Pagan Coffee Talk
Pagan Coffee Talk is hosted and brought to you by Life Temple & Seminary, a traditional witchcraft coven in Charlotte North Carolina, with a long-standing initiatory tradition. We discuss a wide range of pagan, witch, occult, Crafte, magic, and Wiccan topics from a traditionalist point of view. We also explore running and operating a coven or group, plus the challenges, conduct, and responsibilities of the pagan clergy. New episodes come out weekly. Our show is entirely unscripted, and prone to occasional foul language, and moments of SPM (spontaneous pagan mayhem!) We hope you join us. If you would like to be a guest, we are always seeking authors, traditional heads, and group leaders to join us. If you have a topic suggestion, please let us know in the comments. Check the about section for links to our social media and website. A special thanks to Darkest Era for the use of their songs: The Morrigan, & Poem to the Gael. Check them out at http://darkestera.net/.
Pagan Coffee Talk
Seasonal Depression Meets Pagan Calendar: Bring Snacks
The year doesn’t truly start when everything blooms—it starts when the world goes quiet. We step into Samhain to ask why so many traditions begin in darkness, what that silence invites us to notice, and how the cold months can become a steady practice of reflection instead of a stretch to endure.
We shift into practical shadow work made safer through community: rituals that surface hard truths, shared space that makes vulnerability possible, and small, grounded steps that keep anyone from getting lost in the abyss. This is a season for inventory—naming patterns, letting old stories rest, and choosing what to carry into the light.
If the Wheel of the Year has ever felt confusing, we untangle it by separating the two parallel myths: the goddess cycle centered on the Grand Sabbats and the god cycle threaded through the solar festivals. Each path carries its own rhythm—death to maiden to mother to elder for the goddess; birth, rise, peak, and decline for the god—intersecting without losing shape. We offer a new frame: think spiral, not wheel, a double-helix of time where lessons compound and renewal keeps returning. Press play for a grounded guide to seasonal spirituality, emotional resilience, and myth made useful. If this conversation resonated, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so others can find the show.
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SPEAKER_04:I'm all right. So we're getting close to Salin. We are. You know, uh, which is uh translates roughly to summer's end, which is the beginning of the Celtic year, or majority of times considered the beginning of the year. But why winter?
SPEAKER_02:You know, that's a good question.
SPEAKER_04:All right. Why is the beginning of summer not a beginning of spring? Is that not a new growing season?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it is, and you know, you would think that that's the time of renewal, so it should be the beginning. You would think.
SPEAKER_04:You would think, wouldn't you? But yeah, I'm I'm being serious though, but yeah, uh everybody's new year seems to be in winter. We we we celebrate the death of a year, not the birth of a year. Right since when we're going to say one the world's dying off. We there's a saying that we have in our temple which you must go through darkness to enjoy the light.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:All right. In other words, you you must struggle, you have to go through hardships to learn to grow, to be stronger. Not everything can be perfect all the time.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:All right. This to us is a us mimicking the cycles of nature itself.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, because in the winter time everything dies off, things are struggling to some things are struggling to grow.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:And there are certain things that you were doing to prep for next year too on that, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:You know, and again, think about the olden days when all this first started. Um how many times uh have we sat there and said people used to have to sleep with a livestock during the winter to keep from freezing?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:You know, and a lot of people look at us going, what are you talking about? That's kind of like most people have forgotten the reason women were stay-at-home moms for the majority of history, it took that was a more than a full-time job to run a household in and of itself. You didn't have time, you didn't have time to do anything else. You know, you were you were prepping food literally from scratch. You had to make a bunch of other stuff before you could make the main meal.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Just like summer. Just the story of the grasshopper and the ant.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Again, comes up during this time. The idea is that we have to go through sorrow. We have to go through the darkness. There are times in our lives when we are depressed, but it don't last. It will pass over time. I mean, I understand there are people out there, and I know there's probably a few people sitting there going, well, my depression lasts all year round. I understand that there are people out there that does that. But once you go through it, once you get to the other side, things tend to be better.
SPEAKER_02:Because again, Oh, absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, see, I don't know I think a main problem we have now, especially in society as a whole, is nobody ever wants to feel bad feelings.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it does seem that way, don't it?
SPEAKER_04:You're with me. You know, I I nobody wants to feel depressed, nobody wants to feel sad, nobody wants to feel bad about that. They don't mind getting angry. They don't mind being happy, but they don't want all these uh Well, and I mean honestly, I can understand that.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I don't like I don't like feeling down and out. I don't like feeling depressed.
SPEAKER_04:Who does? It happens, it happens, you know. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things we don't like. I know there's other things going on in all of this, like, you know, if you're not depressed and you have to take antidepressant medicine for like pain and stuff, yes, it has a tendency to make you depressed a lot. All right. So again, sometimes there are things in our lives we have to outweigh, which is the for the lack of a better word, which cross is easier for us to bear than others.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:There's a lot of times when we go through this darkness, we live, we we tend to want to put extra stuff on there because we want to think it's so deep. That it's so endless and all this other stuff. But there is a flip side to it. The the sun does come back out. Nature shows us these cycles always happen, they happen within side of us. We just have to embrace those cycles.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. And that's and that's part of what this is all about. I mean there are lessons to be learned. There's wisdom Yeah, wisdom to be gained. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:Wisdom to be gained through these things. All right. I mean, if you're feeling bad, if being depressed makes you more depressed, there's a problem there.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:All right. When you're depressed, you need to try to look upwards. Again, during these dark times and stuff like that, when we're going into these months, and I know there's some people out there that get depressed because of the lack of light. Right. I I don't know how common that is.
SPEAKER_02:I don't either, but I know it does happen. There are, you know, there are treatments for those.
SPEAKER_04:Right. But again, going through this going through bouts of depression on an average day is not that big of a deal. When you're depressed 24-7 all the time, that's when you need help.
SPEAKER_03:Right. That's when there's an issue.
SPEAKER_04:There's a there's an issue. Uh again, people do get depressed for a few days and then we'll c snap out of it. But this is the time of the year in which we're looking at people going, no, we want to look at these shadows, we want to look at this darkness, we want to look at what makes us afraid.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:All right. And again, it it's getting people, and I know a lot of people sit there and go, Well, that's shadow work, that's shadow work. Yeah, but there's there is something about a little bit different doing it around this time of year.
SPEAKER_02:And what is that?
SPEAKER_04:Well, it's your mindset's already there. Nature, you're flowing with the nature. Okay. All right, just like the trees are withdrawing into themselves and the animals are stocking up and getting ready for the long winter nap, so should we. This should be the time when we dig into those fears and those things we don't like about ourselves. We're in the darkness already. And the majority of times is once you're in the darkness and you start to explore it, you start to realize it's not as scary as you think it is.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:That the majority of the fears are in your head and are overdrawn.
SPEAKER_02:And it does become easy, it does become easier to navigate after a while.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, I I will admit, yes, there is the quote unquote abyss. And if you stare in there too long and stuff like that, you can get trapped in there and go to a really dark place. All right.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's easy to do.
SPEAKER_04:Right. This is not what we're talking about. We're talking about taking more of a clinical look at the stuff that you need to take care of in your life.
SPEAKER_02:Right. It's like um it's like an inventory of sorts.
SPEAKER_04:Exactly. You know, and again, this is a good time to reflect and make sure all your rituals reflect these the this time, this dark time of the season to those more inward things about yourself and to look into those over the next few months. You over the next three or four months and next couple of Sabbaths, I would suggest tiples. Hey, why don't y'all think about this? Do a little bit more rougher and get up more of them harder emotions during this time.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:So people can experience this in a safe place like ritual space.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:Share those emotions with others, especially in the presence of the gods. I mean, that helps out a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, part of it is being vulnerable during this time.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Especially if if you're part of a coven, you're part of a temple, you should be relying on your on your church members to help you through a lot of those times and a lot of those issues that you're working through. Not completely.
SPEAKER_04:This is not again, through all this, this is not a time to isolate yourself.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's not, no.
SPEAKER_04:This is this is a time to do the complete opposite. Go into those dark places, but see your friends and your family more often.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's just like um it it's it's just like you know, sleeping with your cattle.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You're still you're using them for a purpose, but they're benefiting from it as well.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_02:But you're not isolating yourself.
SPEAKER_04:No. No. And we need to do the same things with our families and friends.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_04:During this time of season, we should be pulling them closer. Hence the reason why in the world we have so many um secular, a lot of the secular holidays that we have, like here in the United States, believe it or not, yes, I'm calling Chris um Christmas secular. All right, because Christmas, the whole Santa Claus and stuff, that's secular to me. And the Jesus blood is religious.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:This is what's going on. All the all these holidays seem to be in the winter time, and it's to bring families together.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Because we are in the darkness. We do need those hand holding. All right. Hence the reason why in the world we have those. Notice we don't have that many holidays in the spring. I mean, we have our Sabbaths and our holidays, but we don't have too many celebrations just in spring and summer. You you with me when I'm saying to the same extent we do like Christmas or New Year's.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, don't get me wrong, I understand little towns and stuff have their spring festivals and their fall festival. That's not what what I'm talking about here.
SPEAKER_02:Well, no, but you can you can definitely include those because that's a community thing.
SPEAKER_04:It is, but I'm just talking about this large scale that seems to encompass ever you know the whole entire country or the world in itself. Yeah, yeah. You know, in general, not just some small community out in the middle of nowhere. Right. So that's what in the world we're doing in this time. All right. It it's not a bad thing, but we must endure this to enjoy the light because how do you know what's good if you ain't had what's bad?
SPEAKER_02:That's a good point.
SPEAKER_04:How do you enjoy the sweet without the bitter? I mean, and and don't even get me started because again, look at human behavior. How many people do the spicy sweet?
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:The sweet and sour and all that, these extremes, all right?
SPEAKER_02:I don't I don't do the sweet and sour, but I will definitely do the spicy sweet.
SPEAKER_04:I hate the sour too. But I will I'm like you, I'll do the spicy.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Chicken cooking, what? Um honey and um what like a jalapeno sauce or salsa verde or something like that.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. That is honey.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I'm trying to think of the powder, uh, the um cayenne powder.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, cayenne.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. Cayenne and honey on your chicken before you bake it.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, nothing like fresh cayenne out of the garden.
SPEAKER_04:Ooh.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway.
SPEAKER_04:Anyway.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that was just a that was a rant on food. Sorry.
SPEAKER_04:Uh but again, to me, that's what this time period is. Hence the reason we have to enjoy the darkness to be able to enjoy the light. You understand this concept concept when you have to get up in the middle of the night to go pee on a cold day and you get back into your warm bed afterwards. Right. That's what this time is supposed to be like. All right. So don't take it with a negative emotion or anything like that. Embrace it full on. I got a question not too long ago. Someone wrote us, hey, could y'all go over the Will of the Year myth cycle?
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:A little confusing.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it is confusing.
SPEAKER_04:Right? So so let's walk through it first, okay?
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_04:And we're gonna start at the beginning of our year, which is Sawin, right? At Sawin, the goddess is prone, the god is dead, he's going into the underworld. Right?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Then we go to Yul. She's a maiden, she she's the pregnant mother, about to give birth.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:The sun god, and he's a child. Then we move to invulk. And at embulk so gentleman, and she's a young maiden.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm. And they're they're courting, yeah, dating.
SPEAKER_04:Dating, courting, maybe a little bit more. Maybe and then we move to Star. Now the star she's the turn, she's coming into her fluition. She's suddenly become going from childhood into adulthood. She's becoming a woman.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Correct? Right. He's doing he's roughly doing the same thing, right?
SPEAKER_03:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:And then we move to Delta. Now we're talking more adults and what adult things.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Hooking up.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Alright. So so we know what this is going on here. We move to Setha. Setha's a little bit more of a downtime. Enjoying spring and summer and beginnings of the bounties of our harvest, right?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Everything's growing, everything's in its cycle. He's at his peak of manhood, the whole nine yards. He's like finally turned into that chieftain. Again, nothing dramatic really going on now. Then we move to Linassa. And Linassa, it's a hard it's a again, it's a harvest. Things are starting, certain things are starting to come to fruition. She's allowing things to mature to get ready to die, and so we can pick them. And the home nine yards, because it's the first harvest. Then we move to Aban. Second harvest is the fall. Sort of considered late in life for the gods. And then moving on to that one, in which he's dead. Why does this all sound so confusing?
SPEAKER_02:Because it is. Well, in some ways it is, because we've actually got two different cycles running.
SPEAKER_04:That's right. We got two different stories running side by side.
SPEAKER_02:And we're and when you do the wheel of the year like this, you're overlaying, and that's where the confusion comes in.
SPEAKER_04:Right. So again, if we take a moment and we say, okay, grands are about the goddess.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:And all the lessers are about the god.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:So then if we go back and we look at just the story of the grands, what do we wind up with?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we have en bulk.
SPEAKER_04:No, no, start at Soin.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, Salwan. Which is death. Right.
SPEAKER_04:We would skip Joel and go to Mbulk, in which she's the maiden. She's trying to get pregnant.
SPEAKER_02:Right, because Mbulk is in the belly.
SPEAKER_04:In the belly, right? She's trying to get pregnant, or the whole process there. She's not showing yet.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:And then we move to the next grand. Then we move to the next grand, which is Beltane, in which she is in her full ripeness. She is the pregnant mother in all her glory. Right. Then we move on to Lanasa, which again is her and her old age. Stone given birth, pretty much, and is heading on into old age.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Just in time for Salwin.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Now that makes a little bit better sense, don't it? It keeps it easier, but keep straight.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it it flows a little better. Yeah. Flows easy.
SPEAKER_04:Well, to do the God story, we have to start instead of in Salwin, we have to start in Yule. He's born. Then he goes into adulthood where he, her, and can do what he needs to do. So Stara.
SPEAKER_02:Go figure. Go figure.
SPEAKER_04:Then what Sabbath do we have? What's the next Litha? Or solstice. Right. Litha. He's at his ripened manhood. He is the thief then. He is the father of the clan.
SPEAKER_02:He's at his peak.
SPEAKER_04:Just in time to go to Maybon. Where now he's starting to wither away and preparing to die just in time to be reborn at Yule.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:This is why it's so confusing.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, so you have to separate, you have to actually separate the two.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Because the grand are seasonal. This is supposed to be the changes between summer and winter, fall, and this is those are what those are. Where the lessers are solar events. I think this illustrates 100% a lot of pagan thought. Because what it is is he's on his journey, she's on hers, but we see where they interact with each other throughout the year, through their stories, through their viewpoint, balancing each other out, and taking a turn to move on, to move the wheel further to the next cycle. Right? Now, what you got to remember also is that technically we don't that cycle as necessarily a wheel, it's more of a spiral. So again, continue overlapping, building on top of each other over and over again.
SPEAKER_02:So on okay, on that note, you said spiral. How how do we how do you create a spiral out of that?
SPEAKER_04:Out of two circles?
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:Well again, if you s if you were able to see it from the side or and rotate them around each other, if you looked at it from the side, it would look more and more like a double helix. The representation of the human out of all of this.
SPEAKER_02:Right. I think at some point it would turn in, it would kind of look like a double helix, depending on how far. Yeah, depending on how far you stretch it out, but yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Again, that's one of the reasons it's so confusing because again, technically they're two different myths stories going on simultaneously.
SPEAKER_02:They yeah, they do they do overlap at some point. Right. Right. But not completely.
SPEAKER_04:No.
SPEAKER_02:And so I think that's where that's where this person who asked the question was coming from because it is I mean, if you just look at it as it is, flat on a piece of paper.
SPEAKER_04:The history I was told about this was the Celts followed the four grands.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:Right? And and they didn't start even touching the lessers until after their encounters with Rome, who did. So that sort of that culture sort of weaved its that part of that culture sort of weaved itself into the Celtic society and was sort of brought down to us.
SPEAKER_02:That's kind of the way I that's the way I understood it too. So right.
SPEAKER_04:I mean again, are we a hundred percent sure this is you know what they did and the what they believed?
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_04:I don't think anybody will.
SPEAKER_02:No, we'll never be sure.
SPEAKER_04:Not some scholar professor that just sat there and studied, I just made myself and I.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:I wish there was more I could tell you, but that's as simple as that cycle can get.
SPEAKER_02:It it it does simplify it. Right. I mean, it does simplify it to the point where, okay, now it makes better sense.
SPEAKER_04:Right. And again, it's very vague and very simple. It can get a whole lot more certain traditions, it can be a whole lot more complicated. This is the way we look at it in our tradition.
SPEAKER_02:And it seems to work for us, so I was gonna say if uh if anybody has any additional ideas, feel free to let us know.
SPEAKER_04:We love ideas, comments, and share.
SPEAKER_02:Let's get some coffee.
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SPEAKER_02:Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Pegan Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Please visit us at life templeseminary.org for more information, as well as links to our social media: Facebook, Discord, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit.
SPEAKER_00:We travel down this trodden path, the maze of stone and mire. Just hold my hand as we pass by a steel blazing fires. And so it is the end of our days, so walk with me till morning breaks, and so it is the end of our days, so walk with me till morning break.
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