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S2E28 TRANSCRIPT:

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Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. My name's Mark. 

Yucca: and I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we're going to talk about the August Sabbath, the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumnal Equinox, which is celebrated by many pagans as one of the eight stations on the wheel of the year. 

Yucca: It's also one of those tricky ones in terms of what is it called? 

Mark: Right. That's the first thing we need to talk about. What do you call this thing? How do you pronounce that? And so forth and so on from there. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I often use Lamas because it's the one I can spell of the ones that other people might know what, what I'm talking about. I also think of it as the Second Summer and It's just that, that beautiful, wonderful holiday, which we'll get into the meaning for it later. But I almost don't even think of it having a name. I just associate it with what's happening during the season for us. So it's our monsoon holiday.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. Llamas comes from the middle English meaning loaf mass. 

So in Europe it's very associated with bread and the green harvest, which happened right about now in the course of the year in the countries that had that kind of agricultural cycle. And so it's also associated with all of the products of green, like beer and bread and you know, all the associated things that you can make with grain. Another word that is commonly used in the pagan community is Luna SSA, which is spelled with a variety of extra consonants. 

Yucca: Pronounced Luna, Luna, Luna said neither of which. Correct pronunciations for Irish.

Mark: Right. And I choose not to use that name because when I was naming the Sabbaths around the course of the wheel of the year and just generally conceptualizing atheopagan ism generally I didn't want to be drawing from any particular culture. I want it to be very clear that this was a modern interpretation of paganism that didn't stem from Celtic culture or Norse culture or Germanic culture or Greek culture or Egypt culture.

You know, for, for a number of reasons, one of which is that I feel strongly. My spirituality being a forward-looking spirituality about living in the world today and our vision for the future. And also because I wanted to avoid a cultural appropriation. So 

Yucca: name also is in reference to a God. Is it not?

Mark: yes, yes, Lugh, who is a God that I don't know anything about. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So what I have been calling this, I, I, for a while, and in the book I call it Summer's End, but. Really, it just isn't the end of summer here. If that doesn't work very well. So I've moved from that to Summer's Waning. And also just to the term Dimming, because this is the time of year when it begins to become clear that the days are getting shorter again.

It's been long enough since the summer solstice that you can really tell. You're not getting those very little. Nights anymore. It's the days are still long. They're just not as long. 

Yucca: yeah, that's getting noticeable. Hmm. I love the waning that connects it back to some of the. The lunar term terminology that we use as well, even though it's a solar holiday, it's, it's connecting those two just with the language. 

Mark: Right, right. 

Yucca: Although in my, my climate, the sun is, the days are getting shorter, but the summer itself, definitely not coming to an end, but this is the height of summer for us.

You know, summer solstice is. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Still it's summer, but it's still spring ish. It's really the end of spring, but this is truly summer for us at this point. 

Mark: What'd you say it was high summer where you are. 

Yucca: really sure. How to, what that word would really mean to be high summer. 

Mark: okay. Okay. 

Yucca: Because I would associate high summer with being like the very middle of summer. And I suppose it i