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