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
Magic, Mindfulness, and Moral Choices
What happens when the eagerness to lend a hand clashes with the ethical boundaries of magical intervention? Join us on Pagan Coffee Talk as we unravel the complexities of aiding others. We promise you'll leave with a deeper understanding of the intricate dance between desire to help and the often murky waters of ethical intervention. We explore the balance of knowing when to act and when to let nature take its course, drawing upon wisdom from diverse spiritual traditions. Whether it's the temptation of using active magical solutions or the quieter strength found in patience and meditation, we challenge listeners to consider the true necessity and impact of their actions. We emphasize the importance of asking questions, listening, and reflecting before jumping into action, and the wisdom in recognizing when a situation might require official intervention.
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Welcome to Pagan Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. Now here are your hosts, lady Abba and Lord Knight.
Speaker 3:Hi Lord Knight. Hi, Look, the snow finally went away.
Speaker 4:It's coming back, don't worry.
Speaker 3:Grandpa always said if the snows last longer than a week, it's waiting for its friends to show up.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean okay, Well, that only works in the south.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 4:North. We just know it's snow season. So today we are going to talk about as a witch, as a pagan. Just because you can intervene or interfere or meddle, should you Not necessarily?
Speaker 3:You may want to.
Speaker 4:Well and that's sort of my point. I think, right, it's human nature to want to help. It's human nature to want to fix, to I don't know prevent, to influence, to do all of these things. But often, yeah, we see this a lot in the pagan community, where people come to us and go. Someone else is having a problem. Right, it's not me directly, but it's my friend, it's my significant other, my co-worker, whomever is having this issue, and I want to intervene on their behalf. And it's like, well, first of all, did they ask you to? Right?
Speaker 3:see, that's where most people I think this is where most people mess up they never ask that real first question right.
Speaker 4:Were you asked? Were you asked? And even if you were asked, does it still mean that you should? I?
Speaker 3:mean well, were you even really asked, or was the person just sitting there bitching?
Speaker 4:True.
Speaker 3:You know Well, but sometimes it's not bitching right.
Speaker 4:Sometimes it's a serious issue. Something's happening, somebody's dealing with something and I mean I get it. It can be rough, but it's like craft is not always the answer.
Speaker 3:No. I'd like to say that it is but Let me put it to you this way In a religious context, yes it is always the answer. Magically. It's not Right. It's when you start putting these spells and stuff in there and sticking your nose in there, it's not realizing your field of expertise.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. But then what if you have someone who is an occult practitioner and you know they're very well versed in magic, then because they, then they feel like it, they go okay, but I do have the expertise, I do have the knowledge, but again, does it mean you should meddle well?
Speaker 3:we're back to. Are you going to fix it the way they want to fix? Oh there's the stick in the, there's the rub. All right, I can see a solution to the problem. It does not necessarily mean it's the solution you want that's a harsh one, but it's true, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's true, because just because I would fix it one way doesn't mean it's the fix that you want or need at the time, right so then? So then are we exerting our will upon someone else?
Speaker 3:to some extent.
Speaker 4:Yes and we're exerting our will upon the situation right I can backfire real fast well again.
Speaker 3:You know we got to remit that all magic is nothing more than will so again enforcing that we do on a daily basis, but when we start to push it into other people's lives, that's where it tends to come back and slap us in the face but it's so hard.
Speaker 4:It's so hard to sit on our hands. And it's funny because in other faiths right, what do people say? They just go, I'll pray for you, I'll pray for you, right, I know I don't have a problem with that, well, but that's what I mean. That's prayer is fine. Prayer is fine, but pagans don't go there first. Pagans go right to. Let me start brewing and doing and confining.
Speaker 3:You're not sitting there going. Hey gods, I have this friend. Can you please give me the wisdom to know what to do, to maybe help?
Speaker 4:them.
Speaker 3:Right, which? That answer may be nothing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's what I mean. And pagans, I think, have to be a little bit more willing, take a step back from the doing and go into um, because to us sometimes, sometimes I think, prayer can seem passive. Right, that's the problem. We all want action, right, we want to do and pagan is a very do heavy faith but sometimes the passivity of just let me pray about it, let me meditate about it, is more effective and more of what that person needs or is it because we have this attitude that sometimes problems do work themselves out?
Speaker 4:yeah, but we're also impatient yeah like anything else. I mean we're. I mean the reality is if, if more pagans took a beat from the buddhist path, we would never do magic no because we would just wait and defer and let things work themselves out, and then we would go oh okay, well then that happened how it was supposed to?
Speaker 3:yeah well, now let me ask you is this the same logic that we are getting from when we talk about healing magic?
Speaker 4:that sometimes healing people is not necessarily the correct yeah answer I mean, look, I think that sometimes pagans feel a bit like the island of misfit toys and we all feel like in some ways we're a little bit broken and we're flawed, and you know, we're broken creatures and we know this. So when we see another broken creature, we want to fix, we want to mend, we want to heal, we want to do all of these things, but we forget there's a big difference between taking a baby bird that has fallen out of the nest Right.
Speaker 4:That is just shy, of being old enough to fly and saying, okay, little dude, I'm going to put you in a box, I'm going to feed you, I'm going to let you heal, and then let you go. And having the newborn baby bird that fell out of the nest, that is nowhere near flight. That can't possibly sustain itself and, sadly, the better decision is probably to humanely.
Speaker 3:Just leave the bird alone.
Speaker 4:Right, let it die Let nature take its course.
Speaker 3:I mean I'm sorry if his parents are there. The parents are probably pretty close by watching anyway.
Speaker 4:And our intervention is unlikely to do much in that situation. And then we, but we again, we just we can't help ourselves. We can't, and I would gather to say just about every pagan probably has a story of where they have done this, they have overstepped, they have over intervened and it's put them in the ass, or it's just been a lot of energy and a lot of effort and a lot of heartache and nothing and yeah, for for no good or real reason in the end yeah, I mean, it's kind of like all those people that you see that find the baby squirrel yeah yeah, for everyone that actually lives there, about 100 that probably dies in that situation yeah, and it, but it's tough, it's tough.
Speaker 4:I wish there was a um, a better answer to this or a way to I don't know because it's funny.
Speaker 3:You don't want that behavior completely suppressed, but you sort of do. At the same time, you want people to be caring and empathetic to others well, because compassion is important.
Speaker 4:Yes, right, and yes, empathy is important, but neither compassion nor empathy by themselves, right?
Speaker 1:as an emotion. No, no, no you're right.
Speaker 4:That is their entire existence. Empathy doesn't require you to do anything. Compassion doesn't necessarily require you to do it. It is an attitude. It is how you go about living your life, it is how you conduct yourself, but in nowhere does it say that, in order to be a compassionate person, you have to put yourself out there.
Speaker 4:Yeah or overextend. I think both of those situations come down to what can you give of freely that does not take away too much from yourself, and see, this is where I think this, where lord man kept on being into our head to know your field of expertise.
Speaker 3:All right, yeah, so that way, when people come up to me and ask me medical stuff, I'm not a doctor, you know. Yes, I did work in hospitals, but I'm not a doctor, I'm not even a nurse. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And I think that probably what people often fail to realize is that our most magical power is listening. Yes, it's listening and it's saying those words. I empathize with you. You, I have compassion for your situation, I'm sorry that you're going through this, you know, but it's not jumping in to go, I'm gonna fix it. No, yeah, and that's another reason why I do think that, from a clerical standpoint, cleric standpoint, this is why it's so important for practitioners and especially groups, to have a pre-existing list of local resources yes for any number of situations that can arise right be it it healthcare, homelessness, drug addiction shelters food banks.
Speaker 4:Right Low cost clinics.
Speaker 3:And stuff like this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, this is where you know. It's funny because we always said that you know. For Life Temple, we require our third degrees to receive a certain amount of counseling right and to study a certain amount of counseling from a therapy standpoint. But also, a great addition to that is a little bit of social work. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's taking a couple of classes in social work and or again creating, creating that network of resources, because I mean just the volunteering for a hotline, yeah yeah, teaches you a lot.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, because same thing. You know folks who you're right, like volunteering on a hotline. There you become a branch of a resource and being able to say my benefit lies in the fact that I'm listening to what this person has to say and that I am able to direct them to other things Right that they can take action upon.
Speaker 4:I can give this person a little bit of hope, because I got some resources for them, right, we can help you Right. Little bit of hope because, like, I got some resources for that, we can help you right. But you're not necessarily going here. Let me give you right in a winter wardrobe and get you a hotel room and you know, yeah, but it's it's, it's easy. It's easy to to fall into that because we so badly we don't want to see people suffer.
Speaker 3:Well, and it does become hard. When do you intervene versus when you?
Speaker 4:don't, when should you?
Speaker 3:I mean again someone on the side of the road and pain and stuff. Yes, you stop and intervene.
Speaker 4:Yes. All right, we understand this, but Helplessness right Right, understand this, but helplessness, right right, we intervene when someone is not able to advocate for themselves and not able to help themselves.
Speaker 3:Um, for whatever that looks like, and we remember when you're doing that. You need to advocate for them, not for what you think is right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 4:That's the situation. If you're looking at someone who's able-bodied and just they're just having a rough time, give them resources. Don't try to do it for them, that's. And another thing about that is sometimes help right assistance that is also empowering for the other person. If you do it for them, you're stripping them, you're taking that power away from them and you're kind of denying them the satisfaction of feeling like they were able to pull themselves out of whatever the situation was I mean because we have this whole entire story.
Speaker 3:Uh, I heard a long time ago sort of on the same lines about this guy who found a moth or something trying to metamorph and come out of its shell. And it was struggling, so he decided to help it. Well, in doing so, the butterfly's wings didn't get strong enough so he never could fly.
Speaker 4:This is the concept we're talking about.
Speaker 3:We think we're doing something, and well, yeah, what is that? The road to hell's paved with good intentions, yeah well, it's funny.
Speaker 4:You said a moth because it's. It's a similar thing like if you watch a baby bird come out of a shell. That looks excruciating yes, it looks awful, and it takes forever and this poor little thing is struggling and struggling and struggling. Yeah, I can. I can probably think almost immediately most pagans would be like let me just take the show off no stop it. This has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years before you this is how this bird strengthens its muscles to get out.
Speaker 4:This is yeah, exactly if. If this bird doesn't go through this, they might not make it, so yeah, but it's so easy for us to want to just jump on in there and you know it, I mean. And then there's the hero complex, right, the savior complex, yeah, and pagans are no exception to it.
Speaker 3:I think we're a little bit more prone to it Potentially yeah, we.
Speaker 4:I mean, man, there are so many people. This is where a little bit of power can be a dangerous thing, right? Yeah, bit of power can be a dangerous thing, right? Yeah? Um, priests and priestesses have to be very careful to not start thinking more of themselves than is necessary yeah yeah, it's the I'm not special concept. No, and this is tough, you know, for seconds and thirds and as people climb the ranks. You know, remember, at the end of the day, you and your first degrees are the same yeah, literally, literally the same.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you, you may have a few more notches in your belt, but you're the same, yeah, um, yeah, and.
Speaker 4:And this is also where, again, delegation is lovely, because, well, actually I shouldn't even say delegation community yeah because if you want to try to assist someone again, rather than necessarily trying to take it on yourself or magically intervene, sometimes it's really nice to throw something out anonymously to the community and say, hey, I have someone experiencing abc. Is this anyone's area of expertise? Are there any suggestions? Has anyone dealt with this personally? Yeah, because that's really. That is again, again. It's knowledge, it's community, it's that is where the power lies. You know there's a reason why we were the passers of information, right, right, and you know that was, that was always the big draw of the town witch is that we knew things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but how we we paid attention yeah, yeah, we didn't know things, because we were just knowing things right, we paid attention pass down it was, it was wisdom, and and that wisdom still has to exist in our actions and our affairs today, which you know is hard when we go, but google knows everything well, I don't know if it knows everything no, it doesn't. I think there's five percent left remember there's still that part of the ocean we know nothing about. But yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 3:We have Well, let me ask you this what are ways that you do to stop yourself.
Speaker 4:If we're talking about this, what?
Speaker 3:are ways to actually stop yourself.
Speaker 4:So what I do is I ask a lot of questions, I try to really get a lot of information from this person about the situation so that I am not again tempted to just jump on in there and try to do right on the spot. You know, let me really gather up the full scope of what's happening now.
Speaker 3:I don't know about you, but when I've been in this situation, I do just like you and start to ask questions nine times out of ten. You see the person going and telling you about this.
Speaker 4:You see that light bulb moment on there because they this sort of helps them figure it out versus you're working, you're you're problem solving by forcing them to think differently, or potentially differently, about the situation, because some a question that you might ask may lead them to realize that there's something they have not thought about or explored.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So asking a lot of questions, listening intently and then, yes, making suggestions, but the other thing is I force myself not to make any promises on the spot true, true. I will take the time myself to sit back and think about what is feasible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm like you. I will use the meditate on this for two days and come back and see me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It does help. And it gives you time to think. It gives them time to think, yeah.
Speaker 4:Because here's the other thing Most situations not all, but most right. They aren't going to be solved overnight.
Speaker 3:No, and you've got to remember when you are sitting down and you're talking about this and all this, your first reaction is your first. On anything that they tell you, you're going to have your own emotional reaction to it.
Speaker 4:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 3:And you're going to have to let that pass before you can start thinking about rational.
Speaker 4:Well, that also brings up another really good point. You have to confer with the law of the land.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 4:Because if you are having a strong emotional reaction, is there a law being broken? Is there an injustice?
Speaker 3:Being done.
Speaker 4:Right, and in that case, do we need to take a step back?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:And involve the law of the land. You, yeah, in a weird way and I mean, I know that this isn't always the case, but right, we talk about first responders. We talk oh not, sorry, not first mandatory reporters, right, right, find me a witch who is not a mandatory reporter, right, right, I would be flabbergasted if I heard that a witch turned their back on a situation or chose not to intervene in a situation of that nature. Right, right, because at that point again, if we're talking about the abuse, the neglect, the harm of something or someone who cannot advocate or fend for themselves, then damn the consequences, yeah, and and I don't mean that magically, because I'm not going to magically intervene, I'm going to call the authorities, right, right, and I don't care, I don't care Whatever dust that might kick up, right, I think you know, again, the whole, it outweighs the good of the one.
Speaker 3:It's that At the time. I need to make this situation safe for everyone, and this is not.
Speaker 4:Yeah, this situation safe for, yes, everyone. And this is not. Yeah, I I just yeah.
Speaker 3:I can't imagine the idea of yeah, of there being a witch that did not consider themselves a mandatory reporter yeah, um, I mean, don't get me wrong I praise the people who get the dogs out of the backyards that are being abused in the hut yeah these things I understand but, then there are times where you start to get into people's personal business and stuff like that.
Speaker 4:You really shouldn't. Yeah, yeah, and there's a lot of that because craft there's a nosiness to craft.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 4:Yeah, deals with emotions. When you've got people talking about vendettas and hexes and, uh, you know anything that could be negatively impacting them, there's that retaliation factor that some practitioners go to yeah but there's an irony here, because what you should be focusing on is the fortification of the individual, not trying to pinpoint whoever is the wrongdoer.
Speaker 4:Right, it's like fortify your defenses first, right, because there, I mean, there is to me anyway there's. The irony of of hexcraft is that all hexcraft is is something that has managed to work its way into a weakness in the armor.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, fix the armor, fix the armor I just yeah uh-huh never mind and and how do you fix this armor? You do this through your meditation. Well, partially, yeah, partially meditation.
Speaker 4:But I mean, look a fix, an armor, right. Let's be honest, if we're using that metaphorically right to talk about a person, it could be anything. It could be their mental state it could be therapy, it could be their physical being, it could be exercise, it could be. But whatever it is, you focus on that person, not the external thing.
Speaker 3:Out there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So it makes and it does. It makes a huge difference for that individual, because then you're giving them tools. We're back to yes, teach a man how to fish Right For a lifetime Right, Instead of just handing him a fishy Not that we don't like being handed a fishy every now and then I mean I'll take a fish.
Speaker 3:And I'll take a cup of coffee.
Speaker 4:Nice, try Ooh coffee.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Pagan 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 2: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, thank you.
