Unlock the mysteries of myth and anthropology with us as we journey through the fascinating tales deeply rooted in human culture. The profound narratives of the Lady of the Lake, Merlin, and the Picts, an early tribe of the British Isles, serve as a portal to understanding how beliefs, traditions, and lifestyles have sculpted the stories passed down through generations. We sift through the Bible, unearthing the power of shared belief and principles in preserving and disseminating ideas.
Fasten your seatbelts as we transition from ancient tales to dissecting tribal life and its evolution into modern society. Our journey traverses the intricacies of rituals and the series of practices and beliefs that have been both tamed and retained. We question the influences of ancient philosophers like Plato on modern society and draw attention to how their vision, or lack thereof, have formulated societal norms. As modern pagans, we emphasize the duty to honor and understand these myths, rituals, and beliefs, not just as a part of our faith, but as a reflection of our dynamic cultural heritage in today's era. Tune in for an enlightening rendezvous with the annals of human history, faith, and culture.
Join us on
Discord: https://discord.gg/MdcMwqUjPZ
Facebook: (7) Life Temple and Seminary | Facebook
Unlock the mysteries of myth and anthropology with us as we journey through the fascinating tales deeply rooted in human culture. The profound narratives of the Lady of the Lake, Merlin, and the Picts, an early tribe of the British Isles, serve as a portal to understanding how beliefs, traditions, and lifestyles have sculpted the stories passed down through generations. We sift through the Bible, unearthing the power of shared belief and principles in preserving and disseminating ideas.
Fasten your seatbelts as we transition from ancient tales to dissecting tribal life and its evolution into modern society. Our journey traverses the intricacies of rituals and the series of practices and beliefs that have been both tamed and retained. We question the influences of ancient philosophers like Plato on modern society and draw attention to how their vision, or lack thereof, have formulated societal norms. As modern pagans, we emphasize the duty to honor and understand these myths, rituals, and beliefs, not just as a part of our faith, but as a reflection of our dynamic cultural heritage in today's era. Tune in for an enlightening rendezvous with the annals of human history, faith, and culture.
Join us on
Discord: https://discord.gg/MdcMwqUjPZ
Facebook: (7) Life Temple and Seminary | Facebook
Welcome to Peg and Coffee Talk. Here are your hosts, Lady Alba and Lord Knight.
Speaker 2:So alright.
Speaker 3:Myth, but we need anthropology.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So If I said that right yeah. So myth is great, but if you want to understand a people and their faith, you need anthropology. So when I was a fledgling Fledging Fledgling which Neophyte.
Speaker 3:Neophyte yeah, Many, many, many yeah.
Speaker 2:You were very keen on pointing out all of the myths and legends that are bullshit. Well, thank you, yeah, and I think one of the ones that shocked the class that I was in was, of course, merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, and it was completely made up. Right and very few people, I feel like, know that the Mists of Avalon, which is a phenomenal book, and Wonderful movie and. Same thing. It's all the Lady of the Lake, right yeah?
Speaker 3:I mean, don't get me wrong, there are probably certain aspects of this story, sure, that used to be myths Well In the ancient times. That got sort of weaving into this.
Speaker 2:Well it's. It's what we know about a lot of biblical tales. It's what we know about a lot of mythology. It was originally based on something, some maybe real event or piece of information that they wanted to distribute to the populace. But you know, they didn't have CNN, no.
Speaker 3:So Well, again you have the Lady of the Lake, which to me is a reference to Donu, who is actual water.
Speaker 2:But the idea becomes right.
Speaker 3:But the idea then becomes the Lady of the Lake.
Speaker 2:But you had to make stories interesting oh. God you had to make them catchy. You had to like the brothers Grimm, right, you didn't want children to talk to strangers and walk off into the woods. You got to make it something to hold their attention.
Speaker 3:Because kids don't listen to lectures. No, they listen to stories.
Speaker 2:And if those kids grow up believing or those, those legends, those stories, what do they do? They tell them to their kids, who tell them to their kids? Who keeps on keeping on? But what I found, I guess, interesting early on was that understanding that we have to kind of take a look at the myth and then go what came before it, what's underneath it. You were the first person to introduce me to the pics.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:I had never even heard the word picked. I was like what in the hell is this? And the fact that we and if you don't know what it is, go look it up. I'm not going to ruin that part for you, you figure it out. But but right, elves, fairies, sprites, brownies, what else?
Speaker 3:Oh, brownies possibly leprechauns, leprechauns, all those change lanes are all connected to a group of people, a tribe of people known as the pics.
Speaker 2:Who were an early inhabitants of the British shouts.
Speaker 2:And I was like are you freaking, kidding me? Like I had never heard of these people. And so, of course then I mean, part of it was my studies. I had to do some research on them. But I took it a little bit further and what I realized was I was like OK, so now I'm studying people and to get a better understanding of how they lived and their faith as a result of that, and you know, in talking to a friend, she was like oh yeah, you're studying anthropology. And I was like the hell, what? Because I never made that connection. And I was like, oh my God, that's exactly what it is. Yes, so you effectively become an archaeologist of people, of people, and start looking at who, the what, the why and the when, and then the myths start to make an awful lot of sense.
Speaker 3:Because once you are sort of to understand how people live their lives, it's one thing for us to sit here. Me and you both come from a farming background.
Speaker 2:You more so than me, but yeah, I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's different when you're living in that lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:OK, it's different when you're there. Hence the reason why a lot of these anthropologists do that, where they're going to these older, these tribes that have never had contact. Oh, where they, where they dress and act and behave and do exactly what they do, so they don't mess with the culture.
Speaker 2:Even in modern times. So there's still. People are fascinated with the gullah of South Carolina, that coastal region where you have this, this these people that are like a native tribe and they are so insulated from modern life. They're still doing everything the way they did it hundreds of years ago, and this is taking place now, in 2023, and people are still going to study to learn to understand about them, their language, their call. They have a whole language and people are like what in South Carolina.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, this is like. Yeah, I mean, this is no different than the.
Speaker 2:Mennonites yes, the Amish, I mean yeah.
Speaker 3:We're talking about the same thing here. Now again. What I always found interesting on myths and legends is if you don't know what in the world you believe, you don't see those, you don't see those myths or those lessons in those myths. If you say that again, if you don't know what you believe in I can read a myth, like you know we're very big ponderance of keeping your word Right, so I can see that a lot in the myths that we tell.
Speaker 3:If I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't necessarily say it I see, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I mean, it's what I think most of us do. The Bible is a great example of this Right. People take from it certain passages or certain ideas because that's a principle or a tenet of faith that they want to share.
Speaker 3:To share, yes, because they believe so strongly in it, and they believe that this passage illustrates what they believe the best.
Speaker 2:Right and then that gets spread Absolutely. I totally agree with that.
Speaker 3:And I think this is part of how myths are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you also have certain aspects of myth that were very practical for the time, exactly. So we, as modern pagans, have a little bit of a duty to understand the difference, so that we are practicing our religion in accordance with what we do actually believe and what is applicable to us today. So here's my best example on this, and I can't believe I'm going to use Chris Rock as an example. But, why not?
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:This is from an old, old special of his where he breaks down the reason why, biblically, the Jews were told not to eat pork and why pork became taboo. And he was like, yeah, because if all of a sudden your elders and your leaders were like, man, everybody's eating the pork and getting sick. Something's going on. And we need and it's really. We know it's, we know the pigs are responsible. We just don't know how to get people to stop eating the pig.
Speaker 2:And all it takes is one guy to go. I got it. Tell him, god said don't do it. Don't eat the pig, and so then the swine becomes right right banned.
Speaker 2:And there you go. And then you have generation upon generation upon generation, no pork. And he said in that special today for and I don't remember what year it was, but you know, whatever it's, twenty twenty three, if you were lucky enough to have a pork chop put in front of you, bite the shit out of that motherfucker. Thank you, because it's not the same logic.
Speaker 3:Well, no, the reason, the reason most people believe it is because there is a particular bacteria and stuff and if you do not cook it completely properly, yes, it will make you sick, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's what we now know about Seminole and E coli and all of the different, you know, foodborne illnesses that can really fuck us up.
Speaker 3:But back then, they didn't know that Well again. Hence, like the reason, like you were talking about with Jewish people, the separation. There's a lot of Jewish people that have two refrigerators.
Speaker 2:Yes, the Orthodox? Yeah, absolutely there's. There's a lot of that, I mean, and I still I have. My Jewish friends are divided right down the middle. Some of them are like give me all the bacon, and some of them are like, oh, I can't have that when we clean, because there's pork in it, because when we cleaned houses we've had a few Jewish or which some people actually had like in your sit back on you almost have like two different kitchen?
Speaker 2:Yes, and they do, they do. I had a friend who worked in a Jewish nursing home and there were there were different refrigerators and if a staff member put their lunch from home in the wrong refrigerator, the rabbi had to be called in to bless, cleanse and consecrate everything before any of the residents could eat. It was. It was a big, big deal and I mean, hey, again, not, you know, not trying to tear apart anybody's beliefs, and you know that's fine, but again, it's the why. Why is it like this? Where? Where is the? You know? Do we really believe that God came down and said don't eat the pork?
Speaker 3:Or do we believe people kept on getting sick when they eat the pork and they were saying, right, we got to stop this, right.
Speaker 2:Historically. We look back and we can see it, we can document it, we can look and go.
Speaker 3:I mean because again you got to remember a lot of people forget tribal life was on the edge at all times, always always All right.
Speaker 2:All it took was one disease, one shit. A case of diarrhea could wipe out hundreds of people.
Speaker 3:I mean because again diarrhea going through and just just. Even if it was just the hunters, yes, but again you got the hunters down for like two or three weeks, not bringing in fresh meat and that's a problem.
Speaker 2:That's a problem. And again, there's that's anthropology, that's that understanding of why people did what they did when they did it, and when we look at that throughout history, we see all these little components of every religion's belief system that was influenced by this Exactly. So, as modern pagans, we have to go. Well, okay, gosh, I'm trying to think of like like one of the Greek myths or the Roman myths that otherwise would be like I'm like a major influence on our lives. Okay, bacchus, bacchanalia, oh Right, so so the Roman orgies that were so popular? Okay, now, now again I go. Okay, did the Romans just want to get a little freaky? So they were like Bacchus said it's cool, let's do this. No, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Consider he's supposed to be the god of wine, the god of wine.
Speaker 2:Yep, they get a little intoxicated yeah so I mean, and being Italian myself and coming from a long line of wine drinkers, I can see where first you got drunk and then you went. This guy is great.
Speaker 3:Like Bacchus is our dude.
Speaker 2:This seems like a wonderful idea, but but Bacchanalia as a celebration in modern society, that's some risky shit. Sti's, right Diseases, I mean infidelity, pregnancy there's so many things that can be an issue that you know what. The practice got abolished a long time ago and I don't think that there's too many people out there right now who are going. Man, I really wish we could bring back Bacchanalia like you know, like pining over the lost ritual.
Speaker 3:Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Now I'm going to say this but we do have Mardi Gras. We do have Mardi Gras, you're right.
Speaker 2:We have Carnival, we have, we have other things, but they're tamer.
Speaker 3:They're tamer by comparison. But you know what I just want you to think? You just refer to Mardi Gras as being tame, I mean compared to what I have read about the Romans you know it's pretty frequent time you know.
Speaker 2:And then there's slavery is another one right. There's stories throughout mythology of slavery Come on, we know that that's wrong. We know that you even have.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, as far as that goes even in the old days you had philosophers like the Roman, the great Plato and all who did not, who could not envision a world without slavery?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and, and we've again, we've evolved. We've evolved so far past that, right, that we have to look at some of those things skeptically. And again, I think it's funny because pagans are very quick to do it with the Bible, right? Right, we're very quick to point out, like well, in Deuteronomy and that's bullshit. And that's not, and then you know no.
Speaker 3:And don't give me time on the she bears.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're very fast to kind of be assholes about the Christian tenants, but then when it comes to our own, we're not stopping to go. Oh yeah, that's a little messed up.
Speaker 3:Maybe, maybe. I mean. I mean really, you got to keep a boom and you got to get into a bag and be beat to death.
Speaker 2:That's it I mean. And then people wonder why there's still the sacrifice of animals, why that's still such a bit, because back in the day it was necessity. It was absolutely how you survived. And, yes, you had a harvest, you had a slaughter, you thanked the gods, you spilled the blood. We don't have to do that anymore.
Speaker 3:I'm going to do this way and I could be wrong here. There was a lot of things that our priests and priests saw in society that were bad.
Speaker 2:We had to put a good spin on Correct Because it had to get done Of course I mean let's, let's look at the Maple, right, right, how did we go from dancing around the big penis and and what we're basically coming of age children going off and fornicating to now what is little kids dancing around a light pole with a bunch of ribbon?
Speaker 3:Exactly Because it had to, because we because we needed to bring these subjects up to the kids going away. Here's what's going to be happening.
Speaker 2:Yes, and can we still celebrate the Maple, and can we still have that as part of Beltane and May Day festivities? Of course we can, but we're not. We're not doing it the way they did it. No, no, no.
Speaker 3:There's not always a happy time at the end of our no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Um, just, you know Burning man and you know Wicker man, that whole thing I'm like. You do realize that once upon a time it was filled with people and it was lit on fire.
Speaker 3:Well, she, I mean just the guy that they found buried at Stonehenge, that was strangled, hit and throat cut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's so many tales of the warriors being found with all kind, I mean even the Pharaohs. Right, they were buried with their dogs, their kids, their slaves, their. Why, I mean, can you imagine, like well, my husband's dead. Okay, I guess it's my turn. Like you, everything he had went with him.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, there was, like you know I forgot which culture it is but they believed if your head wasn't attached to your body, you couldn't rest well. So they would always decapitate all their enemies before they buried them.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's, that's fun.
Speaker 3:And that's how they found out that there were enemies, because the head would always be somewhere, be somewhere else, yipes, yeah, I forgot about that one, that's true.
Speaker 2:But again, these things turn into other stories and if we don't pick them apart, we just we can't, just blindly follow them, we can't, we can't just read the mythology and go well, yeah, I, you know, I follow the Greek pantheon and traditions and I, you know, I consider myself dianic. Well, that's great. But you also have to apply that to modern society, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean again, we don't go through a lot of that. I do not think any modern woman in Western society is going to go into the bleed nuts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think so I don't see that happening. No, no, I really I don't. I don't see that happening either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right, I mean maybe I, but like I mean, nobody has a fear that your secretary is on her monthly cycle is suddenly going to endow the computer with special properties to where nobody else could use it but her, but at the same time you have retreats right All over the country where people do sometimes engage in these kinds of things that are very archaic, and it's like, why?
Speaker 2:What benefit are you actually getting from it? Oh, you know, yeah, I'm going to go into my cycle, so I'm going to go spend seven days in the woods in a yurt. Okay, okay, why.
Speaker 3:Why what?
Speaker 2:purpose. Does it serve? Now you know, if you just want to go on a meditation retreat, knock yourself out Right, but yeah, and go get a massage.
Speaker 3:I mean Exactly, I mean come on.
Speaker 2:you know, have a piece of cheesecake. I mean you don't have to go to those extremes, that's a bit much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but again something we don't actually practice, but again it is part of our mythology and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. It is so, please, please, if you're following a particular pantheon Greek, norse, egyptian, roman, native American, celtic what else are we? I mean the tip of the iceberg, right, sumerian, whatever it is do your anthropological diligence and read about the people. I know it may seem like it's a little boring, guys, I'm at it.
Speaker 3:It is, I mean, some of some of these papers read about, like you know, trying to eat sandpaper.
Speaker 2:Of course, because it's like written by some professor from Columbia University back in 1962, when you're like, but it's, but it is necessary. It is necessary to have a full understanding, otherwise we are no better than anyone else, just blindly following some text.
Speaker 3:I think I'm out of coffee, damn.
Speaker 2:I got to switch to decaf, maybe.
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.
Speaker 1:And so it is the end of our day so walk with me till morning breaks.
Speaker 4:And so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks.