Our Numinous Nature

Doug Elliott is a naturalist, herbalist, storyteller, musician, author, illustrator and something of a living legend in Rutherford County, western North Carolina. After a story about deciphering the secret language of trout, we open on Doug's early career as a 1970's traveling forager. Now, no Doug Elliott conversation would be right without a 101 on groundhog-ology ranging from how to make groundhog shoelaces to understanding the medicinal properties of groundhog grease. The natural next step from groundhogs is opossums, Doug recounts the time he befriended an eccentric Alabama mayor who happened to be the president of the Possum Growers & Breeders Association of America. From there its on to folkways & more encounters with the natural world: doctoring a wounded hunting dog with strips of bark; a life lesson learned from a spruce grouse; eating poison ivy; folk names for regional plants & birds; and the inspiration for his latest book about bees. 

Purchase Doug's books at Dougelliott.com

Music by Doug Elliott

"Oh Groundhog"
Written & Performed by Doug Elliott

"West Virginia"
Written & Performed by Doug Elliott

"Aint No Bugs on Me"
Written & Performed by Doug Elliott

"Wonderful to be be Alive"
Written & Performed by Doug Elliott


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Contact: [email protected]

Luke Manget is an author, historian, and assistant professor of history at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. After a reading from an 1870’s newspaper about a strange race of beings known as “saugers,” we dive straight into the significance of ginseng on the American frontier [1780’s], specifically in southern Appalachia: Va, WV, NC. We get into such topics as: the commons vs private property; old world mandrake folklore; & deterring poachers with traps. Luke then describes the ginseng digger stereotype as perpetuated & mythologized by newspapers of the late 19th-century, opening a discussion about class in Appalachian society. For the last third of the episode we hear about the other roots and herbs that were dug for profit besides ginseng; the counter-medical-establishment herbalism movement of the 1800's; and lastly, newspaper accounts of The Wild Man of the Woods.

Reading from Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia by Luke Manget.

Check out Luke's site The Southern Highland where you can purchase his book, Ginseng Diggers.

Music:

"Ginseng Sullivan"
Written by Norman Blake
Performed by Andy & Graham Ferrell
Courtesy of Old Home Place Recordings

"Ginseng Blues"
Written by the Kentucky Ramblers
Performed by The Bird Family Band

"Weary Blues"
Traditional Song
Performed by Andy & Graham Ferrell
Courtesy of Old Home Place Recordings

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Contact: [email protected]

Bobby Baranowski is a past life practitioner, author & former professional musician residing in Asheville, North Carolina. We begin this metaphysical trek in the mountains of "Sedona East" with its many vortexes; then dive headlong into Bobby's Asheville Past Lives Project in which he practices a non-hypnotic past life regression method called The Awareness Techniques. He walks us through the steps and speaks to one's emotional responses as the key to validate the imagery. Bobby shares his own visionary experiences with his "time awakening" and past and future lives, as a 29th-century south-westerner, an ancient monk, a cruel rich man and a shamanic drummer.  We explore the mystery of creativity and its ability to tell the future; and ask metaphysical questions like: Do we choose our incarnations? Have we ever been the perpetrator? Do we have a spiritual journey across many lifetimes? Does genealogy matter? Do the dead pass knowledge to the living? And so on, culminating in Bobby's most profound past-life story about a light being 30,000-years-ago. 

Check out The Asheville Past Lives Project to book a session

Reading from Other Lives, Other Selves: A Jungian Psychotherapist Discovers Past Lives by Roger J. Woolger, Ph.D.

Music by BAILE

"The Lamb" (BAILE REMIX)
Sampled Vocals by John Tavener & Music by BAILE

"Magic"
Written & Performed by BAILE

"Confronting the Monster"
Written & Performed by BAILE

"I Loved You"
Written & Performed by BAILE

"Out of Sorts"
Written & Performed by BAILE

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Eric "Mubita" Sheppard is a U.S. Air Force veteran, family historian, and the visionary founder of Mubita LLC in Williamsburg, Virginia. We open on Eric's early life in Baltimore and the events that led up to his spiritual genealogy quest, one in which he was guided to the slave narrative of an ancestor unbeknownst to him, Moses Grandy. Born into slavery in North Carolina, we hear of Moses' life [1786-1843]: working the canals in The Great Dismal Swamp; the nightmarish death of his brother; cruelties of slavery; and finally, buying his freedom. Eric tells of guiding trips to Lake Drummond to share this history with the likes of formerly incarcerated men. We end on Eric's profound trip to Zambia where he met the Litunga [king] of Barotseland & founded a partnership to connect descendants of American slavery - especially in Virginia - to their African heritage. 

Check out Eric's mission at Mubita LLC.

Reading from Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America.by Moses Grandy


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William Balderson is the Director of Living History & Historic Trades at Jamestown Rediscovery [Historic Jamestowne] in Virginia. After readings from John Smith's accounts about Pocahontas, the local fauna & corn planting, our guest describes his singular life path as a career living historian. From there Willie illustrates the events leading up to the Jamestown expedition including the infamous Roanoke Lost Colony. On this deep dive, we learn of John Smith's life as a mercenary & slave prior to Jamestown; the Pocahontas legend; John White the 16th-century watercolorist of indigenous life in the Carolinas; Powhatan's eagerness for the technological advantages of trading with the English; and other tidbits from Smith's journals such as raccoon capes, birchbark canoes and a native deer hunting technique. We end this history lesson on a reflective note, as Willie describes the feeling of interpreting the past on the actual site where it took place.

Plan your trip to Historic Jamestowne

Readings from The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, & the Summer Isles by Captain John Smith and The Jamestown Adventure: Accounts of the Virginia Colony, 1605-1614 edited by Ed Southern


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David Givens is the Director of Archaeology at Jamestown Rediscovery [Historic Jamestowne] on the James River in the Tidewater region of Virginia. After a nightmarish reading of the trials of the early Jamestown colonists, we start at the beginning of an archaeological quest to find the lost 1607 fort; the first permanent English settlement in America, where the worlds of the English Empire & Powhatan Confederacy clashed, and the legends of John Smith & Pocahontas were born. After describing the rediscovery project, we head over land and water to Chief Powhatan's village, Werowocomoco, to hear of the indigenous preservation efforts underway. Then it's on to artifacts dug up over the decades: English pipes inspired by Native American design; foodways like iguanas and corn cobs found in middens & wells; glassworks; distilling & herbalism. For his story, David tells of his involvement in the disturbing discovery of colonial cannibalism dating back to a harrowing period called The Starving Time [1609-1610]. We end this epic episode on the first English-American wagon road and musings about reincarnation, the wheel of fortune, and Terrence Malick's film "The New World."

Plan your trip to Historic Jamestowne

Reading from The Jamestown Adventure: Accounts of the Virginia Colony, 1605-1614 edited by Ed Southern

Music:

"Daphne"
Performed by The Telemann Society, Richard Schulze

"Mr. Beveridge's Maggot"
Performed by The Telemann Society, Richard Schulze


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Check out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my art

Contact: [email protected]

Sissel Morken Gullord is a Scandinavian musician and singer living on a farm in Biri, Norway. We begin this enchanting musical episode by heading up to the saeter - the summer mountain farm - to hear the instruments, songs, and herding calls of the bygone milkmaids and shepherds, starting with the bukkehorn [goat horn]. Sissel describes how they're made and how livestock reacts to both the horn and a whimsical style of calling called kulning [or hujing in Norwegian]. We hear the blasting of a lur, a long wooden horn and followed by her commission by Disney. Opening up the more magical and sublime side of nature, Sissel tells a story about performing for hunters and foresters in which she spoke to them about the folkloric forest nymph known as Hulder and the accompanying huldra-folk [elves]. We wrap up this slice of Norwegian culture on folk song motifs, the nation's famous brown cheese, and bunad [the traditional rural clothing from the 1700-1800's]. 

Check out more of Sissel's music on Spotify & YouTube.

Reading from Folktales of Norway edited by Reidar Christiansen

Reference images:
- Hans Dahl romantic milkmaid painting
- Example of a traditional Norwegian home interior decorated with rosemaling
- 2nd Example of folk paintings on walls of home
- Norwegian woman playing the lur
- Bunad traditional clothing

Music by:

"Kulokk - Call On The Cattle"
Performed by Sissel Morken Gullord

"Kråkevisa"
Performed by Sissel Morken Gullord

"Lokker geitebukker med bukkehorn"
Performed by Sissel Morken Gullord

"Bukkehorn & Hujing"
Performed by Sissel Morken Gullord

"Huldrelokk"
Written & performed by Saga Sjöberg

"Till, till Tove"
Performed by Sissel Morken Gullord

"Den Bakvendte Visa"
Performed by Sissel Morken Gullord

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Mike Smith is the former superintendent of Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park, as well as an artifact & fossil enthusiast and traditional bow hunter, in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. We begin with his time at Droop Mountain, metal detecting under old oak trees and recounting the regional Civil War history. He tells of park visitors' many ghost experiences and significant archeological finds, such as three boys stumbling upon a Confederate rifle in the steep woods. We turn the pages of time back to arrowheads of the Shawnee and earlier native peoples; then even further back to 300-million-year-old fossils. Half way we switch to Mike's life, starting with his stories of an annual snapping turtle party, followed by his earliest boyhood memories of being a primitive hunter armed with only rocks.  We close on hellbender tongues, making buckskins and a proud father-son moment.

Buy the book Mike helped research, Last Sleep: The Battle of Droop Mountain

 Reading from Confederate Ghosts by Susan Crites

Music by:

"John Brown's Body"
Performed by Pete Seeger

"Mother Kissed Me in my Dream"
Unknown Artist

"In the Pines"
Performed by Dock Walsh

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Kevin Malcomb is a beekeeper, former coon-hunter, welder, and mechanic in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. After a reading about the old frontier profession of the bee hunter, Kevin describes both his own & old time methods of Appalachian beekeeping: traditional "bee gum" hives; keeping ants out; catching feral swarms with a shotgun; how to hunt for wild bee trees from water sources; bee trapping; hive threats such as warm winters, mites, hornets, insecticides, & wax moths. We move on to his unconventional mechanic business run from a used-hearse which opens up musings and intuitions on potential past lives. For the last quarter we hear about coon-hunting in his youth along with an illustrative story about a formidable coon taking on an entire horde of hounds. We end on eating raccoon & less popular wild game; eccentric bird houses; and a sliver of local folk medicine.

Reading from Bees in America: How The Honey Bee Shaped a Nation by Tammy Horn.

Music by:

"Going Across the Mountain"
Written & Performed by Frank Proffitt

"Sourwood Mountain"
Written & Performed by Frank Proffitt

"Rueben Train"
Written & Performed by Frank Proffitt

"Moonshine"
Written & Performed by Frank Proffitt


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Check out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my art

Contact: [email protected]

Chris Semtner is an artist, author, lecturer & curator at The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. In Part II of our Edgar Allan Poe podcast, we begin with an archival recording of "The Black Cat." Then we pick back up where we left off, with "the imp of the perverse” and exploring the psychology of the criminal mind through his villainous characters. After describing a prophetic scene about shipwreck & cannibalism from Poe's only novel, Chris explains the literary genres beyond horror that Poe founded or advanced: the detective story, science-fiction, and perhaps the southern gothic. We then turn back to the biographical, with Poe's death and his mysterious last few days on the streets of Baltimore. From African-American hoodoo to spiritualist mediums, we hear what the paranormal was like in his time, and end on modern sightings of his ghost. 

Check out The Poe Museum and Chris' books.

1954 archival reading of Poe'sThe Black Cat performed by Marvin Miller

1939 archival reading of Poe’s The Raven performed by Nelson Olmsted

Music:

"The Raven"
Written & Performed by The Ivy League Trio

"Quiet Mysterioso; Diver's Dream; Four Cuts"
Written & Performed by The Crawford Light Orchestra

Support Our Numinous Nature on Patreon.

Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on Instagram

Check out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my art

Contact: [email protected]