You see something's going to happen. What what's going to happen?
I think.
What?
I bet that you help. Welcome to the occult Rejects.
Today's episode is for anyone tired of witchcraft esthetic and ready for the real thing. Folk magic as culture, not as a trend or a reason to cause play on Instagram, but as a set of practices that grew inside real communities under real pressures weather, hunger, disease, war, birth, death, and the constant need to protect the home. But before we introduce the guests and other panelists, there's a few
things I would like to mention. So yes, this coming April twenty fifth, Saturday, April twenty fifth.
Twenty twenty sixth.
Obviously, we have the twenty twenty six Southeastern Masonic Symposium and that is happening in Asheville at the Asheville Masonic Temple at eighty Broadway Street in Ashwell, North Carolina, and Ike Baker and Colin and a few other people will be there. I will be there, so come on down you can check it out. The keynote speaker will be John Michael Greer. He is a prolific occult and esoteric historian with seventy plus book books, including Circles of Power
in the award winning New Encyclopedia of the Occult. And he's also initiated across the Hermitic, Masonic, and Druid lineages and former Grand Arc Druid. Then we have Colin Concrede, who has been on the show before. If you haven't checked it out, I suggest to check it out. And he is a creator behind American Esoteric and he is focused on ancient philosophy and comparative Narra comparative religion. And he is also publicly listed as a massa mason and
a writer. And then we have somebody that you've seen on this show plenty of times and he's a fan favorite. We got Ike Baker, and he's an independent scholar and esoteric instructor. He's a practicing ceremonialist and initiate initiatic Mason. He is the Blue Lodge plus York right, also connected with Martinism and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and he is the host of the Arcanum podcast and
you've seen him here plenty of times. And then last but not least, they do have Tom Carter and he is a brother out of Mount Herman Lodge number one eighteen in Ashram, North Carolina, and he will be speaking on I don't know they didn't list it, but uh yeah, come down check it out. I will be there definitely. I might be filming stuff, so when I'm that busy filming, I can definitely hang out, but definitely come down and check it out.
It should be a good time.
And another thing I do want to just mention before we do get to the guest, we have the Occult Research Institute dot org.
That is our website for the ocult rejects kind.
Of and there's a lot of stuff on there to read if you're into reading. A lot of episodes that I've done in the past has been turned into readable form on there, and eventually I will be adding to the website. If you're interested in it now, you can always dm me. We do have t shirts for sale. We do have one with the skeleton. Sometimes you see somebody on the show where it oh myself with the X hands and then the one that looks like the Birth of Aphrodite or the.
Birth of Venus.
He could check it out dm me if you want to check them out to see what they look like they are twenty five dollars shipped. Total twenty five dollars at your house. So if you're interested, please let me know. And now I am done talking and our guest is will. Before I introduce the guest, let me introduce June Judith de Loon.
What is going on? Judith? How are you?
And we got my man Jewels, the handsome hyrafant. What is going on in Mississippi?
Misstic?
Hey, what's going on? Nick?
Guys?
I'm Jewles, host of the Gray Pill podcast, host of a couple other shows. Me and Headless have the Rust of Gods show we do on the Occult Rejects, also Gods of the Morning. Would and uh yeah find me over on x at gray Pilled pod and Patreon if you want to support the Showpatreon dot com says great pul podcast and also printify for some merch gray Pill dot Printify dot me. I had some Asunga Saka shirts. Gods of the Morning would merch a bunch of cool stuff.
Just put a hand of Sabasias shirt on that. So yeah, go check it out. I'm very excited to be here, very excited to learn from Joanna. I've been kind of stoked about this all week subject matter. So thank you Nick for inviting me, and it's been the old fellow rejects.
Hell yeah no, thank you for making it, sir, And we got Brandon Magas in the media.
What is going on?
Sir?
How are You's up?
Crew?
So excited to be here. Thank you Nick, Thank you team. I love being on every panel and all the time. Joanna, this is going to be fire. I'm so excited to hear what you got to say. Everyone just go to Magas in the media, X YouTube, subscribe, I can share Instagram. We're throwing out clips all the time, breaking down everything in the world through a mythmagic and meaning, let's get it.
Welso, thank you so much for making it.
And last week I least the Headless Giant and we got Beans with them too, What is going on?
How you doing?
You can catch Beans' podcast on my podcast on Thursdays. We show a mail bag where you can send in your cult slash essenteric stories and you can email those to me at the Headless Giant Podcast at gmail dot com and you can find me on X and YouTube and on insacrap too, so check those out.
Thank you awesome, Thank you very much, sir.
And finally our guest is we've got Joanna Tarnovska screwing that up tried my best known too many through her work as Polish Folk, which she describes herself as an animist, folk practitioner, writer, and psychologist living in the mountains of Lower Fight pronounce thiss right Celicia Poland, where her practice stays intentionally bioregional, tied to local landscape, local stories, in
the rhythms of the traditional year. She's the author of Polish Folk Magic and Ancestral Law and Traditions of the West Slavs, published through Crosscrow Books. Who was nice of us, nice enough to put me in contact with her, and that is a work that frames Polish folk magic through the lens of traditional cosmology, spirits and Allies, protective and heal charms, and the agrarian calendar, with an emphasis on the difference between modern reconstruction and what actually survives in
practice and record. And what makes this conversation worth doing, especially if you care about history, is that Polish folk practice sits at a crossroads pre Christian Slavic inheritance, centuries of Catholic devotional life and a deep reservoir of vernacular ritual technology, blessings, thresholds, spoken formulas, seasonal rights, where the boundary between religion and magic is more often about who's labeling it than what people are actually doing. So thank
you very much Johanna for joining us. Please let everybody know everything about you or whatever you'd like to advertise a plug.
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm really stalk to have this conversation today with your folks. You pretty much already introduced me, so I'm not going to be you know, adding much to that. All I can say is that if you folks enjoy our conversation to day, you can find me pretty much anywhere online under the name Polish Folk, which I also teach online, especially via patron about folk magic, animism and traditional craft. So if you enjoy my yapping tonight, then yeah, check me out.
That's it awesome. Thank you much. Thank you very much again for coming on, Joanna.
Like I asked all my guests on this type of stuff, when did you find yourself interested in this type of life, for this researching this stuff.
It's been a long while, you know. I'm in my mid thirties at the moment. And I have to say that what drew me to magical practice in general and occultism all of that is that from a very very young age, actually I had experiences with spirits and I needed to figure out how to deal with that, how to understand what I was experiencing. So in my teens I got into magic and occultism. It wasn't folk magic
straight away. Straight away, I did explore various paradigms and approaches, so, you know, being here and there you could say over the years, but folk magic is eventually what I arrived at and where I you know, ultimately felt at home.
So awesome, thank you very much. Some of the earlier things was one of the early things into before we get into folk magic, just wondering.
Oh, you know, the thing is that the things that were available at the time in Poland where I lived, is essentially what got me started. And at that time this was mainly like ceremonial magic, chaos magic, you know, telema, that kind of stuff. I did research that and practice that for quite a few years. But then over the years, you know, you can kind of see that the evolution
from that. It's a long stretch to folk magic. Right, So I could say that my path was maybe upside down to some of the folks I usually talk to about, you know, starting with the stuff that's close to you and then expanding into the broader kind of occult scene. You could say for me, it was kind of the opposite, so kind of funny.
One thing I want to add, when you were more into you mentioned the limo, which could be you know, and you mentioned ceremonial magic. I think, I mean, that's all that could intel a lot of stuff. It could be a very take you an hour to do something. Did you you know, did you go to that extent when you were practicing that stuff?
You know, I was never really initiated into any orders or like formally being introduced into that. So it was mainly like, you know, the kind of stuff you can do based on sources that are available, not very in depth. Looking back at it now from my you know, much more experienced advantage point today.
I mean, were you like busting out the ritual, the pentagram and all that stuff and the hexagram to do stuff now?
Yeah, pretty much you know, like the LBR.
P Okay, all right, So now my other question there, I guess to follow up on that is what you're into now seem like a little bit not as uh not as detailed.
Ah, you know, that's depends depends how you see the stuff, right. I think a lot of it is dictated by the perception of how stuff works, and that I think makes a huge difference in what is meaningful in terms of the craft that you do. So over the years, you could say for me, it was a lot of shedding of the things that at first felt really cool to explore, you know, and all of that, but over time became
unnecessary and I found more meaning in a more simple practice. Actually, so it all kind of depends on you know, the journey itself determines a lot of how we end up engaging with magic.
What do you think about the lima?
Do I have to answer.
Really bad? I guess you can.
It's all right, I mean no, no, not not really. It's just that it's really not for me. I do have friends who are initiated into auto and you know that kind of stuff, and I have huge respect for everybody from all walks of the craft. So it's not like I have bad things to say. It's just that for me, and especially also having you know, professional background in psychology as well. I find a lot of that approach to be very deeply psychologized, you could say, right,
depending on how you approach it. I think in Poland that's the main way that it's approached within auto especially right. So it's definitely not not for me, not something that I like to entertain personally.
But that's quite right. I was in the OTO for about five years and I didn't like it anymore. Left myself. I could definitely say it, but I'm not gonna go there. But so I understand pretty much. Yeah, yeah, all right. So I guess, I mean, you got this book. What is it with this book that you wanted to try to I guess what was the reason that you wrote this book? What do you think that this book has the author that other books maybe on this subject matter doesn't.
HM. Well, the one thing that it offers that maybe is not as present out there, or wasn't up until this point, is the perspective of a local, of somebody who actually lives here and has been you know, born into this culture and you know, living within it, Whereas up until this point, most of the sources you can see out there when it comes to like Slavic magic, Slavic witchcraft, that kind of stuff is usually from the
perspective of an outsider. So I really wanted to put my perspective out there, just for the folks and especially for the folks of the diaspora, to have something to compare to essentially what things look like here, the kind of you know, perception of the world that our ancestors had, what shaped Polish folk magic, why it were, the way
it works. I feel like those aspects are often lacking because frankly, many of the sources that we have here, and many of them are academic as well, you know, they were never translated to English, so this knowledge is just not out there, and the locals also haven't been haven't really been heard much up until this point either.
So I'm really glad that I was, you know, given the opportunity to have a platform to actually put my own book across, you know, on a global market, for people to be able to engage some of this stuff and maybe learned about some of these aspects for the first time, because some of them were never seen before
on the you know, English scene. You could say. So, yeah, I think why I wanted to write this book though, because you know, I was really hesitant, to be honest, it's a huge undertaking to be taking my entire culture and somehow packaging it within a single book like that feels very reductive. Right, We can all probably agree it's it wasn't easy. So and I'm somebody, yeah, and I'm somebody who really hates to put misinformation out there or to be like reductive, you know. So yeah, I was
really hesitant. But ultimately, you know, I've worked with a lot of folks of the diaspora, people who learn from me, and they were just so encouraging towards this happening and actually,
you know, them being able to access this. So they encouraged me to write this book and make it available for them so that they can access these you know, ancestral traditions in maybe more like down to earth authentic way without this romanticization you could say of you know, this land far away where their ancestors migrated from and all of that, because you know, there's a lot of misinformation out there essentially.
So yeah, before before I.
Ask anyblse if they have something to ask, there was just something that like your answer kind of touched on three other questions, But one of them I do want to ask, because you've mentioned the word a few times already. You're right with Theosporia and mine, what are the biggest mistakes you think practitioners make when trying to go Slavic.
Yeah. I already kind of touched on this, but I think it's romanticization really of just kind of having this idea of what was out there or of this ancient, unbroken line of tradition coming all the way down from
the pre Christian pagan practices. A lot of that is really not factual or frankly made up, and so yeah, I feel like that's but that's nobody's fault really, I think also because if you, you know, you wake up one day and you're like, Okay, I have Slavic ancestors, and I would love to reconnect with this culture and there you know, approaches to life, their craft, their beliefs,
all of that. You probably begin by trying to look for some information out there online, and it's really hard for folks who don't know our languages to be able
to discern what's actually legit versus what really is. And so you know, a lot of the as you asked mistakes just come from the fact that it's not easy to access information straight away that would be a good base for all of this, right, So I would encourage people who are trying to maybe get into this to explore their ancestral roots and our cultural traditions, to try
and look for people who are locals. And it's not just me, like, I'm so happy to see more and more people actually from the broadly speaking Slavic you know, regents and countries getting out there and creating content or writing books in English. So there's more and more legit
information out there. So if you're looking, and if you really are serious about exploring this, try to learn from the locals first, ask them what are some you know, legit sources so you don't get into you could really get into some nasty rabbit holes with the with exploring this stuff. So yeah, yeah, thank you.
I was gonna say, as an unabashed romanticizer of pre Christian history, it's really interesting to see in Lithuania a reconstruction movement going on right now that is having a lot of popularity. I mean, it's it's almost like the national religion at this point of removal, and I'm seeing that, and I'm like, wow, this is you know, they're actually turning back the clock. They're going past the point of the Northern Crusades and actually exploring the pre Christian roots.
What are your thoughts on these reconstruction movements going on in Slavic paganism.
Mm hmm. I can mostly speak to the ones I observe here in Poland, since that that's thing that I'm most familiar with. I can't really speak to Romova because I'm not informed enough to be having an opinion, to be honest, but I can see and honestly, I was also saw years back at a point where I was deeply into exploring this as well, this pagan reconstructionism, and in Poland this is called rogimovistvo or rodnovari, which is
basically meaning native faith. Right. I see that people are really craving this pre Christian connection to their own culture, and that stems from the fact that's growing up we are not taught about it at all. Like the history of Poland, for example, is thought starting from the moment that Poland was baptized as a country, and that's where
we begin as the people. Right, So people at some point who may be you know, take a step back from Catholicism, which is the main religion, are disappointed and are looking for something older, something that feels really ancestral and ancient and deep in their blood. You know, it's a craving that just goes very deep, and that's where those reconstructive movements come in and they fill that hole. And you know, of course I respect the people who
are into that. I have been participating in some of their rituals and practices, not as a formal member, but mostly as an outsider. It's not for me personally, I have to say that, because I don't feel personally the need to sterilize our folklore off of the folk Catholic elements. For example, I just don't need that because I dealt with my own religious wounds and it doesn't bother me.
But I also completely understand people who just can't stand that and they need to be rid of that and try to practice something that is as close in their eye, at least to something that was here in the pre Christian times. I respect that. I think it can bring a lot of healing, a lot of personal development, and
I think it's just good for a community. Also. On that you know other level as well, because these communities of worshipers you could say, who are mostly like you could see them as polythias, right, they are really close
knit communities who are doing something really cool together. So yeah, I think it's really cool that we can see that being more prominent today, and that slowly, because I don't know, that's not maybe something that people would pay attention to in like the US or Western countries, but here it's a big deal that it's slowly becoming accepted actually, because like a decade or two ago, that would be completely socially just unacceptable for somebody to come out as a
pagan or something like that, right, So yeah, it's cool that we are seeing this just becoming normalized.
Yeah, I do have a question for you because here in the US we do have a lot of folklore magicians, if you want to call them that, and I come from a culture that also has that when it comes to folklore.
Though, as you did your research, did.
You find that a lot of how can I say, nationalized habits, whether they be in Catholicism or Christianity or Orthodox were actually folk magic themselves and they became regular to you where it became normal as you did your research, because I found that out, even though you venture out into ceremonial magic and everything.
It's like you look at people from.
The who's talking you from the outside, and you're like, how is this not normal to you? Because this is normal within our culture. Because I have to admit I was surprised that there's Polish folklaw, but I have a My significant other is Slavic and a lot of things. When we talk about magic, he's like, well, yes, I'm Orthodox, but this and this and this is popular, and we do go to the person who does read the tea's
and they read the cards and it's normalized. But for Westerners that are unfamiliar with that, it's like foreign to them. How do you deal with that and how does that fall into the Polish folklore?
M hm, that's a very elaborate question, so I would have to break it down a bit, right, But yeah, I can see what you're talking about. In general, there's like a lot of those aspects of the folkloric craft
that's kind of seeped into the religion and vice versa. Right, that's what you're kind of talking about, right, Like something that's just people in the mainstream would consider acceptable even though they are religious has like older roots or roots in magic, which technically, you know, shouldn't be accepted by our mainstream religion, right. So yeah, there's a lot of
that in Polish culture in general. And also even if you look at the like, I don't even know where to start because it's everywhere, so sorry for being scatter brained about this, but even if you look about the church calendar of like celebrations and everything, most of them are rooted in those agrarian traditions that actually have a lot to do with just worshiping the earth literally Matt Kazemia, Mother Earth, right, paying you know, respect to the land,
spirits and stuff like that, and also with the coming to specialized practitioners for aid. Like we do have that as well in certain pockets of Poland where you have practitioners who specialize in like folk healing or like doing egg cleanses, or like fortune telling and stuff like that, and it's somehow acceptable in the eyes of rel just people, even though it shouldn't be, right. So, yeah, there's a lot of that as well, and I think that is normalized.
Those aspects are normalized because they were I guess incorporated into the folk Catholic perception of what's somehow religiously cohesive, even though if you look as an outsider, that kind of doesn't make sense really, But that's where the syncretism is. It's a living, breathing, you know, practice that just is
present and has been throughout this whole time. So I don't know if I'm like if I lost part of your question there, if you could like, is there something that that I missed to address or because I feel like there was more?
No, Actually you did answer it, because actually answered the question I was going to follow up, what was do you follow the will of the year? And you did actually say you do follow the will of the year. And most ceremonial magicians and those who follow those lines of magical practice, it's a little bit harder for them to understand that folk magic is along those lines.
It's just a little bit acceptable.
And we, yeah, we actually, how can it's more normalize with us at a young age that magic is not how can I say magic is not something to wonder about, it's more like a daily practice when it comes to folk magic and rural magic in that sense.
Oh yeah, that's so well said. Honestly, like let's let's thinking, let's philosophy and all of that, and more just doing and being out there, you know, with the with the practice on a daily basis, that's definitely they're approaching folk magic. So yeah, I agree with that when it comes to the folk practices, as you said, around the wheel of the year, technically I wouldn't consider it to be a
wheel of the year. It's more just like a calendar focused on the shifts in the patterns of the seasons, but also like cultural elements that would be prominent around certain times of the year. So I tend to usually call this more like a folkloric calendar or something like that.
And what is funny is that some of the most important dates actually they were preserved as feast days of saints, so you know, there's this religious layer on top of everything that was the most important to the people, just to make sure just in case that you know, they perceive it as part of the monoty as religion that's you know, kind of imposed upon them so that they you know, have to perceive it through that lens and
no other. But yeah, it's definitely present, like an everyday thing that you do and it's hard not to incorporate it as especially if you work with the land, like as a farmer or somebody who just you know, does this kind of work, because it dictates when you plant seeds, when you gather things, when certain plants bloom or are ready to be harvested, you know, or when to take your animals out there to graze in the fields for
the first time, or when to take them. But like literally everything is dictated by this calendar, right, and it's filled with for every such a date. It's not only dictating the agrarian cycles of everything, but it's dictating how the life of everyday life of people is structured, how people planned things is just ingrained into every single aspect of a like a you could say, average peasence life, right. So, yeah, it's hard to separate these things.
Jewels, you had a question, correct, Oh, I.
Just wanted to tell her that I completely agree with her. There there is something happening right now in my own case.
You know, in the past.
Couple of years of me being a Christian mystic or what I've come to realize what I you know, have have been uh, you know, the past six months, I have come to understand that my ancestors didn't worship demons, and these are emanations of the Creator, you know, just like how you said nature is uh, this representation of God, you know, here on earth, this divine presence that we feel,
and it is this calling that you do feel. That that led me to go back to my uh Scandinavian and Germanic roots and read like these stories from the lens of my own people, right, not not from this this uh kind of subjective lens that's been pushed upon us by the powers that be, you know.
Uh.
And even when you go to the Eda's like Snory was a Christian, you know, like this is written through the lens of dogma and religion, and so it's I think it is important to go back to the to the root, right to the origin of where you come from, especially as as a people. And uh, yeah, I just
wanted to say, yeah, you're spot on. I think it's something that's happening to a lot of people right now, and I think a lot of people are trying to reject it, and I think that's harmful especially I mean, look, and what you were speaking on, like if you have this relationship with the Holy Spirit, what you call the Christ what has been talked about in mystery schools and all these ancient cultures. You know, maybe in other words or other terms, but it is the spirit that has existed.
You know, you don't have to lose that, But don't go into researching you know, your own blood and your own heritage. I mean you could say you know from someone from another point of view, right, I mean, it depends on who those people are, you know. But yeah, I mean I think it's something that everyone should embrace and I think it's beautiful so to speak on that. Yeah, No, it's it's definitely something that I've experienced myself. Reading the Volsunga saga right now on on my show, and seeing
where you know, my my people come from. Is it's just it's it's incredible and and there's no shame in it.
So yeah, thanks, thanks for mentioning that. I really appreciate that. And I also think that's what you're mentioning with. You know, it's making sense in the context of because if I'm understanding correctly, like you are practiced through a Christian mister Glens.
Right, me and my wife. But my wife will tell you as well. She found God in the forest. Yeah, yeah, and so why should we deny that just to embrace
this other thing. It's like you you could if you are truly living And me and Brandon talked about this when he came on my show this past week, The Path of the Mystic, you know, like, if you're truly living that life, I think it's something that you can you know, you can find both of it right where you can find it, and you can find yourself in both places.
You know.
Yeah, that's very true. And when it comes to how it shows up, for example, in our culture, is the dual faith elements, right, it's ever present that there's almost like a version of the mainstream religion that people embraced as a way to conceal some of the practices to
make them acceptable to those who are in power. But also at the end of the day, the way these traditions and these beliefs evolve, it is so deeply intermingled syncretically, the monotheist aspects with the older non monotious aspects of the beliefs that it's impossible to separate them. And I think everybody, no matter the kind of religious background you have or the things you believe and broadly speaking, you can find a space for yourself with then folk magic.
And even in Poland we have practitioners practitioners of folk magic who would consider themselves Catholics. We also have those who are more in my strain, who perceive themselves more as heretics, who actually reject the religion but still take from those religious elements, uh, And folks who are in between, right, like the Pagans, who take all of those elements out
because they prefer that. I believe there's a space for all of us, no matter how you inherently choose to believe in, how the spirit show up and all of that.
Right, So yeah, absolutely, but yeah, and to add on to that, you know, for how much we've been lied to in our past, you know we should be able to say, hey, we need to look at this through this objective lens, right to be able to really find
the truth. Because I think a lot of people right now, you got a lot of disinformation slop out there, people pushing uh what I like to call fear propaganda, fear porn, right, and that's how they kind of control I think the mass consciousness, the eggrigor of society or has headless with the genius loci. Uh you know, and and uh it works, it's magic right like these people are doing.
Uh.
I could get into it with you.
That's a deep stuff right.
And everything you know. But no, I think, uh, I think what what what you're speaking? I think you're one hundred percent on what you're speaking to and you are You're on your path, right, You're following your path and you you're staying true to that. So I think that, oh, yeah, for sure, Yeah, thank you.
I have a go for it, Go for it, go for it, let's.
Hit it, okay, Joanna Hi. So I so you were a practicing ceremonial magician and you were doing all these other techniques of consciousness change and tapping into that golden thread of the esoteric path, and then you found yourself into your tradition that your genes and your genetics and that your DNA stems from, which I think is really important, which then adheres to what Carl Jung talks about is getting back to the symbols and signs of the unconscious
so you can understand yourself a little bit better. But what my question actually is is, and if I would love to hear you talk about it, is how did what you started translate into and integrate into what you're doing now for your practice. And would you say that the esoteric understanding of that golden thread of trying to understand your individual nature with reality is within all of those systems. It just is how your nervous system and culture and techniques tap into those types of things.
If that makes sense, Yeah, it does make sense. I don't think you will like my answer though.
I don't have a stake in any game here, Okay, okay.
Cool, because I have to combine that background of let's say, ceremonial magic and the techniques you mentioned, with also my background in psychology, because again I believe those are related. Looking at it from my perspective now as a folk practitioner and especially an animist, I personally think that psychology and those techniques seen in the more western esoteric traditions are more of an obstacle actually, in my humble opinion.
And you know, when I was younger, I had my fair share of like the fascination in the psychological model of magic, and I did practice in that for quite
a few years. But in the end, you know, I found that this lens is at odds with my worldview and especially with animism, because at the end of the day, when you look at it, these approaches are very deeply colonized, very deeply anthropocentric, uh, and they pathologize the kind of traditional indigenous folkloric knowledge, science, and philosophies as something that's very primitive, stupid, coming from people who don't know what
they're talking about. Right, It's this kind of power disproportion between those who are learned, studied versus the stupid peasants who are just to serve. Right, So, before you.
Get deeper into that, what do you mean by I don't like I'm kind of confused on how you're getting too that.
I don't know where I lost you.
No, No, it's not about asking. I'm trying to figure out who is the one saying the stupid animists peasants nonsensical because I consider myself as a heretic as much as the next person. And so what's interesting is that I'm getting at the idea that we are human, we all have nervous systems that we're trying to tap into the basically the consciousness and pulse of the planet of that animist world, soul and so if we're how do
we do that? And what I see it as is we all are trying to do whatever ways that feels natural to our own psyche, mind, sysogy, and when we do that, we tap into maybe what the Polish folk magic, the animistic thing, the ceremonial magic, whatever it is, to try to get into those things. So I'm trying to figure out how do we get into colon colonialism.
It's very deeply rooted in those practices that come from those who started them as part of, you know, just being accessible to the elites, to those who are in power. I don't know how, I don't know which approaches you explore or which ones you draw upon. It's not the same today. I'm talking about a few hundred years back, when the power disproportions in societies were maybe much more visible to the people than they are today. They were
much more obvious. You could only access ceremonial kinds of magic if you were from like nobility, if you were part of you know, those who were part of the church and so on. You couldn't access any of that if you weren't you know, studied, if you didn't go to university, if you weren't rich if you weren't from
a particular part of society. So you know, the world views that these traditions are based on are very anthropocentric because at the end of the day, they were created similarly to monotisms by the way to serve humans and to perceive humans as you know, being in a hierarchy above everything else in creation essentially right, and folk magic is not compatible compatible with that worldview. Animism is not compatible with that worldview. And even modern psychology, you know,
is very colonized in that regard as well. Me as a psychologist, having had I currently you know, don't do psychology anymore. I actually distanced myself after over eight decade of being a practicing psychologist because I couldn't, you know, just keep living that while also being an animist. You kind of have to choose at some point where your
ethics stand. And if you see the field that you work in pathologizes animist perceptions of the world, pathologizes indigenous approaches to the world around you, you know, the belief in spirits or respecting other beings around you on the same level as you know yourself as a human and essentially not seeing yourself as the center of the universe as a human being, I couldn't, you know, just see it making sense for me ethically. So that's where I
come from. You know, this takes a lot of unpacking to get there, so I don't think we can go through that entire process here. I'm just marking.
Do you think then that do you believe that there's a golden thread that stems through all humans that are trying to understand their place in nature, and that golden thread just moves its way through the human nervous system through certain symbols.
I think that's a very abstract way of putting things. I'm not sure what you mean by that, because this could be understood Jocelyn Godwin.
So, Jocelyn Godwin has written a book called Golden Thread, and it talks about the different syncretized understandings of the Hermetic path, the Neoplatonic path, the Western esoteric tradition through a long time. However, that all stems from where Plato understood his ideas of shamanism, from the regions of these people coming down and then integrating it into the Western mystery tradition, and so that mystery tradition has what they would call in Jocelyn Godwin's work, the golden thread that
stems through things. And as we say, as I've been trying to tell people, and how I think comes off in the Rejects and all these different things, is that even though the persona the mask may change, the symbols are pointing to the same direction. That consciousness is all there is, and we're trying to tap into the magic,
myth and meaning in the world. We're trying to bring back something that seems to be ancient, no matter if you're an animist, no matter if you're a Christian mystic, no matter if you're an Eastern mystical practitioner of things that we are all when we get into that golden thread, are trying to bring back myth, magic and meaning. You know what I mean.
Okay, yeah, I know what you mean. I've been there also. I get it. It's a very union approach in a way, which I've also have explored for a long while in my earlier life. I currently don't hold that view because I believe it's very reductive in terms of erasing very local expressions of certain things and boiling them down to the same kind of core. And I can see where that stems from, because on some levels we have to admit, like, objectively, our experiences will be similar in a lot of ways,
our perceptions of spirits will overlap. No matter where you live, there will be spirits who serve similar functions or like there will be rituals or techniques or of achieving altered states. Let's say that are similar and so on. That doesn't mean that they are the same. That doesn't mean that we should be erasing the differences between them or making them lave. I'm saying erasing okay, okay, because that's how
I Yeah, I perceive it that way. I believe that when you take and try to create a standardized language for experiences of people around the globe and apply it everywhere you are in power, you are creating the narrative by creating that language lens right, So I believe everybody living in different places around the world, in different cultures, their language, their way of expressing that, their way of you know, receiving that. It's just a valid and it
just shouldn't be equated. Yeah, That's what I'm trying to get at, which is why I don't usually I'm not in favor of such approaches because I see them as reductive. To be honest, can you do you like the diversity?
Yeah?
Of course, of course? Could it be both? Could you both have the individual level of cultural experiences as well as trying to tap into the universal?
I mean, who says you can't nice?
Okay, I'm let's see. I'm trying to see where we agree because I think and the reason I talk about this way is because of in the West, what I see is us continually moving into this post like we're within a post modern materialistic, functional deconstructionist. I believe that it's like it's tearing us apart, like on a global
and an individual level. So it's like, how can we as heretics altogether try to speak while also using our own separate little our areas of expertise both rise up altogether and be all like, Hey, I'm not willing to accept this postmodern materialist, functional, nonsensical worldview of these things. And so I'm I'm really trying to get away from
I myself. I don't consider myself a reductionist at all, because if it just doesn't work with my worldview as well as I have my own blending of different genetics within my own being, and so I've just it's fascinating. I appreciate your you're definitely your research and study and
stuff like that. So it's like, how can we all come together in this day and age where we're in a globalized world no matter what, and we can't help it, and so how can we be are in the culture and also accepting the wider cultural viewpoint at the same time.
See, that's a really good question and something that's that's like really valid to ask in these times. Honestly, So I can see where you're coming from. I think we would be probably approaching it from like separate ends of the spectrum, but maybe we would arrive at something eventually.
It seems like we did. It, seems like we did kind well.
I think the point that we're dancing around is something far older than the imposition of Christianity, which is the urban versus the rural right. And so we keep talking about folk magic, we talk about practices relating to this extremely local stuff, and yet you know, you've got the urban which is always trying to reach out and sort of either acquire or put down any of those practices. The term pagan didn't come about because of Christianity, the
Romans would doing this all the time. They were doing this up in England. This is what Julius Caesar wrote about when he was talking, you know, he made up the Burning Man that they can continually use that all of these different movies today. So it's the same idea of you know, the urban is trying to put a brand on everything, and the role is just trying to keep what they have.
You know, that's an interesting perspective. Yeah, there's something to it, for sure. I can see that, you know, with the as you put it urban versus rurle, I'm not sure if I would put it that way. I would maybe see it in terms of like systemic things or hierarchies
in societies in general. Maybe, but yeah, definitely, like one part is just looking towards globalization and making everything equal according to one particular chosen lens that's universal enough that everybody can more or less like live with it, I suppose, versus the localized stuff, the personal the intimate experience of these things, right, which, Yeah.
One thing, I if I was thinking of a few things where you guys were talking before, I guess kind of like boiling stuff down or maybe misappropriating or whatever. I just wanted to say something that I do actually have questions that you kind of touched on within your answers earlier. One thing that I have noticed, well, see, now I'm a ceremonial magician and an occultist, and like I guess kind of maybe depends on what you're into, is the.
Way that you'll look at things.
But to me, even as a ceremonial magician, because of ways that I look at magic, I would still think that the way something is being said or that spell in that language that it was first done in probably has a different sound signature than what's coming out of my mouth. So I may not be able to mimic that correctly on something even it's very I would consider that possibly being very specific, so I can see like maybe the loss of the translation of actually even losing
part of the spell. But then and then to even just add like not trying to I really didn't have a you.
Know, really a saying in any of that opinion of what happened earlier.
But another thing to add, I will say, from having guests on this show cover indigenous things or Native American tribes, I've seen countless times that symbols that they will show. I'm like, oh, that order uses that, that order uses that. That pygician put that symbol on his book, and I had no idea that was a Native American sign.
You know.
So it is interesting how you will even see these symbols that were from indigenous groups or Native American tribes getting pimped out by orders, and there is nothing about it. When they talk about it. They're not going back to those people and giving them credit. So I have noticed that, and it's actually very weird, and it has made me want to look into that stuff more because obviously they've been influenced by those dudes, those people.
So that's all I really.
Wanted it to, kind of like just I just throw my two cents into that whole conversation earlier.
But now I did have a question.
You mentioned animism and psychology I didn't want to get that was actually my next question. After all this your work blends animism and traditional craft. For people that are listening, they may not know exactly what that means. What is animism and what does it look like in daily life where you live.
So there's quite a few deffinitions of animism depending on who you ask. Luckily, nowadays we can look at it from a more decolonized lens again, and that's the approach that I personally take to animism. So in my approach, animism is essentially a while of life, a way of life where you recognize that broadly speaking, ecology around us is inhabited by countless beings, all of whom possess person who,
and that person who is very important. It's central to the of animism, right, And what's even more important that these persons should be respected as equally important members of our local communities. And that aspect of respect and building relationships with them is also central to animism. So that's
how I would define it. I hope that's clear, clear enough, And you know, it's actually one of the oldest ways that humans related to the world around them when you boil it down, and you can see it in many like traditional again indigenous that we already mentioned ways of relating to the world or beliefs.
Right.
Also, the folkloric perception of the world is deeped in animism. So if you look, because you asked about my culture, I guess, and what that looks like in the daily life where I live. So obviously, like we are way way way into the process of like cultural globalization, and even prior to that, Christianization and all of that. So these things nowadays are surviving in very concealed forms, you could say, but they're still very much present in our
folk culture. You can see, even though most people here would consider themselves Catholics, how they still go to wayside shrines and leave offerings there. Those are places where that used to be people knew that they used to be inhabited by land spirits. The features of the lands that are revered as sacred, like sacred rocks, sacred hills, sacred springs and so on. Nowadays, a lot of the times they are attributed to Mary's folk clerk, Mary's or saints.
But people still go to those places for healing, for miracles, for worship. They take pilgrimages to places in the land that were always very alive with local spirits, and still you know, giving of rings, giving prayer and still continuing that tradition that is very very stepped in animism, right, even though concealed under Catholicism. So it may not be like openly recognized or called animism, even by the people who engage in that. But that's essentially what it is.
So people treating the land around them as alive and possessing personhood, that's animism.
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. And one other questions a little let you guys ask if you got anything, how did psychology, you know, with your professional lens, change how you interpret spirits, trans fear and religious experiences, stuff along those lines.
I think I already kind of addressed that when Brandon asked about more ceremonial approach, I touched on that. I think when it comes to having a folk budget and animists perspective outlook on life and practice right, psychology is more of an obstacle just because of the way it pathologizes those things and essentially sees them as either something that is a mental illness right, or at the very best, something silly that you know, people who are smart don't engage with.
So.
Honestly, back when I was practicing myself through the psychological lens, through the psychological paradigm, my approach was very much Jungian. I couldn't really believe in spirits in a literal sense or be an animist perceive those beings as possessing person who'd nowadays that's just not something I can do anymore. So, you know, those are very very different outlooks on life and perceptions of the world around us.
That's interesting.
We just want to follow up on just real quick because of something that you said, Like even for myself, I guess, like you said, like maybe you don't, like I guess kind of like believe in the spirits. I guess I myself, Like I'm mentioning it a few times on the show, but I really don't even believe that those gods that we talk about are actually real.
Do you believe in.
Like I guess, and you know that the gods of that area, if there's like a god who like helps this grow better or this? I mean, do you look at them and then as an actual literal being or is that something different too, you know what I'm trying to ask because of the way that you look at spirits mm hmm.
I you know, maybe this is gonna sound funny. I think deities are overrated in the sense that this is a whole historical thing as well. I could get on a tangent. I will try to keep it, you know, short, but This is also something that di it is in general, and the way that pantheons evolved in many cultures was a gradual thing, right. It all started from a very like localized cult of local spirits, some of them becoming more prominent.
You know.
Of course, the situation you could say, political situation of neighboring tribes would be changing, and so some deities would become even more prominent outside of their local place where they stemmed from and so on. That's where you eventually, over the centuries, gets deities, right. But I think it maybe makes sense to worship deities or work with deities if you like. The idea of something as a very broad thing. In my humble opinion, it doesn't really translate
well to a very bio original practice. So I don't have a strong opinion on deities and who they are or how they work. I know that when I myself transitioned from a more you could say, like pagan lends towards animists and folk magic lends, I was guided by the spirits that I work with to actually not do deity because that just wasn't condusive to the work I was doing. So and when it comes to you know, because you ask about belief. I don't think you really
need to like believe in spirits. In local spirits or those beings, you can actually like interact with them. They are out there, like the literal plant in your garden. They possess a spirit. You can talk to them via divination or altered states. You don't have to imagine that they are out there. You can see them. And it's the case for many of the local land spirits. They are in the land features around you. They are there. It's really not that hard.
Okay, thank you.
I was just wondering how you looked at it, because you know, again like I myself, I look at the you know, gods and stuff is more of archetypes or something else, you know.
But thank you. I appreciate anybody I have any questions.
I do have a question about the exclusion of psychology when it comes to dealing with members because I understand, okay, the mental illness part, because you did mention that, so I can understand if someone deals with spirits spirit possession, it could be seen within psychology as a mental illness. But what is your view when it comes to dealing with trauma as a blockage for spiritual growth within the folklore concept.
That is a very difficult topic, honestly, and I feel like I need to tread lightly here because this could
go a lot of different directions and be misinterpreted. I think in general, when it comes to trauma, we need to be very careful not to, you know, entertain spiritual lenses first and foremost in the sense that it's safer for people to approach trauma or other such very strong conditions that one finds oneself in, right, It's just safer to approach it from a down to earth lens and not consider spiritual causes as a main thing, right, I think we need to be And I'm saying this especially
because many people who practice certain types of you could say, like spiritual healing broadly speaking, are not necessarily qualified to deal with somebody in that mental state, so it could potentially just not have the kind of outcome that you would be hoping for. And I think I will just leave it at that because I really don't want to, you know, I really want to be careful with talking about things like this, you know, because it could just cause harm and I don't want to.
The reason why I ask is because because of within folklore, most folk law, and not just the Polish folk law, but over in general, they tend to dismiss the psychology part and people do turn to that for their spiritual growth. So in my opinion, it's usually important for any spiritual advisor to have that background.
That's the ideal, Yeah, that's the ideal.
Suggests therapy or something like that.
Oh yeah, for sure. For sure, we have those tools, so we should be using them, that's for sure, especially if somebody is in crisis. And honestly, we can see a lot of those people who are really praying on people in crisis for like, you know, telling them, oh,
you have a courage on you. If I do this ritual on you, that's worth a thousand dollars, you're going to be rid of that, right, And people in situations like that are very desperate for getting aid, which is why I I'm very careful in talking about these things, because I really don't want to encourage people to, like people who are already in a possession that's very vulnerable, to think that it's a good idea essentially to look up to somebody for a ritual to cure their thing.
And I think the problem is that you know, in communities, in societies where you had like a folk killer or somebody, you would know that person for years or even for generations. That would be somebody that everybody in the community knew that they could rely on, they could trust, they knew who this person was, and if they ever did harm to anybody or try to take advantage of anybody in such a state, they would be cast away from the community. Right.
So that's a much safer way to engage in folkilling or in spiritual you know, modalities you could say, of healing various ailments, both mental and physical and so on. But in today's world where you would approach somebody online or somebody you just don't know, no, that that's like there's a lot of red flags, and I think more red flags than not. So I would really, you know, encourage people to be very cautious with that.
Yeah, and now we can't trust our doctors, you know.
Yo, there was, Yeah, there was another question that I want to I'm saying, Yoda her Sorry, John, there was there was a question I wanted to ask you, and it's because you kind of went into it a little bit. Oh No, Actually I was the one who kind of brought it up with the point that I was trying to make earlier. Were not really a point, just something that was adding And I was looking at the questions
right in front of me for the next one. Do you think the sounding cadence of Polish matters for efficacy or is it just meaning an attention that's like the main thing?
Hmm, both. It's it's really hard to separate these things.
There's a lot that goes into it that you know, constitutes the whole, like spoken formula for example, right, I think if we're talking in obviously like an international environment, I think in general and not just specifically to Polish folk magic, your native tongue for you personally is always going to be the most powerful, unless you are using a different language that you completely don't know at all in this in the same or similar way that you
would use like barbarous words, that kind of thing, where you know that takes on a completely different dimension to it. But in general, if you're speaking speaking formulas, it's always best to, you know, just use the tongue that you're both familiar with, the one that you think in, the one that you dream in, and so on. It's just
going to work the best for you. So and when I was actually writing my book, you know, because I provide both the Polish and the English translation of all of the formulas that I mentioned, which all of them are historical, of course, it wasn't easy to translate them at all because you kind of have to make those decisions again how to preserve the core kind of meaning
or the message of the formula. Obviously, like a lot of the times, you lose the kind of rhythm that it has to it naturally, which a lot of the times would be transinducing in and of itself. It just
sounds different, It has different qualities in translation. But I still believe that you can make them work even in translation, if you just know how to send word out there, because then, other than the formula itself the way it structured the words it uses, there's also this component of you know, sending the words out there into the world
with your breath. Like, for example, in our culture, it was believed that your breath contains life force, So as you speak where or as you breathe into something, you are actually sending that life force out there to do the work for you.
Right.
That's why, for example, people who would use spoken formulas. In Polish folk magic, would a lot of the types speak them into the wind because the wind, as a living being, would carry them where it needs to go. Right, So, yeah, there's a lot that goes into the whole process. It's not just words.
It's interesting. We've had a goetic magicians talking about how they've increased the effectiveness of their formulas by invoking the winds before they do anything.
So it's yeah, that makes sense, I can see why.
Yeah, it's it's interesting to me the difference in quality when it comes to how to deal with maybe negative spirits or imbalances and sort of the folk or tradition versus the more you know, urban traditions of exorcism, right, So an exorcism, you're just trying to get rid of it, where as in focalo you're trying to harmonize those forces with the imbalances that they've may have created. So it's a it's a different perspective on methodology when it comes
to dealing with these problems. Instead of trying to get rid of something, you're trying to tast something out. You're instead trying to bring it in a balance with the rest of the systems that are around it.
Yeah, that also depends. Sometimes you would resort to threats or you know, doing all sorts of dodgy stuff to get your way. But yeah, for sure, I think there's a lot that goes into this approach that's very considerate of the relationship you have to the subject that you are addressing.
Yeah, thank you, Brandon, Judith Heads.
Anything, just yeah, yeah, yeah, just a nice little add is Uh. There's a book it's called The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and it's a fascinating explanation. The book is just great pros But the reason I bring it up is the idea about putting something onto the wind and it helps move the message somewhere for you.
And so in that book, there there's an old academy and they're trying to tap into these to these these forces of nature and so people in one of the oldest magics of them all is the magic of naming. And so it's the idea of being able to tap into the name of things and from the outside when you find that name of the wind, and it takes a lot of the right things that through all magic, it takes honing the will, the imagination, training the mind, and upon doing so, when the main character are other
characters in they're it. They find the name of the wind, and then it they can move it. But it's not like they're controlling it. It's that they become one together. And upon doing so, when you say the name of the wind, whatever it is, everyone else around you actually, here's jargon or a barbarous name or just nonsense. But to you, you've really tapped into something that is old and ancient. And I just find it beautiful, kind of
very similarly to what you just said. And I think that's something that hopefully all of us are trying to do on our own right, is tap into the name of things.
And I think that's.
Yeah, I love that a similar thing. By the way, you can also read in Ursula, Laguins, Earth Sea right beautiful, Yeah, very similar approach, and I find it just so relatable in terms of like the animist approach to the beings out there. If you know their name, that means if you know how to address them in a way that they can understand and receive what you're communicating.
Honorable and yeah, yeah, I agree. See, I knew we'd find a likeness.
Yeah, language is funny. And see see that's why ideas out there, Uh, it's it can get very particular in terms of what gets to people. And this is the same thing. Like you just spoke my language. I understood you right there. Right, that's the same idea.
That's beautiful.
No, I love that.
That's yeah, I like that. So it's yeah, but both everyone out there should read both of those books. Ursula Kyla Gwen is one of the greatest science fiction fantasy writers of all time.
So yes, I agree, absolutely, All right, did you have you have a couple other questions.
In your work?
What's the what's the relationship between household spirits, land spirits and demonology?
Oh?
Okay, that's a cool question.
Uh.
I'm wondering though, if if this comes from the kind of maybe common understanding of demonology as something related to goisha and that those currents of magic, right, is that where you're coming from?
Well, I guess see, like somebody on this show may like may look at the Croatia for one reason, or somebody who's like ignorant to occultism can look at the Croatia for other reasons. In the public to look at demons completely different and don't even know what the goatia is,
so I don't know. I guess it's almost more of kind of like because then I was going to go into demons and pop culture and like, so let's go a little bit more that way, I guess, with kind of like where how like the rest of the world kind of looks okay.
Okay, okay, because maybe maybe we should explain a bit because when usually like you see from the modern lens or the pop cultural lens, as you kind of mentioned, when when we think of demonology, we usually think of like scary demons and evil beings and all of that, right, like other such spirits that are recognized as demons broadly speaking, uh, and it's deeply colored in general, but by like the
monotheist lenses and pop culture. But in the context of folklore studies in general, and like folk traditions, including of course Polish folklore, all local spirits and folkloric spirits fall under the lens of demons, and that doesn't make them like demonic in the again monotiest sense, right, Like we need to ditch the religious lens when it comes to that.
It's just a word. Okay, You could look at it more from the lens, like of diamonds the way they were perceived in ancient Greece, right, that kind of lens. So folk demonology is essentially like the field of study that seeks to preserve the knowledge of all the spirits that are present in your particular tradition or culture. That's essentially what it is. So in the context of your question, like the household spirits and the land spirits are demons in that sense.
Okay, no, thank you.
I maybe I didn't ask the question the right way, but I got the right answer, so thank you very much for that.
Actually, so thank you God.
That's also closely related to Shintoism and how the East sees their understanding of the daemons or demons. It's not that they're see that's the problem with the Abrahamic religions, right, is that they want to create a dualism, which then creates the subjective moral evil, which is I think super terrible because of obviously the comless amounts of reasons. But then in Shintoism they see it's all about the interaction
with nature and the individual who's then perceiving said things. Right, is that am I am I hidden kind of closely to the very yeah right right, yeah.
And that's because Shintoism is animist exactly.
Yeah, So I love Shintoism. I anyway, it doesn't matter.
Yeah.
Uh.
And then I did have kind of like another follow up between that, but I think we kind of covered it. It was like, what's the biggest difference between folk devils of popa cult demons?
Do you think you kind of answered that already a little bit with I.
Think so, yeah, because they don't have much in common like for chloric devils or essentially very old local spirits of various domains, and that's it. They just are studied under the field of folk demonology, but they are not like demons in the pop culture sense.
I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't ask, what are some of the main sort of land spirits that you have, you know, encountered in folklore or encountered in your own personal experiences?
The main sort like the main kinds you mean, like.
Right, like different lands have different you know, main focuses on what comes through the dominant plants, dominant animals, and these sort of color the spiritual nature of those lands. So I figured, you know, experiences would show you how they manifest.
How they manage. I'm not sure if I understood your question. Actually, could you rephrase?
Sorry, A lot of different lands have a lot of different kinds of spirits, and you find that they have sort of a dominant character in different places, you know.
Okay, I don't think I agree with that. I don't think there's such a thing as a dominant character to spirits, at least here, we have such a plethora of spirits of literally every domain, like everything you can think of, there is a local spirit of some sort that has domain over that thing or that place or that phenomenon, everything and anything, and they are so diverse, probably more diverse than us humans. So yeah, I don't think it's possible to boil them down to some like main characteristic.
Maybe if we were talking about folk demonology as a field in general, I would say that the Polish strain of folk demonology is kind of dark and gruesome, honestly, And maybe you can actually I'm sure, like most people know the Watcher games, right, like those people who played it, you can see that there's like spirits of you know, miscarried children and all kinds of like very dark stuff out there, like Polish folk demonology is filled with that. It's very dark.
Something I want to ask you about this will make it just real quick, healyst. I think this might make a little bit more sense on like kind of what you're getting at, because now it's got me wondering.
Is there like a hierarchy amongst spirits?
Yes, I wouldn't say so. No, I think those things you can mostly see from like the Monothey's lenses. But in folk demonology there's no such a thing as spirits being like one that's up top and then he has some smaller ones. No, not at all really. If anything, there may be like spirits who are literally bigger because they inhabit like some very broad spaces, like an entire
mountain rage or something like that. Like it's obviously a bigger like physically you could say physically in you know, uh, than than a spirit of a local plants obviously right in that way, But it's not a higher keeper. Say, it's just like the way some animals are bigger or small smaller, et cetera.
If those plants grow on them out.
Yeah, it's an entire ecology of spirits out there, right, That's why we are all kind of intertwined.
Yeah, yeah, just.
To touch on that, so you don't put them in my quote unquote some other folklore has put them in family groupings. You don't put that in family groupings in the Polish folk law.
Hmmm. That's an interesting way to perceive that. I can see where that would be coming from. Uh, but yeah, usually know you would mostly like perceive them in terms of domains that they inhabit, and if you're if you're talking about family, I think the closest thing that comes to mind for me, for example, are all of the spirits that inhabit the spaces where humans live, like for example, on your homestead. There's like an entire you could say family of spirit or like an entire group of spirits
who coexist and co inhabit this space. Everybody has their role to play, everybody is responsible for something, and it amounts to like an entire family system in a way. But I haven't ever seen this being conceptualized in that way in our culture.
That's interesting. Yes, sorry, just real quick, just real quick, I'm sorry, so sorry.
So it wouldn't be like Egyptian mythology where it's like this person screwing around with this person to meet this one, and you know, there wouldn't be this whole lineage, you know, you know, you know what I'm getting Like, you know how like some of them it's like everybody's you know, there's or even even in the Christian you know, even
in the Bible, there's that whole lineage. So you guys actually don't like really see that that this person, you know, the forgotten, this one and that one and this one and that one. It's not like that they're just all just separate beings from themselves.
I mean, they coexist in groups that just are beneficial to everybody's interests, right, But but yeah, I wouldn't see them conceptualized in that way. Right. That's more like our way of making sense of these spirit relationships.
Like I was going on before, makes sense, Like you can have Isis and you know Osiris and then you got rhunds.
Like they're they're familiar in that sense. Okay, that's that's more when it comes to like pantheons and stuff, but not really with spirits. We do have some like local legends of spirits who like let's say, uh, for example,
with the folkloric devils. Actually there's like this very cool part of Polish folklore where some folkloric devils are actually spirits of men of nobility who are so evil to the local community and everybody around them that they were like cursed by everybody, including the land itself, that they became these you know, spirits, and sometimes their entire families would would have like you know, would be kind of condemned to become a certain type of spirit after death.
So in that sense, maybe you could see families among spirits, but that's like an anomaly, you would say, And those are spirits of human origin obviously, So if we look at it that way, you could also see you know, your ancestors in a similar way, we call it rude, which is essentially like the family or bloodline, where all of your ancestral spirits formed this family system in that way. But yeah, it's not really conceptualized that like that outwardly.
Thank you, sorry, thank you for entertaining those questions. I was just wondering, right.
I was. I was just going to say that, you know, the characteristics of the land here in Wisconsin have definitely changed my perception of how these spirits move. So it's you know, mostly sandy soil we've got sandstone cliffs that pop up out of nowhere and like a bunch of pine forests, and so when actually interacting with these things, it sort of takes on a characteristic of the land, and that sort of changes the perception of how these spirits are seen by the locals.
Okay, so that's what you originally meant by your earlier question. Okay, yeah, sure, I didn't think of it that way, because, like you know, I live in this landscape, so it's like, you know, kind of the area you breathe, you don't see it right exactly. Okay, yeah, I get your point now. Yeah. So Poland is very like moderate climates and it's usually very flats across the country, but where I live, for example,
it's quite mountainous. So there's a lot of legends of mountain spirits do gour as we call it, so like the spirit or the ghost of the mountain. There's a lot of that, right, and various like folkloric devils wandering around and like lost portals to Hell and all of that. There's there's a lot of that, Like every single place has its own, I guess, peculiarities when it comes to the spirits that inhabit the space. But yeah, we've.
Got Devil's Lake and Devil's Hollow out here, which are these really cool geographical formations that you know, we're demonized because obviously something weird is happening out there, you know.
Oh yeah, I definitely know what you mean. Yeah, for example, we have a mountain here, Rada, and because of the land features, there's like an anomally that's happening that the compasses don't work there, right, and it's actually believed in legends that that's the like meeting place of devils.
So yeah, yeah, they ever have any other questions, I'm pretty much pretty much done, I think myself. All right, Joanna, is there anything else that you would like to leave us with? I mean, what's the one thing that you hope that reader takes from this book? You know, at least one thing, you know, when if they get this book, what do you hope they get it?
You know, what I would really like for the readers of my book to get out of it is that folk budget and in general, like ancestral traditions can be really a great foundation for just having a wholesome life, and it's such a great resource for finding your own strength and resilience, and especially in the times that we find ourselves in today where a lot of things are you know, ah, yeah, just in crisis. You could say
that without getting into details, right. So I want people to know that they can reach out to their ancestors for support, for leaning on in terms of like learning about how to deal with situations like that because they've been through worse. So we can learn so much from our ancestral traditions in terms of just living a good life, being like a decent person. And you know, especially how do I put it into words? I think it's important
that you know yourself. You could you could boil it down to that, right, But I think, uh, learning about your ancestral traditions can be such a good source of that that's very down to earth and based in reality and not so much focusing on I guess philosophizing or romanticizing things that may not have such an impact on your on your daily life.
Right.
So I think folk magic in a lot of ways is like the opposite of escapism, you could say, right, And I think we need to be down down to earth in these times that we find ourselves in. So yeah, I know, it's a one key way to put it, but I hope I put my point across.
No, thank you. I I think that was very well said.
I really appreciate it, you know again, all the questions and stuff, and even even at times where I think maybe we might have been a little bit confused, I didn't totally understand what you were saying. I appreciate you doing as best as you can to try to explain yourself and how you were looking through the situation with you a lens. Really, I had a really great time. I thought it was a blast. I learned a lot of interesting stuff. So before we wrap it up, well,
of course, no, thank you very much. I'd love to have you back on again in the future. There's partly tons more questions I could ask you, Judith, real quick before we wrap it up. Let everybody know where they can find your stuff.
Jonah, it was a pleasure discussing having this discussion with you.
It helped actually brun my horizon on my.
Heritage and my family's folklore and actually showed me similarities even though we are oceans apart, which is quite pleasing. Thank you for having me and you guys could find me at the Weekly Bunch every Sunday on YouTube and X as the Loom.
Thank you again, of course, we thank you.
And my man the Headless Giant. I don't know where they can find you, please, sir, you all mute it again, my man?
Oh yeah, sorry, So you can find me on exit on YouTube at the Headless Giant, and also on Instagram. Tomorrow I've got the trialogue coming up with Ethan Indigo and Ricardo caled Audio, so definitely check that out. Thank you.
Of course, of course I'll be totally honest with you.
If it wasn't that I was so used to using my mixer, if I was to shut myself over on stream mode, I would forget just as much as you.
So don't feel mad, Brandon. What is going on, sir? How will you?
I'm great? Thank you? This was fantastic. Thank you Nick as always, Thank you, Judith and Headless. I always love being on stream with you, Joanna, that great conversation. I love even the small sparring sessions. That's the way we can really truly start to understand where we're coming together, because truly we are on the same side. And just everybody, just go to YouTube, go to x go to Instagram,
even TikTok. What we're trying to do is we're trying to battle the techno Oligarcic arconic dark Sorcerers out there in the world, and there's only one way to do it. That's with myth, magic and meaning and maggis and the media is here for you to do that. So make sure to continue to follow the rejects, continue to follow everybody on this panel. And yeah, this is a great conversation. We're going to continue to have it in this ocean of chaos.
Again, thank you, Thank you very much, Brandon, always appreciate you on the show. And finally, again Joanna, please let everybody know where they can find your stuff. And again I just want to say I had a really great time and this is some talk, some talk.
Thank you again, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation. And I can see that we are coming from a very different perspectives practice wise, but I was having a blust just comparing perspectives and seeing things from different lenses. I always appreciate, you know, those differences and being able to just compare and learn
from others. So yeah, thank you so much for having me, and for being so open and understanding of, you know, somebody from a very different perspective magically speaking, in terms of your know my work and the stuff I do out there. You know, I teach Polish for project animism and traditional crafts. You can find me under the name Polish folk Witch pretty much anywhere on the Internet, So if you enjoyed this conversation, please find me out there.
Thank you, and again, Joanna, I really appreciate again you coming on. Hopefully we'll get you on again in the future, but whatever, maybe something else. We'll still talk about the same stuff. But I had a bless and I really appreciate the rest of your rejects coming on and making the show what it was.
And until the next one, everybody be well later.