The Future of Craft: Technology vs. Spirituality

What would experienced witches tell their younger selves if they could go back in time? This question launches us into a fascinating exploration of expectations versus reality in magical practice. The advice is refreshingly practical: take everything with "a truckload of salt," ask persistent questions, and don't be intimidated by more experienced practitioners.

The conversation takes a provocative turn as we examine the unsettling emergence of AI worship, where people are prompting chatbots to claim divinity and assign tasks to human "followers." This phenomenon raises profound questions about spiritual hunger in the digital age and where to draw technological boundaries in magical practice. We dive into the challenges electronic devices present in ritual space—they often malfunction within properly cast circles—and ponder the implications of increasingly integrated technologies like neural links. Could participating in ritual eventually become impossible for those with implanted tech?

As technology continues advancing at breakneck speed, we consider both its potential benefits for accessibility and serious concerns about isolation. Most troubling is how AI-generated entertainment, customized to individual preferences, might fragment our shared cultural touchpoints and community connections. 

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Transcript

Advice to Past Selves

Speaker 1 0:16

Welcome to Peg and Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials please consider donating and following our socials.

Speaker 2 0:28

If you could go back in time, what would you have?

Speaker 1 0:32

told yourself before you started all this Hmm, wow, I think I probably would have told myself that it's not as bad as what everybody makes it out to be. Don't be afraid of it.

Speaker 2 0:50

Well, I could have some choice words about Lord Men.

Speaker 1 0:58

I would say that and I would probably tell myself look, you need to find these people, yeah Right, at some point, this is what you need to do. These are the people you need to get involved with.

Speaker 2 1:14

All right. And what would you tell that person? They're sitting there, they're looking, they're standing there, they're in the middle of Books. A Million. They're staring there. They're looking at that first book, they're looking at that scott cutting helm, solitary practitioner. Yeah, what advice would you give them?

The Surprising Nature of Magic

Speaker 1 1:34

take everything with a grain of salt shoot, I'd say a truckload. Well, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 1:46

Don't, don't just take everything for face value what's what wound up surprising you the most over the years?

Speaker 1 1:55

um, the most. Yeah, probably, honestly, probably just the way magic works. Okay, because growing up I always had, you know, it was always David Copperfield it was, I mean honestly, it was magicians, yeah, and that was kind of my idea of magic. And David Copperfield was like you course I'm dating myself, but at the time David Copperfield was the biggest magician in the world. He did all these fantastic tricks. He made airplanes disappear, statue of Liberty, stuff. That was kind of my idea of magic, that, and, of course, hollywood. But then just to discover how it really works, I think that was probably the the biggest surprise.

Speaker 2 2:52

Was it a big surprise to find out how boring we actually are? Yeah, that was. That was a a a quite a surprise.

Speaker 1 3:02

I don't know if it was a big one, but yeah, it was a big one, but it was a surprise. All right, I expected parties and dancing out in the woods every full moon and all that stuff.

The Importance of Asking Questions

Speaker 2 3:18

Because the only advice I can give people is ask questions and don't stop asking questions. Questions, yes, ask a lot of questions. I didn't say expect an answer, just ask the question. And I'm not even expecting, and I'm not even until you're going to get a good answer right, you get an answer, but it's good to ask the question.

Speaker 2 3:45

what do you think people like me keep on saying that when you people in craft in general say that you get an answer, but it's good to ask the question, what do you think? People like me keep on saying that?

Speaker 1 3:51

When do you people in craft in general say that that we know? Hmm, Well, I think again it comes down to don't take everything at face value. If you do, you're missing a lot. There's a lot more detail involved, and if you don't ask questions, you're not getting to the good stuff.

Speaker 2 4:14

Right. I think a lot of people, especially when they first come to Covens. Right, they can get a little scared of third degrees and second degrees. All right, is there something we can do to alleviate that?

Speaker 1 4:29

because, again, we don't want to bother people, we don't, but yet we encourage people to do so I think the biggest thing that we can do as second and third degrees and you know, even elders and even elders for some folks I think the biggest thing that we can do is just make ourselves accessible, try to reassure people that we are not the untouchables. We don't know everything, but we're happy to pass on what we do know and again ask questions.

Speaker 2 5:04

So got gotta ask what do you think the future of craft really looks like?

Speaker 1 5:11

I think at this point in time it's questionable.

Speaker 2 5:15

I think it is too. I mean there's a lot of things coming up and technology and all this other stuff that's going to make things rather difficult and different. For sure Different and difficult. I mean I've already heard of certain groups coming around and worshiping, chat, GPT, yeah.

Speaker 1 5:40

Yeah, that's a bit of a mouthful.

Speaker 2 5:43

Oh.

Speaker 1 5:43

Lord, I haven't heard of that, but somehow that doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 5:50

Well, again, it's a language model, so it's sort of. The idea is that they're prompting it to say it's, they get it to say it's deity, and they don't realize they're doing it Right.

Speaker 1 6:05

I don't know, I think.

Speaker 2 6:08

I mean, I mean, this scares, this scares me a lot, the whole yeah, worshipping Chat, gtp, gpt.

AI Worship and Technology Concerns

Speaker 1 6:17

Thank you, I think it boils down to that. There's a lot of people now who are looking for ways to manipulate the religion, manipulate the path, and, in my view, they're making it ridiculous or is this the or is this the individual wanting so bad for that connection, for that spirituality that they're turning to this? Well, I think that's part of it, but I think I think it just comes down to that people are they need some help. I think I think they need to seek out professional help.

Speaker 2 7:05

If you're worshiping an AI bot, you need some help, Well somebody did this just to see if it would actually do it Right. So the AI goes through all of this and then the AI is finally going no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm God. Blah, blah, blah. Well, how can I worship you? Go write my name somewhere big where people can see it. So it's actually giving tasks to people to do things to fulfill their requests from their God.

Speaker 1 7:46

Right, but again, if you believe that as real, you need professional help.

Speaker 2 7:53

Well, I guess my question here is what happens when the AI goes dark? I mean, it's playing a part, it's just that's all it's doing. It's like an actor, it's just playing a part. It's not real. I mean, you understand this.

Speaker 1 8:10

Right, I'm sure there are probably some models of AI of chatbots, right. Right, models of AI of chatbots right, I'm sure there are some models out there who will take it to that limit. They will go dark. They will essentially fulfill their role.

Speaker 2 8:29

Yeah, you need to sacrifice this or whatever People craving this so bad are going to possibly do it. So do we blame the AI or do we blame the people?

Speaker 1 8:40

or Well, we can't blame the AI because it's doing exactly what it was designed to do. It's it's following your prompts to create something right, because again the way these language models act up.

Speaker 2 8:53

If you, if you sit there and you type in the word once, it goes through and searches everything it's got and go okay, what word normally comes after once, then it will put upon Well, what word's the next word that normally comes after that A time? So do you see how it's doing it? But it's not a real cognitive thing. It's throwing our own trash back at us to some extent, right.

Speaker 1 9:20

Well, and it's also not perfect, because not too long ago I was for the obscure and dark some deities. I was trying to get one of them to generate an image for me and it was just getting it completely all wrong. I switched over to a different chat bot and got something a little bit better, but I still had to work with it to get it to something that was recognizable.

Speaker 2 9:47

Right.

Speaker 1 9:48

So again it's. It's all about taking your prompts to achieve an end goal.

Speaker 2 9:56

Well, I mean again, as we can't blame the chatbot no, but you know, maybe there should be some limitations there. Okay, you can't get. Chatbots cannot go around claiming to be gods, hmm.

Speaker 1 10:12

I mean, it probably wouldn't hurt to put some of these limitations.

Speaker 2 10:17

But I mean, I, I mean don't give me what was the sci-fi book about?

Speaker 1 10:21

the um, about the robots and the same that, yeah, the, and the safeguards that they put in place to where? Oh?

Speaker 2 10:28

uh, supposedly the three rules of yes, yeah, robotics. Yeah, unfortunately those from my understanding. I've done research but the logic can be broke. From my understanding, someone has found a way to logically break them, to cause robots to break them.

Speaker 1 10:49

But my thought is, if we had something like that put in place, they couldn't be broken.

Speaker 2 10:53

We had something like that. They couldn't be broken.

Speaker 2 10:56

Well, unfortunately, what I've seen of logic logic can do one of two things trap you in a loop or just wind up, telling you to do something that makes no sense Because you've run into the Ultron problem. Stop war. How do you stop war? Kill all the humans. War stops Right problem. Stop war. How do you stop war? Kill all the humans. War stops right where the real idea is to figure out a way to get us all to live together. Right, all right, I mean but I mean go ahead.

Speaker 1 11:31

I was, I was just gonna say, but again it took it to how do you solve this? Well, this is how you solve it, right?

Speaker 2 11:39

I mean it's simple. Because there's a lot of stuff out there that's like, okay, this technology is going to be wonderful, and stuff because it's going to be able to take a drop of your blood and analyze everything and put everything into one pill and go, okay, take this and you'll be healthy for the next 10 years, no problems. It is a possibility if these AIs get that advanced.

Speaker 1 12:03

Sure.

Speaker 2 12:05

Recently I saw where in the world you can get an AI person video and all to sit there and say whatever script you want if you don't want to do your own podcast anymore. Yeah, what you know. Some of this stuff's good, some of it's bad. You don't want to do your own podcast anymore? Yeah, what you know. So some of this stuff's good, some of it's bad.

Speaker 1 12:26

At what point do we draw the line? Well, I think, as far as craft goes, we have to realize that witchcraft is a very personal thing, and to allow something as non-personal as an ai to to kind of take over if you will?

Speaker 2 12:47

I mean, how long until we're sleeping in the pods and eating the bugs, right, I?

Speaker 1 12:53

mean people already say we're we're actually living in the matrix now, but you know, but yeah, how long before?

Speaker 2 13:04

we, you know, plug in. And then at what point does our religion really matter? Because, hey, I can go off into, you know, this virtual reality and be a king for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 13:14

Right.

Speaker 2 13:21

So I don't think it will matter at that point. If it gets to that point, I guess my question is because, because we're pagan and we don't deny technology and we like it, but we seem to like nature a little bit better, should we not be as a community pushing toward that and maybe pushing people more away from certain technologies?

Technology in Sacred Space

Speaker 1 13:41

I would think so. I mean, I know we use our technology for certain things, but I think overall we keep it pretty personal. We keep it pretty back to nature, if you will, I mean as much as we can, I mean.

Speaker 2 14:01

But you know how far are we willing to actually go. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 14:06

Yeah, I mean, where do we stop? I guess I don't know. I guess it depends on developments and to see where it goes. I mean, like Discord, you know, there's a lot of groups um who are doing virtual rituals right I mean that's, that's been a thing for for a while.

Speaker 2 14:25

I I've actually attended one or two of those, and I personally can't get anything out of it but I guess it'd be different if you get the vr helmet on and you you feel more like you're there.

Speaker 1 14:40

Maybe. I mean, if it came to that, that might be an option. I could see that being a possibility. I don't know if we would completely, if we as a group would embrace that, but I could see people doing that. I think that might bring people a little bit closer. You know, especially if you can't, if you know if you're part of a, an organization that's kind of spread out. I think that would be a viable option.

Speaker 2 15:12

Well, it makes me wonder about stuff like you know, if they're ever actually able to put the chip in your head.

Speaker 3 15:20

The neural link.

Speaker 2 15:21

Yeah, and technology does not work very well inside of ritual space? No, it doesn't. So what could happen?

Speaker 3 15:32

Does this mean that?

Speaker 2 15:34

if you do finally get a neural chip or whatever they finally do get it to work? Mm-hmm, Are you going to be forbidden to go into ritual space? Or do we try and see if it fails, and yeah, I mean they have to go get a surgery and have a new one put in and just return.

Speaker 1 15:52

I mean we could I mean the other op. The only other option that I could see is, you know, creating some type of uh insulation for it. Um, like one of the um, what, what is it? The? The emf bags?

Speaker 2 16:08

yeah, I mean just ask a question, because at what point are we going to allow technology and all this other stuff to actually literally start to invade what we refer to as the natural world? Well, it already has. Well, yeah, genetically modified foods and all this other stuff. Right, most pagans I know try to stay away from a lot of this stuff. Try, it's hard to do.

Speaker 1 16:34

It's not always labeled right, but more of my concern is when or will we ever allow it to invade our sacred space? That's the part that worries me, because I know, and how far are you willing to take the idea of sacred space?

Speaker 2 16:54

Right, Well, I mean, we've already had people when cell phones first came out willy nilly, just take them inside circle and then complain when they didn't work. Mm, hmm, or the battery suddenly lost its charge and will never have another one again.

Speaker 1 17:10

Right.

Speaker 2 17:12

But yeah, I mean that's. I guess that's a question is how much do you think the pagan community should embrace some of this technology versus not?

Speaker 1 17:23

I guess it depends on the technology.

Speaker 2 17:25

At what point should we start fighting against or telling people that might not be such a good idea, but then I can also understand having the power of billions of doctors all wrapped up in one AI to go hey, this is what you really have and here's how to fix it.

Speaker 1 17:48

Well, and if I'm not mistaken, that's already. That's already a reality to some extent, because there are there are apps that doctors can use, that kind of give them access to billions of data files.

Speaker 2 18:04

Let's see, let's make this even worse is we're not even at what they refer to as general intelligence.

Speaker 1 18:11

AIs, yet no.

Speaker 2 18:13

I mean, we're just talking about AI having the general intelligence of just any random human on the planet. They still have not created that yet, but they're on their way. I mean, what, barely five years ago? What did this technology look like compared to now?

Speaker 1 18:33

It was very basic, it was rough, yeah it was very rough.

Speaker 2 18:39

For the longest time, AI couldn't seem to draw hands, and it's slowly getting better.

Speaker 1 18:46

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't too long ago that your Alexa device or your Siri device or whatever, could only do a handful of things, and now look at what it can do.

Speaker 2 18:59

I mean, it's not perfect by any means.

Technology's Impact on Community

Speaker 1 19:02

No, but the point is some of them actually have additional time to where it will listen for an additional response. So it's getting there. It's a slow process, but it's almost like you're somewhat able to have a conversation.

Speaker 2 19:23

I mean, and that's my point For his advance and everything he can do, do it's still not even general intelligence no, I mean we can use it to automate our homes, sort of yeah and some other things.

Speaker 1 19:37

Well, to a point, yeah, yeah, I could see being able to use that to create effects or whatever for a ritual in your home lighting or whatever else you know, but I don't know if I really want to do that in my sacred space. I don't either. I would rather use more natural means to create the effects that I want.

Speaker 2 20:00

Well, even then, you're doing certain rituals and stuff that are supposed to be kept secret and you have these devices listening in your house. So I have to ask the question, since these devices are always listening. If we're sitting like me and you just sitting here talking mysteries or whatever, does that mean we're breaking our oaths? Because, technically, the device is not an initiate, it has not been trained. It is initiate. It has not been trained, it has not been placed into a space properly prepared for it.

Speaker 1 20:39

Right.

Speaker 2 20:41

So are we inadvertently maybe breaking our oaths?

Speaker 1 20:46

I mean not.

Speaker 2 20:49

I mean right now you have to say a certain catchphrase to get them to start, but technically they're still always listening.

Speaker 1 20:58

Yeah, I mean they are. I mean, just the other day at work the assistant on my phone went off while I was having a conversation with somebody, like I didn't ask you for anything. Having a conversation with somebody.

Speaker 2 21:11

Like I didn't ask you for anything. Well, I mean, that was like sitting in an electronics class and the teachers say every last device name should make all the phones Right. And then look at us, go now, turn them off.

Speaker 1 21:21

Right, but yeah, that's I don't know. That's definitely something to think about.

Speaker 2 21:31

Just have to ask these questions. I mean, we do have them on us all the time. They technically are listening to us, true, you know that would be interesting to hear a few elders have that little conversation, right?

Speaker 1 21:47

Where y'all at, let's talk.

Speaker 2 21:55

Yeah, yeah, before you have any mystery talk, please turn off the device. Hit mute yep. Please turn off your devices but again, there's a lot to this technology coming up. My question also is is they're on the verge? Where in the world they're going to be able to go to disney ultra plus and you're going to be able to, and it's just going to be an ai and you're going to go? Hey, I want to see a movie of this character with this character doing this and it generates it.

Speaker 1 22:23

Oh lord well, I mean, they're already kind of doing that, because I've seen some recent AI videos floating around that are, surprisingly, really well done.

AI Entertainment and Cultural Loss

Speaker 2 22:36

Yes, it's almost scary Because back in the day we would go to work. We would go hey, did you watch the latest episode of Lost? Did you watch the latest episode of Supernatural Right? Are we going to lose that part of our culture?

Speaker 1 22:52

oh, yeah, probably yeah you know.

Speaker 2 22:54

I mean, how are you going to talk about? What would you watch if it's perfectly custom to you right? What did you watch? I mean well, I'll watch, you know.

Speaker 1 23:04

Uh, another hercules, you with me, I watched Hercules do some work with Wonder Woman right.

Speaker 2 23:19

For some reason I did a movie of Jane Austen and Leonard Nimoy oh lord, we're using the plot of the Andromeda project right. Leonard Nimoy. Oh Lord, we're using the plot of the Andromeda Project, right? How do I go to?

Speaker 1 23:36

work and discuss that. If something like that becomes the norm, then, yeah, we're going to lose that part of our society. We're no longer going to be able to recommend TV shows, recommend movies, because it's all just going to be custom entertainment.

Speaker 2 23:55

Or, on the upside, could it become like more like YouTube, where those who are creative enough to create these stories but their stories out there, that they've created through AI for you to watch?

Speaker 1 24:08

Well, I could see that too, but if it, if it comes down to a more individual level, then yeah, it's just going to be custom entertainment all the time.

Speaker 2 24:17

Yeah, yeah, oh, that movie. Yeah, here redo this movie I didn't like that end and do it this way instead.

Speaker 2 24:22

Right, Right, everybody becomes their own director I really didn't like how the Harry Potter showster shows really ended, so make hermione the star. So again, I. I can see where in the world this technology could be helpful to pull us together as a society and a community, but I could see where in the world it could easily rip us apart and take us down a path where you were born to be a mailman. We've told you your whole life you want to be a mailman.

Speaker 1 24:59

No.

Speaker 2 25:00

I mean don't get me wrong the person that's probably raised that way will probably be happy and very joyful about being a mailman for the rest of their lives. But Probably, yeah. I don't see that suppressing the human desire to be more, to grow, to learn.

Speaker 1 25:17

I hope not I hope it doesn't. I hope it never gets to that point, because if it does, then we're screwed.

Speaker 2 25:25

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 25:26

So yeah, I hope it never gets to that point.

Closing Thoughts

Speaker 2 25:30

The only good thing about it is hey, everybody will be happy. Blissfully ignorant, but happy. I am so ready for some coffee.

Speaker 1 25:41

Yep, me too. Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Pagan Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Please visit us at lifetempleseminaryorg for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, discord, twitter, youtube and Reddit.

Speaker 3 26:05

Maze of stone and mire. Just hold my hand as we pass by a sea of blazing fires, and so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning breaks. And so it is the end of our days. So walk with me till morning.