Farming with Cosmic Vitality and Sacredness, The Cunning Farmer Episode 2

In this second episode of The Cunning Farmer, Todd Elliott and I tromp-on through Chapter 2 of his pivotal book and masterpiece, The Cunning Farmer: Agrarian Magical Practices, Mythology, and Folklore, diving first into the idea of Sacred Geography and Sacred Spaces and then progressing into the concept of Cosmic Vitality and inter-world spirit-laces in both symbology and practice.

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Episodes or Articles mentioned in the podcast

God Is Red with Taylor Keen Episode 1

The Great Animal Master article by Todd Elliott

Transcript

Series Setup And How To Join

D. Ffrith Griffith 0:02

Hello. Welcome to the podcast. This is episode two in the Cunning Farmer series with my dear friend Todd Elliott. We are walking through his new release, his book, The Cunning Farmer, recently published by Inner Traditions this March. And we are releasing chapter by chapter our conversations between Todd and I throughout the book. And so I encourage you, if this conversation is interesting, or you listened to episode one that aired uh two weeks ago, and you found that interesting, pick up the book, read it through with us. I think this is going to be a really rewarding and exciting process. At least I am excited and I feel rewarded. So maybe you will too. This episode, episode two, Todd and I are talking about uh chapter two in his book, Land Spirits, and Sacred Space. Him and I, we talk about the Animal Master archetype and symbology and deities. We talk about sacred geography, we talk about this cosmic vitality that tethers Earth to the skylodge, the above, the heavens, the stars, and the celestial bodies, the sun, the moon, and others. Uh, we talk about astrology, uh, we talk about farming practices in view of this celestial vitality, and uh many other things. I encourage you listen to chapter one, uh, and then dive into chapter two with us as we move through the book. Pick up the book. It's on Amazon. Please try your local bookstores or at least bookshop.org, or buy it directly from the publisher inner traditions. Uh, those individual choices as an author myself, I cannot tell you how important they are, though they may feel little to you. And then also join us on Substack. Your your time there also may seem small, your your your participation there, but it is the world to us. It is a free membership online, you can ask questions, you get special access to the episodes, you could dialogue with myself uh through the platform, but also with our guests, in this case, Todd Elliott, who is also a prolific writer on Substack under uh the Cunning Farmer uh nomenclature there. We encourage you to join us there, join our community. Don't just receive the information, but partake with it and commune with it. That is an aspect of the community that uh we yearn for. And so you are welcome and uh we are waiting for you. Uh Substack also has the ability to, like Patreon, uh, allow you to support the podcast financially. And so if you've been a listener to this podcast and you have a couple extra dollars a month, uh, or maybe it's just a coffee you don't buy at the local coffee shop and instead uh send the resources this way, we would be also deeply appreciated, appreciative of that. Podcasting costs uh both time and money. We don't take uh sponsors or ads on the podcast that we can stay on topic and do basically what we like, which hopefully is what you like. And so if you find that uh you are able to support the podcast in this financial way, you can also do that on Substack. And so without further ado, chapter two, episode two of The Cunning Farmer with Todd Elliott.

Authors And The Social Media Trap

Todd Elloitt 3:43

Yeah, Instagram is is weird because all the little videos and things, and I'm not comfortable being one of those people that Instagram gurus. I'm really not comfortable with it. I mean, if it helps me, yeah, if it helps me make a living as a writer, I might do it, but I don't want to be one of those people. And I don't no shade on them. I like some of the videos that people do, but I also think it's weird to present yourself as a I just think it's weird. I don't think it's bad.

D. Ffrith Griffith 4:17

I just don't know if I would be well it it's it's antithetical, I think, to the act of writing, which is a really I I th I'm sure you saw it. I put this out in Substack the other day. I read this interesting piece about uh author marketing put on I think the piece was written by a editor or senior editor at one of the big uh five or six publishing houses. And it was interesting. I mean, she had a lot of interesting points. Um, but she she made the comment, I'll read it. She goes, How to grow strategically is uh get really good at creating content, build relationships, digital relationships, and uh make a plan for content implementation on the social media apps and then stick to it. And it's so interesting, is like all of the things that I can think about that make a good author a good author, all of the intangible aspects of courting the muse and writing these stories or writing the information that used to be stories in nonfiction form, however, it takes is like antithetical to that. It stands against that.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Right.

D. Ffrith Griffith 5:17

Like artists, we like you were saying, we spend years or many, many, many days or months writing these Substack posts or books. Like we suck at 30-minute Instagram content, videos, short form content as it's called. Like we cultivate amazing relationships with ideas and peoples and places and spirits and landforms and all of the things that you write about, but like we're we're horrible, we're complete shit, as I say in the post at building like online digital content relationship. Like what it's all the things that make an author today marketable are all the things that make an author not an author. And so, like how we how we stand in times, you and I, authors, stand in times like this, I think is an enduring question that at least my wife and I talk about every day. I think she's really tired of it. It's been literally years. Um and uh I don't know, I think it's a product of my absolute failings. Like I'm horrible at growing online mediums. Like I just I I can't, I can't, like you're saying, make those videos.

Todd Elloitt 6:20

Yeah, I don't want to do it either. Uh well, I mean, I am am I I mean, are I selling my soul to the devil as it were? I mean, not the not the right one either. Um yeah, am I like selling my soul to the man by doing that? Or am I just really giving in an honest effort at marketing so I can make a level doing this because I I'm I'm really I'm really getting tired of digging potatoes.

D. Ffrith Griffith 6:51

I hear ya. Well, let's jump in. Uh uh Todd, thanks for being here again. We we got such a good reception. It's a very articulate way of saying that, but we had such a fine reception for the first episode in this Cunning Farmer series. Um we're going to, regardless of the reception, continue through your book, but it is encouraging that so many people listened on Substack, on Apple, on Spotify, wherever people get their their podcasts. It was it was really well listened to, a really a highlight, I think. I mean, sometimes we release episodes and I really think that people are going to eat them up as the as the saying goes, and and they don't, and they get, you know, only so many listens. Um, but this one really seems to have gotten some traction. Really so yeah, yeah. Actually, it it's um I don't want to be surprised as if I didn't think that you would get traction, but I I'm pleasantly, happily surprised, I guess, that uh so many people are drawn to magic, paganism, agriculture, and that convergence.

Todd Elloitt 7:50

Yeah. I mean, so thanks for being here. I feel like I've gotten a really good and positive response to the book so far, and people seem to be interested in it, which I mean, uh I like I just said to you, I started out with 60 60 subscribers or 50 subscribers on Substack in my first month, and slowly have grown over to over 2,000 and uh over three years. It the growth has been really slow, and I was wondering who my audience would be, but people seem to be really really appreciating it. And and I'm no one's more shocked than I am. Not that I don't think the content is great, but who am I to judge? I've never had a you know, I've never had a big head about it. I have a big head about some things, but that's not one of them.

D. Ffrith Griffith 8:32

Yeah. It's it's it's wonderful to see the success, and I'm glad that people are resonating with your words and with the uh the way they appear on paper.

Todd Elloitt 8:41

Well, as I said, if I wasn't doing this, I'd be digging potatoes, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

Enter Sacred Geography And Earthworks

D. Ffrith Griffith 8:48

I hear that. This is uh we'll we'll dive into chapter two. Um the first episode, we we we touched on um the foreword, the introduction in chapter one, um consulting the genius of place and things like this. Um I think it's gonna be healthy as our listeners are buying the book and reading it through while listening to us talk to it. If we're a little bit organized, every episode will take tackle a chapter, even though I don't presume uh that you and I are gonna stick in that the bounds of that chapter very well, just no knowing our relationship and how both of our brains and and and hearts work. But we'll at least start there. We'll start on chapter two. It's titled Land Spirits and Sacred Space, a pilgrimage to some of the earthworks of Southern Ohio. Um and and I think if I could, um, on the very first page of chapter two, if people have the book, it's on page 21, you you begin um with this idea of a larger cosmological structure. And and I wonder if at the beginning of this, some of our long-term listeners have heard Taylor Keene and the God Is Red series that we've been running for the last six to nine months, whatever it's been, talk a lot about sacred geography. But if you can, maybe just in this beginning moment, sacred geography, you write that it's the cosmic made personal. Those are not necessarily your words, but a summary of your words. That is, it's the cosmic and the personal, the particular, the land here, and it's some connection there. Can we start with maybe what is sacred geography, at least from your view as the cunning farmer, and how does it stand in our view of both place where we are, that this local particular place, but also that the general universal cosmic space?

Todd Elloitt 10:30

I I do have a couple, I do talk about sacred geography geography a couple places in the book, actually. Um but in the second chapter, I'm referring to uh specifically the idea of sacred space, the idea of um taking a particular place on the earth and making it into an image of the cosmos. Um and that's what I think those earthworks were doing. They were making an ordinary field by a creek in southern Ohio or a ridge on top of a a ridge overlooking a river, and they were turning it into a ceremonial place by making a circle and making uh and make and marking the four directions with earthworks and marking the risings and the settings of the sun. So they're tying this this very ordinary place into the movements of the sun and the moon, and they were performing rituals and ceremonies there at certain times of the year, and I think what you're getting at is that I was I was trying to talk about how we sort of have to turn our ordinary places where we live into a sacred place in order. And I think I think in in as a magical practitioner, a a lot of magical practitioners will will be familiar with the idea of consecrating sacred space. Um, like a lot of a lot of rituals, neopagan rituals or or magical rituals, first mark out begin with marking out the quarters. Maybe you'll bless it with you know you'll cleanse it with water, with fire, with smoke. Uh you'll call in the c the quarters, the elements, the spirits of the elements, the angels, or whatever, the elements, and you'll you'll make this place where you perform this ceremony not just your your living room or your or your backyard. You'll make it this is this is an image of the cosmos. There's the there's the east, there's the four cardinal directions where the sun rises and sets, where the where the north wind comes from and the south wind comes from. This this place is not just an ordinary everyday place. This place is an eternal place now because I've because we've marked it out. So the spirits can come here. Because I mean, not that they can't come to an ordinary ordinary place, but we've made it a liminal zone. Um by by making it uh by marking out this special delineating this specialness of this place in in sort of a general and and ritual and archetypal way.

Harvest Rituals And Marked Places

D. Ffrith Griffith 13:25

My wife and I, we do a lot of field harvests. It's kind of a a job that we find ourselves to per performing here. And um the interesting thing is we've performed so many field harvests on so many aspects of land all around Virginia and the surrounding states. Yeah, you mean it's a very sacred.

Todd Elloitt 13:42

You mean animals. I do a lot of field harvests too.

D. Ffrith Griffith 13:45

Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, I'm talking to a veggie farmer. I'm sorry. No, field harvest as in like a wild hunt of a domestic bovine, right on, yeah, if you will. So a long distance shot. Um, or I mean, we've even participated in uh arrows, which is another thing that I don't want to talk about right now. But the point is we we participate in a lot of this, and a lot of that we teach, a lot of the workshops or quote ceremonies that we teach are around the sacred harvest, and there's a lot of ceremony and sacred place creation or sacred space, you know, uh adorning, if you will, around the harvest. And there's a lot of blood and smoke, and we smoke certain plants, and we give off like there's a lot of ceremony, let's say, sacred ceremony that corresponds to the harvest, which is why it's become very, I should say, popular among our clans out here. But the interesting thing is in most of the farms we work with, we've witnessed this thing occur that your words sparked in my in my memory. But we will harvest a cow, let's say, through the whole, you know, the whole process, whatever it is, harvest the cow. And it's always through education. It's illegal to do this commercially or something, but it's always just through education, helping the farmers understand how to do this for themselves, because that's not illegal. But through the educational format, we'll we'll harvest a cow with the farm to help them understand that they can do it without us next time, and we'll go through the ceremony of that. And then, you know, it the that animal might be alone or something, and the rest of the animals on the farm might be elsewhere, whatever it might be. And then a year later, as a herd of animals moves through that, it's always masculine, it's always the bulls, and it's only intact bulls. But the bulls will find that spot. And again, this could be a year or two. We've even experienced three years later. There's no blood, there's no remnants, there's no guts or organs, or something. This is three years ago an animal died here. All of the bulls will stop and they'll all kick the earth and make this unbelievably dinosaur-like Jurassic noise. Like when a bull like whines, it's very high-pitched in like that like whiny sense. You know, in the human culture, I would say that. It's like a whine. Oh, yeah. It it becomes guttural, becomes this really deep, almost like bull fight type of like go to a rodeo, you'll hear this noise. It's a guttural noise, and they all circle around that spot and they kick the dirt and they eat it. And like it, they spray themselves with the dirt. They were not there when it happened. Three years have passed. It's three years hence. Nobody saw it happen. There's no memory of it. We we've even done it on our farm. We've brought a cow in, harvested it without ever introducing that cow to the rest of our herd. So our herd didn't even know that that cow, and the herd could have been two and a half miles off at the back of our farm. And when they cross that spot, the bulls will identify it and and do a short ceremony over that space without ever knowing that an animal, like there's there's there's there's no connection other than that, I think that that place was truly actually made sacred. And and the bulls are recognizing this. And it's interesting that we've had steers not recognize it. The females, the cows, the heifers, they don't recognize it. At least they don't show attention to that. But it's the bulls, and the bulls all gather around and they all partake in that ceremony. It's it's it's really interesting. Yeah, we've witnessed this for maybe maybe nine years straight now.

Todd Elloitt 16:56

I've seen something similar. I had a cow that had a stillborn calf and moved her through the full rotation. I I mean she wasn't didn't go back, it wasn't three years, but it was several months. Because I lived on a larger farm where I could rotate cows on a lot bigger, longer rotation. But she had stopped mourning the calf. But when she came back to where where she had birthed him and he had died, she started mourning all over again in that same place. And I disposed of the calf and it it had rained and the grass had grown, and I I don't know, it wasn't three years, but it was it was several months. About two months. And still the the memory of the place brought back the memory to her.

unknown 17:41

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 17:42

So you're saying the place is marked.

D. Ffrith Griffith 17:44

Yeah. It it interestingly, too, we've um we we had this one cow, he was half blind. We bought it as a calf from a farmer that was not exactly a good one. We call it a an abusive farm. And we bought this calf out of him because it had its eye plucked out because of barbed wire and other things on the farm. The farm just wasn't it's kind of dilapidated. Well, anyways, we brought this calf home, had one eye. Never should have done it to some larger degree. We raised it for about a year and a half and never acclimated into the herd. It was always very skittish, as you can imagine. And um, well, anyways, it kept getting out, and the local police department was sick of it being on the road, and so they said you have to put it down, and we put it down. Long story short, I'm taking literally a year and a half and boiling it down to the moment, but we put it down and we didn't process it. We literally did another ceremony. I mean we didn't eat it, I should say. We did another ceremony and disposed of it another way. Um, just didn't feel like it was ours in the domestic animal husbandry sense. And um, nobody has ever noticed. Nobody has ever seen that space and done anything. But for the last, like as I said, nine years, literally hundreds and hundreds of harvests that we've conducted in a ceremonial and sacred fashion, almost every time there is a sacred ceremony for years and years and years in that exact space. But that one that we shot at the sheriff's behest and did nothing with, um, just shot it and basically uh there's a black bear nesting on the property, and we fed her, and actually she did it too. Anyways, the point is we didn't partake in that. There was no ceremony there, no intention, just kind of responsive or you know, retroactive. So it's it's interesting. My point is it's not that there's just smelling blood. There's there's literal variation to it. Um and and there's different degrees. Like I mean, I can I can speak about this for an hour and I don't want to want to get more into your book, but the point is it seems that sacred spaces is a lot bigger, I think, than a lot of people um spiritually like cognizise, cognitize, excuse me. Like it really actually let the idea sink in that the sacredness or the creating of a sacred space it could last generations.

Todd Elloitt 20:00

Yeah. Yeah, I think the I think that I mean didn't think don't people have people have stories about their indigenous cultures have stories about their about their land, where their where their creation myths take place. Well this, you know, all over the world, this this hill was built where where the these beings in the primordial time, the gods or whatever, fought and they caused this rift in this landscape. They built this mountain. There's so much of that, Sagragyomity. We've we've lost a lot of that in our in our rootless and landless culture. Yeah, I think it's I think it's necessary to bring that back. I quote um I there it's somewhere in the book. I quote there's a fellow named Jake Stratton Kent, who was an occultist uh who passed away a few years ago, but he wrote some really awesome books, and there was one where he said, as magic practitioners, we have to reclaim sacred geometry and sort of map map the mythical back onto our own land, even though we might not have much history there. We have to make the effort of mapping the imaginal or the events of the mythical stories back onto into our own lives. Like you know, for instance, I have I have this oak tree where I practice. I wrote about this in the article that I published, but I have this oak tree where I practice, and it is for me the world tree. And it has a spring running out from underneath of it, like Idrisil does, and it has a a gash down the side where the lightning struck it, and it is a perfect example of the world tree, and it's a great place, uh the Axis Mundi, as it were, and it's a great place to do a ceremony because it's it's a living symbol. And I I think there's a lot of people who do that. That's what that's what a sacred tree, a sacred grove is is for for for the tri the cultures that that use them. That's what their trees were the natural symbol of the cosmos.

D. Ffrith Griffith 21:58

Right.

Plant Medicine And Thin Places

D. Ffrith Griffith 21:59

Speaking Of trees. You talk a little bit about this in chapter two. Let's do real real quick talk about let's call them uh medicine plants, hallucinogenic plants. In my conversation with Taylor Keane um throughout the God Is Red series, we've talked a lot about Picture Cave, this ancient Degihasu or Omaha spiritual womb or dark, deep dark cave, if you will. And uh listen to the episodes, they're really good.

Todd Elloitt 22:28

Um they are really good.

D. Ffrith Griffith 22:30

But one one one of them, I mean, one of the episodes he talks about visiting Picture Cave only recently and and learning more and studying it there. And at the cave's entrance was Datura just growing, but in a very um uh intentional way, from a human perspective, intentional, it seemed to be planted. And uh he made the comment that it is not uncommon in sacred spaces to have sacred medicinal plants present there, not just as guardian or you know, uh kinship entities, but also as usable entities to help you through that space. Um could you you speak about I wanted I wanted to say that to joggy memory. Could you just speak about that? You write about it in this chapter too.

Todd Elloitt 23:13

I recounted, I went to the Site Mound, which is in Ohio, um on the Paint, is it the Paint Creek or the Paint River? Paint Creek. It's a beautiful site. It's uh it's really there's some modern stuff there. I think there's a high school not too far away, kind of off in the distance, but it really doesn't, it's so small, the valley's so big, it's like a glacial valley or something like that. It really doesn't, it really doesn't take anything. For the for the eastern part of the country, it's a really big landscape. Um and so there's this mound there, and near the mound, there's a there's they've mowed they found ceremonial circles and earthworks of a smaller nature, but then and I I was sitting there with my wife and kids, and I just kind of could imagine this ceremony that they would be performing as the moon neared its one of the points of its of its 19-year cycle, say the uh in the on the solstice when it would be in its northernmost point or the summer solstice. I was picturing that they would have a they would have a ceremony there, and I was picturing the the shamans in their um shape-shifting costumes as bears or as cougars or as wolves or as birds or whatever. And I imagined that they would be partaking of whatever uh indigenous plants would have been useful to them uh to to transport them to this other world to make the shift into the other world more tangible. And I I speculated that it might have been Datura, because you often, like you said, find that those are those are native to the area, and you often find those growing at at sites, uh, or perhaps even psilocybin mushrooms because the the the Hopewell people were um they found mushroom-like copper mushrooms buried in some of the burial sites, or ammonita muscaria. I really I really wasn't sure. Or then you have um oh Petey Newman, who just wrote a book about Mississippi and ayahuasca, which is made of um honey locusts and passion flower, and he said that you often find honey locusts growing around these sites. And I I think that's a I think that's a giant uh a very realistic possibility that that was something that they did, although I didn't I hadn't heard that hypothesis at the time that I wrote my chapter two, but it it does seem to me that those would be an important aid uh to working with sacred geography to to uh make the transformation, as I said, a little more, a little more real, a little more tangible, uh to be able to experience the liminality of such such places more fully.

D. Ffrith Griffith 26:05

Yeah. Yeah. I have a a dear friend and mentor of mine, a Lakota pipe, pipe carrier, sundancer. He uh has done a lot of work um in the graduate and collegiate space around um um hypnosis. And he he talks a lot about hypnosis and brain chemistry and neurology. I mean, he really attacks it from that perspective, but he writes um critical neurophilosophy and indigenous perspective or something, I think is his book title. Maybe he's written many books, but um, but he he writes a boat hypnosis, and I think at the time he compares it to uh two plans and other things like you're talking about, Tutora and others, psilocybin um uh as well, that your brain exists scientifically from a Western perspective and two, not like left brain and right brain, but actually in a high and a low. It's like a high brain frequency to low brain frequency. And when you're sleeping and you're dreaming and you're in that deep brain sleep, it goes to that high brain, and you can believe a lot of things are true, but at the lower brain frequency, it's hard to believe what you would automatically believe is true in the higher when you're in the lower. And what hypnosis and plants allow you to do is be in that low frequency, you're not in REM sleep, but accept that which your eyes would never accept. Yes. So it's it's a way of both being present and yet dreaming.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yes.

D. Ffrith Griffith 27:25

Which which I think is a really interesting way to see it. It it's not tricking your brain, but it's allowing your brain to be both dreaming in REM, but also living and so experiencing, and so still present in that way.

Todd Elloitt 27:40

So so you're able to participate in the symbolism, you're able to believe the symbolism, internalize it. And and and and when you're in those states of mind, um I can speak mostly about psilocybin when you're in those states of mind, those things seem much more real than you do in your concrete everyday. It takes more effort to transport yourself to the those liminal realms in your ordinary everyday consciousness. And you know, I th I think there's other ways of getting to getting there, hypnosis or or other methods of inducing trance. But reliably the the psilocybin is uh is a is a more reliable path, I think, for a lot of people.

D. Ffrith Griffith 28:33

Yeah. It's just it's it's a very interesting idea to me that this sacred geography or sacred space creation partnership with plants to allow the particular to ascend into that cosmic, universal, um, generalized, archetypal type, you know, form, if you will, to use a bunch of words that need defining. But it it just seems interesting to me that that is common to the human experience. Because I think, if anything, for our listeners and for most modern people today, it is uncommon to the human experience. And yet as we look back and we understand these things, or at least try to reunderstand these things, or maybe give um frontal space to cultures and ideas that have hitherto been genocided and pushed aside and colonized and quieted and things. I mean, as we stand in that seventh generation, to use Taylor Keene's words, I mean, it's it's interesting that it's so simple and so grounded and so real and so ancient, and yet at the same time so foreign, so alien to most of our lived experiences.

Todd Elloitt 29:40

Aaron Powell Well, they also I I also think our our work-a-day capitalist um society doesn't really like people um not being productive. And you definitely need you definitely uh those substances have a way of shifting your your values and your priorities from the from the everyday productivity of the Protestant work ethic to a more um well, they change your values to a more holistic or a more um spiritual uh plane. Definitely they activate your higher brain, as you said, and and you're less concerned with your everyday realities, your everyday and and and that can be a there's a time and a place for that. I mean, some uh there's an author called Dale Pandell who writes about sacred plants and who wrote about sacred plants, he passed away a few years ago, but he he said we had to work on our solar and our lunar uh he called it our solar and our lunar energy. So solar energy is your is your everyday daylight consciousness, but your lunar energy allows you to walk between the worlds, and both are necessary. I mean, if you if you're unbalanced, if you're if you're going over too much to the moon side and you can you can't hold down a job, you're you're walking in the other world a little too much, and I'm sure we've known we've all known people like that that are just a little too much in the other world, and and that's um that's okay for them, maybe, and maybe that's their path that they need to walk. But uh, you know, we some of us have families to raise and and farms to run, and so we have to make a balance. There's time and place for everything, and and these seasonal festivals uh would be a would be a time for that that those things could be brought into a community ritual for an otherwise pretty well productive culture. You know, if you were doing it every day, if you weren't passing over into lunar state, into the astral plane every day, if you were doing it on the on the solstices and the equinoxes as part of your culture's um ways of connecting to their sacred geography, that could be uh uh a path for a culture. And I'm and it has been, and it and it, and it was, and maybe it will be again.

Ceremony As Knowledge And Balance

D. Ffrith Griffith 31:59

Yeah. Ceremony, um aheamani or our our um Ross, EC Ross, I think is his name, his pen name, his English name, if you will. Um believe he was Lakota or Dakota, I can't remember. He wrote a book, um, Matakwasi, we are all related. Um, Taylor and I did a podcast on it a while ago. But in in that book, he talks about ceremony. He was learning from, I believe, let's I think he was Dakota, but he was discussing a long time ago, and he was writing about this in the book, but he was discussing with the Dakota elder the role of ceremony. And he said, ceremony is knowledge. And that surprised me because I I I don't think I would have said that. Ceremony is knowledge. Knowledge, I might have said something a little bit more esoteric than that. But it's it's it's stuck with me for a long time. And what the elder was saying is if you want to know something, go to ceremony. If you have questions, go to ceremony. If if you have needs, go to ceremony. If you are ill, go to ceremony. And when you go to ceremony, that like I'm emphasizing the go, that active participation with the ceremony, not just receiving it retroactively or you know, on your ass, sitting back, leaning back, but actually going to ceremony, whatever that means for the ceremony. I mean, the pipe dance, the sun dance, um, in the Lakota fashion in the general Osatisakawi culture. Like that's that's that's that's that's there, that's leaning in. That's literally tying yourself and your skin, you know, to a tree and dancing on hot gravel and not eating or drinking for so long. Like that's that's that's a very physical ceremony. And there's other ceremonies, like psilocybin would be a very much more pacified version of that, not the same thing, or is it even going for the same thing? But the point is it's a lot less physical than that. And so my point is there's the variations, but to have to go into ceremony is knowledge, it's healing, it's power, it's balance, it's wisdom, whatever it is. But it's that act of like going into it, you know, that sacred space, that that that moment that makes it different than the daily. And I think that's what you're you're getting at too. It's it's it's this idea of sacred places, sacred spaces, ceremonials, and things like this. You it it's it's a place to go to, not to achieve something in a linear fashion, but to receive what spirit is there to give you, whatever that might mean, in the balance of that. It's not living in the lunar all the time, it's not living in the solar all the time, but it's that balance where you actually undergo that gloaming, that twilight when the sun is setting and then the moon comes out, and that's a big transition point. Like there, there has to be that space, especially in harvest. Like when we teach these harvests or lead these harvest ceremonies, you know, it's it's very different for a modern human to stand there with, you know, 30 gallons of fresh, wet, red, warm, drippy, you know, non-coagulated blood all over their body. And like they could bring them from like Costco, you know, to to a field of that is a very it could be very problematic, you know, it could it very well could be problematic for them. And so you have to like get into that, you know. There's there's a place of going into ceremony. You don't do ceremony, you go into ceremony.

Todd Elloitt 35:10

It's physical, it's absolutely an interesting way of saying it.

D. Ffrith Griffith 35:13

Yeah.

Todd Elloitt 35:13

Yeah. And it's it's when you it's when you make a decision to go out of your go again, to travel out of your ordinary everyday routine and go to maybe a special place where you can meet with the gods and meet with the spirits and receive knowledge from them. I I think that's a really good way of putting it. So if you want knowledge, go to ceremony. Yeah, yeah. I will, I will, I will try to internalize that that phrase because that is that is a good way of putting it. Uh, the last couple nights I've been going in my oak tree because the moon's been out, and I I just have been going sitting by my oak tree and burning some sage or some tobacco or some Topal or something like that, and just sitting there in my and just talking to the gods. Uh just praying, just praying for um just knowledge, wisdom, help. A lot of help. We we go for we go to them for help. You know, we need we need healing, we need wisdom, we need um rain. And it's just started raining right now. Uh so we go down there and and we talk to them or we go somewhere. I love it.

D. Ffrith Griffith 36:28

Yeah.

Celestial Vitality Through Astrology

D. Ffrith Griffith 36:29

On page 29, if if if I can reground us in the text, sure, sure. You you I'll read you your words, which is always uncomfortable, I know, but um, and maybe it'll spark some conversation around this. You're talking about the Hopewell and Adina cultures, mounds, and predecessors, the earlier peoples. And uh you write that the uh the work of the shaman has to be done in accordance with the tides of celestial fatality issuing from the sun, the moon, and the stars. Um, and then you make the comment that these ritual spaces are thin, ritual spaces are thin places, portals, as you mentioned earlier in this conversation. I wonder uh when it comes to language, because you know, as we approach these sacred spaces, I think a lot of people, my I, myself, Taylor and I in the God Is Red series had a couple episodes even talking about this. I struggle with the language because I I want I want I want the name for it. Not the scientific name, the taxonomy, if you will, but like the name for it. Like when you pray to the moon, our peoples used to have a name for that. We don't now, we just call it the moon, which is a very, I think English is a very colonial tongue. I think some people disagree with that, and that's fine. But the point is my ancestors just 50 years ago weren't allowed to speak Irish. They had to speak English or they were imprisoned. And um and that's I don't know, that's just maybe new to me, meaning fresh, raw, still very vivid in in my in my marrow. And so I think this way, but um, I want to talk about like so the tides of celestial vitality seems to have a very universal, obviously cosmic feeling to it, right? Whereas human language is very personal, right? We speak English, you and I, but there's also many different versions of English, even in the United States, like Kentucky English and Virginia English is going to be a little bit different, and our cliches and slang is different, let alone the three or four hundred different, you know, different languages of indigenous peoples on this continent that you and I are speaking for. Like there's just so many different languages. So this these tides of celestial activity, like the rising and setting of Pleiades in the spring and the the winter in the autumn sky, that is universal, that's cosmic. That's I don't want to say singular from a linear perspective, but that's that's here in my hand. Language is so unique. It's so unique, it's so personal, it's so particular, it's so grounded to place. To some degree, if you look at it as a scale, you have the tides of celestial vitality on the one side, and then you have language balancing it on the other. I see it as balance. It's not necessarily a line that wins, but it's a balanced line. How in our ceremonial sacred practices, how do you see the growth of language or the use of language at these sacred spaces during these tides of celestial vitality, at, like you're saying, this tree at the full moon? Like, where do you see language a part of that? Do you see language as a part of that? How do we work through this, especially as settler peoples? Well, that's really the third phrase. That's really interesting.

Todd Elloitt 39:34

Well, let me just say that when I wrote that phrase, just before I address your question, because it's a really good one. Um, when I wrote that those couple paragraphs that you just read, I was I visited those sites and I was also studying astrological magic pretty intensively. And it seemed to me that those sites were bound up with some sort of astrological magic, by which I mean working with the planets, the sun and the moon at times when they were particularly powerful. Like the summer solstice, the sun is very powerful, for instance, or the full moon. Or the moon, like I said, at the at its when the moon is at its northernmost point of the 19-year cycle on the summer sold that happened a couple years ago. When the sun and the moon are aligned at the summer solstice, and the full moon happens at the summer solstice, that's a particularly potent time. Or like, or when the moon in in Western astrology is in her sign of cancer, she's more powerful essentially. She has more strength because she rules that part of the she rules that part of the zodiac. So she's more powerful there. So that's what I was thinking that not that they were Western astrologers, far from it, but they but that the people that built those sites were tracking the movements of the sun and the moon and probably the stars because they were trying to they were trying to work with them when they were potent. They were trying to find when the eclipses were going to happen. They were trying to find, I I I think I still think that they were tracking eclipses, at least very broadly. Maybe, maybe they couldn't have predicted them to the exact time and place, but they were predicting them pretty closely. Maybe they could have predicted them exactly. The Babylonians could. I don't see why the Hope Well couldn't. Um so uh and the reason one reason you'd want to predict eclipses is not just because of scientific curiosity. One reason is because there's powerful energies that happen in the eclipse that you would either want to use to help your people, or you would want to defend your people from because sometimes the energies are negative. I mean, we as astrologers we know that eclipses uh can symbolize represent the death of kings, rulers, um, they can symbolize war. A lot of astrologers uh I heard some astrologers speaking recently that the recent solar eclipse uh predicted the death of the leader of Iran and the war that's happening right now. Um I I I I buy that. It it was uh it was an eclipse that was only visible from an from Antarctica, so I didn't really, as an astrologer, I didn't really get right on that myself. But um I think I think it's usually if you can see the eclipse, like we had an eclipse, not to get too far off on eclipses. Um anyway, I think they were tracking them because they were powerful moments of energy where you can feel the energy is palpable. We had two sol we had two um total solar eclipses in the last several years, one in 2017 and one in 2024, right in my area. And they were the energy is is intense. Lunar eclipses when the when the moon goes dark. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

D. Ffrith Griffith 42:57

Um we had a solar eclipse in 2024, right? In April. And uh Morgan and I, we performed on that day, we performed a 250-acre prescribed burn in a clear-cut, overgrown clear cut that was about five, six years old. And it ended up being a true canopy fire for 200 acres. I mean, it was like, you know, 30 feet tall flames over 200 acres in a singular moment. It was it was very intense, tons of undergrowth. Just and it was the day of the lunar eclipse, and I have videos the morning of it, and I have um I have videos of me, because we fight fires, and you know, I'm in my studio, when like like my lot of they're cool photos, but like the smoke blotted up the sky. And you know, and a lot of prescribed burns, they're just let's call them understory fires, very cold. You can walk literally within feet of them and you not feel the difference. It's a very passive cold fire. Well, this one didn't happen that way. It was 200 acres of 30 foot tall flames. And so the smoke was insane. Like you hear the radio on the video. I was on the ground just trying to get out of the smoke, it was so intense. And uh it was this crazy moment where the sky was dark and then the earth in almost like a sacred way, we literally secondly blotted out the sun and it was just dark for hours and hours and hours. It'll be a big turning time and in a lot of other things for us too. It ended up being a sacred moment too. But it was interesting the way that happened. I mean, we've been praying for that burn for three years. That's happened on that day.

Todd Elloitt 44:24

Well, that's that's crazy because that that day, first of all, it was a it was a lunar uh a solar eclipse. I don't know if you're talking about the lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse. The solar eclipse was in Aries and it was on the new moon.

D. Ffrith Griffith 44:36

Yeah, that I think it was a solar eclipse. Yeah, yeah.

Todd Elloitt 44:39

And it was visible here. But that yeah afternoon after it happened, my neighbors set the field across the holler from us on fire.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

No way.

Todd Elloitt 44:50

And luckily the fire department came and put it out, but it had been getting very dry and it was fairly windy, and this guy decided to burn some brush, and they set this, and I was like, could you first of all, an eclipse in Aries, according to Western astrology, a solar eclipse in Aries is an incredibly fiery, powerful, burning energy. It's ruled by Mars, it's hot and dry. And um, yeah, it wouldn't, it wouldn't necessarily if you really wanted something to burn like you did, it would be a great day to do it. But it did. It's just everything's just ready to burn. I mean I mean, on an archetypal level, maybe not on a physical level. So this guy, this guy was like, what is he doing? And luckily, it luckily the fire department, the volunteer fire department, my son and I ran over there with shovels and were beat, you know, putting the fire out with shovels and throwing in the volunteer fire department. It was intense, but it only lasted about half an hour, luckily. So yeah, interesting that that you were involved with that at the same time.

D. Ffrith Griffith 45:51

Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting to see. I didn't know that it was a time of burning. I don't I think I would have cared more, maybe.

Todd Elloitt 45:59

Burning in a time. In an archetypal sense, you know. Yeah.

D. Ffrith Griffith 46:03

Well, I don't know if you've ever stood in the middle of uh when it when you're in a when you're in a fire, prescribed or otherwise, and all around you is, you know, let's say 50, 75 acres of just 30-foot flames. No, that seems crazy. And it it it feels archetypal. It does, it doesn't feel physical. So I'm I'm with your words. Um but I stopped you on the eclipses and things. You were talking about the tides of celestial vitality.

Todd Elloitt 46:30

I'm just for instance, you would want to know, and I don't know if they so Aries, Aries is the sign of the of the spring equinox. So I I don't think that the the Hopewell would have practiced Western astrology, and I don't think they had the same meanings for the for the signs in the parts of the heaven that we do in the West. But I I do think that they were tracking them, and they would have they would have wanted to know, for instance, that there was an eclipse happening at the place where the sun is in the in the and they would have they might have been able to, they could have known, they could have predicted that eclipse with what they knew. Um it's highly speculative, and they and they would have been careful maybe with fire then, or they would have done some ceremonies to to work with that energy, either for good, it might have been, or for, you know, let's say you had a neighboring tribe that you didn't like, you might want to work within fiery energies to send some some uh bad juju at your at your enemies. I mean that that was a part of ancient life too. I mean, people people weren't weren't just happy, um I mean, people had had to use the dark side too, and and the the energy, the cosmic energies, there's a place for that as well. Um so yeah, that's what I was getting at with the the vital tides of celestial energy. Uh, but you wanted you wanted to talk about words and language.

Magic Words Language And Place Memory

Todd Elloitt 48:01

And um I I I think I'm a huge we we talked about Hebrew last time, and I am a I have a huge interest in magic words. I have a huge interest in nomina magica and barbarous words of of evocation. Um, I love those things. I I I think they're really cool. I think the idea that there's a primal angelic speech that God used to create the universe is a really fascinating myth to me. And I believe that many cultures have had their own versions of that, that they used or are language that is used in ceremony but wouldn't be used in ordinary times. Um, names of God, names of angels, names of spirits, names of demons that you would call when you wanted to work with those with those celestial tides. Yeah, that's a that's a huge part of Western magic. And and at those times that are celestially potent, we as Western magicians do use particular words that are congenial to those times. And I imagine that the people that built those earthworks had their own system, which is unfortunately lost to us, of ceremonial language that they used at those times. Yeah, I'm sure they did. And they had their own um herbal potions that they would take. Yeah, I think they had a complete system that of wisdom that is lost to us largely.

D. Ffrith Griffith 49:26

Yeah, I always think about in Robin Walkemer's book, she has that chapter about the grammar of animacy. And she writes about how grammar and language is so central to our understanding of kinship and animacy and all of these things that her book writes about. The indigenous worldview, if you will, if you wanted to highly generalize the subject, maybe accurately, maybe inaccurately. And it is, it just interests me. I think as a linguist or somebody who wants to believe that they are a linguist, it interests me the way that words are carried. I think I think some people just like words, and and obviously you like magic words, and and I think that's amazing. I I I get really interested in the way words are carried or not carried, if that makes sense. So language is called constantly evolving within culture. Uh there's this biological evolutionist that I really appreciate when that said uh I forget his name, but I wish I did remember it. But he he made the comment that culture is our genes' desire, our genetics, our DNA, to move faster. So culture, human culture, and just culture of any, I mean any living system across the face of Earth. Um, I can't speak biologically definitively, but I'm pretty sure I would stand behind the concept that this is universal across all life on earth. Genetics can move only through reproduction, right? So when a gene mutates, it can only mutate, generally speaking, within a reproductive cycle. So horses are very slow to change their phenotype or their genetic, or really even their epigenetic expression is always very lagging because their gestation is 11 to 13 months. Whereas a pig, I mean, a pig can, I mean, oh my God, you you you have a domestic pig, and then three months, three weeks, and three days later you can have another pig. So the gestation is very short. A domestic pig within one generation of being in the wild can half its snout length.

Todd Elloitt 51:20

There's there's an interesting non-physical, non-material. Like, why would a why would a bunch of pink pigs revert to the wild type within a few generations if there wasn't some Lamarckian inheritance going on there? If there wasn't some morphogenetic fields influencing their development, if the if it was all if it was all DNA, why?

unknown 51:43

Yeah.

D. Ffrith Griffith 51:44

Well the culture is it the thing that this guy is saying is that culture, that a species culture can actually change or basically delimit its mutational experience. So if let's say the limit, scientifically, mathematically, of genetic mutation is reproduction, we can delimit that through culture. So when plants grow in a particular culture, call it a guild from a you know vegetative plant perspective, they could progress through mutation a lot faster. They can do things that they shouldn't be able to do in a single generation or even a couple of weeks without mute, you know, genetic um reproduction, but because they're in that community. So my point is in this grammar of animacy that Raman Walkemur is writing about, that I know a lot of people have really attached onto, language is a product of culture. Culture is also a product of language. It's balanced, it's like a snake eating itself, the yin yang. It's it's both expressive and retractive, retractive and expressive. It's both active, passive, passive, active. It's it's kind of co-creating within that sphere. And it's it's always just been so interesting to me, the words that are left out, meaning that they were once held and then they were let go and a new word took their place, or maybe old words that just won't be eradicated. You know, that that's always been so interesting to me, especially in view of, and I say this all in view of the sacred space and sacred geography of many ancient native and indigenous cultures all around the world, from Loch Nell, the the Serpent Mounds in Scotland to the ones that you write about here. Um, I can't remember the uh the serpent mound in People, Ohio is the one you write about here on page 25. But I think the same thing is true with the sacred geography. If culture and language are like snakes eating each other and they're both co-developing and co-creating to move that species into a more healthy, more balanced, more stable, more light-loving, more whatever state, I wonder the role of sacred geography as like the rootedness of that. Does that does that make sense? It's it's that hearthstone that we come back to. It's that sacred space that we know on the equinox or the solstice, we can do these things and remember ourselves, even though these other things are turning.

Todd Elloitt 53:59

We I mean, I I know, I know in in your in your to the tradition, you you are your sort of native tradition or whatever, the Irish tradition, I know they had sacred geography there. And I I would think that they you would I know that there's things in other cultures where they walk through their sacred geography and reenact the myths as they go. I know that's a thing in Australian indigenous cultures, yeah. Where you re you recite the myths in the places where they happened. And then even even in Christianized culture, there was a thing where they would uh they would perform this, they have a ceremony called rogue uh rogation days, where they would go to have you heard of this?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

No.

Todd Elloitt 54:40

This was in this is in Catholic uh England before the before the Reformation, although I think the Anglican church still does it, where you would go to the parish boundaries in procession and recite the gospel at different points of the boundaries. So and and uh in sort of haze the young people as well. There's like a little bit of like hazing of the young men, so they would remember the parish boundaries. So, like you know, I don't really know how they exactly did it, but you would you would go to this all the boundaries of the territory, the parish, and recite the sacred stories at the different points. And this was um, this was a this is a I I forget what Roman holiday, is it the Ambervalia, where they did a similar thing? This is a Christian survival of an ancient Roman ritual where they did the same thing, except they didn't recite the scriptures. I don't know what they recited, but they wrote they would process around the boundaries and say the sacred word and have a ritual where you would mark the boundaries and you would recite something to scare away evil energies and to bring in the good ones. And it was like it was enacting your your myth on the physical geography of your land. And this this survives uh even even to this day. I'm sure I'm pretty sure there's still some parishes that do this, maybe overseas, maybe even here in the United States. I I hardly any of them are small enough that you could you can cover them by walking, though. So maybe over there they are. But you would have to know. You'd have to know where your where your jurisdiction began ended and where the next one began. And there's no better way than to mark a story. Even even um, Daniel, I when I was when I work on the farm and I listen to a podcast, say yours and Taylor's, I will forever remember what story I was listening to while I was doing the work in that place in a year. I'll go back to that place and I'll remember the story I was listening to because that place, that job, and that time are related in my memory. And that that's such a banal and 21st century thing. But if you know, or I'll remember a road trip that I took where I listened to a particular uh audio book on the way, and I'll and I'll drive by that site years later and I'll remember that audiobook and that story that I was listening to in that same territory because there's so much of our sacred geography. Like this is probably what you're getting at that it's tied to storytelling.

D. Ffrith Griffith 57:10

I I think it's also true with the harvests that we're blessed to lead. Um, we were my wife and I were on a walk and yesterday, yesterday evening, after the podcast that we tried to record, ended up not being recorded because of technical issues. And we were on the walk, and uh our daughter, she's five, just turned five, and and uh she asked, like, what day it is, or something like this. And Morgan responded, uh, today is the day that we harvested the cow a year ago with such and such a person. I won't name him. And uh, and we were right there, like right at that spot we had harvested a cow. And and my point is it was like there was there was gravity to that, if that makes sense. Like there was a story there. And and I was making the comment how fast the grass is growing this spring. And she said, Yeah, do you remember how it grew when we harvested that cow with such and such a person exactly a year ago? And that's the date you know exactly. And it it is you're right, it's so interesting. Stories have a way of grounding us to place in that very sacred sense. And memory. And it's interesting, yeah. And it's interesting that so many stories, ancient stories, living stories, worthwhile stories, mythic stories, are also grounded to sacred geography. Like so much of the Irish myth is grounded to sacred geography in Ireland, for instance. Absolutely. Like the uh the Anverdan Fiesta, um, the Standing of Knowledge, which I believe is the Irish creation story, another topic for another conversation, that's centered on the River Boyne or the Balak Nabuffin and uh the Katmag Turd, the Second Battle of Matura, is all centered around the plain surrounding um the hill of Tara. Yeah, I think where the false bone and everything else. Like all like it's so centralized. It's almost as if the sacred spaces and sacred geography is a member of the story, which I think you either wrote about that in this chapter or the Substack article you put out. The uh I think you were talking about Jungian archetypes or something where the gods are both outside of us, but also in the story as living actors themselves. I'm putting bad words to your beautiful writing. I think that was in your Substack post today. I was. Um Yeah, so these sacred spaces I think also have that same sort of archetypal duology, maybe. Like they're they're in the space, they are physical spaces, they do all the things that we've discussed. They they weave the heavens and earth, they tie the tethers, they can act as the axis mundi, things like this. And yet at the same time, they're living there. They are that place, and they have that imbued, I hate to use the word animacy, but they have that imbued animacy, that life way, that spirit force that also acts in the story. And so the stories, the myths, carry them in both of those ways. Like the hill of Tara and the Gatmag turd is a place, but also the false stone, which is a the the stone at the hill of Tara, is also a living entity in that story. So it's it's a it's a sacred space, but it's also a sacred being. We have other things that I think I would like to talk about, especially with your slip stack article today. Is there anything left in this chapter, land spirits and sacred space, that you maybe wanted to talk about

Sacred Architecture From Circles To Cathedrals

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:00:11

and we didn't?

Todd Elloitt 1:00:11

I mean, do you Yeah, I I think I was trying to connect those places with uh the shamanic worldview in general and the shamanic worldview with the uh Western magical tradition as well, because I I I'm I'm sort of really my brain, I don't want to say that I'm a lumper. You know, there's two kinds of people, lumper and a splitter, but I'm a person that sees similarities. I I love comparative religion, comparative mythology, and that's kind of how my brain works. So I I see something and I and I say, well, that's that's here, but it's also here. And I don't really think that everybody in the world is doing the same thing, although I could be guilty of being a bit of a perennialist, but I I do think I do think that there's an archetypal level that in which people are our minds are structured, our spirits are structured, and we read that into the world at large. And I I do think, and I said that I said this in the article that I published today, I think that people in North America and people in Europe, ancient people in particular, were very much concerned with the same sorts of realities. And I think these Hopewell and Adina people who constructed these giant earthworks were building magical circles in the exact same way that a magician would construct a magical circle. They were building a sac a circular space. I mean, the medicine wheels out that are out west as well are the same kind of thing. You're you're making a place that the four directions are represented. It's a circle, it's a place where the gods and the spirits can manifest in a ceremony. And yeah, that it is is identical to identical in in form and function to what we do as magicians, except it was their culture. Whereas we stand on that, we stand as outliers into our culture. Um Best was a nation of perhaps of magicians. That and we whereas we're weirdos, although I have to say, uh being familiar with sacred, a little bit, not not giant, hugely familiar with sacred architecture in the West, churches are also, I mean, the cathedral is also built with the four directions in mind, and it is also a uh imagomundi, an image of the cosmos, in the same way that uh in the same way that a magic circle or uh even a earthwork, a Hopewell earthwork is. I mean, the sacred space embodies the archetypal characteristics of the spiritual world. And you know, and if you throw a tree in there, you've got the you've even got the tiered structure, like the Sundance. I've actually been to a Sundance, which I was fortunate enough to I don't I don't know if if it it was there was one done in Kentucky, actually, in uh maybe the early 2000s at my friend's farm. They had they were connected with a group of Lakota people from the Dakotas, and they performed the Sundance. They I don't they I they performed it on their farm, and it was so long ago. I I I came over several days. I didn't stay over there and I didn't I didn't dance, but I came to be there and to experience to watch the ceremony. And uh but it's the same thing there. You have the tree in the middle of the circle, and the people are dancing and hanging from the tree. You it's the it's the image of the cosmos where the people are suffering for enlightenment. Um, it was a pretty powerful experience. I I don't know how often it's done in Kentucky, but it was done there at this place, and I got to see it. I'm very fortunate.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:04:04

When ceremony in place within the idea of a sacred space has so long been tended, it does grow a new sort of power, I think. Time, I think, space-time, I think plays a part of that. I'm not saying that new ceremonies are insuperior, but old ones seem to have a different power.

Todd Elloitt 1:04:27

Maybe

Reclaiming Ancient Names For Earth

Todd Elloitt 1:04:28

Corbick Residence, Rupert Sheldrick. In one of his books, he talks about how old ceremonies are seem to be more effec effective, and that the ceremony is kind of conservative because of that. Um I believe that. I I know that I much would have preferred to do some use of and also I I think old words are more sacred to me anyway. Like I was reading a uh somebody posted a note, uh a fellow, I don't I don't remember his name offhand, but he posted a note on Substack about um this ancient Indo-U Proto-Indo-European word for um the earth mother, Degon Mether. And immediately he said it's one of the oldest words in the Western in the West for the Earth Mother. And he he said to I think I think it was his name is Andreas, I don't remember. He he's he's um anyway, fellow that has this on the back.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:30

You probably do this stuff. I think I commented on that.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:05:34

He was an older guy, it was a video.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:36

Yeah, it was a video. Yeah, I think I caught it that's he does some great stuff on he does some very hedonism too.

Todd Elloitt 1:05:42

Um that's interesting. And uh I immediately I was like, that is what I've been looking for. We were about to do a ceremony that day for our sort of the beginning of our cultural season and our plowing, and I was I immediately I was gonna pull out my little Earth Mother statue and my little Freyer statue. And burn some burn some incense and make some offering to plow. And I immediately I was like, this timing couldn't be better because I'm going to perform this ritual today. And immediately I was like, an ancient word for the earth mode. This is exactly what I mean. So I'm not just saying English or or even Greek. I mean, gay or Demeter is great, but this is older. This is Proto-Indo-European. This is like seven years old.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:06:23

Greek comes from ancient Greek, ancient Greek from Proto-Hellenic, Proto-Hellenic from PIE, Proto-Indo-European.

Todd Elloitt 1:06:29

Yeah, this is old.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:06:31

Yeah. I commented because I'll I'll say this because it's funny. I commented, I said, um, he's not wrong in any way. He's not wrong. You can't be wrong in a reconstructed language. Their language doesn't exist. It's all reconstructed. So how can you be wrong? But I said, just to be clear, the the word for earth is Greny. Greno is the word for earth. Dagom is the word for earth mother. So he's not wrong. But to say Dagom Molter, however he pronounced it, is like saying Earth Mother, Mother.

Todd Elloitt 1:06:58

Right.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:06:58

It's saying like mother, mother. Like Dagom is Mother Earth. Grenyo would be Earth, as in soil, the ball we ride on, this globe, etc. Isn't that interesting? So it's Dagom. And the reason that it matters, I told him, and we had a good conversation about it, him and I, but the uh suffix um or yos allows Dagom to become Dagom Yos or Dagom Yo, which literally means the child of Earth, mother. Earthling, it could be translated as. So Dagom is Mother Earth, Dagom Yol is you and me. And so I I I I agree though. I I find that to be unbelievably powerful.

Todd Elloitt 1:07:38

Yeah, yeah. I and usable it fit right in. And I I'm still using that, and I thank him for bringing that to my attention. And well, we do have the word demeter, right? Demeter, demeter, I'm not sure how it's pronounced exactly. But that seems to it does seem to combine. Although I was listening to the Golden Bow yesterday as I was riding around on the tractor, and um Fraser says that Di was an ancient Greek word for barley. So demeter is the the barley mother. And I was I was thinking about Dagon Mether when I when I heard this, when I when I ran across that again. Who knows? I I mean, like you said, you can't really be wrong with a reconstructed language because you're it's it's reconstructed and it's a scholar's conjecture, really.

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:08:26

But even, you know, mother, mother, however you want to pronounce that, even even that is genetic. It has genetic children to it, meaning that what you're saying is you're it's the genetic mother of Earth. Uh there's another word that's not coming to me that is like like the womb holder. You would trans maybe translate it better, Tras. I should look it up and I'll put it in the show notes if I can find it. But like it's like the all mother, maybe is is a little bit more Nordic way of saying it, but like the all mother is not motare. Mother is like the woman whose womb

Final Reflections And Farewell

D. Ffrith Griffith 1:09:00

I came out of, which still is probably not wrong when you're speaking about Earth Mother, right? But at the same time, there's so much variation. Dejare, Dejare is the Proto-Celtic um child of Degam, Dejare. So as the Proto-Indo-European language moved west, especially around 6000 BC, um, it permutated or evolved, if you will, into Dejare. So Dejare is what I use. It's a little bit more localized to me and my ancestors, dejare.