Pagan Coffee Talk
Pagan Coffee Talk is hosted and brought to you by Life Temple & Seminary, a traditional witchcraft coven in Charlotte North Carolina, with a long-standing initiatory tradition. We discuss a wide range of pagan, witch, occult, Crafte, magic, and Wiccan topics from a traditionalist point of view. We also explore running and operating a coven or group, plus the challenges, conduct, and responsibilities of the pagan clergy. New episodes come out weekly. Our show is entirely unscripted, and prone to occasional foul language, and moments of SPM (spontaneous pagan mayhem!) We hope you join us. If you would like to be a guest, we are always seeking authors, traditional heads, and group leaders to join us. If you have a topic suggestion, please let us know in the comments. Check the about section for links to our social media and website. A special thanks to Darkest Era for the use of their songs: The Morrigan, & Poem to the Gael. Check them out at http://darkestera.net/.
Pagan Coffee Talk
When the Spiritual Meets the Mundane: Understanding Gender Roles in Craft
The sacred dance between masculine and feminine energies forms the backbone of many pagan traditions. From the physical realm of temple-building and organization that falls under priestly domain to the spiritual guidance and ritual expertise of the priestess, we explore how these roles mirror traditional family dynamics while creating something greater than the sum of their parts. "The priestess decides where the temple goes, but the priest builds it" – a simple yet powerful illustration of how these energies work in tandem.
Perhaps most valuable is our honest assessment of spiritual burnout. Any leader attempting to fulfill both roles simultaneously courts disaster, explaining why historical figures like Gerald Gardner quickly initiated priestesses. It wasn't just spiritual balance he sought – it was practical necessity. This wisdom extends beyond religious practice into relationships and daily life, where recognizing complementary strengths creates harmony.
This conversation offers valuable insights into how wisdom gained from the past remains relevant in modern practice. Subscribe to Pagan Coffee Talk for more thought-provoking discussions that bridge the gap between traditional knowledge and contemporary living.
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Speaker 2:please consider donating and following our socials. We just had a 20 minute discussion you, me and Lord Oswin about a multitude of things, but that all boil down to gender and gender and craft and uh yeah, and I want to have this conversation with you because for years you've gone around and told everybody you act more like a priest than a priestess.
Speaker 3:so there is a difference between the priestesshood and the priesthood god yes so can we talk about this?
Speaker 2:yeah yeah so what? Well, let's start with the basics. What does it mean to be a priest?
Speaker 3:well, again, our jobs is to handle the mundane. It's our job to do the banking, the, the keeping up the tempo, doing the work okay, organization in.
Speaker 2:If we go back to, you know the olden days, right, you would have literally been responsible for building, yes, the temple. You would have been responsible for the, the stick and mortar, yeah, um, and then it's upkeep and right yeah, grounds keeping the whole night right.
Speaker 2:So the older I get, the funnier some of these things are to me, because I do find myself right, as I think we all do acting like my parents and I realize that it's like you know, when you remodeled a part of the house or when my parents did anyway, right, my dad built it, but my mom was the one who decided where it went and what it was.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's kind of the same thing. So, like the priestess was responsible for saying, yes, this is the location, right, this is the sacred spot, this is where it's going, but then, ultimately, you would, it would be handed over to you, but it's, it's more than that, right, so we can talk about, yes, the mundane and the spiritual yes. And so the priestess is supposed to handle all the spiritual matters.
Speaker 2:Counseling um ritual itself is her domain right um, teaching is an interesting one because, technically, technically, it falls under the priesthood. The priesthood, yes, but it is she who interprets the teachings and the meanings behind them, and the things that we need to impart upon the next generation.
Speaker 3:Now, when we talk about you know, like when I say I'm more like a priest, I don't really mean that, obviously no, it's just you were, you were taught and for the longest time, were only exposed to the priesthood so, yes, that's one of the things that does make me a bit of an anomaly in craft.
Speaker 2:Right, I was a priestess raised by priests. Right, I had priestess influences from outside our tradition tradition, but yeah, but I was largely raised by raised by men, um, but also right. Let's look at some of the mundane. We have long said that we pick up the slack where the other fails right or or has a shortcoming right. Okay, so in your case, right, with dyslexia being something that bars you from being able to do some of the tasks you would want to do, like with the lecture series and with teaching, I pick up the slack Right, and so I have a bit more of a hands-on in the structural aspect.
Speaker 2:But then of course I'm consulting with you on.
Speaker 3:How you?
Speaker 2:want it to be yeah.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:It's. It is kind of fascinating and, of course, there are many traditions that don't operate this way. No, there's not a lot of equality when it comes to the division.
Speaker 3:No, and there is a tendency in our community for the roles of certain genders to be more downgraded than others, and it happens.
Speaker 2:Here's my thing. If you're running a church and you are trying to do it all by yourself, regardless of which gender, Right, I pity you yes. I pity you, that is crap. Yes, it is hard gender right. I pity you.
Speaker 3:Yes, I pity you that is crap.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the burnout is going to be extraordinary. It's going to be epic. You need somebody else. You need a counterbalance point. You need somebody to share that load.
Speaker 3:You need right if nothing else, you need someone to at least bitch at every so often that you can talk to on the same level of course.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a peer-to-peer system. Right craft always has been so. The idea of of, like I said, just one person, and it's funny because we look at some of the history of like gardenerian and I mean I'm no expert on Gardnerian, I know that, I accept that, I mean, but there is a lot of documentation to say Gardner was very quick to initiate and elevate his priestesses. Yes, and I'm like, yeah, no shit, he needed help. Yes, like how else was he going?
Speaker 4:to do it.
Speaker 2:I don't. I think at the time I mean, yes, we look at that now and we go oh my God, that was so fast and it was you know well, yeah.
Speaker 3:And when you're sitting there and you're watching a temple that's been operating for a while and got all this down pat and stuff.
Speaker 2:Full moon looks like it goes off without a hitch it looks like that I mean everything, every aspect, every minute, detail of circle casting, tools, rituals, pantheons, mythology, it all has male, female.
Speaker 3:Connotations.
Speaker 2:Connotations, and if we don't study those, if we don't understand them, we're at a disadvantage.
Speaker 3:Well, again, our religion is a religion of life. All right, and unfortunately, the majority of the people in the world are straight, so our religion is this way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:All right, I'm sorry, it's just the way it is.
Speaker 2:I don't even worry about straight versus gay. I think, we're just down to the aspect of procreation, right, male female penis, vagina, baby, yeah, we can certainly like look, and there are plenty of people who like to go. Well, what about I don't want to hear about? What about? There are always exceptions, right, there are always in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 2:There are always anomalies, there are until it's not perfect, it doesn't go right and things happen until we can spontaneously reproduce, right which I don't see happening you know, this is the way right, at least for us, and it's that duality, that dynamic, and I I can't help but think and, like I said, it's it cracks me up right now, the more I think about things and I go oh my god, I'm turning into my parents, because traditional roles even if you weren't raised in a very traditional house, you know Right, there's still the idea that mom always knows what's going on with the kids. Right, dad is usually clueless.
Speaker 3:But look, I don't know about your house but, I swear up and down. My mom was part lawyer.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh God, I mean, this woman could sniff out a freaking lie from 90 miles away. Oh yeah, my father on the other hand, you could tell him anything. He'd be like yeah, that's possible, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's, and it's not to say that men are gullible. It's just their way again of looking at the world is different. They're a little bit more linear, women or not? But let me.
Speaker 3:Let me put it to you this way I I have two older sisters. Okay, and and again, as you can tell from the voice and everything, yes, I am southern, so I was raised in a very traditional southern family and as the youngest in my family, there were things I got away with that my sisters could never freaking do, but you were also the male I was the boy in the family. I could stay out until one o'clock at 16, where my sisters couldn't, of course.
Speaker 2:There are always these sorts of exceptions I think that people make in these. You know again the but like here right now, I can't. I mean, I had this. It smacked me like a ton of bricks the other day and I had to stop what I was doing. I was vacuuming, that's all I was doing.
Speaker 2:I was vacuuming and the conversation that I had just had with my boyfriend was one that made me go ugh. I literally feel like my mom and dad right now, because he agreed to do a task or a chore right, and that was something my dad would have like immediately volunteered for. And I was like, well, okay, I'll go ahead and vacuum, because I know how much you hate it. Plus, I'm a little better at it anyway, I find the dust bunnies, but I did. I stopped the vacuum and I went. I'm my mother. How did this happen? And it's so funny how a couple and I do think any healthy relationship right you fall into just lying Like it just happens. You don't plan it, you don't think about it, it's just how it goes Right. And typically, yes, women do more of the planning, the organizing, the decorating.
Speaker 3:The more social events of a family and men.
Speaker 2:It's more of the building, the more shall we say isolated or solo activities, right the, the maintenance and all this other stuff that just and it's not to say, of, of course, that in different roles, different couples, different situations, they don't, you know, share the different strengths. If one's weaker at one, the other one picks up the slack, fine.
Speaker 3:It's just fascinating, though, the people who think this way that that you know that we're being all this very restrictive stuff have never lived on a farm. All right, when you're living on a farm, gender goes out the window and jobs getting done comes in. Just getting the job done is more important than who's actually doing it. Sure, now again.
Speaker 2:Yes, we've often sit there going, hey, this guy's better at building fences, so let this guy go do it but versus but but sure, but I mean that's also, I think, like, look, let's be honest, when the shit hits the fan you step up. You know you do what has to be done, but day to day it really is interesting to look at the prioritization of what men value and what women value and how the two balance each other out. Yeah, yeah, I think for priests and priestesses. So much of it, and we do.
Speaker 2:We've compared, we've long compared it right to a family right where you have mom and dad and you have your grandparents as your elders, and then you have your spiritual children and where they fall in the pecking order and you know it's no, or it should come as no surprise, right, if you're a neophyte or a new person, you're a baby, you're the infant. You get all the attention yes, you do yeah and you know, first and seconds are kind of like why? How come the baby gets all that You're like. Well, yeah, they're new. Sorry.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, you don't understand. I got sent a meme of this, oh no. All right. It is a picture of a woman in the swimming pool trying to coach one of her little kids to jump into the pool, while her little, slightly older one is like sitting there trying to drown. And what were the labels? The mother was high priestess Nia fights for the little kids jumping in and the kid drowning were first degrees.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, oh, it's so true though we do, because we are also we are very definitely. We're not coddlers, we're not, no, we're not, no. And once you have an initiation under your belt. We're like okay, kid, sink or swim.
Speaker 3:Train wheels come off. It's done, they really do. Oh man, I got to find that and send it to you now.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, you do. But I mean, is there?
Speaker 3:anything else? I I mean, is there anything else that we can? Really well, when you found let me ask you this when you finally started getting around other priestesses, I mean because again for a while you were trapped just with me for a while. What was the biggest difference you saw when you were first introduced to a real priestess? And I don't, I don't know how to say, I don't mean a real priestess, but yeah, yeah, I do know what you mean, though um someone who was actually raised in the priestess yeah, yeah, they're.
Speaker 2:The first impression is that they're sterner yes they are not.
Speaker 2:So again, if I, if I liken it to parenting, priests tend to be a little more jovial and a little more outgoing initially, and priestesses are a little shrewd, they're a little guarded, yeah, they sort of sit back and they watch and they do a lot of internalizing and they watch and they do a lot of internalizing about the situation, right, the other thing that becomes really apparent really fast and again I liken this to mothers we don't care who the child belongs to. If the child is acting up, we will intercede. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:No, no. I will sit here and state that I have been sitting at a ritual at our temple. Someone had a baby, the baby cried, and five women jumped.
Speaker 2:Oh my God.
Speaker 3:I thought it was stampede.
Speaker 2:But we also take that to mean our neophytes, right. Literally, our spiritual children. If somebody's spiritual child is acting out of turn or is being disruptive, she'll step in. Yes, she doesn't give a fuck who you are, where you came from, literally. Who do you belong to, right? Who's your spiritual?
Speaker 3:mother? Who is your spiritual mother? Yeah, we're having a conversation.
Speaker 2:We are going to go have a little talky talk, and I mean, it's not any different than put a group of moms together at a playground and if one kid's being a bully or picking on others or doing something dumb, somebody's gonna step up regardless and go hey look, I could have left it be, but your kid was probably gonna hurt themselves so or or somebody else. So I had to do something. And moms are really funny, because I think in a lot of situations when you approach a mother about their child and you go I'd like to have a conversation about their first reaction is what they do Immediately. What did they do Not? They don't side with their kid.
Speaker 4:They're like what did they?
Speaker 2:do what happened. You know what I think is funny? I think most people mistake or think a priestess is going to act more like a maiden.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that's where the disconnect comes in. We're not, we're not.
Speaker 3:I have gotten phone calls from people counseling, wanting counseling from Temple and be given to them, and they'll be sitting there going. Well, can I talk to your priestess instead, and I'm like she's going to give you the exact same answer, I am Right. But no, I really believe that you're going to do something different than I. Yeah, I just it's.
Speaker 2:but it is fascinating that we, a lot of us, idealize the mother figure as the maiden. The maiden is, she's sweet and she's charming and she's full of love and life and she's innocent. And a lot of that comes from the very fact that you know what she hasn't dealt with. The same hardship, well again.
Speaker 2:The maiden is that you're going from girlhood into woman right it is that transitional phase, yeah, and she's very huggy and she's very, very open-armed. It's not always the case with the mother, no, um, and on the other end of the coin, the but. But here's where, again, it's so interesting. People see the priest and think he is going to be more like the sage yeah they think he's going to be the grumpy old man you know, get off my porch speaks little, listens a lot, and I'm like where does this come from?
Speaker 2:these are some really interesting stereotypes that, I'm going to be honest, they come from pop culture, not from reality.
Speaker 3:No, I mean there's not too many priests. I know that actually act like that.
Speaker 2:We're all quite a few maybe, but for the most part I don't see our priests as stoic, cold or you know. No, no, not at all. So, yeah, I mean it is something to really think about, to look at, to kind of embrace some of those things. Like I said, I joke now and I go okay, I've turned into my mother, great. But, um, there is something about that acknowledgement that is part of growth. Yeah, you know it's. It's part of understanding that if you are displaying the best qualities from your upbringing, then you're probably on the right track. You're probably doing doing something okay, yeah, but that does have to carry over into your priest and priesthood.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely need more coffee. I do too.
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.
Speaker 4:YouTube and Reddit 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.
