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Polish Folk Magic with Joanna Tarnawska · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see something's going to happen. What what's going to happen?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: What?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I bet that you help. Welcome to the occult Rejects.
• 0:26
  Speaker 4: Today's episode is for anyone tired of witchcraft esthetic and
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: ready for the real thing. Folk magic as culture, not
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: as a trend or a reason to cause play on Instagram,
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: but as a set of practices that grew inside real
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: communities under real pressures weather, hunger, disease, war, birth, death,
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: and the constant need to protect the home. But before
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: we introduce the guests and other panelists, there's a few
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: things I would like to mention. So yes, this coming
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: April twenty fifth, Saturday, April twenty fifth.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Twenty twenty sixth.
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: Obviously, we have the twenty twenty six Southeastern Masonic Symposium
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: and that is happening in Asheville at the Asheville Masonic
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: Temple at eighty Broadway Street in Ashwell, North Carolina, and
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: Ike Baker and Colin and a few other people will
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: be there. I will be there, so come on down
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: you can check it out. The keynote speaker will be
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: John Michael Greer. He is a prolific occult and esoteric
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: historian with seventy plus book books, including Circles of Power
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: in the award winning New Encyclopedia of the Occult. And
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: he's also initiated across the Hermitic, Masonic, and Druid lineages
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: and former Grand Arc Druid. Then we have Colin Concrede,
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: who has been on the show before. If you haven't
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: checked it out, I suggest to check it out. And
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: he is a creator behind American Esoteric and he is
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: focused on ancient philosophy and comparative Narra comparative religion. And
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: he is also publicly listed as a massa mason and
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: a writer. And then we have somebody that you've seen
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: on this show plenty of times and he's a fan favorite.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: We got Ike Baker, and he's an independent scholar and
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: esoteric instructor. He's a practicing ceremonialist and initiate initiatic Mason.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: He is the Blue Lodge plus York right, also connected
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: with Martinism and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: and he is the host of the Arcanum podcast and
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: you've seen him here plenty of times. And then last
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: but not least, they do have Tom Carter and he
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: is a brother out of Mount Herman Lodge number one
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: eighteen in Ashram, North Carolina, and he will be speaking
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: on I don't know they didn't list it, but uh yeah,
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: come down check it out. I will be there definitely.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: I might be filming stuff, so when I'm that busy filming,
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: I can definitely hang out, but definitely come down and
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: check it out.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: It should be a good time.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: And another thing I do want to just mention before
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: we do get to the guest, we have the Occult
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: Research Institute dot org.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: That is our website for the ocult rejects kind.
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: Of and there's a lot of stuff on there to
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: read if you're into reading. A lot of episodes that
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: I've done in the past has been turned into readable
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: form on there, and eventually I will be adding to
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: the website. If you're interested in it now, you can
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: always dm me. We do have t shirts for sale.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: We do have one with the skeleton. Sometimes you see
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: somebody on the show where it oh myself with the
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: X hands and then the one that looks like the
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Birth of Aphrodite or the.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Birth of Venus.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: He could check it out dm me if you want
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: to check them out to see what they look like
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: they are twenty five dollars shipped. Total twenty five dollars
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: at your house. So if you're interested, please let me know.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: And now I am done talking and our guest is will.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Before I introduce the guest, let me introduce June Judith
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: de Loon.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: What is going on? Judith? How are you?
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: And we got my man Jewels, the handsome hyrafant. What
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: is going on in Mississippi?
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Misstic?
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: Hey, what's going on? Nick?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Guys?
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: I'm Jewles, host of the Gray Pill podcast, host of
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: a couple other shows. Me and Headless have the Rust
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: of Gods show we do on the Occult Rejects, also
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: Gods of the Morning. Would and uh yeah find me
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: over on x at gray Pilled pod and Patreon if
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: you want to support the Showpatreon dot com says great
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: pul podcast and also printify for some merch gray Pill
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: dot Printify dot me. I had some Asunga Saka shirts.
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: Gods of the Morning would merch a bunch of cool stuff.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: Just put a hand of Sabasias shirt on that. So yeah,
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: go check it out. I'm very excited to be here,
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: very excited to learn from Joanna. I've been kind of
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: stoked about this all week subject matter. So thank you
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: Nick for inviting me, and it's been the old fellow rejects.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Hell yeah no, thank you for making it, sir, And
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: we got Brandon Magas in the media.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: What is going on?
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Sir?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: How are You's up?
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: Crew?
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: So excited to be here. Thank you Nick, Thank you team.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: I love being on every panel and all the time. Joanna,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: this is going to be fire. I'm so excited to
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: hear what you got to say. Everyone just go to
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Magas in the media, X YouTube, subscribe, I can share Instagram.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: We're throwing out clips all the time, breaking down everything
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: in the world through a mythmagic and meaning, let's get it.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Welso, thank you so much for making it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: And last week I least the Headless Giant and we
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: got Beans with them too, What is going on?
• 4:52
  Speaker 6: How you doing?
• 4:52
  Speaker 7: You can catch Beans' podcast on my podcast on Thursdays.
• 4:56
  Speaker 7: We show a mail bag where you can send in
• 4:58
  Speaker 7: your cult slash essenteric stories and you can email those
• 5:02
  Speaker 7: to me at the Headless Giant Podcast at gmail dot
• 5:04
  Speaker 7: com and you can find me on X and YouTube
• 5:07
  Speaker 7: and on insacrap too, so check those out.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you awesome, Thank you very much, sir.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: And finally our guest is we've got Joanna Tarnovska screwing
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: that up tried my best known too many through her
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: work as Polish Folk, which she describes herself as an animist,
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  Speaker 4: folk practitioner, writer, and psychologist living in the mountains of
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  Speaker 4: Lower Fight pronounce thiss right Celicia Poland, where her practice
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  Speaker 4: stays intentionally bioregional, tied to local landscape, local stories, in
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: the rhythms of the traditional year. She's the author of
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Polish Folk Magic and Ancestral Law and Traditions of the
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  Speaker 4: West Slavs, published through Crosscrow Books. Who was nice of us,
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: nice enough to put me in contact with her, and
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  Speaker 4: that is a work that frames Polish folk magic through
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: the lens of traditional cosmology, spirits and Allies, protective and
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  Speaker 4: heal charms, and the agrarian calendar, with an emphasis on
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  Speaker 4: the difference between modern reconstruction and what actually survives in
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: practice and record. And what makes this conversation worth doing,
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  Speaker 4: especially if you care about history, is that Polish folk
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  Speaker 4: practice sits at a crossroads pre Christian Slavic inheritance, centuries
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  Speaker 4: of Catholic devotional life and a deep reservoir of vernacular
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  Speaker 4: ritual technology, blessings, thresholds, spoken formulas, seasonal rights, where the
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: boundary between religion and magic is more often about who's
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: labeling it than what people are actually doing. So thank
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  Speaker 4: you very much Johanna for joining us. Please let everybody
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: know everything about you or whatever you'd like to advertise
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: a plug.
• 6:45
  Speaker 8: Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm really
• 6:47
  Speaker 8: stalk to have this conversation today with your folks. You
• 6:51
  Speaker 8: pretty much already introduced me, so I'm not going to
• 6:53
  Speaker 8: be you know, adding much to that. All I can
• 6:56
  Speaker 8: say is that if you folks enjoy our conversation to day,
• 7:00
  Speaker 8: you can find me pretty much anywhere online under the
• 7:03
  Speaker 8: name Polish Folk, which I also teach online, especially via
• 7:07
  Speaker 8: patron about folk magic, animism and traditional craft. So if
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  Speaker 8: you enjoy my yapping tonight, then yeah, check me out.
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  Speaker 1: That's it awesome. Thank you much. Thank you very much
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: again for coming on, Joanna.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: Like I asked all my guests on this type of stuff,
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: when did you find yourself interested in this type of life,
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  Speaker 4: for this researching this stuff.
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  Speaker 8: It's been a long while, you know. I'm in my
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  Speaker 8: mid thirties at the moment. And I have to say
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  Speaker 8: that what drew me to magical practice in general and
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  Speaker 8: occultism all of that is that from a very very
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  Speaker 8: young age, actually I had experiences with spirits and I
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  Speaker 8: needed to figure out how to deal with that, how
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  Speaker 8: to understand what I was experiencing. So in my teens
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  Speaker 8: I got into magic and occultism. It wasn't folk magic
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  Speaker 8: straight away. Straight away, I did explore various paradigms and approaches, so,
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  Speaker 8: you know, being here and there you could say over
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  Speaker 8: the years, but folk magic is eventually what I arrived
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  Speaker 8: at and where I you know, ultimately felt at home.
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  Speaker 4: So awesome, thank you very much. Some of the earlier
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  Speaker 4: things was one of the early things into before we
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  Speaker 4: get into folk magic, just wondering.
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  Speaker 8: Oh, you know, the thing is that the things that
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  Speaker 8: were available at the time in Poland where I lived,
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  Speaker 8: is essentially what got me started. And at that time
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  Speaker 8: this was mainly like ceremonial magic, chaos magic, you know, telema,
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  Speaker 8: that kind of stuff. I did research that and practice
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  Speaker 8: that for quite a few years. But then over the years,
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  Speaker 8: you know, you can kind of see that the evolution
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  Speaker 8: from that. It's a long stretch to folk magic. Right,
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  Speaker 8: So I could say that my path was maybe upside
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  Speaker 8: down to some of the folks I usually talk to about,
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  Speaker 8: you know, starting with the stuff that's close to you
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  Speaker 8: and then expanding into the broader kind of occult scene.
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  Speaker 8: You could say for me, it was kind of the opposite,
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  Speaker 8: so kind of funny.
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  Speaker 4: One thing I want to add, when you were more
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: into you mentioned the limo, which could be you know,
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  Speaker 4: and you mentioned ceremonial magic. I think, I mean, that's
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: all that could intel a lot of stuff. It could
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: be a very take you an hour to do something.
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  Speaker 4: Did you you know, did you go to that extent
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  Speaker 4: when you were practicing that stuff?
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  Speaker 8: You know, I was never really initiated into any orders
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  Speaker 8: or like formally being introduced into that. So it was
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  Speaker 8: mainly like, you know, the kind of stuff you can
• 9:44
  Speaker 8: do based on sources that are available, not very in depth.
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  Speaker 8: Looking back at it now from my you know, much
• 9:50
  Speaker 8: more experienced advantage point today.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, were you like busting out the ritual, the
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: pentagram and all that stuff and the hexagram to do
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  Speaker 4: stuff now?
• 9:57
  Speaker 8: Yeah, pretty much you know, like the LBR.
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  Speaker 4: P Okay, all right, So now my other question there,
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  Speaker 4: I guess to follow up on that is what you're
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: into now seem like a little bit not as uh
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: not as detailed.
• 10:07
  Speaker 8: Ah, you know, that's depends depends how you see the stuff, right.
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  Speaker 8: I think a lot of it is dictated by the
• 10:17
  Speaker 8: perception of how stuff works, and that I think makes
• 10:21
  Speaker 8: a huge difference in what is meaningful in terms of
• 10:25
  Speaker 8: the craft that you do. So over the years, you
• 10:28
  Speaker 8: could say for me, it was a lot of shedding
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  Speaker 8: of the things that at first felt really cool to explore,
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  Speaker 8: you know, and all of that, but over time became
• 10:36
  Speaker 8: unnecessary and I found more meaning in a more simple practice. Actually,
• 10:41
  Speaker 8: so it all kind of depends on you know, the
• 10:43
  Speaker 8: journey itself determines a lot of how we end up
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  Speaker 8: engaging with magic.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: What do you think about the lima?
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  Speaker 8: Do I have to answer.
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  Speaker 1: Really bad? I guess you can.
• 10:59
  Speaker 8: It's all right, I mean no, no, not not really.
• 11:01
  Speaker 8: It's just that it's really not for me. I do
• 11:03
  Speaker 8: have friends who are initiated into auto and you know
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  Speaker 8: that kind of stuff, and I have huge respect for
• 11:09
  Speaker 8: everybody from all walks of the craft. So it's not
• 11:13
  Speaker 8: like I have bad things to say. It's just that
• 11:15
  Speaker 8: for me, and especially also having you know, professional background
• 11:20
  Speaker 8: in psychology as well. I find a lot of that
• 11:24
  Speaker 8: approach to be very deeply psychologized, you could say, right,
• 11:28
  Speaker 8: depending on how you approach it. I think in Poland
• 11:30
  Speaker 8: that's the main way that it's approached within auto especially right.
• 11:37
  Speaker 8: So it's definitely not not for me, not something that
• 11:40
  Speaker 8: I like to entertain personally.
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: But that's quite right. I was in the OTO for
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: about five years and I didn't like it anymore. Left myself.
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: I could definitely say it, but I'm not gonna go there.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: But so I understand pretty much. Yeah, yeah, all right.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: So I guess, I mean, you got this book. What
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: is it with this book that you wanted to try
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: to I guess what was the reason that you wrote
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: this book? What do you think that this book has
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: the author that other books maybe on this subject matter doesn't.
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  Speaker 8: HM. Well, the one thing that it offers that maybe
• 12:15
  Speaker 8: is not as present out there, or wasn't up until
• 12:17
  Speaker 8: this point, is the perspective of a local, of somebody
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  Speaker 8: who actually lives here and has been you know, born
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  Speaker 8: into this culture and you know, living within it, Whereas
• 12:29
  Speaker 8: up until this point, most of the sources you can
• 12:31
  Speaker 8: see out there when it comes to like Slavic magic,
• 12:35
  Speaker 8: Slavic witchcraft, that kind of stuff is usually from the
• 12:37
  Speaker 8: perspective of an outsider. So I really wanted to put
• 12:42
  Speaker 8: my perspective out there, just for the folks and especially
• 12:45
  Speaker 8: for the folks of the diaspora, to have something to
• 12:49
  Speaker 8: compare to essentially what things look like here, the kind
• 12:53
  Speaker 8: of you know, perception of the world that our ancestors had,
• 12:57
  Speaker 8: what shaped Polish folk magic, why it were, the way
• 13:00
  Speaker 8: it works. I feel like those aspects are often lacking
• 13:03
  Speaker 8: because frankly, many of the sources that we have here,
• 13:07
  Speaker 8: and many of them are academic as well, you know,
• 13:09
  Speaker 8: they were never translated to English, so this knowledge is
• 13:13
  Speaker 8: just not out there, and the locals also haven't been
• 13:17
  Speaker 8: haven't really been heard much up until this point either.
• 13:22
  Speaker 8: So I'm really glad that I was, you know, given
• 13:24
  Speaker 8: the opportunity to have a platform to actually put my
• 13:28
  Speaker 8: own book across, you know, on a global market, for
• 13:31
  Speaker 8: people to be able to engage some of this stuff
• 13:34
  Speaker 8: and maybe learned about some of these aspects for the
• 13:37
  Speaker 8: first time, because some of them were never seen before
• 13:41
  Speaker 8: on the you know, English scene. You could say. So, yeah,
• 13:45
  Speaker 8: I think why I wanted to write this book though,
• 13:48
  Speaker 8: because you know, I was really hesitant, to be honest,
• 13:51
  Speaker 8: it's a huge undertaking to be taking my entire culture
• 13:56
  Speaker 8: and somehow packaging it within a single book like that
• 14:00
  Speaker 8: feels very reductive. Right, We can all probably agree it's
• 14:05
  Speaker 8: it wasn't easy. So and I'm somebody, yeah, and I'm
• 14:10
  Speaker 8: somebody who really hates to put misinformation out there or
• 14:14
  Speaker 8: to be like reductive, you know. So yeah, I was
• 14:18
  Speaker 8: really hesitant. But ultimately, you know, I've worked with a
• 14:20
  Speaker 8: lot of folks of the diaspora, people who learn from me,
• 14:23
  Speaker 8: and they were just so encouraging towards this happening and actually,
• 14:29
  Speaker 8: you know, them being able to access this. So they
• 14:33
  Speaker 8: encouraged me to write this book and make it available
• 14:36
  Speaker 8: for them so that they can access these you know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 8: ancestral traditions in maybe more like down to earth authentic
• 14:43
  Speaker 8: way without this romanticization you could say of you know,
• 14:48
  Speaker 8: this land far away where their ancestors migrated from and
• 14:51
  Speaker 8: all of that, because you know, there's a lot of
• 14:53
  Speaker 8: misinformation out there essentially.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: So yeah, before before I.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: Ask anyblse if they have something to ask, there was
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: just something that like your answer kind of touched on
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: three other questions, But one of them I do want
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: to ask, because you've mentioned the word a few times already.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: You're right with Theosporia and mine, what are the biggest
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: mistakes you think practitioners make when trying to go Slavic.
• 15:17
  Speaker 8: Yeah. I already kind of touched on this, but I
• 15:20
  Speaker 8: think it's romanticization really of just kind of having this
• 15:26
  Speaker 8: idea of what was out there or of this ancient,
• 15:30
  Speaker 8: unbroken line of tradition coming all the way down from
• 15:34
  Speaker 8: the pre Christian pagan practices. A lot of that is
• 15:39
  Speaker 8: really not factual or frankly made up, and so yeah,
• 15:46
  Speaker 8: I feel like that's but that's nobody's fault really, I
• 15:49
  Speaker 8: think also because if you, you know, you wake up
• 15:53
  Speaker 8: one day and you're like, Okay, I have Slavic ancestors,
• 15:56
  Speaker 8: and I would love to reconnect with this culture and
• 15:59
  Speaker 8: there you know, approaches to life, their craft, their beliefs,
• 16:03
  Speaker 8: all of that. You probably begin by trying to look
• 16:07
  Speaker 8: for some information out there online, and it's really hard
• 16:10
  Speaker 8: for folks who don't know our languages to be able
• 16:14
  Speaker 8: to discern what's actually legit versus what really is. And
• 16:17
  Speaker 8: so you know, a lot of the as you asked
• 16:20
  Speaker 8: mistakes just come from the fact that it's not easy
• 16:23
  Speaker 8: to access information straight away that would be a good
• 16:27
  Speaker 8: base for all of this, right, So I would encourage
• 16:31
  Speaker 8: people who are trying to maybe get into this to
• 16:36
  Speaker 8: explore their ancestral roots and our cultural traditions, to try
• 16:40
  Speaker 8: and look for people who are locals. And it's not
• 16:45
  Speaker 8: just me, like, I'm so happy to see more and
• 16:47
  Speaker 8: more people actually from the broadly speaking Slavic you know,
• 16:52
  Speaker 8: regents and countries getting out there and creating content or
• 16:56
  Speaker 8: writing books in English. So there's more and more legit
• 16:59
  Speaker 8: information out there. So if you're looking, and if you
• 17:02
  Speaker 8: really are serious about exploring this, try to learn from
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: the locals first, ask them what are some you know,
• 17:09
  Speaker 8: legit sources so you don't get into you could really
• 17:12
  Speaker 8: get into some nasty rabbit holes with the with exploring
• 17:16
  Speaker 8: this stuff. So yeah, yeah, thank you.
• 17:21
  Speaker 7: I was gonna say, as an unabashed romanticizer of pre
• 17:24
  Speaker 7: Christian history, it's really interesting to see in Lithuania a
• 17:30
  Speaker 7: reconstruction movement going on right now that is having a
• 17:34
  Speaker 7: lot of popularity. I mean, it's it's almost like the
• 17:37
  Speaker 7: national religion at this point of removal, and I'm seeing that,
• 17:40
  Speaker 7: and I'm like, wow, this is you know, they're actually
• 17:43
  Speaker 7: turning back the clock. They're going past the point of
• 17:45
  Speaker 7: the Northern Crusades and actually exploring the pre Christian roots.
• 17:49
  Speaker 7: What are your thoughts on these reconstruction movements going on
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: in Slavic paganism.
• 17:54
  Speaker 8: Mm hmm. I can mostly speak to the ones I
• 17:57
  Speaker 8: observe here in Poland, since that that's thing that I'm
• 18:00
  Speaker 8: most familiar with. I can't really speak to Romova because
• 18:03
  Speaker 8: I'm not informed enough to be having an opinion, to
• 18:07
  Speaker 8: be honest, but I can see and honestly, I was
• 18:11
  Speaker 8: also saw years back at a point where I was
• 18:13
  Speaker 8: deeply into exploring this as well, this pagan reconstructionism, and
• 18:18
  Speaker 8: in Poland this is called rogimovistvo or rodnovari, which is
• 18:23
  Speaker 8: basically meaning native faith. Right. I see that people are
• 18:29
  Speaker 8: really craving this pre Christian connection to their own culture,
• 18:33
  Speaker 8: and that stems from the fact that's growing up we
• 18:37
  Speaker 8: are not taught about it at all. Like the history
• 18:41
  Speaker 8: of Poland, for example, is thought starting from the moment
• 18:44
  Speaker 8: that Poland was baptized as a country, and that's where
• 18:48
  Speaker 8: we begin as the people. Right, So people at some
• 18:53
  Speaker 8: point who may be you know, take a step back
• 18:57
  Speaker 8: from Catholicism, which is the main religion, are disappointed and
• 19:03
  Speaker 8: are looking for something older, something that feels really ancestral
• 19:06
  Speaker 8: and ancient and deep in their blood. You know, it's
• 19:09
  Speaker 8: a craving that just goes very deep, and that's where
• 19:12
  Speaker 8: those reconstructive movements come in and they fill that hole.
• 19:18
  Speaker 8: And you know, of course I respect the people who
• 19:21
  Speaker 8: are into that. I have been participating in some of
• 19:25
  Speaker 8: their rituals and practices, not as a formal member, but
• 19:31
  Speaker 8: mostly as an outsider. It's not for me personally, I
• 19:35
  Speaker 8: have to say that, because I don't feel personally the
• 19:37
  Speaker 8: need to sterilize our folklore off of the folk Catholic elements.
• 19:43
  Speaker 8: For example, I just don't need that because I dealt
• 19:46
  Speaker 8: with my own religious wounds and it doesn't bother me.
• 19:48
  Speaker 8: But I also completely understand people who just can't stand
• 19:52
  Speaker 8: that and they need to be rid of that and
• 19:55
  Speaker 8: try to practice something that is as close in their eye,
• 20:00
  Speaker 8: at least to something that was here in the pre
• 20:04
  Speaker 8: Christian times. I respect that. I think it can bring
• 20:08
  Speaker 8: a lot of healing, a lot of personal development, and
• 20:12
  Speaker 8: I think it's just good for a community. Also. On
• 20:14
  Speaker 8: that you know other level as well, because these communities
• 20:18
  Speaker 8: of worshipers you could say, who are mostly like you
• 20:23
  Speaker 8: could see them as polythias, right, they are really close
• 20:26
  Speaker 8: knit communities who are doing something really cool together. So yeah,
• 20:29
  Speaker 8: I think it's really cool that we can see that
• 20:32
  Speaker 8: being more prominent today, and that slowly, because I don't know,
• 20:36
  Speaker 8: that's not maybe something that people would pay attention to
• 20:39
  Speaker 8: in like the US or Western countries, but here it's
• 20:42
  Speaker 8: a big deal that it's slowly becoming accepted actually, because
• 20:46
  Speaker 8: like a decade or two ago, that would be completely
• 20:49
  Speaker 8: socially just unacceptable for somebody to come out as a
• 20:54
  Speaker 8: pagan or something like that, right, So yeah, it's cool
• 20:57
  Speaker 8: that we are seeing this just becoming normalized.
• 20:59
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I do have a question for you because here
• 21:04
  Speaker 9: in the US we do have a lot of folklore magicians,
• 21:08
  Speaker 9: if you want to call them that, and I come
• 21:10
  Speaker 9: from a culture that also has that when it comes
• 21:13
  Speaker 9: to folklore.
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: Though, as you did your research, did.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: You find that a lot of how can I say,
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: nationalized habits, whether they be in Catholicism or Christianity or
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: Orthodox were actually folk magic themselves and they became regular
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: to you where it became normal as you did your research,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: because I found that out, even though you venture out
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: into ceremonial magic and everything.
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: It's like you look at people from.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: The who's talking you from the outside, and you're like,
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: how is this not normal to you? Because this is
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: normal within our culture. Because I have to admit I
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: was surprised that there's Polish folklaw, but I have a
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: My significant other is Slavic and a lot of things.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: When we talk about magic, he's like, well, yes, I'm Orthodox,
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: but this and this and this is popular, and we
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: do go to the person who does read the tea's
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: and they read the cards and it's normalized. But for
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Westerners that are unfamiliar with that, it's like foreign to them.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: How do you deal with that and how does that
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: fall into the Polish folklore?
• 22:31
  Speaker 8: M hm, that's a very elaborate question, so I would
• 22:35
  Speaker 8: have to break it down a bit, right, But yeah,
• 22:37
  Speaker 8: I can see what you're talking about. In general, there's
• 22:39
  Speaker 8: like a lot of those aspects of the folkloric craft
• 22:43
  Speaker 8: that's kind of seeped into the religion and vice versa. Right,
• 22:48
  Speaker 8: that's what you're kind of talking about, right, Like something
• 22:51
  Speaker 8: that's just people in the mainstream would consider acceptable even
• 22:55
  Speaker 8: though they are religious has like older roots or roots
• 23:00
  Speaker 8: in magic, which technically, you know, shouldn't be accepted by
• 23:04
  Speaker 8: our mainstream religion, right. So yeah, there's a lot of
• 23:07
  Speaker 8: that in Polish culture in general. And also even if
• 23:12
  Speaker 8: you look at the like, I don't even know where
• 23:15
  Speaker 8: to start because it's everywhere, so sorry for being scatter
• 23:17
  Speaker 8: brained about this, but even if you look about the
• 23:21
  Speaker 8: church calendar of like celebrations and everything, most of them
• 23:26
  Speaker 8: are rooted in those agrarian traditions that actually have a
• 23:29
  Speaker 8: lot to do with just worshiping the earth literally Matt Kazemia,
• 23:34
  Speaker 8: Mother Earth, right, paying you know, respect to the land,
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: spirits and stuff like that, and also with the coming
• 23:41
  Speaker 8: to specialized practitioners for aid. Like we do have that
• 23:45
  Speaker 8: as well in certain pockets of Poland where you have
• 23:48
  Speaker 8: practitioners who specialize in like folk healing or like doing
• 23:52
  Speaker 8: egg cleanses, or like fortune telling and stuff like that,
• 23:56
  Speaker 8: and it's somehow acceptable in the eyes of rel just people,
• 24:00
  Speaker 8: even though it shouldn't be, right. So, yeah, there's a
• 24:03
  Speaker 8: lot of that as well, and I think that is normalized.
• 24:06
  Speaker 8: Those aspects are normalized because they were I guess incorporated
• 24:12
  Speaker 8: into the folk Catholic perception of what's somehow religiously cohesive,
• 24:19
  Speaker 8: even though if you look as an outsider, that kind
• 24:21
  Speaker 8: of doesn't make sense really, But that's where the syncretism is.
• 24:25
  Speaker 8: It's a living, breathing, you know, practice that just is
• 24:30
  Speaker 8: present and has been throughout this whole time. So I
• 24:33
  Speaker 8: don't know if I'm like if I lost part of
• 24:35
  Speaker 8: your question there, if you could like, is there something
• 24:38
  Speaker 8: that that I missed to address or because I feel
• 24:43
  Speaker 8: like there was more?
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: No, Actually you did answer it, because actually answered the
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: question I was going to follow up, what was do
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: you follow the will of the year? And you did
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: actually say you do follow the will of the year.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: And most ceremonial magicians and those who follow those lines
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: of magical practice, it's a little bit harder for them
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: to understand that folk magic is along those lines.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: It's just a little bit acceptable.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: And we, yeah, we actually, how can it's more normalize
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: with us at a young age that magic is not
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: how can I say magic is not something to wonder about,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: it's more like a daily practice when it comes to
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: folk magic and rural magic in that sense.
• 25:39
  Speaker 8: Oh yeah, that's so well said. Honestly, like let's let's thinking,
• 25:42
  Speaker 8: let's philosophy and all of that, and more just doing
• 25:46
  Speaker 8: and being out there, you know, with the with the
• 25:48
  Speaker 8: practice on a daily basis, that's definitely they're approaching folk magic.
• 25:52
  Speaker 8: So yeah, I agree with that when it comes to
• 25:54
  Speaker 8: the folk practices, as you said, around the wheel of
• 25:57
  Speaker 8: the year, technically I wouldn't consider it to be a
• 26:01
  Speaker 8: wheel of the year. It's more just like a calendar
• 26:04
  Speaker 8: focused on the shifts in the patterns of the seasons,
• 26:10
  Speaker 8: but also like cultural elements that would be prominent around
• 26:15
  Speaker 8: certain times of the year. So I tend to usually
• 26:19
  Speaker 8: call this more like a folkloric calendar or something like that.
• 26:22
  Speaker 8: And what is funny is that some of the most
• 26:25
  Speaker 8: important dates actually they were preserved as feast days of saints,
• 26:30
  Speaker 8: so you know, there's this religious layer on top of
• 26:34
  Speaker 8: everything that was the most important to the people, just
• 26:36
  Speaker 8: to make sure just in case that you know, they
• 26:40
  Speaker 8: perceive it as part of the monoty as religion that's
• 26:44
  Speaker 8: you know, kind of imposed upon them so that they
• 26:48
  Speaker 8: you know, have to perceive it through that lens and
• 26:51
  Speaker 8: no other. But yeah, it's definitely present, like an everyday
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: thing that you do and it's hard not to incorporate
• 26:59
  Speaker 8: it as especially if you work with the land, like
• 27:01
  Speaker 8: as a farmer or somebody who just you know, does
• 27:04
  Speaker 8: this kind of work, because it dictates when you plant seeds,
• 27:09
  Speaker 8: when you gather things, when certain plants bloom or are
• 27:13
  Speaker 8: ready to be harvested, you know, or when to take
• 27:16
  Speaker 8: your animals out there to graze in the fields for
• 27:19
  Speaker 8: the first time, or when to take them. But like
• 27:21
  Speaker 8: literally everything is dictated by this calendar, right, and it's
• 27:27
  Speaker 8: filled with for every such a date. It's not only
• 27:31
  Speaker 8: dictating the agrarian cycles of everything, but it's dictating how
• 27:37
  Speaker 8: the life of everyday life of people is structured, how
• 27:41
  Speaker 8: people planned things is just ingrained into every single aspect
• 27:47
  Speaker 8: of a like a you could say, average peasence life, right. So, yeah,
• 27:53
  Speaker 8: it's hard to separate these things.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Jewels, you had a question, correct, Oh, I.
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: Just wanted to tell her that I completely agree with her.
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: There there is something happening right now in my own case.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: You know, in the past.
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: Couple of years of me being a Christian mystic or
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: what I've come to realize what I you know, have
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: have been uh, you know, the past six months, I
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: have come to understand that my ancestors didn't worship demons,
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: and these are emanations of the Creator, you know, just
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: like how you said nature is uh, this representation of God,
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: you know, here on earth, this divine presence that we feel,
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: and it is this calling that you do feel. That
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: that led me to go back to my uh Scandinavian
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: and Germanic roots and read like these stories from the
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: lens of my own people, right, not not from this
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: this uh kind of subjective lens that's been pushed upon
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: us by the powers that be, you know.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: And even when you go to the Eda's like Snory
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: was a Christian, you know, like this is written through
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: the lens of dogma and religion, and so it's I
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: think it is important to go back to the to
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: the root, right to the origin of where you come from,
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: especially as as a people. And uh, yeah, I just
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: wanted to say, yeah, you're spot on. I think it's
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: something that's happening to a lot of people right now,
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: and I think a lot of people are trying to
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: reject it, and I think that's harmful especially I mean, look,
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: and what you were speaking on, like if you have
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: this relationship with the Holy Spirit, what you call the
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: Christ what has been talked about in mystery schools and
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: all these ancient cultures. You know, maybe in other words
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: or other terms, but it is the spirit that has existed.
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: You know, you don't have to lose that, But don't
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: go into researching you know, your own blood and your
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: own heritage. I mean you could say you know from
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: someone from another point of view, right, I mean, it
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: depends on who those people are, you know. But yeah,
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: I mean I think it's something that everyone should embrace
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: and I think it's beautiful so to speak on that. Yeah, No,
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: it's it's definitely something that I've experienced myself. Reading the
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: Volsunga saga right now on on my show, and seeing
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: where you know, my my people come from. Is it's
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: just it's it's incredible and and there's no shame in it.
• 30:28
  Speaker 8: So yeah, thanks, thanks for mentioning that. I really appreciate that.
• 30:33
  Speaker 8: And I also think that's what you're mentioning with. You know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 8: it's making sense in the context of because if I'm
• 30:40
  Speaker 8: understanding correctly, like you are practiced through a Christian mister Glens.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: Right, me and my wife. But my wife will tell
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: you as well. She found God in the forest. Yeah, yeah,
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: and so why should we deny that just to embrace
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: this other thing. It's like you you could if you
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: are truly living And me and Brandon talked about this
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: when he came on my show this past week, The
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: Path of the Mystic, you know, like, if you're truly
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: living that life, I think it's something that you can
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: you know, you can find both of it right where
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: you can find it, and you can find yourself in
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: both places.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 31:18
  Speaker 8: Yeah, that's very true. And when it comes to how
• 31:21
  Speaker 8: it shows up, for example, in our culture, is the
• 31:24
  Speaker 8: dual faith elements, right, it's ever present that there's almost
• 31:31
  Speaker 8: like a version of the mainstream religion that people embraced
• 31:36
  Speaker 8: as a way to conceal some of the practices to
• 31:39
  Speaker 8: make them acceptable to those who are in power. But
• 31:43
  Speaker 8: also at the end of the day, the way these
• 31:48
  Speaker 8: traditions and these beliefs evolve, it is so deeply intermingled syncretically,
• 31:56
  Speaker 8: the monotheist aspects with the older non monotious aspects of
• 32:02
  Speaker 8: the beliefs that it's impossible to separate them. And I
• 32:05
  Speaker 8: think everybody, no matter the kind of religious background you
• 32:10
  Speaker 8: have or the things you believe and broadly speaking, you
• 32:14
  Speaker 8: can find a space for yourself with then folk magic.
• 32:17
  Speaker 8: And even in Poland we have practitioners practitioners of folk
• 32:22
  Speaker 8: magic who would consider themselves Catholics. We also have those
• 32:26
  Speaker 8: who are more in my strain, who perceive themselves more
• 32:29
  Speaker 8: as heretics, who actually reject the religion but still take
• 32:34
  Speaker 8: from those religious elements, uh, And folks who are in between, right,
• 32:38
  Speaker 8: like the Pagans, who take all of those elements out
• 32:41
  Speaker 8: because they prefer that. I believe there's a space for
• 32:43
  Speaker 8: all of us, no matter how you inherently choose to
• 32:46
  Speaker 8: believe in, how the spirit show up and all of that.
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: Right, So yeah, absolutely, but yeah, and to add on
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: to that, you know, for how much we've been lied
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: to in our past, you know we should be able
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: to say, hey, we need to look at this through
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: this objective lens, right to be able to really find
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: the truth. Because I think a lot of people right now,
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: you got a lot of disinformation slop out there, people
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: pushing uh what I like to call fear propaganda, fear porn, right,
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: and that's how they kind of control I think the
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: mass consciousness, the eggrigor of society or has headless with
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: the genius loci. Uh you know, and and uh it works,
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: it's magic right like these people are doing.
• 33:32
  Speaker 8: Uh.
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: I could get into it with you.
• 33:35
  Speaker 8: That's a deep stuff right.
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: And everything you know. But no, I think, uh, I
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: think what what what you're speaking? I think you're one
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: hundred percent on what you're speaking to and you are
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: You're on your path, right, You're following your path and
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: you you're staying true to that. So I think that, oh, yeah,
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: for sure, Yeah, thank you.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I have a go for it, Go for it, go
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: for it, let's.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Hit it, okay, Joanna Hi. So I so you were
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: a practicing ceremonial magician and you were doing all these
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: other techniques of consciousness change and tapping into that golden
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: thread of the esoteric path, and then you found yourself
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: into your tradition that your genes and your genetics and
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: that your DNA stems from, which I think is really important,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: which then adheres to what Carl Jung talks about is
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: getting back to the symbols and signs of the unconscious
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: so you can understand yourself a little bit better. But
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: what my question actually is is, and if I would
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: love to hear you talk about it, is how did
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: what you started translate into and integrate into what you're
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: doing now for your practice. And would you say that
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: the esoteric understanding of that golden thread of trying to
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: understand your individual nature with reality is within all of
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: those systems. It just is how your nervous system and
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: culture and techniques tap into those types of things.
• 34:57
  Speaker 8: If that makes sense, Yeah, it does make sense. I
• 35:01
  Speaker 8: don't think you will like my answer though.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I don't have a stake in any game here, Okay, okay.
• 35:08
  Speaker 8: Cool, because I have to combine that background of let's say,
• 35:13
  Speaker 8: ceremonial magic and the techniques you mentioned, with also my
• 35:16
  Speaker 8: background in psychology, because again I believe those are related.
• 35:21
  Speaker 8: Looking at it from my perspective now as a folk
• 35:24
  Speaker 8: practitioner and especially an animist, I personally think that psychology
• 35:29
  Speaker 8: and those techniques seen in the more western esoteric traditions
• 35:35
  Speaker 8: are more of an obstacle actually, in my humble opinion.
• 35:39
  Speaker 8: And you know, when I was younger, I had my
• 35:45
  Speaker 8: fair share of like the fascination in the psychological model
• 35:48
  Speaker 8: of magic, and I did practice in that for quite
• 35:51
  Speaker 8: a few years. But in the end, you know, I
• 35:56
  Speaker 8: found that this lens is at odds with my worldview
• 35:59
  Speaker 8: and especially with animism, because at the end of the day,
• 36:04
  Speaker 8: when you look at it, these approaches are very deeply colonized,
• 36:11
  Speaker 8: very deeply anthropocentric, uh, and they pathologize the kind of
• 36:17
  Speaker 8: traditional indigenous folkloric knowledge, science, and philosophies as something that's
• 36:24
  Speaker 8: very primitive, stupid, coming from people who don't know what
• 36:28
  Speaker 8: they're talking about. Right, It's this kind of power disproportion
• 36:32
  Speaker 8: between those who are learned, studied versus the stupid peasants
• 36:38
  Speaker 8: who are just to serve. Right, So, before you.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Get deeper into that, what do you mean by I
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: don't like I'm kind of confused on how you're getting
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: too that.
• 36:49
  Speaker 8: I don't know where I lost you.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: No, No, it's not about asking. I'm trying to figure
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: out who is the one saying the stupid animists peasants
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: nonsensical because I consider myself as a heretic as much
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: as the next person. And so what's interesting is that
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: I'm getting at the idea that we are human, we
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: all have nervous systems that we're trying to tap into
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: the basically the consciousness and pulse of the planet of
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: that animist world, soul and so if we're how do
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: we do that? And what I see it as is
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: we all are trying to do whatever ways that feels
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: natural to our own psyche, mind, sysogy, and when we
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: do that, we tap into maybe what the Polish folk magic,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: the animistic thing, the ceremonial magic, whatever it is, to
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: try to get into those things. So I'm trying to
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: figure out how do we get into colon colonialism.
• 37:42
  Speaker 8: It's very deeply rooted in those practices that come from
• 37:46
  Speaker 8: those who started them as part of, you know, just
• 37:50
  Speaker 8: being accessible to the elites, to those who are in power.
• 37:54
  Speaker 8: I don't know how, I don't know which approaches you
• 37:57
  Speaker 8: explore or which ones you draw upon. It's not the
• 38:00
  Speaker 8: same today. I'm talking about a few hundred years back,
• 38:03
  Speaker 8: when the power disproportions in societies were maybe much more
• 38:07
  Speaker 8: visible to the people than they are today. They were
• 38:10
  Speaker 8: much more obvious. You could only access ceremonial kinds of
• 38:17
  Speaker 8: magic if you were from like nobility, if you were
• 38:22
  Speaker 8: part of you know, those who were part of the
• 38:25
  Speaker 8: church and so on. You couldn't access any of that
• 38:29
  Speaker 8: if you weren't you know, studied, if you didn't go
• 38:32
  Speaker 8: to university, if you weren't rich if you weren't from
• 38:34
  Speaker 8: a particular part of society. So you know, the world
• 38:38
  Speaker 8: views that these traditions are based on are very anthropocentric
• 38:44
  Speaker 8: because at the end of the day, they were created
• 38:47
  Speaker 8: similarly to monotisms by the way to serve humans and
• 38:52
  Speaker 8: to perceive humans as you know, being in a hierarchy
• 38:57
  Speaker 8: above everything else in creation essentially right, and folk magic
• 39:03
  Speaker 8: is not compatible compatible with that worldview. Animism is not
• 39:07
  Speaker 8: compatible with that worldview. And even modern psychology, you know,
• 39:12
  Speaker 8: is very colonized in that regard as well. Me as
• 39:15
  Speaker 8: a psychologist, having had I currently you know, don't do
• 39:19
  Speaker 8: psychology anymore. I actually distanced myself after over eight decade
• 39:23
  Speaker 8: of being a practicing psychologist because I couldn't, you know,
• 39:28
  Speaker 8: just keep living that while also being an animist. You
• 39:33
  Speaker 8: kind of have to choose at some point where your
• 39:35
  Speaker 8: ethics stand. And if you see the field that you
• 39:40
  Speaker 8: work in pathologizes animist perceptions of the world, pathologizes indigenous
• 39:47
  Speaker 8: approaches to the world around you, you know, the belief
• 39:50
  Speaker 8: in spirits or respecting other beings around you on the
• 39:54
  Speaker 8: same level as you know yourself as a human and
• 39:58
  Speaker 8: essentially not seeing yourself as the center of the universe
• 40:01
  Speaker 8: as a human being, I couldn't, you know, just see
• 40:06
  Speaker 8: it making sense for me ethically. So that's where I
• 40:10
  Speaker 8: come from. You know, this takes a lot of unpacking
• 40:13
  Speaker 8: to get there, so I don't think we can go
• 40:15
  Speaker 8: through that entire process here. I'm just marking.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Do you think then that do you believe that there's
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: a golden thread that stems through all humans that are
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: trying to understand their place in nature, and that golden
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: thread just moves its way through the human nervous system
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: through certain symbols.
• 40:34
  Speaker 8: I think that's a very abstract way of putting things.
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: I'm not sure what you mean by that, because this
• 40:42
  Speaker 8: could be understood Jocelyn Godwin.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: So, Jocelyn Godwin has written a book called Golden Thread,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and it talks about the different syncretized understandings of the
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Hermetic path, the Neoplatonic path, the Western esoteric tradition through
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: a long time. However, that all stems from where Plato
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: understood his ideas of shamanism, from the regions of these
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: people coming down and then integrating it into the Western
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: mystery tradition, and so that mystery tradition has what they
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: would call in Jocelyn Godwin's work, the golden thread that
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: stems through things. And as we say, as I've been
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: trying to tell people, and how I think comes off
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: in the Rejects and all these different things, is that
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: even though the persona the mask may change, the symbols
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: are pointing to the same direction. That consciousness is all
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: there is, and we're trying to tap into the magic,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: myth and meaning in the world. We're trying to bring
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: back something that seems to be ancient, no matter if
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: you're an animist, no matter if you're a Christian mystic,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: no matter if you're an Eastern mystical practitioner of things
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: that we are all when we get into that golden thread,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: are trying to bring back myth, magic and meaning. You
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: know what I mean.
• 41:52
  Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, I know what you mean. I've been there also.
• 41:55
  Speaker 8: I get it. It's a very union approach in a way,
• 41:59
  Speaker 8: which I've also have explored for a long while in
• 42:02
  Speaker 8: my earlier life. I currently don't hold that view because
• 42:07
  Speaker 8: I believe it's very reductive in terms of erasing very
• 42:12
  Speaker 8: local expressions of certain things and boiling them down to
• 42:16
  Speaker 8: the same kind of core. And I can see where
• 42:18
  Speaker 8: that stems from, because on some levels we have to admit, like, objectively,
• 42:23
  Speaker 8: our experiences will be similar in a lot of ways,
• 42:26
  Speaker 8: our perceptions of spirits will overlap. No matter where you live,
• 42:31
  Speaker 8: there will be spirits who serve similar functions or like
• 42:34
  Speaker 8: there will be rituals or techniques or of achieving altered states.
• 42:39
  Speaker 8: Let's say that are similar and so on. That doesn't
• 42:42
  Speaker 8: mean that they are the same. That doesn't mean that
• 42:44
  Speaker 8: we should be erasing the differences between them or making
• 42:49
  Speaker 8: them lave. I'm saying erasing okay, okay, because that's how
• 42:55
  Speaker 8: I Yeah, I perceive it that way. I believe that
• 42:59
  Speaker 8: when you take and try to create a standardized language
• 43:04
  Speaker 8: for experiences of people around the globe and apply it
• 43:08
  Speaker 8: everywhere you are in power, you are creating the narrative
• 43:12
  Speaker 8: by creating that language lens right, So I believe everybody
• 43:17
  Speaker 8: living in different places around the world, in different cultures,
• 43:21
  Speaker 8: their language, their way of expressing that, their way of
• 43:26
  Speaker 8: you know, receiving that. It's just a valid and it
• 43:30
  Speaker 8: just shouldn't be equated. Yeah, That's what I'm trying to
• 43:32
  Speaker 8: get at, which is why I don't usually I'm not
• 43:36
  Speaker 8: in favor of such approaches because I see them as reductive.
• 43:40
  Speaker 8: To be honest, can you do you like the diversity?
• 43:42
  Speaker 9: Yeah?
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Of course, of course? Could it be both? Could you
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: both have the individual level of cultural experiences as well
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: as trying to tap into the universal?
• 43:52
  Speaker 8: I mean, who says you can't nice?
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm let's see. I'm trying to see where we
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: agree because I think and the reason I talk about
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: this way is because of in the West, what I
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: see is us continually moving into this post like we're
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: within a post modern materialistic, functional deconstructionist. I believe that
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: it's like it's tearing us apart, like on a global
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: and an individual level. So it's like, how can we
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: as heretics altogether try to speak while also using our
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: own separate little our areas of expertise both rise up
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: altogether and be all like, Hey, I'm not willing to
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: accept this postmodern materialist, functional, nonsensical worldview of these things.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: And so I'm I'm really trying to get away from
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: I myself. I don't consider myself a reductionist at all,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: because if it just doesn't work with my worldview as
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: well as I have my own blending of different genetics
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: within my own being, and so I've just it's fascinating.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I appreciate your you're definitely your research and study and
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. So it's like, how can we all
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: come together in this day and age where we're in
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: a globalized world no matter what, and we can't help it,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: and so how can we be are in the culture
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: and also accepting the wider cultural viewpoint at the same time.
• 45:13
  Speaker 8: See, that's a really good question and something that's that's
• 45:16
  Speaker 8: like really valid to ask in these times. Honestly, So
• 45:19
  Speaker 8: I can see where you're coming from. I think we
• 45:22
  Speaker 8: would be probably approaching it from like separate ends of
• 45:24
  Speaker 8: the spectrum, but maybe we would arrive at something eventually.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: It seems like we did. It, seems like we did
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: kind well.
• 45:32
  Speaker 7: I think the point that we're dancing around is something
• 45:36
  Speaker 7: far older than the imposition of Christianity, which is the
• 45:39
  Speaker 7: urban versus the rural right. And so we keep talking
• 45:43
  Speaker 7: about folk magic, we talk about practices relating to this
• 45:46
  Speaker 7: extremely local stuff, and yet you know, you've got the
• 45:51
  Speaker 7: urban which is always trying to reach out and sort
• 45:53
  Speaker 7: of either acquire or put down any of those practices.
• 45:56
  Speaker 7: The term pagan didn't come about because of Christianity, the
• 45:59
  Speaker 7: Romans would doing this all the time. They were doing
• 46:01
  Speaker 7: this up in England. This is what Julius Caesar wrote
• 46:03
  Speaker 7: about when he was talking, you know, he made up
• 46:05
  Speaker 7: the Burning Man that they can continually use that all
• 46:09
  Speaker 7: of these different movies today. So it's the same idea
• 46:12
  Speaker 7: of you know, the urban is trying to put a
• 46:15
  Speaker 7: brand on everything, and the role is just trying to
• 46:18
  Speaker 7: keep what they have.
• 46:19
  Speaker 8: You know, that's an interesting perspective. Yeah, there's something to it,
• 46:23
  Speaker 8: for sure. I can see that, you know, with the
• 46:26
  Speaker 8: as you put it urban versus rurle, I'm not sure
• 46:29
  Speaker 8: if I would put it that way. I would maybe
• 46:31
  Speaker 8: see it in terms of like systemic things or hierarchies
• 46:35
  Speaker 8: in societies in general. Maybe, but yeah, definitely, like one
• 46:39
  Speaker 8: part is just looking towards globalization and making everything equal
• 46:44
  Speaker 8: according to one particular chosen lens that's universal enough that
• 46:48
  Speaker 8: everybody can more or less like live with it, I suppose,
• 46:53
  Speaker 8: versus the localized stuff, the personal the intimate experience of
• 47:00
  Speaker 8: these things, right, which, Yeah.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: One thing, I if I was thinking of a few
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: things where you guys were talking before, I guess kind
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: of like boiling stuff down or maybe misappropriating or whatever.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: I just wanted to say something that I do actually
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: have questions that you kind of touched on within your
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: answers earlier. One thing that I have noticed, well, see,
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: now I'm a ceremonial magician and an occultist, and like
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: I guess kind of maybe depends on what you're into,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: is the.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Way that you'll look at things.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: But to me, even as a ceremonial magician, because of
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: ways that I look at magic, I would still think
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: that the way something is being said or that spell
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: in that language that it was first done in probably
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: has a different sound signature than what's coming out of
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: my mouth. So I may not be able to mimic
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: that correctly on something even it's very I would consider
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: that possibly being very specific, so I can see like
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: maybe the loss of the translation of actually even losing
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: part of the spell. But then and then to even
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: just add like not trying to I really didn't have
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: a you.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Know, really a saying in any of that opinion of
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: what happened earlier.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: But another thing to add, I will say, from having
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: guests on this show cover indigenous things or Native American tribes,
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: I've seen countless times that symbols that they will show.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, that order uses that, that order uses that.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: That pygician put that symbol on his book, and I
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: had no idea that was a Native American sign.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: So it is interesting how you will even see these
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: symbols that were from indigenous groups or Native American tribes
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: getting pimped out by orders, and there is nothing about it.
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: When they talk about it. They're not going back to
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: those people and giving them credit. So I have noticed that,
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: and it's actually very weird, and it has made me
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: want to look into that stuff more because obviously they've
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: been influenced by those dudes, those people.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: So that's all I really.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: Wanted it to, kind of like just I just throw
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: my two cents into that whole conversation earlier.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: But now I did have a question.
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: You mentioned animism and psychology I didn't want to get
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: that was actually my next question. After all this your
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: work blends animism and traditional craft. For people that are listening,
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: they may not know exactly what that means. What is
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: animism and what does it look like in daily life
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: where you live.
• 49:25
  Speaker 8: So there's quite a few deffinitions of animism depending on
• 49:30
  Speaker 8: who you ask. Luckily, nowadays we can look at it
• 49:34
  Speaker 8: from a more decolonized lens again, and that's the approach
• 49:37
  Speaker 8: that I personally take to animism. So in my approach,
• 49:41
  Speaker 8: animism is essentially a while of life, a way of
• 49:44
  Speaker 8: life where you recognize that broadly speaking, ecology around us
• 49:50
  Speaker 8: is inhabited by countless beings, all of whom possess person who,
• 49:56
  Speaker 8: and that person who is very important. It's central to
• 49:59
  Speaker 8: the of animism, right, And what's even more important that
• 50:04
  Speaker 8: these persons should be respected as equally important members of
• 50:10
  Speaker 8: our local communities. And that aspect of respect and building
• 50:15
  Speaker 8: relationships with them is also central to animism. So that's
• 50:20
  Speaker 8: how I would define it. I hope that's clear, clear enough,
• 50:26
  Speaker 8: And you know, it's actually one of the oldest ways
• 50:29
  Speaker 8: that humans related to the world around them when you
• 50:32
  Speaker 8: boil it down, and you can see it in many
• 50:35
  Speaker 8: like traditional again indigenous that we already mentioned ways of
• 50:40
  Speaker 8: relating to the world or beliefs.
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 50:43
  Speaker 8: Also, the folkloric perception of the world is deeped in animism.
• 50:47
  Speaker 8: So if you look, because you asked about my culture,
• 50:50
  Speaker 8: I guess, and what that looks like in the daily
• 50:53
  Speaker 8: life where I live. So obviously, like we are way
• 50:58
  Speaker 8: way way into the process of like cultural globalization, and
• 51:03
  Speaker 8: even prior to that, Christianization and all of that. So
• 51:06
  Speaker 8: these things nowadays are surviving in very concealed forms, you
• 51:11
  Speaker 8: could say, but they're still very much present in our
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: folk culture. You can see, even though most people here
• 51:18
  Speaker 8: would consider themselves Catholics, how they still go to wayside
• 51:21
  Speaker 8: shrines and leave offerings there. Those are places where that
• 51:26
  Speaker 8: used to be people knew that they used to be
• 51:29
  Speaker 8: inhabited by land spirits. The features of the lands that
• 51:33
  Speaker 8: are revered as sacred, like sacred rocks, sacred hills, sacred
• 51:38
  Speaker 8: springs and so on. Nowadays, a lot of the times
• 51:40
  Speaker 8: they are attributed to Mary's folk clerk, Mary's or saints.
• 51:45
  Speaker 8: But people still go to those places for healing, for miracles,
• 51:49
  Speaker 8: for worship. They take pilgrimages to places in the land
• 51:55
  Speaker 8: that were always very alive with local spirits, and still
• 51:59
  Speaker 8: you know, giving of rings, giving prayer and still continuing
• 52:02
  Speaker 8: that tradition that is very very stepped in animism, right,
• 52:05
  Speaker 8: even though concealed under Catholicism. So it may not be
• 52:11
  Speaker 8: like openly recognized or called animism, even by the people
• 52:15
  Speaker 8: who engage in that. But that's essentially what it is.
• 52:19
  Speaker 8: So people treating the land around them as alive and
• 52:23
  Speaker 8: possessing personhood, that's animism.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. And one other
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: questions a little let you guys ask if you got anything,
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: how did psychology, you know, with your professional lens, change
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: how you interpret spirits, trans fear and religious experiences, stuff
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: along those lines.
• 52:43
  Speaker 8: I think I already kind of addressed that when Brandon
• 52:46
  Speaker 8: asked about more ceremonial approach, I touched on that. I
• 52:52
  Speaker 8: think when it comes to having a folk budget and
• 52:55
  Speaker 8: animists perspective outlook on life and practice right, psychology is
• 53:01
  Speaker 8: more of an obstacle just because of the way it
• 53:03
  Speaker 8: pathologizes those things and essentially sees them as either something
• 53:09
  Speaker 8: that is a mental illness right, or at the very best,
• 53:14
  Speaker 8: something silly that you know, people who are smart don't
• 53:18
  Speaker 8: engage with.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: So.
• 53:20
  Speaker 8: Honestly, back when I was practicing myself through the psychological lens,
• 53:25
  Speaker 8: through the psychological paradigm, my approach was very much Jungian.
• 53:30
  Speaker 8: I couldn't really believe in spirits in a literal sense
• 53:34
  Speaker 8: or be an animist perceive those beings as possessing person
• 53:39
  Speaker 8: who'd nowadays that's just not something I can do anymore. So,
• 53:43
  Speaker 8: you know, those are very very different outlooks on life
• 53:47
  Speaker 8: and perceptions of the world around us.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: We just want to follow up on just real quick
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: because of something that you said, Like even for myself,
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: I guess, like you said, like maybe you don't, like
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: I guess kind of like believe in the spirits. I
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: guess I myself, Like I'm mentioning it a few times
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: on the show, but I really don't even believe that
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: those gods that we talk about are actually real.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Do you believe in.
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: Like I guess, and you know that the gods of
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: that area, if there's like a god who like helps
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: this grow better or this? I mean, do you look
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: at them and then as an actual literal being or
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: is that something different too, you know what I'm trying
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: to ask because of the way that you look at
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: spirits mm hmm.
• 54:28
  Speaker 8: I you know, maybe this is gonna sound funny. I
• 54:32
  Speaker 8: think deities are overrated in the sense that this is
• 54:39
  Speaker 8: a whole historical thing as well. I could get on
• 54:42
  Speaker 8: a tangent. I will try to keep it, you know, short,
• 54:45
  Speaker 8: but This is also something that di it is in general,
• 54:49
  Speaker 8: and the way that pantheons evolved in many cultures was
• 54:54
  Speaker 8: a gradual thing, right. It all started from a very
• 54:57
  Speaker 8: like localized cult of local spirits, some of them becoming
• 55:01
  Speaker 8: more prominent.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 55:03
  Speaker 8: Of course, the situation you could say, political situation of
• 55:08
  Speaker 8: neighboring tribes would be changing, and so some deities would
• 55:11
  Speaker 8: become even more prominent outside of their local place where
• 55:15
  Speaker 8: they stemmed from and so on. That's where you eventually,
• 55:18
  Speaker 8: over the centuries, gets deities, right. But I think it
• 55:24
  Speaker 8: maybe makes sense to worship deities or work with deities
• 55:29
  Speaker 8: if you like. The idea of something as a very
• 55:32
  Speaker 8: broad thing. In my humble opinion, it doesn't really translate
• 55:38
  Speaker 8: well to a very bio original practice. So I don't
• 55:44
  Speaker 8: have a strong opinion on deities and who they are
• 55:47
  Speaker 8: or how they work. I know that when I myself
• 55:49
  Speaker 8: transitioned from a more you could say, like pagan lends
• 55:53
  Speaker 8: towards animists and folk magic lends, I was guided by
• 55:56
  Speaker 8: the spirits that I work with to actually not do
• 55:59
  Speaker 8: deity because that just wasn't condusive to the work I
• 56:02
  Speaker 8: was doing. So and when it comes to you know,
• 56:05
  Speaker 8: because you ask about belief. I don't think you really
• 56:08
  Speaker 8: need to like believe in spirits. In local spirits or
• 56:12
  Speaker 8: those beings, you can actually like interact with them. They
• 56:15
  Speaker 8: are out there, like the literal plant in your garden.
• 56:18
  Speaker 8: They possess a spirit. You can talk to them via
• 56:20
  Speaker 8: divination or altered states. You don't have to imagine that
• 56:23
  Speaker 8: they are out there. You can see them. And it's
• 56:26
  Speaker 8: the case for many of the local land spirits. They
• 56:28
  Speaker 8: are in the land features around you. They are there.
• 56:31
  Speaker 8: It's really not that hard.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, thank you.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: I was just wondering how you looked at it, because
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: you know, again like I myself, I look at the
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: you know, gods and stuff is more of archetypes or
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: something else, you know.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: But thank you. I appreciate anybody I have any questions.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: I do have a question about the exclusion of psychology
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: when it comes to dealing with members because I understand, okay,
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: the mental illness part, because you did mention that, so
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: I can understand if someone deals with spirits spirit possession,
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: it could be seen within psychology as a mental illness.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: But what is your view when it comes to dealing
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: with trauma as a blockage for spiritual growth within the
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: folklore concept.
• 57:28
  Speaker 8: That is a very difficult topic, honestly, and I feel
• 57:31
  Speaker 8: like I need to tread lightly here because this could
• 57:34
  Speaker 8: go a lot of different directions and be misinterpreted. I
• 57:39
  Speaker 8: think in general, when it comes to trauma, we need
• 57:42
  Speaker 8: to be very careful not to, you know, entertain spiritual
• 57:49
  Speaker 8: lenses first and foremost in the sense that it's safer
• 57:53
  Speaker 8: for people to approach trauma or other such very strong
• 58:03
  Speaker 8: conditions that one finds oneself in, right, It's just safer
• 58:07
  Speaker 8: to approach it from a down to earth lens and
• 58:11
  Speaker 8: not consider spiritual causes as a main thing, right, I
• 58:17
  Speaker 8: think we need to be And I'm saying this especially
• 58:22
  Speaker 8: because many people who practice certain types of you could say,
• 58:27
  Speaker 8: like spiritual healing broadly speaking, are not necessarily qualified to
• 58:34
  Speaker 8: deal with somebody in that mental state, so it could
• 58:37
  Speaker 8: potentially just not have the kind of outcome that you
• 58:40
  Speaker 8: would be hoping for. And I think I will just
• 58:43
  Speaker 8: leave it at that because I really don't want to,
• 58:47
  Speaker 8: you know, I really want to be careful with talking
• 58:50
  Speaker 8: about things like this, you know, because it could just
• 58:52
  Speaker 8: cause harm and I don't want to.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: The reason why I ask is because because of within folklore,
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: most folk law, and not just the Polish folk law,
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: but over in general, they tend to dismiss the psychology
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: part and people do turn to that for their spiritual growth.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: So in my opinion, it's usually important for any spiritual
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: advisor to have that background.
• 59:24
  Speaker 8: That's the ideal, Yeah, that's the ideal.
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: Suggests therapy or something like that.
• 59:32
  Speaker 8: Oh yeah, for sure. For sure, we have those tools,
• 59:34
  Speaker 8: so we should be using them, that's for sure, especially
• 59:37
  Speaker 8: if somebody is in crisis. And honestly, we can see
• 59:40
  Speaker 8: a lot of those people who are really praying on
• 59:43
  Speaker 8: people in crisis for like, you know, telling them, oh,
• 59:47
  Speaker 8: you have a courage on you. If I do this
• 59:49
  Speaker 8: ritual on you, that's worth a thousand dollars, you're going
• 59:51
  Speaker 8: to be rid of that, right, And people in situations
• 59:56
  Speaker 8: like that are very desperate for getting aid, which is
• 59:58
  Speaker 8: why I I'm very careful in talking about these things,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 8: because I really don't want to encourage people to, like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 8: people who are already in a possession that's very vulnerable,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 8: to think that it's a good idea essentially to look
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 8: up to somebody for a ritual to cure their thing.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 8: And I think the problem is that you know, in communities,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 8: in societies where you had like a folk killer or somebody,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 8: you would know that person for years or even for generations.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 8: That would be somebody that everybody in the community knew
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 8: that they could rely on, they could trust, they knew
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 8: who this person was, and if they ever did harm
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 8: to anybody or try to take advantage of anybody in
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 8: such a state, they would be cast away from the community. Right.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 8: So that's a much safer way to engage in folkilling
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 8: or in spiritual you know, modalities you could say, of
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 8: healing various ailments, both mental and physical and so on.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 8: But in today's world where you would approach somebody online
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 8: or somebody you just don't know, no, that that's like
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 8: there's a lot of red flags, and I think more
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 8: red flags than not. So I would really, you know,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 8: encourage people to be very cautious with that.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and now we can't trust our doctors, you know.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: Yo, there was, Yeah, there was another question that I
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: want to I'm saying, Yoda her Sorry, John, there was
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: there was a question I wanted to ask you, and
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: it's because you kind of went into it a little bit.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: Oh No, Actually I was the one who kind of
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: brought it up with the point that I was trying
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: to make earlier. Were not really a point, just something
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: that was adding And I was looking at the questions
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: right in front of me for the next one. Do
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: you think the sounding cadence of Polish matters for efficacy
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: or is it just meaning an attention that's like the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: main thing?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 8: Hmm, both. It's it's really hard to separate these things.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 8: There's a lot that goes into it that you know,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 8: constitutes the whole, like spoken formula for example, right, I
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 8: think if we're talking in obviously like an international environment,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 8: I think in general and not just specifically to Polish
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 8: folk magic, your native tongue for you personally is always
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 8: going to be the most powerful, unless you are using
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 8: a different language that you completely don't know at all
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 8: in this in the same or similar way that you
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 8: would use like barbarous words, that kind of thing, where
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 8: you know that takes on a completely different dimension to it.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 8: But in general, if you're speaking speaking formulas, it's always
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 8: best to, you know, just use the tongue that you're
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 8: both familiar with, the one that you think in, the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 8: one that you dream in, and so on. It's just
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 8: going to work the best for you. So and when
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 8: I was actually writing my book, you know, because I
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 8: provide both the Polish and the English translation of all
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 8: of the formulas that I mentioned, which all of them
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 8: are historical, of course, it wasn't easy to translate them
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 8: at all because you kind of have to make those
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 8: decisions again how to preserve the core kind of meaning
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 8: or the message of the formula. Obviously, like a lot
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 8: of the times, you lose the kind of rhythm that
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 8: it has to it naturally, which a lot of the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 8: times would be transinducing in and of itself. It just
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 8: sounds different, It has different qualities in translation. But I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: still believe that you can make them work even in translation,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 8: if you just know how to send word out there,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 8: because then, other than the formula itself the way it
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 8: structured the words it uses, there's also this component of
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 8: you know, sending the words out there into the world
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 8: with your breath. Like, for example, in our culture, it
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 8: was believed that your breath contains life force, So as
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 8: you speak where or as you breathe into something, you
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 8: are actually sending that life force out there to do
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 8: the work for you.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 8: That's why, for example, people who would use spoken formulas.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 8: In Polish folk magic, would a lot of the types
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 8: speak them into the wind because the wind, as a
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 8: living being, would carry them where it needs to go. Right, So, yeah,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 8: there's a lot that goes into the whole process. It's
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 8: not just words.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 7: It's interesting. We've had a goetic magicians talking about how
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: they've increased the effectiveness of their formulas by invoking the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 7: winds before they do anything.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 8: So it's yeah, that makes sense, I can see why.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's it's interesting to me the difference in quality
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: when it comes to how to deal with maybe negative
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 7: spirits or imbalances and sort of the folk or tradition
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 7: versus the more you know, urban traditions of exorcism, right,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 7: So an exorcism, you're just trying to get rid of it,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 7: where as in focalo you're trying to harmonize those forces
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 7: with the imbalances that they've may have created. So it's
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 7: a it's a different perspective on methodology when it comes
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 7: to dealing with these problems. Instead of trying to get
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 7: rid of something, you're trying to tast something out. You're
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 7: instead trying to bring it in a balance with the
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 7: rest of the systems that are around it.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 8: Yeah, that also depends. Sometimes you would resort to threats
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 8: or you know, doing all sorts of dodgy stuff to
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 8: get your way. But yeah, for sure, I think there's
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 8: a lot that goes into this approach that's very considerate
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 8: of the relationship you have to the subject that you
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 8: are addressing.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Brandon, Judith Heads.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Anything, just yeah, yeah, yeah, just a nice little add
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: is Uh. There's a book it's called The Name of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and it's a fascinating explanation.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: The book is just great pros But the reason I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: bring it up is the idea about putting something onto
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: the wind and it helps move the message somewhere for you.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: And so in that book, there there's an old academy
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: and they're trying to tap into these to these these
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: forces of nature and so people in one of the
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: oldest magics of them all is the magic of naming.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: And so it's the idea of being able to tap
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: into the name of things and from the outside when
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: you find that name of the wind, and it takes
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of the right things that through all magic,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: it takes honing the will, the imagination, training the mind,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: and upon doing so, when the main character are other
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: characters in they're it. They find the name of the wind,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: and then it they can move it. But it's not
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: like they're controlling it. It's that they become one together.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: And upon doing so, when you say the name of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: the wind, whatever it is, everyone else around you actually,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: here's jargon or a barbarous name or just nonsense. But
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: to you, you've really tapped into something that is old
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: and ancient. And I just find it beautiful, kind of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: very similarly to what you just said. And I think
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: that's something that hopefully all of us are trying to
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: do on our own right, is tap into the name
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: of things.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: And I think that's.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I love that a similar thing. By the way,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 8: you can also read in Ursula, Laguins, Earth Sea right beautiful, Yeah,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 8: very similar approach, and I find it just so relatable
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: in terms of like the animist approach to the beings
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 8: out there. If you know their name, that means if
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 8: you know how to address them in a way that
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 8: they can understand and receive what you're communicating.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: Honorable and yeah, yeah, I agree. See, I knew we'd
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: find a likeness.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 8: Yeah, language is funny. And see see that's why ideas
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: out there, Uh, it's it can get very particular in
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 8: terms of what gets to people. And this is the
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: same thing. Like you just spoke my language. I understood
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 8: you right there. Right, that's the same idea.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: No, I love that.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, I like that. So it's yeah, but both
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: everyone out there should read both of those books. Ursula
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: Kyla Gwen is one of the greatest science fiction fantasy
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: writers of all time.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: So yes, I agree, absolutely, All right, did you have
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: you have a couple other questions.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: In your work?
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: What's the what's the relationship between household spirits, land spirits
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: and demonology?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 8: Okay, that's a cool question.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 8: I'm wondering though, if if this comes from the kind
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 8: of maybe common understanding of demonology as something related to
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 8: goisha and that those currents of magic, right, is that
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 8: where you're coming from?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: Well, I guess see, like somebody on this show may
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: like may look at the Croatia for one reason, or
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: somebody who's like ignorant to occultism can look at the
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: Croatia for other reasons. In the public to look at
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: demons completely different and don't even know what the goatia is,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: so I don't know. I guess it's almost more of
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: kind of like because then I was going to go
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: into demons and pop culture and like, so let's go
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: a little bit more that way, I guess, with kind
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: of like where how like the rest of the world
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: kind of looks okay.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 8: Okay, okay, because maybe maybe we should explain a bit
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 8: because when usually like you see from the modern lens
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 8: or the pop cultural lens, as you kind of mentioned,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 8: when when we think of demonology, we usually think of
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 8: like scary demons and evil beings and all of that, right,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: like other such spirits that are recognized as demons broadly speaking, uh,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 8: and it's deeply colored in general, but by like the
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 8: monotheist lenses and pop culture. But in the context of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 8: folklore studies in general, and like folk traditions, including of
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 8: course Polish folklore, all local spirits and folkloric spirits fall
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 8: under the lens of demons, and that doesn't make them
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 8: like demonic in the again monotiest sense, right, Like we
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 8: need to ditch the religious lens when it comes to that.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 8: It's just a word. Okay, You could look at it
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 8: more from the lens, like of diamonds the way they
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 8: were perceived in ancient Greece, right, that kind of lens.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 8: So folk demonology is essentially like the field of study
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 8: that seeks to preserve the knowledge of all the spirits
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 8: that are present in your particular tradition or culture. That's
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 8: essentially what it is. So in the context of your question,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 8: like the household spirits and the land spirits are demons
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 8: in that sense.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, no, thank you.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: I maybe I didn't ask the question the right way,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: but I got the right answer, so thank you very
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: much for that.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: Actually, so thank you God.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: That's also closely related to Shintoism and how the East
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: sees their understanding of the daemons or demons. It's not
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: that they're see that's the problem with the Abrahamic religions, right,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: is that they want to create a dualism, which then
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: creates the subjective moral evil, which is I think super
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: terrible because of obviously the comless amounts of reasons. But
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: then in Shintoism they see it's all about the interaction
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: with nature and the individual who's then perceiving said things. Right,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: is that am I am I hidden kind of closely
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: to the very yeah right right, yeah.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 8: And that's because Shintoism is animist exactly.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I love Shintoism. I anyway, it doesn't matter.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: And then I did have kind of like another follow
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: up between that, but I think we kind of covered it.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: It was like, what's the biggest difference between folk devils
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: of popa cult demons?
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: Do you think you kind of answered that already a
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: little bit with I.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 8: Think so, yeah, because they don't have much in common
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 8: like for chloric devils or essentially very old local spirits
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 8: of various domains, and that's it. They just are studied
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 8: under the field of folk demonology, but they are not
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 8: like demons in the pop culture sense.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 7: I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't ask,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 7: what are some of the main sort of land spirits
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 7: that you have, you know, encountered in folklore or encountered
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 7: in your own personal experiences?
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 8: The main sort like the main kinds you mean, like.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 7: Right, like different lands have different you know, main focuses
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 7: on what comes through the dominant plants, dominant animals, and
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 7: these sort of color the spiritual nature of those lands.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: So I figured, you know, experiences would show you how
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 7: they manifest.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 8: How they manage. I'm not sure if I understood your question. Actually,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 8: could you rephrase?
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 7: Sorry, A lot of different lands have a lot of
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 7: different kinds of spirits, and you find that they have
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 7: sort of a dominant character in different places, you know.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 8: Okay, I don't think I agree with that. I don't
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 8: think there's such a thing as a dominant character to spirits,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 8: at least here, we have such a plethora of spirits
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 8: of literally every domain, like everything you can think of,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 8: there is a local spirit of some sort that has
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 8: domain over that thing or that place or that phenomenon,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: everything and anything, and they are so diverse, probably more
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 8: diverse than us humans. So yeah, I don't think it's
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 8: possible to boil them down to some like main characteristic.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 8: Maybe if we were talking about folk demonology as a
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: field in general, I would say that the Polish strain
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 8: of folk demonology is kind of dark and gruesome, honestly,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 8: And maybe you can actually I'm sure, like most people
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 8: know the Watcher games, right, like those people who played it,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 8: you can see that there's like spirits of you know,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 8: miscarried children and all kinds of like very dark stuff
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 8: out there, like Polish folk demonology is filled with that.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 8: It's very dark.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: Something I want to ask you about this will make
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: it just real quick, healyst. I think this might make
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: a little bit more sense on like kind of what
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: you're getting at, because now it's got me wondering.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Is there like a hierarchy amongst spirits?
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 8: Yes, I wouldn't say so. No, I think those things
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 8: you can mostly see from like the Monothey's lenses. But
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 8: in folk demonology there's no such a thing as spirits
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 8: being like one that's up top and then he has
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 8: some smaller ones. No, not at all really. If anything,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 8: there may be like spirits who are literally bigger because
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 8: they inhabit like some very broad spaces, like an entire
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 8: mountain rage or something like that. Like it's obviously a
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 8: bigger like physically you could say physically in you know, uh,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: than than a spirit of a local plants obviously right
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 8: in that way, But it's not a higher keeper. Say,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 8: it's just like the way some animals are bigger or
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 8: small smaller, et cetera.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: If those plants grow on them out.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it's an entire ecology of spirits out there, right,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 8: That's why we are all kind of intertwined.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: To touch on that, so you don't put them in
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: my quote unquote some other folklore has put them in
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: family groupings. You don't put that in family groupings in
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: the Polish folk law.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 8: Hmmm. That's an interesting way to perceive that. I can
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 8: see where that would be coming from. Uh, but yeah,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 8: usually know you would mostly like perceive them in terms
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 8: of domains that they inhabit, and if you're if you're
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 8: talking about family, I think the closest thing that comes
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 8: to mind for me, for example, are all of the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 8: spirits that inhabit the spaces where humans live, like for example,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 8: on your homestead. There's like an entire you could say
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 8: family of spirit or like an entire group of spirits
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 8: who coexist and co inhabit this space. Everybody has their
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 8: role to play, everybody is responsible for something, and it
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 8: amounts to like an entire family system in a way.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 8: But I haven't ever seen this being conceptualized in that
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 8: way in our culture.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yes, sorry, just real quick, just real quick,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, so sorry.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: So it wouldn't be like Egyptian mythology where it's like
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: this person screwing around with this person to meet this one,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: and you know, there wouldn't be this whole lineage, you know,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: you know, you know what I'm getting Like, you know
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: how like some of them it's like everybody's you know,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: there's or even even in the Christian you know, even
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: in the Bible, there's that whole lineage. So you guys
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: actually don't like really see that that this person, you know,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: the forgotten, this one and that one and this one
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: and that one. It's not like that they're just all
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: just separate beings from themselves.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 8: I mean, they coexist in groups that just are beneficial
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 8: to everybody's interests, right, But but yeah, I wouldn't see
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: them conceptualized in that way. Right. That's more like our
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 8: way of making sense of these spirit relationships.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: Like I was going on before, makes sense, Like you
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: can have Isis and you know Osiris and then you
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: got rhunds.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 8: Like they're they're familiar in that sense. Okay, that's that's
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 8: more when it comes to like pantheons and stuff, but
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 8: not really with spirits. We do have some like local
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 8: legends of spirits who like let's say, uh, for example,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 8: with the folkloric devils. Actually there's like this very cool
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 8: part of Polish folklore where some folkloric devils are actually
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: spirits of men of nobility who are so evil to
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 8: the local community and everybody around them that they were
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 8: like cursed by everybody, including the land itself, that they
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 8: became these you know, spirits, and sometimes their entire families
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 8: would would have like you know, would be kind of
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 8: condemned to become a certain type of spirit after death.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: So in that sense, maybe you could see families among spirits,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 8: but that's like an anomaly, you would say, And those
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 8: are spirits of human origin obviously, So if we look
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 8: at it that way, you could also see you know,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 8: your ancestors in a similar way, we call it rude,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 8: which is essentially like the family or bloodline, where all
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 8: of your ancestral spirits formed this family system in that way.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 8: But yeah, it's not really conceptualized that like that outwardly.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: Thank you, sorry, thank you for entertaining those questions. I
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: was just wondering, right.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 7: I was. I was just going to say that, you know,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 7: the characteristics of the land here in Wisconsin have definitely
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 7: changed my perception of how these spirits move. So it's
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 7: you know, mostly sandy soil we've got sandstone cliffs that
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 7: pop up out of nowhere and like a bunch of
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 7: pine forests, and so when actually interacting with these things,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 7: it sort of takes on a characteristic of the land,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 7: and that sort of changes the perception of how these
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 7: spirits are seen by the locals.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 8: Okay, so that's what you originally meant by your earlier question. Okay, yeah, sure,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 8: I didn't think of it that way, because, like you know,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 8: I live in this landscape, so it's like, you know,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 8: kind of the area you breathe, you don't see it
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 8: right exactly. Okay, yeah, I get your point now. Yeah.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 8: So Poland is very like moderate climates and it's usually
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 8: very flats across the country, but where I live, for example,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 8: it's quite mountainous. So there's a lot of legends of
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 8: mountain spirits do gour as we call it, so like
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: the spirit or the ghost of the mountain. There's a
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 8: lot of that, right, and various like folkloric devils wandering
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 8: around and like lost portals to Hell and all of that.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 8: There's there's a lot of that, Like every single place
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 8: has its own, I guess, peculiarities when it comes to
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 8: the spirits that inhabit the space. But yeah, we've.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 7: Got Devil's Lake and Devil's Hollow out here, which are
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 7: these really cool geographical formations that you know, we're demonized
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 7: because obviously something weird is happening out there, you know.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I definitely know what you mean. Yeah, for example,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 8: we have a mountain here, Rada, and because of the
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 8: land features, there's like an anomally that's happening that the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 8: compasses don't work there, right, and it's actually believed in
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 8: legends that that's the like meeting place of devils.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, they ever have any other questions, I'm
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: pretty much pretty much done, I think myself. All right, Joanna,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: is there anything else that you would like to leave
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: us with? I mean, what's the one thing that you
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: hope that reader takes from this book? You know, at
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: least one thing, you know, when if they get this book,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: what do you hope they get it?
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 8: You know, what I would really like for the readers
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: of my book to get out of it is that
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 8: folk budget and in general, like ancestral traditions can be
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 8: really a great foundation for just having a wholesome life,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 8: and it's such a great resource for finding your own
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 8: strength and resilience, and especially in the times that we
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 8: find ourselves in today where a lot of things are
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 8: you know, ah, yeah, just in crisis. You could say
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 8: that without getting into details, right. So I want people
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 8: to know that they can reach out to their ancestors
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 8: for support, for leaning on in terms of like learning
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 8: about how to deal with situations like that because they've
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 8: been through worse. So we can learn so much from
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 8: our ancestral traditions in terms of just living a good life,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 8: being like a decent person. And you know, especially how
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 8: do I put it into words? I think it's important
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 8: that you know yourself. You could you could boil it
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 8: down to that, right, But I think, uh, learning about
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 8: your ancestral traditions can be such a good source of
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: that that's very down to earth and based in reality
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 8: and not so much focusing on I guess philosophizing or
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 8: romanticizing things that may not have such an impact on
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 8: your on your daily life.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 8: So I think folk magic in a lot of ways
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 8: is like the opposite of escapism, you could say, right,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 8: And I think we need to be down down to
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 8: earth in these times that we find ourselves in. So yeah,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 8: I know, it's a one key way to put it,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 8: but I hope I put my point across.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: No, thank you. I I think that was very well said.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: I really appreciate it, you know again, all the questions
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 4: and stuff, and even even at times where I think
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: maybe we might have been a little bit confused, I
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: didn't totally understand what you were saying. I appreciate you
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: doing as best as you can to try to explain
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: yourself and how you were looking through the situation with
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: you a lens. Really, I had a really great time.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: I thought it was a blast. I learned a lot
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: of interesting stuff. So before we wrap it up, well,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: of course, no, thank you very much. I'd love to
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: have you back on again in the future. There's partly
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: tons more questions I could ask you, Judith, real quick
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 4: before we wrap it up. Let everybody know where they
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: can find your stuff.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: Jonah, it was a pleasure discussing having this discussion with you.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: It helped actually brun my horizon on my.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: Heritage and my family's folklore and actually showed me similarities
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: even though we are oceans apart, which is quite pleasing.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me and you guys could find
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: me at the Weekly Bunch every Sunday on YouTube and
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: X as the Loom.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 6: Thank you again, of course, we thank you.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: And my man the Headless Giant. I don't know where
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 4: they can find you, please, sir, you all mute it again,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: my man?
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 7: Oh yeah, sorry, So you can find me on exit
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 7: on YouTube at the Headless Giant, and also on Instagram.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 7: Tomorrow I've got the trialogue coming up with Ethan Indigo
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 7: and Ricardo caled Audio, so definitely check that out. Thank you.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course I'll be totally honest with you.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: If it wasn't that I was so used to using
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: my mixer, if I was to shut myself over on
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: stream mode, I would forget just as much as you.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: So don't feel mad, Brandon. What is going on, sir?
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: How will you?
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: I'm great? Thank you? This was fantastic. Thank you Nick
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: as always, Thank you, Judith and Headless. I always love
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: being on stream with you, Joanna, that great conversation. I
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: love even the small sparring sessions. That's the way we
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: can really truly start to understand where we're coming together,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: because truly we are on the same side. And just everybody,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: just go to YouTube, go to x go to Instagram,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: even TikTok. What we're trying to do is we're trying
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: to battle the techno Oligarcic arconic dark Sorcerers out there
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: in the world, and there's only one way to do it.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: That's with myth, magic and meaning and maggis and the
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: media is here for you to do that. So make
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: sure to continue to follow the rejects, continue to follow
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: everybody on this panel. And yeah, this is a great conversation.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to continue to have it in this ocean
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: of chaos.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: Again, thank you, Thank you very much, Brandon, always appreciate
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: you on the show. And finally, again Joanna, please let
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: everybody know where they can find your stuff. And again
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 4: I just want to say I had a really great
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: time and this is some talk, some talk.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 8: Thank you again, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 8: I really enjoyed this conversation. And I can see that
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 8: we are coming from a very different perspectives practice wise,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 8: but I was having a blust just comparing perspectives and
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 8: seeing things from different lenses. I always appreciate, you know,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 8: those differences and being able to just compare and learn
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 8: from others. So yeah, thank you so much for having me,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 8: and for being so open and understanding of, you know,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 8: somebody from a very different perspective magically speaking, in terms
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 8: of your know my work and the stuff I do
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 8: out there. You know, I teach Polish for project animism
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 8: and traditional crafts. You can find me under the name
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 8: Polish folk Witch pretty much anywhere on the Internet, So
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 8: if you enjoyed this conversation, please find me out there.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: Thank you, and again, Joanna, I really appreciate again you
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: coming on. Hopefully we'll get you on again in the future,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: but whatever, maybe something else. We'll still talk about the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: same stuff. But I had a bless and I really
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 4: appreciate the rest of your rejects coming on and making
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 4: the show what it was.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: And until the next one, everybody be well later.