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
The Alchemy of Faith: Understanding the Magic of Belief Systems
Venturing into the realm where dogma and data converge, our conversation takes a sharp turn. As the world edges further towards secularism, we muse on the evolving role of religion in sculpting the ethical clay of society. We'll even cast a spell of understanding over the misunderstood practices of witchcraft and chaos magic, underlining the profound equilibrium between order and the vast, untamed cosmic forces. Join us for an episode that promises not just enlightenment but a bold reimagining of the spiritual and the scientific.
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Welcome to Pig and Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. Now here are your hosts, lady Alba and Lord Knight.
Speaker 2:So we often talk about how all gods are one god, all goddesses are one goddess, and combined they are one entity. Right, right.
Speaker 3:The owl, the source, the source, the creator.
Speaker 2:Whatever?
Speaker 3:you want to call it.
Speaker 2:So why is it then that pagans are so obsessed with all of the different variations on deity?
Speaker 3:I don't know. There's this one lady. I see her every so often, and every time she puts something out it's always about hecatate.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And I'm like there are other. Yeah, can we move on? My hecatate is a great goddess and all this, but she's not the I'm not gonna mess with her, but she's not the sun and the moon.
Speaker 2:Well, ironic, so, but here's the thing, and I think we tend to fuck up a lot of people when we say this right, right, we come out and go, we're monotheistic. Yes, like you can watch people's brains explode.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Look, they literally look like the meme where the guy goes yeah, yeah, I mean so, knowing this right, we go okay, yeah, for those of us who've been doing it a long time, yeah, we go. Yeah, we're monotheistic. You can keep stripping it away, stripping it away, stripping it away, until you just get it down to this source idea and you go yeah, it has no gender, it has no personality, it has no one singular.
Speaker 3:To think that this thing is anything like us or thinks like us or behaves like us is absurd, Right, right Again. For us to describe this would be like an aunt trying to describe a UFO to one of us.
Speaker 2:But it's ironic because so much of Pagandum is spent witchcraft, whatever you want to call it is spent around learning about reading, about understanding different deities, right? So okay, how do you view it? What are they? Why do they matter? Why? What's the point?
Speaker 3:I believe the source for us works kind of like video games. You can put whatever skin you want on that damn character. Using the myths and stuff helps you better visualize that skin of that person. Okay, and it's going to behave in the way you.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Based on the myths and stuff when you're interacting it.
Speaker 2:That's interesting and I see it as in order for us, like you said, for us to even remotely be able to understand deity, source, source, whatever we have to be able to relate to it somehow, and the only way in which we can do that is to find commonality. Right Now, it's like you said. To believe that we understand it or that it's like us is absurd. But it's no different than my dog, is completely different than I am, is motivated by views the world completely differently than I do, but there are moments. There are moments when we understand each other and we have the same view or the same desire, outcome whatever it is, so it's relatable.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So to me, yeah, all these different versions of gods and goddesses are just ways in which we can find common ground.
Speaker 3:It also ends one other problem I see in the pagan community with the individual gods. All right, does this mean that the Nordic gods are at war with the Celtic gods or the Celtic gods at war with the Roman gods? Oh God, so again now you got this problem of different pantheons.
Speaker 2:It's where history overlaps right. It's where people come into play. Cultures I have long said the Vikings and the Celts are the same.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I am so sick and tired of people trying to separate them. I'm like, by all accounts, historically the Vikings got around. Oh, God, we know that To think that they didn't land in what we know of as the UK is a fallacy. Of course they did, Well.
Speaker 3:I mean, and again, if the invasions came in like we think they did, they came into the British Isles, then they moved up to Maybe, Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's six of one half a dozen, right? Did the Celts come first? Did the Vikings come? I don't fucking know, I don't care.
Speaker 3:I'm going to put it to you this way If it wasn't for the second invasion of the British by the Romans, I believe the Celtic mythology would be more along the lines of Nordic mythology.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It would be a lot more united and making sense.
Speaker 2:But I cannot help but think if you took, at any point in history, a Celtic warrior, a Viking warrior and plopped them down in a strange place, in a strange land, they would be like, okay, we need to talk because, they would be the only two relatable there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they would have far more in common than not, and there's so many examples of that. And then, of course, it's the fact that myth and story is used to influence the people of the time, right, if Zeus told us to do this, then we'd do it, so it was an easy way to manipulate your people.
Speaker 3:To keep society and laws and rules and behaviors, certain ways that you wanted.
Speaker 2:And that's. We've seen that throughout time. It's not only in fable and it's in myth. The Bible does it.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean we still have the whole entire. Problem is there might been a guy named Hercules. He might have been the strongest in his village, but after telling that story 50 times, you have to start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at some point he becomes the son of Zeus, right? I mean, yeah, totally. But I think that the bigger thing that we see right now is that a lot of pagans, a lot, are obsessed with their particular pantheon and they don't see beyond it, or they don't see beyond the gender lines.
Speaker 3:Or is it that they don't want to see beyond?
Speaker 2:them. I think it's that they just don't. A lot of human beings right. They're very rigid. Until we see it it's not real, right. Until we experience it it's not real. So the gods are the idea of them. It's so much greater than us. How could we ever experience that? How could we ever write? So we sort of get stuck in that idea. But it always strikes a nerve with me. It always kind of upsets me a little bit because I'm like it doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter. Call her whatever you want, call him whatever you want. I don't think they care.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's the point.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, yes, you might have to call it something you know, and you, we might only be communicating with a fraction of a fraction of the source itself, right, so we have to put something on there. We've got to put something between us and them Because, again to me, this is the same problem that we have with the whole ego and it, the ego, has to be formed to protect the id, which is nothing more than your soul that has no concept of how this world works.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Hence the reason why little kids are nuts.
Speaker 2:So nobody told them that they can't.
Speaker 3:Nobody told them that they can't, and they're still trying to figure this out. This is what causes that personality. I think this is the same process going on with the gods.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 3:But on a larger scale.
Speaker 2:How do you think people begin to move beyond it? How do you think they begin to move beyond this idea of a specific deity or a specific confine for God and goddess and to begin to see them more universally?
Speaker 3:When you're sitting there and you're dealing with and you're you're meditating, you're dealing with your actual soul, you start to realize okay, a lot of people mean you've discussed this when we're in that state, we don't necessarily feel our gender. I guess we don't feel one way or the other because it's a soul state. There is no gender.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's pure energy.
Speaker 2:My vagina plays no part in that moment. It's there, or whatever. It's there, or whatever I mean.
Speaker 3:I paint about as much attention as my hair, right now, yeah, exactly I mean, I'm meditating and I'm, yeah, again, this getting to this state, if you're sure to understand that this state is the same state with the gods, that these are not things where we're having to bring them down to our level Right, we're not moving up to their level.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:We have to accept that there is, that we have spiritual bodies that are just energy.
Speaker 2:You. It's so funny to hear you say some of this because it sounds very hippy. It does, but yeah, it comes across as almost Hindu there's.
Speaker 3:Let me make it even worse. What if I told you, in my head is not any of that energy can either be destroyed or that energy's got to go somewhere.
Speaker 2:Right, right, it just is, it just is.
Speaker 3:It's just our energy, mm. Hmm, it's got to go somewhere.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So again, this energy doesn't just when we die, it's got to go somewhere, and to me this has got to be that soul.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean this is also largely how I view psychics. People get all you know they can tell the future. No, they can't. No, they're reading energy differently than we are In essence.
Speaker 3:you're reading the fabric of fate, where the odds are leading leaning to, not where they're going to be.
Speaker 2:They're seeing time differently and a different scale than we can Do. We know why, no, but they can do it. And if they learn how to harness it, then, yes, outcomes suddenly seem magical. And, you know no, stradamus becomes who he is now, you know, but that's all it was.
Speaker 3:You got to remember. All this occult stuff always comes back to the same thing Magic is neither good or bad.
Speaker 2:It is just energy, it just is.
Speaker 3:We are nothing. Our souls are nothing more than energies. The gods are nothing more than energies.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know that's like us going into circle when we sit there and tell people the circle is not to protect us, it's to protect those things from us. We're the demons, we're the lower form of life compared to them. So I'm sure and again, this is always probably going to be a struggle in the human mind to grasp on to something that is greater than ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's that cosmic in nature, sure.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like you see on them through the wormhole. Oh yeah, where he talks about it. It is very hard for us to imagine living in a fourth dimensional reality. Oh yeah, yeah, because it's so far beyond us, right? And if it was like a two dimensional creature suddenly being in a three dimensional world would probably go insane, right? Same thing for us.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I can see that. I think it's something people need to sit with more, though they do, yeah, contemplate more, sit with more or even move towards that language that is more generic, even inside of our circle. Just because we are a Celtic temple of craft does not mean that we are all consumed with those Celtic deities. No, we're really not. We almost never talk about them outside of classes. No, yeah.
Speaker 3:No Other than the way we structure stuff. Yeah, and that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I can't remember outside of the charge of the goddess and reading particular names of the goddess from all over the map. I cannot remember the last time we called out Donu specifically.
Speaker 3:I remember one time within the past year.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:You weren't really there for that Fair. Okay, you were there, but you weren't there, gotcha, all right.
Speaker 2:That's fun.
Speaker 3:We were giving offerings to the goddess.
Speaker 2:There you go. Yeah, okay, that explains it. I was physically there, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's why you don't remember that. I think that was the last time, because I talked to Donu directly.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 3:I think I was the only one that did that, but that's just me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really do wish people would spend more time with it.
Speaker 3:I don't have a problem If you're going to sit there and tell me that you're following a certain pantheon and these are the people you pray, these are the gods you pray to, and whatever Sure, go for it. You need that connection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we all do.
Speaker 3:I just again. I do not see the reason to take a tool off the table For me to sit here. I know I've rubbed a lot of people wrong to refer to gods as tools, but why am I going to take wisdom and knowledge off the table just because I don't agree with religion?
Speaker 2:I need a double espresso for that one. Wow, that was nice. Let's get coffee. Okay, you feel like you used to have agentle heart. All right, I'm gonna read you something. Okay, the greater the achievements in science, the more mysteries are explained, the more questions are answered, the less need there is for a god to provide answers. This was in direct relation to religion and miracles mysteries, whatever you want to call them and modern man and what's gonna happen going forward. So when I heard that, my question became because I do think there's truth in that statement will there be any mysteries in the future? Will there be any left? Will science have revealed all there is to reveal?
Speaker 3:See, I find it hard to think of that because it seems like there will always be something else, because right now and again it might be the times in which we live. In all the questions that science answers, there always seems to be more questions behind it.
Speaker 2:True, and it may just be a deeper meaning or look at things. But I mean, we can look back over the last couple hundred years and go, okay, things that people thought right were miraculous, were mysterious, were in direct relation to creator. Now yeah, they're explained scientifically and we look at that and we go, well, they were dumb or, you know, they didn't have the same knowledge that we have now.
Speaker 3:Well, Satan, but that's a misnomer. Let's look at religions. Let's look at Buddhist.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Science already proven there are microscopic animals and stuff and viruses and water and all this other stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they live on us.
Speaker 3:They live on us and, again, some of them can make us sick. And if it's not done right, well, sure, all right. But to get the water to where it's safe for us to drink, we have to kill off these bacteria Right In the Buddhist practice, you're not allowed to kill anything. So again, so they don't believe that these microscopic animals actually exist, because that means that they are now killing something.
Speaker 2:That's interesting because, yeah, but I also think I mean the Buddhist faith, and not that I'm an expert by any means, but I feel like the situation with Buddha, and with I mean even Christ. You know a lot of the messiahs, if you will. They set a standard of impossibility, right, but it's not possible to exist and not kill or harm anything. Well, it's not.
Speaker 3:Well again. Well, we said Buddhist, but we still have the same problem with what is that Christian scientist?
Speaker 2:Christian science. Yeah, they don't believe in modern medicine. They don't believe, yeah, right.
Speaker 3:You're not allowed to do anything regardless if they have.
Speaker 2:Right, you pray your headache away. You don't take an Advil.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, but again we're seeing the same thing here. Is religions just going to stubbornly refuse to believe science when it starts to cross a certain Huh, when we're going down this line if they're going to solve the mysteries? I mean, I'm already seeing it happening.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, you got me thinking, because I mean, look, I absolutely know at least one devout Christian who refuses to believe the dinosaurs are real or real, they are, in her mind, propaganda or some kind of falsification Did she doesn't believe they ever happened. She believes the earth is 2000 years old.
Speaker 3:Right, that's yeah, that's, my father believes the same thing and that all the lizards and stuff were overgrown because the firmament and the home yard. We have the same thing. We don't want to believe science, we want to believe our religion. So again, here's where in the world I think you're going to have a problem in the future. Maybe not with paganism or witchcraft like we're talking about, because we tend to be a little bit more accepting.
Speaker 2:Well, but that's. But that's. Part of my point is that in that acceptance are we going to hit a place where we go there's nothing left, right, there's because we're seeing it now. Right, modern society is pulling away from religion. People are less and less likely to be part of an organized religious practice and part of what you see is like look, I mean, I know people on all ends of the spectrum. I have a friend who's an atheist, who you know will flat out Well, it's just, it's dumb. Religion is dumb, the whole thing is nonsense. But science first. You know all that, which is fine. But I'm just like oh shit, because we for a long time were considered right, witchcraft, witches were considered knowledge keepers, right, we had information, whether it be related to medicine, to astrology astrology, timekeeping, seasonal changes oh shit, the smithing.
Speaker 2:The very specific disciplines of jobs. Yeah, they the crafts, literally. Yeah, they were considered sacred knowledge that only got passed down in a specific way. Now what?
Speaker 3:Now what I mean. Yes, I think there is going to come a time where science explains everything, but I think a problem is is we don't look at religion in its proper context.
Speaker 2:Okay, what do you mean?
Speaker 3:Well, and I'm about to get all sorts of trouble. Oh boy, if we look at the relationship between man and woman all right, the real relationship. There, the majority of times, the man turns out to be the provider and it's the woman that injects the social aspects and responsibilities into the relationship.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:You're with me, I agree and social norms and stuff like this. This is religion's role in the bigger scope. It's that same thing of the way. It is our job to maintain social ethics and morals, not maintain knowledge and science Interesting. We're supposed to be controlling the social norms, but we don't anymore.
Speaker 2:It's mmm. That's fascinating, because then, when we get down to things like the preservation of craft and that very phrase, well, that's yeah. So what is it we're preserving?
Speaker 3:Right, we're preserving the ethics and the morals, like the ethics and morals of keeping your word, accepting responsibility, trying to maintain balance, following the laws of Lady Sheba. Yeah, this is where we're sitting there going. Look, if you want to live a good life, okay, it's fine that we have all this stuff.
Speaker 2:So it becomes more philosophical, right, and it becomes more about the individual. Well, I mean, it's not that it's any different now it really is. It's the individual's role in society, and are they living a fulfilled life both in and outside of said society, right? Hmm, interesting, it's very Henry David Thoreau, it's the transcendentalists and that whole movement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, again, when you start dipping your toes into the chaos, chaos is what you're going to get out. Hmm, because again, everybody thinks chaos is this wonderful thing they don't understand. Chaos is randomness for randomness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and everybody right now is obsessed with chaos, magic, which I'm like stop it which, again, we're still back to.
Speaker 3:If you understand chaos magic, there's no power there. Because it can be there, then it's not. Yeah, it is both there and not at the same time.
Speaker 2:Well, sure, but there are people who believe that it can be harnessed and that it can be directed, and the but then I'm like then it's not chaos.
Speaker 3:It's not chaos, it's not chaos, it suddenly becomes order.
Speaker 2:Right, it becomes orderly. So this is interesting, but you're right, because I mean, if you look at man as a chaotic being, religion strives to put some order in that into the chaos.
Speaker 3:Holy shit, it's about our behavior. It's about us, not about how we behave in society.
Speaker 2:So the mysteries then become internalized. Right the mysteries become about the individual and their growth and how they experience it. Right the understanding that when the equinoxes take place and day and night are balanced, these are the things we can anticipate for the coming season.
Speaker 3:But again, as we move into the future, and again, as brought up before, what are you going to do when we're on Mars? What are you going to do? When we're on other planets that don't have the exact same seasons and tidal forces we have here.
Speaker 2:Right, there's something else that potentially comes later. We don't know, we won't be here for that, but huh, I think we'd be here in some form, right. Well, it just makes me wonder what will paganism look like in a hundred years? Yeah, I mean because we think about it now and we go a lot of people who look at our religions and the various traditions. We use words like reclaiming, Right.
Speaker 2:We're going backwards, we're trying to go back in time and stay connected to something older, right? Yeah, I mean it's interesting to think about how far back our future pagans are going to go.
Speaker 3:Well see, here's what blows my mind when we're talking about this concept. I don't think Gerald Gardner ever started out to be. Quote unquote Gerald Gardner no, do you see what I'm saying? I don't think so. Again, I look around at like what the people we have now, who's going to be that person in 50 years from now? They're going to be like oh, everybody was listening to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, outside of Alistair Crowley, who was very calculated, anton LeVay, who again very calculated individual, and maybe Sybil Leak, I feel like everyone else, it just sort of happened. They didn't mean for it to happen necessarily, it wasn't an agenda per se. Now maybe their second generation it turned into that. But the majority of them know. But you're right. But now I mean we have Laurie Cabot and, let's be honest, a lot of the popular pagans right now. Some of them are pretty controversial and there's a lot to be said on both sides about what's happening, but none of them are really reinventing the craft. No, no, there's not a major movement. I think the closest we get is, interestingly, some of the work being done with Gay Witchcraft and.
Speaker 2:Gay Men's Magic and some of that, because that was largely unexplored.
Speaker 4:Right, there is a more man driven movement inside paganism more than what they're used to be.
Speaker 3:And this is a great thing, as long as we keep it moving forward.
Speaker 2:But I don't have any issue with it. Yeah, I mean. But outside of that, I do think that at some point and we're seeing a little bit of it, but still not enough I think there will be more diversity inside of Witchcraft. I think we will start to see more black people reclaiming their magical roots. I would love to see that. To be fucking honest, I really do have days where I'm like why are we so white? Why, why I get it?
Speaker 4:I mean I know it's migration.
Speaker 2:I know it's European.
Speaker 3:No, no, there needs to be deprogramming on this. I'm sorry. I have came to the conclusion a long time ago. This whole concept of race is a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, I know what you're saying, but I'm just looking at popular belief. So here we are, going all over the place. My issue with race is as follows that's not possible. We are all the same species, and if we are all the same species, then race is a misnomer, right, right, and it's like you can have a breed like a breed of dog, right, but they're all still dogs.
Speaker 3:Thank you, and again, if we were really different species, our kids would be hybrids and would not be able to reproduce. So again, that ends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, I do think in the future, race as we know it now will eventually be just abolished. It's just nonsense. It's nonsense, but culturally, let's look at it that way, okay, yes, I would love to see more black people involved. We have a lovely woman here in Charlotte who owns one of the major shops. She's a black voodoo practitioner. I think she's phenomenal. But I mean there's you know what about? I look at South America and I look at Latin Americans and that culture and I go when is that going to happen?
Speaker 3:I've been waiting to hear more of their legends. Yeah, it's starting.
Speaker 2:It's starting, it's lit, but it still hasn't gone full mainstream. You know, I always kind of get upset when I meet people who clearly, clearly lived somewhere where Christian missionaries moved in and took over.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think my favorite example of this is the Philippines. A lot of people that I meet who are Filipino and have Filipino ancestry, their families are Christian. And I go what were they before that? And everybody kind of goes, what do you mean? And I'm like, what were they before? A group of white people showed up and said Jesus is great and here's a bunch of free stuff and we're going to build you a well and hand you Bibles, but did you believe before that? Because that's what I want to see happen. There are so many small countries that Christianity, I think, kind of wiped out.
Speaker 3:Lord Min always told me Lord Min always talked about the missionaries who went up to the North Pole and talked to the Eskimos. Yeah, and the Eskimos were like trying to figure out how to go to hell, because a place that was warm all the time was great. Yeah, imagine those missionaries trying to untangle that.
Speaker 2:But it's the same thing. You know the Native Americans and the Inuits and you know it's exactly the same. They were Christianized, in a way, they were religiously colonized, and then you go well, shit, there are loads and loads and loads of, I'm sure, magical methodologies and mythologies that we have yet to see come into the mainstream light.
Speaker 3:How much did we actually lose during all this process? I mean, because they've been doing the same process all the way back to the British Isles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's probably some of it that's a lot older than that, I mean, but yes, and it's wild to think about what else is out there. So maybe that will be where some of this turns to. Maybe the mysteries will then be about revealing what was lost.
Speaker 3:Maybe I still always like to think there's always something else there.
Speaker 2:Well, realistically, until a god or a creator or a goddess or you know whatever form it takes I'm kind of gender neutralizing this right now until it shows up in the room and starts to tell us all of the things that we don't have answers to, then yeah, there's got to be something, because the reality is, death is the greatest mystery. Death is the one we have. No, we don't know, we don't know, we have no solution, and we never will, to that mystery.
Speaker 2:We don't know, we can speculate, all we want, yeah we can, but we have no idea, so that one we know for certain.
Speaker 3:There will always be at least one mystery. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Well, in that case, there will always be at least one, and for any witch striving to learn, that last mystery will always supersede everything else we do.
Speaker 2:Technically well, but technically it can be. There's two then. Yeah, because death is is the ultimate mystery, but so is life. I'm not talking about birth, I'm not talking about the, you know like no, yeah, all of the scientific things, the whole journey. Right. Where does the soul come from? What animates, right the thing, right. What is that? We still don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, Well, I think my philosophy. Brain cells are dead for today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely need more coffee, and I'm hoping that we have left people something to ponder over their next cup.
Speaker 1: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 lifetemposeminaryorg 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 days. So walk with me till morning breaks, and so it is the end of our days. So walk with me till morning breaks.
