Exploring Krampus With Monster Lore Tour

SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this week's episode of Three Cups and a Dash of Spirituality, we are slipping into the shadowy side of the holiday season. Today I'm welcoming back Jeremy Carr and joining him as his co-host Moz. Now, Moz is a lore expert who knows every twist and turn of Krampus' story. Yes, the horned holiday troublemaker himself. Now, a quick note before we dive in, this episode is a little darker than our usual cozy chats. We talk about Krampus's mischief, misdeeds, and the folklore that has made him famous. So listener discretion is advised, especially around little ears. If you're ready for a mix of darkness, legends, and a touch of holiday mayhem, grab your mug and let's jump into this episode again with our guests from the Monster Lore Tour podcast. Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Three Cups and a Dash of Spirituality. I am Michelle and I am without my normal co-host today. Each of them have a commitment, but filling their places or standing in for them are two of my favorite podcasters out there. We have Jeremy Carr and Moz. I don't know, is there another name they call you or just Moz?

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Uh Matt Ozero aka the Moz. It's really just Moz. Thanks for having us yet again.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yeah, I'm so happy to have you back. People really enjoyed the episodes you did earlier this year, Jeremy. And last year, around Christmas time, we did just a brief overlook on some of the different tr traditions around Christmas, the different lores. And I wanted to go a little more in depth. And I'm like, who can help me with this? And you too popped into my mind immediately. So thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

This is Moz's wheelhouse right here. I I came on and talked about the nature of true time and things like that. But when it comes to the straight up monster, like real monster lore, this this is where Moz really shines. So it's really going to be a Moz episode today.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

You have to set me up, don't you? You have to be like, yeah, it's going to be amazing. I love your work, man. I love your work. Oh, I appreciate that. We we do good, we do good work. And you guys do good work. We enjoy your stuff as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

So thank you so much. And I love your voices. I think you have the best podcast voices I've heard.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

All right. Well, I I think, you know, you guys are doing like the lighter end as far as you guys seem to be fighting the good fight out there for the greater good. And what we're doing, we're not exactly sure. So maybe you can we're kind of peering into the dark side a lot. We're more best diving.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Yeah. Maybe perhaps more than we should. I I really like your guys' ghost investigation, like ghost hunting, but it's almost like ghost helping investigation. Yeah. Your guys' approach to that is great. I actually have been really been enjoying those episodes particularly.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I haven't even shared this yet, but not too long ago I saw that the Warren House they were putting out 90 more nights in their home of the current owners before they close it down and redo everything. And somehow I got one of those nights. So in August, we are going to the Warren House in I think it's Connecticut. So I'm super excited about that. Just thought I'd share that.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Super awesome place.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah, I can't wait. And you guys were talking about us doing like the lighter stuff. And I will say when Jeremy came on that first time and he talked to us about the I don't even like saying it.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah. Oh yeah. We go skin walker.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Yes. Can we air so scary, but we did in its entirety, and it is what it is. It's the lore around it. It's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Yeah. Yeah. It gets pretty dark. And it it we're actually here to help. It's the more you know concepts that, you know, the more you know about these things, the less fear there is, and the more you know how to handle it if things start happening to you and things like that. So uh you know, it's we're we're really just here trying to help, trying to figure some stuff out. Yeah. That's what it's really about.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

No, that's true. And I mean, I never would have thought that they're just really there protecting lands and keeping everybody there in check. And that's kind of what we had talked about in the last episode. So it did give me a little more history on that, and I'm not quite as fearful. Although I still won't say it.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

There you go. That's why I share my story so often, even though it still makes my p spine tingle every time I tell it. Gives me the shakes every time.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Well, today we're gonna jump into Christmas lore. And Maz, you said you have a lot of information on Krampus, who is just so fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Krampus is a character right out of some brother Grimm type fairy tales, uh, the Schwarzwald itself, but he has a kind of a composite character going on. There were a lot of black for, you know, this is we're talking about the Black Forest region of Germany and Austria and some of those Slavic countries, but it's kind of Krampus started out with there was farmhand Ruprecht or Nocht Ruprecht, servant Robert. There's the Svarta Pete that has similar kind of behaviors. There's this Kmutzli, which is not Muttley's, it's not, it's not Dastardly's side. That's that's Mutley. But basically it was these same guys going around punishing children for misbehaving. And this all became part of the Krampus lore of these characters over time, and it really became part of the it during this whole parade this that we'll get to. There's also some overlap with Krampus and the Prect, P-R-E-C-H-T, these mischievous alpine ghosts of the woodlands. Some folklorists point to Krampus as emerging from these forest spirits, the Precked. So a potential forest elemental connection as well to this guy. Krampus is often described as goat-like and swinging around uh birch branches to beat unwary children. His tongue is supposed to be longer than even Gene Simmons is supposedly the Yeah. And is and you know, is it forked the tongue? Yes, yes. But in in most of the pictures I saw. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Serpent tongue then.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yeah. And as as well as doling out these punishments, Krampus is known to even disappear kiddos, sometimes to be dragging them to hell kind of thing. So there's definitely a darker side to this. What comes down to us, I mean, I guess is to be good for goodness sake, is where that comes from. So there's definitely a threat behind that, I guess. Yeah. But see, you know, he's the enforcer of the naughty list, Krampus. Yeah, but he does have bells on his belt. So I think that's a nice touch. You know, he's got that one connection to St. Nicholas that I could find is that he has bells on his belt, so he does jingle. You are, you know, you leave out cookies for Santa. You can't answer this because you know this, Jeremy. But if if you want to guess who what what you have to leave out for Krampus the night before, do you have any guesses? It's nice to put people on the spot as the way we feel.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

I'm I'm thinking like fruit or something. I know we talked about this in last year's episode, but I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

You're close fermented fruit, schnapp. They leave out cookies for Santa and schnapps for Krampus. You gotta leave them a little booze for the Krampus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

That would put me in a better mood too. A little booze.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Well, I don't know if the kids fire a little bit. The kids are gone, have some schnapps. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know where where this really comes from.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

You know, and you're talking about that tie back to Santa Claus and that they both wear bells, but I think if I heard Santa's bells, I would be intrigued and want to find him, but I would be hiding if I knew Krampus was coming and those were his bells I was hearing.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

And the way you'd know it is he comes out the night before. So that it's celebrated in the sixth and some for some pagan cults in some of this area and some of this region. Christmas at St. Nicholas was a December 6th kind of exchanging gifts. So fifth, what you would see, Krampus. Same idea with Christmas Eve versus Christmas. So he comes out the night before for the bad kids, basically. And I and the etymology beside behind Krampus, it means Knight of the Claw, to give you any idea of what a you know kind of a groovy guy this this guy is. And it also could mean dried or shriveled up in some some yeah. So it's basically a strange warm and welcoming, right? Yeah, it's not it's not particularly Christmasy. But for the Christmas version of the celebration, it's called Krampus Lauf. There's a parade called Krampus Lauf, which means Krampus Walk or Run. And this was a parade held every year. And I really feel like, you know, this is where, you know, Krampus really became a goat and be and some of these more pagany and other things, other uh themes and tropes kind of emerged, become this composite character. They anthropomorphized him to be in the parade. Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah. I mean well, you were supposed to dress up as Krampus, so it's kind of the collective unconscious stuff. People went out, and and over the years he this is what he started to look like, basically. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

So in the beginning, he wasn't necessarily goat-like, it's just kind of what tradition has morphed him into and these parades have morphed him into, or has he always had that goat-like appearance?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

The first images he was goat-like. He had these horns. He wasn't fully goat-like, but he was partially. But I think a lot of this came from this parade and came from folklore and came from people dressing up as him over the years. And then, yes, all these composite people who went out to to punish children the night before, eventually they put a face to that. And this is what kind of emerged is this goat-like. Well, you know. Interesting. Exactly. As far as etymology, there's one other piece, I guess, that comes in. Basically, the Krampus Parade is called larvin from the Latin word larva, meaning mask, but the pers so there's a persona aspect to this as well. So it has a ghost spirit kind of connotation that I got from Emily Zarko's Monstrum, by the way. I can send you the show notes if you're interested. In 1932, however, Austria declared war on Krampus, banning him and all his foul deeds. Per good old Wikipedia, the Austr, the Austrian authorities distributed pamphlets at the time that read Krampus is an evil man. Not very imaginative. That's very straightforward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Oh my gosh. Yeah, no, it's scary.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

But very imaginative for those Australians, Austrians out there, I would say. But Santa origins possibly date back to the 11th century in the Germanic form of old St. Nicholas. But of course, his stereanthropic counterpart, Krampus, has origins that are likely much older. Since Krampus sounds a lot like some of the other creatures we've chased on this monster lower tour, we're not really surprised by that. But eventually Krampus became associated with the Christianized devil, probably more so than various his counterpart, Renek Ruprecht, or any of his farmhound the farmhand. Farmhand, yes. Farm because Krampus is part goat and looks a lot like the depictions of the devil. So he has these hoops. Can you explain the farmhand Ruprecht real quick? All of them, again, the only thing to say about them is they were pe they were characters that were known to go out and and catch misbehaving children. So they became kind of lumped and scraped up into the kind of the Krampus lure over time. They didn't look like him. They weren't goat-like. They were just people. It's just an evil dude. Right. Just a dude that was there to punish kids that had misbehaved. Exactly. You know. Pop culture-wise, there's a lot of Krampus movies on Tubi, if you're interested, out there. That's all you really need in life. The show Grim has Krampus episode, by the way, which is a fun one. Check that one out. Even Scooby-Doo has Krampus, Wrath of Krampus, and it's kind of a mystery incorporated. It's kind of the reboot. So the new the next generation Scooby, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

I had no idea. I'm gonna have to look that up. My kids love Scooby-Doo.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

There you go. But basic goat symbolism, we find the positive side of the goat as means new beginnings as an astrological kind of point, but uh an ability to leap over life's obstacles. But on the dark side, we find letcher You can stomach anything. Yeah. There you go. There you go. There you guess right, because they eat everything. But the bad side, you've got this lechery, beastliness component, and of course, a long deep connection to the devil himself, or pan or saturnalia is the other kind of possibility there. Yeah, and we keep talking about this one quote from back in the day, but the first witch's quote had a like a woman riding on a goat swinging a cat. So you've got the the familiar goat instead of a broom. Right. So you got this connection, you know. But there's the theory is, you know, that definitely was created as a composite character, but some people kind of fight the whole concept that Krampus actually has pagan origins again. Back to Emily Zarka, she was saying there's really no evidence for this. I don't see it at all. I I think it kind of grew out of it. Yeah, I think it grew out of it. I think we have some of the same tropes and themes kind of re-emerging in a different form, you know. And overall, the uh the other whole thing is we never tend to see these guys at the same time. You know, and that I think it's like there's a there's a theory that it's Santa's shadow, and one of the first images of of of Krampus, if you look at it, you have Saint Nicholas in front of him, and behind him, this darker figure, the same height, and it looks just like where his shadow would be. And it is this kind of a Jekyll and Hyde moment where Santa once a year. It's Santa's Jungian shadow. It's his dark side. He lets it out once a year, and all his because he has to be so nice, you know, for the other 364 days of the year.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Maybe that's how he gets the magic to actually deliver all his presents all at once all over the world, is he has to let out the daemon the night before to do its thing. Right. And we should talk about it. How's that for some creepy Christmas lore? That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Well, that is pretty creepy. You know, I'm just listening, and you know, Krampus to me has always been associated with mischief and moral lessons that are needing to be dealt out to misbehaving children, while whereas Santa's always encouraged goodness, but you just would get coal if you weren't good. I mean, just so different. But I hear what you're saying, and that's a really good visual representation of it being his shadow.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

But it ties back into just as you said, it ties back into the old bogey where you know they've always used monsters to help kids, you know, stay away from the cliff, stay away from the water. There's always something, and then this version is if you're just generally misbehaving, there's a person who's a correctional officer who's coming out to take care of that. And I think the very worst way. Oh my god, the very worst way. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely and again, if you have a character that comes out right before Christmas, that could disappear you. That is a that was a those and the brothers Grimm were very dark fairy tales. And from this area, we definitely find a lot of even nursery rhymes like Bring Around the Rosies about dying of the plague.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Yep. You know, it's a lot of these things come from such a dark place. Right. And if I always think since Moz has started educating me about Krampus, I think about the song Jingle Bells and taken from Krampus's point of view, and the you know, you re-spell slaying at the end with an AY and it takes on a very different connotation.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yes, it does. Yeah, it sure does. At some point, we'll have to have you on because I think it'd be fascinating to go through some of these fairy tales and nursery rhymes too, and their origin, because I, as you said at the beginning, I like to see the light and find the light and things, but I know there is this dark side of Christmas history and of lore and everything. Do you think Krampus is out there more to symbolize fear, discipline, protection? What do you think his role really is?

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Well, and I and again, I I I think the the the shadow side that emerges collectively or otherwise is not something necessarily evil. It can be. And this is this is a dark way to put it, but that's kind of what I do at Christmas. You know, I kind of ruin Christmas for people.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

We we take turns ruining Christmas every year.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah. But if if Santa is too light, there's got to be this balance. And really the balance between light and dark is ultimately this play of opposites that we're supposed to transcend according to some views and you know So he's the yang to yang. It's not necessarily evil, but and and if you go too light, uh sometimes a real darkness emerges if you're not looking, if you're not checking that light, checking that shadow, doing your shadow work, it's going to come out. And for Santa, that would be and again, forgive me, but this once a year, because he didn't address these things and actually try to surpass them or balance them, this energy becomes out of balance and this truly darker self emerges.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Are you saying that Santa needs therapy?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah, I think Santa needs a nice balance. I mean, if you're if your whole life is a Hallmark moment, I mean, at some point you you go purge, right? Like one day one day a year.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Oh, I sure wish Carissa was here right now. She would be loving every second of this conversation as a therapist. And that is very fascinating, and it's so true.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

I mean Santa, I treat them right now.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Oh, I like that. I like it that you you pull that comparison of light and dark into there because there does need to be balance in the world. So that makes a lot of sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, one of the things, and we found a lot of other, and and like if we ever swing back on, you know, we definitely have looked into the whole thing, and this isn't us doing it, others have looked here, but there's so many tropes that come back from cosmogeny of the Christmas tree and how it relates to the Axis Mundi and the machine elves and people with hallucinations back to the reindeer herders of the circumpolar tribe, where we have shamanic cultures and some of those mushroom cults coming back and and and creeping in through Christmas. So there's all these other themes. And when we started Monster Lord Tour, you know, I really just diving into the actual original text in the In and Archive and looking back through the earliest stuff, you really find these same tropes and themes kind of emerging from these pagan and Wiccan and shamanic cultures that just seem to keep emerging into the same themes and tropes over and over again. So we've tried to figure out a lot of what they might mean. And Krampus is no different. We could actually talk about him for a couple hours and tie it back into a lot of the other things we seem to be see emerging, including theriantropy. Like we see a lot of half man, half animals on cave paintings. We see them in our cryptozoology accounts today, and we see them in the back shadowy side of Santa Claus. So the whole the whole thing. And if you think about claw etymology-wise, just think claws and claws. Santa Claus and Knight of the Claw. I mean, claw and claws, I don't know if there's any Right, it's the Knight of the Claw followed by the morning of the claws. Yeah.

unknown 19:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Wow. That has given me so much to think about.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

And all that about uh the Santa stuff he was just talking about, he covered that extensively in episodes 16 and 17, which was the first time Maz ruined Christmas. Yeah. I ruined Christmas a lot. Got into the whole thing about Santa being tied in with with psychedelic mushrooms. Yeah. Oh my god. It's a very interesting piece of lore. Yeah. He didn't make it up. Like this is real stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Santa dresses very much, and the elves like uh the the Muscaria mushroom. Yeah, and it it explains the flying reindeer and all that, because they like to trip with you. And when people take DMT and mushrooms, they tend to see these elf-like, clown-like beings, and that this kind of again becomes part of the tradition.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

When when you those little guys you're talking to, when you do DMT, those are Santa's little elves, man.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

The Terrence McKenna machine elves.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

So I know that's I know we're uh it's a darker version of Christmas. And I actually took out the dark parts. So I want you to know that. I believe you. I believe you. He looked at it and he goes, Don't say that.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

You can't do that. We did an extended version of this for our own Christmas special.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

And he did the full-on ruining Christmas part. And I'm like, you cannot do this on someone else's podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

No, I'm gonna have to listen to yours also. I knew that that with talking to you, it would take a slightly darker look at some of these lores or traditions around the world. And I was okay with that because I don't know. I I just, I mean, there is that side of it. And as you said, it can't always be rainbows and light. They're darker elements out there that we don't normally focus on. But I do find the lore of it completely fascinating. I did have a question about December 5th. That's a day of the big celebration, which I'm I don't even know if I want to try to pronounce it. How do you say Krampisnacht?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Krampusnacht, which means Krampischnacht, which just means night in German. And Krampus Lauf is the is the parade that's held around there as well, where they dress up as Krampus. But again, the celebration became very dark in and of itself because people are dressing like Krampus, people are threatening other people with violence. Uh, this is why Austria came against it and said, you know, stop, we're stopping the Parade. It was basically a celebration of violence, you know, running around with sticks and whacking each other.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

So I wasn't understanding that part of it. I was thinking Macy Day Parade or something where they're just doing the story.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

So the parade is a bunch of people dressed as Krampus running around hitting people with sticks.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Well, it got that way, yeah, because that's the theme. I mean, you're right, you're if the only thing in your That actually sounds like a lot of fun to me is you're holding these things to go swing at people. That's what happening a lot.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

It's like a run into the bulls kind of thing, right? It's like inherently became inherently violent, and like it's almost the more violent it is, the better it is in a way. Well but it didn't start that way. It turned into that over time.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

But again, this is what the the people came up with. This became part of the lure. And again, I think it rose up from the collective unconscious in that form.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

And I th well it's like you said, eventually you you need the purge.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

If you're living, you know, a whole market too restricted of a life for too long. There's gonna come a time where you'd want to let that out, you know, you're gonna kind of blow your top and let out the steam.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yep. So do your shadow work, kids, you know. Keep keep a check on that.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Definitely. So do you think it increases tourism in areas such as Austria, Bavaria, and northern Italy during this time because people want to attend this parade?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Well, I think come for the come for the beer stay for the Krampus, you know. Okay. I I don't know how big those those events are still today, honestly, but I'm sure that that's still, you know, part of the lure of those and them their hills.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

I I can't imagine they have a parade where everybody's hitting each other with sticks.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

No.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

I could see them dressing as Krampus and stuff and doing the parade, but without the violence. Yeah. It's probably I I bet they still do something for it, but it's different.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah. It's it's it's evolved. And that's the other thing we've seen about myth and folklore is how they evolve and adapt to the culture. Yeah. And and this is one of those things where they created a a parade so people could decide what this thing was, and something emerged from the collective. And I think then it will adapt today to be something different, what's needed. You know, I always use the line uh from the Christian Bale thing with Batman says, I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be. Right. And and that's what ends up being. Our monsters end up being what we need them to be to keep us in line.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

And it's the uh die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Well, so we've talked about Krampus. Is there another lore that we might have time to jump into real quick before we close out the episode in a change?

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Well, I can look at the the cosmogen of of things as far as, you know, again, if we look back at all these early cultures and they create this sacred space and they have this access mundi or sacred pole at the center, you can kind of put the Christmas into that kind of thing. You know, you you actually have the Christmas tree as the sacred pole. And again, this is the one that the shamans use to get to the upper world or the lower world, or it becomes the sacred site for many cultures that would they'll they're going to the the stairway to heaven, as it were. The stairway to heaven. And basically you've got this tree in the middle, and you tend to have these portal guardians. So at the top, there's usually a bird, or in this case for the Christmas tree, a star, an angel. So you got the angel at the top. Right, the angel with the wings, because that's the bird. Right. So that's that's from, you know, or Navajo would have a thunderbird, for example. At the base of the tree, there's usually a portal guardian, which is could be in this case Krampus or the bumble. You know. It's typically a serpent there, right? Yeah, it's usually an a serpent is the most common from other cosmogenies. The only thing I thought of connection-wise, I don't know if I talked to you about this, garland. You've got the serpentine thing going from the bottom of the tree up to the top. So you have this and again that's like the snake wrapping around the tree alive. Right. The serpent with the tree of knowledge. Right. And the sacred pole can tie into the chakra systems and ties into a lot of other things. But basically, you've also got this circle of strand of land around it, which is usually the skirt around which we have this basically a train going around the circle. It kind of looks just like a lot of the the the cosmogenies of of what people see. Like a lot of the sacred land, the lay of the land for the sacred kind of is in is in another form at Christmas, and it matches from Norse to Navajo to beyond. And it's it's very serpent-based.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

And Krampus has a forked serpent tongue.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah, so the serpenty theranthropy. I like to bring it back to the beginning. Right. Yeah. It ties that ties back into that again, that shamanic piece and the theranthropy, the serpentine component to it, and the darker side of it. But basically, those portal guardians are there, you know, just to guard you from when you're ready for that next move, that next level of consciousness, that next shock or jump. They're just the bouncers. They're there. If you're if you're okay to get it, if you have a hand stamp, you get to the next level. If you don't, they just keep they scare you off, kind of thing. The the psychic portal guardians. Right. So that's uh how cosmogeny may and Christmas may tie in to some degree.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, I've never thought about that putting up my Christmas tree before.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

And I never will again. Moz ruins Christmas again. Don't put the put a snake at the bottom of the tree tree.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

And even the Christmas tree itself, what it the original concept was people on on the longest night of the year, you know, typically December twenty first or second, people would actually go out in the woods and put candles in the trees and light them to help light the the world on the darkest night. And it was one of those ritualistic things that, you know, that's how you get the sun to start staying up longer is on that darkest night you go out and you and you bring light to the forest. It was the solstice. On the solstice celebration, you would stay up all night putting candles in the trees in the woods. Those lights you put in your Christmas tree. You were talking about the garland on the Christmas tree. The lights you put on your Christmas tree are those candles that you put in the tree on the darkest night to bring light back to the world.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Right. And to find the sacred pole, the access mundi, the world. This is so ancient world.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Like this is so before m any religions that we still know. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like all these things come from something before. Yeah. And we add to it, you know, there's different symbolism added to it as you go, but that it doesn't take away from the fact that it still comes from a deeper root than a lot of people realize.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

I think if it adapts and loses its way, it finds its way back and those same tropes and themes re-emerge.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

No, it's all very fascinating. And I I love going back and listening, well, not going back and listening, I love hearing you talk about like the tree and how it started and everything like that. And hearing about Krampus too, and knowing it has that dark side, but knowing it's something that's still around today. It's just, as you said, morphed and changed to what people need it to be today. And remembering that everything does have an origin and comes from somewhere into this modern day Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

That's that's how I like to approach anything lore-wise okay in what came before that. Okay in what came before that, and see how far back you can really go with it.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Moz is actually a master of that. Yeah, we try to go back to the very He found the first shaman.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Well, like one and one example. No, I found one example of a proto-shaman. There are several proto-shamans, but they all kind of again, the from the proto-shaman emerges all these themes we still find today that we think we've moved past and and they're still there in different forms.

unknown 29:49

You know.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Well, I really appreciate you both being here today and talking to me about Krampus, talking to our listeners about Krampus. And I know you said this is a shortened version of what you're doing on your own podcast.

unknown 30:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

If you want to lose some some hit, some of your views, I could continue. Yeah, we'll we'll be dropping that.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

I'll actually try to drop it on the 23rd of December. So if you're traveling for the holiday or whatever, you can listen to it on the holidays, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah, that's a good thing for you to do. Doing it right before you.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. Just in time for Krampus himself to hear it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah. Well, do you want to tell our listeners where they can find you?

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yeah. We are Monster Lore Tour. That's L-O-R-E-T-O-U-R. You can find us on all the audio platforms, the Spotify and Apple and iHeart and Amazon, and we are also on YouTube. But yeah, just search Monster Lore Tour anywhere. We're MonsterLoreTour.com. Any platform you listen to podcasts on, you'll find us.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Yeah, well, thank you for that. And yeah, and definitely to our listeners out there, December 23rd, you said you're gonna probably drop that episode. So if you want to listen to Krampus more in depth, a little bit darker, it's gonna be there for you to listen to.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

If you want to hear about Santa sitting in the center of the dark pentagram, oh wow. You can you can jump over to Monster Lore Tour on Christmas Eve and give us a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

I was just trying to figure out how he transforms into Krampus once a year. So we're gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

You gotta know how to release that shadow. Yeah.

unknown 31:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yeah, Michelle, thank you so much for having us. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

I hope you'll come visit us again.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Well, before starting this episode, I know that you said that you listened to our ending. So do you want to go ahead and help me out with it right now?

SPEAKER_02 31:45

We're gonna let Moz finish. How about that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Okay, I think he has the perfect voice for it. So I'm just gonna say stay classy.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Stay sassy. And remember to be badassy, like, you know, Krampus.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

And you guys, thank you so much. Until next time, everybody. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Three Cups and a Dash of Spirituality. If you like what you heard, please know that we have a full library of episodes now available on your favorite podcasting platform. You can listen to it now or you can download it to listen to later. Also, if you'd like to give us a review, we'd appreciate it. We love connecting with listeners and think in advance.