Are you interested in angels? Demons, spirits, ghosts, monsters. Are you curious about the origins? An influence upon history and on the present day. If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. Yesterday I had the pleasure of appearing as a guest on Paranormal Radio, which is a UK-based YouTube channel that goes through and interviews other uh people that are involved in the paranormal space. And it was a ton of fun.
The link for that will be down in the description. So please feel free to check that out if you would like. Otherwise, the website is getting some updates. I'm actually adding in a uh homegrown content management system for the site. I've actually been writing press releases for a few of our episodes. There's going to be some recurring news, some bulletins, some blog posts that's all going up there. The first batch of which are going to be some protection information that uh Lee Taru from our Discord channel actually provided me.
And you can actually hear her episode, which is entitled A Demontic Haunting. But otherwise, we are going to get back into our conversation with Rocky from Macabre World Podcast. In this episode, we actually discussed a good bit of topic. Everything from bullying to death right to Catholicism, and then her amazing jewelry that she actually sells on her website. So sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy the last piece of our interview with Macabre.
One of the things I rely back on, me personally, my personal spirituality is I think I have evolved into a universalist. Meaning I I absolutely support and encourage anyone who has a spiritual affiliation to get the most they can out of it. I don't I'm not gonna argue who's right or who's wrong. I think everybody's got a little bit of the right idea, and I think it's also okay if you think nobody's got a right idea to not be part of any of it. But I grew up in a very and I'm trying to think of a possible painfully Catholic family.
And and I I made a quip uh when we spoke briefly before the show. I said, by the time I I received first communion, my preparation for that was like a second-year seminary student. And and in no way am I am I downing all of that knowledge, it's just it's a kind of heavy atmosphere. And in in my my mom's culture, that's how you did it. You know, do you you you it was a very, very heavily religious culture. So I you know, you I think it was destiny that I was not gonna be a full-fledged, awesome Catholic because I was always looking for loopholes.
And I think part of being a great skeptic and part of being, you know, a terrific lapsed Catholic is looking for loop though loopholes. And and I I think that that when you have somebody who's uh not familiar, maybe I think on a whole, it's like the general public may not be familiar with how sacraments work, how rites work within the canon law of the church. To have a lay person suggest that they are able to perform a sacramental rite seems unusual. They can assist.
There was a time when lay people didn't touch the Eucharist, and then now they have Eucharistic ministers who can who can do who will assist at mass, before it was only the priest. I mean, they've they've they've definitely loosened that up a bit. But at the time that there were claims made about exorcisms being something that lay persons could do, I I think that rank faults with me.
Yep, I I am completely there with you on that one. Now, I know that there are some variants of the Catholic Church. Uh, so I know that you have you've interviewed uh Bishop Archbishop Long on your show, in which they make a differentiation between minor rites of exorcism and major rites of exorcism. I still in my heart of hearts, that's still kind of like threading the needle on that one. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.
Well, it's this is gonna be the worst pun of many. The devil is in the details. The devil is surely in the details here. Bisho uh Archbishop Long was uh a fun interview, and he's a terrific human. I think that that I understand that where he's coming to in and it's I think there's there's lots of hairs that got split before the plan filtered down to what we have now. So I in no way am I suggesting that Archbishop Long designed it this way, but I think there was more allowance.
I mean, I think it boils down to the fact of what you what you understood as exorcism versus the minor right, the major right, and I think he really illuminated that very clearly and very well. But I think there may have been some gullibility on the part of the public because in general most people aren't gonna realize there's a minor and a major with exorcism to just gonna watch the movie The Exorcist. The power of Christ compels you to peace soup, and they're just gonna assume that that's how it goes.
I need an old priest and a new priest.
Oh dear, yeah.
It doesn't work like that, but try to find a new priest. Yeah, exactly.
Those are thin on the ground. I think actually, you know, and and this isn't in no disrespect to anyone's faith. I think that um that there has to be a lot of uh what's the word I want? Renovation and updating. Vatican II was in 1963. Just a a a little side message. If if folks in the Catholic Church want more uh practitioners, you need to be more updated and inclusive, I think.
Oh, and and just the sheer amount of priests that actually still refuse to recognize Vatican II, that you know, still only insist that you know the old Latin rites are the only true rights that you know bring true, and even priests that now actively don't you know go against the Pope and don't believe that the Pope is what he's supposed to be, is it just kind of like breaks my mind a little bit. And we got a nice pope now. Yes, we do. And he's a nice pope.
You know, and I've I've probably gone through six popes myself. Uh six or eight popes, I'm not sure. I never counted. And like I said, I'm I'm not I'm I'm no longer, you know, in the games as it were. It's are we losing our sense of the ancient rites in general? Are the folks that are clamoring on and and holding on to pre-Vatican II Catholicism, are they trying to save something? I'm seriously, I I I I think about that.
I mean, because we're all basically That is a wonderful question.
Are they trying to save something, you know?
Uh because I I do think they have a point. I I'm not arguing against that. And in fact, I mean whenever whenever you read about exorcisms in particular, because it does kind of like paint it in a certain light, you know, they do many exorcists say that the older the language in which you can speak, the more effective it seems to be against the the dwelling host. And uh I mean that does make a perverted kind of sense. So maybe there is a lot of justification there.
I'm certainly not pretending to have the answers because I never Yeah, that that's that that's a that's a pretty a pretty open-ended question. But you know, it's all of our definitions have gotten a little slushy, and I think I understand when people want to cling to what they've always known. I I have compassion. Just because I'm a little fly out of the seat of my pants, always looking around the corner for something crazy, kooky, and new to learn, doesn't mean everybody feels that way. And and I'm and I'm very, very accepting and compassionate to people who have firmly rooted opinions.
It doesn't it they don't have to match mine and they don't have to have the same sense of adventure spiritually or otherwise. But there's something to be gleaned in the old versus new. I think that and and and you can just take that from paranormal investigation, you can take that from I had a chance to talk to a terrific guy named Dan Sturgis. Dan Sturgis is out in New York City and uh he's a paranormal researcher. And and he and I were talking about uh like the equipment, because there's a lot of these ghost hunting shows now.
And Dan said something that that really stuck with me, and he was just like, I just bring in a tape recorder and a pat and a pad. We all got cameras on our phones now, you know. If you are responding to a report where somebody heard something or saw something, you got ears, you got eyes. That's about it. He says, You don't need he says the rest of it he says they didn't experience this with all kinds of gadgetry, they experienced it in their everyday life.
If it's something legitimate phenomena, you should be able to at least initially go in there and investigate using the same tools where how is as how as it was observed.
That's true.
In fact, um back to basics kind of way to think about it. I liked that.
Well, honestly, uh like so I was I just got through interviewing my very first paranormal researcher uh on the podcast who was out of Cookville, Tennessee. And you know, he does have a lot of fancy equipment stuff that I've never utilized myself, but he actually advocated, you know, that some of the most basic uh utilities like a pair of dowsing rods, right, was the most effective thing that he's ever utilized. And that was you know fascinating.
I was amazed when I first saw dowsing rods used uh on a paranormal investigation, because in a lot of cultures, that's how you find that's how you that's how you dig a well.
Oh, in fact, where I come from, that's what they're used for. Do you have a water witcher? Tons of people find water with dowsing rods, and they work. Yes, they do. Amazing. It really is.
And and and I had seen that myself because people would be digging for for wells and things like that. I'd seen that's a very old country thing to do. In fact, I had only seen it done, I'd seen it done many times, but I'd only seen it done with a branch, like a Y-shaped branch. Yes, and somebody would delicately balance the branch, and and of course the the the pull would show you where the the the water and that makes some kind of scientific sense.
Not that I can explain it in detail, but I mean it it doesn't seem that paranormal to me that things like polarity energies change when water tables get high. That's just you know elemental. That makes that doesn't seem all that wacky and weird to me. But interesting that it's come into uh the realm of spirit communication.
Exactly.
You know, and and uh I'm in an area now, um like I said it's very cosmopolitan, but going a little bit northwest uh southwest, I guess, from us is like the Pennsylvania Dutch country. And there's a lot of a lot of very unusual customs, a lot of great throwback stuff. The Amish are I've actually have an Amish market that's near that has plenty of Amish folks and I see them on the regular because I shop there and they're delightful humans, but wonderful folks to talk to. But you know, there's a lot of old meats new there, and they kinda like stick in the old. What are they trying to save?
I think it's some I think when you keep thinking about, like I said, the old versus new, the good versus the evil, you look at folks that are holding on to tradition, and exactly half the camp is gonna say, Oh, you're crazy for just not getting up with the times, and the other half says, We don't hold on to this, it's gonna disappear and go away and be gone forever. So it's sort of where do you where do you draw that line? How do you keep the old and renovate into the new without losing your identity?
Well, I grew up, we have a ton of uh of Mennonite communities, and yeah, a lot of them have set up, you know, entire stores which sell the most amazing metalwork. I I love going there and they're free.
Here it's bacon. The bacon is crazy. Bacon and donuts. Oh my god. Oh yeah. That's why I'm not you know, I always tell people, people always ask, you know, are you medium? Oh, no, man, I'm like at least an extra large. But you know what's because of bacon and Amish donuts. Not everybody feels this way, I understand, but I think there's this ex we have this xenophobia that has become at least moderately fashionable. Certain climates, certain personalities, certain popularities, and in some circles have made it okay to ex to express extreme xenophobia.
And I'm I'm not cool with that, so I don't do it. And I'm I'm I'm not into into I I just sometimes I step back. I took one anthropology class too many. I step back and I look at folks who are arguing about their differences, and if they would just take a moment and realize how much they are the same, they'd be staggeringly, staggeringly. And we have so much more in common. Words of Sting in the 80s when we had our first We Hate the Russians deal. The Russians love their kids too. Do you know the Blue Turtles kind of changed my life? It was a great album, you know.
But you know, it's it's it's a crazy, it's a crazy thought. We're all we're all arguing about minutiae indifferences instead of embracing our same. What's the evil that we're fighting? I mean, we we want to get into this yin-yang, this good versus evil, old versus new. We don't know who's right and who's wrong anymore. We don't have the answers anymore. We don't know what's, you know, what is there an afterlife, a before life? This one's an atheist, that one's this one, you know.
And we're all just gonna argue about it instead of saying, Why don't we try to, you know, support each other and learn together.
In fact, there was a uh there's an American philosopher called uh Alistair McIntyre, who wrote in one of his books that was kind of famous, that we have forgotten how to hold a civil discourse on morality ever since 1947. And he goes through a lot of reasoning as to why that date in particular, but you know, I I've always have found that like a a truly intriguing way of thinking about things.
So well, I'm a huge, huge fan, I'm a big reader, and and I'm an uh an incredibly uh huge fan of Arthur Miller, the playwright. And I I loved that he did a a direct allegory to the McCarthy trials in his play The Crucible. Exactly.
And there was there was and you know, I think the amount of insight speaking as somebody who grew up not too far off from Salem Mass and uh went there frequently because there was all our field trips were like Salem, Bunker Hill, Old North Church. Been there a lot. Well we do all these great, great cool field trips learning history when we were we were kids in like you know third, fourth, fifth grade. And it was all revolutionary war because it was all around us. We had all these monuments, we had all these plaques, we had lots of cannons and everything.
And so somewhere around April, somebody said, Oh no, we better catch them up to at least like Vietnam. And then so I I learned about the the the you know the the American Revolution for six months and the la the next two months we're just trying to catch up to V to get to at least get to the Vietnam War. But we went to all these all these cool places and go in in Salem when you experience like what's what Salem is like and and you look at learn about those trials, they were highly political.
It was it was a brilliant al brilliant reference on Mueller's part to link that to the to the witch trials because it was hugely political. Do I think that they were actual metaphysical witches? I don't know. I have lots of people I know who say they're witches and that's okay. They practice a religion that that that that embraces that and that's awesome and they're and they're great. I have lots of friends who say there are a lot of things. I was an EMT for many, many years. I had a I had a patient say he was a fire truck. It's all okay.
So, you know, it's all perception, it's all reality, whatever. And and somebody else's perception is their reality, not to say that I'm I don't want to sound either pedantic or or I don't want to sound condescending. I'm I'm okay with everybody's okay. But when whether they were metaphysical witches or not, and and I do, you know, understand that they had a they had so you know when you have somebody who's from the West Indies, Tichuba who was kidnapped as a slave and and brought there was from the West Indies, her beliefs are gonna look different than Puritan beliefs in a big way.
But y a lot of people don't realize that that you know, some things I like to consider when looking at some of these famous cases are things like ergot poisoning. There's a lot of food and drink that probably wasn't stored really well. So you're gonna get some of your molds and things. And the other thing that drives me is the political gain. The fact that when you were accused and arrested for wit witchcraft, you had to pay for your imprisonment until trial. And they made a nice, tidy, steep fee for your imprisonment. So if you could not pay that fee, you forfeited part of your land.
And some some folks have kind of like looked at it from a different angle and said, Alright, let's say JJ, you and I are neighbors. I got five acres, you got ten acres, and there's a five acre parcel that's right up against your land that I want, and I ask you to sell it to me. And you don't want to sell it to me because you think I'm a jerk. You're not wrong. So you don't want to sell me your five acres. If someone could be casual to point at you and accuse you, you go into debtor's prison.
What's gonna hap I mean now go into prison and you're gonna incur debt, and then the debt has to be paid off by the sale of your lands. Who's gonna be first in line to buy it? Right.
And if one goes and searches a lot of these, there's a few books that explore this. You'll see that there's some interesting land transactions that seem to heavily suggest that there could have been some political motivation. So you have bored teenage girls, somebody with some unusual beliefs that were brought in from a different place in a different culture, and then you have people, you know, you have avarice, you have greed.
And I mean, just to divorce it from, you know, from the maneuvering or actually to embed it even firm more firmly into the maneuvering aspect, you know, if you have a woman who is very outspoken, what better way to get her out of your hair than to accuse her of something like that? I mean, it it's sad to say. And you know, there's been a lot, especially in this current political climate, there's been a lot of uh hypothesizing about that with the you know current supposed rolling that's gonna be handed down on Roe versus Wade, and you know, it's it's a more than a little bit chilling.
Well, you know, it it becomes the handmaid's tale. And I think that was uh another brilliant piece of literature that I I know that everybody talks about it, but I think we're gonna see that book turn into a classic a lot sooner than you thought. In our lifetime moments there and and things like that. Well, you know, talking about who's a witch and who isn't, you know, my grand my grandmother from Portugal was kind of kinda kooky. She was very uh she was very religious, but she also had like a a very syncretic way of approaching that.
And you know, she enjoyed things like you know, she told fortunes with cards, she she read tea leaves, she had statues of saints that she dressed in different outfits, which is a little unusual to some, but having shrines in the home, if you if anyone travels abroad, uh that's not that unusual. It's not that weird. It's a little weird. I I I'll go with that, but it's not that strange. And of course, growing up around that, I I I don't think it's all that odd at all.
But you know, there was all of this symbolism, all of this this rich symbolism, and she was not allowed to draw she she actually was gonna become a nun. And she was kicked out of the comment for being outspoken, for being a little different, and and that kind of thing. So when you're outspoken and when you're different, if somebody's got a religious square peg, that round, you're not gonna get, I mean, uh you're not gonna get it through a round hole. And I think that's great.
Speaking about shrine uh and icons just in general, I mean, that's actually what got me to convert. I mean, that's actually what piqued my interest in the Catholic Church to begin with. We were walking in the doors of St. Teresa in Farmville, Virginia, and I thought I had was about to bump into somebody, and I turned around to excuse them. I mean, to excuse them. Myself and it was actually an icon of St. Teresa herself. It kind of threw me because I had never seen icons before ever. And that and going to Japan and seeing like personal shrines uh dedicated to uh to deceased family members.
It uh you know, if you're not from there, it kind of takes your breath away and it gives it even more of a reverence than what you may feel if you were not originally a part of that tradition or that background.
I think it's I think it's a wonderful way to to express respect and grief and and to work through those those those feelings. Respect, love, and grief, I think are are very difficult at those times, and I think having something that honors them I mean you see those I I love funerary culture, which probably makes me sound like a real death nerd, which is kind of true. I am a death nerd. But it's that's the way it should be. Right, you know, but looking at funerary culture, I mean, my two favorite funerary cultures are the Victorians and the Egyptians. Because in both cases it got way overdone.
It's where they really took it and ran with it. I think some of the lingering and I don't think a lot of people realize we're a lot of these lingering customs that we have, like eating a meal after the funeral, or the collation, if you will, or or whatever you want to call that post-funeral get-together. Well, I mean, it's true in a lot of cultures you celebrate good, bad, and otherwise, you bond together over food.
But there was, you know, that can go back to some of the the sin eating a custom in in the medieval times in in Europe, where when someone died, you could pay someone to eat a meal for their soul to to benefit their soul. They're called sin eaters. And that there's been some interesting Hollywood adaptations. And the custom of the collation after the funeral has really evolved, or at least there was, could it have, from that synedian concept. I mean, the whole you eat after the funeral. Right.
You know, so and there's some parts of the United States where that's where you are gonna get the greatest, greatest plate of like scallop cheesy potatoes you ever will have. That's true.
Oh, those funeral potatoes are no joke. Those are no joke.
I'll be I'm you know, I'm I'm from New England and I'm and I'm half Italian. I'm always just waiting for them to roll out the eggplant. But you know. Don't mind me, I'm just waiting for the eggplant. Yeah. I'll just sit here and pick a date. Yeah.
Uh have you ever heard of uh Fayum?
Fayume.
Yep. It's fascinating. So it's later Egyptian. What would happen is that before you died, you would get your portrait painted. And these portraits are beautiful. They're like you know, a thousand years before Vic, you know, before Victorian era paintings, but they look almost identical. They're just they're the most beautiful ancient art I've seen. And after you die, you would become mummified. They would roll your body back into your house, you would continue to eat with your family, and they would then modify the portrait with uh celestial jewelry.
So they would paint you with a crown on, with stars on, some other symbolism, and yeah, it like the uh the MFA, uh the Museum of Fine Arts in uh Boston, they have an extensive faiume collection, and it's just it they're beautiful.
That's incredible.
But it's beautiful.
Well they they you know the the the preparation and the ritual for funerary custom is is no small thing, you know. And I I think a lot of people don't realize how much of it filters into our our our modern life, you know. I never like the funeral home, we always call it a funeral pala. I mean, I don't know if that's part of it is colloquial to my region, but there was a time, and it was not in my lifetime, I can honestly say, I don't want to make any any any claims that are not true. I have never attended a wake in a home.
But I am one Kevin Bacon away from a whole generation of people where that's all they did. And because my mom, you know, she says, Oh yeah, we always waked at home. My mom is from a very humble uh family, and she says, That's what she did. You know, they were laid out in the front parlor in the parlor or whatever you put the accent, but they were they were laid out in in the front room and and people came in, paid their respects, and then and the wake was done and and that and that type of thing.
And it's these customs are are still in place because we still have the wakes that we have today, people have a meal after the thing. There's a lot of different uh customs I think that we hold on to. Which is why when we go back to talking about people who are desperately holding on to the old w you know, how do we incorporate it? How do we get them comfortable enough to loosen their grip? How do we get them into the next level of involvement? And I think if you actually look at that concept through a number of cultural things, that's that's that's half the problem.
It's people whether it's a political opinion, religious opinion, you get folks rooted so deeply into one section and they're terrified to lose their grip because then it's gonna be anarchy. Then the monsters are gonna get us. And the monsters are gonna rule us. Whatever the they're afraid of is gonna happen. They're gonna create their own reality of fear. And which is I think one big reason why horror movies are so popular, because the more outrageous, the more crazy. We love that. Because then it then that's what's real horror. What's happening day to day isn't horrible.
Exactly.
It's our it's our fantasy, it's our fantasy comparison. But if we could learn how to like just get to a point where we could just loosen our grip a little. Of course I'm not speaking of myself, everybody knows I ain't tied up tonight. So my grip, my grip's gone.
The the I I think that the you know, the more someone views the world only in pure shades of black and white, you know, the more stuck they're going to be in whatever worldview they have. And honestly, that is one of the to roll it back, you know, one of the greatest benefits of being part of a melded culture is there's less chances of seeing a world in pure black and white, and you get gray that mixes into everywhere. And the more viewpoints that you have, the the less dark the world can become. So at least that's the way it was for me.
I think I think I agree absolutely in in the sense, like you said, you get into shades of gray, it gets chromatic, you get lots of different hues, you get lots of different ways to to to see things. You get to see things through a kaleidoscope that changes instead of just the one static view, because you know, everybody's gonna see things a little bit differently. And I think part of the reason I've enjoyed that and I've learned things, like I where I live now, you cannot I've lived in different places in the United States, even though I I grew up in New England.
But like where I live, I live not too far off from the New Jersey Pine lands. And the famous, most famous story coming out of the New Jersey Pine lands and arguably is the Jersey Devil. And you can't swing a dead cat not that you should, in New Jersey, at, let's say, a gathering or at a at a tavern, perhaps. Or as we say up up north, you can't swing a dead cat in a bar, New Jersey, without running yourself into somebody who has either seen the Jersey Devil or run into Bruce Springsteen.
Those are the two stories you'll hear in about our New Jersey, is that somebody had a Jersey Devil experience or they met Bruce Springsteen. Jersey people, you kookie, I love you. But yeah, that's that's what you hear. But when I lived down in in Washington State, I lived in in Yakima, Washington for about a year in the in the 90s, which is a very interesting experience, and there's some some terrific people out in that area of the country. And the scenery, if you've never seen it, is just uh breathtaking.
But you know, any place you sit out in Washington State, any bar in Washington, you're gonna hear the Bigfoot story. And, you know, because we all got crazy stuff. We got the Bigfoot, we got the the whole, you know, and wherever you go, there you are, you're gonna you're gonna get even small places are cosmopolitan when you start talking about the creepy.
Exactly. So I don't wanna miss the chance of getting to talk about this. Looking at your website, there are some beautiful pieces of artwork there. Thank you. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
I make jewelry out of real human bone. And that's usually like one of those record slide scratch conversation stopper moments. I make jewelry out of real human bone. And somebody goes, What? Yes, yes. Um they are and and I I'm not very cagey or strange or mysterious, I'm sorry to say, about the origin of the bones. They are retired medical specimens. There are bone brokers that that buy and sell uh human remains, and it's not a dark, dire type thing.
They are collectors, usually medical enthusiasts, and for whatever reason, so there are and for some reason the odd fellows have tons of skeletons in their closets, quite literally. So they're there are bone bro and I think bones are beautiful. I grew up uh uh looking at all those old gravestones made of slate in those New England graveyards from the pilgrims and stuff. And like John and Priscilla Alden's daughter is buried in in in little comp in Rhode Island. I used to regularly walk through that cemetery, you know, and see her stone. So we're rooted in some really, really deep history.
And a lot of those stones had the wings, skulls, and I started falling in love with just falling in love with the imagery. And being the creepy kid, I was actually a bullied kid, and I was uh the bullies were afraid to go in the cemetery, so they chased me in there, but they wouldn't go in, but they wouldn't let me out, and I ended up just like finding hours of amusement just going through the the stones and stuff. So you know, little do they know that they they they they inspired a love for the history and art and art uh of of a cemetery. And and I was never afraid.
In fact, to this day I find them very peaceful, restful places. So I love bones, I love skeletons, I love bones, and I think bones are a great equalizer. You know, skin color fades, body shape fades. When we get down to the skeletal level, we are all the same. That's what we have in common. The rest of it and you know, and that's not to say I ignore the differences, I celebrate them. I think they're fun. Because then we'd all be the same, we'd be boring. But I love skeletons, and so I love to take bones, and these are people that donated their bodies to science.
There's no no ill, ill acquisition here and elevate it into something artful. When these skeletons are no longer used in the teaching classrooms, they typically get broken up for parts for everything for search and rescue to you know, art to the bone dealers. So I've been making human bone jewelry and I want to say 2017 was when we officially went, I think that's when I really went out and got official and got my license and started really making pieces. I had done a piece or two for myself at that time, but uh it's it's polarizing.
I just did a show yesterday and and people either dig it or they don't.
That so you have to get a license for that?
A business license, just like you sales tax and all that good stuff. Because I'm legit. I'm a rule follower.
That is that is truly phenomenal. I mean, what uh so I understand, you know, the the fascination with it, but uh when did you come up with the idea to even start doing that?
I had always wanted, and I and I I'm I can't remember what movie it was. It was might have been something cool like The Serpent and the Rainbow and somebody had a bone necklace on. Because the bone necklace was is you see those in a lot of kooky old movies, and and you know, it's always somebody like either either somebody they're trying to depict somebody either on the voodoo side of things or somebody like uh a lot of times it's some sort of like head-shrinking Brazil thing or or some such nonsense.
And of course, now as an adult I realize that voudon and candomblé are very much not Hollywood religions per se. But I I always said, you know, they're so beautiful. And I was looking at a web page that had just one vertebra, and I was looking at the channels of it. And I I worked in the medical field for a long time, so I find myself going through Grey's Anatomy. My father was an art teacher, and uh one of the things he gave you to to help you learn to draw, and one of the things he always said, he says, You need to know what's underneath to draw like a portrait.
You need to know where the muscles of the face are. So my dad's drawing textbook for all of you know for all any two of his students, and of course I wasn't officially a student as I was his kid, was Gray's Anatomy. So bones and muscles and all of that was very cool. And the more I looked at it, the more I saw beauty. And isn't that what art is? You see beauty where others don't. You show it to them and make it.
That's amazing. It really is. I mean, uh if y'all haven't uh seen this, I highly recommend you to go check it out and take a look because they really are beautiful. Uh where can they uh where can they find not only your podcast, but also your your jewelry collection, etc.
At www.darkerartsstudio.com. There are pages for the podcast, there are pages for the for the jewelry. I do custom work too, so if you know you have something you'd like that you don't see, you said I've always wanted one of these, let me know. We'll figure out. We'll get something where you can show them your darker art side.
That is beautiful. Well, uh, I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed this conversation. In fact, I I think it's one of the first that I've ever had in which, you know, yes, you talked a lot, but I think I talked, you know, a a decent bit myself, and normally I just kind of like hand it over. But uh this was like probably the first like true conversation I've had on this podcast, and it was awesome. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Well, I absolutely enjoyed it. I hope you'll have me back. I'd love to have you back on ours. I love a good intellectual discourse. We I think the whole world needs to sit around, question, talk, and bond more about what we're curious about. I think that's what we do.
I mean, I mean she I completely agree. All right, my friend. Well, thank you so much again. And again, you can uh you can find her at darkerartstudio.com, or you can always find the link on southerndemonology.com under the friends of the of the show page. So Rocky, it was a pleasure. Same here. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com, where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedback that you may have.
As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.