Speaker 1: You're listening to the paranorl UK Radio network and this
is six Degrees of John Keel.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the six Degrees of John Keele podcast.
I'm your host Barbara Fisher. Today close to in Bulk,
I'm talking with Daniella Simona and she's been here before
and she just came out with a new book called
A Fairy Path, the Memoirs of a Young Fairy Seer
in Training, and it's very excellent. We're going to talk
about that and probably other stuff too. Welcome Danielle. I'm
so glad to see you again.
Speaker 1: Hello. Hello, I'm so so glad to be back. We
had a very exciting episode the last time. So many things,
questions left unanswered. We just didn't have a physical time
not to get into everything. So I'm very glad to
be here to continue in a sense discussion that we
started last time, but also to bring up new topics
and look at very magic and what I'm writing about
very magic from a new point of view, the front angle.
Speaker 2: Okay, at that so excellent. Yeah. Yeah. We went as
deep as we could the first time and not talk
for five hours, which is I didn't want to, like,
you know, uh, destroy your ability to like communicate by
making you talk forever. I could have though, I could have,
I could have talked with you forever and ever. But uh,
I'm glad that you came back. Okay, before we start
talking about fairy magic, I want to talk about your
book a little bit, and then it's just gonna it's
gonna flow, it's gonna come. A Fairy Path is interesting
because it is a memoir, and one of my favorite
genres to read is memoirs, because I think that the
more experiences of humanity that we have, the more we
understand everyone and ourselves. The more that we read about
people from different places and different cultures who have different
experiences than us, the more we see that they are human.
And not only are they human, but even if their
experiences and culture are very very different from us, what
we learn is that inside we're all the same. We
all have the same desires, we have the same kinds
of emotions, and that is honestly, I think that's a
really interesting and good way to teach magic by showing
how you got to where you are now. So in
this book, you tell from what grade were you in.
Speaker 1: It starts with me being in the third grade.
Speaker 2: That's what I've find.
Speaker 1: It goes through a good part of fourth grade. So
the book packs and what's happening over an arc of
about two years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's well, I think in child development speak,
those two years are like pivotal. I really think that
those are Your brain is developing at a very fast pace.
Your understanding of the world, which you get from context
clues most of the time and from direct teaching from
your family, is moving very quickly. You know. This is
like what I always said to uh Morgana when she
got older and Fox was a little little toddler kid.
I was like, they get really interested, Like all kids
get really interesting around third grade. That's that's when I
was like, not like, not like I didn't like him
when he's toddling around and being really cute. But third
grade is when they open their mouths and things just
come out where they have learned their own understanding and
then they add it to their cultural understanding, and weird
stuff just pops right out of their mouths, and you go, huh,
I never thought of that. So let's start with the
very first sentence, and we're not going to do the
whole text, like this, people don't be all like weird. Yeah,
it says there's no such thing as Santa. Can you
like elaborate on this?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I really should say it wasn't just it
doesn't say there's no such thing as Santa. There are
quotes around it. Someone is saying it, and not only
is she saying it, she's saying it loudly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in capitals, I believe. Yes. So there was
this instance in my life when I heard my teacher,
So the person talking that is my third grade teacher
yelling at me there is no such thing as Center,
and actually slamming her hand on the desk, and she
was very, very irritated by the very idea that someone
a child would bring up the idea of magic. And
it may not be very obvious to the reader in
the United States or other places around the world why
my teacher was so outraged about it. The action in
the book is placed in the early seventies when in
Romania we had a dictatorial regime. And what a dictatorial
regime means is that the people who have the political power,
they will tell you how to dress, what you eat,
what you believe you are allowed to believe in what
you're not allowed to believe, how you should think. And
if you do not align, if you do set your
toe past the line, you are in trouble. And trouble
ranges from consequences like a child could have been placed
in an institution to be re educated, rehabbed, for an
adult that could be prison or again conversations to help
the adult involved clear up their mind and sort out
the healthy from the unhealthy ideas and the healthy making
her bunny ears by healthy. It was intended what the
political party was considered healthy. So with all that in mind,
I can now, looking back, I can understand my teacher's
outrage because she was concerned that such a deeply mystical
little being was emerging, was blossoming right underneath in front
of her in her class. So she was concerned. But
as the reader, I hope the reader will have the
curiosity to follow through the pages of the book, we'll
discover that my teacher herself was one of those honest
believers in how sound and good that regime political regime was,
And she was like this fervent preacher of the values
that the dictatorial regime in Romania back then was representing,
embodying and trying to really instill to the citizens since
the earliest possible. As you, Barbara said, third grade, childhood
is a time when children are prime to absorb the
world through either what the experience and what they are
they are taught. So those are formative years and are crucial.
Now you might be wondering at this point how even
the discourse of Santa came about. And without giving here
too much of a spoiler, I want to say that
I had my own experiences and perceptions and sightings and interactions.
So this goes beyond just imagining or how I think
I saw something in the corner of my eye. I
had my share of experiences since a very young age,
since as early as I can remember, I can say,
and I was trying to in my child's like in
my mind as a child, I was trying to make
sense of what I was seeing. And when I encountered
this what appeared to be like a gentleman dressed in
a certain fashion. And because it was very early, it
was the last day of November. I will never forget
that that's like etched into my memory late November. Now,
this is a time when in Romania we have like
the first snow falling, and you know that's deep, massive
frost in most of the areas. So my mind combined
put two and two together, the apparition plus the time
of the year, and I said, okay, wow, cool, that
might be Santa Claus. So I went around, you know,
telling it's like, hey, I saw Santa Claus. So you know,
it's not like we are told those things don't exist,
because I just saw him. So that kind of gives
the idea what kind of experience sightings I was having.
And to make things even more confusing for the reader
or for the listener right now, I'll go ahead and
say that I grew up with my grandmother, so she
lived with us, and she was a practitioner of folk
medicine and a very seer. And now I'm just visualizing.
I have this image of the audience going, what do
you mean you grew up with a fairy witch with
a medicine woman right there, and there was nobody to
tell you about Santa Claus and what were you seeing
and what is what? And help you this entangle your
own experiences. And the answer here is two fold. First
of all, I thought that all children and see what
I'm seeing. Like I remember one day walking into the
classroom and telling everybody, Hey, guys, my cat was glowing
blue this morning. What colors do your cats blow? I
leave it to everyone's imagination to figure out what happened
given the context that I just gave, you know about
a very strict very and I was very upset. I'm like,
either every I mean, everyone's better than myself at keeping
it a secret, so they don't like to talk about
what colors their cats or dogs are glowing. So that's
that's one aspect that I didn't I couldn't fathom from
the very beginning that not everyone was seeing was perceiving
these kind of things the way I did. And the
other thing, my grandmother herself was trying to keep me
away when she was doing her charms and her healing
magic and all those rituals, and she was really trying
to keep me away. There was a time I could
remember when I was like very very little, like toddleer age,
when I was crawling into the spaces where she and
her friends her ladies were doing things, and that was
sticking my nose into everything. But then I also remember
a time when she started to push me away, and
I was really really frustrated. So Grandma was there. Basically
my source of knowledge and potential answers was right there
with me, and yet I couldn't reach What this led to,
I started to do things by myself and trying to
figure out what I was seeing, what I was doing,
what I was and I was getting myself into trouble,
talking to the wrong people, asking the wrong type of questions,
people from outside the house. At which point my grandmother
realized that it's better if she begins to discuss with
me about certain things because having these she called them
magical gifts. So having these magical gifts could have gotten
me into trouble, and I actually did get in trouble
more than once. Yeah, but there are none. Nevertheless, their gifts,
and I could have been taught to use them better
in useful ways, in productive ways. So she steps in
basically to protect me and making me aware that this
is not something too toy around with. The Consequences can
be very very serious, arranging from all discomfort to death.
You know, I know it's a broad spectrum, but I'm
not exaggerating now, Grandmother, this is the tie back to
the beginning of our discussion when we mentioned the problem
the problems arising from living under an authoritarian regime. So grandmother,
one of the reasons that she didn't want to tell me,
I mean, teach me more was that as a kid,
I would have probably went around speaking and sharing with
my friends little friends, what did I learn and what
fabulous things can I do or not to do, which
would have spelled trouble for the whole whole family and
get us the wrong kind of attention from authorities, which,
by the way, if you did the book, that actually
does happen at some point. So we had the Romanian
security services stepping in, so yeah, not fun. So that
was the reason why she was concerned about teaching me.
On the other hand, she had too because I was
a danger to myself and others. And yeah, so yeah,
teaching was the best way out of the situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took her a little bit to come to
that conclusion, now, because you know, you you were you
were stubborn and and you kept you kept listening at doors. Hey,
I'm not judging you. Yes, I did that too. I
pretended to be asleep a lot.
Speaker 1: Yees, Yes, I relate, Yeah, relate.
Speaker 2: I didn't learn good this is interesting stuff you did
that way, But still I did learn lots of the
family secrets that little kids aren't supposed to know, and
that you know, that's a thing that kids do. We're curious,
you know, and kids at that age are especially curious.
And you get to be curious not just about what
you're learning in school, but everything because you want to
make sense of how all of this works. And you
had your teacher who went by the title comrade, so
you know, I mean.
Speaker 1: That's how we were. We were talking to the teacher.
I mean, you don't say mom or miss, so it
was like, Comrade such and such, step up there, take
up nice, you know, upright position, and say Comrade such
and such and you start addressing. So it was it
was getting pretty militarized, criticized. Certainly, it wasn't as bad
as in our neighboring country, the ex Soviet Union, because
we have a big common border with the ex Soviet Union,
so there was a lot of pressure on, you know,
our government from theirs. So they also made sure that
we Romania stays in line with So yeah, a lot
of stuff was important. Oh yeah, and it's planted implanted
with no choice over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that was the same for a
lot of the Eastern Bloc countries at the time, yep.
And you know they were they were all little variations,
you know, but it was the same common thread of authoritarianism.
And that's I think this is like at the core
of the book is that when you are a child
in an authoritarian country with an authoritarian regime with stuff
like secret police and security services and all of that stuff. Yeah, okay,
we've got the CIA, but they don't follow kids to
school and crap. I mean, I know that the conspiracy
theory people are going to be like, yes they did,
and I'm like, okay, just go over there. No, no,
they didn't, and they don't. You know, Yeah, we have
that stuff, but it's not the same. And it's one
of the things that I found so crucial to the
message of this book is these things are not only dangerous.
Magic is not only dangerous because it's dangerous like as
you said, illness, death, honestly, insanity. Yes, you can lose
your mind essentially if you play around in a stupid way.
So it's not just that it's that other people recognize
it is dangerous. And want to stamp it out. Yep,
and that was I mean, look look at the Catholic
Church for centuries. They knew darn good and well that
that stuff worked and that it was dangerous, so they
stamped it out. The only person allowed to do things
like transubstantiation was the priest. Yes, that's the only person.
And by the way, he could only read. He was
the only one who could read the Bible because he
was the only one who was taught Latin, and so
all of this stuff, you know, they kept it all together. Now,
instead of doing it that way, the Romanian government did
it the other way, which is stamp it straight out
just by going no, you don't believe. It's like a
giant gaslighting session. Like you can call authoritarianism a case
of gigantic gaslighting where you tell your citizens you didn't
see that that doesn't exist. This is how we think
of things. That is how we do not think of things.
And if you don't think of things the way we do,
we're just going.
Speaker 1: To keep it. Yeah, they help you see the right way, Yes, because.
Speaker 2: In a way, the ones who are true believers believe
they are helping you. And this is actually this is
this is why a lot of evangelical Christian communities are
really into this whole witnessing to non Christians, because they
truly do believe that these people are going to go
to hell when they die, and they want to save them,
and in their mind they are helping them. Same thing.
It is, it's the.
Speaker 1: Exact same thing. I mean, I remember, and they tried
to make and they were actually making programs for children
that were super opealing the mind of a young child.
They were, and I had many among my friends who
were themselves and their families were completely sold out on
this materialistic, strictly one hundred percent materialistic, pragmatic view of
the world. And they I remember how they were telling
kids that, oh, but you have the power, and that's
nothing more intelligent and stronger than the human mind. Look
how we subdue the forces of nature and we create electricities,
the electricity in this plants, you know, the using water power.
And look how magnificent is the human mind. And there's
nothing about the human mind. And with that, it's it
began the erosion in the belief of any other power
or force outside the human as a person. And then
of course, as a person, you have to listen to
the reasoning of other persons who are above you and
who supposedly know better. So yeah, and that's that's that's dangerous.
And what you said. I really like what you said
about the the Catholic Church and believe Church and Christian
or Monotheistic religions in general, about Christianity, particularly because in
its advancing it took on so much from the pre
Christian beliefs. I mean, if you look in old manuscripts
of recorded handwritten prayer books that also incorporate healing charms,
and you see that I believe this is from lap Nunga,
from this Leach book, and there are prayers there that
it's like call for God's name and Jesus and then
the additional you know, the addition of deities or.
Speaker 3: Say they're saints, and but back then they were called
and this is not lacking on a different term where
Odin or Votan was called.
Speaker 1: And then later down in the in the charm, do's
does Jesus or you know, God's Christian God mentioned? So
there was things started to blend. So they realized that
there's one there are better ways to convince people by
presenting them, Hey, your deity and our deities, you know,
they kind of mishmashed together and then gradually, gradually beginning
to erase the other and pushing your own agendas and
then limiting. Okay, the only ones who can do this
are the ones who we give them the power and
your authority to do so, and these are the priests.
Funny thing in Romanian I actually so there the predominant
religion is Christian Orthodox Eastern Orthodox. And I'm not gonna
tell what I find flawed with with that. I mean
that that would take us like a whole.
Speaker 2: You can give us a little little bits.
Speaker 1: So well, I don't like the the blatant anti Semitism
that is present if you if you hear, you know,
the preaching of uh John Grisostomos, that's the Greek named
John golden Mouth. So he's very, very virulent in his
preaching against Christianity and against Pagans in general. So there
are those aspects that I do not like. And I
never felt like I was belonging with with that, you know,
Christian view of the world. But when Christianity took over
to Krutz in Romania, the pre Christian many of them
were deeply deeply, deeply ingrained, and people would not let
them let go of them, And for example, believes in
fairies and medicine women and medicine men, witches working with fairies.
So we have there the name. It's an equivalent of
the fairy sear. I don't have exact translation for it,
so I'm using very Sear as the best, you know,
closest name, and as such. Now also consider that many
of the priests were coming from the countryside, from the village,
and they themselves grew up with beliefs in fairies and
things that were near and dear to their families, to
their grandparents, to their great grandparents, so growing an ecclesiastical class,
so to speak. This is before communist times when we
didn't have much of an ecclesiastical class crime. So having
this growing, this class, growing with this profession, growing with
roots into their heritage, led to a very interesting solution.
I would call it compromise solution. These weren't really really
one hundred and fifty percent, not all of them convinced
that all beliefs must be eradicated. So we end up
in Eastern Orthodox Christianity with very holidays and very festivals
incorporated into the Church calendar, and there are groups of
ferries to major groups of fairy Zieromania, Salience and Zienna,
which I bring about in the book and discussed there,
and both of them have their holidays acknowledge big read
letters in the Church calendar of holidays and they are
under the name it's Feast of Russali and Feast of Sinsienna.
A lot of the ancestor cult and ancestor veneration practices
have been incorporated into the Church calendar. So we were
really really lucky there to have more of this syncretic
blend and having a little bit of you know, best
of both worlds. Except for for what I said, You
know that there is a misogyny and there is an
anti semitism to the old you know, to the patristic
writings the church fathers and quoting again Bonniers here fathers founders.
So that is something that's very repelling, repulsive. I find
it blatant, absolutely repulsing. So that's that. But then the overall,
a lot of the practices that we had from the
pre Christian past survived because they were incorporated in the Christianity.
How does this go along with the with the communist
with the authoritarian regime, and again the materialistic view that
was imposed on us the older generation generations, for most part,
they knew how to play along with whatever the leadership wanted,
but deep down they wouldn't really buy it. So it
was all a it was, it was a masquerade, really,
so to them talking with comrade this, comrade that, and
then in private conversations over the phone, oh, madam sir,
which were not really allowed in you know, conversations at
least in all vicial settings, you wouldn't use those terms.
So and then our parents, who are like an in between,
some of them still connected with their families, their own parents,
grandparents from the countryside, who are still very much connected
to the old traditions in Lauren folklore. And these parents
of ours, like my own, living in the city, educated
in universities and bombarded with the information that was fed
to them, so they were really at loss. I mean,
I wasn't aware so much of that as a child.
I mean, I could see the duality, but I couldn't
really you know, pinpoint the way I can do now
looking in retrospect and as an adult that I've seen
and lived through quite a bit so for me, it
was extremely disorienting. At school, You're told to be yourself,
be tell the truth, have the courage to take responsibility
for your own deeds and words, be brave, stand up
and speak your mind. And then the reality that I
was confronted with keep your mouth shut, because if you're
going to speak up your mind and stand up for
your truth, will end up all in jail and you're
possible in some sort of foster care, you know, to
be re educated whatever. So I just didn't know what
to believe. And for a young child, it is a
really really dramatic, very unsettling place to be. And I'm
discussing in the Bookhype made sense of story to make
sense of my world and not feel guilty, not feel
ashamed that I can only say half truths depending on
whom I was talking to. Yeah, so, yeah, that was.
Speaker 2: That's hard on kids. That's really hard on kids to
be told one thing by outside authorities and another thing
from your familial authorities. You know, you want them to
at least agree some you know, and with your your parents.
They did seem to kind of agree with the authorities
on the outside, but not really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they just want us to be safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and kids, your sense that, even if it's not
stated out up front, and one of the horrible things
about being told in school, hey, say your mind, speak
your truth, stand up, be proud of of what you understand.
Is okay, So I'm gonna bring up uh MAOIs China here.
Uh there was right before the Cultural Revolution, there was
a political They called it the Campaign of the Thousand Flowers.
And it's you know, because it's poetics. Chinese people like
poetic stuff and that makes it nice and it sounds
very similar to what the authorities taught you. But the
Campaign of the Thousand Flowers was all about let's let
a thousand flowers of intellect and understanding and knowledge bloom
in our in our beautiful country, our unified country, and
every everyone will have an opinion. Please state your opinions.
We have freedom of the press, we have freedom of information.
Yet no, because what happened that lasted about you know,
I don't know, six months, a year or something long
enough for the people who did stand up and write,
you know, newspaper articles or magazine articles or books or whatever,
ex bounding upon their own philosophy. It was long enough
for somebody in the clerk's office to write down their
names and addresses.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: And when they were done with blooming, when we you know,
when the flowers all went to seed and those seeds
could have dispersed, all those books disappeared, the newspaper articles disappeared,
magazines disappeared, and so did the people.
Speaker 1: The people disappeared.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the people were taken to re education camps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's exactly how. And actually when I grew up,
the the government that modeling. It was very much modeled.
So they liked a lot what was happening in China.
And we even had this monumental shows on stadiums, you
know where where you have the president standing there and
waving everybody. And we were like taking you know, it
was part of our summer vacation sometimes and we were
taken there, you know, to perform all these shows and displays.
Speaker 2: That's how they used That's how they used the property
of the arts against people. This is this is really
hard for Americans to understand. And that's why as I
was reading this book, I was like, this is important.
And even if you don't give a rat's patuit about fairies,
I kind of think you should read it because it
shows how if you have an authoritarian government and they
want to make people think their way, everything is geared
towards doing that, and it can be the harmful way
of making people disappear and go to the camps. It
can be in the harm harmless.
Speaker 1: They can make it very alluring. Yeah, very alluring, very
interesting if you end up liking it, enjoying it so much,
and they give you the sense of they're very good
at giving. So again, it was very much about training
the younger generations, making you feel very important. And we
had these beautiful free camps, so we would go for
you know, two camps for free, and you are given
all kinds of assignments. You know, you're going to take
care of this. You're going to take care like little
leadership roles. And this is how we want our young communists,
you know, to train and to grow. And we had
a lot of fun, honestly, while this mentality was trickled
into us. And as a child, you're just into that,
Oh I'm having so much fun. This is so cool,
this is so great. Maybe these grown ups don't really
get it, but I think this communess think is a
really cool thing. Yeah, and then then when you grow
up a little bit more and life really comes at
you and you're out of the childhood bubble and there
are no more free camps and real life in a
totalitarian regime can be extremely hard. Nerve action, So then
nerve wracking plus considering from the economic standpoint, considering that
the government decides where you are going to go and work,
so you finish your college degree or your college whatever education,
and then you don't go and search for a job
wherever you want and wherever it suits you. The government
gives you assigns the position, and that can be in
a place where you really really don't want to be,
like the opposite side of the country, away from family
and from and nobody cares. This is where you were
sent and this is where you're going. Yeah, so you
have zero control over that. And a lot of people
having to get married during the college years, so the
moment they would graduate, it was called a repartition. So
the repartition took into account married couples so they wouldn't
split them apart and they would send them in the
same place. And the reasoning behind that was, well, if
I'm going to be sent in who knows what teeny
tiny village or very very lonely place where the closest house.
Let's say that I'm a doctor and I'm going to
be sent to work into a country, small clinic, studying
you know, medicine, you know, six years, I'm going to
get my reportition in that place, which is all fine.
I mean, we need doctors in the small places. The
problem is that place is so isolated that I'm not
even sure I will be able to find a spouse
and set up a family and all those kinds. Right,
So then by necessity it was that plus the policy
of speaking reproductive rights. You have zero reproductive rights. The
state decides how many kids you're going to have? Yeah,
so and yeah, so the state decides.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's another book. It's out of print, but it
is interesting and I think it's one of the things
that taught me at an early age what totalitarianism is
like for children. And it's called Mischling second degree, and
it's by the author ILSA. Cohen, and it talks it's
a it's a memoir again of growing up in Nazi Germany.
And she was she had one grandparent who was born Jewish,
but who repudiated the religion and became what they call
a freethinker. So they were basically not of any religion,
which is, you know, really dangerous in a in a
totalitarian place, because then they'll tell they'll say you're of
this religion or whatever, Yeah, whether you are or not.
And this girl essentially hidden in plain sight by her
mother divorcing her father. It was his mother who was
technically born with one Jewish parent, so in divorcing him,
not because she wanted to, but to protect their child.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 2: Essentially she was hidden in plain sight and she had
to join Hitler Youth. And when we look at films
of Hitler Youth from the time period, when we see
the kids in the uniforms, especially the boys, you very
seldom see the girls. But they had uniforms too, and
they had meetings to and they did things. There is
a passage where she tells her father she's will visits
her father secretly and and he says, you have He says,
I hate to see you in that uniform. And the
only reason he wasn't sent to a camp was because
he was an electrician who worked with the large electrical
producing stations and the high tension cables, and he was
one of the experts in the field. So you know,
by the end of the war, he was needed every
day to fix the things that the bombing stopped, you know,
so every time, you know, he'd have someone say well,
i'll shoot you tomorrow, and he'd be like, yeah, sure
you will. Okay, I'll go.
Speaker 1: Fix the shot, and you're shooting yourself in the yeah, yeah, guy.
Speaker 2: So he was very lucky in that sense. Yes, anyway,
he said, I hate to see you in that, but
I know you have to do it to fit in.
And she said, well, it's not like they do anything
with us. It's it's just they teach us songs and
we play games exactly, and we make crafts and you know,
and he was like, all of this is meant to
teach you their values, and as you get older, it's
going to become less games, less songs, less dancing, and
more actually upholding the regime. And you know, at that
point you had to be so careful again, just like
you did. You can't say anything outside of your house,
can't write anything down. That's another thing I noticed is
you know, once you start getting taught by your grandmother
or before you start getting taught by your grandmother. You
wrote down what you experimented with and what you experienced,
and that was taken away from you. So then, yes,
clever girl, you figured out where to hide stuff. Well,
I'm going to put it behind a picture and I'm
going to put it under the rug, but I'll spread
it out so it doesn't make a lump in the
middle because that was figured out, you know. So that
is what she also had to do, and that is
what you have to do. You have to hide yourself,
and that's what you did, and that is something that
I think Americans do have problems understanding that for survival's sake,
for safety, you have to become clever, and you have
to become flexible, and you have to you just have
to learn to dodge and not tell the truth, but
make it look like the truth, which means you have
to kind of act out the truth a little bit
so that it's convincing. And you basically learn to be
what we would say in the movies the spy, you're
you're basically hiding yourself.
Speaker 1: That's so to the point in sight.
Speaker 2: And then we throw in magic and fairies and boy,
they like secrecy too. Don't they They.
Speaker 1: Do they do. I mean, that's that. That is one
of the things, you know, that made me made me
think Inbote, me pondering and considering. Okay, even before we
had an authoritarian regime and all that in my grandmother's youth.
By the way, my grandmother lived to be one hundred
and two, so we had a lot of time together
and she's been around. She was around for a really
long time, which means that she could see, she had
the experience of living in the in both worlds prior
to an authoritarian regime taking power and before that, so
even before that, she told me, these are teachings that
are practiced in secrecy. This is not something that you
go political considerations or safety considerations from that, you know,
social standpoint or not. These are things practiced with a
degree of secrecy. And teachings are not just handed over,
you know, handed down freely. So there's usually a grandmother
an elder who initiates and teaches. Trains are usually a
grand child, not so often one of their own children,
although sometimes that happens. So yeah, and it looks like
they do have a pension for secrecy, but it's themselves.
I remember being told and then having had experience with
its firsthand, when a fairy comes and tells you, you're
not supposed to tell us, you're not supposed to discuss
this with anybody. And I mean I read a lot
in Irish Lord and Irish Very Law about people receiving
gifts from fairies and being told this will only last
for as long as you keep it a secret, and
as soon as the person goes and rugs about, oh,
I got this from a fairy guide or very whatever encounter.
The gift is God, whether it's good luck, whether it's
financial abundance, whether it's a gift you know, like music
or ability to make poetry that's gone. Yeah, So whatever
it was, it don't keep your mouth shut, you lose it.
Speaker 2: So Morgan Daimler tells the story of how that happened
to her, and I think actually pretty much any of
us who've worked with fairies in any capacity can tell
some kind of story about well, when they say keep
your mouth shut, they're not kidding. And yes, sometimes the
punishment is physical and you go, oh, well, I screwed
that up right.
Speaker 1: And I have to and I have to put the
pieces back together. And learned from my mistakes and yeah,
that's that's that's a lot of that.
Speaker 2: But yes, I I the dichotomy of secrecies, the numbers
of secrecies that are in this book, not only is
it what makes the story super interesting because you know,
it's it's kind of like a detective novel in a way.
You know, there's there's levels of who knows what you know?
And you gotta you gotta pretend to be Agatha Christie
and go, okay, so does this person know this and
that person, especially when your grandmother is doing her healing practices,
because okay, I love this. She's pretty well known right
throughout that local area. And I'm not talking a little
tiny county. She's known out in some villages out in
the boons, you know as we call them the boondocks.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And she but nobody of course, talks about it openly, like, well,
grandma over there by name, we're going to use her
name and she's really awesome. No, it's like this, it's
like this underground yes, telephone communications system, and there are
code words. There's you know, you have to you have
to like, you know, you want to help people, but
you also don't want to fall for someone pretending to
be sick just to smoke you out. So she has
her friends who practiced with her, and they all scope
people out. Yes, and you know, let's talk about China again.
When they had their one child policy, there was an official,
unofficial title called the granny Police, and the granny police
worked for the government and they were the older women
who were always in everybody's business, knew everything about everybody,
and they would were the ones who would find out
if somebody was pregnant and wasn't supposed to be, and
then it would be reported and then she would help
see more of those air quotes, help the young woman
do the right thing and either abort the child, give
the child up for adoption, or you know whatever to
keep that in place. And it was an open secret
as to who they were, but they communicated along with
each other, and some of them were like double agents
because they would help women be able to keep at
least their sons, you know, because male children were valuable
for how you know your daughter. You raise your daughter
and she goes off to her husband's family when she
gets married, she's no longer helpful to you. But a
son is always helpful to the mother.
Speaker 1: And father.
Speaker 2: That has to do with patrifocal society. So I was
fascinated to watch the underground information gathering and disseminating group
that surrounded your grandmother, kept her safe, allowed her to
practice her medicine, and helped the community, and kept the
community safe because even if you accepted healing from someone,
you weren't safe. Even your own father might rat you out.
So that was phenomenal. And it goes right along with fairies.
You know, nobody you know, like Ireland, nobody really talked
out loud about Oh well yes that yeah, because they
didn't like to be talked about because they were You
respected that about them. You didn't do anything stupid that
would make them angry with you. And then it was
you know, when there were times when the church was
really down on it, or when the English were really
down on it governmentally, then it brought attention from quarters
in the human world that you didn't want attention. So
there's just levels and levels of secrecy happening here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to add to that. Speaking of writing out,
there's a lot. There's so much that I could not Okay,
so I could not include in the book because there
is a limited space, you know, pages, words that you
can fill in and get your work, you know published.
So and also it wasn't like really it was more
like tangent to the subject that I was trying to preserve,
this transmission of knowledge and practices of very years from
one generation to the other, and what a child can
do with with magic. So one of the things that's
not very clear in the book it may somehow emerge
like assent, but not like a clearly stated something. It's
the ability of these ladies. There's witches to know when
someone is writing out and to eventually find who might
be the person or writing out and if somehow it
happened to be able to contain the damage, that's how
we ended up with with the visits from from from security.
My aunt knew about it, so when she looked into
both her cards, she used to read poker cards and
also read the coffee cups the bottom of the coffee cup,
So in doing that she knew that something's coming, and
therefore we were prepared for the worst. And that worse
didn't happen. It didn't. They didn't catch up with catch
us with with anything, which was very lucky. So those
little little they're not really little. Those things convinced me
that those practices, those divination practices, are real. It was
not a game, It was not to play pretend. It
wasn't a charlatan's scheme to try to fool people. This
was a matter of life and death, and those divination
practices saved. I want to say, save the day, saved
our next in the most literal sense, so I can
testify to the power that such practice is done by
genuine practitioners, well trained practitioners, how powerful these practices can be.
Speaking to the levels of secrecy. I want to go
back to the fact that we have layers of believers
in the rights and true order, with the elderly being
really reluctant to embrace that because they're old enough, and
they saw the country moving through various transitions, through the wars,
between the words, the after the wars, the coming of
the communist regime, the monarchy that we had before the regime,
so they they saw it literally all so they're not
so much sold out on the idea of you know,
communists and renouncing completely private property and so not. Really.
Then you have the middle layer in between generations, the
parents who some of them are more into that some
of them are so they don't really know. And then
you have the children literally torn apart by where am
I going to believe my grandparents, my parents, or what
I'm being thought at school? And everybody starts taking sides
and aggregate around the nucleus that they feel more resonance.
So statement of the obvious, I aggregated around grandmother as
the nucleus, so I really felt drawn towards following and
believing that side of things. Another level of secrecy. In
case you haven't had enough letters until now, there's one more.
The Christian Church in Romania, differently from what happened in
the Soviet Union, was left fairly alone. Why because priests
had to teach about what a great country we live
in and how fabulous are the party leaders and have
congregation pray for the health and wellbeing of the party
leaders who are taking care of us and guiding us.
So that was that. Second, the church paid huge amount
of money to the government to be left alone. And fourth,
those priests who are free thinkers, and because I mean
there were a lot of or quite a few of
free thinking, free spirited even among you know, the the
Christians who are like uphelding values that were not in
line with the communists with or whatever. So those were killed,
so killed or sent into camps from where they from
where they never came back. Basically, so the repression religious
leaders was much stronger in the early years. When the
communist regime really took a hold of the power, it
kind of lessened a little bit. Even among members of
the ruling I'll call it elite, because this is what
it was, even if they wouldn't wouldn't take it. It was
like this class, small group who amassed privilege and power,
so that would be an elite. And many of them
had relatives. They came from the countryside with grandparents and
maybe among their relatives uncles who were priests. So even
among that ruling dominating political elite, not everybody was blatantly against.
Even among those, some were really really bent on the
values of a materialistic philosophy and you know, the authoritarian
regim and how good is to keep order this way.
So some of them were, but some were not. Some
were not. Some were still people who would cross themselves
before living to work in the morning. Some of them
were people who would still baptize their kids in secrecy,
privately help something done at home. This is how my
parents because my my my grandmother, she was she was
a Christian. I mean I'm not a Christian, but my
grandmother was. As a kid, for example, I saw no
problem and so like, okay, that's a Christian God, and
then that's that's these other deities I really liked for
Holle and you know, celebrate and honor Goddess for Holle
each time it snowed. So I didn't see a problem
of have you know, gods and goddesses and the Christian
God and the fairies and spirits of the land and
having a big party there. And I also noticed our
that was this pretty little church where my grandmother used
to go and they used to like going with her there.
And I was looking at the prayers and the incense
that's being burned, and I was like, they're doing the
same thing that we are doing it home. Why is
okay to do it in church? It's not okay to
do it in your own house by yourself. So big
confusion right there. And I noticed that the priest, the
local priest didn't really like Grandma. So my grandmother was
just minding her own, her own thing, and she would
go to church and say, well, you know, the relationship
with the divine, however you perceive the divine, that's personal,
you know, so it doesn't really go through the priest.
So we had to keep it secret from the priest
as well, who was aware that grandmothers was doing things,
but not to a level that would really prompt him
to go and complain to any kind of authority. So yeah,
it was very complicated life, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. And you know, I love I
love that that the Eastern Orthodox Church had sense enough
to essentially pay off the government to leave them basically alone,
you know, So long as they did this thing or
the other thing for the government, the government kind of
went okay, yeah, you're harmless. We're not gonna okay okay,
and you are absolutely right. In a in an authoritarian regime,
it always is a ruling class, a privileged class, and
they bend the rules for their friends, oh yeah, relatives
all the time. It doesn't matter what country you're in.
That's how it happens. So there's there's different levels of
what you must do to be perceived as okay with
the government, and it so long it's all about who
you know, yes and yeah, and how you negotiate your
path through life in that system. It's very complicated. It's
not a simple thing. It's not. Again, if I was
to say, what is the theme of this book, it's secrecy.
It is what is secret, what is open secret? What
is what is generally known? What is safe? To be known?
How to be safe? I mean you you talk about
the fairies, and you explain your experience of the fairies
all through the book. I mean, A Fairy Path is
absolutely a great title, but it's also about secrets. And
it's not just their secrets. It's your secrets and your
grandmother's secrets and the church's secrets. And yeah, I really
got that. The priest did not much like your grandmother,
And I thought it was amazing that she went to
church anyway, because it wasn't any of his damn business
what she does with herself. But you know, there she
is also appearing among the other good Christians as a
good Christian. So what can the priest do about it?
Not much. Your grandmother was a very very canny woman.
She was. She's probably uncanny too with the magic art, yes,
but she was really really intelligent and you know, I
have the utmost respect for older women, always have. But
she is like, I'm like, you go, girl, you go.
Speaker 1: I think she's in a sense, she's the protagonist, the
main character in the book. There, I say, And the
book is dedicated to her. So right there on the
first page is to Grandma. And they wanted to say
something about the title because some people so they the
name memoir, the word memoir in the title kind of
rubbed them the wrong way. And I was asked, who
are you to write memoirs? And I'm like, well, the
word memoir there is tongue in cheek for a purpose.
A nine years old kid, ten years old kid usually
doesn't write memoirs, but I do. It's my nine, ten
eleven years old in that book. So it's the memoir
of a young, very year Now, how much any fairy
sears or witches really right memoirs, to my knowledge, nobody.
Speaker 2: Or if they do, nobody gets it except the family
if they.
Speaker 1: Do, exactly, So that's that's a very So the memoir
there in it's it's it goes against against the grains,
with with with some rules. It's it's a little bit provocative,
and it is intended to be provocative, like the the
rebellious kids in that in the book itself, who's really
provocative And sometimes you know, defying of authority and defying
of of rules in getting into trouble and learning from
that how to stay safe and the value of secrecy,
the value of still staying standing tall and proud and
speaking your truth in a way that benefits you. It's
not about saying out blatant eyes, but knowing how to
learning at a very young age, how to present the
truth from a different angle in such a way that
you're not harmed by by your stating the truth and
not harming your family. So it's it's a lesson in diplomacy,
and that's where I did go with this memoir and
in the title it's young diplomat in training.
Speaker 2: In an authoritarian country. You have to be diplomatic about everything.
Everything is a balance. It's all like you're like the
the guys in the in the circus that you know,
balance the plates on poles that spin and and then
throw them at each other. It's like how now, now,
how do you do that? And you know, I'm gonna
take a quick turn here and talk a little bit
about the magic itself, because one of the things about
traditional witchcraft and traditional magic shamanic work in a specific
culture is it's almost always some kind of secret. There
are secrets to it. There's only so much that you
can tell. Now. Currently in the neopagan movement here in
the United States, there's not as much secrecy. We're out.
People know about us, they know where we are, they
know where we live, you know, because we hang you know,
triple goddess flags outside of our house and we wear
pinnacles on the on the outside, you know, and that's
what we Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And I've got a big
old moon goddess on.
Speaker 1: My own mind, so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Nathor. So she's the Nile in the moon
goddess from Predonistic Egypt. So she's she's you know, I've
got the old lady on there. She's she's really really ancient.
But what's going to happen if there really does become
a Christian nationalist government, not just a movement, but a
government or a military that is guided by a Christian nationalist,
white nationalist leanings. That's where I say to neo pagan's
grab yourself a copy of Danielli's book. Grab yourself a
copy of Mischelink Second Degree and read and absorb that
kind of mindset.
Speaker 1: In the grim yet not to completely unlikely possibility for
us ending up with a regime that's run by fund fundamentalism,
Christian fundamentalism, and white supremacists political military regime. I would
say that such books become survival guides. M I didn't. Honestly,
at the time I wrote the book, I didn't write
it with such a bleak outcome in mind. But now
I cannot ignore the possibility. So that is a surviving
survival guide in the sense that teaches how to operate
when you have to navigate this intricated maze of expectations
and what's tough and valuable for yourself and whom you
can rely upon and whom you cannot rely upon. So
it's a very complicated maze that needs to be navigated,
and I think the book really helps. It's now, you know,
I'm trying to see it from the perspective of an
outside someone who's not involved, because me, okay, that's about me.
I'm involved. I'm part of that. I can only be
objective to a certain degree. But if I'm trying to
see it from your perspective, for example, Barbara, from the
eyes you know, the outsider. I believe there's a lot
in there that warms about the possibility. What is it
to come if people insist in bringing it about? And
one about that these things are not to be taken lightly.
Decisions that one makes have very wide reaching impact. It
goes beyond the personal level and the nuclear family. It
goes reverberates across the society, and it can change I
don't want to say forever, but at least for a
very very very long time life as we know it,
because once people get hold onto power, they're not going
to let it go easily. And it's easier to prevent
something from happening than having to down reverse it once
it happens, and the takedown reversal process it's very difficult.
We can have a completely separate episode on how that is,
but it's usually generates the blood bath. It's not I
saw it. I saw it. I was part of that.
So it's it's not pretty. It's not pretty, it's not safe.
The outcome is not quaranteed. No again, you mentioned China,
Barbara before. The outcome is not quaranteed, and it may
not succeed. Yeah, it may just fail flat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, you know, now there's going to be
listeners going she's lost it, she's gotten paranoid. It's like, no, y'all,
y'all don't even know. I was born paranoid. So just
just just understand that this has always been in the
back of my head. Why do you think I have
studied all of these regimes?
Speaker 1: So you know, it would be so nice. So just
worry without having like a really really strong reason to worry,
and see, yeah, over the next few years that Yeah,
it was a phase. It was a phase you know
when when people really leaned into those fundamentalists. There is
a pre emergence or resurgence of that, but it's kind
of we're finding good place of balance, you know, the
and the present and the pre Christian and the Christian
they harmoniously learn to coexist and it's all good. Yeah,
it would be very nice. I mean, that's that's always
a possibility. So but it's also good to consider that
any outcome is possible, still possible. Everything is on the table,
everything is in flood for the taking, everything is out
for the taking.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean let's also be realistic. Let's talk
about another secret. You and I both do divination. Yeah,
and sometimes most of the time it's it's small things
that you that you catch. Oh, you know, you're going
to be able to go to college because you get accepted.
Blah blah blah blah blah. You know, but that's a
big thing for one person. But it's a small thing
in the grand scheme of things, right, yeah, Or Okay,
you're having problems with your your marriage, Yeah, what just
just tell me because it's right there, I can see it. Okay,
you're not gonna tell me, Okay, I will tell you.
And then of course they tell you, okay, yeah, you
were right. Okay, So let's talk about that. That is
again a big thing in a small sense, like it
is not gonna change the whole world. And then you
get those readings and they usually are repeated, which are
about the big things. And that's when you call your
friends who also do divination and go, hey, did you
see did you get a Have you done the cards recently?
Have you gotten a rogue like streak of saying the
same thing with huge you know, major arcana. Have you
had a dream recently like you know, we have a
mutual friend who's like, I had this weird dream last night.
Did anybody else have weird dreams? And then you know,
it turns out that several of us had similar dreams
or connecting dreams. Yeah. So it's one of those things.
I've always been somewhat paranoid because of various things from
my childhood, but I've also been receiving warnings from outside
and other people have, So I mean, I'm not saying
anything is set and stone. It's not.
Speaker 1: Ye, that's the beauty of things. You know, you do divination,
and you do you you get like signals about the potentiality.
You don't get certainties. Yeah, that's the potential and if
you act on that potential, then you can ser things
in one direction or another.
Speaker 2: That is the value of divination. And your aunt miss
I'm going to see that in the cards. Yeah, I'm
going to look at that and go, oh, y'all, fam, Hey, fam,
come on, we need to do some stuff here. And
I love that she's not well regarded necessarily, but when
she says I saw this in the cards, everybody boom ears,
perk up. Everybody's listening. They know what she can do,
and so they may not look at her favorably on
her personal life, but they know her skill and they
respect that and listen, amazing story. So she said that,
and it didn't come to pass. You will. You all
did the things that you had to do to make
it not come to pass. It was still nerve wracking.
Speaker 1: I was about to blow it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was about to blow it as a
little kid. I was like, oh my god, how could
a little kid? But you got it. You did it.
You did it right, as we say in my family.
You did the thing, you did it right, you didn't
fuck it up, and it worked. So that's that's a
good story from there, that has a happy ending. Although
the whole time I'm sitting there and I start reading
faster what happens. Obviously it didn't destroy everything because she
was here to write the book. But still, and I
want people to understand, I am not slamming Christianity itself.
I have a lot of Christian friends, a lot of
people who are very loving and who are just as
worried about the potentiality of a Christian reconstructionist white supremacist
group a minority of our country at that coming together
and creating just a huge man in our country. It's
not just every Christian. No, most of the Christians are
like me and you the way.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, like my grandmother, like my grandmother, like
my mother, like so many other people whom I know,
and just lovely beings with the healthiest possible values regarding
the human being and the sense of honesty and respect
for each other one another. Yeah, absolutely so. No, My
concern is not with someone's beliefs or religion, whatever those
may be. Is the fundamentalist. When you take things down
to extreme and you become a fundamentalist. I don't care
whether you're a Pagan, whether you're a Christian, whether you're
a Muslim, whether you're the communist. If it boils down
to fundamentalism, that's the problem. Super conservative and fundamentalists in
your values that already says that it's only my way
and everyone else is wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: And and that is antithical, antithetical, antithical, My god, it
just made up a word that is antithetical to the
values that we're written into the Declaration of Independence. And
so it's not it's not a good thing, and it's
it's antithetical to what's in most Christian teaching. So yeah,
let's let's let's be honest here. I am of the
opinion that we need to join up with pretty much
everybody stand up and say no. And I think I
think that you you basically wrote a book that that
says that in a in a way that you don't
you know.
Speaker 4: You pick this up, you go, oh, neopagan, it's a fairies,
it's a magic, a seer. Oh this divination and the
oh my goodness, this is not just that, that's all it's
it's a bunch of other things. And so that's why
I you know, suggest to everybody you know, read this book,
learn as much as you can from it. And she's
gonna come out with another one. I'm pretty sure that's
gonna go more into the magic aspects. But you can't
understand her magic as well if you don't understand where
it arose from.
Speaker 2: And that's another thing. You're coming from a culture that
is different than where you were living now in the
United States. So your your growing up is completely outside
of our reference. It is different, and your tradition the
fairies is different. How many people in the United States. Go, oh, fairies,
where do they come from? Oh, they come from Ireland,
they come from Scotland, they come from England. No, they
come from the world. You know in Romania is one
of those places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean some come from We have like fairy
beings coming from the north, from the Germanic cultures, and
they are here. I had encounters with. I mean cool,
going to Ireland and expect to encounter, knowing my propensity
to run into into into fairy beings and related shenanigans,
I expected to encounter and somehow interact or whatever has
you with the sheep, the local Irish sheep. Nope, all
far so around Dublin area and with the Dublin itself.
The presence what I interact it with and experienced came
from the Alpha, from the North alphar So they come
from everywhere. They're not totally bound to geography. So we
have this migration of people from our world consensus reality
and the other as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and if you think about it, if we're
talking about magical beings, why in God's name would they
be stuck in one place. If they can travel, it will,
if they can dematerialize and materialize if they can move
through reality like swimming in air. You know, I mean,
if they can do all these things, why do they
stay in one place? They don't?
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 2: That's that's the answer, you know, Okham's razor. You know,
if we're gonna take fairies as a real thing, Okas
Razors would say, probably it's not. But it doesn't matter.
But if you take that logical thought, well, if if
they are magical and can do this, that and the
other thing, then they are not going to be bound
by any human expectation. They are a non human intelligence.
They are people. How many human people stay put where
they were We've never have. That is, otherwise I'd all
be in Africa and nobody would be anywhere else. All
our white skin, we would all be in Africa and
that's where we'd be. You know, that's not what happened.
It hasn't happened from the beginning. It's not gonna happen
until the end of time. We're gonna keep moving around.
We're gonna go into space eventually, and you know that's
not a very hospitable environment, but we're still going to
do it because that's what people do.
Speaker 1: Everywhere. Yeah, I want to add something about the book
because those of our listeners didn't see it or only
now learn about it, there might be the impression that
the book is has very little magic compared to the
rest of it, and I want to say that that's
not the case. We're going to to see there my
grandmother in action, like like a full depossession situation when
I was around, and I'm gonna I'm telling it in
the book. I'm repeating it now. My knees were rubber.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when I when I witnessed and I saw that,
I participated into that. There's also all kinds of charms
and spouse folk magic throughout the book as I was participating,
as I participated in it, as a grandmother was doing it,
and I was just trying to spy on it, and
uh oh yeah plenty. So Barbara mentioned at some point
that I was writing. I had my first little magical journal,
and I was trying to record things, and as we discussed,
there wasn't a good idea to keep put things in
writing anyway. So that got confiscated by my mother for
a number of reasons. First, it was dangerous to have
things in writing just to say that somebody comes to
search your house and find the magical you know, a
whole collection of courses and these kind of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And second, when you really really want to have your
child distancing themselves from such practices, first thing you would do,
you try to destroy their little magical journal. So that
was the end of my magical journal. However, I start
because I have a really good memory, so I started
to recreate and you know, develop things that I stored
on bits and pieces of paper, and eventually recreated a
little notebook that I wrote on the cover of it
in black and danielized Book of Magic. So and found
the way play to hide it, to find a place
to hide it. So in the book there's a whole
section at the end, like partly recreated daniel as little
book of Magic, with some of the spells in the
form that they were back then, especially those whom I
remember from Grandma, but some of them changed to also
reflect where I am now in my practice. So it's
still the essence preserves from those years and the foundation
would be authentic folk Romanian, but also with some added
elements of me growing like this wild peg on Kaden
who has a pretty strong magical practice.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm gonna I'm gonna reiterate because
I didn't. I didn't want to give too many spoilers.
You know, but your grandmother, when she threw down, she
threw down. I mean seriously, she she dealt with possessions,
she dealt with a very strong curse, she dealt with healing,
a very dramatic healing of a child. And she she
told some you know, baby kidnapping, uh undying ones, to
shove off, you know, in a respectful and yeah, but yeah,
basically you'll back right off, y'all. You fuck off the
fuck off still, and when you get there, you keep
sucking off until you leave the whole country. Just just go. Yeah.
She was, she's she's a badass. I'll just say it.
I'll just say it. She was. She was very strong.
And it's in there, and people are gonna look at
this book and they're going to be like, it's self thin,
how can all that be in there? It's because it's
well written, concisely written, and it's full of so much
knowledge that it's just it's I can't recommend it more highly.
I really think that many many people, even if you
never do magic, if you do magic, if you want
to do with fairies, if you don't want to do
with fairies, just read it. And it tells an interesting
story too, and it does you know, the way that
that history and magic used to be told, how these
stories used to be told, was oral history from around
the fire. And that's what you basically replicated. All of
that folklore that Morgan and Kat and you and I,
Josh Kuchen we all read. Those were stories from a
first person's perspective that were about things that happened to
people that then were passed down. So you basically did that.
You gathered your stories and now you're passing it down
in print, and you did a great job.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm so happy and honored and humbos that
I was able, you know, to add my voice to
the choir, so to speak, that of so that choir
of people talking about their own personal experiences and putting
personal experiences that some of them are quite intimate. It's
your connection with spirit and spirituality and putting that into
a kind of shop window where people can look at
it from all angles leaves you, or at least lived
me vulnerable. But to afford that vulnerability, you got to
be really strong because so putting these things forth for
people to see and learn from it, it may leave
you with a sense of vulnerability, but actually when you
make the decision, you feel actually very strong, like, yes,
I'm strong enough to be able to be open to
open up the other thing what I found. So this book, obviously,
it's been with me in my head in my heart
for a very very long time. And it's not the
first book that I wrote. But somehow I was hesitant
about putting all this out there because it's very personal.
So it's personal with this far reaching impact, nevertheless personal.
And Morgan and Cat were such a big inspiration. So
Morgan Diama and cat Heat were such big inspirations because
I learned so this was a while ago. I was
into paganism, was already pretty very seasoned pagan and I
wanted to find ways to talk about my own experiences
and didn't know exactly how. And then when I read
Morgan and Kat, the first thing was, oh, I'm not
the only one having encountered this and having encountered that
fairies and spirits and deity and wow, and people are
talking about it. So if I'm going out there and
talk about it, I'm not going to be like the
strangest thing in the world. Second, look how much I
learned and how their stories their material helped me ground
and find my footing on a path that's not necessarily
an easy one when you have lots of experiences and
you need to still stay grounded and align yourself to
social and family and demands and expectations. And reading their work,
I found it of immense help and value. So I
cannot recommend enough Morgan and Catherine's absolutely it's work. And
then I'm like, Okay, I can add my voice to
the choir. And the more of us, the merrier, and
the more of us, the stronger, and the better the
world will live in. Let's bring the magic back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, re enchant more magic, re.
Speaker 1: Enchanting the work. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of mission statement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's re enchanted the world definitely. And right now,
you know, the whole pandemic and the aftermath and the
twenty sixteen election and the aftermath and January sixth and
the aftermath of that after we really need some enchantment.
We need some enchantment. And now our little tweet enchantment
with sparkles, no big enchantment.
Speaker 1: For every single imaginable reason. We need that enchantment, whether
it's for ourselves not to come self doubt and you know, depression,
not to succumb to the grim perspective that it's still
out there and possible undeserved outcomes happening. We need enchantment
to affect change, to affect change and omp the the
good vibes, so to speak. We need that enchantment to
make a difference to ground and bring forth the most
powerful expression of ourselves and make make our voices heard.
Enchantment couldn't hurt, So we need an enchantment by by
all counts.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I'm gonna We're gonna end it there because
that's a great statement. Thank you so much. It's great
to talk with you again and again, you know, thank
you for writing this book. It's one of my favorites.
And if I get to meet you sometime, I'm going
to bring it with me so you can. You can
sign up for me. It has notes in it together,
I wrote notes in it, which I do with all
of my stuff, so me too, all right of us,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It's always always
a pleasure and an honor to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well that's all for this week's episode of the
Six Degrees of John Keel podcast. If you have any
questions or thoughts about the podcast, or would like to
come and talk about your experiences of the paranormal, you
can contact us at six D JK six seven at
gmail dot com. We promised even answer you, and we
are always happy to hear from you. Thank you. Spill
at
Speaker 1: Spa hat st