Pagan Coffee Talk
We will discuss topics related to the Pagan community. All views are from a traditionalist's point of view. The conversations are unscripted (no preparations have been made ahead of time). A special thanks to Darkest Era for the use of their songs: Intro- The Morrigan, Exit - Poem to the Gael. Check them out at http://darkestera.net/.
Pagan Coffee Talk
Whispers in the Walls: Understanding Spirits and House Blessings
Have you ever heard a bump in the night and wondered if you're not alone? We embark on a mystical expedition into the realm of house blessings and the world of mistaken hauntings. In our rich conversation, we peel back the layers of common misconceptions, shedding light on the true rarity of specters and the whispers of history that persist in the nooks and crannies of old homes. We reveal that the shadows you fear may be less about otherworldly visitors and more about the echoes of bygone eras, easily misconstrued through the lens of too many ghostly tales. Join us as we discuss the significance of thorough investigation and the peace the ritual of house blessing can bring, even when the night seems full of terrors.
We ponder the intersection of supernatural encounters and technological glitches. Could that flicker of your bedside lamp be a sign from the beyond, or just a sign you need to call an electrician? Sharing eerie experiences and a particularly haunting drive down a Mississippi highway, we explore why our culture is so captivated by the supernatural. Wrapping up, we share a cup of coffee and a poetic reflection on life's labyrinthine journey, reminding us that within the intensity of life's trials, we can find solace in the camaraderie of our shared experiences and energies.
Join us on
Discord: https://discord.gg/MdcMwqUjPZ
Facebook: (7) Life Temple and Seminary | Facebook
Welcome to Pagan Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. Now here are your hosts, lady Alba and Lord Knight.
Lady Alba:Okay. So in all your years of practicing, Lord Night, how many house blessings have you been asked to perform?
Lord Night:Not counting my own. Yeah, okay, maybe about a handful, maybe about five yeah or so.
Lady Alba:And of those, how many of them were? Because someone believed there was something evil, supernatural, you know, yeah, haunted in their home.
Lord Night:At least two.
Lady Alba:At least two, yeah, and of those two were either of them correct in that assumption that there was something happening.
Lord Night:I'm gonna go out on a limb and say there was one that was an actual haunting but it wasn't like a bad, it was more like a mischievous child.
Lady Alba:Nothing actual harmful Nothing to be overly concerned about.
Lord Night:But you know the knocks in the attic and stuff like that in an old farmhouse sort of unravels more modern day people.
Lady Alba:Yeah, so I do think it's interesting that we typically teach our first degree is know how to do a house bless them Right. It's a relatively basic practice and it's very common for us to house bless our own homes at least once a year.
Lord Night:Right.
Lady Alba:Right, and no, not with Sage (damn it), but you know we're not smudging, but anyway. But often when people seek out witches, it's because they think there's something terrible in their home and they want us to get rid of it. Yeah, now, in many instances we are equipped for this Right. But what I find is, more often than not, these people, upon some questioning, some investigations, some they don't need. What they think they need their house is no, they either need a plumber and an electrician, or some.
Lady Alba:To be quite honest, they need to stop watching so many goddamn ghost stories, right? Because it seems to me that a lot of people want to believe that their house is haunted. They want to believe that someone died on their property. They want to believe that something has gotten through the veil that should not be there.
Lord Night:I think the problem is you have the Erin Brockovich phenomena here?
Lady Alba:Ah okay, .
Lord Night:Right, this is a very unknown woman who just happens to stumbled into this best job ever bonuses and all this lawsuit stuff, right?
Lady Alba:Well, she was she found something out. Her story is pretty fascinating.
Lord Night:But the point here is the reason there's a story about her is it doesn't really happen that often the reason we have ghost stories is because they are rare. Right the that's when we find them in fascinating.
Lady Alba:Yeah, I mean the Catholic Church, even. I mean they. They go through hundreds of thousands of reports and of cases, of things, and that the percentage of actual exorcisms that they perform is very, very, very tiny.
Lady Alba:Most of them are simply debunked Right, and the church goes no, that's not what that is. They have, they have investigators, they have people who actually do that. But I find it interesting how so many people want something to be there but then claim that they don't want it to be there and want to seek us out to get rid of it. Do you know what I mean? Right, they want it to happen so bad. Then, in a small percentage of cases, they invited in, right, I've seen that, yes, I've seen that firsthand, where you've got an entire family, a whole household that is so obsessed with this with that.
Lady Alba:They literally invited in Right yeah, might as well just roll out the red carpet.
Lord Night:These are like the YouTube videos you see every so often, where some idiot takes a Ouija board out to the middle of a cemetery yeah and then bitches for two weeks later about something following them home yeah, what do you think was going to happen?
Lady Alba:Right, and so I think it's really kind of that. Do we have to take that same approach of like? Do we need to really investigate what's happening, determine if it's haunted, determine if it's paranormal phenomena, or do we just go in and do a house blessing and try to alleviate the fears of these people?
Lord Night:Yeah, I hate to be this way the majority of the times it's more to latter. Yeah, it really is. I mean because, again, with the way I know how to do house blessings and how things work, I don't need to do no research.
Lady Alba:No.
Lord Night:If I find something in a house I don't like it's removed, then worry about later.
Lady Alba:I mean, that's the irony, you know, I feel like most of the time it's a very like and I hate to use this analogy, but I am a child of the 80s it's like the Ghostbusters you trap it Right, you, you. You trap it, and you either have two choices you remove it, you take it somewhere else where it can literally do no harm or very little, or you keep it, or you keep it and then it's part of your collection. In some cases you can. You can send them on their way, yes, but if it's genuine haunting, they don't want to go, they don't want to leave, they're having fun.
Lord Night:Well again, and then you still have the problems of and watching these shows and stuff like this. There's no way to tell the difference on a spiritual or a technological level, the difference between an echo, an actual haunting an echo in a thought form that was accidentally left behind.
Lady Alba:Well, so let's explain an echo, because I don't know how many people know what an echo is, but echoes to me are the most common form of quote/u nquote haunting.
Lord Night:The best example I've found of them are the schools where they've the older schools from the fifties and where they've converted them into housing. Yes, and now they hear. Every so often they'll hear the bells and the kids laughing in the hallways.
Lady Alba:Yeah, but we also hear echoes exist where you've typically got someone who was hanged. You have them in certain cases of suicide. I mean, usually it is simply a rip in time where something is on a loop Right and there's no actual no, there's nothing there. It's just a loop of a past event.
Lord Night:It's like a scar of energy laid on top that keeps on repeating over and over again.
Lady Alba:Yes, and usually I think it's because of the amount of emotional energy that was expelled around it during it.
Lord Night:you know, whatever, the case might be. What's going on in time?
Lady Alba:It's intense and yeah, like well, what you're saying, like okay, if you have a school, you know it's been converted into housing. I mean, come on day in and day out. You got kids running in the hallways, you got the bells, you got the announcements.
Lord Night:You've got kids starting puberty and emotions going, all sorts of. You got energy going everywhere.
Lady Alba:So, yeah, it can get stuck Right, that's fine, and but those things other than the fact that they're creepy, they're creepy. They don't do anything, they don't harm anyone, they don't have any impact. As a matter of fact, they can't see you, they can't interact with you Nothing, If anything.
Lord Night:It's more annoying to us because it's like that stereo that's a little too loud in the apartment next door. Yeah, and I'm like would you please shut up yeah.
Lady Alba:Would, you please stop it. Yeah, because you're distracting and you're annoying, exactly, exactly, but I've tried. I mean like if you try to talk to them, okay, there's nothing, there's nothing there. So, so, that's an echo, right, those are very common. And then we have what was the other one you said.
Lord Night:Thought forms.
Lady Alba:Okay, so thought forms.
Lord Night:Thought forms, yeah, thought forms is literally your own thoughts, manifesting in a different form to do a pre-programmed task.
Lady Alba:Pre-programmed task Explain.
Lord Night:Guard said facility, guard this area. Protect these people.
Lady Alba:So but but it's intentional.
Lord Night:But it's intentional.
Lady Alba:Okay, so a thought form for a lot of us is a house guardian Right or a dragon.
Lord Night:Right.
Lady Alba:Or a pet or a. It's usually a large supernaturals the wrong word. It's usually a large mythical creature.
Lord Night:It's something you would associate with protection.
Lady Alba:Yeah, and you know, sometimes you let it follow your kids or you know, yeah, but the thought forms we feed them. We feed them, we do it on purpose. We interact with them. It was very. I mean, this has been going on for years. People call them homers because they're the home.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly.
Lady Alba:Yeah.
Lord Night:So you have a homer.
Lady Alba:They're fine. I mean, as long as your mental state is where it needs to be, then yeah, they're, they're doing their thing. I've, you know, had a house guardians that annoy my dogs, you know, because, yeah they get a little too rambunctious.
Lord Night:When they're a little bit more intelligent than an echo, they're not like an actual disembodied soul. There is some intelligence behind them, but their intelligence is nothing more than like a dog. Or a little bit higher than a dog, but it's in that category. That's why I say pet yeah.
Lady Alba:In Jewish mythology, the closest thing you've got is a golem right. It was the clay man. You put the scroll in its mouth. And it came to life and its only purpose was to fulfill what was on the scroll. But it's a lump of clay, literally, it has no thoughts of its own. That's it. That's it and yeah, it's pretty much, yeah, what they are and we still use them today.
Lord Night:Now an actual ghost is an actual soul, a disembodied soul. A disembodied soul Right, it's still stuck in this world.
Lady Alba:Right, it's a trapped spirit and if they're, the belief is that they are trapped for long enough and they are displeased that soul will morph, transform, level up into a poltergeist or a more benevolent spirit.
Lord Night:Personally, I think they just start doing things to get emotional energy. Yeah, they're children.
Lady Alba:Yes, they're like children. They just do things to get attention because, yes, that's what keeps them going.
Lord Night:Right.
Lady Alba:On the other hand, I mean there are, you know, there's the occasional thing.
Lady Alba:Let's just I'm gonna go with that word. That's not supposed to be here. No, it's from somewhere else. It is literally not supposed to be here, and here's the way I look at it. Most of those entities they're not. I don't feel like they're out to hurt people. I don't feel like they're actually out to do harm and damage. I liken it to ourselves If we woke up and found ourselves in a different dimension that we don't belong in. We're a bull in a china shop, Right? Not for any other reason than we don't even know how the rules work here.
Lady Alba:Right, you're in panic mode, doing whatever you have to Trying to get the hell out, yeah.
Lord Night:One day you woke up on Mars Right, you don't have a clue.
Lady Alba:And, for all we know, in their world, right, there's no gravity, right. They don't understand. So, yeah, so everything is chaos, and I think that that's a lot of what happens when people are like oh my God, I have, but yeah.
Lord Night:Well, and then you normally wind up with some idiot sitting there poking some unfortunate spirit going oh here, let's do Ouija board, let's do this, let's just irritate you.
Lady Alba:Yeah, you're already out of your place. Well then, you're gonna get a bitch slapped. It's gonna happen.
Lord Night:I mean, but again, this is how it normally goes, yeah.
Lady Alba:I also see and again, this is a lot of modern, I feel like everybody's like I have a window, go in my backyard, or I have a skin walker or this or that or a boo hag, and I'm like stop it, just stop it. Why, why does every walk in the woods have to results?
Lord Night:right In some fairies and mystical. Yes why, why.
Lady Alba:I don't understand it. I have been alive for 45 years. I can count on one hand the number of times I have encountered anything that even remotely weirds me out like that. And it weirded me out enough that I'm like I'm not stopping, I'm not gonna interact with you, I'm not no, you go your way, I'm going my way. I have nothing to say to you.
Lord Night:I do not have the energy or the effort right now to deal with you. No, and I will tell you Go away.
Lady Alba:I will tell you one that's really funny and because it will always stick with me. It was a section of highway I was driving from here to New Orleans and it was a section of highway in Mississippi that so helped me. I was like this is the creepiest place on earth. It was a death highway and it was the amount of roadkill right and dead animal. I was like this is not normal. I was like I get that there's a lot of critters out here and we're kind of in the middle of nowhere. But I was like mm-mm, this is excessive. And I just remember being icked out and I was like I would not get out of the car if you paid me a million dollars. I wanna get through this and out of here as fast as I can. And literally when we were out of whatever county, it was fine. I was like okay, that was weird.
Lord Night:I can't say nothing. I still wanna go try to sleep in the side of the devil's circle to see if I wind up on the outside.
Lady Alba:Oh, you're funny, you're funny. See, and I'm always just like I see a crossroad and I giggle Cause I'm like let's get out and play in the crossroads, but I don't know, I just I think that too many people, they want to have something supernatural in their life And-.
Lord Night:We're back to this whole entire concept. Everybody wants to be special.
Lady Alba:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I hate to bust bubbles, but I mean there's just not that much of that. And I feel like, unless you really are psychic, unless you have that gift, and it's strong- right. You probably aren't encountering much of anything, yeah.
Lord Night:No, your best case scenario is, you know, your electrical is putting off a little bit more of a field, magnetic field, making you feel awkward.
Lady Alba:Yeah, or honestly I've seen this too your circle is a little lopsided. Yeah, If your circle is a little wonky, if the energies aren't quite flowing the way they should make sure you don't have an oblong. Seriously, because that could cause a disruption, because the balance is off. That'll make things feel weird.
Lord Night:Yeah, If you think about it this way, it's kind of like you know, trying to drive your car with an unbalanced tire.
Lady Alba:Yeah, oh yeah, that's a good one.
Lord Night:Really it's never going to go well. No, it's not.
Lady Alba:I will say electrical, though, is the big culprit most of the time. Yeah, but I've seen it. I've seen it in my own house, where, ha, ha, ha ha. I have a list written down of all of the electrical oddities that have taken place at my house over the years of having the church there. Right, and I can always pinpoint, I can always be like this is not like. I remember being on the phone with customer service, with my alarm company, and they were like yeah, this is really strange. Like the keypad is just. I'm like just, you need to send me a new keypad. And they're like no, no, no, we've, we're going to try to walk you.
Lady Alba:You need to send me a new keypad. I'm like I'm telling you this thing's toasted, and sure enough it's, but again, circle gives off a shit load of energy and it's powerful. And then what does it do? It dissipates. It dissipates within the dwelling, the ground, the area.
Lord Night:Again, it's that agrarian field building up in the house.
Lady Alba:And I go, oh shit, yeah. So anytime, anytime there's an electronic that craps out, or you know, I'm always the first one to be like what day is it? When did we have ritual last? God damn it. Because that's, because that's usually it.
Lord Night:I think we're going to have a problem in the future, because the more delicate the electronics get, the more sensitive they get. I'm worried about Wi-Fi.
Lady Alba:Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are the ones. Bluetooth especially, it's not stable, not as a tech, and so Bluetooth, there's a lot of bleed, there's a lot of overlap, there's a lot of feedback interference, and I think that interference is going to get worse and it's going to make some things challenging because it will suppress some of our efforts.
Lord Night:I think as technology gets to the point where we have to use more delicate voltages and stuff like that, the more sensitive this stuff is going to become to magic and other influences.
Lady Alba:Hey, all I know is our elders were analog as fuck. And I don't think in all cases that was because that was the only thing available. It was a choice that they made. I can see that. Yeah, like Lord Min was as analog as it gets, even though he was still around, cell phones were here like we had the tech. It was around, but it just is so prone. I mean, don't get me started on the brits.
Lord Night:Let's get you started. Lord Min and the whole. Everything had to be brushed. You didn't roll nothing.
Lady Alba:Yeah, you painted a house with a brush what, but that's yeah, I can see where that's going to continue. And then there's also the thing that we see a lot now is that this again goes back more, less about the hauntings and the house blessings and more about just energy work. We're all trying to get out into nature, we're all trying to connect, we're all trying to disconnect from the technology, but it's unavoidable at this point. You go to a public park, there's Wi-Fi.
Lord Night:Yes, you go to I mean, you got Onestar everywhere.
Lady Alba:Yeah, you go to campgrounds.
Lord Night:And what's the thing Elon has for his, the Starlink?
Lady Alba:Oh, God, I don't even know, I don't shit.
Lord Night:I don't even follow that. I'm like, yeah, okay, Because again how many annoying pagans have I seen through this whole entire? Hey, I'm doing Wi-Fi on the middle of a hill, out in the middle of nowhere, but that's what I'm saying.
Lady Alba:Like we are so as a world, right A planet. We are so plugged in, everything is so wired and connected. We can't be blind to that and think, well, oh, okay, I'm out in the middle of the forest, are you really? Do you have a cell phone signal You're not disconnected from?
Lord Night:the world.
Lady Alba:You're not disconnected, but and even still, even if you didn't have Wi-Fi, that damn phone can still track you the power lines. I remember distinctly the time that you and I were at a gather and we were like, are they?
Lord Night:Yes.
Lady Alba:And I was like it's, the only clearing Circle was being cast under Power lines. Yeah, under high tension power lines. I was like, oh my God.
Lord Night:There's no. Yeah, there's no.
Lady Alba:Wild, wild. I was like this could be really, really bad and I mean, look, I get it, I get it right, it was what they had available. I mean it's yeah.
Lord Night:It was what it was, and sometimes you got a deal.
Lady Alba:I'm sure that somebody kicked themselves in the ass on that afterword or when they realized it. It gotta be, you know. But yeah, those are the sorts of things we need to pay attention to. That's interesting. So, yeah, yeah, I always kind of make that distinction, though. Is it really?
Lord Night:But it shows like what was that? Ghost hunters and stuff.
Lady Alba:Oh God, they're everywhere.
Lord Night:I think they actually went a long ways to sort of helping some of this stuff by showing common day problems.
Lady Alba:That people thought were hauntings. Yes, but if you go onto YouTube, holy crap, there are amateur ghost hunters and ghost hunting channel everywhere, everywhere, and everyone has a witch on demand, you know, to get right, that walks in and just start spouting all kinds of things about what they're feeling and what's there, and I'm like, oh boy, I don't know, I just don't think there's that many damn haunted places. I just don't.
Lord Night:I think they're rare. I think they're more rare than we.
Lady Alba:Alcatraz. Alcatraz scared the shit out of me. I went and I did one of the tours and you could actually go into the prison. I was fine on the island. When we went into the cell block I was like I need to leave. That was, like you know, one of the few things that gave me the absolute heebies. But you know, I go into abandoned buildings and others. I'm like nothing Just just.
Lord Night:Whatever Just abandoned.
Lady Alba:That's a raccoon, you know, making babies in the corner.
Lord Night:Yeah, I still want to go to the hotel from the shining oh yeah, it's a resort now. Yeah.
Lady Alba:Yeah, you can go anytime you like. So yeah, I think I think there's a little too much attention being put on that, the paranormal aspect of house blessing. But on the other end of the coin, do a damn house blessing, it's, it's great, it's great, it's, it's, I think it's just don't use sage.
Lord Night:Stop with this Sage.
Lady Alba:Have you explained this? The sage, have you? Have you explained? I'm not sure if we have All right. Well, just in case and for for anybody who hasn't heard previous episodes. So sage is an insulator and when you use it in a space that has already been cleansed, it magnifies the energies that are present. So years ago a Native American friend of mine, who's now passed, she had two different types of smudge she had sweet grass and she had sage. The sweet grass was what you smudged with to clear.
Oswyn:Right.
Lady Alba:And to eliminate Yep Right and to drive things out of the house and then you went back through with the sage to retain.
Lord Night:Yeah To build a barrier.
Lady Alba:Yeah when smudging was going mainstream for whatever you know like when that started to blow up, I remember her and I sitting down and having a conversation and I was like they're using sage, they're smudging, yeah, they're running around people or runner you know, chanting, praying, doing whatever with and she's. She just shook her head. She was like, oh wow, there was an issue. She couldn't understand why.
Lord Night:I mean again, people were smudging themselves with sage before going in a ritual space. Yeah, I'm like okay, yeah, you just put on a wet suit to get into the shower.
Lady Alba:Yeah, it's a very odd thing. And again it became Look, I can't believe how many times I feel like I'm saying this now, but it bright, it became gentrified in a sense. Yeah, A practice that was absolutely Aboriginal in nature and in its in its origin has been picked up by every other culture and all the and I kind of laugh because I'm like people talk about cultural appropriation. I'm like hello.
Lord Night:And you didn't even follow the instructions correctly. Yeah, this is, it's absolutely appropriation to just go.
Lady Alba:I'm going to take the sage and put it in a in a shell bowl and then you just put it in and then use a feather to get a hello. That is a Native American practice and the guest you need to say hello, butler. Yeah, he barked at me when I said hello. So know what you're doing when you're doing that kind of stuff. You can house bless with candles. You can house bless with regular incense. You do not need anything fancy to house bless and you certainly do not need sage. But it is a nice idea to write Just clean it out. It's like a spring cleaning. That's right, most of us do it coming up. The biggest thing is open a window or a door, start there and in there.
Lady Alba:That's it.
Lord Night:Drive it all out. This is not a complicated procedure.
Lady Alba:Not at all. Not at all. And and there's, I'm sure, a multitude of different. You know house blessings online, but realistically it doesn't. You don't need a chant, you don't need a lot of words. I know people that just say the Hail Mary and walk around the house like you know that's fine, you could.
Lady Alba:You could do music. You could not. You can have everyone in the house participate or not, but you can do it yourself. You don't need a witch, you don't need right reinforcements to do it. In fact, I think if it's your house, you should be the one to do it. Why, why are you going to bring somebody else in to clean your garbage? You?
Lord Night:know that's an interesting way of putting it, but yeah, you're right.
Lady Alba:House blessing to me. That's what you're doing. You're cleaning up, you're clearing out.
Lord Night:I mean because the majority of times I've done it, I don't know about you, but the majority of time I always try to get the homeowner involved.
Lady Alba:Yes, I, you, I feel like you have to in that situation because, again, to me it's like if my kitchen's dirty, I'm not calling somebody else like I'm going to clean my kitchen, so it's, it's your baggage, it's your filth.
Lord Night:You take it out. You need to do it. I'm just here to help you along the way.
Lady Alba:Yeah, we might be there to just kind of I don't know assist, I guess.
Lord Night:Yeah, it's kind of silly, but yeah anyway more coffee? Yeah, all right.
Oswyn:Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Peg and Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Please visit us at lifetimepleseminaryorg for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, discord, twitter, youtube and Reddit.
Speaker 4:We travel down this trodden path, the maze of stone and mire. Just hold my hand as we pass by a sea of blazing fires. And so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks. And so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks.