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
Sorting Through Elder Wisdom: A Tradition's Inheritance Challenge
Two pagan elders unpack the daunting inheritance of spiritual archives in this candid, thoughtful exploration of tradition management.
The podcast hosts share their personal struggles with determining what deserves preservation versus what should be respectfully set aside. Unlike religious traditions that treat founders' words as infallible scripture, most pagan paths acknowledge their elders were human - not prophets or deities. This creates freedom but also responsibility: when documents lack citations (as they often do), arduous research becomes necessary to separate original content from borrowed material.
Perhaps most provocative is their candid discussion about historical accuracy within traditional witchcraft. As scholarly understanding evolves, many foundational claims about ancient lineage face increasing scrutiny. From Margaret Murray's contested theories to controversies surrounding Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley, we are forced to confront uncomfortable questions: What happens when a tradition's origin story doesn't withstand historical investigation? Does acknowledging this diminish its spiritual value?
As current stewards of their tradition, they wrestle with breaking the cycle: Should they continue adding to the overwhelming pile of material their students will someday inherit, or streamline what exists into a more accessible foundation? The digital revolution wasn't something their elders could anticipate - from floppy disks to cloud storage, the very medium of transmission has transformed dramatically within a single generation.
Listen and consider what responsibility we all have to those who follow in our footsteps. What legacy are you creating, and how will it be received by those who come after?
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Speaker 2:So I am currently knee deep in working on our lecture series and what we call the temple archives. This has brought about the question, or, I guess, the discussion of. It's up to us to figure out what to do with what the elders have left for us, so we can only really talk about our elder. But we're not alone in this. No, lord Min is what I lovingly call a digital pack rat.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, that man saved, transcribed, wrote volumes on every subject imaginable. We have as a church so much content from him that we. So let's put it this way, let's put it genealogically right If he is our spiritual father, right.
Speaker 2:Right, Our spiritual children's grandfather right our spiritual children's grandfather right, we as his children are still trying to sort, collate, organize and figure out what to do with that information before we proceed with adding new material. It's wild now, obviously. Of course we're adding new material anytime we write a lecture, anytime you or I perform a ritual and you write, it's all being added, but we were actually discussing this, so this was a.
Speaker 2:This was a joke between you and I the other day that I think is worth sharing because it's great. I said I cannot wait to see the old man again.
Speaker 2:I cannot wait I cannot wait to be in the summerland and to see him again, so that when he looks at me and he has the because he was a very he would look. He was a very loving teddy bear of a man, but he was also when it came to craft, right. He was very um quick to tell you exactly what he wanted and what he expected, right? Yeah, and I have no doubt in my mind he's going to look at me and say, why didn't you expand upon the lecture series? And I'm gonna look at him and go. I would have loved to.
Speaker 2:I was too busy reading and sorting the volumes that you left me, that would take three lifetimes to get through. I'm so sorry, I didn't have time.
Speaker 3:Let's explain about, give an idea of how much information we're talking about. I remember one time looking at him going hey, it would be nice to have a standard wedding ritual. Yes, you asked for a wedding, it would be nice to have a standard wedding ritual.
Speaker 2:Yes, you asked for a wedding.
Speaker 3:I asked for a wedding that I could use to.
Speaker 2:The template, the template Right.
Speaker 3:What I got, on the other hand, was this freaking thick ass file with every single wedding from every single culture across the world. And he's like there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he effectively wrote a book on wedding rituals, and that is only one subject. We have hundreds of them. So, yes, we are still very much sorting through and working with his digital legacy. Now, how do I know we're not alone in this? Um, when lady santana was still alive at ravenwood and I used to go visit her in her retirement home, which was here in north carolina a few hours away, she at one point showed me the filing cabinet which I didn't fully understand at the time. Basically, it was a five drawer filing cabinet as tall as a grown man right standard width. It was so packed I don't think you could slide another single piece of paper into it if you needed to.
Speaker 2:It was effectively Ravenwood, it was the church.
Speaker 3:It was there. It was the church book of shadows.
Speaker 2:Basically yes, In yes, a filing cabinet, a filing cabinet. Yeah, again same problem.
Speaker 2:Right, her spiritual children are now figuring out what in the heck to do with all of this and what you know it's, it's a lot. There are two things that happen to any tradition when this takes place. So number one you have to decide what is sacred text and what is not. And this is a bit of an issue because, on one hand, we're very upfront, we're not afraid to say no, our elders are not prophets, they're not deities, right, they're not. We don't see what they write as the word. It's not like that, for us, it's not our gospel right.
Speaker 2:So we don't see it as some kind of doctrine or gospel and we don't, um, we don't feel that it needs to be protected like that. Like I, I laugh when, um, the Scientologists, anything, anything that L Ron Hubbard wrote, right, they won't change a comma, nothing, it is the word, it is what you do not, and the fact that he misspelled that one word.
Speaker 3:that word doesn't matter, Doesn't?
Speaker 2:matter Anything it is. It is absolutely sacred to them. It is to be unaltered, uncouched. We're not like that.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:So there's another issue that comes about which is very common with pagan traditions in the modern age.
Speaker 3:No citations.
Speaker 2:We don't know where some of this material came from. Could some of it? And? And we usually we can tell by the way our elder writes and you start to get a sense of their voice in the page.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but there are some things. I don't know if he wrote it or someone else wrote it and it was given to him with permission, or if he just copied and pasted it from somewhere. I have no idea. There are documents and things, diagrams, uh, all sorts of historical information. Again, I don't know where all of it came from. I don't know what's fact or fiction. Sometimes I have to do tremendous amounts of research to figure it out. And then often we have to make the decision of if we're questioning its origin, we get rid of it, right, because it we're not going to taint the tradition with information that we cannot verify, right? So there's that piece of things. And then something else that happens with your elders when they, when they, get up there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They go on ramps. Oh God yes big annoying beautiful, long rants about anything and everything everything he pages, yes, and as he got older, uh, more and more and more and more. I mean it would just be a random thought. So, to put this in perspective, right, we have a podcast now. Right, this is, this is us ranting this is this is effectively what.
Speaker 2:This is right, but we didn't have this when he was alive. Now he passed away in 2011. Okay, so it hasn't been that long, but long enough that this kind of technology has evolved significantly. Yeah, trust me when I say had we been able to put a microphone down in front of that man and let him go, holy shit I'd hate to think of what we couldn't put out on web he would have. Basically it would have been lord the lordman channel. He would have just talked every day, all day, on any subject, on anything.
Speaker 3:Oh, trust me, I would. I would have loved to put him on a live feed.
Speaker 2:Just go here, just yeah just go, just talk just talk I mean, and he would have loved it, he would have also insisted on a transcript, which would have driven us bonkers, um, um. But yeah, so it's not easy to sort, it's not easy to collate, it's we don't. Sometimes we just don't know what to do with it. Sometimes I run across a document and I go, wow, this is a really interesting point that he's making. This is a really viable concern about the future of craft. Well, what do I do with it?
Speaker 3:what that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I can't put it in a lecture series no I can't hand this to a bunch of neophytes and go this is what you should be doing. I can't I mean you know, like I can't, yeah we still do this so some of this stuff just gets filed away in never looked at folder for future clergy to go see, you're not alone, you're not the only one.
Speaker 2:We've been going through this for eons and, and with any group, when you're dealing with the founder, when you're dealing with the tradition head, oh, there's so much about our origin that we don't know that even they didn't know. No, this is the big. You know.
Speaker 2:It's such a bizarre concept that we have to defend or that we even have to talk about, but we do the reality is, a traditional coven is nothing more than the understandings, or one person or a group of people's understanding of craft, based on the knowledge they had at the time.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Based on the historical information they had at the time and their agreement to do things in a particular way.
Speaker 3:Well, if you just look at the fact of the whole burning time numbers, of how many they've been refined so many times, and it keeps on getting. Some people keep on making it lower, some people keep on making it higher.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, but the problem is we have so many authors, we have so many people that, unfortunately, have become very, very popular yes, in witchcraft that have made startlingly big claims, right, right, that we're a pre-christian religion. We date back tens of thousands of years. We're potentially the oldest religion on the planet. There's historical evidence that we existed as various cults across the planet. Um, cult, not meaning the modern day word, by the way, cult meaning the older version of, again, a like, a like a religious organization or belief system, system. Um, none of it's verified, no, none of it, none of it. And it's difficult because, on one hand, traditionalists are very proud. We're very proud of our founders, we're very proud of our origin, we're very proud of the effort and the, the sheer sacrifices that they made to make what we do possible and to give us the foundation.
Speaker 3:I mean, don't get me wrong. We appreciate the fact that it took him a lot of time to write this stuff, and collect this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lifetime.
Speaker 3:It's a lifetime of work.
Speaker 2:And and we're very, very we're fiercely proud of that and we're fiercely protective of it. But at the same time, we have to be honest, we have to be realistic about where did our stuff originate? It's one thing to say, well, lord min was initiated in the 1970s. Therefore, right, that's our origin point. But then do we believe in the claim or the idea that it was even older than that and older than that?
Speaker 3:and older than that.
Speaker 2:We don't know, we don't know. So some people have abandoned the term traditional to mean uh, or have turned it into reclaiming right, they call it a reclaiming religion and other people just don't use it at all, because traditional has become a bad word, it has become something to debunk, it has become something to try to I don't know, it's kind of like they've made it, I don't know, traditionalist.
Speaker 3:Somehow the word has become the rigid, rigid or the um this harper valley pta yeah situation where we're too busy telling you how yes, that we're.
Speaker 2:We're too far in your business. We have too many rules. Right, it's our way or the highway, and some of these things are correct. Some of these things are absolutely correct, but in our case, right, it is a decided attempt to structure something in a way where a group of people can function simultaneously and with a set of order. That's it. I don't claim that what I do or what I know is thousands of years old. How could I?
Speaker 3:but see, the only thing I claim is that the stuff I know happens to be about about 54 years old.
Speaker 2:Interesting, because I happen to be about 54 years old. Interesting, because I happen to be about 54 years old. How funny. Oh my god. That's hysterical. That's a good way to look at it.
Speaker 3:I mean that's it.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, and I think that that's part of it is that traditionalists have had to really kind of face the music of. Are we going to keep trying to claim some origin that we don't know?
Speaker 3:That's so.
Speaker 2:And this is the problem, like we see, with the Gardnerians, right, the Gardnerians, really many of them, wholeheartedly believe that this is pre-Gardner, that what they're doing existed long before their founder, and there's so many contradictions and so many stories, some you know we don't know.
Speaker 2:We just don't know what's right or what's wrong or who made what up, or you know, we don't know. We just don't know what's right or what's wrong or who made what up, or you know, we know. Look, we know that Margaret Murray has been debunked Right Countless times over. We know that many of the things that Gardner stated, especially with regards to the burning times, were debunked and were wrong. We know that there is a lot of controversy surrounding gardner and alistair crowley and whether or not they shared information and or potentially stole from one another, borrowed from one another or made shit up together right we know that raven grisami, who is the supposed uh again founder, is not the right word, but the, the uh originator of strega.
Speaker 2:It's all made up right, it's historically and it's completely inaccurate.
Speaker 3:Uh, we know that oh, you are going to piss off some people today.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, oh yeah, it's fine I know I know we, we just we have too much evidence to support, where a lot of this stuff is just not accurate. And it's like what were people's motivations back then? I don't know. Maybe margaret murray thought that what she was writing was correct.
Speaker 3:Yes, I truly believe that when she was writing, she believed it, she was correct.
Speaker 2:Maybe, and maybe that's the case for a lot of these folks, and maybe it's just we've become smarter, we've become more knowledgeable, we've got better research at our fingertips, I mean, that's it. So now we can kind of correct some of the incorrect information. Um, maybe some people did have a more nefarious idea. Maybe they were trying to create something and in order to do so, they believed they had to create a history to support it. Right, it was greater than themselves. Okay, I kind of get that. It doesn't make it right, but I can understand why they thought it was necessary and I do too yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's really, really hard to say sometimes. I also know that one of the things that we see a lot or at least we do as our church goes is we see content throughout our material that is contributed to other authors right and some of these folks are still alive and well and kicking, yes. And it leaves us with the desire I don't know what you want to call it, or just the understanding that we could reach out to them and say how did our elder come about this material?
Speaker 2:Was it something that you gave to him willingly? Was it something that you put out publicly and said, hey, y'all are free to use it? Or is it potentially stolen and do we need to take it out? You know, and sometimes we have to again go down that pathway.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you this question. Because, me and you are not getting any younger. No, all right. So that means that one day that our students, our kids, will be sitting here listening to the podcast going hey, we need to take some of these ideas down, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3:Should we as elders, should we continue the same pattern like them, put up with the headache that we did, or should we fix the problem? Are you with sort of what I am?
Speaker 2:I don't think, but my motivation, you know, and I think we agree on this is that I want to be able to put the material into the most usable format possible, purge a lot of the things that are unrelated to our tradition right and present them with a platform that, hopefully, they can be the ones to focus on adding to, instead of having to sort subtract rehash our exactly, exactly I mean, I guess that's the real reason to bring this up is, yeah, we as a community, since we're all going through this, do we need to look at our steps that we're doing, or is this pattern a part of craft itself?
Speaker 3:yeah, are you with what I'm asking?
Speaker 2:oh, I am absolutely. I mean because you think about, look Gerald Gardner alone, a vast amount of the origins of Gardnerian or the things that that church, that tradition would consider sacred.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Are owned by Ripley's, believe it or Not. It was sold to the museum in quotes with a question mark the sideshow attraction yeah, and it's up for sale. Like you can buy original manuscripts, documents, items. There's a whole story of lore about whether or not ripley's owns gardener's original book of shadows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like, if that stuff is particular, is out there, I can only imagine that somebody with the responsibility of that temple, someone with a direct connection to him, probably has a storage unit right full of material and content and who knows what else. And that's one of the things that I fear for our people is, I don't want us to be in a position where in two or three more generations right, you know, with every elder, we're adding more debris and we're adding just an excessive amount of shit to the pile, right, I think that that's unnecessary and we just we have to be very careful about you know, what do you absorb into your tradition and what do you leave behind, right? I mean, there's a lot of information we have that we just don't even teach, or exactly.
Speaker 3:What do you absorb into your tradition and what do you leave behind, right? I mean, there's a lot of information we have that we just don't even teach, or Exactly, but we have it on hand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have. So Lordman had a very deep connection with a number of members of the Native American community. We had a couple of elder priests who were natives.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:By blood, sewer natives right by blood. And we have and I do mean obnoxious amount of material about various native american traditions just sitting in a folder because we aren't going to incorporate it into our practice nothing. So I would hope that one day we will have someone that we can give that to and let them do with it what they see fit, learn from it, glean from it.
Speaker 2:You know, take what they need, leave the rest, sort of situation. But for us it holds no bearing on our day-to-day no. So to give that to our kids, I think again we're just kind of handing them a problem of like what do you do with those? What do you do? Yeah, it's a lot. The elders, they foresaw a lot.
Speaker 3:They force what?
Speaker 2:They foresaw. They foresaw they foresaw a lot of things, but they did not foresee everything, and the digital age is one of those things. They didn't foresee the ability to search and transcribe. They didn't foresee AI in many instances.
Speaker 3:And how would you use this? I'm sorry, a terabyte of documents in real life is scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah it is.
Speaker 3:If you only knew how much, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:For sure. I remember the floppy disks. Yeah, you remember the floppy disks. Yes, the original temple was handed to you On floppy disks. Yeah, and it was like floppy disks.
Speaker 2:You used to have holders for them and like it was funny because it was like floppy disks you used to have holders for them and, like it was funny because it was like a rolodex, you could flip through them and go clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, and you could literally like, put the, you know, like flip through the discs. You had what? Three of them? Yeah yeah, each, I mean we're it, it sounds. It doesn't sound like a lot.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, it is.
Speaker 2:Each disc could hold. I don't even remember. I think it was like a quarter of a terabyte.
Speaker 3:Something like that.
Speaker 2:Something like that, because they had a limit.
Speaker 3:They weren't that big. It was like 444 megabytes. Yeah, there's something in that.
Speaker 2:Something in that neighborhood. Let's say, between three and 400 megabytes was about what they held. So to have three full reams of them, oh my god, yeah, and and then. So you had the fun task of actually putting them into a computer. Yes, yeah. And then dare I ask do you still have them? No oh, thank god.
Speaker 3:Okay, no matter of fact, I think that well, once we got everything on electronically, yeah, I believe that the magnetic you magnetize them yeah we magnetized them in because they were they were starting to lose their magnetize that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, yeah, that makes sense. So, yeah, he, so you, you basically magnetize them, rendering them unreadable.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now we have it in the computer files.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is a whole lot easier to carry that thing around in a little thumb drive. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:But we also still have the physical Book of Shadows, we have the physical lecture series.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, it's all fun, it's all fun and games until they start to write it is, it is, it is even just pictures.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's so many groups that have volumes of photographs from sabbats and rituals and days past and, like you, don't even know who some of the people are. No, some temples have been around that long yeah.
Speaker 3:Have they been around long enough for some?
Speaker 2:coffee. Oh well, we've come on. We've always had coffee, we know that.
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 lifetempelseminaryorg for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, discord, twitter.
Speaker 4:Maze of stone and mire Just hold my hand as we pass by A sea of blazing pyres.
Speaker 1:And so it is the end of our day.
Speaker 4:So walk with me till morning breaks. And so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning.
