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
Unmasking the Commercialized Occult
Are you ready to challenge the norms of modern-day spirituality? Today, we will peel back the layers of the 'buy, acquire, consume' mentality, and ponder its implications for the practices of craft, witchcraft, and paganism. Brace yourself for an exploration of how the essence of our traditions - making, growing, and gifting items for spiritual use - is being replaced by shallow, commercial interactions.
The maze of commodification extends into the realm of occult book publishing. Spiritual practices are often misrepresented in popular literature, seeming more focused on financial gain rather than providing readers with meaningful tools for spiritual growth.
As we conclude our journey, we mourn the diminishing focus on the religious aspects of our practices, replaced by a fascination with 'spells' and powers. We emphasize the importance of maintaining the integrity of our traditions and advocating for the preservation of the spiritual essence of our traditions.
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Music. Welcome to Pagan Coffee Talk. Here are your hosts, Lady Alba and Lord Night.
Speaker 2:So we are going to talk about the commodification of craft. Something that I have been noticing and that has been driving me absolutely barkers in our community is what I can only call the commodification of craft or witchcraft, or even paganism.
Speaker 3:I don't disagree with you. I go out online. Of course I'm hunting for subjects and stuff like that that we could talk about, and I'm sorry, there's at least once a week we have one of the mystery boxes.
Speaker 2:Social media is overrun by it, the internet in general. Right, it's all about buying, acquiring. I mean, look you and I remember back in the day when anything that a witch had or used on a regular basis, we either made it, it was given to us or we grew it.
Speaker 3:Don't you remember the looks you used to get when you sat there and said no, I bought my anthem.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and we were considered very modern for having done that.
Speaker 3:For done that yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, of course, our elders were like what do you mean? You didn't get out of forage and beat your own metal to death and temper it yourself.
Speaker 3:Well no, I remember Lord Men sitting there telling me when the farers were sort of doing their classes and stuff. There's a recipe in there on how to make paint special paint which they made and it took forever for it to dry in all, nine yards, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm kind of in that headspace right now of how did we become spiritual pack rats? Buy, buy, buy, consume. Oh, I need this and I need this and my altar needs this and I have to buy this. And, oh look, I've got 17 t-shirts that proclaim, you know, my faith and my other cars, broomstick and you know everything In this file box I have of tarot cards, yes, decks and decks and decks and decks and decks and I mean, okay, it was one thing right to have what we used to call occult stores, right which now have become more metaphysical or spiritual centers and a lot of communities, which, hey, that's great.
Speaker 2:I still love supporting those businesses, especially when they're locally owned, because they do create a hub for our community and they have local products. Yes, yes, but I mean when you know Will of the Witch is on Instagram and Etsy and you know whatever else what? Did you call it Will of the Witch you? Know her, you know when they're. I mean, it's just everything from right, the spell boxes and the potions, the lotions. Does everything we buy need to be spiritual in nature? Everything right, Does our shampoo need to have a mystical component?
Speaker 3:No, it really don't. But I mean again, like I said, I can understand buying shampoo from a local. An herbalist An herbalist making it whatever, but it doesn't have to. I don't need shampoo for cleansing.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I think it, we can agree. It is utterly out of control when you can walk into a TJ Maxx or a Marshalls and buy a ready to go love spell kit Right Off the shelf in a major retailer.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, and here's my question, how do you feel about these people, where I'll sit there and watch these people. They'll show you how to cast a spell and then, right at the end of it, they go. All the ingredients and stuff happens to be this low price at our store, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's there's other things that we're noticing too. So you know, I'm a big fan of heavy metal and hard rock and always have been. And look, it's nothing new for those genres and those bands and musicians to kind of align themselves with the fringe. But it's not the fringe anymore, right, and so you know. I remember back in the day it was a big deal if you had the anthrax t-shirt that was a pentagram.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But now it's like again, everyone's doing it and I'm going to give you the band in this moment who I love. I think they're great. Maria Brink, lead singer, is most likely begging of some sort. She's never come out and said what, but that's fine. But when all of their merchandise has, you know, some big giant pentagram on it and you know I've had friends say to me oh, you know, I saw this and it made me think of you and I'm like, thank you, I won't wear that. And it opens up the discussion of well, why not? I thought I thought you were a witch, I thought this was your faith. Well, exactly, it's my faith, not a fashion statement. No, it's not. I don't feel the need to display that 24 hours a day and out in public, and, you know, at the coffee shop at the grocery store and whatever.
Speaker 3:I bring, or at that business meeting or at that interview.
Speaker 2:Or, but to me it's again a lot of other people capitalizing on the faith or capitalizing on the statement that they think it makes. I don't know about you, but I'm not here for a statement. No.
Speaker 3:I'm not in that, Never was. Yeah, you know well, I mean, well, you got to remember we were, we were brought up until that whole entire hard and plain sight.
Speaker 2:It was hide in plain sight. But I also go OK. As a kid of the 80s and the 90s right, I was no stranger to the, to the goth Right Culture and everything that came out of that. I mean hell, I was definitely a part of it.
Speaker 3:Who us to go.
Speaker 2:But I never felt like again. I had to explicitly marry it with pagan items, symbols, things. We just wore a lot of black. We wore black makeup, we did weird things to our hair, we wore a lot of safety pins. Our parents really didn't like it.
Speaker 3:We read a lot of Anne Rice, but other than that, Again, but this was that whole entire, you know, going against the establishment.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, absolutely, and.
Speaker 3:I think here's where in the world we might be having. A problem is now. We have become the establishment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is really weird. It's really strange.
Speaker 3:You have become the man.
Speaker 2:But it's funny because I go out and I see younger people and I see kids especially, you know, and with all of their again, I say pentagrams mainly because that's the thing that always catches my eye, or their triple moon, goddess, you know that kind of thing, Right and I go oh my gosh, you're so cute and I'm like they're adorable and I just want to hug them and squeeze them and love them and put them in a little cage, but you know, in a good way, but but they're, you know, and they're adorable, but there's, I wonder, I wonder how many of them again recognize the faith component that's behind all of that.
Speaker 3:Could the marketing of our religion actually be nothing more than shot content?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and let's and let's be honest, it's a hell of a lot of marketing right now.
Speaker 2:I mean branding marketing it is everywhere and really, you know there's. There's taking again that step back and going how much do I need? Or what do I really need to perform this? I would hate for someone anyone out there to think, oh, I'm a terrible witch because I can't afford to buy this gigantic statue for my altar, or because I can't afford to buy, you know, all of these different crystals that that everyone says I need, right, that's awful. It was never about that.
Speaker 3:Well, we talked not too long ago. We did a podcast on the craft of craft of craft. Yeah, that means that we have to be hands on, hands on we. You have to be creative in the whole. Nine yards, all right. How many people has actually built their own?
Speaker 2:altar Not many.
Speaker 3:I mean, come on, I mean, when we're talking about this stuff and we're looking at and me and you were looking at stuff we have these altars okay, that are like two feet high.
Speaker 2:I think typically you know when it comes to this is a no, no.
Speaker 3:This causes you to.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, right, Because? So I mean, like what you said, okay, building altars, I think typically that's reserved for groups and and and covens and temples and places where you have a large workforce and you can afford to do it. But I still have the same altar that I had when I was 17 years old. It is a and it's funny it's a two foot high.
Speaker 2:I don't even think it's that tall, I think. Right, it's probably like 16 inches off the ground, and it is a small table that I founded, a thrift store. I took it home, I sanded it down, I cleaned it up, I painted it myself and I still have it Now. Do I still use it as an altar? No, it's decommissioned, for, you know, lack of a better way to put it. And was it? You know again, the tiny size and all of that?
Speaker 2:Sure, because back then I lived in an itty-bitty studio apartment. I had nowhere to put anything and, yes, I would get on the floor and I would sit cross-legged and I, you know, take up a yoga pose, and that's where I created Sacred Space at the time, right. But now again, you can, you can go on Etsy and buy any manner of thing. Now, don't get me wrong, they're beautiful, oh, they're gorgeous, and the craftsmanship going into some of these things is exceptional. But I feel like people really think, oh my God, I need to have that. No, your religion should not be based around a wish list of purchases.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, we would be just happy with an altar made out of cinder blocks and a piece of wood. I've done that too, and it's easy as yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's no metal.
Speaker 3:There's no metal.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, I've used just a slab of stone on a piece of wood as an altar I mean. So it's not just us right. Other faiths, I think, experience this as well, and Christian faith, and Christian faith and the Jewish faith have probably seen the most of this in modern society. Because as people evolve and as we well economically right. Status has changed. We do better, we make more money, we start to I don't know maybe become a little bit elaborate Right In some of our practices and some of our tools.
Speaker 3:Again, I don't have a problem with any of that. I just have this problem with when you go out onto Amazon and you look up and they have the witch starter pack.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I mean you're sitting back, going what?
Speaker 2:My question on that is who is it that determined that that is the witch starter pack, and why? And why? Because what gives you anybody right? The right to say, oh, this is absolutely what you need to start becoming a practicing witch? Bullshit, bullshit. You need what you say, you need Not what anyone else tells you you need. So it's a little bit mind-numbing. And again, that spiritual pack rat idea. Like I see some people where it's constant acquisition new robes, new atoms, new, new, new, always. And I'm like you know what. I have Jewish friends who have had the same mizuzah hanging from their door for 27 years. Because once you've bought one, why do you need?
Speaker 3:another one. Well, to me it's sort of like getting initiated Once you've done it once. Yeah, why do you have to go out and get initiated to 50 other?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Once is enough.
Speaker 2:And if it's taken away again, does that make you any less of a witch? You?
Speaker 3:know again, I'm still back to and I've always argued and always will. That is more of a mindset.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Then it is.
Speaker 2:But it can be a counterintuitive mindset when, again, economics, acquisition, marketing, branding is overshadowing the beliefs. Right, that's problematic, I mean. Look, I'll kind of wrap up in saying you and I remember the early days of Llewellyn publishing yes, and maybe even not the early, I think maybe the second decade I remember.
Speaker 3:I remember used to have to go to the bookstores to order the books because you couldn't order them directly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I lived in Walden books as a child which most of you probably don't even know what that is, but places like that, yeah, that's where, in Llewellyn's early days, there were maybe a half a dozen texts at any given time that you could purchase about craft, and a lot of it was people like the Ferraris and it was Silver, raven Wolf and Scott Cunningham.
Speaker 4:Right, those were the early days.
Speaker 3:Ray Buckland.
Speaker 2:Yes, ray Buckland, but now, holy mother, every Tom Dick, which and Jackass is out there writing book after book, after book, after book after book, and it's all marketing. And here's the thing if you're out there and you've read some of these more modern titles and you're kind of going, well, they all say the same thing. You're right, they do because it's the same book being repackaged or again rebranded and republished.
Speaker 3:My biggest complaint on all of that was you bought the Scott Cunningham solitary practitioner, then you got his advanced book yes, and then you saw reading it. It's the same thing as the first book, but just reworded slightly different.
Speaker 2:It is. But at least he also gave us things like herbalism and animal work. And look, I was never a big Scott Cunningham person. To be honest. I kind of pooh poohed Scott Cunningham for a long time because I thought it was too base, right, but he was doing a service for the community at the time. Some of these modern authors I mean sure they're giving us their perspective, but again, I really look at Llewellyn now as a publishing house and I go, it's just a moneymaker.
Speaker 3:It's just the money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, how many books on the spirituality of stones do we need? How many books on reading tarot?
Speaker 3:How many, how many books on candle magic? Yes, I mean, I'm sorry, love spells and meditation.
Speaker 2:I mean, at some point, guys, we have to kind of cut it off at the head and go and that's enough.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, that's just like you know these books that they do the correspondence on. You have all these correspondents, but it's great to have the books and the correspondence and all this other stuff, but until you do something with it, yes, but then what I see a majority of people doing is they'll buy these books read on and then they wind up on a shelf gathering.
Speaker 2:They do, and I mean, look, I'm no stranger to that, I have a massive collection of books. But but I think what surprises people is often when they see my library they see things like they see philosophy and they see mythology and they see a lot of psychology.
Speaker 2:They see people like Carl Jung and they and, and they look at that and they go, oh, that's not what I expected. And I go, yeah, because these books are much, much older and dive into specific topics that we can then use to further our faith, as opposed to a modern author just telling us, oh, sprinkle this on this and do this at this time of the moon, and do, and this will happen, maybe for you.
Speaker 3:Maybe I mean, but I mean, let's admit it out of all the books you mentioned, the most dangerous one that we know of is young, yes, and and many, many young pagans no pun intended.
Speaker 2:don't understand that. By the way it's spelled J U N? G. For those ones it's young yeah. And it's true. It's true, but that's no longer the focus. The focus is on these very gosh again branded attempts to get people to spend more money by dangling a carrot in front of them. That, oh, this is going to teach you some incredible thing you didn't know before.
Speaker 3:I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's frustrating, it's aggravating. I see the, you know, I see the, the young ins with their pub cap size Pentacles, and I'm like oh, ok, well, that's a choice, you know, but it's not. I don't think it's a choice I will ever make, because to me it just again, it, it continues to perpetuate that whole cycle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then it's more greed, it's more I need to find from what. I've seen I need to figure out a way to get more money from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're right, it's a lot of greed, it really is.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of great.
Speaker 2:I mean I remember, I mean you, and I have been going to the Carolina Renfest for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 3:True.
Speaker 2:And when we started going a million moons ago, it was Renaissance, sure, and it was always that, you know, fairy, folklore, mysticism, component to things, and but it was mainly what it was. It was Renaissance based. Right Now we see a lot of pagan introduction, we see a lot of religious items, symbols, and we're like wait, wait, wait a second.
Speaker 3:Well, and even make it even worse, is this is the stuff, and you see it, it's mass produced. Yes, it's just.
Speaker 2:And even if it is being made by artisans, people fail to realize those artisans are traveling across the entire country. In many cases Right, and so in a sense it is still mass produced. But but again it kind of became a. The more pagans came out into the light, the more witches came out and said hey, this is who we are, this is what we are, this is what we believe. Everybody else went awesome, let's sell you some stuff.
Speaker 4:Let's market, let's. How can we?
Speaker 3:make money off that group. Yeah, yeah Bingo.
Speaker 2:And boy oh boy, is it working. I mean, we can all look around and be accused of this. I mean, I know I can in many instances with whether it be the way I decorate my home or, you know, purchases that I make. I mean, look, I'm going to call you out, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the other day, I think, you went to Lowe's you got this adorable flag.
Speaker 4:I mean it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:It's great because, of course, you know, lord Knight has his bulldog and it is a bulldog which, sitting on a broom in front of a movie for Halloween, it's the cutest thing ever. I adore it. I think it's an.
Speaker 3:Of course they got you they got me, they got you, they got me.
Speaker 2:They didn't just get you on one front, they got you on two. We got the bulldog and the witch. That's amazing. I mean, they made that for you, right. And look, there are going to be instances like that where we have to go yeah, ok, you know what I need, to buy that, because that's just great, but but you're not looking at that flag going. This is going to be part of next full moon.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, we're close.
Speaker 2:It's just a cute decoration, yeah. So just bear that in mind. You know, if that is you and you are very entrenched in the lifestyle and the culture from that standpoint, hey great. And if that's where you choose to spend your money, that's great.
Speaker 3:But please let's not forget the faith behind this is a faith, it is a belief system, it is something we believe in.
Speaker 2:It is and it's so important. I told you about what happened to me when I went to that spiritual market recently. Yeah, and this was, this was here in town, this was in Charlotte. I went to a spiritual market that is, I think, a monthly event and they advertise with all kinds of you know, the cauldron, this or mystical moon, that, or, you know, every month has a theme that's very witchy in nature. And when I approached the owner or the organizer I should say and, mind you, this is just, it's an artisan's market, it's crafters and people that create and do, and it was everything from candles to stones, to potions, lotions, oils, artwork, I mean it was. It was a pretty wide array of items. But I approached the organizer and I said you know, we're a local group, this is, this is who we are, this is what we do. We would love to have a table and answer questions for people and talk craft. And she went no, she had no desire to actually have the religious aspect represented. No, none of them do.
Speaker 2:No, none of them do, and that blew my mind and I was staring at this girl who is easily half my age, going what? Because when I was her age I would have killed for that opportunity for somebody to say, hey, we want to come talk or educate or have a discussion. I would have thought that was amazing.
Speaker 3:I mean don't get, don't get me wrong. I'm still surprised, lord me, and never put a you know a distance thing between me and him when I first met him because I was all over him going no, teach me, teach me, teach me, teach me, show me, show me, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, but but now, no, it's. It's almost like the religion itself is the bad guy, right, and and nobody wants the structured component, the education piece, it's it's like nobody wants the ritual anymore.
Speaker 3:They only want spells and to manipulate their lives and those around them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:To me. I say it's more of a power thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:And, just like you know, most pagans I know we believe, just like they do, that those who seek power never get it.
Speaker 2:Amen to that.
Speaker 3:Especially real power. I think I'm out of coffee.
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 lifetempleseminaryorg 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.
