Speaker 1: You're listening to the Parallel UK Radio network and this
is six Degrees of John Keel.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the six Degrees of John kee podcast.
I'm your host Barbara Fisher. With me today is another
podcaster and an author and a wonderful photographer, award winning
It's Doak Mason and he just came out, i think
last year with the book Song of the Dark Man,
Father of Witch's Lord of the Crossroads. And I read
that and there were a couple of places where it
was so on the nose to my experience in life
that I had to kind of close the book and
set it down and think about it a little while
and then run over and open it up and read
some more and then close. So Darra, thank you for coming.
Speaker 3: Oh it's an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Barbara. I really
appreciate the invite.
Speaker 2: So it's great to see you. You guys don't get
to see him, I'm sorry you'll have to look him
up on the internet. But it's great to see you,
great to speak with you. As I said, your podcast
is wonderful. I've been listening to it for a couple
of years. Always have interesting guests, sometimes guests that I
don't ever expect to hear on a paranormal podcast. What
is your kind of what kind of guests do you
search for, and why do you pick who you pick?
Speaker 3: So well? Firstly, thank you for your kind of words
about my podcast. I appreciate it. It's always nice to hear
from another podcaster. The the goal with spur Boox was
to look at spirit communication, magic and folklore from as
many different angles as as I could, to try and
build them a panorama and people could take from that
what they wish. But I've had like Catholic priests, exorcists,
many many witches, herbless all kinds of of people from
many different walks of life. And really the goal for
me is to kind of is to add to the
kind of the body of commentary, the body of knowledge
that people can dip into. Really, so it's it's to
look at different perspectives, different ideas, different experiences and to
share them with the world. Really, that that's that's that's
kind of it. So, Yeah, if people get in touch
with their experiences or a particular area that they're kind
of very knowledgeable in, then I'm interested talk to them.
That's that's that's really it you know, it's it's just
to kind of look at those different perspectives.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating. So I know you have experience and knowledge
of the Gin. Again, I saw that and was like, oh,
I must listen. Then, oh, I have to look at
his work, because not many Western people have that understanding
and experience, and certainly not that experience out in the wild,
out in the world. You know, it's most of us.
It's academic. And the only reason I know as much
about them as I do is because I have friends
who are Muslim, and you know, they're they're my informants,
and so, you know, I remember when one of them
first found out I was doing a paranormal podcast. She
looked at me and to her, the idea of paranormal
means ghosts, because that's what's on TV. That's what we
show on TV in America. And she said, you know,
ghosts aren't ghosts, right, She said, you know that? And
I said, I know what you're going to say, and
she said, yeah, they're Gin and they're trying.
Speaker 1: To fool you.
Speaker 2: She said, in our religion, you can talk with your
dead relatives and your ancestors. They're still there, but they
come to you in dreams. That's when you will see
them and know them. She said, if they're in your house,
moving stuff around, making noise, that's a gin. And then
you know, and she told me all of these things.
So talk about the Gin a little bit, because that's
something that Americans and other you know, Western people don't
necessarily know about or have weird ideas of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that the genre are very interesting, and it's
a really interesting facet facet of Islam and the belief
in gin because I am, but there's a chapter in
the Quran called the Gin. It's meant Jenner mentioned countless
times in the Quran. And I think too, you know,
I think I think that the framing of this is
really important because if you transpose say, belief in let's
say demons or let's say fairies, something something similar to that,
and you transpose that to the Bible. Demons are mentioned
in the Bible, but you know, there's no chapter named
about them, and it's certainly not a living belief where
in Islam and is very much a living belief. Yes,
And my exposure came from shooting a photograph guess in Delhi.
One of my favorite travel photographers was a guy or
not photographer. Sorry, he's a photographer, but he's more well
known as a travel writer. A guy called William dl
rymple who's a Scottish historian and travel writer is wonderful,
wonderful travel writing and a fantastic historian. And he spent
a year in Delhi as a young correspondent in the
eighties and he wrote he wrote a book about his
year in Delhi as a correspondent, and he titled the
City of Jins because kind of on the ground locally,
Delhi was sometimes referred to as the City of Gins.
And Delhi is made up of five different cities that
have kind of risen of fallen over the over the
over the centuries. And he he recounts a couple of
places where he has conversations with Sufi's and what have
you about Gin And when I was when I was
a photographer, I am. I thought it would be a
great idea. I spent a lot of time in India
to go back out to India and shoot the locations
associated with this book City of Gins, that's kind of
an exploration of the theme of Gin's and related to Delhi.
And even before I got there, things started going weird.
There was two principal things before I left. One, I
had this kind of dream where I was in a
Sufi shrine and there was a It was a musical celebration.
The type of music is if people an't familiar, but
it would be like nusferatili can that's the type of
Sufi music, and it was it was. It was that
kind of event. There was a person to my left
and the left. I'll get into that later, but the
left being on the left side is quite symbolic. But
as a person to my left who has head turned
away from me. He had was wearing a white hat.
And then I looked to my left and he turned
and looked at me, and it was his face was
decomposed and it was very Indiana Jones was almost great
cliche really, but like a snake came out of one
eye and went into the other and he said, don't
come here. And I was fairly rattled by that, but
was still, I guess, quite materialistic in a way. You
know my worldview. If you if that happened to me now,
i'd be like message received. You know, I don't need
to explore that any further. But at the time I
was like, okay, well that's weird. Maybe it's just kind
of nerves, pre travel nerves, that kind of thing. And
then then I had had my camera, which was like
a full frame pro camera, some dirt standard appearing in frames,
and I was like this, okay, I still get my
gear clean before I go, because that's what you do
before you go clean yourself if you're good enough, or
you bring it in together Pro Clean. So I brought
it in to getther Pro clean and turned up two
days later to pick it up, and the technician was like,
I don't know what's going on here, but I've cleaned this,
but I've tested it and the dirt has come back
as some kind of oil. I don't know what's going on.
Live with me the other day. Come back the other day.
He's like, I'm really sorry, I can't clean your camera.
This is under a year old. I haven't been anywhere
that it hasn't had been treated roughly like it's been
held with the jew kind of reverence that one does
with this kind of equipment. But he recommends a group
of technicians who are basically the people that Canon and
nick On would go to if they need something fixed.
These guys are down some back alley in London, kind
of second one hundred year old family business. So bring
it to them and they call me a week later, going, yeah,
we can't fix this. We don't know, man. We recommend
you rip the entire sensor box out and replace it
and that's going to cost you one thousand pounds and
I'm like, okay, that's really not worth it. I managed
to get another camera body from an editor friend of mine,
which actually was an upgrade just about a week beforehand. Anyway,
so there's that. So everything that could go wrong went wrong,
and then in the wrong. I'm taking my follow with
me this time because he wanted to come with me
just once, come on one of these trips, and I
can't see what I do and experience, you know, a
truly foreign country for himself, just once. And while we're
waiting to fly and he's a airport, his tooth broke,
so he's in immense discomfort. We're flying. We arrived in
Delhi and I'm gonna you know, I'm I'm well seasoned,
you know, in terms of traveling, never had too much
hassle of scammers. Usually can spot them a mile away.
And we got so much hassle. When we arrived, we
changed hotel three times in two days. Eventually he saw
a dentist. But yeah, it was just a very very
difficult departure, difficult landing, everything went wrong. And then we
visited a number of different sites, supposedly the most haunted
side in Delhi, a place called for us Shot Cutler,
was supposed to be home to ten thousand gins. My
dad at this point is like, you're you're on your own.
I'm not going to place. And eventually we went to
a site called Nismadin Alia Darga and this is the
tomb of the esteemed Suvi Saintisbodin, and it's the place
for my dream. And it's right in the middle of
Old Deli and old Daily Old Deli is you know,
it's this warren of lanes and you know, merchants selling
their their wares for to give the devotionals to the
to the shrine and what have you. So it's all
down this tiny, windy lanes and then it kind of
opens up into this little marble square where these several
tombs are, including the tomb of the saint. And I
have a fixer with me and he talks to the
kind of chief Soufi there as to what I'm trying
to do with Trump to achieve, and they point me
to this kind of little enclosure which has got a
marble carved screen, and in there are the people who
are troubled with gin gin possession or evil spirit possession,
and as a mammal white hat, and and he locks
eyes on me, and he's like he's just like, you know,
I can't hear him, but he's like he's mouthing off
at me. And that was that was kind of that
keystone photograph that would hold the essay together. But I
was I was genuinely perturbed to take the photograph because
I was like, I don't know what this will cost me.
My fixer was like, there, you go, take take the photo.
And I raised my camera and I looked through the viewfinder,
and he immediately the kind of the way just immediately stops,
just kind of eyeballs me and eyebawls the camera and
I had to take a photograph, and and yeah, I was,
I was deeply shaken by the whole thing. Again, it's
just not messed with the whole way what I kind
of know retrospectively is I got off pretty lightly, but
that particular work and the work I did on a
Hindu sect called the Agori really kind of where the
foundations form my podcast, you know. And I did a
series of lectures at I culled paranormal bookshop in London,
cult tread Walls, and to support the essay on the Gin,
I did a huge amount of research into the Gin,
which kind of probably made up the first couple of
shows of spirit books where those lectures turned into turn
to the podcasts. And I became fascinated with the similarity
between Gin and Irish fairies, and you know, really jumped
out at me that even the taboos around them were
almost identical, you know, the association with treasure. I think
leprechauns and gold general associated with very treasure as well,
this kind of thing, and it doesn't stop there. You know.
It's like the fairies travel and the Shiki had the
fairy wind and the travel in the wind. The Gin
are known as fire spirits, you know, less that with
with fairies, but even their origin myths are circle around
the kind of the creation of Adam and then the
kind of the fallout in heaven, whereas the Gin or
a third sapient race apart from the angels and humanity
in Christian In the Christian worldview, it's humans, angels and
what have you, and the fairies is said to be
the kind of the angels that fell from heaven. So
they're very very similar and down to granular things like
there's a book called Living with Gins by an anthropologists
called doctor doctor Barbaras Dryskin parents her name correctly, and
it's her account or living kind of in a lower
middle class family in Cairo for a few years, and
she gives a case of a woman who threw dirty
water out of the house without kind of giving the
the correct warning. And years later I picked up the
local county newspaper in County Mayo and Ireland, the Western People,
and there was a short feature on fairies and belief
in fairies, and it gave the example of throwing dirty
water out of the cabin. One would say a phrase
to give warning, which is essentially translated as lookout, lookout,
dirty water is coming. Is casak chok, So dirty water
is coming. And if you didn't do this and you
accidentally struck a gin or a ferry, there would be
some price to pay and the account they gavehim this
book was this woman did this, and or in the
in the future, this woman did this, and her face
was turned backwards afterwards. Now in the book in the
and the Gin was there was a black dog coming
up the road. While she took this water out. She
was struck. Long she has the site returned. She got
many treatments from a man's and here's the only thing
she could see was a black dog that advenuiteers. I
returned fully. But again the black dog itself, you know,
a symbol that comes both in Gin and a fairy
lore shook being what a famous one in Britain. So
those things kind of intermeahed for me. That's kind of
where all my Gin origin stuff comes from.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. Yeah, the black dog is as soon as
you know. As soon as you said black dog, I
was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I had my very
first clients when I was a personal chef back I
don't know, twenty something years ago. Was a Muslim family
and the wife was from Pakistan and the husband was
from Bangladesh, and they're wonderful people. I loved working for them,
and they were really surprised that I could cook Indian food.
I didn't tell them that I learned by you know,
eating at the Indian restaurant and then deconstructing what I
was eating. And but yeah, I kind of miss misrepresented myself.
Can can you cook Indian food? Yes? I knew three dishes,
but I said yes. And then I had a month
before I got my business license squared away, so I
couldn't really work for anybody. So I had a month
where I would eat at the Indian restaurant they liked
because I was sneaky and asked which one, and then
I started working at the recipes and you know, figuring
it out. The the the server that was always waiting
on us was one of the co owners. He wouldn't
tell me what was in anything, but if he made
a game out of it, if I could guess, if
I told him what I thought was in it, he'd
tell me if I was right or wrong. Yeah, And
so he'd be like yes, yes, yes, no, not that yes, no, yes,
I'd scribble it down. So you know, he helped teach me,
but you know, off to the side weirdly. So anyway,
we got to be friends. After I'd cooked for them
for a while, to the point where the wife would
say things to me, like when her husband was in
the kitchen with me and telling me how to say
the spices, because I was asking, you know, how do
you how do you call cardamom? How do you call
uh Kuman? And so he was telling me, and she's like, no, no, no,
don't learn it from him. He will make you sound
like a Bangladesh. She pumpkin. No, I will tell you.
I was like, I told you, hey, I'm from Virginia.
I can't I can't call somebody a pumpkin. I'm from
the bumpkinest place that we have in America. It's so bumpkin.
And we had fun. But you know, I had them
over for dinner one night and I forgot that dogs
are unclean and that cats are feared by people in
Pakistan because they live on the streets and they might
have diseases. So here I am and there's a dog
sitting on my porch and I was like, oh god,
you know, so I had to help them in and
we had a great time, except one of the cats
would not leave her alone, so I handed her a
we call them a hiss can. But it's the air,
the air that you spray on your computer to clean
the the correct nooks and crannies, and it sounds like
a hiss, and cats will just you know, it doesn't
hurt them. They just run away. And so she got
to where she would just and then giggle because it
was so funny they'd run away. But yeah, they when
they when they talked about dogs with me, I said, well,
I do know that black dogs are a symbol and
they said, oh, yes, the Gin. You know about the Gin?
And I said, yes, I know a little bit about
the Gin. Like nobody in America, there's not that many stuff.
If you can't read Arabic, there's not that many books.
There are a few some of them. Are you look
at it and you go, now that's I don't think that. No,
you're making stuff up. I said, so what is it
with them? Because you know, in Europe black dogs also
have a very similar symbolism, and they're related in a
lot of ways. And so they we had a whole conversation,
the four of us, and and they didn't know that
we had black dog traditions. And I said, and those
black dog traditions came over with the colonists, and especially
in Appalachia, which you know, I'm from that that region,
and like it's almost exactly the same. Like it is
a lot of the stories and songs and traditions kind
of stayed in Appalachia, and some of them weren't added
too much at all. It was it's just that. So
we had a great time. But yeah, as soon as
you said black Dog, I was like, oh, yeah, I know.
And the blindness, of course, there's the story of the
fairy midwife who was instructed to put ointment on the
baby's eyes when the fairy baby was born, and then
she accidentally got some on her eye and then she
could see fairies. And the fairy husband of course, sees
her at the market and she sees him and he
figures out, oh and so he goes and he blinds
her in that eye. I just he just points and
it's over. So yeah, the idea of being struck blind
is exactly the same. That was another thing that that evening.
We were talking about gin and and they said there
are beings in Ireland that can point, and that's Gin.
The gin went to Ireland, you know, I said, Well,
the fairies went to Pakistan. I don't know which one
it is. I think they might be related, and she said,
maybe they're cousins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's there's definitely something to that, you know.
I think it's just a different cultural expression of the
same thing, and there's somehow related to the land, you know. Yeah, yeah,
they're very very similar ruins as well, that kind of thing,
and it was the same association.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The part about the land, the association with the
land is of course the Gin like wild places and
one of the traditions about them though, and part of
why they mess with humans so much is because originally
the earth belonged to them until Adam was created, yes,
and they got really upset about all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were banished to the wild places and at
first they didn't like that, but then you know, some
of them were like, I like to go around as
a storm on the sand and blow everything away.
Speaker 3: That the schism goes back to the creation of Adam
and i Bliez, who is kind of the Islamic Satan
who has somehow risen There's a number of thoughts on this.
The less popular is that Eblis was actually an angel
that somehow has free will. The more conventional belief is
that no, he was a gin that rose to the
court of Angels and to the court of Ballah through
his brilliance the creation of Adam. The host of angels
are ordered to bow to him, to kneel to him,
and do he please this is a great offense, and
he refuses. Essentially I'm paraphrasing now, but he says, he
is made of sounding clay, and I am made of fire.
I will not I will not bow. So it's kind
of a sin of pride similar and as a result
that he's he's he's cast out. He's also depicted as
being jack black, and after that he kind of promises
to beset Man and his descendants as they make their
way along the road, you know, from the front, from
the back, from and both from below, he will he
will attack them.
Speaker 2: M h yeah. The tradition of Iblis being jet black
is seen in the fairly recent film Ten Thousand Years
of Longing, Yes, where he is shown as black and hairy.
And I didn't make that connection in my head until
I was watching the movie. And then, you know, sometimes
I feel like, you know, girl, you have stuff thrown
in front of your face for your whole life, and
then you don't. It doesn't work until you see something
and then boom, there it is. I remember, I don't
remember if it's an apocryphal, I'll just call it an
apocryphal tale about the Queen of Sheba. Because of course
Solomon built the first temple be except he didn't build it.
Speaker 3: He used a.
Speaker 2: Ring and his knowledge of magic to get the gin
to build it, and so he had to do with
the gin. Well, the Queen of Sheba was supposedly half gin, yes,
And there is a story about her crossing a river
to come to Solomon and she pulls up her skirt
to not get it wet, and she has hairy legs.
And the first time I read that, I was like,
who cares if she shaves her legs or not? I
mean I was a kid, I was a teenager, so
I was kind of like, you know, and I'm super feminist,
who cares? You know, that's dumb. Women shouldn't have to
shave their legs. I mean, what's I didn't think about
it as no, it's like fur, you know. I didn't
think about that until I saw the gin in ten
thousand years of longing, and I'm like, oh, the Queen
of Sheba had hair, hurry, hairy legs like not yeah, yeah, okay,
she she had gotcha, that makes sense, and that was
showing her Gin nature and that's why it was commentable upon,
you know, it was it was notable, and that's why
it was written down. And I was like, oh, okay, okay.
And they're like the fee in that way because they
will mate with humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah. So it's one of those kind of
indicators of other worldliness where we have these terryanthropic figures
that are part animal, part human. And this is a
very very old thing. Your Egyptien gods, the horned man Pan,
all these kind of deities are depicted in this way.
And there's a few versions of that story with the
Queen of Siva. Another one is the Gin started rumor
that the Queen of Sheba had these hairy legs in
order to kind of push Solomon off because they feared
that he had an air he would passed the ring
to the air and they would be in safe forever
mm hmm. And to test this, Solomon polished how the
floor of his thrown polished so it's shone like class.
Speaker 2: You see, yea upper skirt. He was a curve, but she.
Speaker 3: Thought it was it looked like water for a moment
and raised her skirts and then he saw her hair,
but she didn't put him off. No, yeah, you know
the rest is pseudo history.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, anybody who writes the Song of
Songs is not going to be put off by just
some hairy legs on a lady. It's just, yeah, the
rest of us beautiful. I don't care. I'm Solomon, I'm
the king it I don't. I don't care. Well, this
seems like a pretty good segue to your book, which,
as I said, I got it as soon as it
came out. Actually, I think I had pre ordered it
so that it just showed up at my house as
soon as it was ready. The Song of the dark Man,
father of which is Lord of the Crossroads. So what
inspired this?
Speaker 3: Did it?
Speaker 2: Did it have to do with the Gin a little bit?
Or is it a different through way in your in
your path?
Speaker 3: So, Frank, good question, Like, like spirit Box as a
whole certainly came from the Gin work. You know that
that was I guess the first domino that kind of
inspired the project. And because I was left with these
lectures and I'm like, I don't really know what to
do with these so I'll just put them up on YouTube,
and kind of that became a podcast. And as I
was interviewing people certainly actually take a step back. So
as I looked at kind of a lot of the
gin lore that brought me back to Ireland and fairy lore,
and as I was reading to Your Fairy Lower, I
kept stumbling upon this figure, this dark rider, the dark interceptor,
that would be feature as kind of like a plot
device to move these stories along, that would challenge, that
would kind of present this kind of serious moral questions
of the protagonist, desires against you know, what they really
stood for, this kind of stuff, And to the point
where I was like, this is notable, This figure is,
this type of theme is a notable thing. And at
the same time I was interviewing different kind of medians
and which is and so you know which is started
mentioning this black man, this dark man who I would
appear in dreams without divisions of that would initiate them
into witchcraft. And so I was I was noting the
team and then basically I I translated the term into
Irish into Gaelic as to what I thought it would be.
So the black Man is unfar Dove of the dark
Man is on Far Dark and I searched for these
in the Irish folklore collection ducas that I use the
name of the website, and I found a heap of
stuff and I'm like, okay, right, this is way more
robust than I kind of thought, right, kind of expectatively
looked at it, and then from there I was just
kind of led, I would say, really from to source
point to source point. And then at the time I
was exploring kind of telema as a magical system and
doing some very basic work like breath work and meditation,
and I had a pretty potent vision of him, black silhouette,
black wings, and that was it. Really. I immediately stopped
all the lima. I lost interest in that, you know,
almost immediately, and well, I know, if I'm honest, I
backed off the whole thing. I was like, okay, this
is this is a bit, you know, above my pay grade.
I want to take my time. And I worked at
a friend of mine, Michelle Divisis who we worked probably
for about a year, maybe eighteen months. I'm doing a
lot of kind of divination, a lot of meditation, guided meditations,
started to kind of work out what was going on
until I became more comfortable with what I had kind
of brushed up against, and that fundamentally became came with
a book, you know, that that exploration, my research became
the book eventually to that. So it was a very
personal book. And you know, it's it's it's a spirit
and it's an experience that's is very personal to many people.
You know, it is a frightening one because everything we've
been told today is that is this is not good.
But it's simply not that simple. It's just that simple.
That's all. My experiences have been very illuminating. You know.
It's given kind of a richness and a tech straight
to my life that I did not have. That's what
I'm grateful for. You know, it's it's it's it's not
easy because as as you would expect, those moral questions,
those questions about your character, what you stand for, what
you're willing to stand for, come up in real life
as well, you know, So how it he whatever behaves
in the stories is quite similar to the experiences that
individuals have. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there were a couple of passages I wanted
you to share with our listeners from the introduction the
top of page two.
Speaker 4: Up to.
Speaker 2: The sentence that ends with of the she.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, okay. It is within this collection of lore
that we can find the Wat, or rather a certain
shape of the Wat, an emanation of the Wat, that
manifested in the wildlands of Europe, from the dark forests
of its eastern borders to the lonely crossroads of the
Irish Hinderlands. A terrible force of nature, a laughing psychopomp
from the underworld, calling for us to lie down the
foul rag and bone shop of the heart, to listen
to the voices of the dead and the sensual whispers
of the she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the first thing that grabbed me and
I had to pause. First off, it's a beautifully written passage,
so thank you for reading it. But it also it
touches upon so much in like a half a paragraph.
You're talking about, you know, the collective unconscious of Western
Europe essentially and Eastern Europe. Yeah, you know, all the
way to the east and you know, back towards the west.
It is something that is, i would say, ingrained in
our understanding, even if we don't venerate it. Yes, I
even look to the modern stories of the shadow people
that people see, or the hat man that people see,
and I'm like, I know who that is, you know,
but look at how people react to them. It is
with fear. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, yeah, totally,
but fear, hesitation, mistrust, and there's you know, like many
things in the Paranormal, there's more than a hint of
the trickster in there. And we all know that. You know,
tricksters can go from the laughing happy coyote being silly
himself into a tree, you know, eaten so much that
his belly's so big that he can't move. You know,
he's a goober, you know. And then we have the
trickster like Puck, who is still on the laughing happy
but he's a little meaner over there. And then we
go to the Odin who, in his way as a trickster,
he will trick people into doing what he wants. So
we have that, and then you know, you throw in
the dark Man and then everybody is like, oh, oh no,
that's that's a big no, no, no no. And that's
part of why I really love this book, because you
you don't take him out of the shadows. He's still
in there. He's still in the dark places, in the underworld,
in the in the belly of the earth herself. You
know that that that's place where we come from and
where we're going to go back to. And it's it's
a it's a very potent image, and it's a very
He's a very potent figure. And I think he this
book came out when it was supposed to. I think.
So the next thing I wanted you to read is
the bottom of that page, where it starts with he
upsets and ends with maybe consumed on the next page.
Speaker 3: He upsets the order of society by empowering chaos, reminding
those in power of the limits to their authority, undermining
their laws, faith, and science in a sort of epithitna
my own words, eptybular epistemological rewilding, and doing it with
a sinister smile and perfect comic timing. He guards the
cold furnace of creation, the dark from where all things come.
When he appears during times of desperation or interrupts a
nighttime journey, it's a call of initiation. If you are cold,
it will be astonishing and horrifying. If you persist, it
will be utterly transformative. If you resist, you may be
consumed m h.
Speaker 2: And then at the end of the next paragraph, starting
with he is the.
Speaker 3: He is the satirical wildness, watching from the shadows and
the dark woods. He rides at the head of the
fairy host. He is the dark One who awakens the
mystic light within the hunter and a lightbearer.
Speaker 2: And then just keep going until we get to the
witches and.
Speaker 3: Storytellers, both of us, the witnesses, those cold to witchcraft,
and those inspired with stories, songs, and art. The Dark
One imparts the most precious insight into our soul's purpose
on this earth. If you listen, he will share with
you an understanding of the deep cathonic power is moving
through your soul, your family line, past, present, and future.
He gives agency to a soul, to the augreies of
his children, the witches and the storytellers.
Speaker 2: See, y'all, you need this book. I'm just saying you
heard that right, This that grabbed me, And like I said,
I had to close the book, sit and think about
it for a minute and go, okay, okay, this sounds
really familiar, not from another book. It's something I knew
in my heart. So I was and I did not
expect to have someone you know, write it down in
a book and you know, have it out in the
world where anybody can just pick it up, because, as
you say, this figure is one who's been denied in
our society for a very long time and has been
pushed away, you know, all but stomped on. I you know, yes,
there is a touch of demonic to him, but I
actually think that's incorrect. It's more of a dimonic thing,
a being that is between humanity and God. And when
I say God, I made all the stuff, the universe
itself is God to me. So he's one of the
creatures that gives faces to God that so we can communicate.
I would say. Another powerful such person would be the
blessed Virgin Mary. She gives us a face so that
we can communicate and not just be overwhelmed. Interestingly. Uh
that that thing about that bit about telling the uh
powers that be uh the uh the beings that that
move our society. He empowers chaos. He throws a monkey
wrench into the works so that those who work with
power over people and and are I would say totalitarian
and hierarchical in their means of work. He basically just
puts a puts a little stoppage into the works. He
goes into the machinery and and clogs up the gears.
And I think that's a very important thing to know
about these days. Yeah, you know, we're having a time
on in the West right now where there's all sorts
of bad ideas coming to the fore, ideas that I
thought we knew were bad. Just maybe that's just me,
but I thought we knew that, you know, hating on
people was a terrible thing. But apparently not there are
people who want to do that.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: You know, as a light bringer, it isn't just light light,
it's illumination and understanding. A seeing is seeing of truth,
whether it's good or bad. We see the truth. I
also see this as this dark man is being connected
to Jung's shadow. You know, we have ego, we have,
yet we have the shadow, you know, and the shadow
is the part of us that we just shoved down
and don't look at It. Doesn't mean it's bad, but
it is socially unacceptable, you know, depending upon what society
you live in, And so we shove it away. And honestly,
I feel like our entire social systems are looking at
the collective shadows.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there's something to that for sure.
Speaker 2: And so the dark Man kind of can show us
the way bringer of light, bringer of truth or shower
of truth. I don't think he brings it. I think
he shows it.
Speaker 3: I think, well, if you think about the stories, you
know that the moral questions within the stories, it's rarely
him who carries out an act, if ever, it's more
the situation that he may orchestrate, and that's someone make
a decision, and that decision is a moral one, and
that is where the kind of the depth of the
individual's character is revealed. And that might be kind of
like wealth over the well being of somebody else, that
kind of thing. Right, So this is what we see
again and again, and I think it's it's similar. But equally,
if we look at say the like the historical witch
trials of Scotland seventeenth century stuff, you had numerous accounts
of witch trials and these were poor people, you know,
they weren't you know, it wasn't accounts of the of
the super wealthy. These were accounts of pretty much poor
people on the breadline or really clinging onto to subsistence
farms in the in the peripheries of Britain and Ireland.
So primary story not Ireland because there were very few
buch Draws around, but there was plenty in Britain. But
that that's kind of telling you something about that empowerment, right,
So people who have no religious power, no political power,
no financial power, are being contacted and initiated by this
birth mm hmm. And in a way you've got this
kind of like dual belief where people pray to God
for salvation but to the devil for survival. Mm hm.
Those things are kind of happening at the same time.
And equally like the gifts of cures, the gifts of healing,
the gifts of psychic capability, all that kind of stuff
magic could come from him or spirits in his pay
m h And then you know, and certainly the accounts
are not all rosy. You know, some of them are
quiet lewd, and you know they don't leave anything to
the imagination. In many places. Isabel Gaudi famously is an
incredibly lowered account. But it's consistent, you know, with with
the accounts of modern which is and and those who
came before. Yes, it's it's it's certainly there, chipping away
at power, and sometimes all that takes is an idea,
you know, or just you know, it's like the truth
is still the truth, you know, no matter what people
say about it. So it's that's the kind of way
that it would twist things, and by kind of showing
the truth, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, speaking of Isabelle Goudy for for my
listeners who are familiar with Tim Renner over at Strange Familiars,
he asked me to guest with him and work with
him and talk about Isabelle Goudi and yeah, she's my girl. Uh.
I first learned about her in in in my teenhood, right,
and the first I saw of her was this awful
paperback novel by Jane Pankhurst that is only really notable
in that it was the very first cover art that
the illustrator Rowena Morale did, and she's like, you know,
she's like there with Boris Fayejo and Frank Frazetta for
fantasy covers in this you know, sixties, seventies and eighties.
So she wasn't famous when she did this. This was
the very first one. And so you can't get the paperback,
which cost I don't know, not even a dollar. When
It was first published for less than forty dollars now
because it's not only is it her first cover, but
it's a it's a byfold sea. You open it up
and there's two scenes, so it's like two for the
price of however many, you know, maybe a dollar twenty
five or whatever it used to be. But that my
mom had had bought the book and then hid it
from me after she read it. Yeah, see, she should
have just thrown it on the on the coffee table
and said, oh, that's a really great book. You should
read it, because I probably wouldn't have read it then,
you know, so of course what did I do? But
you know, go and read it. And it does follow
her trial mostly, but they just you said it was lurid,
and it is. But you know, a nineteen seventies author
of trashy books can can take the lurid and elevate
it to true trashiness. It was. It was. I've read
it as as an adult and gone, oh my god,
this is so awful, you know, this is just this
is badly Oh my god, this isn't purple prose. Angela
Carter is purple prose? Is this is magenta or something?
I don't know what color it is, but it's it's bad.
Speaker 3: It sounds brilliant, it is it is.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I was looking at several books about her other
than that one, and I realized how utterly impoverished the
people who were pointed to in these trials were. You know,
she talks about using Well, one of the things that's
interesting about this section of Scotland when we're talking about
witches is they talk about the Queen of el fame.
They talk about the dark Man or the black Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Who Everybody's like, well, that's the devil and maybe yes,
maybe no. And then we also have when they get familiars,
they get them from as much from the Queen of
Elf as from the dark Man. So you have your
you know, fairy familiars and you have your imps given
by the dark Man. First off, that's more complicated than
a lot of the English stuff, the Pendle which trials
were much more simple. The Scottish people it got mixed
together with several different bits of folklore. Yeah, and that
makes it much more interesting to read.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there are cases in the very south
coast of England where you've got something similar. I know
exactly what you mean in terms of it being more
kind of black and white where fairy doesn't appear at all.
But I mean, certainly, like obviously this is the case
of and and he was put on trial in like
fifteen ninety seven, and part of his his trial records
he is accused of having carnal dealings with the Queen
of elfhim devilish sprite, and indeed she begat several barns
by him. So this kind of thing, you know, and
like I mean, the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft is an
extraordinary resource. There's it's a database of county records, court
records of the testimonies and accounts of of these witch trials.
And the dark Man is certainly not universally present, you know,
But I mean, but there's doesn't a guess where he is.
Like I had an interestingly, you know, it's not always
the devil as aware, but the King of the Fairies.
And I try to talk to this in the book
is that it is not a simple categorization at all.
It is very very murky. You have Lord of the Dead,
King of the Fairies. You got certainly get tales in
Ireland where it's the King of the fairies, who who
presents us as as you would recognize the dark Man.
Speaker 4: But like.
Speaker 3: It it's prolific, like I mean, like some of the accounts,
Like there's Margaret Alexander, she was tried in sixteen forty seven,
referred to a man in black clothing who made her
go forward. She spoke to him as being the king
of the fairies, and that she had sex with him.
And she described as nature as being cold. It's not
knowing what happened to her. Another lady and another Margaret
Marvin Allen, her servants testified this a black man go
into her her room and move around like he said
that he had who's and like you know, for listeners,
when we say black man, we're not talking about anybody
of African descent. We're literally talking about someone who would
be quote unquote kind of into European but appears jet black.
And then they give the countless to these and they
also involve shape shifting, where cases of someone who appeared
to someone's dead husband and you know what, would have
sex with the widow and then revealed that the the
dark man identity and and invite them into witchcraft and
initiation in exchange for in sometimes like an income, you know,
but yeah, there was. There was. There was a case
not far from where I live, where there was a
witch trial seventeenth century. And interestingly that this story is
interesting because it has so many hallmarks. But one of
the things that kind of kicked these elements off that
seems to be a common enough starting point for these
types of experiences some kind of trauma. And in this case,
this particular woman was struck down by malaria and she
started seeing spirits, and these spirits in give me the
information that there was there was gold nearby, and she
went kind of this over period of months. They also
involved a the witch to try and heal her, and
the witch got prosecuted as a result. But this account
that she gives of trying to find this this this
crock of gold, and she's walking across this field, and
across the field she sees beyond a hedge a beautiful
woman in a green dress, and beside hers stood a
man in black clothing, so the presenting as a couple
of sort. And she asks the spirit who who is that?
And she says, that is the Queen of the fairies,
Queen of Elphine. And if you kneel to her, she
will give you an income. Didn't say the man in
black was, but I was pretty sure there was. And
you know, this is from the very very south coast
of England, like closer to France than then to London,
so you you do have similar things. But yeah, this
is where the lines overlap wildly, you know. And it's
just cannot be pinned down. And the kind of the
Christian or more broadly Abrahamic idea of devil, it just
falls down. It's not an encompassing definition at all. That's
not to say those things don't exist. I'm just saying
that for what I'm describing in the Dark Man, it's
just not that simple.
Speaker 2: No, No, it isn't. And it's really really interesting that.
You know, if you go to continental Europe then and
you have the Earl King, Earl Knick, you have a Wharton,
you have up in the North odin same guy who
leads the wild hunt. Yes, you know sometimes a lady
in white named Perchta leads the wild hunt, but she
has her retinue of Pricton who are Oh they look
like your traditional shaggy haired, cloven hooved, big horned devil guys.
And you know, you just see this over and over
and over, and there's overlap and Perkta also has her children,
the Hymchin, who are the souls of babies who or
children who died before being baptized, so she takes care
of them. I made kind of a goof of myself.
I went to see a tele streamed version of The Nutcrackers.
So it was streaming from Moscow, right, and it was
a beautiful production. And I you know, first off, my
friends didn't know I knew anything about ballet. But I'm
watching it and right before the dance of the Snowflakes,
there is a very dark scene, dark in the stage
and they're in a graveyard and these child dancers come
out dressed all in white with drapy, you know, dressy things,
and they're holding spheres that glow. Mouth opens, sound comes out.
Oh it's the Himchin.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Okay, So nobody's sitting with me knew what I was
talking about. So I'm sitting here and then I was like, oh,
oh my god. And so I'm quiet, but you know,
my friend is like, the ho what and I'm.
Speaker 4: Like, it's it's the souls of unbaptized babies perked A.
See the lady in white, lady that's Perkeda. She's she's
the winter mother, She's the one that she can sometimes
lead the Well, I know I was speaking no content
that they understood. This is you know, content free statements. Lady,
I don't know what you're talking about. But I did
explain it after the show and she was like, I
had no idea what you were talking about. But I
didn't realize that this story is so dark. And I
was like, well, it's from the Tales of Hoffmann. It
was a German dude who wrote it. If you look
at any German folklore, it is not it is not pretty.
It's you know, even the Grimm's Brothers those those were
not pretty stories. And so yeah, but that was one
of the times when I just blurted out something. You know,
my folkloric heart was just thrumming with joy.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, this image, I know this. But so
that's what my second kid had to grow up with,
moms saying ridiculous things like that in public. In a
lot of what you're talking about in here is folklore.
It is stuff from the past, but it has much
meaning for the present. And you found people who experienced
these things that you know, are supposedly dead and gone,
you know, not not in our psyche, not part of
our collective unconscious anymore at all. Which, yeah, you and
I know that's never really true. It's all still there.
But I thought it was interesting the the different modern
stories that you found from uh, you know, real life
witches and mages and you know, other practitioners. Yeah, so
how did you find these folks?
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of them came through the podcast, but
others were kind of directed to me because I was
talking about the dark Man and that in two small circles,
that kind of work got out, and you know, people
ended up coming to me with with with their experiences. Equally,
there were others that I reached out to, you know,
could you talk about kind of your expertise, your area
of experience, or whatever discipline of magic that they may
be well versed in. And that was it. But what
I was trying to do with it was to anchor
the folkloric element in the present day, in real experience,
and that was the goal. It was to kind of
present this is the kind of the contextual folklore history too,
to anchor in the in the present, and you know,
some people found that hard. You know, I've I've had
people go I just didn't believe those stories, like okay,
well I don't know what to tell you. But others,
most the majority of people, actually that hit home for them.
That kind of really it gave weight to the first
part of the book.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: That was the goal. It was to talk about kind
of the context in the first part, the thinking the
mythopoetic in many places, but to to kind of to
marry it to to a real experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I that also was interesting, you know, as we
as you said before we started recording, these are things
that people don't talk about in public. We we don't
and for good reason. If anything, the Witch Trials taught
us that, you know, to know to dare, to will
and to keep silent because well yeah, and this insistence
of demonic origin, this insistence that if it's dark, it's bad,
if it's dark it's evil. I mean even in you know,
yin Yang, we have the light within the dark and
the dark within the light, but it's still you know,
shadows are they're not trustworthy. You can't know that's bad.
And you know the style of Christianity here in the
United States currently, and I even went to one of
these churches when I was a teenager, the evangelical charismatic churches.
They're very, very strongly against anything that has a shadow
to it. And well, you know, I'm helpful. You never
read the Bible, did you. There's lots of shadow. We
got stuff going on in there. And it's not all
you know, ah, the evil one. There's some stuff that
you know, the Almighty himself did pretty pretty shaky as
far as I'm concerned, you know, But there is a fear,
a fear of being taken as well. You're just an
evil person if this happens to you, because if you
were a good person, this wouldn't happen to you. And
then there's the issue of things like the movie The Exorcist,
the movie and the book. I mean, the movie scared
my cousin so badly. She was in her twenties. I'll
never let her live it down, but it scared her
so much that she came home from work to eat lunch,
and then she was going to go back, but the
theme tubular Bells came on and it reminded her of
the movie so much it scared her. She tried to
turn off the radio and she couldn't, and she tried
to unplug it, but it was She unplugged it, but
there were batteries in it, so it just kept So
she ran out of the house and ended up locking
herself out. Her purse and keys were sitting on the
kitchen table, and she had to call her mom at
work to come, you know, hey, let me back in
so I can go back to work. Well what happened
as well? Then music? Oh so yeah, I'm much younger
than her, but even as a twelve year old, I
messed with her over it because well, you know, whereas
I watched the movie and was like, it's just a
piece of folklore essentially, you know, brought up to modern times.
And anyway, that's beside the point. We don't talk about
these things because it isn't I guess, culturally safe.
Speaker 3: Well you know, isn't culturally safe, you know, and in
troop total, like in any part of the world, you know,
like there are versions of almost every religion that have
that kind of dogmatic aspect to them, you know. But
I mean I felt for the nature of this book,
I focus just on on Britain and Ireland with a
touch of Germany. But this this stuff is everywhere mhm.
You know, it really is. And equally people do have
that reaction mm hm, because when you call up I mean,
as you know, when you come up against something that
is this otherworldly, your whole nervous system will react to
it because you're it is. And I talk about in
the book as the ontological shock. You know, everything you
understood about the nature of things, the reality of things
has been completely turned on its head. That is going
to that is going to create a visceral reaction. And
on some level, when you're talking about this, people know that,
and they don't want to hear about it, you know.
You know, you'll get dismissed as being a crank or
you know, your delulus or whatever you know. But at
the same time, most of those people, I won't go
with you to a stone circle at midnight, you know,
or to a lonely forest clearing at midnight to do
ritual work, of course they won't. M you know. Yeah,
so because somewhere in somewhere deep within they have a
sense of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think it isn't just a Christian
thing or an Islamic thing, an avery, hammock faith thing
that the people of the book. I don't think that
that's just it. I think because you know, we're talking
about the Lord of the underworld, the land of the dead.
Everybody's afraid of death. Nobody wants to die, right unless
there's something you know, you're suffering or something, and then okay, yeah,
please take me. But people are afraid of it. They
are afraid of what it can mean. What you know,
is there evil that is happening?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: The other thing that is interesting in twenty first century,
in the twenty first century West is we've basically gone
there isn't really evil. Evil is just human evil are
the things humans do and in general, I mean when
people ask what aspect of the paranormal frightens you, and
I go, humans, I'm afraid of humans, you know, if
I'm gonna I love horror movies. But do I watch
ones where the protagonist is a human serial killer? No,
because I know I will not sleep for at least
a week and I already have problems with that, so
I don't need to give more to that. But am
I watching something like The Witch or No Speratu I'm fine,
not because I know that those things aren't real, but
because that, to me is nothing compared to what humans
can come up with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, yeah absolutely. I mean, as you said,
the kind of the idea of there is no supernatural evil,
I guess that's been around for a slightly longer period.
I mean we're talking decades rather than centuries. But the
idea that there is there's no real human evil is
relatively modern, and it's it's it's a projection that kind
of like, oh, everyone shares the same moral values or
everyone thinks the same, and they don't. It's just not true.
You know, there are predatory people. There always have been,
you know you despicable nature is that this is just
the reality of the world.
Speaker 2: If you study history, you can't help but bump up
against it over and over. It's going to just jump
right out at you. It is completely I think it's
it's kind of nonsense he to say there is no
true human evil. I am one of those people who
like to generally say that there is good in every
person in general. I don't think because I won't dehumanize
people even if I don't like them, even if what
they're doing is despicable. I'll still be like, well, it's
still a human being. But when I say it's still
a human being, it isn't me being necessarily nice about it,
you know. And nor do I believe in the whole
idea of the fall of man. I think that it's
it's more a case of our hardwired means of being
in the world. We've been hardwired for competition as a
survival mechanism, and we've been wired with cooperation as a
means of survival. And you know, in my view, that
needs to be balanced. They need to both be there.
You can't do all one and you can't do all
the other. You got to have them both. But I
think when we start going down a path that is
going to lead to human evil is its competition. It's
too much of that.
Speaker 3: It's too much.
Speaker 2: Of I we against they, you know, or I have mine,
don't come near it. It's mine. You don't get to
have any of whatever it is, you know. And that's
when we get into that actual evil is selfishness versus sharing.
I guess would be yeah, several ways to put it.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's interesting to watch because whatever whatever system
of human organization there is, it has a a deeply
negative side, whatever system it is. We see that through history,
like the the like the like the reverse of of
what you described. They're that kind of like accumulation of
immense wealth or resources at the at the cost of others.
The reverse of that is the idea of like, well,
I'm entitled to take mm hmm thing from somebody else,
you know, whatever cost to them, you know, be it
their life, you know, their their health, you know, so
like it's it's the many. You kind of get an idea.
There's always a fringe that spills into mm hmm, you know,
dark dark stuff and not existing with in humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's now now we've gone from dark to dark.
Speaker 1: From right, we've gone from uh an idea of a devil,
the idea of something that isn't the devil but has
to do with the shadowy parts of human nature, or
that has to do with death, or that has to
do with.
Speaker 4: Birth.
Speaker 2: That that comes at because that the whole sexual angle
of it, that with the fairies, with the Gin, and
with the dark Man and with the Queen of Elfham,
everybody is wanting to have sex with humans, and that
that is like you go all the way back, and
it's all in there, you know, and it doesn't matter
what part of the world we're in this happens, you know,
by I mean even alien abduction.
Speaker 3: There there is a sexual undercurrent two seemingly all of
the kind of non embodied human interests, human interactions from
these types of entities we have the idea of, like
again in in Irish you have something called a land sheet,
and that's a fairy lover. You know, we're these deeply
possessive fairy lovers. The same thing with Jin and with
again I mean going back to cirting, back to this Bulagaudi.
You know, it gets it's there in black and white,
you know, like literally get more vivid than that. You know.
There's another case with a woman called Christian Patterson and
her her testimony was again supposed to be quite highly
sexualized in places as well. And this seems to be
this is part of part of how I think it
relates to nature, you know, in that there's in some
areas of thought that there's two aspects to the entity
that makes up the dark Man. That the dark Man
element is the kind of the autumn winter element. As
things are, things are dying and the horned man is
the spring and summer. So it's the kind of the
life and the death. So that the kind of the
fecundity and then the the decline and the interest in
human sexuality as portrayed in the accounts of Isabel Gaudy
and and other other similar accounts, that there is this
almost kind of ritualized participation in in in in human
sexuality in a very wild sense. You know, if you
think about the context of the time, you know, Isabel
Goudy's account would have been unbelievably shocking, you know, absolutely
sexually profane. I mean, it still is, it still has
weight today. But that to me, how I frame that
is it's connecting humanity to its wildness and to the
kind of the the instinct of sexuality, of of of
of procreation, of the kundanity, and that kind of that
that driving force is manifest in those experiences, those accounts.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Isabelle Gouti, like I said, the first time
I heard of her was in a trashy novel where
they made her a a noble woman, which is not
true nowhere near at all, you know, but they they
It's interesting they did have in the novel them using
elf shot, so using stone arrow heads that they flung
off of their fingernail thumbnail. So I'm like tittley winks
or a marble, you know, kind of like that. And
you know, they were strike people who had wronged them,
you know. And I was like, oh, now, come on,
why we got to kill people? Why do we got
to you know, why do we got to make the
cow go dry? Why we got to do these things?
And then I started reading about what life was like
for peasants in that place at that time, and what
kind of houses they lived in. And then I went,
you know, okay, I can see fling in some little
arrows because these people were living in very small turf cottages,
which for Americans is when you cut dirt essentially into
squares and you build your house out of it. It's
not bricks, it's turf, and it's alive, you know, so
it grows. It's almost like what was used in the
voyage West through the United States for how homesteaders they
would build dugout cabins, dugout houses. But man, they're cold,
They're horribly cold, you know, and that these people didn't
have money to warm their homes. They didn't have firewood.
You know, in America, we're like, there's firewood right out there.
I don't know what this this thing, you know, because
we're we don't realize that most of the English woodlands
had been cut down to make the greatest navy in
the world, because we just don't. We just don't think
that way. You know, Britain small. In the United States,
cotton it you know, it's gigantic, and so we don't
get that. Why did the king own all the forests?
Well that's because that's the part that he didn't cut
down to make his navy or her navy actually, and
so we don't understand that. Well, you just go outside
and you just get some tree, you know, you just
cut down trees. You can't do that. And then you know,
and I I am into history, been reading it forever,
and you would think that I would do that, but no, really,
because of what we see every day, it is very different.
And once I realized that what they were doing when
they were making the cows run dries, they were stealing
the milk so they didn't starve. They were stealing the
grain so they didn't starve. Well, you know, Isabelle get
on with your bad self. You do the things you
need to do to survive. I'm not gonna, you know,
sit over here in the twenty first century and be
like evil witch evil evil evil. It's like, no, you
do what you gotta do. You talk to who you
have to talk to. And if the ruling class is
not going to help you all out, well where are
you going to go? If the church isn't going to
help you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean these a brutal place is to live,
you know, like like Scotland, Ireland are very inclement places
like that. You know, you need a lot of the
kind of the modern conveniences to live in comfortably. Like
the West coast of Ireland is like constant rain. Like
these are wet places like and cold, but these are
subsistence farming. I think that there wasn't that long ago
when there was the Irish fam and you know, it
was one hundred and seventy years ago and the population
still hasn't recovered. You know, this is like devastation and
like people were very much living by a fingernail and
if something went wrong, you know, people were dead.
Speaker 4: That was it.
Speaker 3: And likewise, when the circles back to that, the thing
I mentioned about kind of trauma being the instigator for this.
If the bread winner that might be, you know, the
husband who was a laborer died, then that family was done,
you know, like and this is where some of the
stuff that happened as a way of that gave an
avenue for survival. But equally, I think, like you in
a wider context, you know that kind of that initiator
of chaos is this turning it the world on its head.
It's upsetting the apple cart, you know, and for whatever reason,
who knows, you know, you know, that's the that's the
devil's business.
Speaker 2: It's what he does. It's his job. His job is
to stand up against something someone, and who that is
depends in context. When I was thinking about it and
thinking about it from different perspectives and looking back and forth,
one of the one of the things that ended up
happening with me was I left well, I dedicated myself
to the moon goddess on a full moon night, and
I was still going to church, and I ended up
walking out of church. And it was a small charismatic
They were trying to be a cult. They just hadn't
gotten really good at it yet. It was a very
small sect that had broken away from a larger Pentecostal church,
and the minister had was talking about women. Most of
the people in that church were women. I don't know
why he thought it was a good idea, but whatever
he was, he was talking about us. And he was
talking about women who are for the Equal Rights Amendment,
for the er a women's livers. You know, you can
tell how old I am now they are possessed of demons?
Boy did that go over really well with me?
Speaker 3: Pretty well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just sitting there going, oh, can I sit
through this? Can I sit through this? And he started
talking about are you for eighty six? The abortion pill
and how people were being forced to take it and
this and that and oh my god, you know, and
how it was proof that the French Catholics were all
evil people because they developed it in France, and I
was just like, oh, you know. And I finally just
stood up and I said no, no, And he looked
at me and was like, what is it? And I said,
because we were allowed to talk back to him, at
least I've given that. I said, women who want writes
equel to men are not possessed of demons. That's nonsense.
That's just fear mongering and nonsense, and it's just not true.
You know, look how many women are in your congregation.
Look who does the things? I painted the sign for
the new church. You know, your wife plays the piano.
Sister Debbie over there, she cooks lunch for us, every suming,
you know. And I'm just going all these things, This
is all of this work that people give for free,
and they're women. Why are we suddenly because we want
to be recognized as equal to men and able to
do what men do? Why does that make it demons?
Why is that got to be demons? Dem It's just
wanting to be equal, that's it. And oh my go wow.
He was going to come heal me. And so my
best friend stood up with me and she said, yeah,
I can't listen to this either. And we were trying
to get out, you know, we're trying to be cool
and sort of edge out, and he came up and
he was like, let me give you healing, and I
was like, oh, So I just picked up a handle
and said I was going to throw it at him
if he came any more steps closer. And so we
backed out the door and then I tossed the hymnal
gently back in the door, and then we ran like hell,
you know, and laughing because we had both been sitting
there twice a week, going I don't know if I
just can't No, I don't think so. And finally we
had broken free and we ran maniacally through the streets
of Charleston laughing. But that was, you know, the whole
idea of women doing things, wanting anything other than are
prescribed whatever that they decided we would do. That was demonic.
And then all I could do is I looked at her.
I said, you know that I gave myself over to
the moon goddess last month, right, And she was like yeah, no,
and she's like yeah, and she said, what about the
horned God? And I'm like, I'm going to talk to
him next, because I'm not too worried about him being
the actual, honest to god Satan. And that was the
other thing I got in trouble with the Minister with
he was always talking about Satan. He had they had
a personalized Satan who was going after them all the
time and putting obstacles in their path, and very much
like you know, the gin who were throwing it. Don't
come here, go away, no, no, no. Well they were
like this is this is what's happening. And I was
kind of like, you know, maybe you should talk about
Jesus more. You should say his name all the time.
Speaker 4: You should say.
Speaker 2: Jesus because whatever you talk about a lot, that's the
energy you're putting out, and that's going to attract Satan
knows his name. He's not stupid, you know, he knows
who you're talking about, and he will come and follow you.
I said, it's a very simplistic way of these things work.
And you know, he wanted to know where I got
that from and the Bible is well I didn't get
it from the Bible, but okay, you know so that's yeah,
I very much. I feel that we are in a
place where the dark Man is speaking to more and
more people in a way that we listen to but
not necessarily talk to each other about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so, I think so. I think it's
a resurgence. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: An angel just passed through the room. We went silent.
That's what my grandma will say if you have a
conversation going. And maybe you don't say it in Ireland,
but in Appalachia, if you're having a conversation and then
everybody who's silent and angel passed through the room. Yeah,
there's a lot of folklore and apple and a lot
of honestly witchery and folk magic and stuff that we learned,
just right next to learning how to bake biscuits or
make high crust or whatever. Yeah, how to raise chickens
and all that. There was the other stuff that we learned,
but it was it wasn't taught special it just so
you know. Then I look back and I realized, Oh,
when you say an angel passed through, that's basically saying
silence came because you're respecting that being. Hmm. I never
thought of that. So yeah, that's that's what happened. Is
there anything else you want to talk about. We didn't
get to all of the stories in your book, but
I kind of would rather. I really think that the
bits you read are enough to grab someone and get
them to go and read it and and listen to it.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, I appreciate it, and thank you for
your CID warnscause. Yeah, I'm very grateful for.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very grateful you wrote it because a lot
of things in there, you know, especially the stories from
modern day. I was like, oh, yes, I understand that, Yes,
I get that, and it just feels much better. Again,
we don't talk about these things, so to have people
go on the record in a book is invaluable to
other people, I hope.
Speaker 3: So, I mean that's you know, one of the real
goals there was was to help orient type people who
you know, may feel a bit rodderless if this kind
of thing is happening. You know, I certainly felt that
way when it happened to me.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, you know, yeah, that's that's not again the
ontological shock. Yeah, and there are things that you know,
I I'm one of those repeat experiencer people and it
started in early childhood, so I don't know how normal
people are mostly, but I did know enough to not
say everything to my family, especially my parents, even though
there were people in my family who had similar experiences
and they talked about it, but nobody wanted to hear
what was happening with the kid because that's dangerous because
it's a child and no, no, no, And I really
didn't want to get thrown into, you know, a place
where I had to confess to being crazy or something ye.
So this kind of of work that you did, hopefully
you'll do some more fun stuff too. You should write
more books. No, thank you, I'm just saying. I'm just
saying you should. I really I really appreciated this, and
thank you for coming and talking to me about all
of these things. I really appreciated it.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Thank you for the in books.
Speaker 2: Well that's all for this week's episode of the Six
Degrees of John Keel podcast. If you have any questions
or thoughts about the podcast, or would like to come
and talk about your experiences of the paranormal, you can
contact us at six d JK six seven at gmail
dot com. We promised even answer you, and we are
always happy to hear from you. Thank you,