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From The Cult to The Craft. Part 1. · The Corn(ish) Witch

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I would be remiss in myself if I said that they they're all bad because they're not is it a cult?
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Did my mama wear uh magic underwear when she got buried?
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Yes, she did.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: I find that hilarious in some part of my soul.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: But I'm also the same person that carries a rock in my pocket because I've given it power and I'll just there.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: So I think what it comes down to is which magic we choose to believe and which magic we choose not to.
0:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: A witch who lives in Cornwall but who isn't a born and bred Cornish maid.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: And I am back just in time for spooky season.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: I just want to say a quick thank you to all of you for being so patient with me over the summer.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: As my regular listeners will be aware, in July I got a chest infection, and then I pretty much dropped off the face of the earth for about two months.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: I got really unwell, my immune system took a hit, and it just went absolutely not, and I had to rest a lot over the summer.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: But I'm back and I'm really excited to be bringing the podcast back and to be reconnecting with you all.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I've missed you very much and I've missed doing this.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: We continue this series up until your tide, and then I will go and have a break over the Your Tide season and be back in the new year.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: But without any further ado, let's get into today's episode.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: From the cult to the craft.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: A childhood indoctrination into the Mormon church, a military boot camp, and a cross-atlantic love story all led to one woman discovering her real power and why the divine feminine can feel more like home than any religion ever did.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: My guest is Sandy.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: She is a master barber and the owner of the Mad American Barber Shop in Launston, Cornwall.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: She brings a rare blend of lived experience, spiritual insight, and a no-nonsense honesty to a conversation about faith, identity, and the long road to self-trust.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: What begins as a story about online dating and a romantic move to the UK becomes something much bigger.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: A raw and fascinating conversation about identity, belonging, survival, and spiritual awakening.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: In part one of this episode, we break down what it's like to grow up inside the Mormon church, how structure, family, gender, and faith shaped her worldview, and why she ultimately walked away.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Sandy also shares the realities of military life, the pressure of living inside another highly controlled system, and the hard lessons that came after leaving both worlds behind.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: I believe that these episodes will matter to you if you've ever felt caught between who you were raised to be and who you know yourself to be.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: If you've questioned your faith and looked for signs or felt drawn to something older, wilder, and more honest, this conversation will stay with you.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: It's perfect for anyone who's drawn to spirituality, ancestry, witchcraft, personal transformation, or a story that proves that the most powerful magic is often the one that you learn to claim for yourself.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Very welcome.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm really looking forward to getting into this and hearing about your just hearing your story and to feel very honoured.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm I don't know.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm in a cool kid club.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you are in the cool kid club and you always have been without realizing.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and whenever I've seen you around town, I've always thought like, she's so cool.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: She's so cool.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: And when my mum my mum met you at the Practical Magic evening, I think she sat near you and she was like, Oh my god, I love that American woman.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: I was like, That's sad, that Sandy shows the Mad American barber shop.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: She was like, Oh my god, I really like her.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: She is so lovely.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: Tell your mother, I am open to all invitations and friendship.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: The more the merrier.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: So, how long have you been in the UK for?
5:12
SPEAKER_01: I started coming to the UK to visit my husband, who we met online.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: It's a bit of a lovely story of manifestation that I share.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: So we met online at the behest of our two best friends.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: So my best friend back in 2007 decided that she wanted to try this new fancy online dating situation.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Her and I had both been single for a while due to unfortunate events.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: So she asked me, would I mind if she set up an account for me too, so that we could, you know, do this together.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: And so and she set it up on some international website.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's cool.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: And then did not look at it, think about it, or talk about it again after that.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: I think she went on like two dates, and I was I'm a bit of a ride or die kind of girl.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: So I went to the restaurants and hid in a corner to make sure she fuse.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: I love my I was like the bouncer, I was the just-in-case girl.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: It's true that I had a you know, car ride.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm like.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: In case you had to go into the bathroom and then do a runner.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so in 2010.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, what's most interesting about this story is a couple things happen.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: So she kept me on that website.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: Alex, my husband, his best mate, Jay, had put him on a dating website as way off.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: And it just so happened to be this one.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right, where you email each other and you can decide whether you want something or just want to be friends and just chit-chat, whatever.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: So done completely separately, no, no intention there whatsoever.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'd say probably about six months before that, my sister had come away from a really bad relationship, and she knew that like I'd been single for many years because F all that, I'm not interested.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't need a boyfriend, I don't need husband, I don't want a husband, I ever want my husband again.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm never signing away the you know, yeah, signing the piece of paper that says somebody can, you know, behave the way they have a tendency to behave.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: And sister and I sat down together and made a list of file checklist that we said before we ever stepped foot into it.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And it w it maybe two, three months, six months at the very most, before Alex and I had our first conversation.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: And it's little things like that, like because we were talking about manifestation earlier, about making it happen by typing it through to yourself and to the universe and to the goddess and whoever else is listening.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, so called my best friend Terry.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Now bear in mind, she made me an email address in 2007, but she had been the office manager at one of my places of work for years, and I knew if anybody was gonna remember what my email address was and what the password was, it'd be my best mate, Terry.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: So I called her out, I was like, what that email address.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: She's like, oh yeah, hold on.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: She's like, it is da-da-da-da.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: And da da da da da.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, all right.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: It's like thanks.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I was just curious.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna, you know, have a peek around at my email that you made for me that like had over 3,000 messages in it.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: Because I never touched it or looked at it.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Alex's was the third one from the top.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and he had messaged me just to say it was because here's the thing, let's be let's be frank about it.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: The British people are an eloquently spoken.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was gonna say, depending where you go on paper.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd say of the questions he asked were about home, because at the time I was not living in Texas, I was still living in Atlanta, which is where I raised my big, but uh he was he was asking, you know, all of the really lovely polite questions about Texas because he had spent the time as a child in Texas with his father, and I was like, he's just so bloody polite.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I have to answer him, so I did, and and that's how it began.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: And then six months later, I made my first trip over.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't had a holiday in probably about 15 years, and I was like, and the kids were off doing their thing.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: This is around 2010, so I responded to his first email on November 5th, 2010.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: We got married on June 18th, 2012.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: I moved to Cornwall permanently on my birthday, 2012.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: So I came over on Beltane and he met me off the plane.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: But what I think was so fairy tale about it is how he asked me to marry him.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: So on my first visit, we'd already been talking for months and months.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: My clients used to call him the head in the box because he used to take this little tiny computer with me to work.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: He would stay at work late.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: He used to work over at North Denv Tire to Pennygum.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And he'd stay there and he'd go up in the tire stacks, and he would make himself a little nest up there, and he'd put his headphones on, and he would talk to me for a couple hours before he went home to bed after he got off work.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: And so I would just put it on my station and I'd be coloring hair, cutting, you know, and we'd all be chatting with him.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: He was like, Is this what your life is all?
11:01
SPEAKER_01: I was like, This is it, mate.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: And so then I came over and had a bit of a panic attack when I got off the plane, went ahead for 30 minutes before I went through customs, came out with the last customs officer, got through the door, and he was all the way down on the other side of International.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: And he's, you know, he's six foot two and a half, six foot three.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: So he could see me, but I could not see him until he started bobbing up and down.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: Next thing I know, this gazelle is running all the way down the airport through the little metal barrier thing, and he swoops me up, swings me around, kisses me, and got down on one knee.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Like something out of a movie.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: It's very romantic.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, burst my bowl right off the bat.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: What is it?
11:54
SPEAKER_01: So that was that.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: So uh I don't know, he kind of put me on the spot, and I was like, you know what?
12:02
SPEAKER_01: We only get one shot at this.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: So why not say yes and uh see what happens?
12:08
SPEAKER_01: And here we are, and I've been here ever since.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: 14 years?
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: How do you how have you found the culture when you moved over here?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: I've had my ups and downs.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: Um from a cultural perspective.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: I've I've seen I've seen the good in our country, I've seen the bad.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: I think because in the beginning, it really was a lot of culture shock for me.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And I grew up in a really small town.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Like I went to towns called Beckville, Texas, and there were only 37 people in my graduating class.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: There were less than 500 students from kindergarten all the way up through year 12.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: And it was the kind of town where if you went into the local what I would call a bodega or a local, you know, service station, like our like our uh Greenaways or Spa or something, you know everybody, and everybody knows everybody's mama, and everybody knows everybody's grandma, and you know, and you say hi.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: I I did do a lot of bouncing around as a child, but that is definitely the place where I picked up that desire to be somewhere community-based, and last night had that, and so found that first year really, really difficult.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: It's quite funny how the shop got extended.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: I used to sit in the square and I'll just talk to anybody.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And so when it came time for me to open the shop, um, we opened up in 2016.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: And I was I told Alex, I was like, Well, we can't afford a proper signwriter.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we were doing it with a mirror and a chair that Alex found me out of a barn that he repainted, and he painted our first sign, and I was like, we're gonna call it the Mad American.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, baby, we cannot call it that.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, first of all, Matt is a hatter.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Everybody in this town knows it, but I'm the only American around.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: So if we call it that, everybody's been nowhere to he was like, okay.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: He was like, now he's like, nope, that's our brand.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: It just makes me laugh.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: I felt connected to this place.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not necessarily the people.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: I think it's taken me, I'm not gonna say it took, I'm gonna say it's taking me to find my people.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
14:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think that especially for us women, I find British culture can be very insular.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an insular person, even though I do suffer with social anxiety, I do I find talking actually helps.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: And so but I think finding like minds and people who pique my interest for quick quo quo purpose has has been quite difficult.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: People have a tendency to be quite quickish.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: If you don't if you don't quite fit a particular model, then you don't fit.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: You know.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say that anybody, you know, has ever has ever been intentionally nasty to me uh in the last, you know, 10 or so years, because absolutely they haven't.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I would say that I've found on more occasions than not that this is a community of very supportive fans.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody wants to support everybody and make sure that everybody's business is thriving, that everybody's thriving, and that, you know, that everybody has a place to feel secure and to feel safe.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: And and I think that I think that feeling is almost as much about this town and the ground that it sits on as it is about the people in it.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: And I love exploring that.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: You know you feel like Launchon and Cornwall, the land, you feel like it's it calls to you, like you're meant to be here.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it gives me like it gives me chills.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people say that who come to Cornwall and they say they have this longing, they have this calling, and when they're here, you know, they they they finally feel like they're in the right they're in the right place.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: One of the hardest things I've ever experienced was the thing that put me in contact with that the most.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: And that was through COVID, when my mother's health declined rather rapidly.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: And she was and I could not be there for that.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: My sister fortunately had been there when the first when the first uh lockdown got caught in the United States, and so my sister stayed to help my father, who was in need of hip replacement at the time, and so he was really struggling to take care of my mother suffered with severe adult asthma and COPD.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful, lovely things that come with it, including she had a bad ticker, so things working in her favor in that particular department.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, so my sister and I we talked a lot, you know, over that period of time.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: And but also during that period of time, I was living here in a flat with Alex, and we got a dog, and I just said to him, I was like, I was like, I need I need grass under my feet.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I need to be in touch with the ground, I need that.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: And so we started looking.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: We started uh, and it was while we were in lockdown, we started looking for a house that had a garden.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: And mama got really bad, and my sister called me, and she's like, You need to come home now.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: And this was June of 20, and we had just gotten the keys and the paperwork for our house that we're in now.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: And so I flew home.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: The hardest part was I could not stay.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: I stayed for 10 days, stayed long enough to ask my daddy.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, all of us showed up.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: She was such a fighter, you know, because obviously, under those circumstances in the states, you could travel.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: So my son, who is military, he had to travel Kansas.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: This might have been Colorado.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, my daughter was there.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: She was still working at the time, she went to the hospital not very far away.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: And but the thing was my daddy and my sister had told my mama we were home.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: She was.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't, she couldn't talk.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: She was already at that point.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: But she would open her eyes and she and she knew who we were.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: My son, my dad and my mom were super close, super close.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: And he used to call her all the time and she would call him.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Um I had a thing for the boys in the family.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't a big lover of the girls, which is funny because as time went on at the end, my daughter wound up being a stand-in care with my sister for her.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: And so their relationship developed the cold was already there.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And I just told her, I was like, you need to hang on.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: And she did.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: She waited till we got there, and I was holding one hand and he was holding the other.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: And that was it.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: I just took her lost breath.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And I just feel like in that moment went out and I told her that my dad, my dad throughout her whole illness, bless him.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: My dad's not he's just not a big believer that, you know, he just kind of mentally he'll put things off, you know.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: He's a mental procrastinator.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: And he just didn't want to believe that at some point he was gonna get better, that she was gonna come because she always had.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, two and a half years prior to that, they'd given her six months and said, You'll get six good six quality months.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: She lasted another two and a half years.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't going anywhere, she sure the heck wasn't leaving her hummingbirds or her garden.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: Wasn't her swimming pool.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't even a swimming pool, even though she couldn't swim in it anymore.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Bless her.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: My daddy kept it going for her.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, so I spent the next ten days sitting in that garden with my shoes off.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: It's the hardest summer just being her in every part of that.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: Realizing that she was now part of my ancestry.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: Because my daddy, because I grew up in a cult, so in the Mormon church, the way they do things is you know, the body and the spirit go together.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe in the afterlife, so forth so I did the celestial kingdom if you conceal in a temple, which my advance for you.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: And the ladies of the church come and they dress body, which I would not let them do her makeup or her hair, because absolutely my mother was if she was anything, she was mild to pain.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: And I was not gonna let anybody do her hair makeup other than myself, which is really interesting.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: But I think that was part of my awakening as well, because you know how and having to cry wasn't bad in that respect.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: I just wish I had taken better advantage of together in the physical world.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: But I know she's She's not in that box.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: No.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure the hell ain't in that ground.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: You know?
22:04
SPEAKER_01: And I don't th I don't think my like my daddy is so hell bent on keeping that that bit of ground nice and and making sure she's always got flowers and which is all lovely.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: And I will go with him to visit her body, but she's not there.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: No.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: And I know she's not there.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Because I talked to her.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: That was the thing.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: Because I'd always talk to my grandmother, who passed away when I was 13.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: She had always been the voice in the back of my head.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Like, what would I be?
22:34
SPEAKER_01: Kind of a situation.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Having lost my mother as well.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: Put them into my ancestral altar.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: Um and and gave me another another individual to touch with.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: And I you know, I see signs of it all the time.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: All the time.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: My mother had a thing for uh hummingbirds and dragonflies and yeah and lighthouses because she loved a lighthouse because what is a lighthouse meant to do?
23:06
SPEAKER_02: I show you the lighthouse.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh it was really interesting because now it doesn't matter where I'm at, I'll either see a hummingbird or a lighthouse or a drinoplow.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: I guarantee it.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Favorite place in the whole wide world is a a little beach in the Gulf in Texas called Crystal Beach, it's just outside of Galveston.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: And it's a beautiful stretch with mosquitoes big enough to take the children off.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And I mean that.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: I believe you.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: I'll never forgive we decided we'd take my daddy rent a beach house, me and my daughter celebrate, you know, and just have some time in her space, in the in the space that brought her the most joy.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: And uh the whole time we were there, there was a pair of dragonflies that just would not leave me.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: It was brilliant.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: I got pictures of them like, and there was a full moon.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, man.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that's when my journey began in eyes and I started to look at the spiritual side of things it manifests in each of us.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily because here's the thing I can put stock in all of it.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: I can I can, you know, but it's not it's it's not about the power that the stone gives me.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: It's about the power that I give the stone.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: That kind of a thing.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: And waking up to that power and and knowing that manifestation is real, that intention is real, that we influence the universe around us by tapping in goddess-given abilities that we were walking that is part of who we are.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that for me, that genuinely was the beginning.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: It was the realization that no, they're really not a God, that our ancestors can help us, that they can support us and love us and guide us.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: And uh that's really beautiful, like really comforting.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I s I sound really tearful and emotional.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm emotional not necessarily because it's sad that I didn't get to know her in person about that, without that influence.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Even though I know she knows it spiritually.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, because we have had those conversations, but I miss the physicalness of her in the sense that I can't hug her.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: That's what gets me.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: That's what brings tears and things like that.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: I think the hardest part about that is that feeling that way and knowing that to be my truth is really difficult because I can't talk about it that much with anybody else who doesn't practice.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: Because they won't understand.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: I talk about my daughter, she'll probably get it, even though she doesn't practice.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: She does get it though.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: But I can't talk about it with my daddy because as far as he's concerned, he's sitting somewhere in the church's version of purgatory waiting for him to show up so they can go off hand in hand to the celestial kingdom.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Is that a is that a Mormon belief?
26:42
SPEAKER_01: So in the Mormon church, and it's been a long time, so I may get some of this wrong, and if I get it wrong, nobody come back and beat anybody up over it.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: So in the Mormon church, when when it's time for you to marry, you go to the temple and you are sealed together, and and it's forever.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: Like your spirits are rejoined on the other side, and you the whole family can be sealed together as well.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: That you can find each other in what's considered the celestial kingdom.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: So, for example, uh, my whole family has been sealed together, except for me.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: Except except for you.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's another story.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: But I in order to be sealed, you have to have been really good and received what they call a temple recommend.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: When my family got sealed together, so I have to backtrack a little bit.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: So the reason why I joined, I got my family involved in one and daddy had been looking for a faith.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: My my daddy had been raised with a faith by his mom and daddy, but they divorced.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, after my mom and dad living in California, they uh they met in a commune house.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: My mom was my mama was a hardcore little hippie, bless her.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh my daddy's best mate was very much that as well.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: They both rode Harley Davidson motorcycles, and you know, my uncle and had long, beautiful hair, and you know, around the sea-wolf, which used to walk me to school, which is a whole other story.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: I got all kinds of wool and bits, but anyway, long and short, when my mom and daddy got married, so my best mate, she had been raised by her grandparents for proper old school southern, who I absolutely adored.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: It was uh my mom and papa too.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: We called them my mom and papa too because she had a mama and daddy, and they were the ones that raised her.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: So that was my two.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: And uh she came in as my wife.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: I was probably about seven or eleven, and she was my best mate.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean I coming from a divorced home, I did a lot of hopscotch in about yeah, back in Port of California.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Then my biological father moved up to Oklahoma, so there was a bit of there, and then he was in Missouri, and then he was in Arkansas, and he hopscotched all over the bloody planet, and so you know, my summers were spent following suit.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And so meeting my best friend in grade school, I don't know, she just there was something about her, she had a very grounding effect on me.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: And I used to spend a lot of weekends at her house, and I loved her.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: And as we grew up, I loved her as more than a sister.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: I loved her, and I started going to church with her, and my mom and daddy, because they had tried several different churches, they were okay with that.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to, before I got too deep into it, they wanted to know what it was and why.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, okay, well then I'll invite the missionaries over.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: The whole damn family's getting baptized.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: We are now officially members of the Mormon Church, thanks to me opening my stupid mouth.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: For myself and also for listeners who who don't know a lot about uh the Mormon Church or Church of Jesus Christ, I forget.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Would you be able to do a very sort of, I suppose, because I know there's so many layers.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot of layers to it, but just a brief overview of the church.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh there were two young men through the forest one day, and uh they split off.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: One went one way, one went the other.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: And this is in, I believe it was upper state New York.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: One of those young men's name was Joseph Smith.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: And while he was in the woods, he had a vision.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: He was visited by the angel, where he could find some gold that he could translate.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: And those golden plates told of Jesus and Jesus' journey after he was risen during the three days.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus said to his followers, other sheep have I, which are not of this believed by the Mormon Church that during that time he went to visit his other flock.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: The other flock was in what we now call South America.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: That there were two uh groups of people.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: There was the gosh, I can't remember the name of them now.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, there were two groups that was devout and one wasn't, and there were many battles and so forth and so on.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, so Joseph Smith, he supposedly finds these golden tablets and transcribes them with the help of his best mate, who was the other guy that he had been with, and he writes a book.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Now, nobody believed that he was the one that wrote the book because Joseph Smith only had a seventh-grade education.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: It's the Book of Mormon.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: This is the Book of Mormon.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: Right, okay.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: And so he took his Book of Mormon and he took what few followers he had acquired, and the persecutions began.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Now, this part of the church history is absolutely true.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: They got run out on a rail on a regular basis, and they went or the United States looking.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: I think they wound up in Missouri at one point.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: They got ran out of there, they got chased with pitchforks and you know, torches and the whole thing.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: Sounds almost like witches persecuted.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: Very much.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: You could genuinely uh relate the behavior because many people, you know, in more Puritan faith.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: America, even then, was a melting pot.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're talking, you know, the 1800s.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, long and short of it, they wind up in Utah.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't even think Joseph Smith made it that far.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: But so the church settled in Utah, a lot of crazy stuff happened there.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: But the church foundation was a belief in a in a prophet and a quorum of the 12 tribe systems.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: Basically, the prophet of the church, and then he has 12 apostles who go out.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: They believed that Jesus had given them the means and the way to pass his knowledge and anoint and create a new church.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm starting to get the what people would probably call cult cult vibes.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Men saying that they're powerful and that God gave them this power to how so we have a prophet.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Joseph Smith was our first prophet.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Transcriber of he was visited on multiple occasions by angels, cold wings, and then when it was his time and he passed away, our second prophet was named Brigham Young.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: Now, Brigham Young was part of the foundational church he started our first, which Brigham Young is now a very renowned medical university in Utah.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: And there's there's a there's a bright side to Mormon history, and I've done a lot of studying of it.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: There's a bright side to Mormon history, but there's also a very, very dark side that they don't like to discuss.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: So during the era of Bergamina, the church split and it split into two factions.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: One of those factions, it was based on the fact that when they had settled in the Utah territories, there weren't a lot of men left.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the men had died fighting Indians, have you, or just you know, the struggles of the trail.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't a joke.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: Like these people like they were carrying their goods on their entire nation.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: And there were a lot of women and children who had come on the trails with these men, had no means to support themselves.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say that a frontier woman wasn't badassery because they were, but Brigham Young felt that in order to create the foundations of the church, women needed a man for stability and provision.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, she could be domestic and genteel.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: And genteel and raise their children.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: Because there was a shortage of men in the church, prayed about it, and he got divine intervention from the Lord.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: The Lord said, take more wine.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: So the Mormon church does have the sister wives, then it did well subcategories.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: So here's here's what happened.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: So once the church was well established in the Utah territories, yeah, and and and other men had come in from other areas, and they were established to the point where Brigham Young looked around and said, don't need this anymore.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: This was never the intent.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: The intent was never for this to be a permanent solution.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: It was meant to increase numbers and create an environment where everybody was community and we were all taken care of.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: It was meant to be a temporary thing to produce babies.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: And like a man couldn't take four wives unless he had the means and the way to actively provide for all four wives.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: And then within that, there was still a hierarchy.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: So he could reproduce with said wives.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: The first wife had a say in all of it, so forth and so on.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: So it was still, it was considered a family unit, right?
36:46
SPEAKER_01: But it's not what you see today on sister wives, not by any stretches.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: So one on the short of it is Brigham Young had two sons.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: And when he made the declaration that that was gonna go away, they got pissed off.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, well, no, you know, because we want to keep marrying as many birds as we well, yeah, we want all.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Why not, right?
37:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: So there was a split in the church very early on, and it was almost the undoing of the church, but you know, the church was built on a very, to be fair to the church, on a very strong foundation of community, not just divine intervention, but group intervention.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: They were they were very good at circling their wagons and keeping themselves secure.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: So even though that happened, uh so Brigham Young's son was excommunicated, he declared himself a prophet and took his family and they moved to another part of the state, and they called themselves the FLS.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, but one of the biggest problems is that even in modern day, if you say the word Mormon, most people associate it automatically because they kept it, right?
38:06
SPEAKER_01: So we called ourselves Mormons, but they did too.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: And we're like, no, they're not part of us over here.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had enough drama, we didn't need any of that, yeah.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: And so there's been an argument about that part ever since.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Like, you've got your lovely Jack Mormons, which I'm considered a Jack Mormon.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Jack Mormon.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: He's been excommunicated from kids in the church.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: So you've been shunned.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I've been excommunicated.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: When you joined the Mormon church at the tender age of 13.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Were you the OG Mormons or the uh or the or the the ones that you dubbed?
38:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, so you're the OG we ever had any involvement.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had prairie day and it was one to one.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Like there was no uh that like your family union is one man, one woman.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: And they get they get sealed in the temple together, and then their family can be sealed to them.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: But it is one man, one woman, not until death do you part.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: Forever.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: But it's forever.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: They're so bad.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: That that's scare that's quite scary.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: There's no because it's like when you're, I suppose, you grow up completely indoctrinated in this religion and and and this environment, it's your whole world.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: And then if you start to vary different things because in modern day we have divorce.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, this is today, there was no divorce, right?
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Not like that anyway.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: But also women are gonna want to leave abusive relationships, and you know, then my you know what what if children are are being abused by by their parents and they're thinking, well shit, I can leave.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm sick with them forever.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: You know what that means?
39:50
SPEAKER_01: You wind up in the bishop's office having to have a having to have a conversation with the bishop about thing, and then the bishop will pray about it and kind of move.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's what that's all.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: So we need fine.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: When I was 16, my family was scheduled, my mom and dad were scheduled to be sealed in the temple because they did not marry in the temple, they were already married, and so to make the family legitimate in the eyes of God, get sealed in the temple, so basically remarried from from religious perspective, and then all of us children had to be sealed to them as a unit so that our family could be together heavenly forever.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: Your three years in and out at this point.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: Yep, yeah, so you're I'm also heavy, heavily into the indoctrination portion of the program because at a very young age, the boys and the girls are separated, young men go to priesthood, and young women go to young women's, where we will we are taught that we are pearls of great price.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: Job is to create other human beings who have the ability to become celestial beings.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Your celestial baby making machines to go for lack of a better word, lack of a better Jesus.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: So I literally had a four-year theology degree that I started when I was 18 at college level theology degree.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: As a young individual in the church to what they call seminary, yeah, and so before I went to school every day, I got up at six o'clock in the morning or five o'clock, depending on if I had to catch my book, and I did two hours of college-level theology work.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: And every Wednesday we went to the church so that I could go to seminary class, and then on Sunday mornings we were at the church by six so that we could have seminary class.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: So we weren't having indoctrination.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: That indoctrination, yeah.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: The religion as a whole.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Now you're gonna have a hundred sacrifice if I'm a bit.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: You're in the Mormon church at 13 and your family are with you, and at 16 they start to get sealed within the temple.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: You would have had for the first 13 years of your life, you wouldn't have been within the Mormon church.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: So you would have seen how how the real world works.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: So did you start to sort of go as you were getting older?
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh did you start to question things?
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Louis, you must have.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest, I I'm gonna say no.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: I didn't question things.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: I didn't start questioning things till I till I actually left, which was at about 17.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: Um so like I said, I instigated it because I loved my best friend so much.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: I would even go so far as to say I loved her as as a partner who love somebody, yeah, not as as you know, she was not just my best friend, but their and and I still love her to this day, and she is she is devout, she has eight children.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: But also you live in Utah.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: You say you instigate you instigated.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: I did, but can we remember that, Sandy?
43:23
SPEAKER_00: You're 13.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I know, I know that's yeah, but uh but I have to give my parents some credit in that as well because my parents were very much, they didn't want me to get involved with anything that they felt that they felt would be detrimental to my to my spirit or to uh to me as a person.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: And so that's how they wind up getting so heavily involved and active.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: The church has been around almost as long as the United States as long as an organization.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they've had a long time to perfect the honey.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: That they offer, you know, and and and and it's not by accident that the church's symbol is a beehive.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: The sense of community, the sense of belonging.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: And even to this day, I do not dispel the church for that, not in any way.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: And even when I go home now to see my daddy, I'll go to church with him every Sunday.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Are you you allowed to, even though you're excommunicated?
44:23
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm excommunicated.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: Because the goal of the church is for everybody to be together.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: And so even if you've been excommunicated, there's always a path back in if you choose it.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not shunned or looked down upon.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm offered the blood of Christ at every Sunday service, just like anybody else would be.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: But because I'm excommunicated, I would never.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: I I wouldn't I wouldn't be offensive to them or to myself by accepting that.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: But I go with my father because I'm for me, it's about showing him the respect of the raisin that he worked very hard to provide.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: And the church gives him comfort.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: It gives him a comfort that I can't argue with.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: And it gives them a sense of belonging and a sense of community.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: That, and they're very, very good at that.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: Now, do I believe any of the stuff they're selling leave in the sense of family and community that they gave me?
45:31
SPEAKER_01: They shaped that and they did a damn fine job because to me, even now, that is very important.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to me.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: And I did get that from the church.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: I didn't get that from anything else.
45:45
SPEAKER_01: And so I I would be remiss in myself if I said that they they're all bad because they're not.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just is it a cult?
45:56
SPEAKER_01: Is it a cult?
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: Did my mama wear uh magic underwear when she got buried?
46:02
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, she did.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: I find that hilarious in some part of my soul.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: But I'm also the same person that carries a rock in my pocket because I've given it power and an almost there.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: So I think what it comes down to is which magic we choose to believe and which magic we choose not to.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: There are some things that the church gave me, a sense of family, a sense of purpose, an understanding of of how I can move forward and make my place in it.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: Did I do it the way they wanted me to?
46:39
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: But did they help provide the strength for me to feel confident enough to do so?
46:47
SPEAKER_01: They did.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: I can't take that away from it.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: You're giving me an education, which is, you know, this is one of the reasons why I love I love doing this podcast and meeting people, because I get to learn something.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: And you know, my education of the LDS has been from watching documentaries.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: The documentaries I've been watching is probably more F F F L D S, the former Latter-day Saints, which is which is the sister wives and and the money.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Whereas we don't hear much about the OG Merman Church.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: They are very good at controlling their propaganda machine.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: Hear a lot about the OG Mormon Church because they have billions of dollars worth of high-powered lawyers standing in the background to make sure nobody speaks out of terms.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: What about politicians?
47:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't care what anybody says, Mitt Romney's a good guy, you have them.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: And and they do not allow people to call them anything other than Christian, in the sense that you know, the minute somebody pops up and starts calling it a cult, you start getting the response of being a conspiracy theorist and so forth and so forth.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: So when you lay it all out in black and white, you know, it's kind of hard not to see it for what you're saying.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: And and I think again, I think that uh there's just been there's been so much put out there.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: So you have an opportunity, and I would say to anybody who's listening to the podcast, if you want to know about the OG Mormon church and and what they're capable of and a bit of who they are as an organization outside of religion itself, look up a documentary about the salamander letters.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: There's been a couple, and it's quite interesting, but uh what it did was it proved that even an organization with so I won't say anything about it, I'll just let everybody be pleasantly surprised if you choose to watch something of that nature.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, the salamander letters were an interesting uh blemish on the or I want to say 70s, 80s.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: Basically, some documentation was brought to the heads of the church, including it, thought that are good for the church.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean to find out that it was all forgeries and fakes, and yeah, it it made us look a bit but there's there are genuinely there are a lot of good things about the church.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: They take care of their own.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Young men and women are you know taught to treat each other with respect.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, it is very much a misogynistic organization in the sense that the man is the man of the home, women are to be unto their husbands, kind of a situation.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean the whole thing is for example, uh there's a practice called family evening.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: Every Monday night, a family is expected to eat dinner together, and it's for the health of the family.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: So they're expected to eat dinner together, have family conversations, and then have family activities that are based on religion.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: Right.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: So whether it's choosing to dad choosing to read a passage out of the Book of Mormon or the Bible, and yes, Mormons do believe in the Bible as well.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, are big believers in there's nothing in the Bible absolutely counterpoints or interjects or disproves anything in the book, and so so yeah, so you spend Monday evenings at home with your family, and that is meant to bind the family closer together, and then on Wednesdays you do community activities, and so the church has be pretty locked down, right?
50:53
SPEAKER_01: So Mondays are for the family, Wednesdays are community activities like Girl Scouts throughout Texas.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: I'd say the majority of scout leaders are really, really big in the scout organizations.
51:07
SPEAKER_01: I will then, you know, for the use, we had monthly church dances.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: I will never tell my daddy, but me and my best mate used to run away in her car, cross the border into Louisiana, buy as much booze as we could and go drink all night at stars in the Le Bassier Hotel.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: You didn't hear that from me, and you don't know anything about that.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you know, it was interesting growing up, Mormon.
51:33
SPEAKER_01: It really was.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: But so I left home at 17.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: And you know, while I was in boot camp and in what they call A school, which is where learning your first job, whatever.
51:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean tried very hard not to be worldly influenced and to go to church.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: And I I stuck to it pretty good up until the point that I didn't.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: I had my first child out of woodlock, I had Michael first and and here is the reality of it.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: Was ill-prepared, and I mean ill-prepared, nothing about because from the time I was 13 until the time I left my mom and daddy's house, we got put in this bubble, and like we dated Mormon boys.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: I only went to church events, my whole social existence from the age of 13 became about church events.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: But I had my best friends with me, and I had my mom and daddy who were in the church, and I had my little brother and sister, so I had that community.
52:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh reason why I left home when I did is because my mom and daddy did not want me to leave home, and I've got just enough rebel left in me, thanks to my biological father, that I wasn't staying.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: I had applied to the arts college in San Francisco, which is where my father's mother lived, and I had made arrangements up with her.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna go to university in San Francisco and go across the bridge every day from Pacifica.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: But I did all of that behind my mom and daddy's back because I knew what would happen.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: Well, didn't keep the secret quite good enough.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: And when my mom and daddy found out, they were absolutely mortified and they were like, over their dead body, that wasn't gonna happen.
53:26
SPEAKER_01: I was going to school there, that you know, I could live at home.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: And and my dad had made a deal with all of his children.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: Now, my brother and sister are a lot younger than me, so they got the deal later on.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: But dad told every one of us if you choose to live at home, continue to go to church and continue to live under my roof and and abide by the rules, pay for your schooling, pay you a cost, we'll make sure that you have the financial ways and means having a social life if you choose to.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: But we want to make sure that you have the security of home and that you provided for and that you can get your education.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: Because my dad was huge about education, because he'd never had that.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: And so he wanted to make sure that all all of his children had the opportunity to go to university, but because I wanted to move so far afield, he just wasn't having it.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: And so behind my parents back once again, I went to school and went to the school counselor and uh to bring the military through the in.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: And so I wound up joining the Navy in my final year of school, six months before I even I left for the thing where so I went from one institution where you are where every aspect of your life is under some form of control.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and is that what you mean when you said you're in two cults?
54:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't care what anybody says, the US military is a cult.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean and I can give examples.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: So my brother, my brother was in the army 12 years, but you know, I think the British are the British Army is a little bit more free-flow.
55:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean the US the US Army and I mean I think he was stationed with some with some US soldier.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: And that he said it was a it was it was yeah, he was like, they're uh there's something, they're intense super intense flow.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so but I think that was the beginning for me, honestly.
55:31
SPEAKER_01: So in boot camp, what they do is they break you down, right?
55:34
SPEAKER_01: And that is their job, and they do not make up.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: They tell you, if we wanted you to have a family, we'd put one in your sea bag.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: If we wanted you to have a child, we'd have put one in your sea bag.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: We want you to have an life outside of the US military for me, the Navy, we get your sea bag, and we didn't do that.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
55:54
SPEAKER_01: You're ours.
55:54
SPEAKER_01: You sign the Donald Line, you're mine.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna make sure that I break you down and build you back up.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you an example.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: So, right before the end of graduation, where they're just trying to ram it all, huh?
56:07
SPEAKER_01: They do what they call psych.
56:10
SPEAKER_01: So he has up in the day, that's all 80, all 80 of us.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: And basically they sweatbox you, they they torture you physically, like, you know, you know, do 500 star jobs, do 80, you know, that kind of thing.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: By the time it's all of a sudden done, you can barely breathe in your sweating bullets, and like da-da-da.
56:32
SPEAKER_01: Then at the very end of it, end of the night, when they're done torturing us, they make you push all the bumps out of the way, lay down on the floor together, hold hands, and then they put a boom box in the middle of us and started playing his name.
56:49
SPEAKER_01: I want to say Al Green, but I'm not sure if that's I'm being American.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: That's literal brainwashing.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: Being American, where at least I know I'm free.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: Yes, 100%.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: It's brainwashing.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: The irony in that line.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: No, because you're not 100%.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
57:10
SPEAKER_01: And what I also find really, really interesting is that the US military is the purest form of a socialist cult you will ever find.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: Because everything is provided for you by the government.
57:24
SPEAKER_01: Everything.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: Housing was provided by the government, my bills were paid by the government, so my electrics, my water, my gas.
57:35
SPEAKER_01: That's all that all comes with your housing.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh you get it, you get an allotted amount, so part of your pay, but your paycheck winds up going back to the source because you shop at the local shop.
57:47
SPEAKER_01: The PX Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: Prices are cheaper.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: And so, like, you buy your fuel because prices are cheaper.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: So, what they do is they keep that money flowing as a circle back into government hand.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of things have changed.
58:06
SPEAKER_01: Still, I behave, I behave.
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Is still, in fact, we were having this call.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: He's now a master sergeant, and he is part of like uh the upper echelon non-commissioned officers training, training young, soon-to-be officers, how not to kill each other, get lost in the woods, or shoot their own friends.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: And he's very good at his job, bless him.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: And and he is recognized for that.
58:29
SPEAKER_01: He's son is very much like me in the sense that he is capable of thinking outside of the box.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: He knows how to make sure everybody knows all of the rules, everybody learns the rules, so that you know how to bend the rules.
58:48
SPEAKER_01: He's very, very good at it, and he is well recognized for that.
58:51
SPEAKER_01: And he's just good at his job.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: And he's and it's really important to him that he teaches these young men going forward how to make it count, you know, and and to be good, good officers to their men.
59:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, he he he finds that setting that example is extremely important.
59:12
SPEAKER_01: And I don't disagree with him.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: I think it is extremely important.
59:15
SPEAKER_01: I also think it's extremely funny because he's part of the cult.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't break it down from the inside.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he doesn't see it that way.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: And me and Taylor were always poking at him.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: We're like, no, you can't he's like, uh-uh, you really do.
59:32
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, mm-hmm, yeah, I do in the cult.
59:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing an experience.
59:37
SPEAKER_01: I know it does a lot of things for for you.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: For example, son has gone from strength to strength, and he is at the he is at the pinnacle of his career, and and he's got five beautiful children that he can afford to provide for, even in this crazy economic culture that we have at the moment.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it it's it's afforded him the ability to allow his wife.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: She works if she wants to, but she doesn't have to.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: And and at points, they've they've found it more beneficial for their children to be homeschooled versus not being homeschooled.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, she's been able to stay home and be that parent, be a teacher.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: And I at the end of the day, I tell them all the time though, when you think you run it, you don't run it.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: Tayla runs it.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: She is she is the master surgeon in charge.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't care what you say.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: None of it would work if she wasn't there making sure it all stayed together.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: But it is, it is really quite interesting.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh and I do say that.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_01: I say it with laughter, but underneath the laughter, there there is more than a grain of truth in it, you know.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I I don't blame my parents for not giving me practical structure because in the church you're taught that you you always got a safety net.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: The church will always be there for you.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't need practical structure, and my parents didn't need to teach me practical structure because I would learn that in the church.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_01: And me leaving the church meant leaving that opportunity for practical structure.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: Like I made my parents never talked to me about opening a bank account or taking out a loan or Lord did I make some major financial fuck-ups as a as a young person.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't know what I was doing.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_01: I had to learn everything like that on the fly.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: And uh but yeah, I think uh even then, even you know, when I started to come away from that, I started to wake up.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_01: What I would say is that once you step away from those safety nets, you fall really, really hard.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're free-falling.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: And um I I left the military with two kids.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_01: I was married at the time, but the individual that I was married to was not a good personally and physically abusive, and it it very quickly, you know, turned into a situation where on multiple occasions I tried to leave and was not in a position because I had no none of those skills, what I consider life skills, I was not in a position to leave and so would come back.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: And so it took me, it took me almost 11 years to completely break away and take my children with me.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: And even that was very difficult.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: Is that how long you were in the military for?
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: I was in the military for I was active duty for uh six.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: I was active duty for six years, and then I did two years of uh active duty reserves.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_01: I did two years like that, and then I did another four years as what they consider a a reporting non-active duty.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_01: So that meant that I didn't have to report, yeah, go in uniform or anything, but at any moment, if anything were to have happened, it's a five and you're back in.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: So as far as like physical activity and keeping my uniforms and stuff like that, eight years in total, but 12 years altogether.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: I claim the 12 years because boy, they they put they scare the living shit out of you and say, don't go nowhere.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_01: But like because you still had to tell them where you were, where give what your address was, they still they still had to be able to track you.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: So so from that perspective.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_01: But but I was married to an individual that was also active duty military and then got out for a high-paying job.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: And we wound up moving, his his parents were from Georgia, which I do consider if there's there's only been two lots of ground that ever called to me.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: Don't get me wrong, I love California, I love Texas, but Georgia what it is about.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_01: Georgia just it grabs you and put your feet on, you know, on that on that ground because you can feel you can feel the ancestors rising up to have a conversation.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: There's been very few places in my life that made me feel that way.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_01: Georgia was one of them.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: Louisiana was one of them.
1:04:27
SPEAKER_01: And here, right?
1:04:29
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because I think I think all three of those places kind of throughout my life have it's never been necessarily been the people that have influenced me to to do a certain thing or behave a certain way, or i it's been the places I've been in.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: Because I've been all over the world.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, I've lived in other cultures and each one of those things has opened those those mental and I I think I think the world teaches you, especially as a female, yeah, not to recognize those signs and those symbols and those manifestations that, you know, we don't even realize that we're doing it, whether it's making a checklist to find your soulmate, you know, whether it's you know manifesting to yourself happens or spirituality or what have you.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_01: I have always found that all of those things are attached to anytime I've really felt my ancestors talking to me because I've been in a in a special place that I'll never forget when my grandmother passed away I lost it.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: She was my hero.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: She passed away when I was 13 before I joined the church.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: And I had been spending the summer in Oklahoma with my estate biological flock.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: The whole design that we lived on was right next to a bunch of wheat fields.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: one of those defining moments where I went out into the field and I was just beside myself.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: But I she had been she had come to live with my mom and daddy because she was gonna have surgery on her knee and and that's what had had taken her.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: She had gotten a blood clot that had gone too long and killed her in her sleep while she was in hospital.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_01: And so it was very unexpected.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_01: And uh I went out into this wheat field and just threw myself down in the middle of the wheat and sat there crying and and just I was wailing for all it was worth me she was like what are you doing?
1:06:43
SPEAKER_02: Why are you crying?
1:06:44
SPEAKER_02: She was like your hands on the ground.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_01: He's like I'm here because everybody in my life would have would have said that's ridiculous.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sat here listening and I'm just like doesn't sound ridiculous to me at all I'm totally accepting and believing you know it's incredible and I was really lucky because my my daddy my daddy was a bit of a my biological father a bit of a ladies man he had a tendency to collect women like most of us collect China dolls.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_01: And he married on multiple multiple occasions he was an active polygamist he was married to my mama until I was three but he had remarried to my stepmom when I was one and but he got married up in Alaska she was innocent and she believed me yeah that must have been really validating believe me and we talked about it and um she was she was only part innocent but she she had she was you know Alaskan and she she believed in that part of the world.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_01: She also considered herself a very devout Christian but she didn't go to church she had a more spiritual belief her name was Judy and I will never forget her as long as I live and because I was a child when they divorced she was removed from my my life quite suddenly and I've never had the opportunity to speak to her again and and I just I often wonder you know is she still alive is she still out there you know what I mean because there I think as women there are so few of our people in our lives that do understand that part of us that that we can talk to you about it.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_01: But she you know she never made a big deal out of it we didn't like it was never really brought up but when I came back inside that night because I was gone I didn't run her and my biological daddy he got really upset he's like where have you been he was yelling at me and she just turned around she looked at him and she was like shut up Wayne I never had heard her ever speak to my father that way yeah he was it he's a whole nother story he was an interesting man but yeah she did she believed me and and I over the course of my life I was able to tuck those things away she very much believed in spiritual practice she believed in talismans I wound up moving in with her and my biological father once they moved to Oklahoma and my father who was as cheap as the day is long bought a used trailer house what you would call a caravan yeah bedroom two bedroom trailer and put it on a gravel lot stepmom and this is gonna be where we live now he was a truck driver at the time he was he was there very rarely this is gonna be where we live he was like we're moving in next week but you gotta clean it so I kid you not when I tell you I don't know who he bought this trailer from but there had been um gruesome event oh my god that had been that just wondering why he got it so cheap.
1:10:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god how someone been bad and so my son mama and I I was I think I was 10 at the time had to go in and clean this trailer and I can remember pulling the stove out and having to use a spatula to get the gore off the floor.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_01: The trauma like the trauma but he got it for a steal but thing go happened in that trailer.
1:10:43
SPEAKER_01: Well yeah yeah in fact we did not stay there long I think they were in that trailer for less than a year because she told him sell this son of a bitch and you get me out of here because I'm not living here with these spirits any longer so I had my own room and then they had the master bedroom and I had it closet room right and I um I had gotten a hammer from my stepmom Judy had given me the hammer she put it up on top of my dresser and I was sitting on the bed and that hammer flew from one side of the room to the other and hit my window and she came running and she's like what did you do?
1:11:23
SPEAKER_01: And I was like I was crying I was like Mama I didn't do nothing I was like that hammer flew across the room and she did not scold me she just looked at me and she's like okay and she took my hand and she took me out of the room and then something else happened I can't remember what but I remember her she found some things that had been left like records and something and I will never forget she took me outside because in them days everybody had what we call a burn barrel.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_01: So that's where you burned your trash you didn't take your trash to the dump because it was too big it all went into the barrel and you burned it down.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah great for the environment no environmental protection agency in those days that's why even got that hole in the ozone layer is probably a big one we can guarantee it.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: So she took some stuff out of the house put it in that burn barrel and apparently the individual that had committed said atrocities actually was in the room I was in the little ball and so she made me put anything that I found in that room into the burn barrel.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_01: And then she took off a medallion like a St.
1:12:36
SPEAKER_01: Christopher's medal or something of that nature gave it a quick kiss said some prayers stuck it on top of the pile and then put enough lighter fluent on that to freaking crisp up a couple of pigs for a barbecue and lit that bitch on fire and and like you know was basically banishing everything.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_01: And uh she thought she had done a good job and I was I I was just like yep okay let's do this you know being eight at the time and not really knowing what the purpose of this was so probably I'd say probably a couple months later we were in the in the living room area of the trailer and uh me and mama were watching something on TV now she had a thing for John Wayne.
1:13:21
SPEAKER_01: She loved John Wayne.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_01: So my daddy had bought her a sketch a pencil sketch of John Wayne and she was very much into like Frontier style antiques.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_01: And um so she had this beautiful oil lamp that she used to light every night and we sat on top of this trunk and then there was this picture of John Wayne over the trunk.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget it as long as I live.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_01: So her and I were sitting there and we were giggling and laughing and she had turned the TV on and all of a sudden the TV got really loud and then it went off and then this picture of John Wayne I shit you not levitated off the wall and hit that oil lamp came down hit the lamp and she had to fortunately my stepmom was a health and safety nerd I guess she had a fire extinguisher and so she had to put that fire out.
1:14:14
SPEAKER_01: But what I found really interesting is later on in life when I started like looking into things I found it interesting that like so many of us who do practice and do talk to our ancestors and stuff have had have seen those things have had those experiences whether they were good or bad and she just she was convinced and she told my daddy she's like I do not care what you say this place is cursed.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_01: Not not the ground it sits on but this this is cursed.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah and I think that was the first time I took into account the fact that we as spiritual beings as creatures can give something power yeah yeah can can imbue our spirit our power onto a thing and I've told my kids about this and and they were like you were on some serious payote you were I was I like I was eight I was like I don't think I was doing any dream you know I mean not to not to say that things haven't occurred but but yeah so so I have had these occurrences over my life where I have been introduced to things that you cannot explain that you that have no tangibility to them but that you need to handle from a spiritual perspective.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_00: And that is the end of part one I hope you all enjoyed listening to this episode.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_00: Join me next week for the second part of Sandy's incredible story.
1:15:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay so let's move on to our witch weekly events.
1:15:59
SPEAKER_00: Now normally I would talk about what the local Covens and sister circles are in the area.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_00: However some of them have changed so I'm just waiting for some updates and then I'll be bringing them back as soon as I have that confirmed.
1:16:13
SPEAKER_00: But looking forward to Friday and the weekend starting with Friday the Jamaica Inn is holding paranormal investigations.
1:16:22
SPEAKER_00: This is Friday the 16th of October starting at 7 o'clock it's going to be a nighttime ghost hunting and paranormal exploration experience and this is at one of Cornwall's most historically haunted coaching inns, the Jamaica Inn, which is on Bodman Moor.
1:16:37
SPEAKER_00: On Saturday the 17th of October, the Feelgood Festival is taking place at Millennium House in Lisgard.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_00: This is from 10am until 4pm entry is free and you can expect arts and crafts stalls, healers and clairvoyants, wellbeing stalls and wellness practitioners, informational talks and eco-products and healthy living resources.
1:16:59
SPEAKER_00: Also on Saturday the 17th of October Canborn is holding a Mind, body and spirit fair this is from 11am and it's at the Holman Sports Club there will be Spiritual and Wellness Psychic mediums, tarot and oracle card readings, crystals, witchy treasures, handcrafted jewellery and healing therapies and entry is free.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_00: Going into Saturday evening, a spiritual evening is being held at the Union Hotel in Penzance from 5.30pm it's an autumnal evening of insightful talk, gentle practice and intuitive drawing led by Angie Kruger and Jade Lucrezia, focusing on both personal growth and inner insight.
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SPEAKER_00: Something fun on Saturday if you have children or little ones, the Squash Theatre is presenting Secrets of the Hidden Realm.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_00: This is Saturday from 7.30pm the venue is Calstock Village Hall and it's a family friendly puppetry and storytelling performance exploring a mythical parallel dimension that's filled with fairies, pixies and folklore.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: And then finally running from Friday to Sunday, Bodman Jail are hosting a Halloween experience called the Haunted Gallery.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a family friendly Halloween exhibition inside the former historic jail exploring ghost lore and paranormal legends.
1:18:26
SPEAKER_00: And all of the links to the events that I've mentioned can be found in the show notes.
1:18:32
SPEAKER_00: That is everything I have for you for this episode.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening to the Cornish Witch podcast.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is an independent personal project created outside of my professional life.
1:18:48
SPEAKER_00: It exists as a space for conversation with witches, spiritual practitioners and those walking their own paths, sharing lived practice, ritual, experience and folklore often rooted here in Cornwall and the land itself.
1:19:06
SPEAKER_00: If you value these conversations and would like to support the continuation of the podcast there is a voluntary link in the show notes.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_00: Listening will always remain free and there is no expectation to contribute.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_00: Whether you support here when they are meant to and until next time may the path rise to meet you