The Unyielding Spirit of a Wiccan Community's Growth

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When Lord Lugh abandoned the pews for a path less trodden, he didn't just step into the unknown; he leaped. Our latest episode ushers you through the corridors of spirituality, where Lord Lugh recounts the birth of the Circle of Light, a testament to the transformative power of faith and the courage to follow one's own convictions. With his captivating narrative, we trace the bends and curves of a journey that begins with traditional Christianity and culminates in a self-directed, spirited practice, resonating with those who seek truth beyond convention.

Feel the pulse of a community challenged yet unyielding as we share the remarkable tale of a Wiccan temple in Greenville, SC. Their transparency and determination bridged the gap with local law enforcement, turning skepticism into acceptance and allowing spirituality to flourish in grand expression. However, not all victories come without their shadows. We delve into the complexities faced when faith intersects with professional life, spotlighting the temple leader's abrupt career setback and igniting a conversation on the broader implications of religious identity in the workplace.

Finally, we celebrate the human spirit's indefatigable quest for growth and connection. This episode honors the evolution of the Pagan community, from personal struggles to communal triumphs, weaving through tales of activism, shared sanctuaries, and the enduring bonds formed within 'Carolina Pagans with a Purpose.' Join us as we honor the departed, forge alliances with Life Temple and Seminary, and reflect on the manifold hues that paint the ever-expanding canvas of inclusive spirituality.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to Piggin' Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. Now here are your hosts, lady Abba and Lord Knight. Well, hello, lord Lou, how are you today?

Speaker 3: 0:33

I'm doing great. Hope you are.

Speaker 2: 0:35

I'm doing fine. I'm so glad to have you on here. I would like you to tell your history through craft. Okay, well, that's gonna be a mouthful.

Speaker 3: 0:50

Now, way back in the day, in the 70s, I was a little church fella and I went to church a lot. I had a really screwed up, dysfunctional family that I was raised in and I went to the church seeking solace and peace. I got a little zealous. I ended up going to three different churches at once. I went to church Monday through Friday once a day. I went to church twice on Saturday and I went to church three times on Sunday.

Speaker 3: 1:31

I was going to a Pentecostal church, an all black fire baptized hole in this church, and I worked with and volunteered with a Bible deliverance evangelist that went town to town in tents and community centers and auditoriums, and so that's kind of where I got my spiritual start. I needed some kind of balance because my life was just in shambles Even though I was just like 18, 19, 20 years old. I was just not in a good place, but that really helped me. It got me out of my comfort zone. I started in the Baptist church when I found the more what they called the full gospel church. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:24

Became more of an experience, not just showing up for church Right? That part intrigued me. The more I studied, though, the more I got involved, become more aware of church history. Then I kind of it kind of scared me away. I thought, well, but most people don't know so much of the history of the church. You know how they decided when Jesus was born, how they decided when they would celebrate his Holy Day or whatever.

Speaker 3: 3:03

Right. It either had pagan undertones or it was just downright a lie either way. And then, when I got to studying and realizing that I didn't know anybody that followed the teachings of Jesus, everybody I knew followed the teachings of Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament and I thought, well, I'm not going to be a Christian, I'm going to be a Paulist, if I'm going to be anything. But the more I studied about Paul, I thought, oh my God, he was a piece of work too. Yes, he was so.

Speaker 3: 3:42

I began looking elsewhere. I had a cousin that was also in the church and he and his wife and me and my wife Barbara decided we were going to go on a mission to try to find some spiritual truth that was not mired up in the hidden history of the church that we were all a part of. And so we began. In our only way of knowing how to deal with spiritual issues, we prayed and we openly said I don't know who I'm praying to, but if there is a creative force, I need guidance. And so that was what we did, and we prayed and we meditated and things were starting to be revealed. Of course, this was before the internet. This was in 82. Right Before the internet, and you couldn't just go to the library and pick up a book on Wicca, and if you picked up something, it was from the perspective of the church, yes, and you couldn't hardly find anything even in the stores other than, like tarot and astrology. You know, stuff that was older practices, but not religion based. Right.

Speaker 3: 5:06

And so. But we kept praying and we kept asking for guidance and we were encouraged to create sacred space and create a circle and do our magical workings or our prayers or whatever we were doing. Because, we didn't know what we were doing. We were going to do it there. Right.

Speaker 3: 5:31

And because of that we called it circle of light, because we created the circle and we sought the light. We were self taught, but more than that I guess we were spirit taught. And so we just kind of did our thing, me and Barbara and my cousin Ricky and his wife Nancy, and it worked well. I mean, when we did stuff it happened Right. We decided well, first of all, we didn't know anything about no law or three, no Wiccan read, never even heard of Wicca, and so we were just kind of messing around and we decided that we wanted to do a spell. And reason we wanted to do a spell because we wanted to buy a big rent, a big old house so we can all live together. And so we went to this random house and we said, oh my God, that's a wonderful house, let's live by her. And so we parked the car on the side of the road and we walked up into the yard and we picked up a couple of little rocks to three acorns and sticks. We took them home, we put it on our little makeshift altar.

Speaker 3: 6:47

This was on the weekend I don't remember the actual day and within a week from doing it we were moving in. This was a house that had three families living in it. It was a huge 16 room house. It used to be a boarding house for the teachers of Parker High School in Greenville and we went, we moved in. They give us a rent for $60. We were very surprised that we got to come in like that, but that's how it worked.

Speaker 3: 7:21

And we created a little two ritual rooms, one for me and Barbara, one for him and his wife, and but we practiced together, we did magic together. Eventually we closed circle of light and me and Barbara moved out. They were having some family issues. They ended up splitting up so we kind of went on our own way. Later we got involved with Lord man and Gwydian Foxfire and we created a coven with them called United Fellowship and that was based on what we already knew and we began taking the Gavin and Devon Frost witchcraft course from correspondence in the back of an old I think it was like a detective magazine or a crime magazine. I remember Lord man saying something about that.

Speaker 3: 8:18

Yeah, in the back of something Right, some kind of old magazine. There used to be romance magazines, detective magazines and crime magazines and they were always have article about the frost and add since the 60s. Yeah, anyway, we decided we were going to charter and actually have a church. At the time there was a representative from North Carolina, jesse Helms, who was trying to get a bill passed through Congress that no one that was involved in a cult religion would be allowed to be considered a religion. It couldn't be tax exempt, it couldn't be acknowledged as a real path.

Speaker 3: 9:09

Eventually that got knocked down and he kind of lost all his momentum and they made the decision and announced it on the news on Sauen, which I thought was absolutely hilarious when we incorporated because of what was going on, we didn't want to say that it was a Wiccan church because we knew that we wouldn't be accepted if that passed through. So the charter we got, we kind of we didn't want, we just kind of give it to them what they could understand, okay. So we said that we practiced and believe in the way that Jesus taught, but not necessarily Paul, and that the only thing that Paul ever said that supported us was that first Corinthians, chapter 12, I think it is. It talks about the gifts of the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit are basically the same thing, which is due.

Speaker 3: 10:18

And so that's what we said, that we practice those first Corinthians chapter 12, gifts of the Spirit. And it passed and we got through, got our charter. It wasn't officially a Wiccan church but we were trying to cover our basis and stay within the legality of it, so we did incorporate. We were studying their correspondence course from the Frost through the mail, but later we found that all those lessons were in a book called the Wiches Bible and getting more understanding and more connected with community outside of the area here we realized that there was a big stink stirred over them, calling their book B Wiches Bible, as if it was the only way.

Speaker 3: 11:10

But that's where we started and we got involved in that. We did not kick out the beliefs and practices we had. We still, you know, use them and connected with them, and we just kind of made it more eclectic in what we practiced. I guess this was in the mid 80s. Our first group was in. Our first practice was in 82. So the first, I think that was in the in the mid 80s.

Speaker 3: 11:41

Then come the 90s, and in the 90s we connected with a group called Raven's Cry Temple and it was meeting at a local, first Greenville's only and first pagan bookstore at that time, rainbows and Moonbeams, and so they started having crystal awareness classes, which ended up drawing a lot of people that were interested in pagan studies, and the leader of the group at that time decided he would start having coven meetings or coven classes or whatever. And when he did he invited us to come and we did and it was okay, but it was. It was kind of confusing. First of all we had never heard of Wicca. We had never heard of British traditionalist Wicca, and so it was a whole new ball of wax, but the person who was supposed to be teaching it didn't know any magic at all. But they could write a ritual, beautiful ritual.

Speaker 3: 12:53

So we tried to incorporate that ritualization into what we were already doing. He wanted to have mass initiations where you invite everybody, you know, and you'd invite everybody and you would initiate everybody. And I went to an event one night and he had like close to 60 people there to be initiated people he didn't even know. And I told my wife, I said I'm not going to do it. Well, I took my happy ass home and so later he asked why we didn't go and I told him and he said, well, we can do y'all separate and it'll be different. And I said, well, okay, let's do that.

Speaker 3: 13:40

So we had ours at the next full moon, and it was at a natural spring, inside the spring house called Chick Springs in Greenville, off-wade Hampton Boulevard, and when we were in there, everybody was arming and in the background we could hear singing throughout the initiation. And so somebody went outside the house to look and see if there was any. There wasn't, and it was not even a house. It was like a mound that was big enough for you to walk into and stand up, but just barely overhead, and then there was benches or whatever to sit down, and the well was in the middle, and so that's where we got our initiation and we began to work our way up. There were people who got disillusioned in the way the group was run and everybody left the group. Okay.

Speaker 3: 14:44

Including myself. After a couple of months he contacted us again and he wanted to talk about all of that, why it didn't work and all that. And I said, well, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 14:55

I couldn't tell you other than and then I gave him my critiques. And then after a couple of months he said can we go through getting your initiations up and I will turn the coven over to you? And I said, oh. I said, well, I didn't really want to run, okay. And so that's what happened. And we did, and we stayed and we went through the ranks and got initiated up to our third and then we became the priest and priestess of the group. Eventually, due to some irresponsible behavior, he ended up not remaining in the group and so he went on his merry way.

Speaker 3: 15:47

We decided that since now there wasn't a question about the legality of occult religions. So we thought, well, we'll go through this again. We will go ahead and charter as a Wiccan organization. So 90, I think it was 90 or 91. We chartered as the first Wiccan temple and seminary in South Carolina. We did the paperwork on a Thursday or Friday night and blessed it and mailed it on whatever night. That was Thursday or Friday night. Monday in the mail was our charter. It had to go to Columbia, get checked, get approved and sent back, and it was back on Monday Time. Space was out the window. So once we became an actual church then.

Speaker 3: 16:58

Well, first of all I would like to say I have never been in the broom closet. I just did it and just didn't worry about it. We started having public ritual in my backyard in a neighborhood no fence, had no trees, had no blockage you could see my yard from three streets and the neighbors were not so thrilled. So we had a big ball. That was a mixed race neighborhood and when they saw a bunch of white people and white roads it really unnerved neighbors. So then we started trying to incorporate colors into our roads so that we wouldn't have a riot on the street over something that nobody understood what was going on. So that's when we our very first open public ritual. We had not even got the circle cast and the cops showed up. So I thought, oh boy, this is going to be fine. So luckily I had my charter on my altar and I just walked to the front yard with the charter and I said can I help you? And he said, well, we got some calls. And I said, well, maybe this will clear it up. And he handed in the charter and he read it and he said, oh, and he just got back in the car and left and I thought, well, that wasn't quite as hard as I thought it would be, and but if I had not had it I'm sure that could have not been so wonderful.

Speaker 3: 18:55

But at that time Greenville City and Greenville County both had an investigator and I lived in the county but I was what they call city annex. It was like the end of the street that I was Right. One end was city, one end was county. So they both contacted us. They were interested in knowing more, so they came out and asked questions. They asked could they come to a ritual? And we said yeah. They asked could they video the ritual and show it to their dispatchers and their officers? And we said yeah. And then they asked for representatives of the temple to come to the law enforcement center and do a presentation, and so we said yeah.

Speaker 3: 19:42

From that point on they supported us in everything we did. When the neighbors called and said they're doing this, they're doing that the neighbors would get a lecture on Wicca If they called that the second time, the police did come out to their house and get a lecture on Wicca. So the neighbors just gave up on it and after they thought they'd done all they could do. I said, okay, now we can put up a privacy fence and plant some trees, but I didn't want to make it look like we were hiding. Then they think we had something to hide for. So we had bigger and more elaborate rituals and crowd 60, 80, 100 people. It just kind of got crazy. But it was the only place around that was doing open public rituals and we were doing it for all the sabbots. So the police got involved. They were supportive and then I got a call from Greenville News and they wanted to send somebody out to interview about the Coving and I thought, oh Lord, I had a hair on the back of my neck. Goes up. I'm like this is kind of scary. But I said, okay, all right.

Speaker 3: 21:00

And the more I got to talking to the guy, I found out that he was Buddhist.

Speaker 3: 21:04

He'd been into the South for a short period of time. The whole time he was here, people were always beating him over the coals over not being a Christian. Where do you go to church? And he said it was refreshing to be able to write a positive story about something that wasn't an organized mainstream religion, and that was what his zeal was about. And so he came out and he took pictures, took pictures of us in robes, horns, athens in hand, and gave our real names. It was kind of enlightening. But in addition to that, we told him about our dealings with the police and things like that. Well, they contacted the police and got a really positive story. Okay, they also contacted Clemson University and talked to a history professor that did a class called the Witch Crays of the 16th and 17th century. And then he contacted a religion professor at I think it was USC, columbia, and they had nothing but good things to say, not about us, particularly because they didn't know us. Right.

Speaker 3: 22:25

From the historical part of what we told them. They were supportive of that and so they wrote a really, really big article. It was on three different pages of the Greenville News and it started out on the front page of the Greenville News with pictures. And I went to work that next day, oh, Lord.

Speaker 3: 22:53

And where I worked there was a newspaper box outside the door. I was walking in to clock in. I see myself peeking out of the news box. I'm thinking, oh my God. I thought how the hell am I going to deal with this? But I went on into work. I thought well, here we go. Not one person all day long mentioned it, which I thought was really bizarre. They just smiled and nodded and never had any trouble there. But then we started getting.

Speaker 3: 23:27

Since we weren't in the broom closet to begin with, we thought, well, we'll just throw caution to the wind. So we started doing all kinds of stuff. We did an adopt a highway. We would pick up all the garbage, which is what you're supposed to do, yeah, but we wouldn't just do like you're supposed to do. We took all the garbage back to my house and we dumped it all in the circle and the whole coven sat around like a bunch of vultures and we picked through every piece of it and anything that could be recycled or reused. We picked it out and we sent maybe four or five bags out of 30 or 40 to the landfill. We were able to recycle the rest of it.

Speaker 3: 24:20

Then we started doing in house classes in addition to all the sabbots being open. Then we created a correspondence course and then we created a newsletter and we started selling it at the local pagan bookstore. And then we started doing newsletter swaps with other newsletters throughout the country and sold a few subscriptions through that. We joined this group called the Wiccan Pagan Press Alliance, which is like the Associated Press for Pagan Publications. It was in the 90s.

Speaker 3: 25:03

I don't think it's even there now, but anyway that we got involved in that. Well, this was just more than my new job that I could stand. And so I got a certified letter telling me that I couldn't come back to work because I had been put in a as needed basis position from my full time position and there was no explanation other than that I wasn't allowed on the premises until they called me. And now that letter came in the mail a day that I had already gone to work, and so the supervisor pulled me off the floor and said oh, I was working in a psychiatric hospital too, but anyway, they called me into the office and one of what I was doing there and I'm like well, I'm here because I'm scheduled and I work here. And they said so, you don't know. And I said I don't know what. And at that time the door opened and somebody said Ken, you got a phone call. So I went to the phone. It was my wife and she said you got a certified letter from the hospital. And I said, ok, well, what is it? And she said well, I didn't know. And I said well, open it. And it said the same thing that they were telling me, and so I said so what's this about? And she said there's no explanation.

Speaker 3: 26:38

So I went back in the office, I talked to the lady and she wouldn't give me an explanation. But she said are you wearing a pentagram right now? Which I was, but it was inside my shirt. I said I am, but what's that got to do with this? And she just started him, and then Han and stutter and I said, oh, that's what's. And so I thought wow. And so they said but you could still work here, but you could only come in when we have an opening in the schedule and somebody needs Replace or, you know, there's a hole or there's some issue or whatever. And I'm like, okay, after telling me that, to take my name out of the Rolodex on all the units so nobody could call. But luckily I had enough friends and support in the hospital that they were calling me every day I was getting overtime, I was there and they were not happy with that, I can promise you. But it was their rule.

Speaker 3: 27:49

And so Then they started all this, just playing the head game you know where you have to do this if you're gonna stay a boy and you have to do that and just kind of making it difficult and so I just played right along and I happened to be talking to the lady from the Wiccan Pagan Press Alliance on the phone and she said, well, something's got to be done. And I said, well, okay. I said whatever that means. I said I agreed with that. I said, magically we're working on it and she said, no, she said we're gonna get this done right now. She said write up this whole story and send it to me. I'm like, okay, well, I did. And she, I put the people in the administration's name, phone number, address and whole chicken caboodle of all of it, and so she made that into an article and she sent it and had it attached to every Pagan publication in.

Speaker 3: 28:58

America and Europe and requesting letters of support be sent to me and letters of complaint be sent to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to the hospital. And they said any of the letters they want to send a copy of me or her, her send to me or her that we were welcome in accepting a buyout. Well, the letters started coming, hundreds and hundreds and thousands Already, coming from everywhere and the people at the hospital kind of get freaked out by like. But the fact that all these letters kept coming and I kept being at work every single day, at least when I was working my schedule I was working second shift, so the administration didn't have to see me, but they were calling me out on days and all kind of stuff and they were having to see my mug up and down that hall and they were just freaking out.

Speaker 3: 30:03

So there were some issues at the hospital and they were Possibly losing some accreditation from some other bad business decisions they were making. They actually came out and repossessed the medicine and the milk. It was bad. So in the midst of that I got a call and they said we've seen the error of our ways and we're going to Let you come back to work. And I said oh really.

Speaker 3: 30:38

But they were gonna take me off of the adolescent unit because I was such a terrible influence in their words and they were gonna let me work on the adult unit. Well, only adult unit is where all the stink was being stirred. And I told them I said one. Something in my spirit tells me that that's not a wise decision. So I'm not gonna budge. When you can give me my job back, I'll take my job back, but I don't want to work somewhere else.

Speaker 3: 31:10

And this was like on a I think this was on a Wednesday or Thursday. It was mid to latter part of the week. Well, I refuse to go back to work other than just working like I was working because God has told me something was not right. And Sure enough, on Monday morning Rainbow News had a story that they had lost their accreditation On the adult unit and they laid off all the staff. And if I went and took that job on Wednesday or Thursday Then I would have been out the door with all of them and they we've had nobody to question anything about. So they were not happy with that and so I went to. At the chance that I wouldn't get to work, I went to the unemployment office to get a record of not being officially full-time anymore and they sent them a list of reasons why I shouldn't be able to get my unemployment.

Speaker 3: 32:09

Right but it was mainly a list of days that I had been absent. And then they said there was in subordination. They could not tell the people who I was in subordinate to. So I called them to find out. Well, they couldn't tell me who I've been in subordinate to, and, and so when they told me that list of days, I told the lady. I said, can I have a list of a copy of that? And she gave it to me and I said and in return, I'm gonna give you a list of the reasons why they told me that I couldn't come back.

Speaker 3: 32:48

Well, there was a list of days, but it was a different list of days and there was a couple of other things I don't remember right off the top of you, that's a long time ago, but anyway, that they couldn't prove and it was just, it was just crap. And so I said Let me go back to work the next time I go to work and do some homework. And Because it was a long-term facility, the people there were for month or there sometime for months or years. So I could go pull up the charts and if I had a patient that I was caring for, I charted on that patient. So I went back to the charts and I looked at my list of days, both list, and there was one of those days off. Of both those lists there was only one day that I was actually out of work. So I wrote all that down and I called the lady at the Unemployment office and I said, well, I just did some homework on the charts of the patients and all those days on that list except one, I charted on patients. So I was not absent and I said and they can't tell me who I was in subordinate to either.

Speaker 3: 34:10

I said him when I pushed the issue about the days being different. They said they couldn't tell me because they never pulled my days. So if they couldn't, if they didn't know when I was there or not there, how can you fire somebody and report it to a state agency if you ain't never pulled the days? So of course I got approved, but of course I never had to use it because I was up there every day and so I would have to tell them I can't come every day, I can't come to a.

Speaker 3: 34:47

There was a couple of times that I worked first shift, second shift, third shift, first shift, half a second shift Without going home without leaving, without clocking out, took a four-hour break and got back up and work night shift, and they didn't have a problem with that and I know that's illegal, yeah, but they were all well and good with it because it suited their need and they didn't have to officially have me on the books. So then, after getting all those letters, I decided to go to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and dump all this information on them, and so I gave them the double copies of the two sets of dates and the information that I found out about that. And then they Did. They contacted them and they got a third list, completely different list with way more dates on it, and so the woman basically told them that they have the other two lists and that she knew they were full of crap. So they wanted them to send a copy of where they had pulled the record.

Speaker 3: 36:00

Well, they told them right now, playing out, they didn't pull the record. Nobody knew, nobody even checked. And they're really crazy thing about all of this. South Carolina is a right to work state. You fire somebody and just say don't come back and leave it right. But they get on the same way.

Speaker 3: 36:22

I was also in my 90 day probationary period. I really again another reason they could have just let me go, but they chose not. They chose to do it the the evil, nasty way and it paid off for me. Eventually, the woman who did all that got found out. She wasn't even qualified to do her job. And then they finally said okay, we're gonna let you come back to work. And I just laughed and I said so what kind of bullshit are you trying to pull this week? I said could you go? Have to go away is to beat my last one. And she said no, no, you can work anywhere, any unit, any Shift, anytime, just tell me. And I said oh well, that's different. I said well, y'all hate me. I said I ain't real thrilled with y'all. I said let me work 16 hours on Saturday, 16 hours on Sunday. You never have to see me, I never have to see you, and this will be a moot point from now on. And they were all in agreement. Well, I was kind of surprised, but I went back and there were no issues. I thought, oh well, this is different and everybody was nice and supportive.

Speaker 3: 37:41

And so there was a nurse on the adult unit and a nurse on the adolescent unit who decided they wanted to get married and they wanted to medieval, renaissance type of a hand-fasting and wanted me and Barbara to do it. I'm like, okay, well, that's fine. And so they gave me the date and the time where to go and whatever, and so we went and I got out. I have my little robe on my little horns and my little podium so we could go out. It was at the top of a mountain in Pickens County.

Speaker 3: 38:14

One of somebody had bought it and was building a huge house and until they got the house bill they were living in a camper trailer and they were gonna let them use the land to have their hand-fasting. And so I said, okay, well, that's cool. And so we showed up and we got her out there and we got out to the querying where the hand-fasting was, and guess what? They had invited the entire administration. I show up in my red, my red robe and my horns and you could have just about had to pick their jobs. But they made pictures and they shared them at the hospital and and everybody at the hospital was my best buddy after that and I worked there for about four or five years after all that Everybody was oh so supportive and it was just a huge blessing. It was like I like to get through and it took me a little over a year of fighting with them, but we won.

Speaker 3: 39:33

I mean not not me, the person, but right calls of our people pushing forward during time of adversary, and so it was a huge blessing. But it also was a big learning opportunity, and it pushed my face to a point that I Don't think there's nothing that we can accomplish. Huh, that's when we got involved with being Activist in the community, trying to Help other people. There was a lady who was in a car wreck. She was from somewhere in North Carolina and she was in a car wreck and she Visiting her parents and she was a student, or she was a wick and student, but she was a student in college too, and so she had all those books with her.

Speaker 3: 40:38

Well, her car was total, and so they took all their belongings back to Margaret Party Hospital in Hendersonville and the people there had to go through her stuff, make sure there wasn't nothing dangerous or nothing you know she could hurt herself with or somebody else, could anything a value that might get stolen, and in that they found all her witch stuff, at which time they threw all her shit in the floor and they stopped treatment Other than to give her what was specifically ordered by a doctor in their face. They didn't do anything. They would not bathe her, they did not comb her hair, they did not get the blood out of her hair, they did not get the glass that was still in her scalp, they would. Nobody knew she was there, but the staff, because her family hadn't even been notified yet. She was getting calls in her room saying you know you're going to hell because you're a devil worshiper and you know that this would have never happened to you otherwise, and so they gave her lots of grief and they wouldn't do anything.

Speaker 3: 41:56

So we gathered a few people and we went up, got her cleaned up, got her straight, started the letter writing campaign to the hospital there and also Letters to the editor of the hinder Hendersonville paper. Well, they printed the letters to the editor and it stirred a stink and and party hospital Contacted us and was very apologetic and they really turned around the way they treated her and she currently is a voodoo on priestess up in Charlotte. So you'll still have contact. She's a great lady and but that was like our first time of like being active for something other than just self preservation, right and but anyway that's kind of got me started.

Speaker 3: 42:53

We started trading on that wick and pagan press alliance. We started trading newsletters with 35 or 40 other Organizations that were putting out newsletters. So we were offering our information for free and they were offering their information and it just helped to Solidify our stance and give us a little extra Information since we were still building our practice and understanding. That was in Ravens pride temple that all that happened, but that was what it was chartered under the temple name, but the coven name was Hearthstone. So a few years later, I guess mid mid 90s, we went to the first ever blessed be meet me in DC pagan gathering. That was on the mall in DC and at the Jefferson Memorial, and we made the trip. We had a Student that had started her own group that was up there and we went to meet them and we always go into the event.

Speaker 3: 44:03

Well, the day we got ready to go, barbara, my wife got so sick she couldn't even get out of bed, she couldn't stand up, she didn't want to talk, she had a fever, she lost her boys, she was sick as a dog, and so I said, well, I'll stay here with you. And she's like no, no, go ahead, go ahead. He said it's better if you go. So I went and during the day the goddess visited her and Made her feel better and made her get up out of the bed, and made her get a notebook, and and she said, okay, oh well, first of all, I guess a couple of years or three or four years into the Hearthstone group, barbara and I together decided we were the only group that was doing anything public and nobody else was doing it. And so everybody who wanted to be a student or everybody who wanted to come to a ritual, they kept showing up at our house. It was more than we could do, and so we decided, if we shut down the cubbing completely, they'll have to sink or swim. And so that's what we did, and that's what they did, and that's what we left it as.

Speaker 3: 45:22

And so we went to this event with one of our, one of our people's groups, and but anyway, she was woke up, she was made to feel better, she was made to write this long page I mean probably 20 or 30 pages. She just wrote and wrote and wrote the whole day while we were gone, and it was gonna be a change in the way we practice, a change in the name of the group, a change in well. We had always done our Sabbaths and Esports, like most people do. And then so in the revelation she was told that we do moon rituals for a lunar connection, and the solstice and equinoxes for solar connection and the others are for agricultural or earth connection. And so in her, I guess speaking with the goddess, she was told to align her lunar, since the moon was connected to the earth, to align the lunar alignment with the agricultural alignment. So during the first part of the year we would do new moons and then say from Enbald to Beltane we did new moons, and from Beltane to Sialin we did full moons, and then from Sialin to Enbald we did dark moons. And that was a pretty important thing and it altered our magic quite differently because you were connecting the moon with all the daily mundane things you were doing in alignment with the agricultural cycle or the earth cycles, which was pretty, but anyway, a whole bunch of different stuff.

Speaker 3: 47:27

And the name of that group was told to her and she had to look it up to figure out what the headship was to Watha, to care she. And she's writing. She keeps trying to say but I don't have a group. We don't have a group, but I don't know why we're doing this. And God has told her you just get it ready, because the students will be there in the spring and you have to be ready. And that was kind of interesting. But she's like, okay, well, we'll do this.

Speaker 3: 48:06

So she got everything together and randomly, on that next spring equinox come a star.

Speaker 3: 48:16

There was a tap, tap, tap on the door and it was somebody that I had not seen in probably 15, 10, 15 years showed up with their wife that they'd newly got married to, who was having a crisis of faith.

Speaker 3: 48:32

And he told her, he said well, this is where I got help when I was having a crisis of faith. And so and the only reason, he had not been involved in the Coven previously, because when I first met him he was like 16. And so too young and the parents certainly wasn't gonna approve it. But anyway, he went to service and he left the state and he was here and there and everywhere. We kind of lost track. And but then, when the time come, he brought her and it was on a star, just like the God is in it, and so the temple was again open. Now, we didn't do completely open rituals then because we did wanna get all that started but we did have, you know, people we knew we would invite and continuing to deal with the community more but, like I said, not having open rituals and at that point my wife had gotten to an age where she was ready to crone.

Speaker 3: 49:47

And her belief had always been that when you crone you still can teach, you still can offer your services, but you are not a mother. You are not in that role anymore. So she said that she wanted to step down as priestess. She would only be like a resource person, support person, that kind of thing, and we left the members to do whatever they wanted to do, either continue the coven or practice individually or whatever, which gave us a little bit more time to do other things, and so again we began dabbling in other community projects and stuff.

Speaker 3: 50:35

There was a pagan pride day that had been run by several different groups over the years several different incarnations of PPD, and we would go and we would volunteer and do things, and she'd teach a class, or we would help gather information packages to make for every person that came, or just different things that we would do. And so we did that, and then a lot of volunteer work and then, in 2010, barbara passed, and at the time we weren't involved in any organization. There wasn't a current PPD going at that time. Well, there was one. I'll take that back. There was one, but the person that was doing it was very shady and there was a lot of question about it and she ended up shutting it down, absconding with the money, absconding with the vendor list. The whole thing was gone.

Speaker 3: 51:46

And there was another priestess that decided she wanted to try, and so she started trying to put it together and they said, well, the last person kind of did their own thing, so there's nothing for us to pass on to you no money, no list, no, nothing. So the only way you can do it is literally start from scratch. And so she started doing that and she asked me would I help out and be on the board? And I agreed, and so she gathered a whole board and we started creating a current PPD. First one was in 2011. And we had it at the Greenville UU Fellowship. After getting involved with that being on the board and helping plan things I also made a contact on Facebook of all things an organization called Greenville's Interfaith Forum.

Speaker 3: 52:50

And it was for people meeting from all different religious backgrounds in face, and so I contacted them and talked to them, or they'd never had any dealings with pagans or wickens or none of that stuff.

Speaker 3: 53:04

But they welcomed me as the first one and they allowed me to get on the board and make decisions and so I worked with them for several years and finally that organization a lot of the founding members kind of got too old to do whatever and they were. The group was a little bit outdated, they were not very computer friendly and so there wasn't a whole lot done in order to build like a new generation of people to kind of run the show. So eventually it folded. Now and I cannot think of the name of it, but I recently, in the last year, come across another more pagan, inclusive interfaith organization, but I have not had too many irons in the fire to actually get involved with that one at this point. But it is on my to-do list, let's see.

Speaker 3: 54:08

So after we did PPD for a few years, every once in a while a question will come up or there'll be some kind of little something that you need some support from the organization, and so we would try to do that and go through the rock protocol or channels and never got a call back, never got an email back, never got a phone call back, never got a Facebook message, never got anything and say you need to do this, and then that would be the end of it. And you try to find out or get clarification no response. And so we decided well, if we're just going to be flying by the seat of our pants and making it up as we go because nobody's helping us, then we might as well just be doing it, because the way it goes now, they tell you how far apart you have to be from the next person that's doing one, and you have to only have it between Maven and Sialen, or just all harvest related, and that's the only time. And there's just all these rules and the way that they originally told us to do all our paperwork. Since we were under their charter, we had to do all our paperwork for finances and send it to them, and we did every year from 2011 to 2019 or whenever. We stopped dealing with them. And the reason we stopped dealing with them is because they said oh, by the way, we're changing that. We're not going to handle that anymore. You're going to have to do your own. So I said OK, and then I read further down. Then they said retroactive to day one. You have 30 days. I'm like wait, what? So they had all my records and they weren't going to do anything with them and they wanted me to figure it out.

Speaker 3: 56:16

And so the board sat down and decided maybe we ought to just get our own charter and do our own thing and have something that if we're going to be crawling the carpet over, it's going to be because we made the decision, not because somebody said do it and then you do it, and then they wouldn't contact you back. Because when it all happened, I contacted them and the lady who was doing the group contacted them and nobody would get back with us if they wouldn't give us no explanation. I couldn't get no information about getting my paperwork back. I couldn't do nothing. Nobody would tell me nothing. So we just decided we'd start. And that's where we come up with Carolina Pagans for the purpose, because also, you have to answer to them, where you can pull board members or different things from, according to the original agreement. But now we thought, well, why don't we just make it more inclusive and rather than just say South Carolina Upstate Pagan Pride Day, let's make it Carolina Pagans for the purpose? Well, I didn't come up with that by myself. The group of us threw out ideas, but it's something that would be more inclusive, since we had a lot of friends and people we knew in North Carolina that also were involved, and people that wanted to help and people that we wanted their help. And so we thought, well, we'd just be more inclusive and if we're going to stand on it, we'll stand on it alone. And so that's what we did, and we kind of broke ties with PPD. I don't have any ill feelings about them. I learned a lot going through all that, and so now we're kind of doing it on our own, and so that's one thing.

Speaker 3: 58:11

And in the process of all that, lady Crow Moon and well, first of all, when my wife passed, we had been building a rock pile for about three years, because when we moved from our old house in 2016 to our new no, 2006, to our new house, we left a huge stone circle and way too much to move, and also we were going to allow coveners to still live in the house. And so we came here and I decided that I was going to have a circle built here. If for no other reason, just so Barbara would have a circle, because that was her meditated thing. She would go to the circle and walk the circle sometime for hours as her meditation, and so we started gathering. So every time they'd have a dinner party or a birthday party or any kind of anything here, I would tell everybody that you have to bring at least one rock, because we're going to build a circle.

Speaker 3: 59:26

And for three years we gathered rocks, and so we set a date that on October 3rd of 2010, we were going to all gather and build the circle Huge stack of rocks and people were still bringing them, and so on October 1st, barbara died unexpectedly, and on the 3rd it was difficult but the plan had been set and we built that circle and there was lots of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and crying and snotting and just it was a mess for almost everybody there. The energy was so skewed that we had two people with compasses trying to figure out where the points were and the compasses were just totally just spinning, and so we just had to. I said, well, over, there is where the sun comes up, that's all.

Speaker 3: 1:00:32

I can say and we did it by that because none of the compasses would work, and we built it. One of the most touching things I saw is little children bringing their own stones, and a crippled baby who couldn't walk asked her family to physically lay her on the ground so she could place her stone, so they could pick her back up and put her in the wheelchair. Very powerful, but the circle was built and I asked the community to help me to bless it with energy, all kinds of energy. So I put out a call on Facebook that said that it was going to be a community circle and I wanted everybody to use it, and so I began to actively seek people from all different faiths to come. So we had a Druid's ritual and a Celtic ritual, a Norse ritual, a Dianic ritual and a Vodan ritual and a Native American ritual and just I mean just everything. So I wanted it to be blessed for an entire turning of the wheel. So after those first eight sabbots I still had people contact me. So I'm like, okay, well, that's fine, and so we kept doing it. So the second year went by and then the third year started, and then it started getting less and less people that were, you know, contacting me. So Lady Crume Moon and I sat down and talked and she was not running a group at that time she was kind of on sabbatical and so we decided that not to have a coven but just to provide worship for people who didn't have a place. So we decided to start doing, at the community circle, all the sabbots again. All the sabbots were open and we would provide ritual. And also, because I've got room here, we started doing our Carolina pagan with a purpose meetings here. Sometime. If we didn't have a place, we do fundraisers here. So we were just getting more and more involved in the community.

Speaker 3: 1:03:13

And then the community circle brought people from all different faiths and all different facets of paganism. These lots of good connections with people created a unity event where we made a giant dream catcher and we asked people from all these faiths to come and bring their trinkets or annulets or feathers or stones or jewelry or whatever, and we were going to weave it into the web and it was about, I guess the circle was probably four or five foot across and so all this stuff was woven into it and then it was tied to a rope and the rope was thrown up in the tree and we pulled it up so the unity way up hung over the center of the circle and it had all these things in it, all this energy, and then we did energy raising and imbued it with that as well. And then after a year or two we took it down, we took all the stuff off, we put it in a bag, a leather pouch. We asked for another call out had more unity, another unity ritual, and we had people come and we did that again and we re-notted that unity, community feeling and after we got all the new things attached, then we attached to the bottom of it the leather pouch with all the original stuff in it and then after another year or two it started looking kind of peaky. So we did it a third time.

Speaker 3: 1:05:02

So the purpose is we just going to keep doing it as long as we need to do it and we can have a peace pole where people have painted the word peace and all these different languages and just trying to bring people together. Of course, the human element. There s always going to be people that push against it, but you can t win in a situation like that by becoming equally aggressive or equally confrontational. So we just have tried to incorporate as much as we can into making sacred space what it s supposed to be, and we have a lady who has agreed to do the Astora ritual. I know she practices Celtic Wicker and I also know she practices McFarland Dianic and so I don t know what her ritual is going to be like. She has not gotten back with me with all the details, but she s wanting to do it and have some kids activities and stuff like that which we ve done before and it s great and so I m looking forward to it.

Speaker 3: 1:06:16

So my goal is just to try to further paganism in whatever way I can. It s not like I m doing nothing great, but I m just hanging in and doing what I can and planting seeds where I can and like a lot of this work. You don t always know the repercussions of things that you ve done and it shows up much later. I ve been blessed to see that on a number of occasions, going all the way back to getting the house all the way back to when I bought my house here. I bought it completely delusional. First time I bought a house I did not know. I got a call and said okay, we re going to closing all you got to do. And she told me what I had to bring to the closing and she said and don t forget your down payment.

Speaker 3: 1:07:15

Well, I had already forgotten my down payment. I had bought a car three weeks before I had no cash. I didn t have ten dollars and I thought, how the hell am I going to put down a down payment on another house? And eventually I decided I would contact. I know that you get a penalty and I know you have to pay it back. But I thought, well, I ll get some money from my retirement savings, from work. And so I call work and it was like three days before I had to actually take the money with me. And so I call work and I talk to my benefits person and they said, well, you have to pay it back. You get a 20% tax penalty if you take it out. And you got to pay it back. And she told me all this stuff and I said, well, I guess I have to do what I have to do. And she said what are you doing with the money? And I told her and she said oh well, that s under a different clause. She said for death in the family, kids going to college, buying a new house, things like that. You can get it without the penalty and without paying it back.

Speaker 3: 1:08:35

And I said, oh well, that s what I want to do. I said what I got to do and she said, well, I just got to fill out some paperwork. And I said how much can I get? Because I m trying to figure before I m standing on every day. I have money in three days. And so she said, well, hold on. And she said I can t tell you right now. I ll have to send this in and you have to let you know. And I said, well, can you let me know by the end of the week?

Speaker 3: 1:09:06

and she said, well, I think I hope I can and so I think it was the very next day she called me and she told me that it was approved and that I could get X amount of dollars. And when she said it, I knew that it was right. I knew that it was a purposeful thing. It was within ten dollars of what I needed hey, my down payment.

Speaker 3: 1:09:36

And I thought, well, I can t get no better clarification than that but again it put me to a place where I don t believe there s nothing that can t be done.

Speaker 3: 1:09:49

You know, two years ago at PPD or CPP or whatever, there was a hurricane coming up through South Carolina and was going to hit on the day of the event and it was going to hit Greenville and we just decided to pray that that was not going to be an issue and we didn t get the first drop of rain, we didn t get the first wind. It just turned and went back out to sea and nothing was done and it was perfect and everybody else was freaking out. But we just pushed right off the roof and it s just blessed. And at the end of the day, just before we started our musical guest, which we usually do at the end of the day, at the end of the day, right before the music started, there was a huge rainbow over the stage, and so I knew that was amazing. We survived it and so Goddess has been good.

Speaker 3: 1:10:55

I ve been doing this since 82, that s, but it s been a blessing, not always easy, but it s been a blessing, and I gained so much spiritually, emotionally and through my friendships. I appreciate you talking with me and I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2: 1:11:19

I m so scared that this history I was raised on is going to be lost. Yes, I want to get it somewhere where like this is what we did. This is these are the people who taught me and the things that yall taught me. I couldn t put a price tag on them.

Speaker 3: 1:11:36

Well, I ve always appreciated the connection that we ve all had and Lord men for helping to facilitate that, and it s just been a huge blessing all the way around. It has, and I ve supported people in your lives and you don t even know why. But then there they are right when you need them. Again, lord Lou, thank you for being here today. Thank you, I appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time and talking with me.

Speaker 1: 1:12:12

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 lifetimeplesiminaryorg for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, discord, twitter, youtube and Reddit.

Speaker 4: 1:12:30

We travel down this trodden path, amaze 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.