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
Beyond the Seen: Elementals and Symbolism
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Speaker 2:All right, so we're going to talk about elementals. Oh boy, oh boy. Let's first start with names Silphs, salamanders, undines, nymphs, gnomes uh, good, googly goo, uh, phoenixes, river spirits, well, spirits, fire spirits. Basically, pick your, pick your element and add the word spirit to the end of it oh, good grief so oh, googly moogly for sure, googly, moogly.
Speaker 2:For sure, googly, moogly, okay. So, first off, these are beings that exist mythologically, right, spiritually, alchemically and to some extent, in the human psyche, right, okay, there's esoteric tradition involved in this. The belief is that these spirits, or the or elementals, whatever you want to call them, inhabit the places where an element dwells and rule over it. They govern it, right, okay?
Speaker 4:in other words, you're going to find water, spirits and lakes. Rivers, yes. Natural forms, yeah waterfalls.
Speaker 2:You know swimming pools I'm joking, uh, listen, I will actually say this with the invention of now, saltwater pools, yes, yes, I would say in a chlorinated pool, hell, no, they're going to run away from that as fast as I would. But if you have a natural swimming pool, yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't see why not.
Speaker 2:They'd be like this looks cozy, let's post up. So there's so much to this. Yeesh, this is like pandora's box, okay, so, on one hand, most of us and I would be very, very quick to ask for citation for anyone who could claim that they knew we have no idea where these came from. No, we have no idea what the origin of any of this is.
Speaker 4:we don't know where these words, the names, came from none of it, and even the concepts of some of them sort of change from tradition to tradition very much, all right very much so, because well asian more asian um religions. See river spirits and inhabiting valleys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's all kinds. I mean, every culture has some kind of lore here. Keep in mind, this is where we get mermaids.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:This is where we get phoenixes.
Speaker 4:This is where we get the big foots.
Speaker 2:I mean hell throw in airbender you know it's all of it. You know it's the same thing, so it's all of it.
Speaker 4:you know it's the same thing. So I think the big start point is do we believe in them, do we? I mean, do you believe that that mountain over there, that sacred mountain over there, has a mountain spirit attached to it? If you go in there and bother it, it might do something to you. No, are you with me? Yes, now, on the other hand, I can sit there and say I believe that maybe certain whales may have certain spirits attached to it.
Speaker 2:But here's how I look at it. If it inspires awe and if it forces a human being to acknowledge their smallness and acknowledge really just that, how small we are in comparison to the natural world, I do believe something is fueling that. I do believe that there are inhabitants of those places that we cannot readily see, hear, touch, etc. With our major faculties.
Speaker 4:Right, and we're talking about beings that are other than ghosts.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, if we look at water as an example other than ghost. Oh yeah, if we look at water as an example and we look at salamanders, right, salamanders are really interesting because I love when people go, have you ever seen an elemental? And I go, yes, I've seen salamanders. Yeah, because I've literally seen salamanders. I've seen axolotls, which is a type of salamander you know like, yeah, I've, I've seen tadpoles. So, yes, I do believe.
Speaker 2:And so, okay, well, I'm again, let me, let me stick with salamanders for a minute all right salamanders are fascinating because, as a creature, right right, most naturalists and and people who are, you know, just very well versed in parks and nature elements and waterways will tell you the sign of a healthy ecosystem and a healthy waterway fresh water salamanders. Yeah, because if salamanders cannot survive nor reproduce if the water is polluted, if it's impure, if the conditions are not literally perfect, right, I can very easily see where our ancestors saw them, as some kind of otherworldly creature. Yes, I can also see where these little beings have a certain measure of intelligence of their own. They are ecologically necessary and I certainly want, wouldn't want, to tread on them.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't want to do anything to damage their environment or make them unhappy right right right um, which is hard to say because, like any time, like I've walked through many a river. And it's funny because when you see a salamander and you're, I mean they're not happy that you're there, they can't be, they're terrified.
Speaker 4:Right, You've got this big ass creature that's just walking right by you and you're just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when they dart out from a rock, let me tell you they scare the snot out of you because you don't know in that moment what it is, and some salamanders are big and they're very fast moving. Yeah, so to me I go okay, logically, if they exist in water although we do know, right, there's a lot of things that exist in water, there's a lot of microorganisms in water. We know that life came from water Does that not mean that these same things don't exist underground and we just don't know it? Do they exist in the air and we just don't know it? I mean, dust mites exist exist.
Speaker 4:I mean there's a lot of microbiology, yeah, in soil yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:So the question is did our ancestors or did the origin of these creatures come from a place of microbiome, or is it something else entirely?
Speaker 4:I don't know you know, it's like people sitting there wanting to get rid of certain.
Speaker 2:I'm sure the world would love it if we got rid of mosquitoes, but we don't know exactly what would happen it's funny you say that, because there's actually um there's science being done on this right now, about what would happen if we eradicated mosquitoes. Would it create an ecological disaster or could we do it without consequence?
Speaker 4:Right, I mean because we don't know. We don't know. You know, I mean that's just like if all the bees disappear, we're starving to death in no time.
Speaker 2:So do I think? So Go back to what you were saying about, like the spirit of the mountain, you know well, I mean, do you?
Speaker 4:I mean just like, like, like you, like I see on tv and all this there's something there.
Speaker 2:There's some unseen force against something greater than me in that environment, but do I think that it has to be appeased or that it will get angry or even addictive?
Speaker 4:no, all right, or no you know, or that you need to go by their shrine in their little and light an incense, whatever no, I believe they just are again.
Speaker 2:They're not good nor bad. They don't have agenda.
Speaker 4:I don't think they really bother with us when we are there? Not really. Yeah, whatever they're they're.
Speaker 2:We're just, we're insignificant to them, um. So yeah, I don't really think on it beyond that, but I mean, I do have a certain amount of respect for it on a grand scale. Yes, um, do I think? Okay? So then here comes this question, because this becomes a big deal for a lot of pagans do the elementals help us perform magic? Do our? Should we be calling upon them, petitioning them? Is there something they can do?
Speaker 4:Well, there are a lot of things that they can do. All right, and one of the best things that they can do is teach you, but that's a different scenario. As far as magic and stuff like that, I don't really call upon them.
Speaker 2:I don't either. I don't either. I view them a lot and so, so, interestingly, right, so the, the earth elementals, are gnomes. Right and when, when, when I think of any creature that is in a multitude, right again, many, many, many, many, many more than me, why would I call upon you? What you will be unruly. Yes, you will be difficult to manage. You will have the attention span of well, you won't. You won't have an attention span, you will. You will be impossible.
Speaker 4:Well, again, when you summon a gnome, a gnome comes and acts like a gnome.
Speaker 2:Exactly. But it would be like, okay, the best way I can think of it, if I'm going to summon the beings of air, these are winged creatures. Why would I summon a swarm of an insect? They're going to wreak havoc.
Speaker 4:I mean just imagine just getting birds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the belief that we could get them to fall in line Mm-mm, mm-mm. I don't. I just don't see it being reasonable. They're going to be unruly little shits, yes, and I think that what we have to be more concerned with and I will say that this to me, I do believe I believe I've seen this is that you will have an elemental become interested in what you're doing, yeah, and then they become a distraction and you have to occupy them, you have to give them something to do. So I find it kind of funny that when a lot of people see it as, oh, I have this bowl of water as an offering to the elementals of water, I'm like to me, that's not, that's not an offering to them. I'm going here, you go get in the kiddie pool. Yeah, this is, this is yours. You, you stay here so that I can do what I need to do, and they're not a massive distraction. Yeah, that's that's how I view it, it's. I guess you could see that as appeasing.
Speaker 2:Maybe, Maybe I mean. This is where the old you know spill salt, and they have to count it Right. Myths come from. Yeah, you know what is it?
Speaker 4:Trolls yeah, you know um what is it trolls uh. This is also going down the same line as the uh shoe with the the shoesmith yes, the, the, yeah, yeah, yeah, leave your shoes out.
Speaker 2:And the yeah, the cobbler. And yeah, there's tons of this stuff. Elves, all of this, this is where it comes from, and anytime we see these beings, think and I know it again, it's a little juvenile, but think about how we have them introduced to us as children. You know, the dwarves in Snow White are always busy doing something right, they're mining the elves. Santa's elves are always busy. They're little busy bodies, they're always doing something. The Ewoks, right, I mean, come on, the Ewoks were effectively George Lucas's version of an elemental. Yeah, they're.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and I don't know, I don't know, I, I think, if anything, they have the tendency to be very naughty if you let them, and we just have to work within that sometimes what they do tend to be a little bit mischievous yes, and I think that where this becomes important is that when you're performing a ritual, it's knowing and understanding that if a particular element is going sideways in your ritual, you yeah, you've got a little bit of mischief happening and you need to get it under control. Yeah, this is best you can. I don't know, that's how I see. I also think that modern witches have too much science and too much logic at our disposal to be overly concerned with about these little guys. Yeah, you know it would be like. It would be like putting your head on your pillow every single night and freaking out about the bedbugs yeah, not bedbugs. The dust mites, dust mites, bedbugs. Bad Bedbugs, very bad.
Speaker 2:No, dust mites your pillow every single night and freaking out about the bed bugs, not bed bugs, the the dust mites that's my bed bugs bad bed bugs very bad. No dust mites that's my, because dust mites are freaking everywhere. Yes, so when you put your head on your pillow at night, thousands, millions, right, billions of these things are crawling on you yes, there are all of us now.
Speaker 4:Yeah I mean but okay what are you gonna do yeah? There's who knows I mean there there isn't a beneficial to having these on us. They, they, they eat our dead skin.
Speaker 2:They serve a purpose for sure, and I mean, who knows, we may come to find eventually that much like salamanders is a literal creature. There are other elements that this exists, you know. We might find that there in fact are microorganisms that survive in lava and magma.
Speaker 4:We just don't know. Do you? Do you think the names that well, these, these elementals, these these creatures that we're talking about, do you think they might have been misrepresentative, like the unicorn, where the unicorn might be rhinos, it's just anything with a central, one horn is a unicorn, not the horse that we see in mythology. Are you with what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:there, maybe, maybe, maybe. I mean, there's too many mythological choices.
Speaker 4:In other words, could a gnome actually be what used to be a boring animal and they just but we transformed it into what we think it is now?
Speaker 2:Maybe it's very possible. There's so many tales of all of these types of things and different cultures have different versions of them, and a lot of times I find that to be I mean, it's, it's a little too coincidental right.
Speaker 4:I think it's kind of weird that out of all these four elements and all these creatures, one is an actual creature we can pick up, and when was the last time you saw an undying?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So that makes me wonder was there an actual, and we've called it something else now.
Speaker 2:Maybe, or is it extinct, could be, you know, is it something that once existed and now it doesn't? I mean, I hate to say it. We kill creatures all the time.
Speaker 4:We lose how many species each?
Speaker 2:year Uh-huh.
Speaker 4:Of different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe there was something that existed that was already pretty scarce or rare to begin with.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And now it's gone, gone, and so it becomes a thing of legend. I don't know, I don't know. It's worth a ponder though it is, yeah, oh, let's talk about symbols all right witches love their symbols. Yeah, I mean, people love their symbols really, right, right it's more of a human thing than it is a witch thing.
Speaker 4:That's true you know, I just think we have a little bit more of them well, I don't know about that because I think it depends on what you define as a symbol.
Speaker 2:Right, I don't know what are you going to define as a symbol?
Speaker 4:right, I don't know what are you going to define as a symbol so well, let me ask you this is a symbol and a sigil the same thing, or is this?
Speaker 2:could be, can be. Here's the thing anything that represents something else is a symbol right so words represent are just symbols exactly yeah, words aren't real not right, we name things because we need something to call them right but the color blue right, the very word blue is just a symbol of the color we see. Right, yeah, it could. We could have just as easily called blue purple.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:It makes no damn difference.
Speaker 4:Or you know, it could have been shrimp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it makes no difference. I mean, that's, that's one of the things that makes language so funny. Yes, they're just symbols to explain other things.
Speaker 4:And then when you have a language like English, which is made up of a bunch of other languages.
Speaker 2:You have other people's symbols mixed in.
Speaker 4:I tend to like symbols All right. They're an easy way to remember how to tell a story sometimes they can be yeah you know, they're easy ways to remember things, in the way I mean it was the first form of writing, with the pictures and all this, yeah, and we don't understand them because we don't remember those stories now.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's just like Egyptian hieroglyphs were a language right, that was their written language, but it's also just individually, a bunch of symbols, symbols. Asian cultures write the same way. So really, I think what the question becomes is, spiritually, what makes a symbol spiritual? Yeah, what makes us, what makes it special, what makes it powerful?
Speaker 4:um, and again we're back to the lore behind them and, yeah, the meanings and because, because the meanings can change from one temple to another oh of course you know the way we describe how in the world they, how you use the symbol of the five-pointed star varies from all the other temples.
Speaker 2:Well, not completely. I mean, there's some, yeah some that overlap, but it could vary.
Speaker 4:So technically there's not a wrong way to interpret a symbol.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 4:There is no. No, that symbol don't mean that.
Speaker 2:Right, this is also why a lot of witches make up their own language, or they use a sacred alphabet or a dead alphabet. There's a lot of different. I mean really and truly. Anything is a symbol, if you want it to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean really and truly anything is a symbol, if you want it to be. This is also where the discussion of, again the passing of judgment, good words and bad words, good symbols and bad symbols you know what I mean. Like, the symbol itself means nothing. The problem is Hitler did a bad thing. Problem is Hitler did a bad thing, the Nazis did a bad thing, and now the swastika is forever tainted. With that yes, because of their actions. So now it's a bad symbol.
Speaker 4:But I hate to ask this, but do you think that stink will ever get off that At some point in the future when we get far, far away from it? And it's not such a. It was in mine, in your face growing up. Oh for sure, I mean. I remember my grandfather sitting there in his chair telling me stories of the whole nine yards and what it was like.
Speaker 2:Because we're not that removed from it.
Speaker 4:Right. But I'm talking about the generations that are coming up that are removable. They be able to eventually get the stink off some of these symbols maybe I think definitely a few generations down the line. It's possible, right, it's very, very possible or will it take another evil character to come on to corrupt a different symbol, to make everybody hate that? Are you with me? I?
Speaker 2:don't know. I mean like, look here's, here's how I I look at it, look at it in the opposite. So the mayan calendar, which is made up of a bunch of symbols right was once holy.
Speaker 2:That was it was. It was sacred and it. I don't even know all the lore of the Mayan calendar. I don't know all of the things about it, but suffice it to say that people at that time venerated it and found it of importance. Now you can go to any home decorating store and find something with the Mayan calendar on it as a decoration yeah yeah, and with zero spiritual connection or context.
Speaker 2:It's just, oh, it's, it has to do with mexican culture, so let's just put it out there, right, I think the uh, the gravestone over one of the kings is a flag.
Speaker 4:Now the guy that looks like he might be in the spaceship sure, the big, famous one.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, you know which one I'm talking about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah I think that's actually. I think I've seen that as a flag, or there's, but there's so many things like that.
Speaker 2:We're also strangely reverting back meaning. Man started out expressing concept and symbols. Cave drawings, you know, like literally, and write the squiggles for the symbol of water, like look at the alchemical table and you'll see. You know the symbols. Basically, we're going back there, our emojis, nothing more, that's all they are, they're modern symbols.
Speaker 4:So we have come all this way to go, all the way back this, this, this, this is actually starting to sound more like you know here. Eat this root. No, don't eat root. Eat drink tincture. Yeah, and now we're back to the root yeah, it's exactly it.
Speaker 2:I mean, when you go, I could have expressed how I feel right about something in two sentences, where now I can just send a particular smiley face, right.
Speaker 4:I mean, I mean, again it's doing the LOL yeah, All right and the LOL is gone, the LOL has been replaced by the crying emoji, the laugh crying emoji, whatever, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I do think it's interesting, because the want to now shorten, the want to make things simpler, is going to push us further in that direction and it is going to change language as we know it. It's going to change our written text and who know? But you and I have long said, like the original smiley face from the 60s Right that became a big part of the peace love, you know hippie movement, all of that Like.
Speaker 2:is somebody you know, is some distant culture going to find that one day and think that it was a God that? It was a symbol for something greater.
Speaker 4:I mean come on yeah, I mean that's like the whole joke of you know, uh, these um archaeologists go to this land and start uncovering all these stat, all these um monuments to this god called atium yes, you would go to and pray and get something from them.
Speaker 3:Right yeah, an ATM, an ATM machine.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly From a thousand years from now. What will they?
Speaker 2:think about these. That's what's so crazy. I mean, a thousand years from now, will we even have currency? You know it's not looking like it, based on the way we're going, I mean. I mean no one will have cash anymore. Cash won't be. You know, there will not be a minting of currency. I don't know. Symbols change, they evolve, but ultimately what gives a symbol power is the use of it all right it's the use and the meaning you subscribe to it all right.
Speaker 4:Well, let me ask you this do you think there are just coarse symbols? Because I keep on seeing the same symbols over the years, used over and over you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yes, they're either circles, or they're squares, or they're just certain shapes yes, because I think there are certain shapes that we've already done a really good job of giving meaning to and we just continue to use it because it's convenient. It's already been done, everybody recognizes it.
Speaker 4:Don't fix something that ain't right.
Speaker 2:also, in an age now where a lot of people are making their own right they're building their own sigils, they're creating their own seals it's gonna cause a lot of confusion later maybe maybe because okay I I lean more. It will cause confusion more than it's gonna be hard.
Speaker 4:It's gonna be really, really hard to decipher certain things unless that person left a key or something yeah, to be able to decipher it you know well, I mean, I sort of put this up to like the, the painters they paint. Here I'm painting this emotion, here, it is right, I'm painting this feeling.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of interpretation with art, for sure, but art ultimately can give way to symbols. Well, there's, my question is when does it become a symbol versus art? When we start using it in a particular fashion, when we start using it to represent something else? Okay, you know, start using it to represent something else okay, you know. So I'm trying to think of a good example and I'm actually coming up kind of blank on this.
Speaker 4:Um, so I'm sitting here trying to think of an art that I think it's become a symbol, now more than I mean the styles certainly become a symbol um you know what? You know what picture has become a symbol? Is the picture from earth, from space? Yeah it's a picture. It was art to begin with and again it is. Art is not a real pictures kind of put together right, it has became a symbol, but yeah, to some extent it has.
Speaker 2:But I think about things like okay, so the artist. I think his first name is david. I think it's david coons.
Speaker 2:Coons was the guy who did balloon animals right and it was a whole pop culture phenomenon of balloon animals, right, right, right. And he, but he, this dog, this balloon animal dog that he made, has become a symbol of that entire style of pop art. Right, so it's one in the same. I think about Andy Warhol it's kind of the same thing, you know, his, his Campbell's soup can, or Marilyn Monroe has become a symbol for that era. We could say the same thing about Van Gogh.
Speaker 4:To some extent there's now what about things like like the um, oh uh, the Ferris wheel, the big Ferris wheel in england that's sort of become an icon of yeah, I mean it's people.
Speaker 2:People recognize the city because of it right.
Speaker 4:I mean, it's just like the we could say that right, we could say out of buildings too.
Speaker 2:I mean the statue of liberty, that you know. All of it same thing. And the statue of liberty is a good example. Yeah, her head symbolizes the new world for people, the freedom, what america is supposed to stand for, despite what's going on right now. Right, all of that fun stuff. Sorry, I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. I had to get a little political for just like a quarter of a second, I know. Um, but that, but that symbolism. You know that artist. I mean what they were doing at the time. I I think they knew it was important. They didn't know it was going to become that important. And she's not the only one. She's a replica. Yeah, yeah, there's more than one statue of liberty. So I mean there's, there's a lot of different types of those things. I think, if we go all the way back, the, the venus's, the venus of willendorf is probably the most famous popular one where you have to be not popular yet famous.
Speaker 2:You know, she was a little. We assume fertility statue, we assume that she was a fertility goddess for the people who created her right. But whether or not that's true, that's the meaning we've given it. That's the meaning. Yes, so now she is a symbol of that? I don't know, I really don't know. I mean, there's so many things like that. We just because humans will evolve how they see certain things go with it yeah, there's.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of application for some symbology, right in every faith, but I think a practitioner has to really work with it for themselves to gain a true understanding and the power within it. I mean even math, as wild as that sounds right yeah, yeah, I mean yeah it. There's math, and then there's sacred math, yeah. Just saying it's pretty wild stuff, I don't know. Tarot.
Speaker 4:Again symbols.
Speaker 2:Yeah, symbols. Most divination has symbols in some way.
Speaker 4:We definitely give it a lot of power.
Speaker 2:I mean it's very prevalent, we use them all the time, and I don't think we realize how much we use them. I don't think so either. Well, I think, yeah. I think witches do. I think more so than other aspects of culture, yeah, but I think a lot of people on a day-to-day just take them for granted. Something to think about over more coffee.
Speaker 4:Oh, yes, please more 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 3:As we pass by a sea of blazing fires, and so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks, and so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks, thank you.
