1
00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:10,800
Speaker 1: You're listening to the paranorl UK Radio network and this

2
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:13,000
is six Degrees of John Keel.

3
00:00:48,719 --> 00:00:51,840
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the six Degrees of John Keele podcast.

4
00:00:52,359 --> 00:00:57,000
I'm your host Barbara Fisher. Today close to in Bulk,

5
00:00:57,240 --> 00:01:03,679
I'm talking with Daniella Simona and she's been here before

6
00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:07,799
and she just came out with a new book called

7
00:01:07,920 --> 00:01:11,439
A Fairy Path, the Memoirs of a Young Fairy Seer

8
00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:14,920
in Training, and it's very excellent. We're going to talk

9
00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:19,319
about that and probably other stuff too. Welcome Danielle. I'm

10
00:01:19,359 --> 00:01:20,480
so glad to see you again.

11
00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:26,040
Speaker 1: Hello. Hello, I'm so so glad to be back. We

12
00:01:26,120 --> 00:01:30,840
had a very exciting episode the last time. So many things,

13
00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:34,840
questions left unanswered. We just didn't have a physical time

14
00:01:34,959 --> 00:01:38,359
not to get into everything. So I'm very glad to

15
00:01:38,439 --> 00:01:42,480
be here to continue in a sense discussion that we

16
00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:47,599
started last time, but also to bring up new topics

17
00:01:48,120 --> 00:01:52,599
and look at very magic and what I'm writing about

18
00:01:52,719 --> 00:01:57,319
very magic from a new point of view, the front angle.

19
00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:02,879
Speaker 2: Okay, at that so excellent. Yeah. Yeah. We went as

20
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,120
deep as we could the first time and not talk

21
00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:10,639
for five hours, which is I didn't want to, like,

22
00:02:10,919 --> 00:02:16,000
you know, uh, destroy your ability to like communicate by

23
00:02:16,319 --> 00:02:19,080
making you talk forever. I could have though, I could have,

24
00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:22,960
I could have talked with you forever and ever. But uh,

25
00:02:23,039 --> 00:02:28,960
I'm glad that you came back. Okay, before we start

26
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:32,000
talking about fairy magic, I want to talk about your

27
00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:34,639
book a little bit, and then it's just gonna it's

28
00:02:34,680 --> 00:02:39,879
gonna flow, it's gonna come. A Fairy Path is interesting

29
00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:43,400
because it is a memoir, and one of my favorite

30
00:02:43,479 --> 00:02:49,039
genres to read is memoirs, because I think that the

31
00:02:49,039 --> 00:02:54,599
more experiences of humanity that we have, the more we

32
00:02:54,759 --> 00:03:01,960
understand everyone and ourselves. The more that we read about

33
00:03:01,960 --> 00:03:05,639
people from different places and different cultures who have different

34
00:03:05,680 --> 00:03:10,520
experiences than us, the more we see that they are human.

35
00:03:11,199 --> 00:03:13,919
And not only are they human, but even if their

36
00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:18,120
experiences and culture are very very different from us, what

37
00:03:18,159 --> 00:03:22,000
we learn is that inside we're all the same. We

38
00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:27,800
all have the same desires, we have the same kinds

39
00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:33,240
of emotions, and that is honestly, I think that's a

40
00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:37,800
really interesting and good way to teach magic by showing

41
00:03:37,879 --> 00:03:42,560
how you got to where you are now. So in

42
00:03:42,599 --> 00:03:48,080
this book, you tell from what grade were you in.

43
00:03:50,199 --> 00:03:53,400
Speaker 1: It starts with me being in the third grade.

44
00:03:53,520 --> 00:03:54,199
Speaker 2: That's what I've find.

45
00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:57,240
Speaker 1: It goes through a good part of fourth grade. So

46
00:03:57,879 --> 00:04:03,759
the book packs and what's happening over an arc of

47
00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:04,879
about two years.

48
00:04:05,319 --> 00:04:13,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's well, I think in child development speak,

49
00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:18,439
those two years are like pivotal. I really think that

50
00:04:18,519 --> 00:04:22,920
those are Your brain is developing at a very fast pace.

51
00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:29,279
Your understanding of the world, which you get from context

52
00:04:29,319 --> 00:04:32,519
clues most of the time and from direct teaching from

53
00:04:32,560 --> 00:04:36,800
your family, is moving very quickly. You know. This is

54
00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:43,040
like what I always said to uh Morgana when she

55
00:04:43,120 --> 00:04:47,079
got older and Fox was a little little toddler kid.

56
00:04:47,199 --> 00:04:50,879
I was like, they get really interested, Like all kids

57
00:04:50,879 --> 00:04:54,600
get really interesting around third grade. That's that's when I

58
00:04:54,680 --> 00:04:57,120
was like, not like, not like I didn't like him

59
00:04:57,279 --> 00:05:01,439
when he's toddling around and being really cute. But third

60
00:05:01,439 --> 00:05:05,240
grade is when they open their mouths and things just

61
00:05:05,360 --> 00:05:09,839
come out where they have learned their own understanding and

62
00:05:09,879 --> 00:05:12,959
then they add it to their cultural understanding, and weird

63
00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:16,439
stuff just pops right out of their mouths, and you go, huh,

64
00:05:17,399 --> 00:05:21,879
I never thought of that. So let's start with the

65
00:05:22,040 --> 00:05:25,560
very first sentence, and we're not going to do the

66
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:30,680
whole text, like this, people don't be all like weird. Yeah,

67
00:05:30,920 --> 00:05:37,199
it says there's no such thing as Santa. Can you

68
00:05:37,319 --> 00:05:39,959
like elaborate on this?

69
00:05:40,199 --> 00:05:40,839
Speaker 1: Absolutely?

70
00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:44,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I really should say it wasn't just it

71
00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:46,800
doesn't say there's no such thing as Santa. There are

72
00:05:46,839 --> 00:05:49,480
quotes around it. Someone is saying it, and not only

73
00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:51,959
is she saying it, she's saying it loudly.

74
00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:57,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in capitals, I believe. Yes. So there was

75
00:05:58,199 --> 00:06:02,680
this instance in my life when I heard my teacher,

76
00:06:02,759 --> 00:06:05,600
So the person talking that is my third grade teacher

77
00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:08,639
yelling at me there is no such thing as Center,

78
00:06:09,439 --> 00:06:14,519
and actually slamming her hand on the desk, and she

79
00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:19,839
was very, very irritated by the very idea that someone

80
00:06:20,279 --> 00:06:26,480
a child would bring up the idea of magic. And

81
00:06:26,759 --> 00:06:30,519
it may not be very obvious to the reader in

82
00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:35,040
the United States or other places around the world why

83
00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:40,879
my teacher was so outraged about it. The action in

84
00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:46,600
the book is placed in the early seventies when in

85
00:06:46,680 --> 00:06:51,000
Romania we had a dictatorial regime. And what a dictatorial

86
00:06:51,079 --> 00:06:55,399
regime means is that the people who have the political power,

87
00:06:56,600 --> 00:07:00,360
they will tell you how to dress, what you eat,

88
00:07:01,240 --> 00:07:04,720
what you believe you are allowed to believe in what

89
00:07:04,879 --> 00:07:10,439
you're not allowed to believe, how you should think. And

90
00:07:10,759 --> 00:07:13,720
if you do not align, if you do set your

91
00:07:13,839 --> 00:07:19,920
toe past the line, you are in trouble. And trouble

92
00:07:20,040 --> 00:07:26,160
ranges from consequences like a child could have been placed

93
00:07:26,199 --> 00:07:32,000
in an institution to be re educated, rehabbed, for an

94
00:07:32,040 --> 00:07:39,040
adult that could be prison or again conversations to help

95
00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:42,879
the adult involved clear up their mind and sort out

96
00:07:43,279 --> 00:07:48,199
the healthy from the unhealthy ideas and the healthy making

97
00:07:48,240 --> 00:07:54,040
her bunny ears by healthy. It was intended what the

98
00:07:54,600 --> 00:08:02,399
political party was considered healthy. So with all that in mind,

99
00:08:02,600 --> 00:08:05,600
I can now, looking back, I can understand my teacher's

100
00:08:05,800 --> 00:08:10,680
outrage because she was concerned that such a deeply mystical

101
00:08:10,759 --> 00:08:16,319
little being was emerging, was blossoming right underneath in front

102
00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:21,560
of her in her class. So she was concerned. But

103
00:08:21,800 --> 00:08:24,800
as the reader, I hope the reader will have the

104
00:08:24,839 --> 00:08:27,759
curiosity to follow through the pages of the book, we'll

105
00:08:27,759 --> 00:08:33,480
discover that my teacher herself was one of those honest

106
00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:40,000
believers in how sound and good that regime political regime was,

107
00:08:40,720 --> 00:08:48,440
And she was like this fervent preacher of the values

108
00:08:49,120 --> 00:08:55,600
that the dictatorial regime in Romania back then was representing,

109
00:08:55,960 --> 00:09:01,480
embodying and trying to really instill to the citizens since

110
00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:09,240
the earliest possible. As you, Barbara said, third grade, childhood

111
00:09:09,519 --> 00:09:14,279
is a time when children are prime to absorb the

112
00:09:14,279 --> 00:09:18,720
world through either what the experience and what they are

113
00:09:18,879 --> 00:09:23,120
they are taught. So those are formative years and are crucial.

114
00:09:23,840 --> 00:09:26,120
Now you might be wondering at this point how even

115
00:09:26,159 --> 00:09:29,759
the discourse of Santa came about. And without giving here

116
00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:32,000
too much of a spoiler, I want to say that

117
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:39,799
I had my own experiences and perceptions and sightings and interactions.

118
00:09:39,799 --> 00:09:42,919
So this goes beyond just imagining or how I think

119
00:09:42,960 --> 00:09:46,200
I saw something in the corner of my eye. I

120
00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:51,279
had my share of experiences since a very young age,

121
00:09:52,159 --> 00:09:55,360
since as early as I can remember, I can say,

122
00:09:56,080 --> 00:10:01,720
and I was trying to in my child's like in

123
00:10:01,759 --> 00:10:04,399
my mind as a child, I was trying to make

124
00:10:04,480 --> 00:10:09,919
sense of what I was seeing. And when I encountered

125
00:10:09,960 --> 00:10:13,799
this what appeared to be like a gentleman dressed in

126
00:10:13,840 --> 00:10:16,879
a certain fashion. And because it was very early, it

127
00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:19,399
was the last day of November. I will never forget

128
00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:24,080
that that's like etched into my memory late November. Now,

129
00:10:24,120 --> 00:10:26,159
this is a time when in Romania we have like

130
00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:31,000
the first snow falling, and you know that's deep, massive

131
00:10:31,120 --> 00:10:35,519
frost in most of the areas. So my mind combined

132
00:10:35,559 --> 00:10:38,639
put two and two together, the apparition plus the time

133
00:10:38,720 --> 00:10:40,639
of the year, and I said, okay, wow, cool, that

134
00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:45,360
might be Santa Claus. So I went around, you know,

135
00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:47,840
telling it's like, hey, I saw Santa Claus. So you know,

136
00:10:47,919 --> 00:10:51,279
it's not like we are told those things don't exist,

137
00:10:51,360 --> 00:10:57,679
because I just saw him. So that kind of gives

138
00:10:57,720 --> 00:11:02,960
the idea what kind of experience sightings I was having.

139
00:11:03,799 --> 00:11:10,840
And to make things even more confusing for the reader

140
00:11:11,159 --> 00:11:14,080
or for the listener right now, I'll go ahead and

141
00:11:14,159 --> 00:11:17,759
say that I grew up with my grandmother, so she

142
00:11:17,879 --> 00:11:21,600
lived with us, and she was a practitioner of folk

143
00:11:21,679 --> 00:11:26,440
medicine and a very seer. And now I'm just visualizing.

144
00:11:26,639 --> 00:11:30,759
I have this image of the audience going, what do

145
00:11:30,799 --> 00:11:34,639
you mean you grew up with a fairy witch with

146
00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:39,000
a medicine woman right there, and there was nobody to

147
00:11:39,159 --> 00:11:43,600
tell you about Santa Claus and what were you seeing

148
00:11:43,720 --> 00:11:46,799
and what is what? And help you this entangle your

149
00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:54,320
own experiences. And the answer here is two fold. First

150
00:11:54,399 --> 00:12:01,840
of all, I thought that all children and see what

151
00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:06,240
I'm seeing. Like I remember one day walking into the

152
00:12:06,240 --> 00:12:10,200
classroom and telling everybody, Hey, guys, my cat was glowing

153
00:12:10,240 --> 00:12:15,919
blue this morning. What colors do your cats blow? I

154
00:12:16,039 --> 00:12:19,799
leave it to everyone's imagination to figure out what happened

155
00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:22,759
given the context that I just gave, you know about

156
00:12:22,799 --> 00:12:28,799
a very strict very and I was very upset. I'm like,

157
00:12:29,639 --> 00:12:34,279
either every I mean, everyone's better than myself at keeping

158
00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:37,200
it a secret, so they don't like to talk about

159
00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:46,039
what colors their cats or dogs are glowing. So that's

160
00:12:46,200 --> 00:12:50,639
that's one aspect that I didn't I couldn't fathom from

161
00:12:50,679 --> 00:12:54,440
the very beginning that not everyone was seeing was perceiving

162
00:12:54,480 --> 00:12:57,279
these kind of things the way I did. And the

163
00:12:57,440 --> 00:13:02,960
other thing, my grandmother herself was trying to keep me

164
00:13:03,039 --> 00:13:07,159
away when she was doing her charms and her healing

165
00:13:07,240 --> 00:13:12,799
magic and all those rituals, and she was really trying

166
00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:15,159
to keep me away. There was a time I could

167
00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:19,039
remember when I was like very very little, like toddleer age,

168
00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:24,039
when I was crawling into the spaces where she and

169
00:13:24,080 --> 00:13:27,159
her friends her ladies were doing things, and that was

170
00:13:27,399 --> 00:13:30,919
sticking my nose into everything. But then I also remember

171
00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:35,840
a time when she started to push me away, and

172
00:13:36,080 --> 00:13:41,480
I was really really frustrated. So Grandma was there. Basically

173
00:13:41,559 --> 00:13:45,600
my source of knowledge and potential answers was right there

174
00:13:45,639 --> 00:13:54,799
with me, and yet I couldn't reach What this led to,

175
00:13:56,159 --> 00:13:58,399
I started to do things by myself and trying to

176
00:13:58,440 --> 00:14:00,919
figure out what I was seeing, what I was doing,

177
00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:05,320
what I was and I was getting myself into trouble,

178
00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:10,039
talking to the wrong people, asking the wrong type of questions,

179
00:14:10,120 --> 00:14:15,240
people from outside the house. At which point my grandmother

180
00:14:15,360 --> 00:14:19,799
realized that it's better if she begins to discuss with

181
00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:24,519
me about certain things because having these she called them

182
00:14:24,559 --> 00:14:31,600
magical gifts. So having these magical gifts could have gotten

183
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:35,279
me into trouble, and I actually did get in trouble

184
00:14:35,279 --> 00:14:41,840
more than once. Yeah, but there are none. Nevertheless, their gifts,

185
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:46,440
and I could have been taught to use them better

186
00:14:46,559 --> 00:14:50,200
in useful ways, in productive ways. So she steps in

187
00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:55,799
basically to protect me and making me aware that this

188
00:14:55,960 --> 00:15:01,600
is not something too toy around with. The Consequences can

189
00:15:01,679 --> 00:15:06,360
be very very serious, arranging from all discomfort to death.

190
00:15:06,519 --> 00:15:09,279
You know, I know it's a broad spectrum, but I'm

191
00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:14,519
not exaggerating now, Grandmother, this is the tie back to

192
00:15:14,759 --> 00:15:19,639
the beginning of our discussion when we mentioned the problem

193
00:15:20,039 --> 00:15:28,159
the problems arising from living under an authoritarian regime. So grandmother,

194
00:15:28,759 --> 00:15:30,919
one of the reasons that she didn't want to tell me,

195
00:15:31,159 --> 00:15:36,720
I mean, teach me more was that as a kid,

196
00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:41,519
I would have probably went around speaking and sharing with

197
00:15:41,639 --> 00:15:45,559
my friends little friends, what did I learn and what

198
00:15:45,679 --> 00:15:50,159
fabulous things can I do or not to do, which

199
00:15:50,799 --> 00:15:55,480
would have spelled trouble for the whole whole family and

200
00:15:55,639 --> 00:15:58,440
get us the wrong kind of attention from authorities, which,

201
00:15:58,480 --> 00:16:01,480
by the way, if you did the book, that actually

202
00:16:01,960 --> 00:16:05,360
does happen at some point. So we had the Romanian

203
00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:13,200
security services stepping in, so yeah, not fun. So that

204
00:16:13,440 --> 00:16:17,039
was the reason why she was concerned about teaching me.

205
00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:20,000
On the other hand, she had too because I was

206
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:27,039
a danger to myself and others. And yeah, so yeah,

207
00:16:27,080 --> 00:16:29,559
teaching was the best way out of the situation.

208
00:16:30,279 --> 00:16:33,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took her a little bit to come to

209
00:16:33,240 --> 00:16:39,840
that conclusion, now, because you know, you you were you

210
00:16:39,840 --> 00:16:45,240
were stubborn and and you kept you kept listening at doors. Hey,

211
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:49,519
I'm not judging you. Yes, I did that too. I

212
00:16:49,600 --> 00:16:51,120
pretended to be asleep a lot.

213
00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:55,360
Speaker 1: Yees, Yes, I relate, Yeah, relate.

214
00:16:57,720 --> 00:17:00,399
Speaker 2: I didn't learn good this is interesting stuff you did

215
00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:02,960
that way, But still I did learn lots of the

216
00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:09,000
family secrets that little kids aren't supposed to know, and

217
00:17:09,079 --> 00:17:13,279
that you know, that's a thing that kids do. We're curious,

218
00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:17,519
you know, and kids at that age are especially curious.

219
00:17:19,240 --> 00:17:22,119
And you get to be curious not just about what

220
00:17:22,119 --> 00:17:25,680
you're learning in school, but everything because you want to

221
00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:28,400
make sense of how all of this works. And you

222
00:17:28,559 --> 00:17:33,599
had your teacher who went by the title comrade, so

223
00:17:34,359 --> 00:17:35,759
you know, I mean.

224
00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:38,079
Speaker 1: That's how we were. We were talking to the teacher.

225
00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:42,400
I mean, you don't say mom or miss, so it

226
00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:45,680
was like, Comrade such and such, step up there, take

227
00:17:45,759 --> 00:17:48,279
up nice, you know, upright position, and say Comrade such

228
00:17:48,279 --> 00:17:51,000
and such and you start addressing. So it was it

229
00:17:51,039 --> 00:17:56,880
was getting pretty militarized, criticized. Certainly, it wasn't as bad

230
00:17:57,039 --> 00:18:01,200
as in our neighboring country, the ex Soviet Union, because

231
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:04,519
we have a big common border with the ex Soviet Union,

232
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:07,720
so there was a lot of pressure on, you know,

233
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:12,519
our government from theirs. So they also made sure that

234
00:18:12,559 --> 00:18:17,920
we Romania stays in line with So yeah, a lot

235
00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:24,359
of stuff was important. Oh yeah, and it's planted implanted

236
00:18:24,759 --> 00:18:26,200
with no choice over.

237
00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:28,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that was the same for a

238
00:18:28,799 --> 00:18:31,519
lot of the Eastern Bloc countries at the time, yep.

239
00:18:31,799 --> 00:18:34,799
And you know they were they were all little variations,

240
00:18:35,279 --> 00:18:38,880
you know, but it was the same common thread of authoritarianism.

241
00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:42,279
And that's I think this is like at the core

242
00:18:42,519 --> 00:18:48,599
of the book is that when you are a child

243
00:18:48,799 --> 00:18:56,039
in an authoritarian country with an authoritarian regime with stuff

244
00:18:56,119 --> 00:19:02,119
like secret police and security services and all of that stuff. Yeah, okay,

245
00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:04,400
we've got the CIA, but they don't follow kids to

246
00:19:04,400 --> 00:19:09,720
school and crap. I mean, I know that the conspiracy

247
00:19:09,759 --> 00:19:11,480
theory people are going to be like, yes they did,

248
00:19:11,559 --> 00:19:15,000
and I'm like, okay, just go over there. No, no,

249
00:19:15,079 --> 00:19:20,160
they didn't, and they don't. You know, Yeah, we have

250
00:19:20,279 --> 00:19:23,200
that stuff, but it's not the same. And it's one

251
00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:27,279
of the things that I found so crucial to the

252
00:19:27,440 --> 00:19:32,799
message of this book is these things are not only dangerous.

253
00:19:32,920 --> 00:19:37,640
Magic is not only dangerous because it's dangerous like as

254
00:19:37,680 --> 00:19:45,400
you said, illness, death, honestly, insanity. Yes, you can lose

255
00:19:45,759 --> 00:19:54,680
your mind essentially if you play around in a stupid way.

256
00:19:54,839 --> 00:19:59,920
So it's not just that it's that other people recognize

257
00:20:00,039 --> 00:20:04,799
it is dangerous. And want to stamp it out. Yep,

258
00:20:05,680 --> 00:20:08,519
and that was I mean, look look at the Catholic

259
00:20:08,599 --> 00:20:12,920
Church for centuries. They knew darn good and well that

260
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:18,400
that stuff worked and that it was dangerous, so they

261
00:20:18,440 --> 00:20:20,960
stamped it out. The only person allowed to do things

262
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:24,799
like transubstantiation was the priest. Yes, that's the only person.

263
00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:26,839
And by the way, he could only read. He was

264
00:20:26,839 --> 00:20:28,519
the only one who could read the Bible because he

265
00:20:28,559 --> 00:20:32,000
was the only one who was taught Latin, and so

266
00:20:32,960 --> 00:20:36,279
all of this stuff, you know, they kept it all together. Now,

267
00:20:36,359 --> 00:20:40,440
instead of doing it that way, the Romanian government did

268
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:42,680
it the other way, which is stamp it straight out

269
00:20:42,839 --> 00:20:45,920
just by going no, you don't believe. It's like a

270
00:20:46,039 --> 00:20:52,799
giant gaslighting session. Like you can call authoritarianism a case

271
00:20:53,319 --> 00:20:58,359
of gigantic gaslighting where you tell your citizens you didn't

272
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:03,319
see that that doesn't exist. This is how we think

273
00:21:03,359 --> 00:21:06,440
of things. That is how we do not think of things.

274
00:21:07,079 --> 00:21:09,319
And if you don't think of things the way we do,

275
00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:11,119
we're just going.

276
00:21:11,119 --> 00:21:16,440
Speaker 1: To keep it. Yeah, they help you see the right way, Yes, because.

277
00:21:17,839 --> 00:21:20,759
Speaker 2: In a way, the ones who are true believers believe

278
00:21:20,839 --> 00:21:24,519
they are helping you. And this is actually this is

279
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:30,599
this is why a lot of evangelical Christian communities are

280
00:21:30,640 --> 00:21:35,519
really into this whole witnessing to non Christians, because they

281
00:21:35,559 --> 00:21:38,119
truly do believe that these people are going to go

282
00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:41,759
to hell when they die, and they want to save them,

283
00:21:41,799 --> 00:21:45,039
and in their mind they are helping them. Same thing.

284
00:21:45,799 --> 00:21:47,000
It is, it's the.

285
00:21:47,119 --> 00:21:50,920
Speaker 1: Exact same thing. I mean, I remember, and they tried

286
00:21:50,960 --> 00:21:56,559
to make and they were actually making programs for children

287
00:21:56,640 --> 00:22:01,839
that were super opealing the mind of a young child.

288
00:22:02,759 --> 00:22:05,759
They were, and I had many among my friends who

289
00:22:05,759 --> 00:22:10,720
were themselves and their families were completely sold out on

290
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:16,559
this materialistic, strictly one hundred percent materialistic, pragmatic view of

291
00:22:17,039 --> 00:22:22,400
the world. And they I remember how they were telling

292
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,359
kids that, oh, but you have the power, and that's

293
00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:29,119
nothing more intelligent and stronger than the human mind. Look

294
00:22:29,240 --> 00:22:34,079
how we subdue the forces of nature and we create electricities,

295
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:42,359
the electricity in this plants, you know, the using water power.

296
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,240
And look how magnificent is the human mind. And there's

297
00:22:46,319 --> 00:22:50,279
nothing about the human mind. And with that, it's it

298
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:54,720
began the erosion in the belief of any other power

299
00:22:54,839 --> 00:23:00,279
or force outside the human as a person. And then

300
00:23:00,319 --> 00:23:03,039
of course, as a person, you have to listen to

301
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:07,480
the reasoning of other persons who are above you and

302
00:23:07,559 --> 00:23:14,359
who supposedly know better. So yeah, and that's that's that's dangerous.

303
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:16,359
And what you said. I really like what you said

304
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:20,759
about the the Catholic Church and believe Church and Christian

305
00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:27,279
or Monotheistic religions in general, about Christianity, particularly because in

306
00:23:27,319 --> 00:23:33,319
its advancing it took on so much from the pre

307
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:39,400
Christian beliefs. I mean, if you look in old manuscripts

308
00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:46,480
of recorded handwritten prayer books that also incorporate healing charms,

309
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:51,079
and you see that I believe this is from lap Nunga,

310
00:23:51,319 --> 00:23:58,200
from this Leach book, and there are prayers there that

311
00:23:58,319 --> 00:24:02,119
it's like call for God's name and Jesus and then

312
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:07,240
the additional you know, the addition of deities or.

313
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,599
Speaker 3: Say they're saints, and but back then they were called

314
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:14,920
and this is not lacking on a different term where

315
00:24:15,519 --> 00:24:18,720
Odin or Votan was called.

316
00:24:18,759 --> 00:24:21,359
Speaker 1: And then later down in the in the charm, do's

317
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:26,599
does Jesus or you know, God's Christian God mentioned? So

318
00:24:27,079 --> 00:24:31,160
there was things started to blend. So they realized that

319
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:35,000
there's one there are better ways to convince people by

320
00:24:35,079 --> 00:24:38,640
presenting them, Hey, your deity and our deities, you know,

321
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:43,640
they kind of mishmashed together and then gradually, gradually beginning

322
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:48,799
to erase the other and pushing your own agendas and

323
00:24:48,839 --> 00:24:53,440
then limiting. Okay, the only ones who can do this

324
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:59,599
are the ones who we give them the power and

325
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:02,920
your authority to do so, and these are the priests.

326
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:08,960
Funny thing in Romanian I actually so there the predominant

327
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:16,279
religion is Christian Orthodox Eastern Orthodox. And I'm not gonna

328
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,319
tell what I find flawed with with that. I mean

329
00:25:20,319 --> 00:25:21,519
that that would take us like a whole.

330
00:25:22,279 --> 00:25:23,759
Speaker 2: You can give us a little little bits.

331
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 1: So well, I don't like the the blatant anti Semitism

332
00:25:29,039 --> 00:25:31,400
that is present if you if you hear, you know,

333
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:39,079
the preaching of uh John Grisostomos, that's the Greek named

334
00:25:40,039 --> 00:25:44,880
John golden Mouth. So he's very, very virulent in his

335
00:25:45,079 --> 00:25:50,480
preaching against Christianity and against Pagans in general. So there

336
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:54,720
are those aspects that I do not like. And I

337
00:25:54,799 --> 00:25:58,839
never felt like I was belonging with with that, you know,

338
00:25:59,079 --> 00:26:03,759
Christian view of the world. But when Christianity took over

339
00:26:03,839 --> 00:26:07,279
to Krutz in Romania, the pre Christian many of them

340
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:11,519
were deeply deeply, deeply ingrained, and people would not let

341
00:26:11,519 --> 00:26:14,799
them let go of them, And for example, believes in

342
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:23,680
fairies and medicine women and medicine men, witches working with fairies.

343
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:26,519
So we have there the name. It's an equivalent of

344
00:26:26,559 --> 00:26:29,920
the fairy sear. I don't have exact translation for it,

345
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:32,279
so I'm using very Sear as the best, you know,

346
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:41,440
closest name, and as such. Now also consider that many

347
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:46,680
of the priests were coming from the countryside, from the village,

348
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:51,680
and they themselves grew up with beliefs in fairies and

349
00:26:51,799 --> 00:26:55,279
things that were near and dear to their families, to

350
00:26:55,319 --> 00:27:03,880
their grandparents, to their great grandparents, so growing an ecclesiastical class,

351
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:07,720
so to speak. This is before communist times when we

352
00:27:07,799 --> 00:27:12,359
didn't have much of an ecclesiastical class crime. So having

353
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:16,960
this growing, this class, growing with this profession, growing with

354
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:23,839
roots into their heritage, led to a very interesting solution.

355
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:28,319
I would call it compromise solution. These weren't really really

356
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:31,079
one hundred and fifty percent, not all of them convinced

357
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:35,440
that all beliefs must be eradicated. So we end up

358
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:42,960
in Eastern Orthodox Christianity with very holidays and very festivals

359
00:27:43,079 --> 00:27:47,559
incorporated into the Church calendar, and there are groups of

360
00:27:47,599 --> 00:27:51,000
ferries to major groups of fairy Zieromania, Salience and Zienna,

361
00:27:51,079 --> 00:27:53,880
which I bring about in the book and discussed there,

362
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:59,119
and both of them have their holidays acknowledge big read

363
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:03,680
letters in the Church calendar of holidays and they are

364
00:28:03,799 --> 00:28:07,880
under the name it's Feast of Russali and Feast of Sinsienna.

365
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:15,440
A lot of the ancestor cult and ancestor veneration practices

366
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:20,559
have been incorporated into the Church calendar. So we were

367
00:28:20,759 --> 00:28:24,920
really really lucky there to have more of this syncretic

368
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,920
blend and having a little bit of you know, best

369
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:33,799
of both worlds. Except for for what I said, You

370
00:28:33,839 --> 00:28:37,160
know that there is a misogyny and there is an

371
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,599
anti semitism to the old you know, to the patristic

372
00:28:42,519 --> 00:28:49,000
writings the church fathers and quoting again Bonniers here fathers founders.

373
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:54,799
So that is something that's very repelling, repulsive. I find

374
00:28:54,799 --> 00:29:00,519
it blatant, absolutely repulsing. So that's that. But then the overall,

375
00:29:01,279 --> 00:29:04,079
a lot of the practices that we had from the

376
00:29:04,119 --> 00:29:09,559
pre Christian past survived because they were incorporated in the Christianity.

377
00:29:10,599 --> 00:29:12,799
How does this go along with the with the communist

378
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:17,920
with the authoritarian regime, and again the materialistic view that

379
00:29:18,119 --> 00:29:26,480
was imposed on us the older generation generations, for most part,

380
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:34,160
they knew how to play along with whatever the leadership wanted,

381
00:29:35,279 --> 00:29:39,920
but deep down they wouldn't really buy it. So it

382
00:29:40,119 --> 00:29:44,240
was all a it was, it was a masquerade, really,

383
00:29:44,839 --> 00:29:47,960
so to them talking with comrade this, comrade that, and

384
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:52,480
then in private conversations over the phone, oh, madam sir,

385
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:59,480
which were not really allowed in you know, conversations at

386
00:29:59,599 --> 00:30:02,519
least in all vicial settings, you wouldn't use those terms.

387
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:07,880
So and then our parents, who are like an in between,

388
00:30:08,759 --> 00:30:15,039
some of them still connected with their families, their own parents,

389
00:30:15,319 --> 00:30:19,880
grandparents from the countryside, who are still very much connected

390
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:24,359
to the old traditions in Lauren folklore. And these parents

391
00:30:24,359 --> 00:30:29,240
of ours, like my own, living in the city, educated

392
00:30:29,279 --> 00:30:36,240
in universities and bombarded with the information that was fed

393
00:30:36,279 --> 00:30:40,960
to them, so they were really at loss. I mean,

394
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,160
I wasn't aware so much of that as a child.

395
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,599
I mean, I could see the duality, but I couldn't

396
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:50,799
really you know, pinpoint the way I can do now

397
00:30:50,839 --> 00:30:55,440
looking in retrospect and as an adult that I've seen

398
00:30:55,480 --> 00:31:02,799
and lived through quite a bit so for me, it

399
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:08,119
was extremely disorienting. At school, You're told to be yourself,

400
00:31:08,799 --> 00:31:15,119
be tell the truth, have the courage to take responsibility

401
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:20,920
for your own deeds and words, be brave, stand up

402
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:27,279
and speak your mind. And then the reality that I

403
00:31:27,319 --> 00:31:31,960
was confronted with keep your mouth shut, because if you're

404
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:34,960
going to speak up your mind and stand up for

405
00:31:35,119 --> 00:31:39,119
your truth, will end up all in jail and you're

406
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:41,680
possible in some sort of foster care, you know, to

407
00:31:41,799 --> 00:31:48,759
be re educated whatever. So I just didn't know what

408
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,359
to believe. And for a young child, it is a

409
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:58,319
really really dramatic, very unsettling place to be. And I'm

410
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:04,880
discussing in the Bookhype made sense of story to make

411
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:10,160
sense of my world and not feel guilty, not feel

412
00:32:10,279 --> 00:32:16,559
ashamed that I can only say half truths depending on

413
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:21,799
whom I was talking to. Yeah, so, yeah, that was.

414
00:32:22,119 --> 00:32:25,319
Speaker 2: That's hard on kids. That's really hard on kids to

415
00:32:25,359 --> 00:32:30,319
be told one thing by outside authorities and another thing

416
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:36,160
from your familial authorities. You know, you want them to

417
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:41,680
at least agree some you know, and with your your parents.

418
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:45,559
They did seem to kind of agree with the authorities

419
00:32:45,599 --> 00:32:46,720
on the outside, but not really.

420
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they just want us to be safe.

421
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:54,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, and kids, your sense that, even if it's not

422
00:32:54,519 --> 00:32:59,680
stated out up front, and one of the horrible things

423
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:02,839
about being told in school, hey, say your mind, speak

424
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:08,319
your truth, stand up, be proud of of what you understand.

425
00:33:09,359 --> 00:33:14,559
Is okay, So I'm gonna bring up uh MAOIs China here.

426
00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:20,599
Uh there was right before the Cultural Revolution, there was

427
00:33:21,359 --> 00:33:29,640
a political They called it the Campaign of the Thousand Flowers.

428
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,240
And it's you know, because it's poetics. Chinese people like

429
00:33:33,319 --> 00:33:36,519
poetic stuff and that makes it nice and it sounds

430
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:41,759
very similar to what the authorities taught you. But the

431
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:46,079
Campaign of the Thousand Flowers was all about let's let

432
00:33:46,359 --> 00:33:51,799
a thousand flowers of intellect and understanding and knowledge bloom

433
00:33:52,519 --> 00:33:59,279
in our in our beautiful country, our unified country, and

434
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:03,119
every everyone will have an opinion. Please state your opinions.

435
00:34:03,119 --> 00:34:07,039
We have freedom of the press, we have freedom of information.

436
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:11,679
Yet no, because what happened that lasted about you know,

437
00:34:12,039 --> 00:34:15,679
I don't know, six months, a year or something long

438
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,079
enough for the people who did stand up and write,

439
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:23,519
you know, newspaper articles or magazine articles or books or whatever,

440
00:34:24,639 --> 00:34:29,840
ex bounding upon their own philosophy. It was long enough

441
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,760
for somebody in the clerk's office to write down their

442
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:33,719
names and addresses.

443
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.

444
00:34:35,199 --> 00:34:38,079
Speaker 2: And when they were done with blooming, when we you know,

445
00:34:38,119 --> 00:34:41,280
when the flowers all went to seed and those seeds

446
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:47,039
could have dispersed, all those books disappeared, the newspaper articles disappeared,

447
00:34:47,079 --> 00:34:50,719
magazines disappeared, and so did the people.

448
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:53,360
Speaker 1: The people disappeared.

449
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:57,559
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the people were taken to re education camps.

450
00:34:58,119 --> 00:35:02,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's exactly how. And actually when I grew up,

451
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:08,039
the the government that modeling. It was very much modeled.

452
00:35:08,079 --> 00:35:11,320
So they liked a lot what was happening in China.

453
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:20,000
And we even had this monumental shows on stadiums, you

454
00:35:20,079 --> 00:35:22,599
know where where you have the president standing there and

455
00:35:22,679 --> 00:35:27,519
waving everybody. And we were like taking you know, it

456
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:30,760
was part of our summer vacation sometimes and we were

457
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:35,599
taken there, you know, to perform all these shows and displays.

458
00:35:37,519 --> 00:35:40,599
Speaker 2: That's how they used That's how they used the property

459
00:35:40,599 --> 00:35:45,000
of the arts against people. This is this is really

460
00:35:45,039 --> 00:35:50,280
hard for Americans to understand. And that's why as I

461
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,400
was reading this book, I was like, this is important.

462
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,639
And even if you don't give a rat's patuit about fairies,

463
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:00,199
I kind of think you should read it because it

464
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:07,519
shows how if you have an authoritarian government and they

465
00:36:07,639 --> 00:36:12,960
want to make people think their way, everything is geared

466
00:36:13,599 --> 00:36:18,519
towards doing that, and it can be the harmful way

467
00:36:18,559 --> 00:36:22,239
of making people disappear and go to the camps. It

468
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:28,239
can be in the harm harmless.

469
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,199
Speaker 1: They can make it very alluring. Yeah, very alluring, very

470
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,800
interesting if you end up liking it, enjoying it so much,

471
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,400
and they give you the sense of they're very good

472
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:40,320
at giving. So again, it was very much about training

473
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:45,280
the younger generations, making you feel very important. And we

474
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,760
had these beautiful free camps, so we would go for

475
00:36:49,039 --> 00:36:52,480
you know, two camps for free, and you are given

476
00:36:52,519 --> 00:36:54,840
all kinds of assignments. You know, you're going to take

477
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:57,400
care of this. You're going to take care like little

478
00:36:57,639 --> 00:37:03,360
leadership roles. And this is how we want our young communists,

479
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:06,920
you know, to train and to grow. And we had

480
00:37:07,159 --> 00:37:13,480
a lot of fun, honestly, while this mentality was trickled

481
00:37:13,599 --> 00:37:17,440
into us. And as a child, you're just into that,

482
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:19,760
Oh I'm having so much fun. This is so cool,

483
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:23,400
this is so great. Maybe these grown ups don't really

484
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:26,320
get it, but I think this communess think is a

485
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:31,719
really cool thing. Yeah, and then then when you grow

486
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:34,719
up a little bit more and life really comes at

487
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,320
you and you're out of the childhood bubble and there

488
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,960
are no more free camps and real life in a

489
00:37:42,039 --> 00:37:48,199
totalitarian regime can be extremely hard. Nerve action, So then

490
00:37:48,559 --> 00:37:55,679
nerve wracking plus considering from the economic standpoint, considering that

491
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,960
the government decides where you are going to go and work,

492
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,079
so you finish your college degree or your college whatever education,

493
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:08,440
and then you don't go and search for a job

494
00:38:08,599 --> 00:38:12,039
wherever you want and wherever it suits you. The government

495
00:38:12,519 --> 00:38:18,519
gives you assigns the position, and that can be in

496
00:38:18,559 --> 00:38:22,239
a place where you really really don't want to be,

497
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:27,519
like the opposite side of the country, away from family

498
00:38:27,559 --> 00:38:32,360
and from and nobody cares. This is where you were

499
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,960
sent and this is where you're going. Yeah, so you

500
00:38:36,039 --> 00:38:39,480
have zero control over that. And a lot of people

501
00:38:39,639 --> 00:38:45,079
having to get married during the college years, so the

502
00:38:45,199 --> 00:38:52,519
moment they would graduate, it was called a repartition. So

503
00:38:52,599 --> 00:38:58,440
the repartition took into account married couples so they wouldn't

504
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:00,719
split them apart and they would send them in the

505
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:04,599
same place. And the reasoning behind that was, well, if

506
00:39:04,639 --> 00:39:07,920
I'm going to be sent in who knows what teeny

507
00:39:08,079 --> 00:39:14,280
tiny village or very very lonely place where the closest house.

508
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,280
Let's say that I'm a doctor and I'm going to

509
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:21,800
be sent to work into a country, small clinic, studying

510
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,119
you know, medicine, you know, six years, I'm going to

511
00:39:24,119 --> 00:39:26,559
get my reportition in that place, which is all fine.

512
00:39:26,599 --> 00:39:29,079
I mean, we need doctors in the small places. The

513
00:39:29,119 --> 00:39:31,679
problem is that place is so isolated that I'm not

514
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:34,719
even sure I will be able to find a spouse

515
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:36,519
and set up a family and all those kinds. Right,

516
00:39:37,559 --> 00:39:43,599
So then by necessity it was that plus the policy

517
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:49,559
of speaking reproductive rights. You have zero reproductive rights. The

518
00:39:49,679 --> 00:39:54,079
state decides how many kids you're going to have? Yeah,

519
00:39:55,119 --> 00:39:59,199
so and yeah, so the state decides.

520
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's another book. It's out of print, but it

521
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,800
is interesting and I think it's one of the things

522
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:13,320
that taught me at an early age what totalitarianism is

523
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:18,320
like for children. And it's called Mischling second degree, and

524
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:23,880
it's by the author ILSA. Cohen, and it talks it's

525
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:28,840
a it's a memoir again of growing up in Nazi Germany.

526
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:35,320
And she was she had one grandparent who was born Jewish,

527
00:40:36,559 --> 00:40:43,000
but who repudiated the religion and became what they call

528
00:40:43,079 --> 00:40:50,119
a freethinker. So they were basically not of any religion,

529
00:40:50,559 --> 00:40:53,559
which is, you know, really dangerous in a in a

530
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:57,559
totalitarian place, because then they'll tell they'll say you're of

531
00:40:57,599 --> 00:41:01,039
this religion or whatever, Yeah, whether you are or not.

532
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:09,519
And this girl essentially hidden in plain sight by her

533
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:14,320
mother divorcing her father. It was his mother who was

534
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:24,119
technically born with one Jewish parent, so in divorcing him,

535
00:41:24,159 --> 00:41:29,119
not because she wanted to, but to protect their child.

536
00:41:29,679 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 4: And so.

537
00:41:32,039 --> 00:41:37,039
Speaker 2: Essentially she was hidden in plain sight and she had

538
00:41:37,079 --> 00:41:40,480
to join Hitler Youth. And when we look at films

539
00:41:40,559 --> 00:41:44,280
of Hitler Youth from the time period, when we see

540
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,559
the kids in the uniforms, especially the boys, you very

541
00:41:47,599 --> 00:41:50,960
seldom see the girls. But they had uniforms too, and

542
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:55,559
they had meetings to and they did things. There is

543
00:41:55,639 --> 00:42:00,559
a passage where she tells her father she's will visits

544
00:42:00,559 --> 00:42:05,519
her father secretly and and he says, you have He says,

545
00:42:05,559 --> 00:42:09,199
I hate to see you in that uniform. And the

546
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:13,719
only reason he wasn't sent to a camp was because

547
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:18,840
he was an electrician who worked with the large electrical

548
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:23,000
producing stations and the high tension cables, and he was

549
00:42:23,039 --> 00:42:25,639
one of the experts in the field. So you know,

550
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:28,199
by the end of the war, he was needed every

551
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:31,519
day to fix the things that the bombing stopped, you know,

552
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:34,760
so every time, you know, he'd have someone say well,

553
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:36,960
i'll shoot you tomorrow, and he'd be like, yeah, sure

554
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:38,840
you will. Okay, I'll go.

555
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,760
Speaker 1: Fix the shot, and you're shooting yourself in the yeah, yeah, guy.

556
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 2: So he was very lucky in that sense. Yes, anyway,

557
00:42:48,079 --> 00:42:49,880
he said, I hate to see you in that, but

558
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,400
I know you have to do it to fit in.

559
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:55,360
And she said, well, it's not like they do anything

560
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:58,000
with us. It's it's just they teach us songs and

561
00:42:58,079 --> 00:43:04,440
we play games exactly, and we make crafts and you know,

562
00:43:05,199 --> 00:43:10,039
and he was like, all of this is meant to

563
00:43:10,079 --> 00:43:15,639
teach you their values, and as you get older, it's

564
00:43:15,679 --> 00:43:22,599
going to become less games, less songs, less dancing, and

565
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:31,199
more actually upholding the regime. And you know, at that

566
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:35,239
point you had to be so careful again, just like

567
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:38,760
you did. You can't say anything outside of your house,

568
00:43:41,159 --> 00:43:44,679
can't write anything down. That's another thing I noticed is

569
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,760
you know, once you start getting taught by your grandmother

570
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,400
or before you start getting taught by your grandmother. You

571
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:54,960
wrote down what you experimented with and what you experienced,

572
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,800
and that was taken away from you. So then, yes,

573
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,079
clever girl, you figured out where to hide stuff. Well,

574
00:44:02,079 --> 00:44:04,960
I'm going to put it behind a picture and I'm

575
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:08,159
going to put it under the rug, but I'll spread

576
00:44:08,199 --> 00:44:09,840
it out so it doesn't make a lump in the

577
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:13,559
middle because that was figured out, you know. So that

578
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:16,800
is what she also had to do, and that is

579
00:44:17,679 --> 00:44:21,320
what you have to do. You have to hide yourself,

580
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:26,639
and that's what you did, and that is something that

581
00:44:26,679 --> 00:44:34,199
I think Americans do have problems understanding that for survival's sake,

582
00:44:35,199 --> 00:44:41,639
for safety, you have to become clever, and you have

583
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:49,039
to become flexible, and you have to you just have

584
00:44:49,119 --> 00:44:53,800
to learn to dodge and not tell the truth, but

585
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:56,920
make it look like the truth, which means you have

586
00:44:57,000 --> 00:44:59,440
to kind of act out the truth a little bit

587
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:04,840
so that it's convincing. And you basically learn to be

588
00:45:05,679 --> 00:45:08,159
what we would say in the movies the spy, you're

589
00:45:08,199 --> 00:45:10,679
you're basically hiding yourself.

590
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:13,360
Speaker 1: That's so to the point in sight.

591
00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:21,719
Speaker 2: And then we throw in magic and fairies and boy,

592
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,559
they like secrecy too. Don't they They.

593
00:45:25,079 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 1: Do they do. I mean, that's that. That is one

594
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:30,920
of the things, you know, that made me made me

595
00:45:31,039 --> 00:45:36,800
think Inbote, me pondering and considering. Okay, even before we

596
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:41,400
had an authoritarian regime and all that in my grandmother's youth.

597
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:44,880
By the way, my grandmother lived to be one hundred

598
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:48,400
and two, so we had a lot of time together

599
00:45:48,519 --> 00:45:51,199
and she's been around. She was around for a really

600
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:57,360
long time, which means that she could see, she had

601
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:02,039
the experience of living in the in both worlds prior

602
00:46:02,079 --> 00:46:06,280
to an authoritarian regime taking power and before that, so

603
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:10,559
even before that, she told me, these are teachings that

604
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:16,639
are practiced in secrecy. This is not something that you

605
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:23,679
go political considerations or safety considerations from that, you know,

606
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:28,960
social standpoint or not. These are things practiced with a

607
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:34,000
degree of secrecy. And teachings are not just handed over,

608
00:46:34,599 --> 00:46:37,559
you know, handed down freely. So there's usually a grandmother

609
00:46:37,639 --> 00:46:42,440
an elder who initiates and teaches. Trains are usually a

610
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:47,440
grand child, not so often one of their own children,

611
00:46:47,559 --> 00:46:53,639
although sometimes that happens. So yeah, and it looks like

612
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:58,360
they do have a pension for secrecy, but it's themselves.

613
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:02,480
I remember being told and then having had experience with

614
00:47:02,599 --> 00:47:06,719
its firsthand, when a fairy comes and tells you, you're

615
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:10,400
not supposed to tell us, you're not supposed to discuss

616
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:15,159
this with anybody. And I mean I read a lot

617
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:18,960
in Irish Lord and Irish Very Law about people receiving

618
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:23,440
gifts from fairies and being told this will only last

619
00:47:23,679 --> 00:47:27,440
for as long as you keep it a secret, and

620
00:47:27,559 --> 00:47:30,360
as soon as the person goes and rugs about, oh,

621
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:33,840
I got this from a fairy guide or very whatever encounter.

622
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:37,760
The gift is God, whether it's good luck, whether it's

623
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:40,920
financial abundance, whether it's a gift you know, like music

624
00:47:41,079 --> 00:47:45,679
or ability to make poetry that's gone. Yeah, So whatever

625
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:48,679
it was, it don't keep your mouth shut, you lose it.

626
00:47:50,199 --> 00:47:55,119
Speaker 2: So Morgan Daimler tells the story of how that happened

627
00:47:55,159 --> 00:47:58,519
to her, and I think actually pretty much any of

628
00:47:58,599 --> 00:48:02,639
us who've worked with fairies in any capacity can tell

629
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:07,159
some kind of story about well, when they say keep

630
00:48:07,199 --> 00:48:12,639
your mouth shut, they're not kidding. And yes, sometimes the

631
00:48:12,679 --> 00:48:16,480
punishment is physical and you go, oh, well, I screwed

632
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:17,400
that up right.

633
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:19,880
Speaker 1: And I have to and I have to put the

634
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:24,079
pieces back together. And learned from my mistakes and yeah,

635
00:48:24,119 --> 00:48:26,320
that's that's that's a lot of that.

636
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 2: But yes, I I the dichotomy of secrecies, the numbers

637
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:39,679
of secrecies that are in this book, not only is

638
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:43,519
it what makes the story super interesting because you know,

639
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:46,159
it's it's kind of like a detective novel in a way.

640
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:50,400
You know, there's there's levels of who knows what you know?

641
00:48:50,639 --> 00:48:54,000
And you gotta you gotta pretend to be Agatha Christie

642
00:48:54,039 --> 00:48:56,119
and go, okay, so does this person know this and

643
00:48:56,159 --> 00:49:01,159
that person, especially when your grandmother is doing her healing practices,

644
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:06,360
because okay, I love this. She's pretty well known right

645
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,760
throughout that local area. And I'm not talking a little

646
00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:14,239
tiny county. She's known out in some villages out in

647
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:16,960
the boons, you know as we call them the boondocks.

648
00:49:17,280 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 3: Uh.

649
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 2: And she but nobody of course, talks about it openly, like, well,

650
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:30,039
grandma over there by name, we're going to use her

651
00:49:30,119 --> 00:49:36,199
name and she's really awesome. No, it's like this, it's

652
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:43,440
like this underground yes, telephone communications system, and there are

653
00:49:43,519 --> 00:49:49,039
code words. There's you know, you have to you have

654
00:49:49,079 --> 00:49:52,400
to like, you know, you want to help people, but

655
00:49:52,519 --> 00:49:56,679
you also don't want to fall for someone pretending to

656
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:00,199
be sick just to smoke you out. So she has

657
00:50:00,199 --> 00:50:04,760
her friends who practiced with her, and they all scope

658
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:10,039
people out. Yes, and you know, let's talk about China again.

659
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:16,480
When they had their one child policy, there was an official,

660
00:50:16,639 --> 00:50:24,480
unofficial title called the granny Police, and the granny police

661
00:50:25,199 --> 00:50:29,320
worked for the government and they were the older women

662
00:50:30,639 --> 00:50:34,559
who were always in everybody's business, knew everything about everybody,

663
00:50:35,639 --> 00:50:38,840
and they would were the ones who would find out

664
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:42,960
if somebody was pregnant and wasn't supposed to be, and

665
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,639
then it would be reported and then she would help

666
00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:50,840
see more of those air quotes, help the young woman

667
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:56,360
do the right thing and either abort the child, give

668
00:50:56,400 --> 00:51:02,039
the child up for adoption, or you know whatever to

669
00:51:02,679 --> 00:51:07,679
keep that in place. And it was an open secret

670
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:13,280
as to who they were, but they communicated along with

671
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:17,159
each other, and some of them were like double agents

672
00:51:17,639 --> 00:51:21,440
because they would help women be able to keep at

673
00:51:21,519 --> 00:51:28,960
least their sons, you know, because male children were valuable

674
00:51:29,599 --> 00:51:33,480
for how you know your daughter. You raise your daughter

675
00:51:33,519 --> 00:51:36,719
and she goes off to her husband's family when she

676
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:39,719
gets married, she's no longer helpful to you. But a

677
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:41,920
son is always helpful to the mother.

678
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: And father.

679
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 2: That has to do with patrifocal society. So I was

680
00:51:50,719 --> 00:52:00,159
fascinated to watch the underground information gathering and disseminating group

681
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:05,039
that surrounded your grandmother, kept her safe, allowed her to

682
00:52:05,159 --> 00:52:11,519
practice her medicine, and helped the community, and kept the

683
00:52:11,559 --> 00:52:15,440
community safe because even if you accepted healing from someone,

684
00:52:15,639 --> 00:52:20,440
you weren't safe. Even your own father might rat you out.

685
00:52:21,599 --> 00:52:27,480
So that was phenomenal. And it goes right along with fairies.

686
00:52:27,639 --> 00:52:32,039
You know, nobody you know, like Ireland, nobody really talked

687
00:52:32,639 --> 00:52:37,400
out loud about Oh well yes that yeah, because they

688
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:40,320
didn't like to be talked about because they were You

689
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:45,119
respected that about them. You didn't do anything stupid that

690
00:52:45,159 --> 00:52:47,920
would make them angry with you. And then it was

691
00:52:48,159 --> 00:52:50,320
you know, when there were times when the church was

692
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:53,920
really down on it, or when the English were really

693
00:52:53,960 --> 00:53:00,760
down on it governmentally, then it brought attention from quarters

694
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,679
in the human world that you didn't want attention. So

695
00:53:05,679 --> 00:53:08,719
there's just levels and levels of secrecy happening here.

696
00:53:09,519 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to add to that. Speaking of writing out,

697
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:19,280
there's a lot. There's so much that I could not Okay,

698
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:23,679
so I could not include in the book because there

699
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:26,960
is a limited space, you know, pages, words that you

700
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,239
can fill in and get your work, you know published.

701
00:53:30,559 --> 00:53:36,280
So and also it wasn't like really it was more

702
00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:39,159
like tangent to the subject that I was trying to preserve,

703
00:53:39,559 --> 00:53:43,679
this transmission of knowledge and practices of very years from

704
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:46,920
one generation to the other, and what a child can

705
00:53:47,039 --> 00:53:51,880
do with with magic. So one of the things that's

706
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:58,639
not very clear in the book it may somehow emerge

707
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:03,519
like assent, but not like a clearly stated something. It's

708
00:54:03,639 --> 00:54:09,679
the ability of these ladies. There's witches to know when

709
00:54:10,039 --> 00:54:17,519
someone is writing out and to eventually find who might

710
00:54:17,599 --> 00:54:23,880
be the person or writing out and if somehow it

711
00:54:24,079 --> 00:54:28,280
happened to be able to contain the damage, that's how

712
00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:31,800
we ended up with with the visits from from from security.

713
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:35,199
My aunt knew about it, so when she looked into

714
00:54:35,519 --> 00:54:38,800
both her cards, she used to read poker cards and

715
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:42,400
also read the coffee cups the bottom of the coffee cup,

716
00:54:43,079 --> 00:54:47,679
So in doing that she knew that something's coming, and

717
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:52,400
therefore we were prepared for the worst. And that worse

718
00:54:53,039 --> 00:54:57,880
didn't happen. It didn't. They didn't catch up with catch

719
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:04,000
us with with anything, which was very lucky. So those

720
00:55:04,119 --> 00:55:08,719
little little they're not really little. Those things convinced me

721
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:15,960
that those practices, those divination practices, are real. It was

722
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:19,159
not a game, It was not to play pretend. It

723
00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:23,440
wasn't a charlatan's scheme to try to fool people. This

724
00:55:23,639 --> 00:55:26,559
was a matter of life and death, and those divination

725
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:31,480
practices saved. I want to say, save the day, saved

726
00:55:31,519 --> 00:55:36,920
our next in the most literal sense, so I can

727
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:40,400
testify to the power that such practice is done by

728
00:55:40,519 --> 00:55:48,639
genuine practitioners, well trained practitioners, how powerful these practices can be.

729
00:55:49,559 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaking to the levels of secrecy. I want to go

730
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:58,960
back to the fact that we have layers of believers

731
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:03,599
in the rights and true order, with the elderly being

732
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:09,079
really reluctant to embrace that because they're old enough, and

733
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:14,360
they saw the country moving through various transitions, through the wars,

734
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:18,079
between the words, the after the wars, the coming of

735
00:56:18,119 --> 00:56:21,440
the communist regime, the monarchy that we had before the regime,

736
00:56:21,639 --> 00:56:26,119
so they they saw it literally all so they're not

737
00:56:26,599 --> 00:56:29,559
so much sold out on the idea of you know,

738
00:56:30,079 --> 00:56:38,519
communists and renouncing completely private property and so not. Really.

739
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:43,400
Then you have the middle layer in between generations, the

740
00:56:43,519 --> 00:56:46,320
parents who some of them are more into that some

741
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,360
of them are so they don't really know. And then

742
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:55,400
you have the children literally torn apart by where am

743
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:58,880
I going to believe my grandparents, my parents, or what

744
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:03,840
I'm being thought at school? And everybody starts taking sides

745
00:57:04,039 --> 00:57:07,960
and aggregate around the nucleus that they feel more resonance.

746
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:13,199
So statement of the obvious, I aggregated around grandmother as

747
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:21,800
the nucleus, so I really felt drawn towards following and

748
00:57:21,880 --> 00:57:28,159
believing that side of things. Another level of secrecy. In

749
00:57:28,199 --> 00:57:31,519
case you haven't had enough letters until now, there's one more.

750
00:57:32,679 --> 00:57:39,840
The Christian Church in Romania, differently from what happened in

751
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:50,599
the Soviet Union, was left fairly alone. Why because priests

752
00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:56,840
had to teach about what a great country we live

753
00:57:56,880 --> 00:58:00,719
in and how fabulous are the party leaders and have

754
00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:06,840
congregation pray for the health and wellbeing of the party

755
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:11,280
leaders who are taking care of us and guiding us.

756
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:16,639
So that was that. Second, the church paid huge amount

757
00:58:16,719 --> 00:58:23,400
of money to the government to be left alone. And fourth,

758
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:28,880
those priests who are free thinkers, and because I mean

759
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:31,840
there were a lot of or quite a few of

760
00:58:32,239 --> 00:58:35,719
free thinking, free spirited even among you know, the the

761
00:58:35,880 --> 00:58:40,679
Christians who are like uphelding values that were not in

762
00:58:40,719 --> 00:58:47,159
line with the communists with or whatever. So those were killed,

763
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:53,159
so killed or sent into camps from where they from

764
00:58:53,159 --> 00:59:01,000
where they never came back. Basically, so the repression religious

765
00:59:01,119 --> 00:59:05,760
leaders was much stronger in the early years. When the

766
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:09,639
communist regime really took a hold of the power, it

767
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:15,960
kind of lessened a little bit. Even among members of

768
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:19,920
the ruling I'll call it elite, because this is what

769
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:23,920
it was, even if they wouldn't wouldn't take it. It was

770
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:29,559
like this class, small group who amassed privilege and power,

771
00:59:30,440 --> 00:59:34,760
so that would be an elite. And many of them

772
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:40,960
had relatives. They came from the countryside with grandparents and

773
00:59:41,079 --> 00:59:48,239
maybe among their relatives uncles who were priests. So even

774
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:57,079
among that ruling dominating political elite, not everybody was blatantly against.

775
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:03,280
Even among those, some were really really bent on the

776
01:00:03,400 --> 01:00:11,159
values of a materialistic philosophy and you know, the authoritarian

777
01:00:11,159 --> 01:00:13,760
regim and how good is to keep order this way.

778
01:00:14,079 --> 01:00:18,760
So some of them were, but some were not. Some

779
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:22,519
were not. Some were still people who would cross themselves

780
01:00:22,599 --> 01:00:26,400
before living to work in the morning. Some of them

781
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:30,000
were people who would still baptize their kids in secrecy,

782
01:00:30,039 --> 01:00:34,280
privately help something done at home. This is how my

783
01:00:34,400 --> 01:00:37,880
parents because my my my grandmother, she was she was

784
01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:39,880
a Christian. I mean I'm not a Christian, but my

785
01:00:40,199 --> 01:00:43,800
grandmother was. As a kid, for example, I saw no

786
01:00:43,960 --> 01:00:46,719
problem and so like, okay, that's a Christian God, and

787
01:00:46,760 --> 01:00:50,280
then that's that's these other deities I really liked for

788
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:56,199
Holle and you know, celebrate and honor Goddess for Holle

789
01:00:56,519 --> 01:00:59,679
each time it snowed. So I didn't see a problem

790
01:00:59,719 --> 01:01:02,599
of have you know, gods and goddesses and the Christian

791
01:01:02,639 --> 01:01:05,440
God and the fairies and spirits of the land and

792
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:11,559
having a big party there. And I also noticed our

793
01:01:12,440 --> 01:01:16,000
that was this pretty little church where my grandmother used

794
01:01:16,039 --> 01:01:17,920
to go and they used to like going with her there.

795
01:01:18,519 --> 01:01:21,199
And I was looking at the prayers and the incense

796
01:01:21,280 --> 01:01:23,880
that's being burned, and I was like, they're doing the

797
01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:26,599
same thing that we are doing it home. Why is

798
01:01:26,679 --> 01:01:29,039
okay to do it in church? It's not okay to

799
01:01:29,039 --> 01:01:32,000
do it in your own house by yourself. So big

800
01:01:32,039 --> 01:01:38,320
confusion right there. And I noticed that the priest, the

801
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,760
local priest didn't really like Grandma. So my grandmother was

802
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:43,880
just minding her own, her own thing, and she would

803
01:01:43,920 --> 01:01:46,199
go to church and say, well, you know, the relationship

804
01:01:46,239 --> 01:01:50,800
with the divine, however you perceive the divine, that's personal,

805
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:55,159
you know, so it doesn't really go through the priest.

806
01:01:55,599 --> 01:01:59,920
So we had to keep it secret from the priest

807
01:02:00,119 --> 01:02:04,440
as well, who was aware that grandmothers was doing things,

808
01:02:06,239 --> 01:02:09,079
but not to a level that would really prompt him

809
01:02:09,119 --> 01:02:14,599
to go and complain to any kind of authority. So yeah,

810
01:02:14,639 --> 01:02:17,000
it was very complicated life, honestly.

811
01:02:17,159 --> 01:02:21,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. And you know, I love I

812
01:02:21,599 --> 01:02:26,559
love that that the Eastern Orthodox Church had sense enough

813
01:02:28,599 --> 01:02:33,960
to essentially pay off the government to leave them basically alone,

814
01:02:34,440 --> 01:02:37,880
you know, So long as they did this thing or

815
01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:40,840
the other thing for the government, the government kind of

816
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:45,079
went okay, yeah, you're harmless. We're not gonna okay okay,

817
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:50,159
and you are absolutely right. In a in an authoritarian regime,

818
01:02:50,400 --> 01:02:56,559
it always is a ruling class, a privileged class, and

819
01:02:56,719 --> 01:03:00,559
they bend the rules for their friends, oh yeah, relatives

820
01:03:01,559 --> 01:03:04,519
all the time. It doesn't matter what country you're in.

821
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:09,039
That's how it happens. So there's there's different levels of

822
01:03:09,079 --> 01:03:13,000
what you must do to be perceived as okay with

823
01:03:13,199 --> 01:03:17,000
the government, and it so long it's all about who

824
01:03:17,039 --> 01:03:24,079
you know, yes and yeah, and how you negotiate your

825
01:03:24,159 --> 01:03:30,960
path through life in that system. It's very complicated. It's

826
01:03:31,159 --> 01:03:37,360
not a simple thing. It's not. Again, if I was

827
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:41,360
to say, what is the theme of this book, it's secrecy.

828
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:46,599
It is what is secret, what is open secret? What

829
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:52,159
is what is generally known? What is safe? To be known?

830
01:03:53,719 --> 01:04:00,000
How to be safe? I mean you you talk about

831
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:04,199
the fairies, and you explain your experience of the fairies

832
01:04:04,239 --> 01:04:07,199
all through the book. I mean, A Fairy Path is

833
01:04:07,280 --> 01:04:13,599
absolutely a great title, but it's also about secrets. And

834
01:04:13,639 --> 01:04:16,519
it's not just their secrets. It's your secrets and your

835
01:04:16,519 --> 01:04:22,239
grandmother's secrets and the church's secrets. And yeah, I really

836
01:04:22,239 --> 01:04:24,760
got that. The priest did not much like your grandmother,

837
01:04:24,840 --> 01:04:26,480
And I thought it was amazing that she went to

838
01:04:26,559 --> 01:04:29,119
church anyway, because it wasn't any of his damn business

839
01:04:29,119 --> 01:04:33,000
what she does with herself. But you know, there she

840
01:04:33,159 --> 01:04:37,519
is also appearing among the other good Christians as a

841
01:04:37,519 --> 01:04:40,280
good Christian. So what can the priest do about it?

842
01:04:42,199 --> 01:04:47,599
Not much. Your grandmother was a very very canny woman.

843
01:04:47,719 --> 01:04:53,159
She was. She's probably uncanny too with the magic art, yes,

844
01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:59,239
but she was really really intelligent and you know, I

845
01:04:59,400 --> 01:05:05,559
have the utmost respect for older women, always have. But

846
01:05:05,920 --> 01:05:09,320
she is like, I'm like, you go, girl, you go.

847
01:05:09,559 --> 01:05:12,880
Speaker 1: I think she's in a sense, she's the protagonist, the

848
01:05:13,000 --> 01:05:16,519
main character in the book. There, I say, And the

849
01:05:16,559 --> 01:05:18,800
book is dedicated to her. So right there on the

850
01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:22,320
first page is to Grandma. And they wanted to say

851
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:29,280
something about the title because some people so they the

852
01:05:29,800 --> 01:05:32,679
name memoir, the word memoir in the title kind of

853
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:35,559
rubbed them the wrong way. And I was asked, who

854
01:05:36,519 --> 01:05:40,280
are you to write memoirs? And I'm like, well, the

855
01:05:40,320 --> 01:05:44,760
word memoir there is tongue in cheek for a purpose.

856
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:50,000
A nine years old kid, ten years old kid usually

857
01:05:50,119 --> 01:05:54,719
doesn't write memoirs, but I do. It's my nine, ten

858
01:05:54,760 --> 01:05:58,000
eleven years old in that book. So it's the memoir

859
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:00,480
of a young, very year Now, how much any fairy

860
01:06:00,559 --> 01:06:05,960
sears or witches really right memoirs, to my knowledge, nobody.

861
01:06:05,760 --> 01:06:08,000
Speaker 2: Or if they do, nobody gets it except the family

862
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:09,960
if they.

863
01:06:09,840 --> 01:06:15,639
Speaker 1: Do, exactly, So that's that's a very So the memoir

864
01:06:15,760 --> 01:06:22,159
there in it's it's it goes against against the grains,

865
01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:26,519
with with with some rules. It's it's a little bit provocative,

866
01:06:27,159 --> 01:06:30,920
and it is intended to be provocative, like the the

867
01:06:31,079 --> 01:06:36,280
rebellious kids in that in the book itself, who's really

868
01:06:36,280 --> 01:06:39,639
provocative And sometimes you know, defying of authority and defying

869
01:06:39,679 --> 01:06:44,199
of of rules in getting into trouble and learning from

870
01:06:44,239 --> 01:06:47,119
that how to stay safe and the value of secrecy,

871
01:06:47,920 --> 01:06:53,440
the value of still staying standing tall and proud and

872
01:06:53,599 --> 01:06:57,639
speaking your truth in a way that benefits you. It's

873
01:06:57,679 --> 01:07:01,840
not about saying out blatant eyes, but knowing how to

874
01:07:02,079 --> 01:07:04,960
learning at a very young age, how to present the

875
01:07:05,159 --> 01:07:10,199
truth from a different angle in such a way that

876
01:07:10,239 --> 01:07:13,559
you're not harmed by by your stating the truth and

877
01:07:13,679 --> 01:07:18,559
not harming your family. So it's it's a lesson in diplomacy,

878
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:22,440
and that's where I did go with this memoir and

879
01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:31,199
in the title it's young diplomat in training.

880
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:32,559
Speaker 2: In an authoritarian country. You have to be diplomatic about everything.

881
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:37,079
Everything is a balance. It's all like you're like the

882
01:07:37,079 --> 01:07:40,440
the guys in the in the circus that you know,

883
01:07:40,559 --> 01:07:44,119
balance the plates on poles that spin and and then

884
01:07:44,199 --> 01:07:48,360
throw them at each other. It's like how now, now,

885
01:07:48,400 --> 01:07:53,440
how do you do that? And you know, I'm gonna

886
01:07:53,480 --> 01:07:57,840
take a quick turn here and talk a little bit

887
01:07:57,840 --> 01:08:04,599
about the magic itself, because one of the things about

888
01:08:04,719 --> 01:08:11,000
traditional witchcraft and traditional magic shamanic work in a specific

889
01:08:12,440 --> 01:08:16,800
culture is it's almost always some kind of secret. There

890
01:08:16,800 --> 01:08:19,560
are secrets to it. There's only so much that you

891
01:08:19,600 --> 01:08:26,760
can tell. Now. Currently in the neopagan movement here in

892
01:08:26,760 --> 01:08:32,239
the United States, there's not as much secrecy. We're out.

893
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:35,920
People know about us, they know where we are, they

894
01:08:35,960 --> 01:08:39,000
know where we live, you know, because we hang you know,

895
01:08:39,239 --> 01:08:42,680
triple goddess flags outside of our house and we wear

896
01:08:42,720 --> 01:08:46,000
pinnacles on the on the outside, you know, and that's

897
01:08:46,039 --> 01:08:52,800
what we Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And I've got a big

898
01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:54,079
old moon goddess on.

899
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:55,840
Speaker 1: My own mind, so beautiful.

900
01:08:56,119 --> 01:08:59,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Nathor. So she's the Nile in the moon

901
01:09:00,079 --> 01:09:05,279
goddess from Predonistic Egypt. So she's she's you know, I've

902
01:09:05,279 --> 01:09:09,760
got the old lady on there. She's she's really really ancient.

903
01:09:11,239 --> 01:09:19,760
But what's going to happen if there really does become

904
01:09:20,119 --> 01:09:29,159
a Christian nationalist government, not just a movement, but a

905
01:09:29,239 --> 01:09:34,920
government or a military that is guided by a Christian nationalist,

906
01:09:35,479 --> 01:09:44,199
white nationalist leanings. That's where I say to neo pagan's

907
01:09:44,520 --> 01:09:48,199
grab yourself a copy of Danielli's book. Grab yourself a

908
01:09:48,239 --> 01:09:56,560
copy of Mischelink Second Degree and read and absorb that

909
01:09:56,640 --> 01:09:58,079
kind of mindset.

910
01:10:00,079 --> 01:10:06,399
Speaker 1: In the grim yet not to completely unlikely possibility for

911
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:14,840
us ending up with a regime that's run by fund fundamentalism,

912
01:10:14,920 --> 01:10:23,399
Christian fundamentalism, and white supremacists political military regime. I would

913
01:10:23,479 --> 01:10:29,159
say that such books become survival guides. M I didn't. Honestly,

914
01:10:29,279 --> 01:10:31,159
at the time I wrote the book, I didn't write

915
01:10:31,199 --> 01:10:36,800
it with such a bleak outcome in mind. But now

916
01:10:38,359 --> 01:10:43,840
I cannot ignore the possibility. So that is a surviving

917
01:10:44,119 --> 01:10:50,399
survival guide in the sense that teaches how to operate

918
01:10:51,079 --> 01:10:58,640
when you have to navigate this intricated maze of expectations

919
01:10:59,079 --> 01:11:05,439
and what's tough and valuable for yourself and whom you

920
01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:10,640
can rely upon and whom you cannot rely upon. So

921
01:11:10,680 --> 01:11:14,239
it's a very complicated maze that needs to be navigated,

922
01:11:14,279 --> 01:11:19,479
and I think the book really helps. It's now, you know,

923
01:11:19,720 --> 01:11:22,680
I'm trying to see it from the perspective of an

924
01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:28,119
outside someone who's not involved, because me, okay, that's about me.

925
01:11:28,279 --> 01:11:31,000
I'm involved. I'm part of that. I can only be

926
01:11:31,079 --> 01:11:34,880
objective to a certain degree. But if I'm trying to

927
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:38,039
see it from your perspective, for example, Barbara, from the

928
01:11:38,119 --> 01:11:43,239
eyes you know, the outsider. I believe there's a lot

929
01:11:43,399 --> 01:11:52,680
in there that warms about the possibility. What is it

930
01:11:52,720 --> 01:11:58,960
to come if people insist in bringing it about? And

931
01:11:59,680 --> 01:12:03,600
one about that these things are not to be taken lightly.

932
01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:11,359
Decisions that one makes have very wide reaching impact. It

933
01:12:11,439 --> 01:12:14,159
goes beyond the personal level and the nuclear family. It

934
01:12:14,199 --> 01:12:20,760
goes reverberates across the society, and it can change I

935
01:12:20,760 --> 01:12:23,600
don't want to say forever, but at least for a

936
01:12:23,760 --> 01:12:27,000
very very very long time life as we know it,

937
01:12:27,600 --> 01:12:32,520
because once people get hold onto power, they're not going

938
01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:36,239
to let it go easily. And it's easier to prevent

939
01:12:36,359 --> 01:12:44,920
something from happening than having to down reverse it once

940
01:12:46,079 --> 01:12:52,840
it happens, and the takedown reversal process it's very difficult.

941
01:12:52,840 --> 01:12:56,720
We can have a completely separate episode on how that is,

942
01:12:56,800 --> 01:13:01,560
but it's usually generates the blood bath. It's not I

943
01:13:02,760 --> 01:13:04,840
saw it. I saw it. I was part of that.

944
01:13:05,079 --> 01:13:09,880
So it's it's not pretty. It's not pretty, it's not safe.

945
01:13:09,960 --> 01:13:14,079
The outcome is not quaranteed. No again, you mentioned China,

946
01:13:14,119 --> 01:13:19,439
Barbara before. The outcome is not quaranteed, and it may

947
01:13:19,560 --> 01:13:26,159
not succeed. Yeah, it may just fail flat.

948
01:13:26,680 --> 01:13:31,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, you know, now there's going to be

949
01:13:31,439 --> 01:13:35,279
listeners going she's lost it, she's gotten paranoid. It's like, no, y'all,

950
01:13:35,319 --> 01:13:39,920
y'all don't even know. I was born paranoid. So just

951
01:13:39,920 --> 01:13:43,560
just just understand that this has always been in the

952
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:45,279
back of my head. Why do you think I have

953
01:13:45,359 --> 01:13:48,239
studied all of these regimes?

954
01:13:49,920 --> 01:13:54,680
Speaker 1: So you know, it would be so nice. So just

955
01:13:54,920 --> 01:13:58,359
worry without having like a really really strong reason to worry,

956
01:13:58,600 --> 01:14:02,600
and see, yeah, over the next few years that Yeah,

957
01:14:02,640 --> 01:14:04,680
it was a phase. It was a phase you know

958
01:14:04,720 --> 01:14:08,600
when when people really leaned into those fundamentalists. There is

959
01:14:08,640 --> 01:14:11,479
a pre emergence or resurgence of that, but it's kind

960
01:14:11,479 --> 01:14:15,079
of we're finding good place of balance, you know, the

961
01:14:15,840 --> 01:14:19,000
and the present and the pre Christian and the Christian

962
01:14:19,479 --> 01:14:24,760
they harmoniously learn to coexist and it's all good. Yeah,

963
01:14:24,760 --> 01:14:27,119
it would be very nice. I mean, that's that's always

964
01:14:27,119 --> 01:14:32,720
a possibility. So but it's also good to consider that

965
01:14:33,840 --> 01:14:37,319
any outcome is possible, still possible. Everything is on the table,

966
01:14:37,520 --> 01:14:40,680
everything is in flood for the taking, everything is out

967
01:14:40,720 --> 01:14:41,319
for the taking.

968
01:14:41,399 --> 01:14:45,279
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean let's also be realistic. Let's talk

969
01:14:45,319 --> 01:14:49,920
about another secret. You and I both do divination. Yeah,

970
01:14:50,399 --> 01:14:55,199
and sometimes most of the time it's it's small things

971
01:14:55,239 --> 01:14:58,880
that you that you catch. Oh, you know, you're going

972
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:01,159
to be able to go to college because you get accepted.

973
01:15:01,159 --> 01:15:03,439
Blah blah blah blah blah. You know, but that's a

974
01:15:03,439 --> 01:15:05,600
big thing for one person. But it's a small thing

975
01:15:05,640 --> 01:15:10,279
in the grand scheme of things, right, yeah, Or Okay,

976
01:15:10,479 --> 01:15:15,039
you're having problems with your your marriage, Yeah, what just

977
01:15:15,039 --> 01:15:18,159
just tell me because it's right there, I can see it. Okay,

978
01:15:18,239 --> 01:15:20,279
you're not gonna tell me, Okay, I will tell you.

979
01:15:20,720 --> 01:15:23,880
And then of course they tell you, okay, yeah, you

980
01:15:23,920 --> 01:15:27,239
were right. Okay, So let's talk about that. That is

981
01:15:27,680 --> 01:15:33,680
again a big thing in a small sense, like it

982
01:15:33,760 --> 01:15:36,720
is not gonna change the whole world. And then you

983
01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:43,479
get those readings and they usually are repeated, which are

984
01:15:43,640 --> 01:15:46,159
about the big things. And that's when you call your

985
01:15:46,199 --> 01:15:49,920
friends who also do divination and go, hey, did you

986
01:15:49,960 --> 01:15:53,119
see did you get a Have you done the cards recently?

987
01:15:53,279 --> 01:15:57,600
Have you gotten a rogue like streak of saying the

988
01:15:57,640 --> 01:16:00,720
same thing with huge you know, major arcana. Have you

989
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:03,520
had a dream recently like you know, we have a

990
01:16:03,600 --> 01:16:06,159
mutual friend who's like, I had this weird dream last night.

991
01:16:06,159 --> 01:16:08,520
Did anybody else have weird dreams? And then you know,

992
01:16:08,560 --> 01:16:12,840
it turns out that several of us had similar dreams

993
01:16:12,960 --> 01:16:21,000
or connecting dreams. Yeah. So it's one of those things.

994
01:16:21,600 --> 01:16:26,520
I've always been somewhat paranoid because of various things from

995
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:34,520
my childhood, but I've also been receiving warnings from outside

996
01:16:35,319 --> 01:16:39,359
and other people have, So I mean, I'm not saying

997
01:16:39,399 --> 01:16:41,000
anything is set and stone. It's not.

998
01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:45,640
Speaker 1: Ye, that's the beauty of things. You know, you do divination,

999
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:49,560
and you do you you get like signals about the potentiality.

1000
01:16:49,840 --> 01:16:52,960
You don't get certainties. Yeah, that's the potential and if

1001
01:16:53,000 --> 01:16:56,079
you act on that potential, then you can ser things

1002
01:16:56,079 --> 01:16:57,760
in one direction or another.

1003
01:16:58,359 --> 01:17:03,319
Speaker 2: That is the value of divination. And your aunt miss

1004
01:17:03,399 --> 01:17:07,039
I'm going to see that in the cards. Yeah, I'm

1005
01:17:07,039 --> 01:17:10,880
going to look at that and go, oh, y'all, fam, Hey, fam,

1006
01:17:11,079 --> 01:17:16,079
come on, we need to do some stuff here. And

1007
01:17:16,159 --> 01:17:19,920
I love that she's not well regarded necessarily, but when

1008
01:17:19,960 --> 01:17:23,399
she says I saw this in the cards, everybody boom ears,

1009
01:17:23,439 --> 01:17:26,720
perk up. Everybody's listening. They know what she can do,

1010
01:17:27,239 --> 01:17:31,600
and so they may not look at her favorably on

1011
01:17:31,640 --> 01:17:34,920
her personal life, but they know her skill and they

1012
01:17:35,399 --> 01:17:41,520
respect that and listen, amazing story. So she said that,

1013
01:17:41,960 --> 01:17:45,399
and it didn't come to pass. You will. You all

1014
01:17:45,439 --> 01:17:48,239
did the things that you had to do to make

1015
01:17:48,279 --> 01:17:50,479
it not come to pass. It was still nerve wracking.

1016
01:17:51,359 --> 01:17:52,399
Speaker 1: I was about to blow it.

1017
01:17:52,920 --> 01:17:55,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was about to blow it as a

1018
01:17:55,640 --> 01:17:58,680
little kid. I was like, oh my god, how could

1019
01:17:58,720 --> 01:18:01,199
a little kid? But you got it. You did it.

1020
01:18:01,279 --> 01:18:03,960
You did it right, as we say in my family.

1021
01:18:04,039 --> 01:18:05,720
You did the thing, you did it right, you didn't

1022
01:18:05,760 --> 01:18:12,039
fuck it up, and it worked. So that's that's a

1023
01:18:12,079 --> 01:18:15,199
good story from there, that has a happy ending. Although

1024
01:18:15,319 --> 01:18:17,560
the whole time I'm sitting there and I start reading

1025
01:18:17,600 --> 01:18:23,279
faster what happens. Obviously it didn't destroy everything because she

1026
01:18:23,359 --> 01:18:27,319
was here to write the book. But still, and I

1027
01:18:27,359 --> 01:18:32,000
want people to understand, I am not slamming Christianity itself.

1028
01:18:34,520 --> 01:18:38,039
I have a lot of Christian friends, a lot of

1029
01:18:38,159 --> 01:18:41,880
people who are very loving and who are just as

1030
01:18:42,000 --> 01:18:49,720
worried about the potentiality of a Christian reconstructionist white supremacist

1031
01:18:50,319 --> 01:18:56,560
group a minority of our country at that coming together

1032
01:18:57,119 --> 01:19:01,680
and creating just a huge man in our country. It's

1033
01:19:01,800 --> 01:19:06,720
not just every Christian. No, most of the Christians are

1034
01:19:06,800 --> 01:19:08,439
like me and you the way.

1035
01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:12,800
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, like my grandmother, like my grandmother, like

1036
01:19:12,880 --> 01:19:16,399
my mother, like so many other people whom I know,

1037
01:19:16,560 --> 01:19:23,960
and just lovely beings with the healthiest possible values regarding

1038
01:19:24,680 --> 01:19:29,439
the human being and the sense of honesty and respect

1039
01:19:29,560 --> 01:19:34,760
for each other one another. Yeah, absolutely so. No, My

1040
01:19:35,600 --> 01:19:41,920
concern is not with someone's beliefs or religion, whatever those

1041
01:19:42,039 --> 01:19:45,640
may be. Is the fundamentalist. When you take things down

1042
01:19:45,680 --> 01:19:49,159
to extreme and you become a fundamentalist. I don't care

1043
01:19:49,199 --> 01:19:52,000
whether you're a Pagan, whether you're a Christian, whether you're

1044
01:19:52,000 --> 01:19:58,439
a Muslim, whether you're the communist. If it boils down

1045
01:19:58,520 --> 01:20:04,800
to fundamentalism, that's the problem. Super conservative and fundamentalists in

1046
01:20:04,880 --> 01:20:09,800
your values that already says that it's only my way

1047
01:20:10,840 --> 01:20:12,399
and everyone else is wrong.

1048
01:20:13,079 --> 01:20:16,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the recipe for disaster.

1049
01:20:17,159 --> 01:20:17,479
Speaker 1: Mm hm.

1050
01:20:18,680 --> 01:20:22,960
Speaker 2: And and that is antithical, antithetical, antithical, My god, it

1051
01:20:23,079 --> 01:20:26,680
just made up a word that is antithetical to the

1052
01:20:26,800 --> 01:20:30,079
values that we're written into the Declaration of Independence. And

1053
01:20:31,880 --> 01:20:36,760
so it's not it's not a good thing, and it's

1054
01:20:36,840 --> 01:20:42,640
it's antithetical to what's in most Christian teaching. So yeah,

1055
01:20:43,000 --> 01:20:46,319
let's let's let's be honest here. I am of the

1056
01:20:46,359 --> 01:20:49,479
opinion that we need to join up with pretty much

1057
01:20:49,520 --> 01:20:55,039
everybody stand up and say no. And I think I

1058
01:20:55,079 --> 01:20:58,279
think that you you basically wrote a book that that

1059
01:20:58,960 --> 01:21:02,560
says that in a in a way that you don't

1060
01:21:02,880 --> 01:21:03,079
you know.

1061
01:21:03,159 --> 01:21:06,520
Speaker 4: You pick this up, you go, oh, neopagan, it's a fairies,

1062
01:21:06,640 --> 01:21:10,199
it's a magic, a seer. Oh this divination and the

1063
01:21:10,760 --> 01:21:14,760
oh my goodness, this is not just that, that's all it's

1064
01:21:14,920 --> 01:21:18,279
it's a bunch of other things. And so that's why

1065
01:21:18,359 --> 01:21:22,479
I you know, suggest to everybody you know, read this book,

1066
01:21:23,239 --> 01:21:28,279
learn as much as you can from it. And she's

1067
01:21:28,319 --> 01:21:30,439
gonna come out with another one. I'm pretty sure that's

1068
01:21:30,479 --> 01:21:36,560
gonna go more into the magic aspects. But you can't

1069
01:21:36,680 --> 01:21:40,840
understand her magic as well if you don't understand where

1070
01:21:41,319 --> 01:21:42,199
it arose from.

1071
01:21:43,359 --> 01:21:45,800
Speaker 2: And that's another thing. You're coming from a culture that

1072
01:21:45,920 --> 01:21:48,359
is different than where you were living now in the

1073
01:21:48,439 --> 01:21:55,520
United States. So your your growing up is completely outside

1074
01:21:55,600 --> 01:22:00,119
of our reference. It is different, and your tradition the

1075
01:22:00,279 --> 01:22:06,199
fairies is different. How many people in the United States. Go, oh, fairies,

1076
01:22:06,399 --> 01:22:08,359
where do they come from? Oh, they come from Ireland,

1077
01:22:09,600 --> 01:22:12,760
they come from Scotland, they come from England. No, they

1078
01:22:12,800 --> 01:22:16,479
come from the world. You know in Romania is one

1079
01:22:16,520 --> 01:22:17,399
of those places.

1080
01:22:17,920 --> 01:22:22,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean some come from We have like fairy

1081
01:22:22,319 --> 01:22:26,520
beings coming from the north, from the Germanic cultures, and

1082
01:22:27,439 --> 01:22:31,600
they are here. I had encounters with. I mean cool,

1083
01:22:31,840 --> 01:22:36,439
going to Ireland and expect to encounter, knowing my propensity

1084
01:22:36,479 --> 01:22:41,000
to run into into into fairy beings and related shenanigans,

1085
01:22:41,800 --> 01:22:46,720
I expected to encounter and somehow interact or whatever has

1086
01:22:46,760 --> 01:22:52,119
you with the sheep, the local Irish sheep. Nope, all

1087
01:22:52,239 --> 01:22:56,840
far so around Dublin area and with the Dublin itself.

1088
01:22:56,960 --> 01:23:02,680
The presence what I interact it with and experienced came

1089
01:23:02,760 --> 01:23:06,159
from the Alpha, from the North alphar So they come

1090
01:23:06,159 --> 01:23:14,000
from everywhere. They're not totally bound to geography. So we

1091
01:23:14,079 --> 01:23:21,760
have this migration of people from our world consensus reality

1092
01:23:21,800 --> 01:23:24,760
and the other as well.

1093
01:23:25,000 --> 01:23:28,359
Speaker 2: So yeah, and if you think about it, if we're

1094
01:23:28,359 --> 01:23:32,960
talking about magical beings, why in God's name would they

1095
01:23:33,079 --> 01:23:39,079
be stuck in one place. If they can travel, it will,

1096
01:23:39,159 --> 01:23:45,119
if they can dematerialize and materialize if they can move

1097
01:23:45,319 --> 01:23:49,600
through reality like swimming in air. You know, I mean,

1098
01:23:49,640 --> 01:23:52,239
if they can do all these things, why do they

1099
01:23:52,279 --> 01:23:54,079
stay in one place? They don't?

1100
01:23:54,279 --> 01:23:54,720
Speaker 1: They don't.

1101
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:59,239
Speaker 2: That's that's the answer, you know, Okham's razor. You know,

1102
01:23:59,279 --> 01:24:03,640
if we're gonna take fairies as a real thing, Okas

1103
01:24:03,720 --> 01:24:06,479
Razors would say, probably it's not. But it doesn't matter.

1104
01:24:06,520 --> 01:24:12,239
But if you take that logical thought, well, if if

1105
01:24:12,800 --> 01:24:15,119
they are magical and can do this, that and the

1106
01:24:15,159 --> 01:24:17,800
other thing, then they are not going to be bound

1107
01:24:19,000 --> 01:24:22,880
by any human expectation. They are a non human intelligence.

1108
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:27,720
They are people. How many human people stay put where

1109
01:24:27,720 --> 01:24:33,119
they were We've never have. That is, otherwise I'd all

1110
01:24:33,119 --> 01:24:38,399
be in Africa and nobody would be anywhere else. All

1111
01:24:38,840 --> 01:24:43,199
our white skin, we would all be in Africa and

1112
01:24:43,840 --> 01:24:47,560
that's where we'd be. You know, that's not what happened.

1113
01:24:47,560 --> 01:24:50,680
It hasn't happened from the beginning. It's not gonna happen

1114
01:24:50,760 --> 01:24:53,920
until the end of time. We're gonna keep moving around.

1115
01:24:54,159 --> 01:24:58,319
We're gonna go into space eventually, and you know that's

1116
01:24:58,359 --> 01:25:00,800
not a very hospitable environment, but we're still going to

1117
01:25:00,840 --> 01:25:03,039
do it because that's what people do.

1118
01:25:04,520 --> 01:25:10,279
Speaker 1: Everywhere. Yeah, I want to add something about the book

1119
01:25:10,439 --> 01:25:17,640
because those of our listeners didn't see it or only

1120
01:25:17,720 --> 01:25:21,760
now learn about it, there might be the impression that

1121
01:25:21,920 --> 01:25:25,720
the book is has very little magic compared to the

1122
01:25:25,760 --> 01:25:28,600
rest of it, and I want to say that that's

1123
01:25:28,880 --> 01:25:33,640
not the case. We're going to to see there my

1124
01:25:33,800 --> 01:25:44,439
grandmother in action, like like a full depossession situation when

1125
01:25:44,800 --> 01:25:47,560
I was around, and I'm gonna I'm telling it in

1126
01:25:47,600 --> 01:25:50,479
the book. I'm repeating it now. My knees were rubber.

1127
01:25:51,079 --> 01:25:51,279
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1128
01:25:51,439 --> 01:25:53,840
Speaker 1: So when I when I witnessed and I saw that,

1129
01:25:54,000 --> 01:25:59,640
I participated into that. There's also all kinds of charms

1130
01:25:59,640 --> 01:26:05,880
and spouse folk magic throughout the book as I was participating,

1131
01:26:06,039 --> 01:26:09,279
as I participated in it, as a grandmother was doing it,

1132
01:26:09,319 --> 01:26:12,199
and I was just trying to spy on it, and

1133
01:26:12,560 --> 01:26:18,720
uh oh yeah plenty. So Barbara mentioned at some point

1134
01:26:19,520 --> 01:26:23,159
that I was writing. I had my first little magical journal,

1135
01:26:23,159 --> 01:26:26,800
and I was trying to record things, and as we discussed,

1136
01:26:27,600 --> 01:26:29,680
there wasn't a good idea to keep put things in

1137
01:26:29,720 --> 01:26:35,960
writing anyway. So that got confiscated by my mother for

1138
01:26:36,039 --> 01:26:39,359
a number of reasons. First, it was dangerous to have

1139
01:26:39,439 --> 01:26:41,920
things in writing just to say that somebody comes to

1140
01:26:41,960 --> 01:26:44,279
search your house and find the magical you know, a

1141
01:26:44,439 --> 01:26:48,039
whole collection of courses and these kind of things.

1142
01:26:48,119 --> 01:26:48,840
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1143
01:26:48,880 --> 01:26:51,720
Speaker 1: And second, when you really really want to have your

1144
01:26:51,800 --> 01:26:57,000
child distancing themselves from such practices, first thing you would do,

1145
01:26:57,199 --> 01:27:00,600
you try to destroy their little magical journal. So that

1146
01:27:00,800 --> 01:27:04,279
was the end of my magical journal. However, I start

1147
01:27:04,319 --> 01:27:07,840
because I have a really good memory, so I started

1148
01:27:07,840 --> 01:27:11,239
to recreate and you know, develop things that I stored

1149
01:27:11,279 --> 01:27:16,479
on bits and pieces of paper, and eventually recreated a

1150
01:27:16,560 --> 01:27:20,039
little notebook that I wrote on the cover of it

1151
01:27:20,079 --> 01:27:25,359
in black and danielized Book of Magic. So and found

1152
01:27:25,359 --> 01:27:27,640
the way play to hide it, to find a place

1153
01:27:27,680 --> 01:27:32,319
to hide it. So in the book there's a whole

1154
01:27:32,359 --> 01:27:37,439
section at the end, like partly recreated daniel as little

1155
01:27:37,439 --> 01:27:40,920
book of Magic, with some of the spells in the

1156
01:27:40,960 --> 01:27:44,720
form that they were back then, especially those whom I

1157
01:27:44,760 --> 01:27:50,840
remember from Grandma, but some of them changed to also

1158
01:27:50,920 --> 01:27:54,800
reflect where I am now in my practice. So it's

1159
01:27:54,840 --> 01:27:59,119
still the essence preserves from those years and the foundation

1160
01:27:59,199 --> 01:28:04,159
would be authentic folk Romanian, but also with some added

1161
01:28:04,239 --> 01:28:07,560
elements of me growing like this wild peg on Kaden

1162
01:28:09,000 --> 01:28:11,359
who has a pretty strong magical practice.

1163
01:28:11,439 --> 01:28:16,760
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm gonna I'm gonna reiterate because

1164
01:28:16,800 --> 01:28:20,039
I didn't. I didn't want to give too many spoilers.

1165
01:28:20,359 --> 01:28:23,680
You know, but your grandmother, when she threw down, she

1166
01:28:23,800 --> 01:28:28,800
threw down. I mean seriously, she she dealt with possessions,

1167
01:28:28,920 --> 01:28:35,640
she dealt with a very strong curse, she dealt with healing,

1168
01:28:36,560 --> 01:28:43,960
a very dramatic healing of a child. And she she

1169
01:28:44,159 --> 01:28:51,800
told some you know, baby kidnapping, uh undying ones, to

1170
01:28:53,039 --> 01:29:01,159
shove off, you know, in a respectful and yeah, but yeah,

1171
01:29:01,199 --> 01:29:05,760
basically you'll back right off, y'all. You fuck off the

1172
01:29:05,800 --> 01:29:07,640
fuck off still, and when you get there, you keep

1173
01:29:07,680 --> 01:29:12,920
sucking off until you leave the whole country. Just just go. Yeah.

1174
01:29:13,119 --> 01:29:16,319
She was, she's she's a badass. I'll just say it.

1175
01:29:16,640 --> 01:29:19,319
I'll just say it. She was. She was very strong.

1176
01:29:19,359 --> 01:29:21,680
And it's in there, and people are gonna look at

1177
01:29:21,720 --> 01:29:24,600
this book and they're going to be like, it's self thin,

1178
01:29:24,840 --> 01:29:27,439
how can all that be in there? It's because it's

1179
01:29:27,439 --> 01:29:32,399
well written, concisely written, and it's full of so much

1180
01:29:33,039 --> 01:29:40,000
knowledge that it's just it's I can't recommend it more highly.

1181
01:29:40,279 --> 01:29:43,800
I really think that many many people, even if you

1182
01:29:43,920 --> 01:29:48,760
never do magic, if you do magic, if you want

1183
01:29:48,760 --> 01:29:50,640
to do with fairies, if you don't want to do

1184
01:29:50,720 --> 01:29:55,079
with fairies, just read it. And it tells an interesting

1185
01:29:55,119 --> 01:30:00,159
story too, and it does you know, the way that

1186
01:30:00,159 --> 01:30:05,399
that history and magic used to be told, how these

1187
01:30:05,439 --> 01:30:09,960
stories used to be told, was oral history from around

1188
01:30:10,000 --> 01:30:14,680
the fire. And that's what you basically replicated. All of

1189
01:30:14,680 --> 01:30:18,640
that folklore that Morgan and Kat and you and I,

1190
01:30:18,760 --> 01:30:23,359
Josh Kuchen we all read. Those were stories from a

1191
01:30:23,399 --> 01:30:27,880
first person's perspective that were about things that happened to

1192
01:30:28,039 --> 01:30:32,960
people that then were passed down. So you basically did that.

1193
01:30:33,479 --> 01:30:36,680
You gathered your stories and now you're passing it down

1194
01:30:37,079 --> 01:30:40,840
in print, and you did a great job.

1195
01:30:42,000 --> 01:30:49,359
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm so happy and honored and humbos that

1196
01:30:49,600 --> 01:30:51,880
I was able, you know, to add my voice to

1197
01:30:53,640 --> 01:30:59,199
the choir, so to speak, that of so that choir

1198
01:30:59,279 --> 01:31:04,720
of people talking about their own personal experiences and putting

1199
01:31:04,880 --> 01:31:11,079
personal experiences that some of them are quite intimate. It's

1200
01:31:11,159 --> 01:31:17,000
your connection with spirit and spirituality and putting that into

1201
01:31:17,039 --> 01:31:19,960
a kind of shop window where people can look at

1202
01:31:20,000 --> 01:31:24,199
it from all angles leaves you, or at least lived

1203
01:31:24,279 --> 01:31:32,000
me vulnerable. But to afford that vulnerability, you got to

1204
01:31:32,000 --> 01:31:38,039
be really strong because so putting these things forth for

1205
01:31:38,199 --> 01:31:47,479
people to see and learn from it, it may leave

1206
01:31:47,520 --> 01:31:51,319
you with a sense of vulnerability, but actually when you

1207
01:31:51,439 --> 01:31:55,880
make the decision, you feel actually very strong, like, yes,

1208
01:31:56,119 --> 01:32:00,359
I'm strong enough to be able to be open to

1209
01:32:00,439 --> 01:32:07,840
open up the other thing what I found. So this book, obviously,

1210
01:32:07,880 --> 01:32:10,439
it's been with me in my head in my heart

1211
01:32:10,600 --> 01:32:14,199
for a very very long time. And it's not the

1212
01:32:14,199 --> 01:32:20,079
first book that I wrote. But somehow I was hesitant

1213
01:32:20,199 --> 01:32:25,119
about putting all this out there because it's very personal.

1214
01:32:26,399 --> 01:32:31,920
So it's personal with this far reaching impact, nevertheless personal.

1215
01:32:33,439 --> 01:32:38,680
And Morgan and Cat were such a big inspiration. So

1216
01:32:38,800 --> 01:32:44,119
Morgan Diama and cat Heat were such big inspirations because

1217
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:49,079
I learned so this was a while ago. I was

1218
01:32:49,119 --> 01:32:56,520
into paganism, was already pretty very seasoned pagan and I

1219
01:32:56,560 --> 01:33:00,079
wanted to find ways to talk about my own experiences

1220
01:33:00,119 --> 01:33:08,399
and didn't know exactly how. And then when I read

1221
01:33:08,520 --> 01:33:13,960
Morgan and Kat, the first thing was, oh, I'm not

1222
01:33:14,039 --> 01:33:18,680
the only one having encountered this and having encountered that

1223
01:33:18,840 --> 01:33:23,239
fairies and spirits and deity and wow, and people are

1224
01:33:23,279 --> 01:33:25,439
talking about it. So if I'm going out there and

1225
01:33:25,479 --> 01:33:27,479
talk about it, I'm not going to be like the

1226
01:33:27,560 --> 01:33:33,760
strangest thing in the world. Second, look how much I

1227
01:33:33,880 --> 01:33:38,800
learned and how their stories their material helped me ground

1228
01:33:39,680 --> 01:33:42,920
and find my footing on a path that's not necessarily

1229
01:33:43,319 --> 01:33:45,840
an easy one when you have lots of experiences and

1230
01:33:45,880 --> 01:33:51,000
you need to still stay grounded and align yourself to

1231
01:33:51,680 --> 01:33:57,640
social and family and demands and expectations. And reading their work,

1232
01:33:58,199 --> 01:34:03,520
I found it of immense help and value. So I

1233
01:34:03,560 --> 01:34:09,319
cannot recommend enough Morgan and Catherine's absolutely it's work. And

1234
01:34:09,359 --> 01:34:11,800
then I'm like, Okay, I can add my voice to

1235
01:34:11,840 --> 01:34:14,840
the choir. And the more of us, the merrier, and

1236
01:34:14,880 --> 01:34:18,600
the more of us, the stronger, and the better the

1237
01:34:18,640 --> 01:34:21,079
world will live in. Let's bring the magic back.

1238
01:34:21,640 --> 01:34:24,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, re enchant more magic, re.

1239
01:34:24,479 --> 01:34:27,720
Speaker 1: Enchanting the work. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of mission statement.

1240
01:34:27,880 --> 01:34:31,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's re enchanted the world definitely. And right now,

1241
01:34:31,880 --> 01:34:35,960
you know, the whole pandemic and the aftermath and the

1242
01:34:36,000 --> 01:34:39,479
twenty sixteen election and the aftermath and January sixth and

1243
01:34:39,520 --> 01:34:43,159
the aftermath of that after we really need some enchantment.

1244
01:34:44,119 --> 01:34:48,319
We need some enchantment. And now our little tweet enchantment

1245
01:34:48,399 --> 01:34:51,960
with sparkles, no big enchantment.

1246
01:34:52,079 --> 01:34:57,079
Speaker 1: For every single imaginable reason. We need that enchantment, whether

1247
01:34:57,119 --> 01:35:03,439
it's for ourselves not to come self doubt and you know, depression,

1248
01:35:03,720 --> 01:35:10,800
not to succumb to the grim perspective that it's still

1249
01:35:10,800 --> 01:35:17,880
out there and possible undeserved outcomes happening. We need enchantment

1250
01:35:18,600 --> 01:35:24,760
to affect change, to affect change and omp the the

1251
01:35:24,800 --> 01:35:28,119
good vibes, so to speak. We need that enchantment to

1252
01:35:28,199 --> 01:35:32,800
make a difference to ground and bring forth the most

1253
01:35:33,159 --> 01:35:37,680
powerful expression of ourselves and make make our voices heard.

1254
01:35:38,560 --> 01:35:42,399
Enchantment couldn't hurt, So we need an enchantment by by

1255
01:35:42,479 --> 01:35:44,279
all counts.

1256
01:35:43,880 --> 01:35:47,560
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I'm gonna We're gonna end it there because

1257
01:35:47,560 --> 01:35:53,079
that's a great statement. Thank you so much. It's great

1258
01:35:53,119 --> 01:35:58,000
to talk with you again and again, you know, thank

1259
01:35:58,039 --> 01:36:01,479
you for writing this book. It's one of my favorites.

1260
01:36:01,640 --> 01:36:03,720
And if I get to meet you sometime, I'm going

1261
01:36:03,760 --> 01:36:05,199
to bring it with me so you can. You can

1262
01:36:05,239 --> 01:36:08,479
sign up for me. It has notes in it together,

1263
01:36:08,760 --> 01:36:11,680
I wrote notes in it, which I do with all

1264
01:36:11,720 --> 01:36:15,800
of my stuff, so me too, all right of us,

1265
01:36:16,640 --> 01:36:18,039
Thank you so much.

1266
01:36:19,000 --> 01:36:21,680
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It's always always

1267
01:36:22,000 --> 01:36:24,239
a pleasure and an honor to be here. Thank you.

1268
01:36:24,800 --> 01:36:31,479
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well that's all for this week's episode of the

1269
01:36:31,520 --> 01:36:34,960
Six Degrees of John Keel podcast. If you have any

1270
01:36:35,039 --> 01:36:37,840
questions or thoughts about the podcast, or would like to

1271
01:36:37,880 --> 01:36:41,199
come and talk about your experiences of the paranormal, you

1272
01:36:41,239 --> 01:36:45,800
can contact us at six D JK six seven at

1273
01:36:45,840 --> 01:36:50,560
gmail dot com. We promised even answer you, and we

1274
01:36:50,600 --> 01:37:00,840
are always happy to hear from you. Thank you. Spill

1275
01:37:04,960 --> 01:37:05,920
at

1276
01:37:10,439 --> 01:37:23,119
Speaker 1: Spa hat st