because there's such a, there's such a
• 1:07:16
  vast richness of spirituality and really connecting to the
• 1:07:21
  land. And that's where that's where
• 1:07:23
  life is. That's where this moment is and
• 1:07:27
  if we're if we're so busy on our our philosophies and our
• 1:07:31
  understandings and and you know even as heathens we can get
• 1:07:34
  distracted by or even experiences and practices and
• 1:07:41
  sort of miss what's happening in the moment in favor of staying
• 1:07:44
  in this very academic place. And I, you know, I I struggle
• 1:07:50
  with that. I tend to be sort of very
• 1:07:51
  philosophically minded. So I can get into these sort of
• 1:07:55
  places where I have to check myself and I look back and I'm
• 1:07:58
  like, you know, I'm doing a lot of thinking about my
• 1:08:02
  spirituality, but I'm not actually doing a lot of
• 1:08:04
  practice. I'm not tending my hearth.
• 1:08:07
  I'm not making offerings. I'm not actually connecting with
• 1:08:10
  the God's spirits and ancestors, I'm.
• 1:08:12
  I'm sort of wearing all these trappings, but am I really
• 1:08:18
  incorporating this into my life? Is this is this a lifestyle and
• 1:08:22
  a world view? Or is this just another way to
• 1:08:26
  make me feel better about myself Because I'm doing something
• 1:08:29
  good, right? And so, like, I have to check
• 1:08:32
  those motives too, because I'm like, am I?
• 1:08:35
  Am I truly giving a gift out of the spirit of hospitality, Out
• 1:08:40
  of the spirit of goodwill? Or am I constantly thinking
• 1:08:44
  about what I Is it transactional?
• 1:08:46
  Am I? Am I just asking for things or
• 1:08:50
  am I really giving of that spirit of gratitude and and
• 1:08:53
  wanting to connect with the spirits around me?
• 1:08:57
  Is it a is it a relationship or am I trying to always achieve
• 1:09:03
  something? Does that make sense?
• 1:09:05
  Yeah. No, it makes, it makes really
• 1:09:07
  good sense. You mentioned like this, you
• 1:09:10
  know, escapism, right. Trying to, you know, figure out
• 1:09:14
  the next thing to like get away from the way that we were
• 1:09:17
  feeling. I think what we're talking about
• 1:09:20
  now at this point is embracing the way that we're feeling and
• 1:09:25
  attacking it. You know, maybe is it like
• 1:09:27
  that's a that's a harsh term, but I mean going in to do the
• 1:09:30
  work, you know what I mean? Like not not trying to escape
• 1:09:33
  it, but confronting it, facing it off.
• 1:09:37
  And if it needs to be that we battle it head on and deal with
• 1:09:43
  it and put it to rest, then that's what we do.
• 1:09:48
  I had a very vivid experience with that.
• 1:09:52
  I mentioned earlier on the show the the fire on the mountain
• 1:09:55
  men's retreat that I go to every year just for about the last few
• 1:10:00
  years. And one of the things that we,
• 1:10:04
  one of the things that we did at this past event was a sort of
• 1:10:10
  death ceremony where each person that attended was ritually put
• 1:10:18
  to rest on a sort of like a pyre, not a pyre, but like
• 1:10:24
  almost how you would put someone on a boat and send them off in
• 1:10:28
  the water, you know. And so there wasn't.
• 1:10:31
  There was. It was.
• 1:10:33
  It was. And we were, and we were, we
• 1:10:35
  were placed on this, this makeshift.
• 1:10:38
  It was really just a plank of or planks of wood on the land near
• 1:10:42
  a body of water. So there was someone
• 1:10:46
  representing someone who would like kind of be the ferryman to
• 1:10:50
  to carry you down to hell, to to to your final resting place, you
• 1:10:55
  know, so you could hear the water.
• 1:10:57
  But you were, you were covered in a veil.
• 1:10:59
  You were. You were like a blanket was laid
• 1:11:01
  over you and with you were your ritual or not just ritual, but
• 1:11:05
  like any items that you would want to take with you to that,
• 1:11:08
  to that afterlife. And prior to that was a ritual
• 1:11:13
  that we we went into this headspace of anything that came
• 1:11:19
  up in our meditation, anything that came up that was a less
• 1:11:22
  than desirable part of our past, a trauma, something like that.
• 1:11:28
  We weren't going to, we weren't going to avoid it anymore.
• 1:11:30
  We were going to seek it out. We were like, what is that one
• 1:11:33
  thing? What are the, what is that thing
• 1:11:35
  that has been fucking with me my whole life?
• 1:11:38
  And I'm going to, I'm going to go internally and I'm going to
• 1:11:41
  find it. I'm going to go hunting for this
• 1:11:44
  thing. I'm going to seek it out.
• 1:11:46
  I'm going to go armed. Like we each had literal or or
• 1:11:50
  weapons of choice. Somebody had like a staff.
• 1:11:52
  I had a sword, other somebody else had axes and knives.
• 1:11:55
  Like we went into our mind with our physical weapons in our
• 1:11:59
  possession as if we were going to fight an enemy.
• 1:12:05
  And that again, it goes into like this.
• 1:12:10
  We're not trying to escape from it anymore.
• 1:12:13
  You know, we're going into this to to confront it, to attack it,
• 1:12:18
  to beat it, to, to defeat it, to go into war against these
• 1:12:23
  things. And that's part of the process,
• 1:12:25
  man. Like that, that ends up becoming
• 1:12:27
  what is happening underneath our feet, right there are there are
• 1:12:33
  there are things happening where, you know, this root
• 1:12:36
  system might be vying for this root system's life and well,
• 1:12:40
  guess what? We both can't work here.
• 1:12:43
  You know, somebody's going to take over.
• 1:12:46
  Somebody's going to, somebody's going to be the victor and
• 1:12:48
  that's that's nature and that's us too.
• 1:12:51
  Like, you know, you can't avoid stuff.
• 1:12:52
  You can't, you can't just take substances or or do anything to
• 1:12:57
  to escape the issue eventually, you know, because if you do
• 1:13:01
  that, the the issue is going to outrun you.
• 1:13:03
  You're only going to be able to run from it for so long.
• 1:13:06
  Eventually it's going to catch up and then you're going to be
• 1:13:08
  too tired from running all the time to be able to deal with it.
• 1:13:12
  It's better to equip yourself to go up and face this fucking
• 1:13:17
  thing once and for all and be done with it.
• 1:13:21
  And sure, you may come out bad or bruised and and feeling kind
• 1:13:24
  of wore out from it all, but at least you've you've done the
• 1:13:26
  hard work and you've put yourself into that ordeal of
• 1:13:29
  facing it all. And now you know what to go
• 1:13:32
  forth with. And you've got you're better
• 1:13:34
  equipped to, to deal with all the other stuff, right?
• 1:13:36
  The the nutrient, the the rebuilding, the the regrowth.
• 1:13:40
  The rebirth, carrots. But you got to eat that.
• 1:13:46
  I gotta rip those threads apart to start over, like I was
• 1:13:48
  talking about earlier. Sometimes those threads get
• 1:13:49
  damaged and it's like when I gotta gotta start over again.
• 1:13:53
  Part of that, part of that starting over is, well, we can't
• 1:13:55
  just, we can't just weave over this tangled mess of shit.
• 1:13:58
  We've gotta gotta undo it all. We gotta rip it apart and we
• 1:14:02
  gotta. Start a.
• 1:14:03
  Whole new thing so. Yeah, that's badass dude.
• 1:14:09
  And I and I think it it sort of connects the the place that I
• 1:14:14
  sort of logically take that is that like death death and life
• 1:14:19
  only seem to be antagonistic from a certain vantage point.
• 1:14:24
  They're actually the same thing there there is there is no death
• 1:14:28
  and life like life exists because of death and death
• 1:14:32
  exists because of life. And the two cannot be separated.
• 1:14:35
  It is. It is the the process of what we
• 1:14:39
  call life is the process of being born, living, dying, and
• 1:14:44
  then being born again. Like there is this reciprocal
• 1:14:48
  relationship and we're we're all, you know, whether whether
• 1:14:51
  or not you believe or have reincarnation in your practice,
• 1:14:54
  we're all made out of other dead stuff.
• 1:14:56
  It's just a fact of life. Life feeds on life.
• 1:14:59
  And in order to perpetuate that, things are constantly
• 1:15:03
  transmuting themselves and changing into different forms.
• 1:15:06
  And so, yes, there might be that death of a certain Organism,
• 1:15:11
  let's say like the the mycelium and the and the roots are
• 1:15:14
  competing. And perhaps the might, the
• 1:15:16
  mycelium takes so much from the soil that that plant can no
• 1:15:20
  longer live and it dies. Well, then it becomes food for
• 1:15:24
  the mushroom that's living in the soil itself.
• 1:15:27
  And then eventually those cells decompose and then become that
• 1:15:31
  mushroom itself. And so it's not, it's not that
• 1:15:34
  like the plant has now transformed into a mushroom,
• 1:15:38
  It's that the mushroom continues to live because the plant has
• 1:15:40
  become a part of it. Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  Oh yeah, dude. I've seen, I've seen like, one
• 1:15:47
  of the most visceral representations of that.
• 1:15:49
  I think it was maybe the carcass of a raccoon that had decomposed
• 1:15:57
  basically passed its skin just down to the bones and a
• 1:16:00
  photographer had taken a picture.
• 1:16:03
  If I find it I'll put ended up putting it up here on screen for
• 1:16:06
  people to see. But it's it's it's like the paw.
• 1:16:09
  It was either a possum or a raccoon or something, but like
• 1:16:12
  the paw of the the critter, which was again, nothing pretty
• 1:16:17
  much just bones had out of its out of the paw growing
• 1:16:21
  mushrooms. Wow.
• 1:16:24
  Yeah, like that's. Pretty cool.
• 1:16:26
  Thing that thing that like helped decompose the the life of
• 1:16:29
  the animal ended up becoming life in itself.
• 1:16:32
  Wow. Yeah, yeah, it's gnarly, man.
• 1:16:35
  If I find the picture, I'll, I'll send it to you.
• 1:16:37
  But I'll try to put it up here on screen because it's again,
• 1:16:40
  it's like one of the most visceral representations of what
• 1:16:44
  we're talking about, right? It's death isn't the end of
• 1:16:46
  something. It's the continuation of just
• 1:16:49
  the cyclical existence of nature.
• 1:16:51
  It's it's and we're again, We are it.
• 1:16:53
  That's it. That's us, you know?
• 1:16:55
  So part of us, we are eternal. We are eternal beings and
• 1:17:01
  regardless of what you believe in spiritually or religiously, I
• 1:17:04
  mean we are eternal beings. So there is an expiration date
• 1:17:08
  to this meat suit and you know the the, the, the things that
• 1:17:12
  make up the physical composition of what we are.
• 1:17:15
  But it that that is not who we are.
• 1:17:18
  You know what I mean? Like we're part of that unseen
• 1:17:23
  too. There is when when this physical
• 1:17:25
  part of things has has expired, we exist.
• 1:17:28
  Continue. We still exist.
• 1:17:30
  Parts of us still continue to exist.
• 1:17:33
  And that goes back to some of what you said too, like the the
• 1:17:35
  weird and the orlog or Orleg, right, depending on the
• 1:17:39
  pronunciation you want to take. That Orleg is the that primal
• 1:17:43
  layer that that's always been there, that we're constantly
• 1:17:47
  beating and and is being passed down through our ancestry.
• 1:17:52
  So the things that we're doing now are beating those those
• 1:17:57
  roots that well, and then our descendants are being fed from
• 1:18:00
  that source to continue and we're all, we're all
• 1:18:05
  intertwined. We're all a part of that.
• 1:18:07
  So it is, it's a big it's a big huge web of weird.
• 1:18:17
  Weird. Yeah, we spell it WO or D, but
• 1:18:19
  it is. It's weird, man.
• 1:18:21
  But it is. It is odd as fuck.
• 1:18:27
  I love it and I'm excited to see you know if you if you get to a
• 1:18:31
  point man where you have more material whether it's diagrams
• 1:18:36
  or or you know book or anything that you come up with in your
• 1:18:40
  further studies on this and you want to come back on the show
• 1:18:44
  and and talk more about it. You know consider consider this
• 1:18:48
  an open invitation just let me know and we'll figure out figure
• 1:18:50
  it out. There you go with.
• 1:18:54
  Yeah, I can't. I can't wait to see where it
• 1:18:55
  goes. You know, there's there's a lot
• 1:18:57
  of of different rabbit holes that my brain will want to go
• 1:19:01
  down, I'm sure. And I I can't wait to to explore
• 1:19:04
  them, explore them all and come up with something neat out of
• 1:19:08
  it. Now, while we're talking about
• 1:19:11
  that, right, since it is something that you're working on
• 1:19:13
  and it's a project that you're kind of taking a taking point
• 1:19:18
  on, is there like can if people want to connect with you?
• 1:19:23
  I I usually ask this of all my guests, right?
• 1:19:24
  If people want to connect with you, maybe bounce some ideas or
• 1:19:27
  talk with you more about it, 'cause I'm sure this is going to
• 1:19:29
  strike an interest for a lot of different people.
• 1:19:32
  Is there a way that people can get in touch with you if they
• 1:19:34
  want to? Well, I don't really have a
• 1:19:39
  whole lot of pluggables. I have.
• 1:19:40
  I have a private Instagram and I'm on.
• 1:19:44
  I'm on Discord, so I'm in the. I'm in the Skithblathmere
• 1:19:49
  discord. I'm also in the around
• 1:19:52
  grandfather fire Discord so if anybody listens from there you
• 1:19:56
  can connect with me there. I'm Elde Fennel on Discord.
• 1:20:01
  And then and I can also text these to you or or whatever if
• 1:20:04
  you drop. Me, the drop me the details,
• 1:20:07
  'cause I'll add it to the show notes and the description and
• 1:20:09
  all that stuff. So people can if they want to
• 1:20:11
  'cause there's actually a lot of, I noticed a lot of the
• 1:20:14
  heathen people have gravitated toward discord.
• 1:20:17
  There's one guy that I follow on Facebook, he he'll be he, he's
• 1:20:22
  going to be a guest here soon too.
• 1:20:24
  But his, his, his social media is the heathen nerd.
• 1:20:27
  He's on tiktop. I've been to him before.
• 1:20:30
  Yeah, Justin, Chris is his name. He's got a Discord server that
• 1:20:34
  that he does regular stuff on. So I know a lot of heathen
• 1:20:37
  fokker gravitating towards that platform, so that'll probably be
• 1:20:41
  nice for for people to find you and you can connect with them in
• 1:20:44
  that way. So yeah, just shoot me the
• 1:20:46
  details. I'll link it all in the show
• 1:20:47
  notes for people to to find you on if that's OK.
• 1:20:51
  OK, yeah, that's that's totally cool.
• 1:20:53
  And then I'm also working on another project right now as
• 1:20:57
  well. I'm I'm currently trying to
• 1:20:59
  write a prayer and liturgy book. I'm calling it Heathen
• 1:21:04
  Hearthfire. And I'm like right now I'm in
• 1:21:09
  probably about 2530 pages deep into writing it.
• 1:21:14
  I'm going to be creating a Patreon for it soon when it gets
• 1:21:17
  into a little bit more of the, I have a manuscript phase, so I
• 1:21:23
  can send that to you once that launches as well.
• 1:21:25
  If if you wanted to add that on, it probably won't be any any
• 1:21:29
  time soon but maybe if I come on again we can talk more about
• 1:21:33
  that. And I've I've been really
• 1:21:35
  excited about that. I kind of started it as just
• 1:21:38
  this collection of different prayers that I had written.
• 1:21:41
  Because when I first, when I first started practicing my
• 1:21:44
  Heartthcult, I was really awkward, right?
• 1:21:45
  I would, I would just be like, OK, so I know some names of some
• 1:21:51
  gods and that is about it. It would be like, OK, what do I,
• 1:21:56
  what do I do? How do I heathen you know and.
• 1:21:59
  How do I heathen Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:22:03
  And how you heathen's different from how everybody else does,
• 1:22:06
  you know. Yeah, it's it's it's the the
• 1:22:08
  age-old, the age-old adage, right?
• 1:22:10
  You you ask 5 heathens and you'll get 6 answers.
• 1:22:13
  Yep, at least, at least. Yeah, man, definitely.
• 1:22:19
  So yeah, whatever you got, just shoot it my way and I'll be
• 1:22:21
  sure. You know, folks listen and watch
• 1:22:23
  and by this point you'll have it to check out there.
• 1:22:26
  Just go to the to the show notes and for you folks on Patreon
• 1:22:30
  watching this, it'll be down in the description.
• 1:22:34
  So nice. But yeah man, this was great.
• 1:22:38
  I think we got a good episode here.
• 1:22:39
  We can wrap it up. Anything else you want to say to
• 1:22:43
  the people that are listening and watching before we sign off?
• 1:22:51
  No, I don't really think so. I've I've enjoyed getting to
• 1:22:55
  talk about this. I was.
• 1:22:56
  I was a little bit scatterbrained in the beginning.
• 1:22:58
  I was a little nervous so it took me a little bit to get
• 1:23:01
  going so. Yeah, me too.
• 1:23:03
  So was that was that, oh, I'm talking to somebody new.
• 1:23:05
  How do I, you know, get through this?
• 1:23:07
  But Nah man, I think you did great.
• 1:23:09
  You were you were really well spoken and shared a lot of good,
• 1:23:14
  thought provoking information. I thoroughly enjoy talking about
• 1:23:18
  stuff like this, even though I don't claim to know a whole hell
• 1:23:22
  of a lot about it. It just, it speaks to me.
• 1:23:24
  And so I I speak from a place of just what feels, you know, how I
• 1:23:28
  feel about it. But yeah, I'm excited for you,
• 1:23:31
  man, to to to share with more people what you're, what you
• 1:23:34
  discover with it all. Yeah, I like it as a concept.
• 1:23:37
  It kind of it kind of ticks all my boxes it it ticks my I want
• 1:23:41
  to I want to nerd out and get really granular and check
• 1:23:45
  everything out and learn all this stuff and information and
• 1:23:49
  it and it also ticks my spirituality box where I like to
• 1:23:52
  go get weird in the wood with drums you know like and I you
• 1:23:58
  know I had AI had a really powerful experience of that
• 1:24:01
  recently. I was I was kind of kind of
• 1:24:03
  going through a hard time I I sort of got hit with bad tax
• 1:24:06
  news yet again and I was already I was already stressed about
• 1:24:11
  money and I just was in this. I was already in a depressed
• 1:24:14
  state too. And so that happened and I was
• 1:24:16
  just like great. There goes all of my progress
• 1:24:19
  over the last half of half of a year that's going to set me up
• 1:24:23
  to be in the hole for a long time this year.
• 1:24:25
  And just like great. I was kind of going I was kind
• 1:24:28
  of going through that and I went through that for a few days just
• 1:24:30
  feeling really shitty and and down and and then it sort of
• 1:24:34
  just like occurred to me as this like well, well duh.
• 1:24:37
  Like you haven't made any offerings you haven't said a
• 1:24:40
  single prayer about it like why are you it wasn't this like
• 1:24:43
  guilt thing. It was just this like why do you
• 1:24:45
  feel like you have to suffer alone.
• 1:24:47
  Like why why aren't you reaching out when you know that it's
• 1:24:53
  going to be beneficial for you to do that.
• 1:24:55
  And and it it was a very different voice that I'm that
• 1:24:58
  I'm used to like hearing in my head right.
• 1:25:00
  Like I think a lot of times in my past I would experience that
• 1:25:04
  as guilt of just like you son of a bitch you're not even praying
• 1:25:08
  you're doing spirituality blah, blah.
• 1:25:10
  But it was, it was just like this, this almost simple like,
• 1:25:14
  oh, how can I forget that? This simple act of just asking
• 1:25:21
  for help is sometimes all it takes, you know?
• 1:25:23
  And and so I I had that thought and then I went out and I built,
• 1:25:26
  I built a big fire. I had this plan.
• 1:25:29
  I was going to like do this whole ritual, which I didn't end
• 1:25:31
  up doing because I had really low spoons that day.
• 1:25:34
  And I was like, you know what? I really just feel the need to
• 1:25:37
  sit by this fire and play a drum.
• 1:25:40
  And that's exactly what I did. I like, I I invoked Thor.
• 1:25:46
  I said a few words and then I just played my drum for like an
• 1:25:50
  hour and a half and just vibed with this fire.
• 1:25:53
  And then I thanked the fire after it burned out and I went
• 1:25:58
  back inside and just that that little, that little moment of
• 1:26:02
  recognition. Dude, I slept fantastic that
• 1:26:05
  night. I felt completely different the
• 1:26:08
  next day. And I was like, I literally just
• 1:26:11
  needed to take a second and symbolically give my worries to
• 1:26:15
  the gods. Take a step back from it.
• 1:26:17
  Stop getting lost in the weeds of how am I going to do this,
• 1:26:21
  How am I going to figure this out.
• 1:26:23
  And and just ask for that presence.
• 1:26:26
  You know, I wasn't even, I wasn't asking for something to
• 1:26:29
  be taken away or you know, I want you to fix this or or I
• 1:26:34
  need money. It was just like help.
• 1:26:37
  Hang out with me for a minute. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:40
  Like can I just please not be alone in this moment And and I
• 1:26:44
  think, like, noticing that, I feel like the way that I have
• 1:26:48
  started to pray over the last year has become really different
• 1:26:52
  and it's it's a lot more of stuff like that.
• 1:26:54
  It's like when I do ask for things, it's usually for like
• 1:26:58
  some form of assistance where I'm asking for for courage or
• 1:27:03
  I'm asking Odin for wisdom or I'm asking Freya for fierceness
• 1:27:08
  or I'm asking Freg for compassion.
• 1:27:11
  Like whatever it is, it's like something that I that I feel
• 1:27:16
  that God would possess in greater measure than I do, and
• 1:27:20
  I'm just asking for a little bit more of it so that I can then go
• 1:27:23
  and accomplish my task, right? And that's that's much more of
• 1:27:27
  the way that I'm praying these days.
• 1:27:29
  And it seems to be not only doing wonders for myself and the
• 1:27:34
  way that I relate to the Gods themselves, it it is very
• 1:27:38
  effective as well. And it really doesn't take much.
• 1:27:43
  And I'm just noticing all of these these blessings from these
• 1:27:46
  little simple acts. And I think I blow it, blow it
• 1:27:50
  up in in in my head sometimes where I feel like it's got to be
• 1:27:53
  this big sacrifice or this special blow or I have to do
• 1:27:57
  this, that or the other. Nothing's going to happen.
• 1:28:01
  And then, you know, but these little, these little ways that I
• 1:28:05
  can make offerings in my daily life, like sometimes I'll just
• 1:28:08
  have a bag of tobacco when I'm walking around and I'll find a
• 1:28:13
  cool spot and I'll just, you know, leave a little pinch, say
• 1:28:17
  a little prayer, you know, thank the whites of the land for, you
• 1:28:21
  know, allowing me to pass through there.
• 1:28:23
  And then I go on my way and I've I've just really enjoyed kind of
• 1:28:28
  building those. You know, I might not go back to
• 1:28:31
  that spot or have a a continuing relationship with that spirit,
• 1:28:35
  but the fact that I was there and I acknowledged it like is
• 1:28:38
  both meaningful to that spirit and also to me.
• 1:28:41
  And so it's just this way to kind of carry my faith with me
• 1:28:44
  and incorporate that into something that I'm constantly
• 1:28:48
  doing so I can sort of look behind me and go like, well,
• 1:28:51
  I'll be damned. I was making offerings the whole
• 1:28:53
  time. And it wasn't even this, this
• 1:28:55
  huge outpouring of energy. It just sort of naturally flowed
• 1:28:59
  out of the way that I live my life.
• 1:29:02
  That's beautiful, man. Thank you for sharing that.
• 1:29:04
  Thanks for letting me share. That's great.
• 1:29:09
  I think that's a great thing to to end this on.
• 1:29:13
  You can hang out for a second because when I done, when we're
• 1:29:15
  done, when we're when we're done signing off, I'll I'll wrap with
• 1:29:19
  you for just a couple. So that way you know what to
• 1:29:20
  expect after after this. But this has been great.
• 1:29:23
  I appreciate you taking the time out of your your afternoon to to
• 1:29:28
  come here, you know with the time difference and everything
• 1:29:30
  we made at work and I appreciate that so.
• 1:29:32
  Yeah. Yeah, Good stuff, man.
• 1:29:35
  Thank you. Awesome.
• 1:29:37
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:29:38
  Thank you for having me on. This has been a lot of fun and I
• 1:29:41
  I enjoy getting to put those thoughts out in front of me and
• 1:29:45
  look at them again because it it helps me formulate different
• 1:29:48
  ways of thinking and and yeah, it's been a very little time.
• 1:29:53
  Awesome, man. I'm glad it was good for you and
• 1:29:55
  for everybody else that's listening and watching to this
• 1:29:58
  episode. If you did like it, give it a
• 1:30:01
  thumbs up. Follow the podcast on whatever
• 1:30:04
  platform that you are catching this on.
• 1:30:06
  Don't forget to check out every way that you can support Midgard
• 1:30:10
  Musings, the production of this podcast by heading into the link
• 1:30:13
  tree link that's shared in the show notes or the description
• 1:30:16
  area. Wherever he is that you are and
• 1:30:19
  check out stuff that Leif has going on.
• 1:30:21
  Follow him, you know, connect with him on Discord.
• 1:30:23
  It seems to be where he's at. So check all that stuff out if
• 1:30:27
  you want to connect with him. And yeah, that's going to wrap
• 1:30:30
  it up for this week's episode. Thank you all for tuning in and
• 1:30:33
  watching and listening until we talk again.
• 1:30:36
  May the gods continue to notice you and may your ancestors smile
• 1:30:40
  upon you. We'll see you in the next one.