Farming with Magik and Mythology, The Cunning Farmer Episode 1

In this first episode of The Cunning Farmer, Todd Elliott and I begin our walk-through of his pivotal book and masterpiece, The Cunning Farmer: Agrarian Magical Practices, Mythology, and Folklore, diving first into the cross-pollination of myth and magik in view of the general human practice of agriculture. We also talk about ancient languages and how the study of language helps us understand the layers of colonialism and the truths hidden yet in our memory and marrow.

Purchase The Cunning Farmer HERE.

Learn more about Daniel’s work HERE.

Note: in this episode, I say the name of the Biblical Eve is chara, but that is not true. It is chava and the version in the podcast is a simple mispeak. I apologize. Chara is the lenition of cara, the Irish word for friend.

Transcript

New Series And How To Join

D. Ffrith Griffith 0:03

Hello! Welcome to the podcast. This is the first episode in a new series here on Unchod that we will be sprinkling throughout our other series, the Indie Author series with the wonderful Angie Kelly, and also the God is Red series with my brother Taylor Keene. This series is titled The Cunning Farmer. And I am going to be talking for many weeks with the Cunning Farmer himself, Todd Elliott, a master Reiki practitioner, druid, organic veggie farmer in the Ohio River Valley in Kentucky. Todd has also written a book. We will be walking through this book. Now, the book is titled The Cunning Farmer. We stole its title. Its uh subtitle is Agrarian of Magical Practices, Mythology, and Folklore. If that doesn't make you, in the underwear that you are wearing, run down the street to your local bookshop and demand to be able to buy this, take it home and read it with us. Let me tell you this: this book is truly the blending of decades of agricultural practice and wisdom in place on his farm in Kentucky. It is also a sacred liturgy of ancient Western European and North American magical practices in view of agriculture. In addition, it's also a scholarly text. In this first episode, Todd and I talk more about Virgil and his Georgix or Jorgix and his Athenian than we do many other things. If you've been looking for a conversation that blends scholarly and sacred, paganistic and practical agrarian wisdom, this is it. This is it. We're going to be walking through this book chapter by chapter uh every other week or so with Todd. And uh yeah, go get the book, go buy it, go run down the street, go get it from your local bookshop as fast as you possibly can. And read it with us. And join us on Substack. We'll be releasing these episodes on Substack as well. And there you can ask us questions, you can read a chapter, and you can, you know, literally ask, what Todd did you mean when you said this in chapter four? And we'll talk about it on the podcast. So you can actually commune with us. It's not just you sitting there and taking our words, but you can actually commune with the words themselves and and add to them in your own way. I encourage you to do this. In addition, podcasting is not cheap, it's it's not free, and in fact, it's actually quite expensive in the modern era. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month go into the making of this podcast, and it doesn't generate any money, and it takes well, it takes a lot of time. In addition, and so if you also feel like you are receiving anything of value from this podcast, I encourage you, go to Substack, you'll be able to create a paid membership. It's just three dollars a month, and we um that's gonna keep us alive, and uh we appreciate that more than you know. It might be small potatoes, three dollars a month for you, but it is the potatoes that keep me alive, and so I appreciate you and I and I see you. And so uh I can talk all day, uh praising the pants off of Todd. Uh, this book is truly amazing, and so I'll cut it off there. Go get the book, read it with us. Um, today's episode, we're talking about the forward, the introduction, and chapter one. And so maybe pause the episode and go buy the book and then come back, and we'll be here waiting for you. So, without further ado, The Cunning Farmer with Todd Elliott. Yeah, it it is it it is so interesting that I that I that difference between the written word and the oral word. And uh I feel like the more I I write, the more I dive into that realm of the written word, the more respect I have for our elders who had not the symbology and the syllabaries, um, but had the memory and the care. I I heard recently, not that Homer would be in any of my relations, um, but I heard that he was blind and and uh and he had one other impairment. Um, I don't know if that's true or just some ethos placed onto the uh resurgence of Greek mythology, but um yeah, it's interesting.

Todd Elloitt 4:39

Like who knows if there even was a historical Homer. You know. There's seriously though, yeah.

D. Ffrith Griffith 4:45

I'm sure you know the, yeah. There's a lot. I heard I read this one essay, um I forget who was by was what, by some great uh translator of the um a lot of the Greek works, a lot of the plays, um, like The Clouds, for instance, and uh Homer's Iliad and Odyssey too. But he wrote this essay about why um Homer's uh Odyssey is so much better than Virgil's The Aeneid. And he said it's because Homer's Odyssey was written over thousands of years by many people, and Virgil's Aeneid was one man and one lifetime. And that's the difference. And uh I I think that's a pretty clear exclamation of maybe Homer was.

Todd Elloitt 5:35

It was played to music, much like in Ireland and everywhere else in the world, and you know, it was meant to be accompanied in their memory. Can you imagine the memory of somebody to memorize the entire thing?

D. Ffrith Griffith 5:48

Could you imagine the joy of sitting in that like hearth flame lodge with the smoke and the darkness in the winter, and then those bards, let's call them for now, or Shanachy or whatever they were in the Greek language, but and they would they would come in like the anticipation of that in a world, um, something I wrote about in a previous book. It's just like this this idea that it has nothing to do with stories, but the idea that the world you were born into is the world that you leave at the end of your life. Like that's so much of the human experience. Like the fact that I'm a millennial. I was born and I remember the first thing I ever tried, the first time I ever tried to get into get onto the internet. My dad, who worked from home, he had to like disconnect the phone lines and plug into the dial up, and like that was life for so long. Like even for me, and I'm still quite young in my 30s, and now today we have AI and Wi-Fi everywhere and 5G technology, and we have all this stuff. And so, like our modern day is the antithesis, right, of our ages gone past. And there's a lot of information there and a lot of, I guess, conversations we can have too. But the idea being like, could you imagine in a world where you are born and died and very little changed, a bard coming into it and telling such a story? Like the excitement that would follow like a chills thinking about it. Like that would it would be like the the the biggest, you know, movie or or book um adaptation to big film of anybody's life ever. Like that that what a joy that that was. How excited would the kids be? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 7:20

Yeah.

D. Ffrith Griffith 7:20

And then you wonder about like there's a lot of studies into ADHD and a lot of other things out. It's just like this hunter gatherer genomics still kind of lost into our modern, you know, poodle-like genome. But on top of that, you also think about like the an engrossing atmosphere that such a telling environment would have conveyed into the younger mind. Whereas today, they have to sit, these younger minds, in so much duller and just bleak and colorless environments from that spirit sense. And uh and then we ask them to sit still. Whereas in their minds, they're in the hearth flame. Like they, they, I think they still see these things, you know, especially as their craniums and their their skulls are forming and that that tether back to back to sources a little bit true, a little bit stronger.

Todd Elloitt 8:07

My little my littlest one is eight, and he is sort of on the hyperactive end of things, and he's wild. I mean, and but he can listen to a story read out loud for hours. I've been reading The Lord of the Rings, I read him The Hobbit. And then the other day we had a party, and he said, I need everybody's attention. And he stood up on top of a chair and recited this soliloquy from a book that he had memorized, a book about dragons that he had memorized. I had no idea that he even had this talent. Like this two-minute verse about dragons, a prophecy, a dragon prophecy. I was like, Oh my god, that was amazing. So that's the kind of thing that really captures those kids, not sitting in a classroom, storytelling and retelling.

Meeting Todd And Naming The Quest

D. Ffrith Griffith 8:54

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think it's interesting too that so much of folklore, I mean, a lot of people have written about this. Um who's the gentleman who wrote uh the modern uh Iron John? Um Robert Blythe, like he writes about this. Um, but how much of that youthful spirit is written into these folklore and these ancient mythologies, these stories that cause the adult in us to wither away, kind of like retrograde back into our childish selves. Like the the tales themselves ask us to be childs, you know, children or children, childs. Like, or even like the Mabinogi or Mabinogian, the the Welsh branches of the four stories, even that, I mean Maminogi or Mabon Yeah, children's tales. Yeah, there you go. Great stories, by the way. They are great stories. Great stories. It's one of my favorite, my favorite collections, the Maminogi. Um, well, wait, listen, we can talk about this forever. Um, Todd, it is so cool to have you with us. Um I think we have a lot of really fun conversations ahead. And I I feel like I'm writing a book in the sense that I want to get to all the things that I want to get to, but I I need to like go through a journey with you first. And so I feel like you and I, when we met uh just a few weeks ago, it was just the you know, they literally the stars aligned and we had an amazing conversation for two hours in the night sky, and uh and and then you come out with this amazing book, The Cunning Farmer, which is what this series is going to be all about, um subtitled Agrarian Magical Practices, Mythology and Folklore. And uh I just uh I'm like grinning across my entire body. My veins are pumping, my nerves are going. This this is an amazing book. I have really uh enjoyed diving into it. Um, and I'm really uh, how do you say, like giddy um to see where these conversations go? Because for so long of my adult life, as many of our listeners know, um I have struggled with the idea of regeneration, and especially when it comes down to ecology and agriculture, and the staleness of so much that goes on in that very modern space has been so unmoving or off-putting to me. And um I think some of the words that you use in the frameworks that you are speaking it through in this agrarian magical practices and the druidry and everything else that we're gonna dive into, I think really puts well to words these feelings that I've I've lacked the words for, as if spirit and creator has put you right into my path to kind of stimulate my mouth and uh allow it to speak through the heart as well. And so for that, thank you for that. Uh, it is an honor. Um yeah, thanks for thanks for truly being here.

Todd Elloitt 11:43

Well, thank you for having me on, Daniel. It's really awesome to be here with you. And and we really did have an amazing introduction. The first time we talked with the stars aligning, I feel like that was a a major, a major sign from the creator, from the spirits that we that we needed to talk, that we had done the right thing getting together, that we were meant to. And and the fact that you responded to my to my post about the the mounds, where I just got up, got up to the mounds. And when I pulled up to the octagon circle, my wife and I were getting out of the car, and a crow was on top of a tree right outside of the, you know, it used to be a golf course for a while, and a crow was in a giant oak tree right on top of right over the clubhouse building, and he just would not, he was like, like telling everybody we were there. And then I get home and I I I post a little picture about I think it was the uh shrum mound that you responded to uh and and uh we connected from there. And I I feel like being there and being that place somehow connected to my knowing you it was it was a chain of events.

D. Ffrith Griffith 12:53

Yeah. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I um it it's it's it it's so interesting, this digital world, because I I'm always on the fence how much I should attend to it, you know, social media and Substack too. And I was just scrolling through the Substack feed one day and I saw that, and and because of the recent series we've been doing with Taylor Keene, God is red, and we've been talking about all those mounds. I saw that you were there, and I don't even know if I really knew who you were um fully because uh a a friend of mine on Substack shared the uh pre-sale of your book, The Cunning Farmer, a month or two ago or a month or two before this moment. And I remember seeing it. I went on Amazon or wherever it was that they linked to, and I saw it. I saw it was sixty-three dollars, and I was like, okay, I maybe I'm not gonna pre-order this, but I'm I'm gonna get this as soon as I can, you know. And uh and and so it was on my mind or in my heart, or the imagery of the book cover was somewhere in there, and I saw your name on Substack being The Cunning Farmer, which is the title of your book. And I connected the dots, and I was like, oh my God, this is the guy, the magical farming guy who's also writing the book that I want to read, and now he's in the mounds that I've been talking about for the last six months with Taylor Keene. Like, so I sent that to you. And how out of character it was for me to randomly DM you a link saying, Hey, maybe you'll like this podcast that I've done, you know, on archaeoastronomy and the indigenous relationship of the stars to the Degihad or the Omaha Su or Suian peoples or whatever I said, and and uh and then you responded and you're like, yeah, this is awesome. And then we connected, and then the stars aligned, and and now we're here. And uh and I I think if I if I could preface this, something that I think is really interesting is uh, especially in light of conversations I I got to share with Taylor in the general length of the God is Red series, is this idea of displacement, which I think you and I talked about when we first met, you know, under the stars, as we've been saying, but this idea that we're both these European souls in a world, the new world, right, the Western Hemisphere, Turtle Island, all of the different versions it has, you know, politically and socially been over the last 500 years. Not really of our making. I don't I don't feel like I I came here um not unwillingly, but maybe not willingly, and yet there's this tie back to the sacred places of of Western Ireland or my mother, she's from Poland and Lithuania, so there as well. And trying to understand who we are as modern Americans that practice magical and earth-centric or kin-centric relationships back to Earth Mother and Creator without actually being nestled and tied within an ancient social people group, right? Like my grandmother is from County Mayo, um Low Park, County Mayo, in Ireland. I can date back to the 1400s of their family line there. And I'm not there, I've never been there, I've never seen the Irish countryside, let alone Low Park, let alone, you know, County Mayo. And so this sense of not disconnection, but the desire for true reconnection, I think is something that I want to investigate with you throughout these conversations as well, through agriculture, through magic, through folklore and mythology, that is to say, for all of those lost, wandering Poles or Slavs or Irish or Welsh or Crimu or Britons or whoever you are, how do we find our way back without sacrificing where Creator put us here? Right? Like how how do we find that balance? And so I want to just pin mark that or earmark or whatever the phrase, the cliche would be, um, so that it's it's always there. Because I think that's going to be a very interesting thing that unfolds um necessarily in our conversations, even maybe without our our trying.

Todd Elloitt 16:57

Yeah, that's definitely one of the concerns that that I have in my work too, is that how do we become connected to the place where we are, connected to the place where we're where we how do we set down roots? Um I I was listening to your conversation with with Taylor today, and he said something about how uh our Europeans haven't he was quoting another Native American teacher or writer, he said that we hadn't been here long enough to to be connected to the place. Our bone our we're not our b are the bones of our ancestors aren't in the land. And I was thinking about that I while I was working today, and there's a lot of truth to that. But that is also changing. My my dad's buried here on the farm. Um yeah, so his his ashes are now part of the people that have been here that have lived here. So in a sense, that that is changing. And I I feel like also history is you can't do anything about history. You know, you just have to live where you're placed, where are you where you come to, right?

D. Ffrith Griffith 18:10

Right.

Todd Elloitt 18:11

And and try to do it right this way around.

Todd’s Farming Life And Book Origin

D. Ffrith Griffith 18:18

Yeah. Yeah, like an honorable air and a world on the edge. Yeah. But also like a world unknown, which is something else I want to dive in with you on these series is this idea that um maybe it would be a fine one today if we get to it. But the idea of this like folklore and fake lore. Like the world is on the edge, but so are our stories. So much so many of them have been colonized and recolonized and Christianized and re-Christianized for a thousand years for some of us. That um even some of the things that we hold as sacred, you know, and these folkloric elements of our sacred lives are much more fake lore, as uh John Michael Greer says in your in your in the foreword to your book, The Cunning Farmer. He talks about this thickets of pretentious fakery, I think is what he calls it, which we'll get to. And I want to get there. Yeah, the labor. I think that's Leinster, the book of Leinster, would uh or Leinster, I don't know how to pronounce that. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's basically that. Like even in the margins, if you look at the original manuscript, you can see in the margins that um, you know, it'll say like um this was actually a devil or something, you know, or like and you're like, no, that's uh that's that's Banba, that's Iru's younger sister, the Soventy sisters of the land. Like, that's not a devil. So yeah, there's there's a lot there. We can we can dive into that. Um perhaps maybe a fine place to start. Um, if you would, would you please provide uh a short um background maybe for our listeners of who you are, introduce yourself however you like. You can tell your life story, you can just say what the land looks like around you and in you, whatever makes any sense. Just introduce yourself to our to our listeners, and then maybe we can dive into the idea that this book, um, and maybe we can speak also to the writing of the book, because I want to do that. I'm I'm really interested in that. And I think some of our listeners are as well. Um, but the the the writing of this book and and how it runs, this beautiful ley line, if you will, that connects the sacred practice with this worldview, this enchanted worldview that you develop in it, this magical worldview, if you will. And so let's let's start with who you are and and then and then maybe let's progress that direction.

Todd Elloitt 20:40

Well, my name is Todd Elliott, and I am in my early 50s, 53. I am an organic farmer by trade. I have been a farmer in the state of Kentucky since Well, I I've lived in the state of Kentucky since 1996. I'm emerging from um southeastern Pennsylvania uh through a long uh I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania. Um my my family was has been there for a while, since the 18th and 19th centuries, as far as I understand. Um and then I was the first well, I was in the first elite, but I left when I in my early twenties to come to get back to the land, basically, to make a long story short. And uh I have been farming for a livelihood since 1998. First working for other growers, and then and then a few years after doing that, um starting my own farm with my partner at the time, and uh and now I have moved. Uh that was I originally lived in Crumberlin County, Kentucky, which is on the Tennessee line, and now I live in the other part of the northern part of Kentucky, not too far from Cincinnati, Ohio, with uh my wife Esme and my two sons, Miller and Wagner. Um I got into I've always been a nature lover. I've always Been a uh I've always loved being outside and loved playing with plants and animals and um just getting out when I was a kid. I I would get outside whenever I could and wander in the woods wherever I happened to be. Um I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, so any little abandoned patch would be where I'd be found at any anytime I could get away. And um I was in elementary school, I was the kid that ran around with a butterfly net while all the other boys were playing football. That did not give me any points for popularity for sure. Uh in fact, I I rapidly learned that that was probably not a great way to make friends, and uh so I I kind of tried to tone it down the nature thing for a while, and but it came back in my late teens and early 20s, and um ended up with me moving to Kentucky to be a farmer. Um my father also tried his hand at farming in New York State in the 80s and 90s too, and I and I saw his place in the early 90s and uh was really inspired by that as well. So um, yeah, so basically I live out here on a piece of rural acreage in we have 30 acres of property uh in we run a CSA program in Cincinnati uh and in Frankfurt, Kentucky, and we farm for a living. And uh yeah, so I wrote a book a couple years ago, started on it three years ago. It's coming out, being published next week, officially published, released on March 17th. Um I feel like in my life there have been I've had inner promptings, uh things that I really was led and guided to do by perhaps a guardian angel, perhaps perhaps my inner higher self, however you want to call that. And the book was one of those things. I just started writing it, and I had an idea. I was inspired to write the book, and I just went with it and wrote it until it was done. And I'm still writing, but uh the book was uh it was a sustained effort over the course of about nine months to get the manuscript written. Even even I started in January. Uh no, it was more than nine months. It was I think I started in January and I finished in about January as well. So it was about a course of a year, and I even while I was farming full-time, I would still stay up late writing. Sorry about that, Daniel. I stay up late. Uh stay up late writing, and um the words just usually they would just come out of me. It was uh it was a really wonderful feeling to be so passionate and inspired. And and the research, I love doing the research. I loved losing myself in ideas, in books, and stories, in magical practices, and every every time I would write a chapter, I would mourn the chapter a little bit when I was done. So if I, you know, wrote 10,000 words on say oh the spirits of the dead or something like that, I would dive so into that topic that when I got done, I would be sad that I didn't couldn't return to that topic. Again, I had to go on to something else. But of course I got into the next topic just as just as intensely, but it was uh it was pretty cool to hang out with the uh the books and the sources that I was hanging out with when I was writing the chapters. So there's a little bit about writing the book.

Virgil And The Genius Of Place

D. Ffrith Griffith 25:51

Um Yeah. The the book I uh so so rarely in the agricultural uh you know literary space do you find a book, in my opinion, that dives so deeply into the highly intellectual, I think people would see it, um history, prose, poems, ancient cultures, things like this. Like you really do talk about it as if you've met, you know, Virgil in his, you know, in um not he you quote um in the intro or something, not from the Aeneid. Um George. What's the other? What's his other word? Yeah. Yeah. Like you've you've been there, and at the same time your hands are in the soil, but you're not just romantic about it. Like it it's still practical. Like you're diving into these ancient texts, not just to marvel in some sort of white tower way, which we do, and and I think that's a fine thing to do, to marvel in the beauty there. But then you also use that beauty to talk about the dead or the way of the dead, or you know, that that that subject maybe, or the many other plethora of subjects in the book. And I found that to be really, really special, especially in an agricultural literary space, as I'm saying, which often finds itself, I think, either on the how to grow more grass category or you know, pure nature writing romance, like and and it's very kind of difficult, I think, for a lot of us agrarians to find that beautiful middle ground between the practical and the enchantment of the worldview. So I don't know if that's a compliment or not. I see it as one. Yeah, but also I'm curious on how you handled that. Do you do you have any words to describe that part?

Todd Elloitt 27:30

Um could you be a little more specific?

D. Ffrith Griffith 27:34

Yeah, like how how did I don't know, how did you how did you maintain that like author balance between the practical and the enchantment while writing you know those 10,000 words in that chapter? Or, you know, any of the chapters? Like was it was that difficult? Was that second nature? Is that what just the muse gave you?

Todd Elloitt 27:53

That was what the muse gave me. To be to be honest with you, it was it was just it was just how it came out. I'm really glad that it speaks to you. Um yeah, like for instance, the first chapter where I quote Virgil, I I just I I love how he fees, and it's not exactly what I do because I use tractors and not oxen, but um, I love how he he talks about the sensual experiences of plowing, of turning over the field for the first time. And and I I I I picture this this ancient Roman wise man going out to his field and and observing the the winds and and and I do that, you know, when I when and I I've I've farmed a couple different pieces of land, and you have to you have to think ahead. You have and he knew that, and he knew that. He knew you had to like you had to you had to get in touch with the genius of the place to be able to farm a place properly. And I I think that there's a lot of farming that gets done nowadays without consulting the genius of the place, unfortunately. There's there's obviously if you drive, um as I said, we we went up to see the mounds and around Columbus, Ohio, and I I think I remember you saying you're from there. Uh and uh well the drive up there from from where I live, it's about three hours, and most of it is through corn wasteland. And you can see that the genius of the place has not been consulted. And and you can look at the abandoned farms. Uh I mean, the the the farmhouses are look like they're still a lot of them are still lived in, but not all of them. But the outbuildings are abandoned. And the all the fence rows have been taken out, all the orchards have been taken out, all the there's not a cow. I mean, there's not a cow between Cincinnati and Columbus, I don't think. I think I still have.

D. Ffrith Griffith 29:49

Or even in or around Columbus. Right.

Todd Elloitt 29:52

I mean, you'd think with all that far countryside that there'd be some cattle. I mean, Kentucky's cattle, there's all kinds of cattle in Kentucky. I th I but anyway, I feel like that place in particular, and and then going to see these earthworks that were made by people who lived in I don't want to say in harmony. We we I've heard you you and Taylor talk about the problematic nature of that. But people who live so much more at home in their environment than just taking corn and beans and making the environment fit the corn and beans. I I really uh so I I really think that you one one thing I want people to take away is you have to you have to listen to your land and what will grow there and what will grow there without harming the land. Um because there's a lot of things that you you can you can try to make your land fit the plan that's given to you by your State Department of Agriculture or something like that, but I don't I don't think that's necessarily what your land wants to do. Um honestly a lot of my land wants to be forest, and uh it's I'd say all of it would probably like to be forest, but uh a lot of it's getting to go back to being forest because uh it probably should never have been cleared. And the genius of the place is telling me that rather than being this a cow pasture too steep to mow um and too dangerous to mow, and needing a a four-wheel drive a giant four-wheel drive tractor and a 20-foot bushhog, it really needs to be a uh first a blackberry thicket and then a cedar forest, and then some hardwoods poking up there and letting the soil come back because you know it's just been people been trying to make an extractive living from it for the last 250 years or something like that. And and that's just that's just not not what the land wants to do anymore.

D. Ffrith Griffith 31:47

Yeah. Something that even in your the first chapter here, it's on page 11. If people are listening to this after have purchased the book, um talking about his Georgix. Um Georgix. Is that it? Georgix or Georgix? How do you say that? I Georgix, let's do it.

Todd Elloitt 32:03

I lean towards medieval Latin pronunciation. I know that's not how you would want to read Virtual. You'd want to read um reconstructed pronunciation because he's Roman, but uh yeah, Georgix.

D. Ffrith Griffith 32:15

Yeah, well, whatever, however it goes. It's Greek anyway, right? Georgia You and I it's a cool word, George.

Todd Elloitt 32:28

There's so many people named George, but it's a cool word, earthworker.

D. Ffrith Griffith 32:32

Right? Yeah, I think you and I could do a whole episode here on linguistics. And uh that we should. We should we should do that. But okay, so like on page 11 of your of your first chapter here in your book and um consulting the the genius of place. So it the uh what I want to draw, I mean you wrote this, I don't want to draw your attention to it, but I want to re- rebring it up in your mind and introduce it to our listeners here. But so you're you're quite you're quoting through it, and it says, You gods and goddesses who with such kindness watch over our fields and vineyards, and who nurture the fruits that seed themselves without our labor, and all the crops with rain that falls from heaven, it continues. And it says, And yet, if the field is unknown and new to us, so I feel like you and I are in this category, right? Like our people are new to these fields, even as it just farmers open new ground or expand their farm or buy a new farm, let alone when people move from Europe to the Western Hemisphere, these things are new to us. Before our plow breaks upon the soil at all, it's necessary to study the ways of the wind and the changing ways of the skies, and also to know the history of planting in that ground what crops will prosper there and which will not. In one place, grain grows bass, in another vines. Uh the interesting thing is when I mean there's an entire book, I think it's written by Gene Logsden, if I got his name right. It might be different. But I think it's called Consulting the Genius of Place or something like this. Um, it's not Gene Logsden, it's uh Leopold, not Leo Daggone it. It's not Aldo Leopold, it's not Wendell Berry, it's not Gene Logsden, it's the fourth guy. Um his name will come to the Albert Howard. I haven't read that. Not Albert Howard. And we're walking through all of these, you know, um writers that all share the same shelf. Um doesn't matter. But the point is that quote is from Alexander Pope.

Todd Elloitt 34:21

This one is? The consulting No, no, that poem's from is Virgil, but the consulting the genius of the place is from Alexander Pope.

D. Ffrith Griffith 34:29

Yeah, the English poet. You always see that here on the previous page.

Todd Elloitt 34:32

Yeah.

D. Ffrith Griffith 34:33

Um the the interesting thing is I think when so many agricultural types find themselves writing about this genius of place. I mean, like there's an entire book, Consulting the Genius of Place, by this unnamed author like Wendell Berry and Alter Leopold that I can't think of the name of, it's so centralized on this idea of production, right? Like consult the soils, right? Do the soil test and do those kind of things, like consult the tangible things, which I think you shouldn't miss. Like as a full-time farmer talking to a full-time farmer, I I think these things are important, generally considered. But what Virgil, I think, is is is so highlighting for us. I'm so glad you showed like it's just it's you gods and goddesses who with such kindness watch over our fields, right? Like we we begin with the sacred, like this, this, the sacred ethereal element of gods and goddesses written to the land, not like soil testing, not like NRCS, you know, soil studies and things like this, but like we start with the sacred and we move progressively into that very like physical, tangible, carnal layer, right? And then it talks about, you know, before our plow breaks the soil, it's necessary to study the ways of the wind. Not like the soil and topography. This isn't like, you know, um uh the the name uh the permaculture's um scale of permanence. Uh it's developed by P. A. Yeoman's um what's his name down there in Australia today?

Todd Elloitt 35:55

Bill Mollison?

D. Ffrith Griffith 35:56

Um uh yeah, it's uh um younger colleague of Bill Mollison.

Todd Elloitt 36:02

Um yeah, the guy the guy on the back of the book regrarians. Is he on the back of the book? No, not on the back of my book, the back of permaculture bible, the big fat one. There's yeah, there's Bill into the end of two young people.

D. Ffrith Griffith 36:15

Yeah, probably Holmgren and uh this other guy, regrarians. He built this idea of the scale of permanence that when you walk onto a new land and you quote consult the genius of the place, you you start with like you know, weather patterns and things, but then you immediately get into like roads and topography and water movement and soil structures and old buildings that you're gonna have to work around. And it's like this very physical, not incorrect. That's not the point I'm making here, but it's a very physical approach to the genius of the place. Whereas that's not what the Romans meant. No, it's not not at all. I mean, we're starting with gods and goddesses.

Todd Elloitt 36:47

The reason there's a picture is the reason that that picture of the snake, that's the genius of the place.

D. Ffrith Griffith 36:53

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 36:54

That's the that's the genius loci, that snake, that Avalphos diamond, that that snake deity that represents the earth spirit, that's who they're consulting. I mean, the the the first thing a Roman farmer would do when they had to, if they had to clear forests, they would try to make a sacrifice to the to Sylvanus, to the god of the forest. They'd make a what what is it called? A suotoralia? Like a they would sacrifice a bull and a pig to the gods of the forest right away. I mean, it was uh it was very important. They were they were they were very aware of the of the innate animate divine presences in the land, and that they would get angry if they were not appeased, propitiated, or at least thought of, you know, given cult, as they say. And uh, you know, we don't think so so when we when we're doing soil tests and observing the drainage and uh the physical characteristics, I mean, nobody's when they when those these modern people talk about consulting the genius for the place, that's not they're not talking about what what we might you and I might mean, or Virgil.

When Regenerative Practice Still Fails

D. Ffrith Griffith 38:08

Yeah, yeah. It it is so interesting. We used to used to be very high in the uh ecological outcome verification or ecological monitoring sector of the Savory Institute. And we used to do a lot of field work. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres. We would ecologically and biologically assay me and my team for years, three or four years. We are out of that. That's in our past about three years ago. But for years we did that. And we just, I mean, we would just we would be in these massive projects. Um, we we did this massive ecological consulting for a 13,000 acre coal mine restoration project. So it's just 13,000 acres of rolling gravel pits that we were trying to understand the whatever. I'm getting into the details, but the point is just massive projects. And you would see projects that were working, farms that were working, projects that were not, farms that were not. And the interesting thing is so many of their practices were rooted in the same philosophies, adaptive, you know, management or, you know, adaptive planned grazing or, you know, agile grazing or rotational grazing, regenerative grade. They all had these names for it. And they were moving their animals or planting their crops, you know, in rotations or not tilling or tilling, whatever it was. Like they all had all of these farmers, just I mean, literally hundreds and hundreds of individual farms we got to work with. And they all had their practices, and a lot of them were very similar or rooted in these same ecological principles that people like Gabe Brown or others would talk about. Um, all of these soil scientists or grazing, whoever they want to call themselves. And the interesting thing was my wife and I, she she's a trained biologist, went to school for biology. She would always be with us. And we would always be driving home, her and I, some, you know, middle of the night, driving home from like New York or something, just through the night. And we would be sitting there and we were like, that that farm that was doing everything right, why was it so ugly? Like, why was the grass not growing? Why was the soil not regenerating, like year over year over year over year, not like a single moment in time, but like over a five-year trending data set? Like, why is there less grass? Why are there less birds? Why are there less spiders? Why are there like all of these hundreds of mexers that were assaying there from a biological perspective over the land? Why are they decreasing? And then one day she looked at me and she didn't say because they didn't consult the genius of the place, but one day she said, I wonder if the spirit is just off. And at that moment, her and I's life changed. At that moment, I'm not saying don't take your soil test, but like don't leave the spirits at the door. Like the spirits were something was wrong. The heart was wrong. The some some aspect of that spiritual realm, if we will, that we can encase in this heart cage, some aspect of that was not correct. Like they didn't do the bull sacrifice correct before they went into the forest. Like something deeper than practice, or even maybe even intention. Because like you can intend to regenerate, but the spirit is still off. Like even deeper than intention, down deep in that bone marrow, something was wrong.

Todd Elloitt 41:00

How do you? I mean, one one thing that came to me when you were speaking just now was was the 13,000 acre project on the reclaimed coal mine. How do you repair that? That you've just that landscape has been destroyed. How do you how do you the spirit is gone? They left. You know, they they are you're gonna have to draw them back somehow because they're gone. I mean, like the the the uh was it the it was the Vikings, apparently they would they would have dragons, you know where the dragons are on the front of the Viking ship is to scare away the land spirits. When they would sail into a port to frighten away the land spirits, and apparently when they would sail into Iceland, they had to take the dragons off their off the prows of their ship because the they didn't want to share sail into their own ports with the dragons on. And then there's another, there's another piece of Norse, old Norse magic where it called the Nef Nifstong, where you would put a mare's head skull on a pole, on I I think it means shame pole on a neighbor's farm or land to curse it, to drive away the land spirits. So there's this whole like there's this whole practice of cursing in that in that realm, in that culture of driving away the land spirits on purpose. And I I think some people probably over here have accidentally driven away the land spirits. Uh and you have to work hard to get them to come back, I think.

D. Ffrith Griffith 42:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 42:39

And perhaps that farm that just didn't look right, didn't seem right, didn't have the spirits back. And I I feel like just ordinary things damage our relationships with them. Um I I I really do think they're very forgiving, but I I think that there's just yeah, I think I think that maltreatment scares them away or damages them or even angers them or makes them uh less inclined to be cooperative.

Mounds Land Spirits And Cultural Memory

D. Ffrith Griffith 43:11

Right. Right. Well, yeah, I mean I'm even on the I'm on the next page, or maybe that's just I'm on page 14 at the bottom, falling into 15. I have a note here talking about the ishi or the ishi. Um in the proto-Celtic she comes from the sidos, which literally means like wind or spirits. You can translate that as like wind spirits with a dash in between. But so the sidos or the she, right? These these these Celtic fairy folk, which I think is what most people think about them today. And you're talking about here, it's connected to the Gaelic god, the Tuatodanan, um, dethroned and driven into the mounds when Christianity came to the shore. And so, like, even in so much of Celtic mythology, especially as you know, and I I guess I feel like I'm speaking to the listener right now, but there's two sides of Celtic mythology you have continental and insular. And the continental Celts are like the Gallic type. Regions. This is Germanic peoples, Proto-Germanic peoples. This is the Normans, all the way through, you know, modern day the Gallic people. And that those are continental Celts. And you have a particular language and culture that arises there, that really matures there. And then you have the insular languages, so the ancient Britons.

Todd Elloitt 44:21

You're talking about the Lachtan culture?

D. Ffrith Griffith 44:23

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah, in part, definitely. And then in the insular traditions, um, which is, you know, a lot of what Wales or Ireland or Scotland or Alba they talk about. Some of it still lives in Britain. It's the same thing, but it's a little bit different. And the interesting thing is the Shi or the Sedos or the Tuatodon and that fall into the Fairy Mounds, like this is a very, very insular tradition that that's obviously speaks well into the continental languages and cultures as well. To some degree, it's it's limited there. But there's a particular relationship between the land and the spirit and the people living in that place that runs through this insular Celtic mythology. I mean, you're writing about it here. Um like when you know all sorts of stuff on page 15. I mean, this just page is so big and has so much to it. I'm not gonna speak to all of it. Um, buy the book, I'm gonna say that a hundred times, buy this book, go go uh to the show notes, click on the link that Todd's gonna provide that makes the most sense for you to buy the book and buy the book, read it. It's it's brilliant. But the point is that these spirits, literally in our mythology, especially Irish mythology and the creation mythology, this is in the Le Bourg-Baliuren, the book of invasions that we mentioned earlier, right? The men, the Christian men to some degree come to the island in the Tuatodanin, they turn into the H, these, these fairy mounds, these feet touched is a word that modern fantasy writers like to talk about, this bastardized, horrible term, feet. But it's talking about the land spirits or the spirits of the land going into the land, being forced there, right? And that it's this Christian ethos that that does that.

Todd Elloitt 45:58

And so when you think of that- the the the mounds were burial sites, right, of the of the pre-Celtic people. And well, we have we have those here too, or we did until so many of them were destroyed. I was talking to Darren Mason the other day on on his for the Spirit Box podcast, and he's from Ireland, and I I said, uh, I said, it's amazing that so many of the mounds have been destroyed in the United States when so many people in the United States came from places where they would never, ever have the temerity to touch a mound. He said, he said, yeah, they were they're afraid to. I was like, yeah, and they somehow they came here and they lost all that fear.

D. Ffrith Griffith 46:40

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 46:40

And I would I would think if you if you came from a culture like Ireland or Scotland where you would never touch a mound, how you could how you could it's the same thing. Those those are the guardians of the land. Those are the and and I I wonder, and this is highly speculative, is how much of our cultural ills, I think I even I even asked that in that chapter, is how much of our cult the our cultural ills are related to how we've re mistreated the spirits of of place here. I mean how we've turned pristine Appalachian mountains into coal mines, how we've polluted streams, how we've destroyed burial, burial and sacred sites of the of the people of the indigenous people, how we've done all this, and look, look where we are today. We just we have no reverence, we have no sense of decency when it comes to the environment when the earth, we have no respect for our mother.

D. Ffrith Griffith 47:42

Yeah. And I think so many of us lack a name too. I think language is very important. And I think one of the reasons that I love this book that you've written too is it's it's it's it's well written, but it cares about these languages really well. It's not just written well in the English language, but as you've you know exemplified in this podcast already, your your knowledge of other languages is is true. And and that is so, I think, fundamental and central. Because if you think about it, like one one, because I've I I I don't have answers, but I've also thought the same thing. How can a mound worshiping uh culture translate into a mound destroying culture when it moves that in that in the globe, if you will, on Earth? And and the interesting thing is so many, or maybe even all of our ancestors that came from the old world to the Western Hemisphere, maybe popularly understood as Turtle Island, all of that occurred after about 500 at least years of colonization and what I would call a cultural genocide. Um, when we lost our language, when we lost our culture, when we had absolutely no understanding. I mean, even think about this today, as an Irish person, only made it into the American uh clay uh that I am today, but but still obviously very American. Um, so over half of my body is is Irish, and yet at the same time, our Irish stories are almost incapable of being unpeeled or uncurled from the colonialized language, this language of contest, of conquest, of Christianity and the like, to the point that, I mean, it it just for instance, I mean, one of our sacred deities, the Bav, uh, the uh crow raven aspect or shapeshifting aspect of the Morrigan, um, even that is being contested because Bav to some degree means bad or evil. But the word in Proto-Celtic for Crow Raven is anake or anake, which literally means the otherwise, the opposite, meaning a very tricky but creative bird, the opposite of bad or evil or destructive. And so even in our own mythology, our names for our gods and goddesses are to some degree Latin or otherwise, maybe Anglican, or I'm sorry, not Anglican, Anglicized terminology to write our stories as essentially evil and full of sin, like the creation story of Genesis in the in the uh Judeo-Christian Bible. And so, like, even the names of our gods and our mythology isn't even their names. Like I was telling you in that phone call, the Kolyuk, like the most sacred, in my opinion, and I think it's pretty well agreed with, most sacred creative deity, this creative old winter hag of the Irish people in a lot of insular cultures, Welsh especially. Uh I even think Scottish, uh, Isle of Man, the Mangues also have a relationship with Kolyuck, the winter season. I mean, she is this creative dark waters deity. And even her name comes from Calais or from the pallium, I think, is from the Latin. It's a loan word from Latin. There's no word in the Old Irish, so Sean Gaeliga, so modern Irish is Guelaga, Old Irish or Middle Irish is Sean Mean August, or Sean August mean gueliga. Um, no word there. It doesn't go back in the Irish, it doesn't go back into the Proto-Celtic. You have to trace it, that word from the Proto-Indo-European, the great grandmother tongue of the Irish language through the continental relationships, through Latin, that is to say, Proto-Italic or Proto-Italian, through Latin over to really about, I don't know, the ninth or tenth century CE of the Christian era of Rome, of uh, of Rome's Holy Roman Empire's Catholic invasion, let's say, of the uh Celtic Isles, especially of Ireland, where you see the kolyuc come. And then you look at the the root, the Latin root for kolyuc, this creative hag of a Celtic deity, this goddess supreme. And it literally is the outer vestments that the Pope wears in liturgy in the Catholic Church service. And and I'm not saying don't pray to Kolyuc, or I'm not saying don't don't celebrate because that's the name we have. But the point is that very name is a loan word from the Roman Catholic Church about the Pope's vestments. And so when we call her the old hag or the old crone or the woman with the hood, what we're really saying is that that that crony hood covering shawl that the Kalyuk wears in our mythology is like the Pope's garment, right? Our own language for it has been Latin and Christianized. And that's neither here nor there in any sort of import. But the point is, as we dream back, we also are untethered, not just to the land and its spirits, but to uh the the the vernacular, our own vocabulary of how to address them, which I think is something very important.

How Empires Break Sacred Landscapes

Todd Elloitt 52:36

You know, I it wasn't until I started writing this book that I started that I really ever I mean, you've probably been hip to this for a long time, but um I in fact I opened right to it. I read Carol Kusack's book, The Sacred Tree. Have you ever read that?

D. Ffrith Griffith 52:53

No, I've never read it. I I know of it, but please go, please go ahead.

Todd Elloitt 52:59

Well, it was the first time I'd ever come across the idea that I mean, of course I thought it before, but I it was the first time I ever really it just jumped out at me. She she comes out and says that our that the European cultures were the Native European cultures were colonized in exactly the same way the North American Native cultures were. And absolutely just as brutally, and that the the that the that the process was identical. That they they did the same thing to the to the germ to the Saxons and the Charlemagne's missionaries to the same thing to the Saxons. I wrote about it a little bit in the chat in the last chapter of the book.

D. Ffrith Griffith 53:48

Oh, I haven't gotten there yet. Okay.

Todd Elloitt 53:50

Yeah. Yeah, that's where I talk about the sacred tree. Well, they would cut down their sacred trees. First of all, they would cut down their sacred trees because if you destroy the tree, the tree is a living symbol of the cosmology. You destroy the tree, it's a ritual center, you cut down the grove. Um, the Romans had done it before them. You you come to uh you can go back into the Bible, and there's there's I think it's in in the first and second Samuel, a lot, a lot of it in the historical books of the Old Testament, there's a lot of tree cutting and sacred and hilltop sacred shrine desecrating. And it's it's this idea that that an imperial system has to destroy a conquered people's relationship with its land and with its gods, first and foremost, is the is the primary the primary uh job of the conqueror is to destroy, spiritually destroy the conquered people, yeah, and sever them from their traditions. And to think that our European ancestors had had this done to them and then internalized that conqueror imperial mentality so much that they they carried it after generations, they f completely forgot about their old their old ways, and then they carried they carried on to the new world conquering and despoiling and severing people's relationship to their their deities and their sacred sites.

D. Ffrith Griffith 55:21

Right.

Todd Elloitt 55:22

And I it made me to to read that book, it made me angry that it was done to my ancestors. And uh Yeah, and also it was so poignant because because how how could how could we how could we do that to indigenous people in the new world when that was done to our own ancestors so thoroughly after a generation or two it was so thoroughly internalized. I mean Charlemagne go ahead.

D. Ffrith Griffith 55:53

I was just gonna say I think it speaks to the necessity of being tethered in place. There's a certain groundlessness, right, that pervades a generation or two removed from the the like the ocular of the sacred, that the site of the sacred mounds, you know. I th I th I think that I think there's something there. I also think there's a state of um assimilation that is the uh uh enemy, if I can use such a strong word, of a rooted culture. This the sameness um that the American, let's call it melting pot to use the cliche, is so good at enacting and culture. But no, please go to go go to Charlemagne. I like where you were going.

Todd Elloitt 56:39

Oh, um well I mean he was he was a his ancestors were Germanic heathens that were converted by you know Latinized Gaulic Gallic missionaries. I mean, it just goes on and on. I mean the Caesar conquered Gaul, and I I actually quote in the book, and also in that last chapter, uh there's a little bit from Lucan Lucan's Pharsalia, uh which is his poem about the Civil War, about Caesar and his soldiers um destroying a druidic sacred site outside of I believe it's Nîmes, France, now what's now Nimes, France, during the uh during the Roman Civil War, uh as as Julius Caesar was consolidating his power. And the it's a really interesting it's a really interesting section because I I actually first ran across in Cusack's book uh and uh I I was really impressed by it. So I went back to Lucan and pulled it out of there. But basically the Romans needed the wood to build their siege engines. Because I mean famously the famously the uh I don't know if you you you probably know something about the I'm sure you know plenty. You're archaeologist archaeologists and sort of a Celticist, but you know, this the siege the Siege of Gaul used a lot of siege engines and fortifications, and you know, they they caught Verston Gettericks up in a up in um where was that they caught him? But they caught him up on his hill fort and they basically surrendered they built a castle around his castle so he couldn't come out. Um anyway, so the Roman method of warfare took a lot of wood, and Caesar's uh armies would were also um very good with axes and saws. So they were clearing this forest and they came to the they came to the heart of the forest where the where the nematon, the grove of the druids were, were, and that the the soldiers were terrified. And uh Caesar takes it upon himself to cut the first tree then because he said, Well, if the gods are gonna be angry, then they're gonna be angry with me. And he but it he's like, but he Caesar knew that he was breaching an ancient Indo-European protocol to not fell a sacred grove. The Romans had a sacred grove, had sacred groves. They had, you know, groves that were sacred to Jupiter, just like the Celts had the groves that were sacred to their Oak Gods. And um they also knew that their pantheon wasn't that different from the Celtic pantheon, and that this was a great crime. But Caesar said, Well, then let the gods punish me, and and so you'll be blameless. And uh he chops the first tree down, even though he in the poem knew it was wrong. So I and then and then we get to we get to St. Boniface felling Donar's oak in Saxony, the oak of the uh sacred to Donar, the the Germanic thunder god, Thord, um, Thunor, whatever Donar it it was in this case. And uh he had no reverence for the tree, it was just an idol, it was just a tree. I mean, so we we got got a couple hundred years later, and they weren't even guilty about it.

unknown 59:58

Right.

The Colonial War On Forests

Todd Elloitt 59:58

I think it was about 800 years later, but um it is interesting.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:00:02

In the state of Virginia, we used to have a lot of cows. Used to be a pretty good cow state, uh not as good as Kentucky, but pretty good cow state. As of 2021, we have more commercial pine timber plantations than we have uh agricultural land. Isn't that interesting? It it my my point in bringing it up is only to say it doesn't seem like we've strayed too far from that motif, if you will. It it's the um complete conquering of the forest that seems to be this epitome of this strangely European colonial uh ethos that is that is also very interesting, too, because when you study colonial what I would call colonial mythology, that is to say, the mythology and writings and tales and stories that came out of the early colonial period of a lot of the 16th and 17th century European empires, you see a lot of this this forest iconography, this this savagery that goes along with the forest, this primordial waste, not primordial state in some sort of sublime, grandeuresque way, but a wasteful way, right? Like you get this exactly a waste.

Todd Elloitt 1:01:13

A howling wilderness.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:01:14

Yes, yes, yeah.

Todd Elloitt 1:01:16

Somebody called it. I don't remember who that was.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:01:17

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 1:01:18

Um one of the early European settlers called it.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:01:20

Yeah, Massachusetts Bay Colony. So the I think Plymouth would would be maybe a word that people would recognize from that when they first erected their their flag and they designed their flag. It it's literally um in the flag, which was used only till recently. I want to make that very clear. It is this colonial man rugged in sixty or seventeenth century, sixteen hundreds military garb, you know, that shiny metal plate, if you will. And he has a flag, and below him, underneath his foot, is an indigenous man, an Indian under his foot. And there's a thought bubble, literally in a 1600s, I believe who were the Plymouth Bay colony, Dutch from the Netherlands? I don't know. I don't know.

Todd Elloitt 1:02:03

This is where my memory I thought they were English.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:02:06

Maybe they're English Protestants. Let's blame them. I'm a proud Irishman. Let's let's just blame them.

Todd Elloitt 1:02:12

There were definitely bad guys for your for people in Ireland.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:02:15

Yeah, yeah. And uh William of Orange and all that. Yeah. There's this thought bubble that rises from the indigenous man being squished under the iron boot or steel shining boot of this, you know, 16th century colonial gentleman. And it the thought bubble literally reads, Come save us, or come help us, or something like this. And it's that that that that's the Indian, the indigenous man, the Indian underneath his feet. In the flag. In in legitimately in the flag. You could type it into Google and you'll find it pretty quick. The the my point is it's the indigenous people writ in the motif of the shrouded ivy veil-bowed wilderness and waste of this forest, that American exceptionalism, that is to say, I think very clearly a national ethic built in this colonial tree-toppling ethos that's still eating and etching away on the land. And then we stand there as these farmers, you know, who are just laying in the waste of all of these primordial forests, in these open fields on these north-facing slopes that are hard to mow and hard to graze and hard to plow. And we're standing there in grass and we're saying, why isn't it working? Right. I think that's so strong the story of this agriculture in the United States that you write about, that I've written about, that we were talking about, that is more solvable, if solvable can be used, so reductious of a word, but if if that can be used through connection to place, through the study of the spirits, through the dining and the supping of the sacred, like all of these things, not necessarily bringing out like, you know, swales and key line plows and planting orchards immediately and just running with this exact same ethos that says, if the forest doesn't feed me today, it's not worthwhile or worth something. But rather, what does this land need to be? What does the spirits want it to be? What have we done to make it so? What do we need to do today to make it unso? I think this is a much more interesting thought pattern, which deals in magic and myth and mythology and folklore and all of these things that you write about so much more than soil science. Um, but I've attended a lot of conferences, agricultural conferences, I've spoken at many. I've never seen people like you there. And so I'm I'm really blessed.

Todd Elloitt 1:04:39

I've only been to like I went to my first agricultural conference, like not this January. Well, I went I went the last January to my first agricultural conference after even being a farmer for 30 years. I don't really I don't really take conferences.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:04:52

What were your thoughts? I I've never enjoyed them.

Todd Elloitt 1:04:54

I go to see my my friend who wrote who wrote um who wrote one of the blurbs on the back of my uh of my book, Jeff Poppin, who was a hell of a farmer and a very deeply spiritual man and great steward of his land. So I I I went back to our our local agricultural conference again to see I go to see him speak. I go to see friends. Yeah. Um I I don't I don't really tend to talks and stuff like that. I I I I've been farming for I've been farming for I not to be arrogant, and I'm sorry, please forgive me if don't don't hear this the wrong way, but I've been farming for a lot longer than most of the people giving the presentations. So um I know my I know my land, I know my business, I know my customers, and I I know what I have to do. I've tried a lot of new ideas out and I've gotten rid of them. And uh I'm I'm pretty much a traditionalist agriculturally in many ways. And uh I go to see Jeff. He he he's been doing it a long time. He's he's an a wise elder of the community. And if I get a chance to see him speaking an hour away from me, I will go see him and we'll we'll hang out together and and In chat. Awesome.

unknown 1:06:03

Yeah.

Making Ceremony Without Inheriting One

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:06:03

That's awesome. I want to um this fake lore. I want to know, I think just to wet our ears a little bit, how how do we, as a conquered, colonized um people, and I mean that from a story perspective, from a ceremony perspective, um, how how do we remember in a way that is both honoring to the long-ago peoples, our ancestors, but also the land that we currently live on. Um, to put that in perspective, I was in conversation with a dear friend and mentor of mine, a Sundancer of the Lakota, and he was speaking about ceremony. And he was, he wrote a book on the neuroscience of ceremony and how in the Lakota ceremonies, your brain, from a neurological perspective, actually does these, he wrote the whole book, I'm not going to get into it, but it does these things that that does these things that we we you people need. That they he he provided the science behind the neurology of ceremony. And I was asking him, his name is um Don Jacobs or uh Hangabetopa is his name too. And I said, uh Hangabetopa, like I don't have ceremony, and yet at the same time I'm not invited to the sundance. What does somebody like me do? And and then he looked at me and I'll never forget this. And he leaned into the Zoom call because he lives in New Mexico. Yeah, I think it was in New Mexico at the time, and he said, uh, he leaned in and he said, make some. Make some, make ceremony, just go do it. And so how do we, and that's been a question of my life, and I and I want to lay it on you for the next time, but how do we as people, ungrounded, unrooted, unheld in this cauldron of culture and language and ceremony, how do we make some? You know, how do we remember in an honorable, ego-less and not exact scientific way, but like healthy way, maybe is a is a word I would like to use.

Todd Elloitt 1:08:07

That's a really great question, and I think there's so many different answers to it. Um but for me, I just do what feels right to me. I just do what makes sense to my uh to my inner guidance. What what makes sense to my inner guidance? I I I mean I I have tried I have different practices that I do, but I think you're more interested in the in the stuff I do outside for the for the trees and the with the trees in the land and the in the farm than perhaps like practical ceremonial magic. Um and I I definitely have those two those two kinds of ceremonies separate, because I think I think one deals with the land, and one deals with sort of greater spiritual forces that are more transcendent. Um so um I definitely have the there's definitely sides of my practice, and I think if you if you get into a little further in the book, you'll see that I have like I have um a fourfold cosmology that I sort of am presenting here. And I think when we're talking about agricultural magic and agricultural ceremony, we're talking about getting out on the land and actively expressing reverence for the earth mother, actively expressing reverence for the sky father, as actively expressing reverence for the sun and the moon and the animals and the spirits of land and the spirits of those who go before and just remembering them in a formal or less formal, in a ritual. I mean, you know what a ceremony is, it it's it's it's stepping outside of your ordinary everyday talk and action into a special place and a special time that sort of exists outside of space and time. So for me, I I will I will call the four directions. That's in every that's in every esoteric tradition, every spiritual tradition in the I think in the world. And I'll I'll make sacred space and I will call the winds, the quarters, the spirits of the elements, I will call the gods and the goddesses, I will call the creator who stands above everything and and within everything to listen, and I will pray however I see fit. And sometimes my family is with me. A lot of times I'm by myself, and I feel like I am speaking with the greater forces of the cosmos on behalf of, well, first of all, the needs of my farm and my family, and also sometimes for my community as well. I and I don't know, they don't nobody asked me to do this, but sometimes the drought hits and it's hard on everybody, so I'll pray for rain for everybody. You know, I'm sure I'm sure in the churches they're doing the same. Well, they're probably not. They don't most people don't notice it hasn't rained until it goes on for too long, you know. Even country people.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:11:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 1:11:08

People like, well, I I I'm I'm always surprised when it stops raining for about a month. All the a lot of people that I run into are really happy that it hasn't rained for a month because they're getting so much like bulldozing done or truck driving or whatever it is. Uh getting so much work done. I'm like, yeah, but haven't you noticed everything's dying? We need the rain.

Magic Traditions With Christian Veneer

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:11:31

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah, it it seems like there's what you what you're saying, and as I understand it, there's this intrinsic connection between this genius of place and meeting that spirit and meeting her and dining and supping and running and praying with her and understanding what feels right. There's a there's a gut feel there that's I think have been nurtured by the first entrance of the spirit into that place. You know, I think that's I don't know. I think it's I think it's really interesting. I especially like when you think about like the esoteric side of you, this this broad ranging or reaching grasp that you have of many ancient cultures. I think it's so needed. Um, especially today, when we're diving into uh uh this this, let's say uh Celtic myth, and all you see is Christianity. You can uncurl that Christianity from that myth if you know others of the same era or of the same spirit or ethos or symbology or motifs, right? And so the more we can dive into all of these bastardized and bifurcated stories, the more I think we can erect a very true narrative, which may not be true etymologically or cosmologically, but it's true for us, which makes it true in retrospect, I think.

Todd Elloitt 1:12:59

I think um one thing I want to say is that there are new, I say that somewhere in the book, there is new pagans being born every generation. And I don't think I think a pagan is is is any child who expresses is allowed to wander in the in the woods and see the wonder. And I I think I think you can be, I think a lot of anthropologists like we talked about, we might have talked about Frasier or try to find these surviving paganisms from ancient times within the the greater Christian culture. And I I think what what you really see is that it's reinvented in every generation, and our our esoteric tradition, like our like our um ancient myths, is shot through with Christianity. And I don't think it really needs to be expurgated, it needs to just be held kind of loosely. Like, I I feel like if you go back, if you were to go back to the Middle Ages of the Renaissance, you would find the country people being very much indigenous to their place and very much pagan in some sense, but also very much Christian on Sunday when they went to church. And you can read, you can read some of the Anglo-Saxon um spells from the Leech book. Like I give the land blessing charm, the Echerbot, and in the book, and it's praying to the Earth Mother while it's praying to our Heavenly Father, and who knows what Heavenly Father they're talking about, but they they're definitely like they're definitely combining their their Christianity with their agrarian heathenism. And I think our esoteric traditions the same way. We have we have we have the remains of the ancient animisms of the West carefully hidden within our esoteric traditions, and it is it's there for those who know where to look for it.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:14:58

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 1:14:58

I mean, I have grimoires here. Uh I have a pretty good collection of European books of magic, and every one of them has every spirit of the wind, every spirit of every direction, different. I mean, they have a catalog of all these basically nature spirits. I it seems like not too many of them agree on the names of any of the particular ones, but that is the idea that there are spirits in the wind and that they answer when you call them is a really ancient and profoundly animistic idea. Right. And it's the same thing with the the astrological magic traditions, you know, the idea that our our planets have spirits and intelligences, and that they and that you can they answer when you when you talk to them and they petition them and you can you can propitiate them and they'll they're there to help you. The idea that there's that there's angels or that even that there's demons, you know, infernal spirits. We live in a universe of spirits, and that is preserved in our esoteric tradition. And you just I I kind of take it as I find it. I don't try to um I don't I'm not a reconstructionist as as as anyone who reads the book will find. I mean, I do I do ceremonial magic like and I find it very meaningful, and and and it's uh it's pretty there's a lot of Abrahamic stuff in there. I think I addressed that in one of one of the chapters on angel magic on feargy, that there's a lot of and I can understand why people would be uh put off by that. And uh I definitely sympathize that people want to get away from that, but I I feel like holding it lightly and not literally, not like it's it's a it's a tradition as tradition, and I don't um feel like I'm competent to say take one of these ancient books of magic, like uh like for instance the book of Oberon here, which is a 16th-century grimoire, uh 17th-century grimoire from England, and take all the Christianity out of it, there wouldn't be much left. But it is it is fairy magic, very much a lot of actual authentic historical fairy magic in there, too. So it's just so interesting that people were I I I use the phrase dual faith practitioners, that on one hand they had this Christianity wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and then on the other hand, they had this very like heathen every day of the week except Sunday. Um, you can read uh Emma Wilby's uh cunning folk and familiar spirit, uh where she talks about this. Every day but Sunday, these people were out there in the land leaving offerings for the fairies and the brownies, and uh then on Sunday they put on their Sunday vest and and and listen to the priest read the scripture in Latin, which they don't understand. I mean, until the Ren until the Reformation, I mean. Um so they're very they're very, and that's our esoteric tradition. It's it's a combination with a Christian, it's a Christian veneer on top of a, for lack of a better word, a pagan structure. And or or and then a lot of our a lot of our esoteric tradition comes to Christianity, comes to the West by way of the Arab world in the Middle East, and that stuff comes directly from Egyptian, uh, Greco-Egyptian um hermeticism as it's received by the Arab world, and then it goes, so it it and I I feel like so there's this very, very Greco-Egyptian theurgy, and then like the the Picatrix, which is another uh medieval grimoire of astrological magic, it's very, very much an Arab reception of or an Islamic reception of Greco-Egyptian theurgy, and then that comes to the comes to Europe and gets a Christian gloss there. So so you could you would have a lot of layers to peel off there, or you could just work with it as you have it, because uh there's a lot of people who who, you know, the spirits have have come with us along this journey and they've adapted to it. And they're if you want to call them in the name of Jesus or in the name of Allah or in the name of Archangel Gabriel, they'll probably still come. And some people have taken some modern practitioners have taken the grimoires and tried to de-Christianize them or re-paganize them, which is an interesting project. And um, I I think that's great, but it's I don't think one has to.

unknown 1:19:38

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 1:19:38

It's a complicated legacy. Yeah. And and while I I don't consider myself a Christian, I do um I have been a Christian in my life. And I I do um I do accept that part of our tradition, of our esoteric tradition as as a part of the structure of it.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:20:02

Yeah. Yeah, it does seem like that's an important part. I I think you're right on right on the dot there. A very weird and nonlinear and kind of splotch of a dot that we're trying to hit. But it I think that's that's a great point. Yeah, it's it's interesting. It's like we have this moment in time so properly given, right to us on a platter as if Creator actually knew what they were doing, um, where we are able to stand and and look at our stories or our myths or our tales or our you know traditions, if you will, and to see the structure, the word you use. I think that's good. I think that's exactly what it is. It's this legacy, this structure that we've been handed in Christianity and Judaism and all of these other religions, like they're all netted in there, maybe some more than others, or maybe some, like the Catholic, in my opinion, the Roman Catholic, maybe knitted in with bigger thread, or in there with bigger iron bars and cross braces or something, whatever the analogy would run. Um and you're right, not to throw it out. Because I think I think I I know a lot of Celtic scholars who do. I think a lot of Celtic scholars look at the Celtic mythology and say there's nothing here for us. This is all just Roman Catholic rewriting of the Genesis story. That's that's all that is. And then I I think there's so much more there that if you just care to see. Well, yeah.

Todd Elloitt 1:21:28

They've they've adopted it as their own, and they do their magic with with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Saint Bridget, all the saints, they do all their magic with that. And it's the same with the indigenous people in the lat in the Latin American world. Um, there's there's a lot of saints in you know, Mayan spirituality, modern Mayan spirituality nowadays. And uh I I've um yeah, I've read a little bit on the Yucatec Maya, and they with 400 years or 500 years of living side by side with Christianity, they've just brought that into their pantheon. And you will see what's his name?

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:22:08

Um shoot. Um he was the uh the uh Oh, his name is slipping right from my mind. It makes me sad. Um he was the head of like the the red um power movement in the 1960s, I think in early 70s. Um like the indigenous side of the black power movement.

Todd Elloitt 1:22:31

Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to throw out any names for fear. I I do know too.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:22:37

He was he uh he he was asked because he lived in cities. He like he lived in some downtown city center, and he was asked as an as an Indian, as an Indian, how can you reconcile this idea of Indian power or red power while living in a city surrounded by concrete and light and you know whatever? And and he said, Um, oh I've see you've never met the mother. All that you see is of the mother, the concrete, the light, the pain, the machinery. Yeah, all of this is of the mother. And I think that's a really interesting thing to say in regard to what you're saying, uh, or to to knit together in this conversation, which is I think so many would like to look back and isolate a particular mythology as itself in complete isolation, in complete um, you know, limitation to the mythologies that surround it, and say this is Irish mythology, right? But if the spirit is true and and creator is true, and this in the in the in the spirits that waft and and weave all of this, this wonderful lace around this is true, then it is also true that all of this is of the spirit. Maybe some more than others, and maybe some more uh proper or honorable than others. I'm not saying it's all equal and tiered you know, marvelously in that way, but the point is like there's more happening, I guess is what I'm what I'm saying, than you know, Indians live in the rugged horse, you know, horse sweat and and uh you know cud turning planes, and they don't live in cities, but ah, this this man, his name, he's gonna come to me after the episode. Maybe if I remember it, I'll put it in the show notes. But he says it's all of the mother.

Todd Elloitt 1:24:27

Yes, and he's right, isn't he?

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:24:30

I think he is right.

Folk Prayers That Kept Animism Alive

Todd Elloitt 1:24:31

One one person that I I I quote in my book, and and I I really uh I find it interesting. One folklorist is was Alexander Carmichael, who uh do you know of his his work?

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:24:42

No, no, he wrote a book.

Todd Elloitt 1:24:44

I it was a anyway, it's called Carmena Gaelica, and he went into the the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland and interviewed old people and recorded their Gaelic songs. In fact, as a person that's interested in Irish language and Gaelic and things, you might because they're usually on one, and there's usually the Gaelic and the and his English translation, so you might you might find some interesting stuff there. Um, so he'll have these these songs and spells and prayers to the sun, to the moon, to the saints, to Christ, to whatever. But it was it was all these songs for planting, songs, you know, spells for planting, spells for sowing, reaping, for like every for milking a cow, for smurring s'maring your fire at night. Like there wasn't a thing you would do without asking the spiritual spiritual protection of the of the spiritual powers that you you believed in. And it was very um it was very it's very pagan in feel in a lot of ways, because it's very magical. But it's very all the names they were calling, almost all the names they're calling, are from Catholic Christianity. So while it's an extremely animist universe that these people lived in with fairies and and and uh selkies and I don't know, whatever kind of spiritual creatures live in the west of Scotland, and and the but the the way that the powers that they were approached, the they called by Christian names. That's all. And um, I don't know, it it's just it's definitely an older and more, and I think it would be right at home because this is this it was a very those are the indigenous people of the West of Scotland, you know, and they they've been Christian for a very long time. So it's it has been there so long that it's almost their indigenous tradition. The same with Ireland, it's been there so long, it's been there since you know before St. Patrick, and that's uh it's been so internalized. But again, I I think that there's a and then people talk about not that I want to get on, sound like I'm defending Christianity, I'm not. I'm just merely trying to say that it's a very complicated issue of de uh de imperial, de colonializing things. At some point, the people like their gods when they've had them for 1500 years, you know, they like their saints. And uh they can do a lot of they can do a lot of magic, they can do a lot of prayer, they can do a lot of spiritual work with them as they are. And you'll you'll find the same thing in in Afro-Caribbean traditions where the the African faith is is is enmeshed with Christian faith. And and you like I said, you find the same thing in the Leech Book tradition of the early of the early English, the Anglo Saxon people, you find it in Latin America to this day, and it's just not so easy to disentangle them or necessarily or necessary, I don't. think. As long as you actually I I think what is important is removing yourself from the literal interpretation of it. And you know, I I think if you if you're like, well this is this is not history. This is this is and and I don't mean to and I use myth in in the sense of a sacred story about the imaginal realm rather than you know uh the there's a there's a huge difference between holding scripture as history and holding scripture as sacred stories about the imaginal realm or sacred stories of gods and heroes, sacred stories of that are that are like that are there for your spiritual that are that illustrate spiritual truths and illustrate truths in the imaginal realm than history in the Western and political sense. Like I I dig the Bible but I don't I don't believe it's a a reliable I you know I think I think the gospels are are there's a lot of really profound spirituality in them. There's a lot of disturbing um attitudes about Judaism in them. There's a lot of in the Old Testament there's a lot of genocide of pagan and earth earth worshiping peoples in in the Old Testament. There's a lot of profound spiritual longing in the Old Testament. I mean I feel I feel like scripture it's something I've I've I come from an Episcopal background of of episcopal um priests and things like that and I I've studied this the Bible a lot and I I was raised in the Episcopal church and I even attended until you know a couple years ago and uh and the Episcopally but it teaches you to read it historically and um and spiritually you know there's several senses of scripture and the literal is the lowest sense it's the it's the it's the uh the the allegorical so anyway I digress.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:30:12

Yeah it does I think no you raise an amazing point I think it it is interesting especially from a linguistic perspective too that as you begin this um relaxed untethering maybe is a word that would jive with the conversation this relaxed untethering of the Christian ethos from the rest of the mythology or stories or whatever. If one can I I think it's interesting the way if one can, right. Well my point is the the the linguistics are so interesting of a viewpoint because I think if you brought and I was raised Christian as well, but I think if you bring it together um a whole number of of different Christian ideologies together from Lutheran to episcopal to non-denominational to Catholic to whatever. Just the general overarching idea of Christianity which I'm sure most of those people would disagree with other people being involved but the point is like this general idea of Christianity and then you were to read the Bible in the original Hebrew to that which you you know that they would disagree with say on one of these that you you did learn Hebrew which I read I I like I like Hebrew I don't I was go ahead yeah it would no it just it is just why I think I think most of them would disagree with it. I I really do I mean that the by like for for instance you know John 1 in the New Testament it begins in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God is he was with God in the very beginning. So this idea that God is before words in this beginning that he like ignites words and that words are sacred but they come from God. Like all of that is a Greek thought that comes from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament which is the first time in the history of the Old Testament that Genesis 1 was ever translated in the beginning. But if you pick up a Bible today you would see in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and void is probably what the translation says but that's not what the Hebrew says that's what the Greeks when you're reading the Bible you're reading exactly Hashamayim via tacheratzita tohubohu which is literally when the gods began this creation. And so all of a sudden in this room of Christians what do you mean gods and what the hell do you mean this as opposed to that as opposed to there's other creations so immediately in the Hebrew text you have the complete de-Christianization that is to say from the modern ethos of what the Bible is of you know looking at John 1 1 and other versions also I'm not to interrupt you but the logos is a is a gre is a term uh from Greek philosophy that is has its own meaning and John was playing on that when he when he chose that word when he chose a Greek a Greek man playing on the Greek idea of logos reading from the Greek translation the Septuagint of the Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic Bible right or like the second one. I love I mean like this one gets you want to get a Christian rolling I mean the the the idea that God's breath hovers over the water you know so the earth is is formless and void most translations say um hitatahu wobohu formless and void some people um formless and void talk about that as like welter and waste is another term that's prolonged to the earth to home as the deep correlate with tiamat the ancient chaos monster of the of the Babylonians exactly ex so you have this whole thing coming from this essence of deepness right well then the thing that hovers over the deep that brings creation into motion is the breath of God right the Holy Spirit in toward according to Christian tradition the breath of God. Well in the Bible it's varurak Elohim Marakha petabanehamaim like the varurach Elohim va the feminine rack breath Elohim gods it's the feminine breath of gods or the feminine spirit of gods but the author of Genesis 1 2 which most Hebrew scholars believe is a different author than Genesis 1 1 beside the point but the point is the author of Genesis 1 2 that talks about this breath this divine breath of God that basically ushers in the land from this formless welter deep things that we just talked about is feminine and it's gods right this is not Adonai Elohinu or Adonai Elohim or all of the different versions of the God as Lord, as creator, as singular, but rather this feminine breath of gods the author goes through great lengths to make it feminine and to make it of God. Like the like that is uncomfortable. And then interestingly in the Bible in Genesis uh Eve, the first woman is called Kara, which literally means breath. So the feminine breath of gods creates and out of the womb of breath herself Eve, man is also created right so it's out of Kara's womb, out of breath's womb that creation continues to exist, which symbolically you're a mythologist, you study folklore and mythology, you know the truth of this you have the motif of feminine breath this womb, this dark deep water soil-like organism. All of these symbols and motifs are being played the water the it doesn't go out of its way, but yes you would think that the water would be feminine as well. And then you have the creation of this the continual co-creation of this is still in that feminine deep water womb of Qora, which is breath right none of this, in my opinion, and I was raised in a non-denominational then we went to Orthodox Presbyterian things like this totally out of the limits. You bring this up to any of my peers and they immediately say no that's that's just a mistrans they just immediately distance them themselves from it. And that's neither here nor there. The point is linguistically as we dive back through the linguistics I I do I and I and I say this a little bit alone I see that to to most of my scholarly colleagues, my friends if you will through linguistics I believe that we are able to parse the subtleties of alien invasions that is to say non-culturally centric rooted invasions aspects of our stories into those stories. So for instance like this like we've been talking about like the colyc like we talked before did the ancient Irish and insular peoples have a female deity that ruled the winter dark of the year? Absolutely was her name Calyuk no but knowing that her name is Calyuk which is from the Latin pallium which is from the Pope's Vestiments which is Roman Catholic we also now know that that name probably had power which is why the Catholic monks were like nah nah her name is you know what we know Kalia or Cauley. And so we can use that in my opinion as as modern day dream walkers to dream in a particular way to run with the long ago peoples in a particular trail if you will to unfold what does it mean to celebrate the winter season right? Why did the Catholic monks, the Roman Catholic monks hear the Irish name for the winter craggity old, you know, woman crone river whatever the Calyuk and say pallium or palia or cala or calyak? Like what what brought them to that place? What about her about these vestiments, these these royal creative garbs of the high priests indicated a relationship between the Pope and her right and we can study that and dream that and and I I think there's more hope there because of the linguistic study than there would be I think without it as I see it. I'm also drawn to language so like maybe I'm just incredibly um biased.

Todd Elloitt 1:37:57

Me too I'm I love languages. I wish I knew more but I always I always have a memory for old weird words like yourself.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:38:11

Well this Todd this has been this has been fun I'm gonna I'm gonna cut this off because I think we can talk uh for a very long time and I want to talk for a very long time but at intervals throughout your book and so I think if the listener is still with us um I I think we've gone through the forward in chapter one even of your book uh accidentally or on purpose uh but we did so and uh so maybe next time we'll touch the intro a little bit there's some things in there that I want to unpack with you and then progress through chapter one and get into some of the deeper stuff um if that's uh if that's okay with you.

Todd Elloitt 1:38:44

It's been awesome talking to you