The Root of all Religion with Chance Garton on Soul Nectar Show
I joined Kerri Hummingbird on her Soul Nectar Show for my third visit, tracing the roots of religion through language, astrotheology, and alchemy.
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In this episode
Core themes
Philology as a key to myth
Chance described philology as the study of how languages shift and said it could expose the fingerprints of a hidden ancient culture behind world religions. He read the word shaman as sham, a name linked to the sun and fire, and tied it to Samson and solar symbolism. He explained letter swaps such as W and M, giving mind and wind, we and me, and matter and water as examples. Chance also offered a working theory, which he said he could not prove, that letters began as the shapes of leaves. Kerri said she had been reading a book on shamanism as the oldest healing tradition.
Astrotheology and the external savior
Chance said he saw the zodiac and the sun's yearly path as the building block behind mythological systems, and that symbolism is multivalent. He described alchemy's Mercury as a go-between that, in his reading, matches the savior figure, and said the final step is removing the solvent so the savior lives inside you. Chance coined the term Messiahop for religion used as spiritual bypassing. Kerri asked what happens if people attend church on Sunday and avoid doing the inner work of forgiveness and compassion the rest of the week.
Priestcraft, utopia, and personal responsibility
Chance argued that a priest class created lopsided systems of power, while saying he did not blame all priests. He said he thought the Age of Aquarius had been used like earlier promises that a golden age was around the corner, and compared it to promises made by scientism. He gave his own estimate that the age began in the late 1700s, while admitting the timing was uncertain. Kerri said she saw the planet needing course correction and that doing personal work is the work.
The feminine, polarity, and inner medicine
Kerri described her view that patriarchal religion shamed the feminine and the body, and that healing meant turning inward rather than relying on priests, gurus, or outside experts. She credited a teacher for the idea that the story told about oneself matters most. Chance described the Poetic Edda and the Volva, seers who carried a rod, as an example of masculine and feminine polarities within one person. He also described the Ark as a symbol of both generative powers joined, and Kerri added her own reflections on mothers and creation.
Guilt, satisfaction, and abundance
Chance said he had let go of guilt about his lifestyle harming the Earth and encouraged others to do the same, describing guilt as a block on abundance. He said satisfaction, felt in the body, is the frequency that generates abundance, and he suggested a gratitude practice before meals. Chance added that abundance needs to flow through a person. Kerri said that when people wake up and calm their nervous systems, many solutions come to mind, and she tied prosperity to harmony with Mother Earth. These were their personal views.
Quotes
“One day you wake up and realize, you know what, that's all mythology. There's not literally a magical man waiting up in the clouds who's going to come down here and fix everything for me.”
“If you believe that you're guilty in any way or if you're ashamed of yourself and holding on to guilt and shame, it's the exact mechanism that is the opposite of satisfaction and satisfaction is the thing required for generating abundance.”
“Just philologically a fun trick that you can do to see if there's deeper meaning to a word is flip the W's into M's or the M's into W's.”
“My current working theory is that maybe letters came from leaves. As in the different leaves, shapes of different leaves were the original letters that were laid out to do the original type of spelling.”
“The further, the deeper you go into language and philology, the more you see that like everything is everything.”
“If we go to church on Sunday and we sit there and we listen and then we go, that's really cool. And then we leave and go home and the rest of the week, we're pretty much not doing our work, right? We're not working on forgiveness.”
“One of the realizations I came about my personal healing was that it came when I decided, number one, I was going to stop asking external experts. I was going to go inside like I'm leaving the external medicine and I'm building the inner medicine.”
“When you wake up, you realize you're eternal, you're a timeless soul. When you realize that, you kind of, the heart opens, you relax a little. And when your nervous system calms down, a billion solutions come to your mind about what to do to solve a problem.”
