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S2E18 TRANSCRIPT:

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Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark.

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we are going to talk about the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles, which are embraced by those who follow the non theist pagan path of atheopaganism, which you can find much more. [email protected].

These are ethical principles which are designed to help us guide our decision-making and how we live in our lives. They're not commandments they're virtues and there are things that we aspire to. So that's what we'll be talking about today.

Yucca: And as always sharing this is not a saying. Like Mark, you were saying, this is not a commandment. This is not a saying you need to see the world in the exact same way that we do, right. This is us talking about it's this is a useful framework for us. Let's dive into what these concepts are, what these principles are and how they enrich our lives and experience as pagans in the modern world.

Mark: Yes. For a couple of reasons, one of them kind of additive and one sort of subtractive in the additive sense just as we did. Episode on the four pillars, a couple of episodes ago, the four pillars of atheopagan ism, which are the four sacred things. These principles are sort of derived from the four sacred things that is, if you believe that those four things are sacred, then you will conduct yourself according to these principles.

There's a logic there.

Yucca: They really feed into each other.

Mark: exactly. And so. What this does for us is it gives us an ethical framework that helps us, especially when dealing with thorny situational questions that are complex. We can ask ourselves, how does this square with these principles? I've embraced? How, you know, how do I best make a decision?

That is in accordance with these guidelines. So that's sort of the additive sense. The other is the subtractive sense is that paganism has often been accused of being very weak in the world way of ethical development. There's a lot of, I have rights and I'm free and I'm going to do whatever I want because I'm free.

And there's very little, well, there, you have to respect other beings and you have to be considerate about causing damage in the world and you have to be, you know, all those sorts of things

Yucca: The responsibilities that come hand in hand with those rights.

Mark: Precisely. And so, so when I was developing atheopaganism as a pagan path, one of the things that I really wanted to address was that paucity of ethical guidance and the atheopagan principles and the four sacred pillars are the results of that work.

So today we're going to dive into the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles and we'll come back to the rest in subsequent episodes. Not all at once. We'll put some interruptions in between the principles episodes so that we have some variety. But I think this'll be a really great conversation about what we see as important in terms of perspective and behave.

If you're in the world.

Yucca: Just on a structural level. I really appreciate it being 13. That's really fun. There's the 13 moons and the one solar year. And I think it was somebody on the Facebook group who suggested applying the principles to the full moons.

Mark: yes. Which was just a wonderful idea. I was so excited about it. We've just had the laughter moon and which is the perspective moon. And we'll be coming up soon on the Praxis moon, which is the regular well, we'll talk about that. When we talk about principle five But having 13, this is kind of a magic number for pagans because of the 13 moon cycles.

And it's a prime and it's just got all those

Yucca: just a fun number.

Mark: it is,

Yucca: That's great.

Mark: kind of number And so as I worked up these principles and then kind of arrived at the end of the list and realized that I think I've covered everything